by Kyla Stone
In countries where the people respected tigers and kept their distance, tiger attacks had been rare. It was always humans who had hunted them, taunted them, wounded them, and then reacted with stunned outrage when a tiger responded with violence.
Tigers were wary of humans and usually showed no preference for human meat. Although humans were relatively easy prey, they were not a desired source of food. Most man-eating tigers were old, infirm, or had missing teeth. They chose human victims out of desperation.
Vlad stretched out on his favorite rock, gazing at her with his sharp eyes, tail twitching. Well? He seemed to say. Get on with it.
First, she made sure the sliding gate Vlad used to enter his chamber from the enclosure was closed. Then she swung the service door wide. She climbed atop the tiger house, using the flimsy maple tree to get her far enough up to grasp the top edge and haul herself up with a grunt. Everything was harder with the pack weighing her down.
From the safety of the tiger house, she looked down at Vlad. “Don’t make me regret this.”
With her father’s SmartFlex, she could open the sliding gate remotely. She swiped the SmartFlex, bypassing apps until she found the one she needed. She flicked the manual override. The gate creaked as it slid open.
Vlad just stared at her.
She twisted and scanned the park again. Still no lights, no human noises, no Headhunters. No one was out searching for her. Whoever Damien really was, he’d kept his word. He hadn’t betrayed her.
She whistled one long note, two short. The signal for food. Vlad rose languidly, leapt from his rock, and stalked to his chamber. How long would it take him to figure out the service door was open?
She didn’t have long to wait. Within seconds, Vlad sauntered out of the service door like he was embarking on his evening stroll. He raised his great head and stared straight up at her. Their gazes locked.
He was magnificent. And he was terrifying.
She stopped breathing. Adrenaline spiked through her veins. Every hair on her body prickled. From the park side, the roof of the tiger house was only ten feet from the ground. A tiger could leap twelve feet straight up from a dead stand-still.
If he wanted to, Vlad could be on her in less than three seconds. No tranquilizer dart in the world took effect that fast.
He shook his head, tail twitching, as if considering how hungry he was.
“You know me,” she said softly. “Who else gives you jerky and back rubs? Who else hangs out with you for hours atop your tiger house? You know me.”
His ears pricked, listening to her. He gave a loud chuff, whirled, and stalked away.
The enormous tiger vanished into the fog like a specter in the night. As she stared after him, Raven couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d either saved them all or made the gravest error of her life.
22
The glint of a flashlight snagged the corner of Raven’s eye.
She froze.
Moments ago, she’d slipped from the tiger house. Now she was headed for the back gate to open it for the animals. Once she turned off the electrified top wires, the tiger, zebra, and the wolves could leap the wrought-iron fence at any point along the perimeter. The bears and bonobos could clamber over it, while the foxes—Zoe, Zelda, and Magnus—and the otters could squeeze through the bars. The other animals would have to find the open gate to get out.
The fog drifted, impossibly sluggish, an opaque white haze. She knew every loose flagstone in every path of Haven by heart. Yet in the misty darkness, it took on an eerie other-worldliness that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck.
Walking through the fog gave her the eerie sensation of sinking into something deep, impenetrable, alien and unknown.
A scuffling sound came from behind her.
She swung around, peering into the fog. To her right, the reptile house loomed. To her left rose the snack shack, a maple tree growing beside it, its leaves almost gone, bare branches raking the sky.
If someone was out here and had a light, they’d turned it off.
She turned back, kept walking, her footfalls muffled.
She stilled. Was there another footfall, just after hers?
She spun around again, gut clenching. She couldn’t see more than fifteen feet in any direction. Distance was impossible to measure. The world outside her circle of visibility might have vanished, and she would never know. She listened for sounds, heard only her own ragged breathing.
She’d never escape at this rate. She was letting the fog get to her, letting her own fear control her.
Raven braced herself, straightened her shoulders. She tucked her tranq gun in her waistband and grasped her rifle, finger curled around the trigger. She resumed walking.
