by Zoe Chant
As she suspected, actually releasing the gun was noisier, and both the guard and Alistair turned in alarm to face her as she swung it down, turned and aimed at them.
Their moment of shock gave her a chance to release a dart directly into the guard's neck, and she was gratified to see him crumple almost at once.
Alistair had an odd look of alarm and amusement, and Amber half-wished she had picked a gun with real bullets so she could wipe that smug expression off his face forever.
He put his hands up slowly. “What a clever little kitty you are,” he said with an odd twist of his lips. “How did you get the resort staff mobilized? I was hoping to milk them as a source for my collection for much longer, but I knew they'd become a problem eventually. Your friend Tony just hastened that end, nosing around like he was. What I couldn't have hoped for was a chance to capture them all–I had thought they would all have to go down in the terribly unfortunate fire that I've already arranged.”
Finger twitching on the trigger, Amber paused. “Fire?” she said.
As slowly as they'd gone up, Alistair's hands went down. “The resort is rigged,” he said confidently. “Everything is in place to go up at sunset tonight. It's a shame no one will survive. But you know how unpredictable natural gas fuel can be, and construction regulations in a country like this can be a little lax. And they're only shifters.”
“You're a monster,” Amber spat, thinking of all the innocent resort guests who would be killed in the tragedy.
“You're the ones who turn into animals,” Alistair said in disgust, raking her naked body with his glance. “You have to keep me alive,” he insisted. “If you want any chance of disarming...”
Amber pulled the trigger, racked the slide and fired again, sending a second dart straight into his chest beside the first.
Alistair's face twisted in anger and then went slack as he collapsed over the chair and fell to the ground as it rolled away. Amber resisted the urge to shift just so she could claw him in the face and dropped the gun to pounce at the control panel.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tony's roars subsided to growls as the pain from the shock faded. His anger was not the slightest bit banked, and he gnashed his teeth.
The inhabitants of other cages were agitated, many of them up and pacing at the front of their enclosures. None of them volunteered to shift into human, or touch Tony's mind with speech.
He wondered how long Alistair had spent with his box of pain, training them to stay to animal shape, and how far gone they were, trapped within their animal forms.
He longed to reach for Amber with his mind, but feared drawing her back in to Alistair's trap. With luck, she was far, far away by now, not even aware of the commotion that had drawn Beehag away from his zoo.
When the lock at his cage did an unexpected whir-click, Tony thought he must be imagining it. He heard other clicks, all up and down the row of cages.
Then a mind brushed his own. Tony? I think I unlocked the cages?
You beautiful, sexy genius, he answered, shifting so he could reach through and unlatch the door. But didn't I tell you to get out of here?
My social worker always told me I was unreasonably defiant when I was a kid, Amber said smugly. Guess I never grew out of it.
Don't ever, Tony said with a mental caress. I love you just the way you are. He gratefully left the cage and went to the one next door.
A maned red wolf stared back at him.
“You're free,” Tony said, voice pitched to carry. “You're all free!” He unlatched the wolf's door, and it circled once before tentatively stepping out onto the pavement, still in wolf form.
Down the path, a few doors unlatched, and several naked people stepped tentatively out, blinking and flexing fingers curiously. More of the animals whined and refused to shift, waiting for someone to come open their cages; Tony had to wonder if they had forgotten how to be human, or if they were still just afraid. Several of them hid in the backs of their cages and didn't come out even when the doors were opened for them. A gazelle simply fled, hooves clattering on the pavement as it bolted randomly towards the back wall.
The red wolf changed at last, into a crouched man with blazing red hair. He stood up unsteadily, then walked with more confidence to Tony. “You have a way to get us out of here?” he growled, as if his vocal chords hadn't been used in years.
On cue, Amber appeared, rushing from the house, burdened with an armload of guns. “They're tranquilizers,” she panted. “And I heard one of the goons say they turned you human, too. We have to go help Scarlet and her staff at the front gate if we want to get out of here.”
