by Taylor Brown
Wolf.
His ire rises. This kill is his. No rout of wolves will steal his meat.
Mosi lifts his bloodied face to the moon.
He roars.
CHAPTER 24
TIGER LADY
Tyler came fast awake, sitting upright in the snarled sheets of Anse’s bed. A roar was echoing in the chambers of her heart. She swiveled and set her bare feet on the floor, hanging her head over her knees. Her chest was heaving.
She’d been dreaming of Anse. They were standing on a beach at dawn, their sleeping bags crumpled behind them in the dunes. The rising sun shone on the ravaged flesh of Anse’s torso. A land of fissure and striation, carved as if by storm and hoof. She saw the hard little cobbles of his stomach, which spread and converged with his breath, and the bluish rivers that branched down his arms. The scars from bullets or claws or teeth. He turned slightly, letting the dawn-light lick farther across his flesh, and Tyler gasped. An angry scar lay in the hollow of his sternum. Like a surgical wound but rougher, meaner, risen from a dark storm of bruise.
Anse was turning toward the sea, the crashing waves. Toward the east, where so much of his history lay, that ghostly country of jungles and velds.
Just going for a swim, he said.
Tyler wanted to tell him to wait, but no words would come. He turned fully toward the ocean, revealing the ragged chevron of scars in his back, as if someone had ripped out the roots of wings or plastered over a set of gills. She worried he would not come back from the swim. That he would drown in a riptide or undertow. The sound that rose from her throat was not a word but a roar, and she woke upright in bed, heaving.
She stood now, naked in the dark room. Alone. Anse was gone—one of his midnight drives that could last until dawn. Tyler swung open the door of the trailer and stepped onto the stoop. Fall was coming. The cool edge of the night pressed against her skin. She stood there wondering whether the roar was hers. Whether it came from inside her or out. Finally she stepped down from the stoop and walked into the night.
* * *
Malaya jumped down from the truck, shotgun in hand, and approached the lion’s mouth of the entrance. Anse was close behind. They posted themselves on either side of the shattered doors, their chests heaving. The old jockey jammed his bush hat harder on his head and eased open the breech of his shotgun, checking for a chambered round. Then he ducked through the door. Malaya followed him down the darkened hallway, her weapon held high over the squeak of her boots. They spread out in the gift shop, scanning the T-shirt racks and display cases for intruders. The skulls stared back at them from their shelves and pedestals, hollow-eyed.
Nothing.
Lope appeared from the hallway with one of the elephant rifles. The three of them looked at one another, eyes wide in the dark. The cash register was untouched, the merchandise.
If the intruder didn’t come for that …
Together, they turned to face the big windows that looked onto the sanctuary grounds.
The door was ajar.
“You want me to launch the drone?” asked Lope.
Then they saw it: a flicker of stripes in the darkness.
“Tyler,” croaked Anse. He was through the door before they could stop him.
* * *
Tyler walked down the drive between enclosures. The woods were growing paler as the season turned, thinner, and sound traveled farther through the trees. Spanish moss seeped silver from the oaks. The firefly larvae were out, wingless and earthbound. The bulbs of luciferin in their tails emitted a cool, bluish-white glow, like stars scattered through the grass.
Other lights hovered in the night, bodiless, blooming from deep tangles of brush or the high limbs of trees. The eyes of servals, ocelots, tigers. Their iridescent interiors reflected even the dimmest scraps of light onto their retinas, maximizing their night vision. Tyler wondered how she might glow for them, her skin near phosphorescent under the moon.
She found herself standing before the enclosure of the black leopard. Midnight. A sign hung from the hurricane fence, which explained that the black panther was not a distinct species but the melanistic variant of the leopard or jaguar. Midnight was the former: Panthera pardus. Tyler had typed up the language herself. Now she squinted, searching for the green eyeshine of the felid. Anse said the state wildlife commission had found her in the backyard menagerie of a suspected wildlife smuggler. He said they’d called him, needing a home for the animal. The story felt suspicious to her, though she couldn’t say why.