Something dropped directly in front of her.
Raven resisted the urge to leap back in terror, to scream. She remained still, clenching her fists, her teeth. A blurred shape leered out of the murky shadows.
A bonobo materialized. He hooted at her, jumping up and down in glee. His lips peeled back from his teeth as he smiled, his licorice-black eyes glittering eagerly up at her.
“Gizmo,” Raven said in relief. “Go terrorize someone else, would you?”
He reached out his leathery fingers—not gesturing for food, but to hold her hand. For a moment, he clasped her fingers gently in his. She stroked the black fur on the back of his hand.
He hopped on one foot, hooted softly, and gave her that hoarse, goofy laugh of his.
Her eyes pricked. “You’re free now. Go. Find your troop. Live a good life.”
Gizmo rose on his hind legs. His smile changed—his lip curled up, revealing all of his top teeth. To the untrained eye, Gizmo still looked like he was smiling. He wasn’t.
It was a fear grin.
She heard the footsteps too late.
A gunshot shattered the air.
Gizmo let out a tortured shriek.
She pivoted, lifting her rifle, finger already starting to squeeze the trigger. Too late. A hand clamped around her mouth. Something knocked the rifle out of her hands, seized her and shoved her back against something hard—a man’s chest. The cold muzzle of a gun kissed her temple.
“Don’t scream,” Jagger said in his harsh, rasping voice. His hot breath scalded her cheek. He stank of sweat and beer. The sour stench of him clogged her nostrils. “Or maybe do.”
Her heart jerked, bucking against her ribcage, filling her chest with molten panic. She tried to wrench free, but his grip was iron.
“You got her,” a second voice said. A figure materialized out of the fog a few yards to her right.
“You bastard,” she hissed.
Damien smiled tightly, his eyes in shadow. He gripped a handgun with two hands, held low, his semi-automatic slung over his shoulder. “That’s me.”
“We’ve been looking for you,” Jagger said. “And to think, we practically gave up on finding you. Ryker and Cerberus will both be thrilled.”
At her feet, Gizmo writhed in agony, his hands clutching his stomach, blood oozing between his fingers, his small black face contorted in pain and confusion. In his entire life, a human had never hurt him.
Damien stood over him, aimed his gun, and shot the bonobo in the head. Gizmo’s furred body slumped and went still.
A cold fury rose within Raven. Gizmo was only here because he wanted to greet her, to perform his usual antics, to show off, maybe even to say thank you and goodbye.
Instead, Damien killed him.
“You didn’t have to do that!” she cried in a strangled voice. “He wouldn’t have hurt anybody!”
Jagger toed the dead ape with his boot, his gun still pressed to the side of her head. “Too bad we can’t get a pelt out of this thing.”
Somewhere to the east, invisible in the heavy fog, another bonobo wailed in grief. It was Zephyr, Gizmo’s mother. Bonobo mother-son pairs were closely bonded for life. She must have seen what happened from a perch on the reptile house roof or one of the elms lining the path.
Zephyr wailed again. She knew what it meant—her son’s body lying limp and still. Raven felt the bonobo’s pain like her own, stitched into her bones.
“Get that thing to shut up, would you?” Jagger said.
Damien holstered his handgun and grabbed the semi-automatic. He swung and pointed into the fog, firing off several random shots.
“Stop it!” She tried again to wrestle from Jagger’s grip. She kicked backward at his shins, clawed at his skinny forearm. “Leave her be! You don’t have to kill them!”
Jagger only laughed, an ugly, guttural sound. “They’re glorified rodents. Foul, filthy beasts. We’re doing them a favor.”
She choked on helpless anger, unable to speak.
Damien lowered his semi-automatic and peered into the murk, frowning at the sound of tiny nails scrabbling over a metal roof as Zephyr scurried to safety, still shrieking in anguish.
“Now, let’s get down to business,” Jagger said in her ear, his breath hot on her cheek. “You the one who let the damn monkeys out?”
