What a small extinguisher would do against a giant rampage of flame, Carly didn’t know, but it couldn’t hurt, and it would give Cherie something constructive to do.
Cherie bounded to the extinguisher, her tread shaking the floor. With one blow of her large paw, she shattered the glass case. Carly snatched up the extinguisher inside, bigger and heavier than the one they kept at the gallery, and cranked it on.
The extinguisher, at least, worked. Fire retardant spewed from its hose, keeping the advancing flames from reaching this part of the hall. Carly dragged the thing back into the studio from which cubs were still straggling out, spraying what she could.
She yelled at Cherie to start trying to break down the other doors. Cherie obeyed, the tiles vibrating under Carly’s feet every time Cherie’s heavy body hit a door.
Carly kept spraying the studio. She was coughing though, not finding air. The cubs surrounded Carly, holding each other, holding her. She did a head count and nearly cried with relief when she counted eight—nine and ten were Cherie and Olaf in the hall.
Her effort with the fire extinguisher was working somewhat, tamping down the immediate flames. Carly led the cubs out of the studio again, squirting at fire as she went, taking the kids to where Cherie was still trying to open a door.
All the doors seemed to be sealed shut, or bolted. They were steel doors, and Cherie was denting them, but none had broken open.
But they had a chance. Carly kept spraying, Cherie kept beating at the doors, Olaf trying to help. The rest of the cubs huddled around Carly, Jordan holding on to one of her legs.
All would have been well, Carly thought, if not for the next explosion that ripped down the hall, shooting another inferno into the corridor.
* * *
He barreled through them all, the barricades, the firefighters, the police who tried to stop him. He broke anything in his way, including the front door that already sagged from its hinges, and leapt into a fiery nightmare.
It was black-dark and hot, smoke pouring through the corridor. He’d never been in this building before, never been near it until he’d followed Carly and Armand here today.
No matter. Tiger’s well-honed sense of smell told him the cubs were above him, trapped on the second floor. It also told him the jaguar and large gray wolf at the end of the hall were frustrated by the barricade that blocked their way up the stairs.
The debris included part of the walls, the pipes, the ceiling. Spike and Ellison were trying to climb over it, but with every leap or step, the pile shifted, sending them down again.
Tiger growled, shaking the air. Ellison and Spike swung around, wolf and jaguar staring in surprise before turning back to the task of climbing up the blockage.
Tiger bounded past them. He stretched his big body and leapt up the mounded debris, finding holds that had eluded the other two, until he made it to the top. From here, it was a short leap to the next floor, but Spike and Ellison were snarling beneath him.
Tiger slid a few inches back toward them, speaking in growls. Grab on, assholes. Hurry up.
Ellison’s wolf understood, and he reached up to clamp his mouth around the base of Tiger’s tail. Spike, behind him, wrapped his jaguar paws around Ellison.
Tiger leapt. He used claws and paws to scramble up through the hole to the next floor, the weight of the other two barely slowing him. When they reached level flooring, Spike and Ellison dropped off, and all three faced a corridor littered with burning beams.
Tiger ran. His body stretched and bunched as he plowed through the flaming mess, closing his eyes against the black smoke. He knew where Carly was without having to look. The mate bond was taut like a stretched rubber band, pulling him straight to her.
He found Carly on her back on the floor, inches from a burning beam, her body still. Tiger roared, shaking loose more debris, and cubs screamed.
The jaguar ran by. Jordan shouted, opening his arms. Spike caught Jordan’s shirt with his teeth, flipping the little boy up and onto his back.
Cherie in her grizzly form was hunkered next to Carly, and she raised her muzzle in a mournful howl. Olaf, in his human form, sat on Carly’s other side, holding Carly’s hand.
Tiger’s heart pounded as he slid to a halt, but he knew Carly wasn’t dead. The mate bond was still there, as was the bond to her cub.
But she was unconscious, Carly’s face ashen in the light of the fire. Cherie rocked next to her, moaning.
