Pride Mates (Shifters Unbound #1)(26)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

“You all right, Connor?” Kim asked worriedly.

“No. Crap.” He moaned in sudden pain.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick? Geez, Liam, what did you put in the pancakes?”

A plate shattered on the kitchen floor. “Shite,” Sean whispered, and at the same time his eyes flooded with pain.

Liam shoved Kim from him. “Kim, get away from us. Now.”

All four Morrisseys started growling, eyes changing. Connor moaned pathetically.

Kim didn’t know enough about Shifters to know what the hell was the matter with them. Were they shifting? Or sick? Sean slid to the kitchen floor at the same time Liam fell to his knees. Dylan got out of his chair and tried to go to Connor, but he collapsed before he made it to his grandson.

Liam raised his head, lips peeling back from fangs. “Go!” he shouted at her. “Run!”

Kim didn’t waste time arguing. She fled through the kitchen, wrenched open the back door, and ran outside into hot, humid Austin air.

She could leap into her car, roar the hell out of Shiftertown, go home, and change all the locks. Move. Quit her job, never see Shifters again. They could keep her clothes; she didn’t like most of what they’d packed anyway.

When she reached the bottom of the porch steps, Connor started screaming. The anguish of it made Kim stop, turn back. Connor was the youngest, the weakest of them, and whatever was happening hurt him most of all.

Kim ran back up the steps and into the house. Connor’s keening split the air. Dylan and Liam were both crawling toward him, and she realized that they were trying to touch him, these people who comforted each other with bodily contact.

“Liam, what can I do?”

Liam cranked his head around and looked up at Kim. His eyes were bright red. “No, Kim. Get out.”

“I can’t leave you like this. How do I help you?”

Liam couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. He managed to reach Connor, who screamed even louder when Liam touched him.

Damn it. Kim didn’t know enough about Shifters—she who’d thought she’d researched everything about them. This could be anything from their Collars going wrong to some kind of weird virus.

“Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

She had no idea if Liam heard or understood. Kim ran out through the kitchen again and headed down the dirt path to the house next door. She banged on the back door, cupping her hands to peer through the window.

“Glory?”

She heard nothing, and for a few seconds she feared that Glory, too, writhed on the floor, moaning. Maybe everyone in Shiftertown did. Shit.

Glory wrenched open the door, as tall and stunning as she’d been the night before. She wore a hot-pink halter top that clasped her throat and hid her Collar, skin-tight black leather pants, and pink spike-heeled pumps. Not an alpha, my ass.

Glory was breathing hard, as if she’d been working out, but there wasn’t a drop of perspiration on her face, not a hair out of place. “What?”

“There’s something wrong with them. Something Shifter-wrong. You have to help them.”

Glory jerked her gaze to the Morrissey house. “With Dylan?”

“With all of them. I don’t know what’s happening.”

Without a word Glory stepped past her and hurried down the porch stairs. Kim had to jog to keep up with the woman’s long stride, and this with Glory wearing mile-high shoes.

Glory shoved open the back door of the Morrissey house as though she belonged there. She stopped short, and Kim nearly ran into her. Liam had his arms around Connor now, but Connor still keened with his heart-breaking wail.

“What’s wrong with them?” Kim shouted.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before.”

Fat lot of help that was. Glory strode to Dylan, who had his eyes closed, his now elongated teeth cutting his lips. Glory grabbed his shoulder. “Dylan!”

She had to shake him and yell at him before Dylan finally looked up, his eyes now yellow swimming with red. He rasped a word Kim couldn’t understand, but Glory nodded. She turned back to Kim with a grim look.

“They’re being Summoned,” she said.

“Summoned? What the hell does that mean?”

“It means their clan leader is calling them. He’s put a compulsory spell on them—they’ll be like this until they reach him and he lifts it.”

A spell? “I thought you said you’d never seen this before.”

“I haven’t. Summonings happen only about once every two hundred years, because clan leaders who use them indiscriminately don’t stay clan leaders long. Shifters don’t like being coerced. Fergus must want you bad.”

“What, he couldn’t use the phone like everyone else?”

“He did use the phone. Yesterday. He commanded Dylan to turn you over to him, and Dylan refused. So Fergus did this.”

From Glory’s expression, she fully blamed Kim. Glory’s shirt might hide her Collar, and Dylan might claim she wasn’t high in her pack, but she was still a Shifter, still strong, still deadly.

“You have to get them to San Antonio,” Glory said.

“San Antonio?”

“That’s where Fergus is. You have to get them to Fergus—they can’t drive like this.”

“To this Fergus who’s demanding that I be ‘turned over’ to him, whatever the hell that means? Why can’t you take them?”

Glory snorted. “Respond to a Summoning from another clan leader? I’m Lupine. I walk into a gathering of Felines, they’ll take my head off before I can speak.”

“What about my head?”

“You’ll have to risk it. Fergus will expect you to come with them anyway. Come on, help me get them into your car.”

“They won’t fit in my car.”

“Make them fit.” Glory grabbed Dylan under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. The big man could barely stand, but he leaned heavily on Glory and let her drag him across the kitchen. “There’s no other choice.”

Glory kicked open the kitchen door. It banged against the wall and began to drift shut, small flakes of plaster floating from the ceiling.

Liam snaked one clawed hand around Kim’s ankle. “No,” he rasped. “Run.”

The pain in his eyes broke her heart. Liam was right; she should run. She should leave the Shifters to their fate and emigrate to Australia. Kim was coldly terrified at the thought of facing this Fergus, the man who could render four powerful Shifters helpless from seventy-five miles away. But Liam’s anguish kept her with him.