“They’re not monkeys, they’re apes, you moron,” she spat, finding her voice.
An ear-splitting yowl echoed through the night. It sounded both close and directionless. A harsh, guttural bark answered from somewhere nearby.
Jagger went rigid. In his shock, his right arm dropped, the gun slipping from her temple. “What the hell was that?”
Damien spun, gun up, sighting nebulous shapes in the shifting fog. He shot Raven a horrified look. “Which animals did you let out?”
“All of them.” She let the tremble creep into her voice, let the panic clawing up her throat escape. “That yowl you heard? That’s Vlad, the man-eating tiger. It’s the sound he makes right before he attacks.”
It was a lie. The yowl was Electra’s, the dog-like bark belonged to the zebra—neither of whom would attack three full-grown adults. But Jagger and Damien didn’t know that.
Their faces drained of color. Jagger’s attention strayed from Raven to the menacing fog, which hid any number of clawed, fanged, and deadly creatures.
“Where is it?” he cried. “Shoot, damn it, shoot!”
Damien crouched, his gaze sweeping in a slow circle. “I don’t see anything!”
Jagger gestured with his gun. “Shoot anyway! Scare it!”
Raven saw her moment and took it. She threw herself backward, slamming into Jagger’s chest to loosen his one-armed grip. The quarters were too close for the rifle. Instead, she shoved her hand into her pocket and seized the whittling knife. She yanked it out, fumbling to flip it open.
She didn’t think. She simply acted in desperate self-preservation. Carnivores always went for the most vulnerable points of the body—and so did she.
Raven twisted, arm raised, and plunged the blade deep into Jagger’s throat.
23
Hot blood drenched Raven’s hands, slicked her fingers. The knife slipped out of her hands and clattered to the flagstone.
Jagger staggered back. His face went slack with astonishment. He dropped his gun. His eyes were sunken in his gaunt face, his pallor ashen. He clutched his neck with both hands, frantically trying—and failing—to staunch the dark red blood gushing from the wound.
“Shoot her!” he croaked.
Damien’s wide gaze darted from Jagger to Raven and back again. His expression was stony, his shoulders clenched. He swung his semi-automatic toward her, gun barrel pointed at her chest. “Raise your hands.”
The knife lay on the path, dark with blood, a yard from her feet, Jagger’s gun even further away. Her hunting rifle was still slung over her shoulder, but by the time she went for it, Damien could shoot her a dozen times.
“Raise your hands!” Damien said again.
She went very quiet and very still. She lifted both blood-drenched hands in the air and fixed her gaze on Damien. “You don’t have to do this.”
Jagger took a step toward her and stumbled, gasping, half-choking. “What’re you waiting for? Kill her!”
“You have a choice,” Raven said to Damien.
Jagger tottered backward, hands fumbling, plucking at the spurting hole in his neck. He sank to his knees. His breath came in shallow, rapid pants. “Kill her and get me to Gomez! He’s got the med kit…”
Still, Damien hesitated. His rifle wavered. His body was taut, his expression guarded, calculating. His gaze flitted from Jagger to Raven and back again. Something flashed in his eyes—uncertainty.
Blood bubbled from Jagger’s lips. His skin had lost all color. He made an attempt to stand but toppled to the ground with a groan.
His hands tightened over his throat, blood still gushing from the wound, spreading in a thick, shining black puddle. “I’ll kill…you myself…you little—”
“No,” Damien said firmly, his expression clearing like he’d decided something. He shifted and aimed his rifle at Jagger. “You won’t.”
Damien didn’t pull the trigger. He didn’t need to.
Jagger sputtered incoherently. He gasped for air, making choking, gurgling noises, his eyes rolling back in his head. Raven forced herself to watch, dismayed, horrified—but alive.
Within a minute, Jagger stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped everything.
He was dead.
Damien lowered the semi-automatic, but he kept his finger on the trigger. His breathing was ragged, his face hard. “You were supposed to run,” he said, his voice accusatory.