Tyler stepped closer to the fence, hooking her fingers in the links. Closer than visitors or staff were allowed. She squinted. It had always been this way with Anse. There were whole secret worlds inside him. Memories hidden in the flicker of his jaws, the bite of his lip, the grind of his teeth. She trusted him—always had—but it hurt to be outside his skin, unable to know the dark country of his interior. The tongue was too small a bridge, too hardly used. Perhaps she was being paranoid, even jealous. But she knew.
She’d never believed in supernatural phenomena—didn’t need to. She knew the powers of nature were uncanny, underestimated, scarcely understood. There were the thousand-mile songs of the humpback whale, heard from sea to sea on naval anti-submarine systems, and dogs that could detect, hours in advance, the onset of seizures and strokes. Acacia trees whose leaves, when chewed, released a warning gas that drifted from tree to tree, triggering the production of leaf tannins lethal to antelope and other browsers. Hormonal sentience. African elephants that could detect rainstorms from one hundred miles away, sensing the thunder’s vibration in the earth, and Amur tigers capable of premeditated vengeance, tracking down and assassinating poachers. Tyler could even give cautious credence to various premonitions of her own species—intimations of doom or bliss too subtle for clipboards or electrodes.
When no leopard came slinking from the darkness, Tyler turned and started walking again, striking deeper into the sanctuary, toward the unseen glow of the river.
* * *
The loose tigers cut back and forth before Anse, their faces bobbing in the darkness. It was the former circus tigers, Snow and Fire, released or escaped from their enclosure, prowling the sanctuary grounds. Their eyes never deviated from the man before them, despite their switchbacking bodies, the restless whip of their tails.
“Anse!” hissed Malaya.
She was crouched on the back deck of the sanctuary, Lope beside her. Their guns were leveled on the rail, their barrels tracking the crisscrossing tigers.
“Anse!”
The old jockey was standing in the middle of the sanctuary grounds, arms wide, speaking to the animals. Comforting them. He paid no attention to the scream of the monkeys or the foot-thunder of the elephant or the pleas of his own species. He seemed entranced, caught in the tigers’ spell.
Lope thumbed the sweat from one eye, looking down the sights of his rifle.
“Don’t make me do it again,” he whispered. “Please, old man.”
Anse didn’t seem to hear. His voice was low and kind, floating like a lullaby on the night air, but his big howdah pistol was out, the twin hammers cocked. Malaya saw Lope inhale beside her, deep and slow, his chest rising toward his chin. He exhaled slowly, a faint whistle through his lips. Then closed his eyes, opened them. The man seemed changed, calmed. He rose and leaned his rifle against the rail and stepped down from the deck.
“Lope,” said Malaya. “Lope!”
The tall man walked straight toward the old jockey. The tigers were turning tighter circles now, agitated, their stripes flickering in the night, Anse standing spread-armed before them. Lope came to stand beside him, touching the smaller man on the shoulder. Anse jumped at the touch, turning to look.
“There’s blood on their chins,” he said.
“We left out meat to thaw,” said Lope.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Lope. “Come on now, we’ll corral them with the buggy.”
He tugged Anse’s shoulder and
the old man relented. Malaya covered them as they backed their way toward the deck—slowly, so as not to trigger the tigers’ reflexes. They reached the steps and Anse looked up beneath the round brim of his hat. His eyes were wide, boylike, and the big howdah pistol hung forgotten at his side.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Then they heard the scream.
* * *
Tyler walked toward the river, stepping carefully among the tiny blue bulbs of firefly larvae, dim constellations under her feet. Next summer, the survivors would rise on newly sprouted wings, blinking in the dusk. She passed the enclosure of Snow and Fire—her favorites. They rose to approach the fence, chuffing at her presence, but she couldn’t stop. She was being pulled toward the river, as if the current bore its own gravity, an invisible thrall. She walked past the fenced pond of the crocodile, Mighty Mo, then passed beneath the last amber security light of the sanctuary, where moths fluttered and pulsed. She strode on, the path lit only by the moon.