The red wolf shifter took one, checking the chamber expertly, and several other human figures ghosted forward to take their own. A white tiger, staying in animal form, shook his head and snarled, lifting one paw and unsheathing his claws suggestively. An ocelot and a red panda circled Amber curiously, but didn't shift. The other people and animals hung back, listening.
Tony took Amber's last gun, and swept her into a bone-crunching hug. “You were supposed to get out,” he repeated.
“I saw an opportunity to do more good here,” Amber said with the breath she had left from his crushing embrace. It was terrifically distracting having her up against him with both of them naked, but there were more important things happening.
Because just then, shots rang out from the front of the house.
The red-haired wolf shifter pointed to the east of the house, pointed at Tony, and pointed west. Without a word, he selected a handful of the fittest humans and the white tiger, then led them around the corner of the house at an easy lope.
Tony gripped the rifle in one hand and Amber's hand in the other and they broke into a run, a ragged sea of animals and people surging with them. It was a motley crew at best, broken-spirited animals and staggering humans–most of them naked. Counting the red wolf's crew, there were still only eight guns, between them all, and although most of the animals were predators, many of them were not. The only thing they had on their side was the element of surprise, and Tony prayed it would be enough.
“Oh, Tony, there's more,” Amber said breathlessly, as they ran. “Beehag has rigged the resort to explode! At sunset! All the poor guests!”
Tony looked at the sky–midafternoon, and it was a several hour drive from the estate to the resort. “We'd never make it in time to disarm an explosive!”
“I saw a helicopter on the roof of one of the buildings in back,” Amber panted. “Can you fly one?”
Tony had to laugh, because the whole situation was beyond crazy. “Of course I can,” he said with mock arrogance. “I'm a super spy, right?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The scene that greeted them was more chaotic than the one Amber had left. The dragon had returned to human form and lay in a twitching heap, riddled with feathered needles, while a giant polar bear was roaring over the waist-high wall. Its motions were a little drunken, and several darts hung in its brilliant fur, but guards were still scattering before its enormous paws. Scarlet was still in human form, crouched behind most of a wooden plank thick with needles as more of them hissed into her make-shift shield. Half a dozen unconscious humans lay naked across the lawn.
It was into this bedlam that Tony charged, firing quickly at the most competent-looking guards. The sea of animals and humans that were running with him spilled out into the guards, and though their enemies' shots were true, sheer numbers sent the ragged team forward. The polar bear made it over the little wall, but collapsed onto the guards with a whine and lay still, pinning several of them as it turned into Magnolia.
Amber shifted into her cat form, figuring she would be harder to hit if she were smaller, and felt a dart ruffle her fur as she hit the ground running.
She leaped onto the nearest guard, scratching at his face and hissing.
He staggered back and shot wildly into the air before falling backwards with a dart in his shoulder.
Tony fired the last
dart from his gun and Amber caught a glimpse of him shifting into tiger form before she was dodging the swung muzzle of a gun from a guard who was out of darts. She hissed, and as she crouched to leap on him, he staggered backwards with a needle in his throat.
The red wolf shifter's team had flanked the guards from the other side of the house, and the red-haired man was taking down everyone in uniform with grim, sharp-shooting precision, taking a gun from one of the others in his team when he ran out of darts.
In a matter of moments, the battlefield had stilled to growls and hisses. A grizzly bear, shaking a dart from the ruff of its neck, staggered to where the polar bear had collapsed, and changed into Chef, gingerly pulling Magnolia's head into his lap as he sank wearily down beside her.
Scarlet put down her shield and stood up, as gracefully and self-possessed as if she weren't stepping over the knocked-out bodies of most of her staff.
The animals from the zoo milled about uncertainly, and everyone who was ambulatory gradually found themselves in a loose semicircle around the resort owner. Amber put her hand in Tony's and squeezed wearily. Most of them shifted to human, but not all. The maned red wolf drew himself forward as their spokesman. “We're obliged for your assistance,” he said gruffly.