“I was. Until you caught me.”
“That was…out of my control.”
She bared her teeth. “You were there. I saw you. You were shooting at the wolves. Shika, Echo, and Titus are dead.”
A shadow crossed his face. “I had no choice.”
She choked out a furious, disbelieving snort.
“I shot at them—I didn’t kill them myself.”
“You might as well have.” She wiped her hands fiercely on her cargo pants, leaving dark streaks of blood. “And Gizmo? What’s your pathetic excuse for murdering him?”
“Jagger shot him first. I put him out of his misery, and you know it.”
In some small part of her brain, she knew Damien’s shot was a mercy killing. He’d ended Gizmo’s suffering. All the same, she hated him with a blazing intensity. Seeing him standing there next to Ryker and Cerberus while they killed Shika and Titus and Echo—it had felt like a betrayal. “You nearly killed Phil.”
“I was saving him—from Ryker. Ryker would have killed him too if I hadn’t stepped in. I never would have shot that old man.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Look, I can’t act weak, okay? I have to play a part. If I don’t, they’ll abandon me—or kill me.”
“So what? Just leave.”
“It’s not that easy or simple.”
“Looks that easy from where I’m standing.”
His gaze dropped to Jagger’s body, and swiftly snapped up again. “Cerberus is my uncle, okay?”
She just stared at him.
“He came for me.” His voice was strained, his eyes hooded. “I was stuck in my house for five days, afraid to leave with all the rioting and bloodlust, people so scared, they killed anyone who coughed or breathed wrong—some who didn’t even do that. I was in that house with my dead parents and my dead sisters for five days.”
He didn’t look at her, didn’t meet her gaze. He stared off into the mist, eyes glazed and distant, recalling the horror. “I thought I was going to die too, just like them, the fevers, the coughing up blood, writhing in agony, my insides melting like jelly. But I didn’t. I’m immune.” His voice went hollow. “Lucky me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, because she could see the suffering etched on his face, sharpening his features.
“And then Cerberus came,” Damien said. “He fought his way through a riot and dragged me out of that house and he saved me. So I’m alive because of him. I owe him.”
“He sounds like a real winner.”
“He’s—he’s not as bad as you think. He h
as a code. He doesn’t usually kill women and children.”
Her eyebrows shot to her hairline, incredulous. “Usually?”
Damien’s eyes flashed, going hard again. “Trust me. There are worse alternatives.”
She remembered the look on Ryker’s face, his flat eyes as he blew Carl’s face off for no reason but mild irritation. Damien had a point.
She scowled. The Headhunters were killers and criminals and thugs. Every single one of them. “Do you think any of that matters to Carl? To Echo or Gizmo?”
His jaw pulsed. Emotions flitted across his face—anger, resignation, something like sadness. “I’m not your enemy.”
He lifted both hands, releasing his rifle, palms out in a token of trust, maybe—which she didn’t believe for a second. She couldn’t allow herself to believe it.
She didn’t trust him. She despised him. He was one of them. Yet he’d been true to his word. He hadn’t ratted her out back at the lodge.
He’d also stood by and watched his wicked friends shoot the wolves. He’d done nothing when Jagger took her hostage. Yet he’d refused to shoot her, choosing to allow one of his own people to die instead.
It made no sense. She didn’t understand it, didn’t understand him. His presence was disorienting, discomfiting, filling her with anxiety and apprehension.
His hands were off his rifle. She could reach hers, lift, point, and shoot. Maybe she’d get a shot off before he did. He was a Headhunter. He was dangerous.
She should kill him right now.
24
Raven reached for her weapon.
Damien tensed, but he didn’t move. He kept his hands up, palms out. “Are you going to do it, then?”
She should. She needed to. Her father would have.
But there was something in his eyes. A softness, a vulnerability. Her gut twisted. He was the enemy. He’d also spared her life. Twice.
She could hate him, but she couldn’t kill him. With a sigh, she released the rifle. “Why didn’t you shoot me when Jagger told you too?”