Justin grinned. “You see? You’re getting stronger. I’ll show you how the Collars work, and we can go back to Shiftertown and start freeing Shifters. You’re stronger than this Fergus, now. I can feel it. It won’t take you long to kill him.”
Liam growled. Justin backed up some more and let out a growl of his own.
Weak, mewling bastard who’s made me want to kill my own father and make a slave ofmy mate.
Justin growled again, this one defensive. A growl of fear.
Wherever he’d come from, Justin must have been fairly far down in his hierarchy. He smelled wrong, weak, evil.
Liam followed Justin’s advice and let the feral beast come. All the thoughts that had been spinning in his head focused into one specific thought, and Justin was its target.
Liam leapt, and Justin started to scream.
Chapter Twenty-one
Sean took Kim to the east side of Shiftertown, speaking little but tight with tension. Dylan remained behind, saying it was his job to keep coordinating the search.
“These streets are a maze,” Kim said anxiously as they turned down yet another block.
“We can’t search as well in a car.”
“No kidding.”
The roads were narrow and potholed, and blind alleys ran behind buildings like a maze without end. This part of Austin had been more or less abandoned when the Shifters moved in nearby. Kim had been a kid at the time, but she remembered her father saying that thriving businesses had moved out of the area and left it to Shifters and the homeless.
Not many homeless were around, which was odd. It was true that in the summer, vagrants left southern cities, like migrating birds, to find the cooler climes of the north. Even so, many stayed, panhandling from prosperous businessmen and politicians in downtown Austin. None lingered out here. Was that because they thought the pickings wouldn’t be good or because they feared Shifters?
Whatever menace they felt, Kim picked it up as well. The humid air bristled with electricity, a prelude to a storm. She glanced at the horizon and saw that dark clouds were indeed building, thunderheads ominous. Austin didn’t get many tornadoes, but some came through on occasion, and those clouds looked ready to play. All the more reason they needed to find Liam and Michael.
“I hope we find Michael before Nate and Spike do,” Kim said. “I know they’re helping, but I don’t trust them. And I can’t believe his name is Spike.”
“He was a Buffy fan.”
Kim had a surreal vision of Tattoo Guy eating pop-corn and cheering on Buffy and her pals, and wanted to laugh in nervous hysteria.
Sean, Shifter-fashion, would not let Kim walk ahead of him. He turned down yet another alley, shadows gathering in it from the storm and the coming night, and stopped so abruptly that Kim ran into his back.
“What?” she demanded.
“Call Dad.”
“Mind telling me why?” Kim pulled out her cell phone as she tried to peer around him.
“We’ve found Michael.” Sean walked slowly into the alley.
Kim’s phone read “no service.” Damn wireless providers. Perfect when you were in the middle of a teeming city where there were plenty of other ways to communicate, useless out where you needed them the most.
She could walk back down the long alleys behind the crumbling buildings until she found a good spot. Alone. Without Sean and his mean sword to protect her.
Kim ducked into the alley behind Sean. If they’d found Michael, they could grab him and hightail it out of here.
Sean slipped his sword out of its sheath without breaking stride. Oh, no. Please, no.
Kim raced after him, her sandals pattering on the broken asphalt. She reached the small body stretched out on the pavement the same time Sean did and went down on her knees beside him.
“Michael.” Kim lifted him, breathing a sigh of relief to find him warm, his small heart beating. “Oh, thank God.”
Michael whimpered, and Kim held him close. The boy’s eyes were tightly closed, as though he’d withdrawn far into himself. Kim cradled him, rocked him, pressed her cheek to his hair. One of his hands was manacled, the chain stretching to a ring in the brick wall.
“You’re all right, sweetheart,” she said. “I have you. Sean, can you get the chain off him?”
Sean didn’t sheathe the sword. “Something’s dead.”
“What?”
Sean’s nostrils flared, and his eyes went white. Gripping his sword, he kicked the rest of the rotten boards free from the open doorway and ducked into the shadows of the building. A second later, Kim heard him exclaim violently.
Kim stood up. Michael clung to her, whispering, “The bad man. The bad man.”
“What bad man, Michael?”
He didn’t answer. The tether let her carry him just inside the shaded doorway. A wide warehouse floor opened out in front of her, an empty room a couple of stories high. Texas dust coated the floor and hung in the air.
Sean stood over a body sprawled in the middle of the floor. The man was large and naked, with shreds of clothes around him. Kim couldn’t see his face, and fear stabbed through her.
“Liam?” she asked, heart in her throat. Please, please, no.
“No,” Sean said. “I’ve never seen him before. But he’s Shifter, and he’s dead.”
Sean solemnly raised the sword, point down, the hilt between both hands. He whispered words Kim couldn’t catch as he brought the blade down into the Shifter’s chest. Air around the fallen man seemed to shimmer. Then, as had the Shifter who’d attacked Kim in her bedroom, its body crumbled to dust.
“He was feral.” Liam’s rich voice rolled out of the shadows. Sean straightened and turned, and Liam himself walked toward them from the back of the warehouse. Kim went slack with relief. “He told me Fergus and Brian were experimenting on him,” Liam went on. “They found a way to remove his Collar. That’s what Brian was doing the night his girlfriend was killed, and that’s why he couldn’t tell anyone where he’d really been.”
Kim put Michael down on the cool pavement, smoothed his hair, and reassured him she’d be right back. The boy lay down and curled into a ball, and Kim hurried inside. “Liam.”
Sean put a large hand on Kim’s shoulder and yanked her back. Kim collided with Sean’s chest, and his hard hand kept her pinned.
“What are you doing? Let go of me.”
Sean didn’t release her. Liam kept walking toward them. He was shirtless, and angry scratches bled across his chest. But he didn’t move as if he was hurt; he walked slowly, like a lion stalking its prey, every step deliberate, focused.