by Zoe Chant
She had moved just in time. There was another silvery gleam as a car door opened and de Jager stepped out. He was dressed in a light gray suit, completely incongruous given their surroundings. Dark glasses glinted in the sunlight as he surveyed the area, confidence in every inch of his stance.
“Well, Mr. Silver, are you going to show yourself?”
His voice echoed around the clearing. Toni hadn’t noticed the birdsong until it disappeared, leaving a hole of silence after de Jager’s words faded.
“Really, Mr. Silver, there’s no need to keep playing these games. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you incapacitated the rest of my team as they arrived? Actually, I should thank you! Employees are replaceable, but the thrill of the hunt is, I’m sure you’ll agree, without comparison!”
Even from her distant hiding place, Toni could see the smile spread over his perfectly tanned face.
She frowned. He may have been smiling, but he didn’t appear to be armed. As she watched, he held his arms out wide.
“You know, when your contract first came up, I thought I was losing it. Surely, after all this time, the universe wouldn’t line things up so neatly? And yet, here we are.”
His grin widened. It was no longer a smile – just teeth.
“As for the other two freaks … well, that’ll make a nice bonus for the boss.”
Anger boiled up in Toni’s chest. He was talking about the twins! She clenched her fists, imagining smashing them into de Jager’s smug, smiling face.
Then her anger turned into horror as another figure stepped out of the shadows under the trees.
“Jack, no,” she whispered under her breath. “He’s baiting you. Don’t fall for it!”
She watched, her heart in her throat, as Jack stalked toward de Jager. He stopped ten feet away from the other man. Toni could see the tension in every inch of his body – hell, she could feel it in her own body, and she was no longer sure whether that was a result of their bond, or just plain fear.
The two men exchanged words, too quietly for Toni to hear them. Jack threw a cell phone to the ground between them – the phone Toni had seen last night.
So it had been from the driver. And whatever Jack had tried to use it for, de Jager had clearly used it against him to set this trap.
Toni felt sick. She had come all this way, but now that she was here, she had no idea what to do. If she revealed herself, she might distract Jack long enough for de Jager to… what?
She supposed he might have a gun, hidden somewhere under his perfectly tailored clothes. He seemed too calm for a man who was completely unarmed.
Then a movement further down the slope caught her eye, and her veins turned to ice.
A little way down the slope from where she stood, sunlight glinted off dark metal. She wasn’t the only person hiding in the trees. A man in camo gear knelt behind a stand of brush, completely concealed from the clearing. He held a rifle aimed directly at Jack.
Toni’s chest went tight as she pieced the situation together. Jack had left hours ago, and based on what de Jager had just said, he’d probably had time to deal with any of de Jager’s men who were in the area when he arrived. But if de Jager knew he was coming … then he must have sent those men ahead as bait. Lured Jack into a sense of false security, then called in secret backup.
Jack clearly couldn’t tell he was in danger, and as a breeze of air raised goose bumps on the backs of her arms, Toni realized why. The wind was in the sniper’s favor, blowing his scent, and Toni’s, away from his prey.
The three men were almost perfectly lined up. That was probably the only reason Jack was still alive, Toni realized. The sniper wouldn’t risk shooting his boss by accident.
“I have a proposal for you, Mr. Silver!” De Jager was speaking loudly again, his voice carrying across the clearing. “I told you I should thank you for taking out my advance team. After all, there’s no fun to a hunt when the field’s already been staked out.”
“Say what you’ve got to say,” Jack growled. “You know I don’t have any interest in your hunts.”
He spat the last word as though it hurt his mouth.
De Jager regarded him coolly. Toni wanted to jump out, to scream and wave her arms, warn Jack, but even mindspeaking might surprise him too much, give de Jager time to jump away and the sniper time to get that one shot in. She gulped.
“As I said, my contract is only for you. The two kittens were an unexpected bonus. Or they will be when I catch up with them.”
Toni could see Jack’s fists clench.
“But I can see that distresses you, Mr. Silver. And I’m sure it is distressing. Two children, carried away to who knows where?”
All traces of humor disappeared from his face. They were replaced by a strange expression, as though de Jager was trying to fake compassion, but had no idea what the concept really was.
“Here’s the deal, Mr. Silver. I want my bounty, but I want my hunt, too. You give me that, and I’ll leave the kittens alone.”
Toni held her breath. Her eyes kept darting between the sniper on the slope below her, and the two men standing so close together across the clearing.
“What do you mean?” Jack asked at the same moment as the question passed through Toni’s mind.
De Jager shrugged. “I didn’t get into this profession for the money, Mr. Silver. I got into it for the game. You give me a good time, and when I haul your carcass to my employer, I won’t say a peep about the kids. You can die knowing you’re saving their lives.”
And, Toni thought, that might have been the truth – except that as he finished speaking, de Jager took a casual step sideways.
Jack hung his head in his hands. Toni’s heart went out to him – was already with him – but her brain was on fire.
De Jager was lying. All that rubbish about the hunt was just that: bullshit. This was the same man who’d piled carcass on top of carcass in front of a government building out of sheer spite, so Toni was pretty sure it wasn’t any game that interested him. Just death.
And if she didn’t do something, Jack would be his next victim.
Her thoughts jumped to the gun in her pack, but her hands were shaking so badly she would be more likely to drop the gun than aim and fire it. She could shout, or mindspeak, but if Jack made any sudden moves the man would likely shoot him on the spot.
She could only think of one thing to do.
