Quinn would endure whatever torture, perform whatever task was asked of him, if only to protect his mother from any further pain or indignity.
One morning, after he had lost track of the days, the clank of the door latch made him open his eyes. His mind had gone sluggish, just like his limbs. It felt like thoughts and muscles were both trapped deep in thick mud. His mouth hung open and he felt drool on his stubbled cheek and for the first time since his captivity, instead of fury, he felt shame.
“Mr. Quinn,” Teague said, “you’ve been holding out on us.”
Quinn wished he could kill him with a glance. He stared hate at Teague, thinking the man would smile and cajole and make light of that hatred, as he always did. But there were no smiles from Teague today.
“Did you hurt her?” Quinn asked, his voice a rasp, his lips curling back as he thought about how deeply his teeth would bite into Teague’s flesh and bone if he could only get the man close enough.
Teague arched an eyebrow. “Your dear old mama? Her condition is unchanged. But she has been chatty lately, the old dear. Her mind drifts, as you know. This morning she mistook me for some old acquaintance or another. Maybe the accent triggered some precious memory. All she wanted to do was boast about her children, about her beautiful daughter and her handsome son, the successful entrepreneur.”
Quinn blinked, trying to make sense of Teague’s demeanor.
“I told you we were thinking long term, Quinn,” the man said slowly. “About the next generation. I told you that full-bloods were more useful to us. That mother of yours might be a few clowns short of a circus, but her little episode this morning has more than made it worth my while to keep her breathing.”
In the deep mud of Quinn’s brain, a thought began to form. A terrible, terrible thought.
“No,” he rasped.
Now Teague smiled. “Oh, yes. Congratulations, Mr. Quinn. Mama told us you’re a new daddy.”
The smile slid away, vanishing slowly until Teague looked feral.
“You will tell me where to find this infant, Mr. Quinn. In return, I will not order my people to torture your mother. I will not order them to kill her. I will not order them to torture you. Your son will be raised well, if strictly, and he will grow to be a great warrior—in the service of the highest bidder.”
Quinn stared death at him.
“Tell me, and you will all live,” Teague said. “Even your son and his mother.”
“You would have to kill me,” Quinn snarled. “And you would have to kill his mother.”
“You drive a hard bargain, but okay. We’ll kill you and we’ll kill your wife, or whatever she is. But your mother will live.”
“No, I . . .” he mumbled, fighting the effects of the drugs. “You think I . . . No. You will never touch my child. Never see my child. Even I do not know where he is.”
Thank you, Tij, he thought. Thank you so much for your insistence upon tradition.
Teague actually laughed. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
For several seconds they only glared at each other, and then Teague threw up his hands in frustration.
“All right. Honestly, I hoped it could be done simply, but it isn’t as if I expected you to just tell me, even with all the ugly things my people will do to your mother.”
“Don’t—”
Teague shook his head. “Be serious, Quinn. I have a job to do. You haven’t left me any choice.”
They made no attempt to torture Quinn himself—at least not physically. Teague had to know that no amount of physical agony would have persuaded him to willingly surrender his infant son. Instead, the man in charge was as cruel as his word. That afternoon, they tapered off the sedative drip just enough so that he could clear many of the cobwebs from his mind. He still couldn’t focus enough to make a full transformation, but he could watch as they brought his mother into the room with the same control poles. They humiliated her, spat on her, and kicked her. She was not as sedated as he had been during his weeklong haze, but they had drugged her enough that she could not fight back as they cut her skin.
Quinn roared at first. In time, he wept. When Teague brought in an electric branding iron of the sort ranchers used for cattle, he hurled himself against his bonds. The chains clanked and strained and he heard the creak of metal stressed to its limit, and one of Teague’s men chambered a shotgun round and aimed at his mother’s face.
“Sit back, Mr. Quinn,” Teague said. “Sit back or her life ends now.”
“Do it, then!” his mother roared, whipping her head up to face the shotgun.
Quinn held his breath, staring, the little boy he had once been crying out inside at the sight of his mother tormented . . . again. Images cascaded through his mind of the night years ago when she had been beaten and raped . . . the night he’d killed the men who had done that to her. He had vowed then never to allow her to come to harm again.
“Mom,” he said.
Perhaps she heard a hint of surrender in his voice. Quinn didn’t know where his girlfriend and their baby were living, but he had his suspicions. He could tell Teague what he knew just to stop his mother’s anguish and then wait for an opportunity. Figuring out where Tij was and actually finding her were two different things. Speaking now would spare his mother and buy him time. He could escape somehow, kill Teague . . .
“Stop!” he shouted.
His mother whipped her head up and met his gaze. Despite whatever sedatives they had given her, the fog of madness and growing dementia had cleared. Her eyes were vivid purple, almost like his own, and brightly alert. Perhaps pain had given her clarity.
“Not a word, boy,” she told him. “I’ll suffer any pain to keep that baby safe. Death for me now would be victory. Don’t take that from me.”
