by Zoe Chant
Without pausing, Tony was off, every muscle of his huge tiger body tensing with one purpose: to rescue his mate. Behind him, he heard Jimmy whimper in fear.
Chapter Seventeen
Amber felt under-dressed before she even walked in the ornate double doors to Alistair's house. The armed guards flanking the doors made her feel even more uncertain. It seemed odd that there were so many of them.
The foyer was as big as her entire cottage, and decorated with things that Amber immediately recognized as valuable and couldn't deny were tasteful. It was like a museum; clearly tailored to Alistair's personal taste for the rare and unique. Antique masks lined the walls, as well as colonial paintings that Amber felt like she ought to recognize. The furniture was all rich, solid wood, beautifully carved and subtly stained; Amber guessed that Alistair had never even seen the inside of an Ikea store.
She paused. A stairway led off to her right, curving up to a second floor. The dining room was open to the left, a decadent-smelling meal already laid out on a table long enough to run footraces.
“I'm not sure I should...” she stumbled, gesturing to her dirty sandals and worn shorts.
“My dear,” said Alistair, and his hand at her elbow felt a little tight. “I insist. You are my... guest.”
Amber went, because she didn't know how to deny what she tried to tell herself was a request. Although she could sense Alistair's interest in her, she didn't want to encourage it... and she wasn't sure how to discourage it politely. He wasn't like Jimmy, leering and making her feel dirty, but there was an uneasiness in Amber's stomach that she wasn't sure he deserved. Maybe it was just because she kept comparing him to Tony, and no one could measure up.
“Alright,” she said, and she let the billionaire lead her to the table and pull out her chair. He even put her napkin in her lap. Maybe it was a Costa Rican custom, she wondered, thinking back to her breakfast service.
Breakfast had been very, very long ago, and when the servant put a plate of artfully arranged lampchops and tender vegetables before her, she fell into it eagerly.
“Your arboretum is amazing,” she said, as her eating politely allowed. “I have never seen such an extensive collection of rare plants.”
“It is charming to have someone who is enthused about it,” Alistair said with an artful laugh, clearly enjoying his own food. “You are a botanist, then?”
Amber laughed. “I studied botany in college,” she explained. “But mostly I just work in a garden shop. A very rural garden shop, where most people are concerned with strains of corn and pest control by the barrel. The most excitement I get is building hanging baskets of flowers in the spring. When it comes to exotics, all I get are aloe and jade plants. I love to read about things that grow in this climate, but I am a rank amateur when it comes to this stuff!”
“You undersell yourself,” Alistair said, with a strange smile. “I find you very knowledgeable, and a delightful conversationalist.”
Amber blinked at him and mumbled some shy thanks. Had she conversed all that much?
A servant took her plate, and she was startled into looking up at him. He seemed an awfully... military looking person to be waiting on a table with a towel over his arm, with short cropped hair and a thick, muscled neck.
“Dessert?” Alistair offered. “I believe the chef has prepared a crème brule.”
But the meal felt odd in Amber's stomach. She felt like her cat was on her metaphorical shoulders, every strand of fur on end, shrieking warnings in her ears.
“No, thank you! I'm... uh, on a diet. We really should call Jimmy to come collect me. I've imposed on you so much already.”
She was on no kind of diet at all, but she had enough curves to convince him that it was the truth with a big-eyed smile and a pat at her belly.
“Let me show you the study and the private collection before you leave. It will take Jimmy some time to get back with the van,” Alistair said, so mildly and logically that Amber couldn't figure out how to protest it.
She took his offered hand, and wasn't sure it was only politeness that prompted her to try to act enthused about it.
The study was a shock that took all of her acting ability to hide.
Taxidermied animals and pelts filled the cavernous room. A tiger's skin sprawled across a portion of the floor, and Amber thought immediately of Tony.
“My grandfather's collection,” Alistair said, unsettlingly close to her ear. “Of course that was colonial times, when the hunt wasn't illegal, and many of these weren't even endangered. People would even say it was immoral, but times were very different then.”
“Of course,” Amber said weakly.
“Come, this is not what I really wanted you to see.”
He led her through the dim room, and Amber tried not to startle at the soul-less gaze of a stuffed gazelle, or the bear caught mid-roar beside it.
Alistair unlocked a sturdy wooden door with another keypad, and led her out into the warm night air. The dining room had not had windows, so Amber was surprised to realize that it was quite late. Crickets and frogs made a now-familiar drone, and a silvery moon hung in a field of glittering stars. Far away, a seabird cried hauntingly and went still.
They walked into a garden, edged with very tall fencing that after a moment, Amber recognized as cages. She was alarmed, but not as surprised as she should have been when two guards from the door fell in step behind her.
“Much of my collection is nocturnal,” Alistair said, and Amber could hear the excited pride in his voice. This was something he very much wanted to share with her, and it filled her with dread.
The first enclosure, a landscaped habitat with artful trees and a little hill with lounging rocks, proved to hide a small, agile ocelot, who jumped down from a branch to stare at them from behind the metal mesh. Amber, looking back at it, felt an odd connection. Maybe it was because she felt like she was being trapped as surely as it was.