At that moment, the gazelle charged from behind the house, skittered to the side when it encountered the mass of animals, and then fled wildly through the gate, leaping over anything in its path and finally charging over the van with a clatter of panicked hooves.
An elderly woman buried her face in her hand and wept. “I don't know what I'll do now,” she sobbed. “It's been twenty years since I saw my family.”
“Some of these people have been here fifty years,” Tony said, remembering. “Some of them may not remember how to be human.”
“You have a home at the resort,” Scarlet said, unexpectedly. “We can find beds and food for everyone, and the resort is as welcoming to shifters in animal form as in human.” She lifted her voice to include them all. “Everyone who needs a place may stay there, until you can contact family, or as long as you need.”
Amber clenched Tony's hand in her own, and as one, they said, “The resort!”
Scarlet's eyes drilled into them. “What about the resort?”
“Beehag,” Amber said, then she explained as quickly as she could. “He says he rigged the resort to explode tonight at sundown. Tried to use it as leverage so I wouldn't shoot him.”
“I hope that you did anyway?” Scarlet's voice was dry and hard.
“Twice,” Amber said with remembered satisfaction, and she was rewarded by a grim nod from Scarlet.
“That's my mate,” Tony said proudly.
“He said something about the natural gas,” Amber remembered.
“Jimmy,” Scarlet spat. “I caught him fooling with the hot water heaters earlier this week. He had some excuse about the settings being too high.” She looked around suddenly. “Where did Jimmy go?”
A swift search revealed no sign of Jimmy among the unconscious on the lawn.
Tony hissed, “Beehag.”
The three of them dashed for the security room at the back of the house.
The red wolf shifter remained behind to coordinate the dazed animals and secure the guards.
No one noticed the ocelot who followed them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Beehag was gone.
Tony roared, and curled his hands in fists by his side, barely keeping himself from smashing out at the computers.
Scarlet crouched at the floor, and picked up something small. A hypodermic needle, it appeared. “A stimulant, as an anecdote to the tranquilizer?” she theorized.
“The helicopter,” Amber said urgently, tugging at Tony's arm as he muttered every curse word he knew.
Scarlet looked up sharply. “There's a helicopter?”
“We could get back and you could disarm the resort,” Amber said, full of hope.
Tony both loved the way her trust in him made him feel, and shuddered to think he might not be able to do as much as she thought he could.
“You can fly a helicopter?” There was that dubious tone in Scarlet's voice again–as if she doubted he could drive a car, or possibly even a bicycle.
“Yes,” he said, stung. It had been a while, but he had done well in all of his flight training. As long as it was one he'd flown before, so he didn't have the humiliation of having to check the manual for the location of the fuel pump controls.
Amber immediately led them out of the room and towards the back of the compound, scampering as gracefully in human form as she did as a cat. Scarlet somehow managed to walk briskly enough to keep up without sacrificing her dignity and breaking into a run. Tony loped along beside her, and they all scrambled up the rickety steps outside the warehouse to the rooftop landing pad.
It was a relief to find that was that it was a helicopter Tony had flown before, a common Bell 206, all sleek and glossy black.
It was less of a relief that the propellers already spooling up.
Jimmy was sitting on the far side, controls in hand, and Beehag was buckled in beside him, looking murderous and groggy. In his hand, pointed at them from the open cockpit, was a pistol. Tony strongly doubted that it was a tranquilizer.
If it had really been a spy movie, the words that Beehag was saying would have been something dramatic and threatening, but they were whipped away by the sound of the propellers coming to speed.
“We can't let him get away!” Amber shouted near his ear.
Tony cast about for something to stop him with, discarding the idea of throwing something into the propellers as too risky just as he realized that Beehag wasn't aiming at him, but at Amber, and that Amber was already sprinting for the helicopter as if she were going to wrestle him down with her sheer force of will.