Tiger nuzzled Carly’s face, taking her scent, sending reassurances through the bond. Then he turned and grabbed at the handle of the nearest door, the heat of it singeing his paws.
Olaf, serious-faced, said, “We tried to open the doors. They’re blocked. Is Carly dying?”
Tiger saw where Cherie had dented two of the steel doors. He grabbed for the handle of one of the bent ones, but the door handle snapped off, and Tiger slipped to the floor.
He stood again, shaking himself out, letting rage take over. Cherie couldn’t budge the door, but Cherie hadn’t been created in a lab where breaking through doors had been part of her training. After a while, the researchers had had to make Tiger’s cage doors about two feet thick.
Tiger backed up, lunged, and hit the door with all four paws, full force. The door groaned under the onslaught, bent some more, then broke from the wall and skittered inside the room. Tiger rode the door through the flames, through burning tables and chairs, and slammed into a wall under a window. The shades were down, but Tiger ripped the shades from the wall and then yanked the window out of the wall as well.
Firemen below yelled, signaling the ladder truck to move its position. Tiger dropped the window and ran back through broken glass to the corridor.
He grabbed Ellison by the scruff of the neck and dragged him to Carly. Ellison, catching on, shifted to human, his skin breaking into sweat from the fire’s heat. Ellison lifted Carly over his shoulders and ran with her to the window.
No time to wait to see whether the ladder trucks came for her—Tiger had to get the others out.
Spike ran by with Jordan on him as well as one other cub, and into the room with the open window. The cubs scrambled from his back to the windowsill.
Tiger growled at Cherie. She shook herself, recognizing the commander in Tiger. Three more of the cubs fit on her back, and she ran through the burning door to the next room.
Four cubs remained, including Olaf. Tiger lowered himself and they climbed onto him, clinging to his fur. A sweat-streaked fireman appeared at the window, reaching for Carly, and then another fireman came behind him. Spike and Ellison stayed with the cubs, helping and calming them, while the firemen lifted them out.
They’d make it.
As soon as the thought formed in Tiger’s head, another explosion sounded, blasting Tiger and his load of cubs back into the hall. The steel doorframe of the doorway to safety folded in on itself as the wall broke apart and fell.
The explosion had come from above, and now the corridor’s ceiling collapsed, burying Tiger and all four cubs under burning wreckage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Carly swam to wakefulness, and thought she was being smothered. She grabbed for the thing that pressed her face and found a plastic mound, then saw the dark face of an EMT behind it.
“Take it easy,” the man said. “You’re fine. You just need oxygen. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Carly nodded, the mask moving with her. “We’ll get you to a hospital and have both you and the baby checked out. All right?”
Carly lifted the mask from her mouth. “Where are the others?”
The EMT pressed the mask back into place. “They’re coming out. Your boss said there were ten kids. That right?”
Carly nodded again, tears leaking from her eyes.
“Some crazy tiger ran in there after them.” The EMT shook his head. “I guess he was one of those Shifters. We couldn’t stop him.”
Tiger? Carly couldn’t shout questions with the oxygen mask over her face. More tears came. Tiger had return
ed. And he was saving the cubs.
She made herself relax, to breathe the healing oxygen and not move. Tiger would come out, he’d have the cubs, and all would be well.
There was a whump, and firemen shouting, and a huge plume of flame and smoke shot from the building’s roof, high into the blue of the afternoon sky. Every window showed fire, and a part of the building collapsed.
Carly screamed. She ripped off the mask and tried to scramble from the stretcher. The EMT, a strong Hispanic man with muscles almost as big as a Shifter’s, pushed her back down. “No, you stay here.”
“Did they get out?” Carly yelled. “Did they get out?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out, okay?”
Carly clutched the padded sides of the stretcher, staring at the building until her eyes ached. Ellison and Spike were on the ground, human now, leading Cherie and the cubs to the parking lot. Other Shifters had arrived, Liam and Dylan, Sean and Ronan. Ronan ran for Cherie, now a human girl again, and caught her in his arms. He led her away, snatching the blanket a fireman brought them and wrapping it around her.
