Marc. And he was close.
I sprinted around a thick patch of raspberry briars to find him directly in front of me, headed straight for the stream. He was almost there. But so was I.
A growl rumbled from deep in my throat. Instead of stopping at my warning, Marc sped up. I did the same, my muscles burning in protest. Cats are sprinters, not longdistance runners. But I was so close!
The distance between us narrowed. My claws gripped the earth as I ran, providing traction on a slick bed of moss that grew thicker the closer I got to the water. My lungs burned from exertion, demanding that I win, that I not put my body through such torment in the heat of the day for nothing.
But I couldn’t win. Marc’s tail was only inches from my nose, but I had no more speed to offer, no more energy to spend. Marc had cheated, and he was going to win.
Unless I cheated, too.
After an instant’s hesitation, I sank my teeth into the tip of Marc’s tail.
He yelped and tried to stop instantly. Instead of the graceful halt he’d no doubt intended, he tumbled forward, stumbling over his own front paws. His muzzle hit the ground, buried in a patch of moss, while his hind legs kept going, propelling the rest of him forward. He looked like a pig rooting in the mud.
I dropped his tail without slowing, and huffed in Marc’s ear as I passed him. It was the closest I could come to laughing in his face.
He recovered quickly. I glanced back to see him running after me, moss stuck in his front teeth. He was too late. I splashed into the stream up to my shoulders, snorting and tossing my head as I inhaled too much water.
Before I could clear my nasal passages, Marc bounded into the water after me. He hissed and slapped the surface with one front paw, spraying me with a backlash of water.
I’m sure you are pissed, you cheating son of a bitch, I thought. But all I could do was grunt at him. And splash him back.
For the most part, stories about cats hating water are exaggerated. About us, they’re an outright fabrication. Like most large cats, we love water. The guys and I had been known to waste entire summer afternoons splashing around in the stream, treading water at the deepest parts. We’d catch fish when we got hungry, and when we grew tired, we’d stretch out on the banks to dry in the sun before bounding off into the woods for more recreation. And with the national preserve bordering our land, we had plenty of forest in which to play.
While the woods were usually thick with humans during the tourist season, none of the backpacking trails or campgrounds were anywhere near our private wilderness. We’d seen very few hikers, and on those rare occasions when we had, the noise of their approach gave us plenty of time to hide in the trees before the two-legged wanderer came into view.
Marc and I played in the water for several minutes before Vic, now in cat form, padded to the edge of the stream, announcing his presence with a low-pitched yowl. His nose looked better, from what I could tell. It was swollen, but straight, and the bleeding had stopped.
Though it hurts like hell, Shifting shortly after receiving an injury can reduce healing time by as much as half. The best explanation I’d heard for the phenomenon was that since muscles, ligaments, and bones are torn apart and rearranged during a Shift anyway, injuries begin to heal automatically as our parts are reattached in new positions.
I’d experienced this personally twice, and had welcomed the accelerated recovery time in spite of the extra pain.
Vic growled at us from the bank, clearly chewing us both out. Though I couldn’t understand his exact phrasing, the gist was clear enough: we’d both cheated, and he had no intention of cooking either of us dinner. Ever.
That said, or growled, in this case, he jumped into the water between us, draping one heavy black paw over Marc’s shoulders and hauling him beneath the surface. They both came up sputtering, each batting playfully at the other’s muzzle as they tried to dunk each other.
I backed away to watch from the edge of the stream, and to slake the thirst I’d worked up during my long sprint. But even sloshing with water, my stomach wasn’t satisfied. Hunger gnawed at me, my belly demanding compensation for the calories burned during my Shift.
Shifting takes a lot of energy, which must be replaced quickly with both food and water. Water, I had plenty of. Food was another story.
My stomach growling, I turned to recruit Marc and Vic for the hunt I was already planning. But again, Marc was gone. Vic paddled alone in the middle of the stream, beckoning me forward with a playful splash and a toss of his head. Wondering vaguely where Marc had wandered off to, I pushed off from the bank and swam toward Vic, intending to dunk him as he’d dunked Marc. But as I extended one paw beneath the surface, my sheathed claws only inches from his head, something heavy dropped onto my back. I plunged to the bottom of the stream, my limbs flailing in the weak current.
For a long moment, I panicked, sucking water in through my nose in bewilderment. My paws scraped uselessly at loose, smooth stones, scrambling for purchase. My tail stirred the water fast enough to create a light foam. Then the weight was gone, and I floated to the surface, sputtering and hissing with my first gulp of air.
Marc bobbed in front of me, treading water. The gold specks in his eyes sparkled in delight. He seemed to be laughing at me around a muzzle full of sharp, pointed cat teeth. The bastard.
I growled at him in mock anger, swatting his ear with my paw, claws unsheathed. But I didn’t hit him hard enough to hurt him, or even to break his skin, because we were just playing. And because I’d get him back later, when the time was right. When I had the advantage of surprise. When he’d completely forgotten I still owed him…
After Marc’s champion pounce, we played in the stream, swimming and splashing each other, until my stomach renewed its demand for food with cramps instead of gurgling chatter. But by then I was too tired, from our play and from hunger, to even think about hunting. I jumped up onto the bank, signaling to the guys that I wanted to Shift back by tossing my head in the direction of the ranch.
Marc climbed the northern bank of the stream and took off through the woods with Vic trailing close behind. Evidently they still had far more energy left than I did. But then, they hadn’t spent all afternoon sparring with Ethan.
I trudged after them, not bothering to keep up. Surely by the time I made it home and Shifted back, someone would have started cooking. Or at least ordered a few pizzas. But as I made my way through the forest, plodding around tree stumps instead of leaping over them, something raced across the left edge of my vision. My head turned instinctively to follow the movement, ears arching forward as the rest of my body froze.
At first, I saw nothing but the great outdoors: trees, dead leaves, underbrush, and fallen twigs and branches. But then something moved again, and my focus shifted. And that’s when I saw the other cat.
My pulse spiked, and my jaws clenched. My paws flexed, claws digging into the dirt out of instinct. It was just a brief glimpse, a flash of slick black fur between two trees at least forty feet away. But it was enough to put me instantly on alert.
I’d made no effort to be quiet on my trek back from the stream, and neither had Marc or Vic, so any other cat in the woods would certainly know we were there. If he were one of ours—even my one nonresident brother, Michael, who came over a couple of times a month to make use of our excess of wilderness—he would have made his presence known out of courtesy. With the exception of Ryan, who wasn’t allowed out anyway, we were all very close, and none of us would have snubbed the others by walking by without a greeting.
The mystery cat wasn’t one of ours.
On alert now, I tensed, going completely still in a tangle of honeysuckle. I had to call for help. I had no delusions about my ability to