Quinn’s blood ran cold and he felt his heart go still. He exhaled and eased back down onto the bed, giving his chains a rest as warm blood ran from his wrists and ankles where he had strained against the metal.
Teague saw the moment pass between them. As mother and son made peace with whatever came next, the man screamed out his own rage, so much more savage than Quinn had ever been. He knew now that he would never get what he wanted from them.
“Enough!” Teague snapped. He turned on his men. “Take the bitch out of here.”
Quinn watched him in silence. No taunts. No threats. No pleas.
“You will give me what I want,” Teague told him before he followed the torturers out, not waiting for a reply.
When he was alone again, Quinn kept working at his bonds. The blood from his wounds lubricated the shackles, and he thought that might be enough to help him slip free. But then an orderly came in and turned up the flow of drugs into his IV. He thrashed, attempting to tear the needle loose, but in seconds he had drifted into darkness again.
When he was allowed to emerge from the narcotic fog, the torturers had returned. There were no control poles this time. No nooses. Such measures were not necessary for an ordinary human, a defenseless woman.
Like his sister, Frannie.
Wide-eyed with terror, Frannie had fresh bruises on her face and neck. The left side of her mouth was swollen and her lip had been split. Blood trickled from a cut just above her eyebrow on the same side. They had her on her knees, these men, one with a shotgun aimed at her head and the others only waiting.
“John?” she whispered.
His little sister, now a grown woman, happily married and living her peaceful human life. Until now.
Hatred seethed in Quinn’s heart. The tiger awoke.
Teague waited nearly ten minutes before entering the room, perhaps purposely giving him that time to contemplate what came next.
“You don’t need to say a word,” Quinn told him. “Just listen. I have an idea.”
“I’m sorry I got y
ou into this,” Frannie said unhappily, staring at him with the sad eyes that had always been able to change his mind and heart.
The thrum of the airplane’s engines created a constant white noise around them, and the pressurized air in the cabin made his ears feel as if they were about to pop. Quinn sat in his seat, shackles on his wrists. They were overkill—the men with the guns knew he wouldn’t try anything as long as his sister’s life was in peril. That was why they had brought Frannie with them in the first place.
The private jet had eight rows with a single seat on either side of the central aisle. Quinn sat about halfway down the left side of the plane with his sister in the seat in front of him. Across the aisle were three gun thugs, one adjacent to each of the Quinn siblings and a third one row up, just for good measure—three killers in a row.
“Do you really think this is somehow your fault?” he asked, frowning. “You didn’t get me into this, Fran. You’re here because of me.”
The man sitting across from Quinn raised the gun from his lap and aimed it at him. “Shut up.”
Frannie had been half turned so she could talk quietly with her brother, but now she slid around to face straight ahead, like a schoolgirl who’d been scolded.
Quinn forced himself to exhale his rage, to stay calm. Even in shackles, he could have killed the man in seconds, gun or no gun. Perhaps he would be shot, but he thought the odds were with him. Trouble was, the two guys who were covering Frannie would shoot her instantly. He’d never be able to disarm them all before they killed her.
Quinn glanced at the man to his right, at the gun resting on his lap.
“You know,” he said, “you’re going to have to take these cuffs off when we get there. No point in keeping me like this.”
The man gave him a sidelong glance, almost a sneer. “I’ve got my orders, man. Just like you. We’ll both follow them and maybe everyone comes out of this alive.”
Quinn grunted. “Maybe.”
The guard in Frannie’s row turned to stare back at Quinn. “You gonna make a move? Are you that stupid?”
“I won’t endanger my sister’s life.”
The man smiled thinly. The one guarding Quinn seemed all business, but this one took sadistic pleasure in their circumstances. The urge to twist his head off was strong. Quinn inhaled again and caught the scent of fear. Remarkably it came not from Frannie but from the final guard, the man in the row ahead of Frannie’s. He glanced back nervously, clearly terrified of being in an enclosed space with a weretiger.
You’re the smartest one, Quinn thought.
“I really am sorry,” Frannie said quietly.
The guards all glanced over at her. The one across the aisle from Quinn seemed about to object, but then he settled down, perhaps deciding that he no longer cared, that conversation between brother and sister would not change the outcome.
“You didn’t put me here,” Quinn said, his voice a low growl. “That bastard Teague did this.”
“Teague forced your hand,” Frannie agreed, “but you suggested this setup to protect Mama and me, and the baby.”
Quinn said nothing. He would never blame Frannie or his mother for the cruelty, greed, and savagery of other people. Faced with the threat of harm to his family, or the nightmare of his boy being enslaved to murderous combat like some ancient gladiatorial beast, he had made a different offer to Teague—Quinn would become the weapon they sought. They didn’t have to wait twenty years for his son to be their tiger-warrior; he would serve them now, go anywhere and kill anyone as long as they abandoned any effort to take and use his son, and as long as they left his mother and sister alone.
They had kept him in a cell for more than another week, only lightly drugged and with the threat that if he attempted to escape, Frannie and his mother would die. As the days passed, he had realized that they were waiting for the full moon, thinking that he would be stronger then, and that he would be less able to control his own ferocity. On those counts, they had been correct.