“My father was the one who started this collection,” Alistair said, leading her further down the path. “He recognized the limitations of taking the skins of these... animals, and began trapping them instead.”
“You've continued his legacy, then,” Amber said, trying to keep conversation casual. The next animal was a pacing tiger, white and black stripes rippling over agitated muscle. It roared as they walked past; Alistair gave no time to pause and observe. They passed a spotted deer that Amber didn't recognize, and a glass enclosure of little, thick-furred mammals. Each enclosure was carefully crafted for its residents. Amber was reminded of the best zoos.
“I've improved upon it,” Alistair said proudly. “I've found some of the rarest and most precious animals, most of them just in the last few years. We've got a Borneo Bay cat,” he said, his British accent pronounced. “Have you ever seen one?”
“I haven't,” Amber admitted reluctantly. She was aware that her steps were slowing, and that her surreptitious glances for an exit or escape were becoming less subtle than she could wish.
“They aren't the rarest cat,” Alistair said leadingly, and Amber couldn't hide her terror any longer. She came to a stop, and turned to find that only one of the guards behind her had his gun at ready. The other had a long-handled dog-catcher.
“Oh?” she said, incapable of anything more clever.
“I've been looking for an Andean mountain cat for a very long time,” he said seductively. “And I think you'll be very happy in the enclosure I've made for you.”
“Those skins in the study,” Amber said with a sudden sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Were those all shifters?”
“Of course!” Alistair said in that accent that Amber couldn't hear as anything but terrifying now. “What sport is there in normal animals?”
She was spared having to answer that by a sudden, blaring alarm, just as the cellphone in Alistair's pocket came to life. He gestured to the guards behind them, and Amber couldn't get her frozen feet to move before the dog-catcher was dropped loosely around her neck.
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“Show our guest to her new quarters,” Alistair said lightly, as if there weren't a gun trained at her and a noose laying on her shoulders. “My dear, I hope you will forgive my lack of hospitality in showing you myself, but I have to deal with a slight problem at the perimeter.”
He disappeared down a side path, and Amber was left with the guards, who prodded her into a staggering walk towards her doom.
Chapter Eighteen
Tony ran.
As a tiger, he was an efficient machine of muscle and energy, and the jungle, unexpectedly, felt like home.
The jungle floor was springy, and surprisingly free of underbrush. Above him, tangled branches hid the night sky. Even with keen cat night vision, it was dark, and the drone of insects and frogs was like an ambient soundtrack to keep his pace.
His race at first was sheer adrenaline, but settled quickly into a punishing pace that ate the ground beneath him.
It was easy to follow the ridge as Scarlet had suggested, keeping to the high areas. It was steep here, and the land fell away from him on either side.
He was just beginning to wonder exactly how long the island was when he burst out of the jungle onto a groomed lawn that made a perimeter around a tall stone wall. To one side, a lit driveway led to gates, and he immediately smelled the guards who lurked in shadows on either side.
He turned back to the edge of the jungle, fighting the tiger self who knew that Amber was behind that gate, and that she was in trouble. But training kept him in control; it didn't make sense to charge in without reconnaissance.
It took a long careful time to pace fully around the estate and return to the driveway; the compound was the size of a small town, and fully walled. There was only the one gate, the walls had barbed wire at the top, and Tony noticed mounted cameras at several intervals. He suspected it was only darkness and luck that had kept him from being spotted when he had bolted out of the jungle, and was grateful for the natural camouflage of his tiger shape.
Tony even climbed into a tree, which groaned at his weight, to peer over the walls. The grassy perimeter meant he couldn't get close–jumping from the tree would have been impossible–but it gave him a view of the layout beyond the wall. A house was nearest the gate, and what looked like a orchard to one side. Copious solar panels on most roofs suggested the source of their power. What puzzled him was the section behind the house, which was a sprawling labyrinth of squares with half-mesh roofs. It took Tony a moment to recognize that it looked like a zoo, and then everything clicked into place.
Relief flooded him; the collector was keeping the shifters he was capturing, not killing them, which meant Amber was safe.
Anger followed on the heels of relief, because alive or not, they were keeping his mate from him, locking her in a cage, and Tony realized he was growling out loud.
He gave it some thought and decided, from his vantage, that the best place to scale the walls was back by the orchard. There was a natural rise in the grass at that point, making the wall a little shorter, and if he was careful, he might be able to take out the camera on his way over. There was a building just beyond that he thought he could hit with a good jump. They couldn't be expecting him, he thought. What were the chances that someone was actually watching the monitors at that exact moment?
His tiger demanded action, and for once, Tony was in complete agreement.
He ran across the open lawn like a streak of justice, leaping for the wall. Walls meant to keep most animals out–or in–weren't going to stop a determined tiger, but it was still a stretch, and the barbed wire at the top drew blood on Tony's paws.
Tony wasn't as lucky as he'd hoped. He missed the camera, and landed with a heavy THUMP on the roof of the building beyond. Alarms immediately began to blare.