Tony couldn't let her do that; no part of him was ready to lose Amber so soon after finding her again, and he went after her in a springing tackle, desperate to get her out of Beehag's sights. He caught her in two strides, wrapping his arms around her and rolling as he heard a heart-pounding pistol shot over the thump of the helicopter blades.
For a terrible moment that lasted far too long, he was sure he had moved too late, that she had been shot in his arms and the despair that washed over him was soul-deep and searing. Then she caught her breath, and squawked in protest. He remained atop her, knowing that Beehag would shoot again, and was surprised by a streak of motion.
Scarlet, he thought at first, but a second glance showed that Scarlet was at its tail, a steel handrail she had wrenched from the stairs in her hands as she dashed across the rooftop.
The first shape was the ocelot from the zoo, already swarming into the cockpit and launching itself, snarling, at Beehag's face. Wild shots drew Tony protectively down over Amber, who was sensibly curled beneath him this time.
When he looked up again, Scarlet was pulling an unconscious Beehag out of his straps. Jimmy, face bleeding, was weeping and holding his hands up in surrender. Shots had spider-webbed the windshield of the helicopter, but Scarlet appeared untouched. The ocelot was staggering out of the cockpit, blood dark on one spotted flank. It walked several steps and then sat to begin grooming itself stiffly.
Tony rose, shaking his head, as Scarlet gestured at Jimmy to get out of the cockpit.
“I'll need him,” he shouted at Scarlet. “He knows where the detonators are, and being with me at the resort with me, he'll have plenty of motivation to make sure they all get disarmed.” The pistol was lying on the floor of the helicopter and he checked it. “One shot left,” he said. Jimmy winced and cowered.
“I'll take that,” Amber said over the thump of the rotors, at his elbow. “You'll have to fly us, and I can handle a gun.”
“You have to stay here, where it's safer,” Tony said at once.
“You saw how well that worked last time,” Amber said with a cheeky smile.
Tony couldn't help himself, but had to lean down and kiss her before stridi
ng around for the pilot's seat while she scrambled into the back seat with a not-so-accidental clip to the side of Jimmy's head.
Scarlet had gathered up the panting ocelot, and ducked back to a safe distance as Tony took the helicopter up, quickly getting used to the controls and handling. A quick glance showed that Amber had the gun to Jimmy's head, looking a little blood-thirsty in her satisfaction.
Tony had to grin as they went aloft. She was in every way his perfect mate.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The island below them was an emerald jewel in an azure ocean, edged in black rock and golden crescents of sand. If it hadn't been for the spider-cracked windshield and the weight of the pistol in her hand, Amber might have believed that she was on the kind of tourist heli-tour she had imagined taking when she had first envisioned her tropical trip; they even got a gorgeous eyeful of a tall waterfall that cascaded into the ocean below.
She just hadn't imagined taking the tour nude, and the helicopter straps were not particularly comfortable without the additional padding of clothing.
Tony certainly looked comfortable enough, his muscles gleaming in the sunlight as he handled the controls with movie-style ease. Amber grinned. As much as he had protested being a super spy, he certainly played the role well.
Even Shifting Sands looked idyllic and perfect as they circled it. It was hard to remember that they were still in danger, everything seemed so peaceful. There were a few guests sunbathing in the late afternoon sun by the pool and on the beach, and if anyone had noticed that the staff was conspicuously missing, it hadn't raised any alarm. A few people glanced up at the helicopter, but more seemed not to notice it.
Tony came to a gentle landing at the front entrance. Amber noticed that he did not turn off the blades as he poked Jimmy out of the cockpit and followed him, taking the gun from Amber. If they failed to disarm the bombs, the two of them could escape, but Amber couldn't help but think of the guests–there weren't more than a few dozen of them, but they couldn't possibly all fit in the helicopter.