Before her loomed the old enclosure along the river. The chain-link fence was swarmed with vines and kudzu, solid as the wall of a hedge maze, the topmost leaves shining like shattered glass. She knew Anse came sometimes in the evenings to visit Henrietta’s grave. Once or twice she’d seen bloody chunks of meat in his truck, offerings perhaps to her ghost. She imagined the door of the old enclosure would groan wide beneath her hands, the rust-seized hinges giving way.
She stopped short.
A brass padlock hung from a length of heavy chain, securing the gate. That was strange. She knew of no reason to keep the enclosure locked. No chains could hold back the memories buried along the river. The wind moved through the trees, and the dream-roar echoed again in her chest. The larvae glowed and the river still called. The night felt newly alive, sentient. The throb of blood in darkness.
Tyler walked along the fence until she found the old feeding chute. She touched the lower edge of the pipe, then held her hand to her face.
Blood.
Fear jolted her, sure as a shot. She was not alone. There was something back here, kept from her. She stalked along the fence, looking for an opening in the mass of vines. Here was one. A single diamond of chain link. She bent to the spyhole, squinting through the wall of vines, searching for a shadow of movement, a secret in the night.
She leaned closer, head cocked, her breath rattling the vines. Leaves tickled her chin. She was about to look away when a bronze eye, enormous, rose to meet her own. Tyler leapt backward from the fence, reeling and stumbling, crushing the blue worlds of glow bugs under her feet. A cry rose in her chest. She opened her mouth, screaming as an arm came curling around her neck, choking off the sound in her throat. The hard ball of a bicep jumped against her carotid artery, cutting the blood from her brain. She staggered, her vision tunneling, her nostrils filled with the scent of a man. Sweaty, feral. She dropped to her knees, clawing streaks in the fleshy noose of the arm. Her eyes caught a scroll of words rounding the pale cap of shoulder.
BEAST—
Now darkness.
* * *
“There!” cried Anse, leaping from the buggy.
Tyler was locked in one of the safety cages, her hands bound behind her back. A bandanna had been tied through her jaw, baring her teeth. They retrieved a pair of bolt-cutters from the gear-bag and cut the padlock. Anse jumped into the cage, cutting away her binds and gag with a pocketknife.
“Baby,” he said. “I thought you were tiger food.”
Tyler ripped the bandanna from her mouth.
“You’re hiding the King of Savannah in the back enclosure.”
It was not a question.
Anse opened his mouth to reply, but she stabbed a finger upright between them. His mouth clamped shut. Tyler swiped the jags of hair from her face, turned on her feet, and walked away, out of the safety cage and past the buggy, heading for the front of the sanctuary. Her shoulders were wide and squared, her wild blond hair bouncing in the night. Snow and Fire were still loose. She walked right past them. The tigers dipped their heads before her, expecting to be fed or addressed. Tyler kept walking.
Malaya’s mouth hung open.
“Damn,” she said. “Tiger lady.”
* * *
They sat on the back deck of the gift shop, drinking instant coffee from chipped mugs. The eastern sky was paling, edging the pines from darkness. The tigers were back in their enclosure, persuaded with raw buffalo shanks, and the King of Savannah was gone. Taken. The heavy padlocks of the river enclosure had been cut with an acetylene torch, the scorched brass remnants set atop the coil of anchor chain. The animal had been darted either from the trees or through a break in the vine-wall. His pugmarks turned three curlicues of widening circumference before his heavy chest had beached in the underbrush, flattening a bed of chickweed. There were marks where he’d been dragged or winched onto a litter, terminating at the fresh tracks of a heavy vehicle reversed to the gate for loading. The perpetrator’s footprints had been raked away and the sanctuary’s security cameras deactivated, the hard drive removed from the computer tower—the only thing taken from the office or gift shop.
Malaya held her mug with both hands. Her knees were tucked against her chest.
“Slick job,” she said. “Professional.”
Lope nodded. “You think it was that guy owns Lion Gas? The one from the news? Winter-something?”
Anse stood chewing his lip, squinting across the palms and cages of the sanctuary.
“Melton,” he said. “Winter Melton.”
He shook his head.