He leaped down from the building, and ran, full out, in the direction he remembered the enclosures being. If subtlety wasn't going to work, perhaps sheer force would.
Voices shouted behind him. He spun to find three black-uniformed guards. Two of them held guns, and the third had a staff that Tony recognized as a shock stick. He didn't care about them, and turned in the direction that he knew Amber was, only to feel the sting of a needle in one shoulder. They were tranquilizer guns, he realized, and he was halfway across the orchard before he felt another one hit him.
The door separating the orchard from the zoo was wide open, and for a moment, Tony thought he was going to make it through–they couldn't possibly have planned their shots for a tiger's weight–when the effects of the drug hit him and his run turned into a stagger.
To his astonishment, his tiger legs were suddenly a man's, and he was crawling, naked and drunken, across the manicured grass. He didn't even realize he was lying down until a pair of stylish shoes made their way into his field of vision.
“A shame we already have a Siberian tiger,” a crisp British voice said. “We don't have any use for this one.”
“Could get a good price for his pelt,” a Spanish-accented voice suggested.
“You... have... my... mate...” Tony managed to say. It didn't have the dramatic affect he intended, coming from a mouth half-stuffed with grass, and then blackness engulfed him.
Chapter Nineteen
Amber walked meekly with the guards, trying not to be too obvious about looking around. The dog-catcher was lying unexpectedly loose at her shoulders, and when she glanced at the man holding the pole, he glared back and fingered a button on the handle. The other guard, walking behind her with the gun trained on her, cleared his throat, and Amber put her head down and continued to shamble with them. She was short, so it was easy to walk slowly and look like she was using a normal pace.
The looseness of the noose around her neck got her brain spinning.
They were expecting a mountain cat–an American mountain cat. A big mountain cat. If she shifted, it would be tight around the neck of a big cat. But around her small cat shape...
As quickly as the idea occurred to her, Amber put it in motion, shifting as she pretended to stumble.
Her clothing fell away from her cat form even as she jumped–straight through the noose–and scrambled for the wall of the mesh enclosure they were passing. She heard the crackle of the dog-catcher rather than feeling it through her thick fur, and realized belatedly that it must be electrified. She wasn't sure if she would have made this attempt if she'd known that, but it was far too late now, and her coat, meant for cold mountain winters, had protected her from the worst of it.
She climbed with all the panic in her stomach, and agility of her cat form driving her, and as the guard behind her fired and missed, and missed again as she switched directions up the enclosure and reached the roof, she heard the zoo erupt into roars and animal cries of encouragement. A human voice even cried out, “Go, kitty cat!”
“Shit!” the guards said in unison.
More wild shots followed her. Needles hissed by as Amber made it up to the roof of the enclosure. She ran and leaped to the next. She was already two cages away while the guards were still peering up onto the first. Then she switched directions entirely and leaped across the path to a new row of cages.
Her night sight let her see better than she had as a human, and her height gave her a clear view. Lights all along the wall had come on, showing her that she had no real chance of getting over them–though she could probably squeeze between the barbed wire with little damage thanks to her coat, she was too small to make it to the top of the wall to try; nothing was built up close to it. She noticed the cameras, too, now swiveling back into the enclosure to try to find her, and had a glimpse of a helicopter on one of the low roofs towards the back.
“Goddamn it, do you see it?” one guard called to the other.
“Beehag said it was a mountain cat, not a goddamn little cat!” the other complained.
Their voices were clear to Amber's excellent hearing.
Instead of immediate escape, Amber looked for hiding spaces, and found one in a pile of construction materials tow
ards the end of the zoo. While the cameras were still re-positioning to try to follow her, she dashed out of sight down the side of one of the enclosures and flattened herself to fit in a tiny space on top of a pile of rocks, under dimension lumber and roof tiles. From here, she could see a dozen more hiding places that she'd be able to make it to in short order, and she had a good vantage for seeing oncoming intruders.
From this space, she could actually see that the entire space was much more suited for finding big animals. She'd be able to get out, she felt, with her first taste of confidence as the adrenaline began to release its hold on her. She just had to lie low, and she'd be able to sneak out of the front gates when the timing was right.
“Call it in!” one of the guards was saying.
“Fuck no, you call it in,” the other protested.
Eventually, they worked out who was making the call, and the little two-way radio crackled in return as they explained their mistake.
“Escaped?” Even over the poor quality radio from a distance, Amber recognized Alistair's voice, and it made the hackles on her neck rise.
The guards fell over each other to justify their actions, and Amber gave a little cat smile to hear them describe her as basically supernatural.
There was a moment of silence in response, and then Alistair's crisp accent. “She won't get far. We've got her mate here.”
Mate?
Amber knew without a doubt that they meant Tony, and it was everything she could do not to bolt from her hiding hole right then to find and defend him. But what did they mean by 'mate?' She could all but hear the emphasis that Alistair was putting on it.
Whatever they meant by it, she knew that Alistair was right–knowing that they had Tony–that they might hurt Tony to get her, meant that Alistair had Amber as surely as if that noose had been tight around her neck.
Chapter Twenty