Cubs: one, two, three, four, five, and Cherie. Six. The rest must be inside with Tiger.
Carly scrambled off the stretcher again, holding the mask to her face. She could barely see through smoke and tears, or through the crowd of people and emergency vehicles. All she could make out was that the small community center was now a flaming wreck, collapsing on itself, with Tiger and the cubs inside.
Shouting sounded at the front of the building. The rest of the med team started that way, running, running.
Smoke billowed from the front door, and people scattered. Through the opening, parting the smoke and haloed by flame, ran Tiger. His fur was blackened, body moving fast, children clinging to his back.
He stopped as the medics ran forward, Tiger dropping flat on his belly so the kids—three of them—could drop from his back. The medics swept them up, and Liam and Dylan surrounded the kids and EMTs.
Only three cubs.
Carly threw down the oxygen mask and darted away from the EMT, running, stumbling, toward the entrance and Tiger.
Tiger was already climbing to his feet as she sprinted forward. “Olaf!” she yelled. “Where’s Olaf?”
She had to stop as coughing wracked her, more gook in her lungs coming out. Ronan released Cherie and pushed her at Sean.
Tiger had turned for the building even before Carly had shouted about Olaf. Another explosion lit up the world, the community center now nothing but flames surrounding a shell.
Tiger ran right into it.
Carly collapsed, sitting down hard on the ground. Tiger’s body was outlined in flame for a brief instant, then he was gone.
* * *
There was no longer any up or down, backward or forward. There was only flame, and the melting floor searing Tiger’s feet, his fur burning. Trying to see was useless, so Tiger closed his eyes.
Numbers whirled across the insides of his eyelids—coordinates, angles, distances. Every piece of data about the building as it had stood condensed itself into formula, and danced before him.
Tiger had known exactly when Olaf had fallen, but Tiger hadn’t been able to stop his forward momentum to snatch him up. The other cubs had been falling too, sliding, coughing. Tiger had put on a burst of speed to take them to safety.
The new explosion complicated things, but Tiger moved unerringly through the flames, eyes closed, stopping at the small limp body of the polar bear cub. He reached down and gently picked up Olaf by the scruff of his neck.
Then Tiger turned and ran. Fire tried to stop him. It burned him, his fur singeing with an acrid stench, his sinews melting. But Tiger kept going.
The door wasn’t where he’d left it. Tiger closed his eyes again, relaxing his mind, letting the numbers come. Why they were there, and how Tiger understood them, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. With the strings of numbers to guide him, Tiger ran directly to the last door in the building that existed and out into daylight.
A giant Kodiak bear caught Olaf as he fell from Tiger’s numb grip. The Kodiak turned into Ronan, who lifted the unconscious Olaf into his arms and ran with him toward a medical team.
Tiger collapsed. His lungs were liquid, his coat gone, fire dissolving his skin. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a sound.
He heard Carly’s voice—my mate—and dragged open his eyes. He saw Carly, her hair scraggly and singed, her clothes burned, blood on her arms and legs. But she was safe.
Tiger let out a sigh. Carly was too far away from him, but she was safe.
Tiger focused then on his immediate surroundings, and found the barrels of a dozen automatic weapons pointed at his head.
* * *
Tiger groaned. He couldn’t move. He lay supine in his human form, chained down, too exhausted to shift to the tiger.
They’d chained him like this in the hospital, and before that, in the research facility where he’d been made. Only this time, there was no leaping up in rage, no breaking the chains. Tiger was weak, and he was dying. But then, he’d been burned to death today.
Was it still today? Or had days and nights passed? Tiger had no idea.
The cubs were safe. Carly was safe. Nothing else mattered.
At one point, men in white masks came and drew blood out of Tiger’s arm, and scraped skin cells from his armpit, the only place he hadn’t burned.
Most of his skin was gone. Tiger was surprised he could see or hear, but those senses seemed to function, though his left eye, when he pried it open, showed him nothing but a milk-white fog.
He had his sense of smell too, because he could smell himself, and it wasn’t good. Taste, he wasn’t certain, except for the dry sourness in his mouth. They gave him no water but pumped fluids into his veins through an IV.