“It ain’t him. If he knew we had the lion, he’d call in everybody he could. Police, news. Make it a public relations bonanza. Televised rescue or something. Whereas this looks like a small crew, possibly a one-man job. Looks like only one set of tracks raked clean back there.”
“Beast of waste and desolation.”
They turned quickly to find Tyler standing on the deck. No one had heard her approach. She was fresh from the shower, twisting the blond rope of her hair, wringing water from the braid. Drops pattered against the planks at her feet. Anse, openmouthed, stared at her.
“Say that again?”
“A tattoo,” she said. “He was shirtless, covered in tattoos. There’s only one I saw up close, when he put me in the sleeper hold.” Here she straightened and Malaya saw the bruised cords of her throat, which tightened.
“‘Beast of waste and desolation’ is what it said.”
“Sounds like scripture,” said Malaya.
Lope shook his head. “It ain’t, not from the Bible.”
“No,” said Anse. “It’s from Teddy Roosevelt.” The old man’s jaw muscles twitched. “Writing about the wolf.”
Malaya felt a cold breath at the back of her neck, prickling the hairs.
“Then it’s him,” she said. “The one we’ve been hunting.”
Tyler looked at the three of them, then back at Anse. She crossed her arms.
“Hunting?”
Anse ground his teeth.
“We’ve been calling him the wolfman. Breeds wolf hybrids, possibly big cats, too. Could be a tiger farm or chop shop, shipping parts straight out of the port.”
Tyler lifted her chin, her arms still crossed.
“Where?”
“Some island,” said Anse. “Our informant kept saying Lion Claw. Could be a nickname for a place, or else our man misheard it.” The old jockey tugged absently on one earlobe. “It was kindly hard to tell at the time.”
Lope set down his coffee.
“Yamacraw,” he said. “Yamacraw Island. Just off Savannah. My daddy and uncle grew up out there in the sixties and seventies. Investors bought it all up about a decade back, aiming to build a resort. All the old families sold and moved off, the few that were left. They built a beachfront hotel out there, golf course, tennis courts, cottages, the whole nine yards—just a couple years before the recession hit. It all went bankrupt soon after, is what I heard. Everything left to rot. It’s isolated
out there, no bridge.” Lope shook his head. “It’s perfect.”
Anse growled, his brow gathered stormy over his eyes. He looked at Tyler.
“You want to be part of this?”
Tyler looked out across the sanctuary. She brushed one hand up the sleeve of her T-shirt, over the long swell of her upper arm. Then higher, lightly touching the bruise at her neck.
“In Chinese mythology, they say a tiger, at five hundred years old, will turn white and transform into a god, a guardian of the western sky and autumn lands—but only if virtue rules the land. But white tigers are no longer rare, are they? The world’s full of them, bred father-to-daughter for circuses, sideshows, pets. For generations.”
Now she swiveled back toward the others and uncrossed her arms, setting her hands on the back of a deck chair.
“Has Anse ever told you about our first rescue here, Polara? She was a white tiger bred for a Las Vegas magic show. When the show folded, they couldn’t afford to keep her, so we took her in. She was slightly cross-eyed, with a clubbed rear foot. She sort of bounced around her enclosure, goofy-pawed, chuffing all the time, slapping at Boomer Balls.” Tyler leaned closer to the rest of them, shaking her head. “I don’t know what it was, but I loved that fucking cat. I really did. When she died, we dug her a grave along the river. Our first.”
Tyler squeezed the back of the chair, the muscles standing from her arms.
“I’ve had enough sad stories crusted under my nails. I want claws.”
CHAPTER 25
THE ISLAND
The full moon floated high in the dusk, a silver bullet in the purple glow of sky. Beneath it, the sea was dark, sharp, lapping at the hull of the boat. The Catbird Seat. Three days ago, they’d found the old shrimp trawler abandoned at her moorings, the owners fled. They’d swabbed the feathers from the decks and cleared the bilge and scrubbed the scum from the wheelhouse windows. Anse had fussed over the Detroit 8-71 diesel for hours, clad in rubber boots and headlamp, wielding wrenches and screwdrivers and aerosol cans until the old motor woke from greasy slumber, throbbing rhythmically in the hold.