Quinn glanced out the window of the plane. The sky had begun to darken as they hurtled toward the horizon, the clouds sifting away below them. Soon they would fly into nightfall and the moon would shine.
“I don’t even know where you’re taking me,” he said.
“A place where the people won’t obey, and the tyrant who rules wants to set an example. The company is being paid very well for your services.”
Frannie had been brought along as a reminder of what would happen if he did not fulfill his promise. Teague’s employers had not tried to recruit Quinn initially because they did not believe they could count on his cooperation even if he agreed, but that was before they had learned of the existence of his son. This assignment would be a test run. If he made one wrong move, disobeyed a single order, they would kill Frannie on the spot and begin anew the search for Tij and the baby. The guard in the row ahead of Frannie’s had a massive tranquilizer gun—they would kill his sister but keep Quinn alive, drugged and enslaved.
“In the future,” Teague had said, “I don’t think we’ll need your sister to go along. But this first time, having her with us might help you focus.”
The future, Quinn thought, jaw tight as he hung his head and clenched his fists. I am their killer, forever. He studied the curls of his sister’s hair that stuck out beside her seat.
So be it, he thought, sighing deeply. Whatever it takes.
“John?” Frannie said quietly, turning again in her seat so she could see him.
The guards all glanced warily at her. The one across from Quinn kept watching, but the other two looked away.
“It’s getting dark,” Frannie rasped. It sounded as if her voice were full of emotion. “Whatever they’re going to have you do, it’ll be soon.”
“I guess.”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Quinn frowned. “I’m not going to die tonight, Fran. I’ll be back. Tell me then.”
“It has to be now. There’s a reason I haven’t visited Mama in a while. A reason I haven’t seen you in months. Something I’ve been dealing with.”
The guard across from Quinn glanced away, apparently sensing a moment of intimacy between brother and sister. It seemed he had decided to allow it.
“Go on,” he said.
“Her mind . . . You know how she gets,” Frannie said, an angry furrow on her brow. Her chest rose and fell and she gritted her teeth as she tried to keep that anger in. “I tried to visit her regularly, tried to lift her spirits, but sometimes she would barely know me. She’d be lost in some awful memory or just confused, and if I tried to touch her, she’d lash out.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said thoughtfully, studying her, wondering at the source of the anger he saw. “I know I should have visited more. It’s been a complicated year.”
Her left hand gripped the side of her seat as she peered back at him. Her hair hung down, veiling part of her face, but her eyes glinted with dark light.
“You saw that she’d knocked out some of her teeth?” Frannie rasped, voice hitching, lowering her gaze.
Quinn frowned. They had told him that Mama had knocked out the rest of her teeth, but that she’d been missing many of them before that.
“Yes.”
“She started that because when she was lucid, when the madness and the growing dementia retreated, she would realize what she’d done.”
“What had she done?”
Frannie’s upper lip curled back and she practically snarled the next sentence.
“Sometimes,” his sister said, “Mama would bite me.”
Quinn went cold. His breath caught in his chest. “How many times did this happen?”
Outside the plane, it had grown dark. The full moon shone brightly through the oval windows.
His sister glanced up at him with tiger’s eyes.
“En
ough,” she growled, as her teeth began to lengthen and sharpen and elegantly striped fur began to push slowly through her skin.
The thug in Quinn’s row noticed first.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, raising his gun as his eyes went wide.
He aimed at Frannie, and that was his mistake—taking his focus off the man he was supposed to be guarding.
Quinn lunged across the aisle at superhuman speed, shattering his handcuffs as he slammed the gunman against the inner wall of the plane, gripped him with hands beginning to sprout their own fur, and broke his neck. In a death twitch, the man’s finger pulled the trigger on his gun but the dart punched into the floor and lodged there.
By the time Quinn twisted around to go after the others, still only beginning to change, Frannie had killed the man with the cruel smile. She lifted her head—half human and half tiger, only able to achieve that partial transformation, like other bitten weres—and her muzzle was soaked with the gunman’s blood.
The third man—the frightened one—threw his gun on the seat cushion and raised his hands in surrender, backing up the aisle toward the pilot’s cabin.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said, voice quavering. “Please, just don’t—”
Brother and sister roared in unison and a jet of urine streamed down the man’s leg, soaking his pants.
In the thrall of the full moon, Frannie had no control over her rage. She killed him there, in the aisle, blood soaking into the thin airplane carpeting.
Quinn halted his transformation and willed himself to revert to human. He felt the full moon’s sway but had spent his life mastering it.
“Frannie,” he said.
She glanced up from the dead man, chunks of his flesh in her jaws, tiger eyes gleaming in the moonlight.
“Stay here,” Quinn said, moving past her, stepping over the dead man. “Do you hear me? Stay here while I go and talk to the pilot.”
He thought of Teague and Dr. Delisle and of the things they had done to his mother—the things they had threatened to do to his wife and son.
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