Tiger definitely had his sense of feeling. He was in excruciating pain.
He wasn’t sure who was keeping him prisoner this time, but it must be Shifter Bureau. The men who’d come for him had looked like they were from Walker’s unit.
But it no longer mattered. Carly was safe. His cub was safe. Tiger had seen the magical threads of the mate bond shimmering between them—intact and still strong.
More time passed. More blood, more skin cells taken, a change of the IV drip bag. Tiger couldn’t make his mouth work to ask what the white-coated medics were doing to him or why.
He drifted to troubled sleep. The next time he opened his eyes, two researchers were standing over him. Past and present melded, and Tiger started to think he’d dreamed being released from the research lab, and everything that had happened since.
“A couple more samples,” one said. “Then he’s done.”
“Done?”
“Terminated. He’s beyond saving.”
“Shame,” the other man said. “Would have been interesting to study him.”
“Orders are orders,” the first man said. “But we can dissect him. See what’s inside.”
“That’ll work.”
Tiger wanted to leap up and onto them, to tear them down. But he lay inert, his body refusing to obey.
He needed Carly. Wanted her so much. She hadn’t been a dream. Carly was very real.
Tiger fought to rise, to get out of this place before they killed him, to get to Carly, but he managed only to fall asleep again.
He saw Carly, her red lips and wide smile, her sexy legs, the way she closed her beautiful eyes when she leaned in to kiss him. The position let Tiger see her soft breasts behind the neckline of whatever dress she wore that day, made him want to cup her in his hands, lick her, close his mouth over her breast. She made such pretty noises when he did that.
Carly, he tried to say. A faint croak issued from his throat.
Tiger forced the name out. “Carly.”
“Sorry, my friend.” He thought Walker leaned over him. “I’m not as pretty. But now I know what you are.” The man wore a look of triumph. “Or at least, what you’re f
or.”
Oh goody, Tiger wanted to say in Connor’s most withering tones. I’d been so worried about that.
“I’ve brought someone to see you.”
Tiger’s heart squeezed with fear. No. Not Carly. This place wasn’t safe. She couldn’t be here.
The person who walked forward at Walker’s gesture wasn’t Carly, but Liam.
“You were a bit of a hero out there,” Liam said, his smart-ass Irish grin in place. “I’m thinking my humble home won’t be big enough to hold you now, but I’m going to take you there anyway. Carly, now, she told me to bring you back with me, or not to bother coming back at all.”
* * *
Carly sat on the edge of the big bed in the attic room of Liam’s house and looked down at Tiger. She feared to touch him, since what was left of his skin was black and brittle. Any human, probably any other Shifter, would be dead by now.
It was night, Tiger’s room lit by one small lamp. The rest of the house had gone to bed, but Carly hadn’t wanted to leave Tiger alone in the dark.
The usually quiet Olaf had been regaling everyone in sight, repeatedly for the last couple of days, about how he’d thought he was dead, and then Tiger ran in through the flames and rescued him. Ran in, straight to him, Olaf said in awe, and out again.
Olaf had begged for paper and paints so he could draw Carly a picture, and Armand happily supplied them. Olaf had submerged himself in art, painting a picture of a huge tiger carrying a little polar bear, both surrounded by flames. No more abstract images without faces—Olaf’s tiger had Tiger’s face and ferocious snarl.
“You’re a hero,” Carly said softly to Tiger now. “The newspapers and TV are full of it. Especially after the convenience store clerk recognized you and said you were the guy who’d stopped the robbery too. A Shifter superhero. You’ll probably end up in a graphic novel.”
Tiger didn’t answer. He hadn’t for the day and night he’d lain here. He hadn’t healed either. No change in him at all.
“Ethan is leaving me alone,” Carly said. “Armand’s lawyer talked to Ethan’s lawyer, and Ethan’s been advised that since he did cheat on me, and because you’re so popular right now, he should leave you alone. And me. That’s good. I don’t care if I never see Ethan again.”
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