Raven’s Instinct (A Day Care for Shifters #6)

38. Kendra

38

KENDRA

K endra loved to fly.

Whatever hassles and forced secrecy came with being a shifter, the ability to rise up into the air and defy gravity was a beautiful gift that made up for all of it.

There was so much freedom in the sweep of her wings, so much finesse in the way a simple tilt to her fanned tail could change her trajectory. The whole world went small beneath her and seemed to stretch out and make sense again. The road beneath her was a string of red and white Christmas lights, the sky above was deep blue velvet just starting to show sparkles.

There was no time to enjoy the flight this time. Kendra strained for the sky and felt Alan fall effortlessly in at her wingtip. The token in her human hand seemed to have become part of her owl’s claw, and she could feel Alan—his presence and his emotions—as if they were one person.

He loved her.

He’d said as much, twice now, and Kendra had been too cowardly to admit the same. Could he feel it from her anyway? Did he guess, or was he certain?

He deserved better, and for once, Kendra didn’t mean better than her, she meant that he deserved all of her.

He deserved her trust.

Kendra banked to the west and felt Alan swerve east. There were two major ways out of town, and it was a good guess that a fake ambulance with a kidnapped woman in labor wasn’t going to hang around for people to notice she was missing.

If they had a bug in the day care, it was possible that they already knew that they were being pursued and had gone to ground, but Kendra couldn’t second-guess every possibility, and it was still possible that they didn’t know she and Alan could fly. They’d work systematically from the furthest possible point of escape and then back in.

An ambulance could certainly move faster than an owl or a raven, but to do that on these pokey roads during what passed as rush hour in Nickel City, it would need its lights on, and that would be easy to see. Kendra climbed higher.

She felt the curious flicker of Alan’s alert and had a moment of surreal double vision. He’d spotted something, then dismissed it. The real ambulance coming from East Medical was probably running its lights, too.

Then she saw one with her own eyes. It was a different ambulance, and it was just coming through a snarl of traffic towards the open two-lane highway. If it got there, it would outrun her with ease. Kendra didn’t hesitate for a moment, but turned her dive into a headlong flight. She felt Alan’s alarm and his will to call her off from solo pursuit.

Not a chance, she thought fiercely in reply. She didn’t think Alan would hear the words, but knew that he’d capture the feeling.

If she didn’t stop that ambulance, they’d lose it altogether, and there was no knowing where Addison would end up or what would happen to her baby.

Owls were not made for distance flight. They were stealthy hunters, clever and patient, and they crept up on their prey, they didn’t outlast it. Kendra’s wings were already aching by the time she got to the intersection, and the ambulance had pulled out and was putting on speed. She wasn’t going to catch it. The laws of physics were not in her favor.

She couldn’t do it as an owl…but as a human…

She landed at the intersection and risked shifting in the low light behind a switch box before she sprinted to the fastest-looking car waiting for the light.

She pounded on the window, and when the driver lowered it in astonishment, reached right in and opened the door from the inside. “NCPD,” she bluffed, flashing him her driver’s license. “Get out of the car.”

To her surprise and relief, he actually did, and then Kendra had to figure out what to say next. “I’m requisitioning this in pursuit of a suspect. You will be…ah…compensated.”

The driver’s face started to darken suspiciously, but Kendra flung herself into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, put it in gear, and peeled out of the intersection around the car in front of her, honking to warn the vehicles that were going through legally.

They scattered off the intersection in front of her, and Kendra was finally on the highway, the wind wailing in through the open window that she couldn’t find the controls to close.

She drove with a lead foot, weaving around slower traffic until she was just one car behind the ambulance, which had turned off both its flashing lights and its siren. If she and Alan had started off even a few moments later, they would have lost it forever. For a while, she simply paced it, trying to still her pounding heart and figure out a way to stop it. She finally fumbled the window controls, so at least she didn’t have near-freezing wind making her face numb and her eyes water.

Alan. Alan was on his way, though she couldn’t really tell how near he was. He couldn’t fly fast enough to catch them. She had to stop the ambulance, at least long enough for him to get there. She didn’t have to overpower the driver or the EMTs or single-handedly rescue Addison, which was good, because she could not imagine how she could possibly do that. She just had to stop it. Without killing herself or Addison.

And she wasn’t going to be able to do that from behind it.

There was finally a strip of highway—truly dark now—with a straight stretch and no oncoming headlights. Kendra stomped on the gas and wheeled around the vehicle that had been between her and the ambulance, and then didn’t slow down to get between them, but floored the car to get ahead of it.

Headlights appeared before them from around a curve that Kendra hadn’t seen coming, but she was committed now and kept her foot on the gas without hesitation. She squeaked into a heart-stopping space in front of the ambulance as the oncoming car honked and swerved, and the ambulance laid on the horn.

Kendra braked, and the ambulance seemed to buck behind her as the heavier vehicle had more trouble stopping than she did. She knew exactly what it was like to drive a vehicle of that size and style...and she bet that they were more inexperienced at it than she was. Kendra released the brake at the last moment before they could ram her, gave them both a breath of unchecked forward motion, then braked again, keeping careful tabs on the headlights behind her.

The ambulance honked and flashed its lights and sirens, which was exactly what Kendra hoped it would do, and when she turned sideways in the road, it came to a screeching stop as all of the traffic behind it piled up. All of her own forward momentum seemed to dissipate with the speed of her car, and she was left in a running car tying up two lanes of traffic, her heart pounding, with no idea what to do next.