Heart hammering in her chest, Toni mounted the bike again and let gravity pull her forward and down the other side of the ridge. Wind whipped across her bare face as she gained speed.
Where you look, there you go. Toni kept her eyes locked on her target: the man with the gun.
If she had had time to think about what she was doing, Toni never would have gone through with it. She would have seen the stones mixed in with the dirt along the edge of the slip, the holes and gaps and sharp edges just waiting to clip the wheels of her bike and send her tumbling. But she hadn’t had time to think about it, so instead she barreled on down the hill and slammed directly into the shooter.
Later, Toni would remember thinking that everything happened at once, like a series of photographic negatives stacked one on top of the other. Slamming into the man full-on, sending him sprawling into the dirt. The ground rising up and smacking her. Winded, rolling downhill, trying to cover her head, but unable to tell whether she’d banged it on anything already, or even what part of her had hit the ground first.
The smell of hot dirt in her face.
Sun glaring in her eyes.
Pushing herself up, muscles screaming, head spinning. She had to run. She had to get to the van, the kids—
No.
That had been yesterday. It was light now, not dark. The kids were safe.
A voice in her head.
Jack.
Toni stared across the bare earth at the man she had come to rescue, and the world stopped spinning. She had fallen off her bike and skidded halfway down the hill; the
man she had hit lay crumpled on the ground.
His gun lay midway between them, smaller items scattered around it. Toni blinked. They looked like … phials?
“Toni!”
“Jack!” She spun around and half-ran, half-skidded down the hill, her backpack smacking against her with every step. Jack had turned away from de Jager and was moving toward her.
Behind him, Toni saw de Jager dash back to the car and pull out a gun. He leveled it at Jack’s back.
“Jack, look out!” Even before the words left her lips, Jack was spinning around. Toni felt his shock like a blow as he saw the gun.
Then she felt the shots.
Toni gasped, and her hands flew to her chest. There was nothing there, just the same dirt-stained shirt as before. Then she saw Jack fall to his knees in front of her.
She ran to his side, knees buckling under her as she reached him. The phantom pain – his pain – still echoed in her body as Jack sank to the ground. She rolled him over, terrified by the thought of what she might see.
A metallic glint caught the light where she had expected to see blood. Something was sticking out of Jack’s chest, and it wasn’t bullets. Jack grunted as Toni pulled one of the darts out of his chest. It had a highlighter-yellow fletch and, under that, an empty syringe.
“Oh, god, Jack,” Toni breathed. “It’s a tranquilizer dart.”
But it wasn’t just one. It was three, bristling from Jack’s heaving chest like monstrous flowers. Toni pulled the other two from her lover’s body as fast as she could, but all three syringes were empty.
She’d been wrong. Whatever de Jager, or his boss, wanted out of Jack, it wasn’t his death. This whole thing had been a trap meant to capture him alive. Render him unconscious, and helpless.
Jack’s eyes were going unfocused, and Toni could tell he was losing consciousness as the drug kicked in. She mentally added up the quantity of tranquilizer that must have been in the three darts and felt ill. De Jager had shot Jack with enough tranquilizer to fell a huge animal – but for a human, that dose would be lethal. She held back a sob. De Jager’s plan might fail, after all, but not for any reason she could have hoped.
She shook Jack’s shoulder desperately as a shadow fell over her. “Jack, listen to me. Focus on my voice. The amount of tranquilizer you’ve got in your system – it’s too much, it’ll kill you. But your tiger might be able to deal with it. Jack, you have to transform. Trust me, you have to shift now.”
Jack’s eyelids flickered as he tried to fight the drug. His breath was slowing, as though his lungs were straining to work against a great pressure.
De Jager dragged Toni upright and pulled her around to face him. She recoiled as he leered at her, but he gripped her arm so tightly she couldn’t move away.
“The mysterious Antonia Parker!” he crowed triumphantly. “Speaking of bonuses … I can’t think what my employer would do with you, sweetheart, but I’m sure one of his pet scientists will find you an interesting data point.” He leaned in closer. “You and your niece and nephew.”
Toni almost retched as de Jager drew her closer to his face.
“Don’t you dare touch them!” she snarled. Silently, she shouted out to Jack to wake up, to fight the drugs, but there was only silence behind her. Even the long, dragging sound of Jack’s breath had grown quiet.
Toni sobbed and threw her full weight at de Jager, hoping to knock him off balance. But he was ready for her, and threw her to the ground. Toni hit the dirt and lay there, stunned.
“I’d offer you the same deal I offered our friend here, but I get the feeling you’d suspect I wasn’t being entirely truthful with you,” de Jager said conversationally. They might have been exchanging small talk at an office party.
Toni’s mind was racing. She glanced across to Jack. He hadn’t moved, or shifted. Her heart lurched in her chest. Desperate, she held on to the connection she still felt between herself and the man she had fallen so quickly and deeply in love with. Focusing with all her energy, she sent her strength to Jack, willing him to fight the drugs that were coursing through his body – to be strong, to survive—
Toni’s vision swam, and she never saw de Jager’s boot swinging toward her. Pain burst along her side as he kicked her to the ground.
“I asked you a question, you damn freak! When I talk, you listen!”
Toni spat out a mouthful of dirt and glared up at de Jager. She had seen her sister and parents hiss and spit when they were enraged in cat form, their glossy coats puffing up to make them look bigger. In this moment, Toni understood what that must feel like. If she’d had hackles, they would have risen. If she’d had a tail, it would have been puffed up like a banner.
Instead, since she was a human, she made do with spitting all the profanities she could think of. She pushed herself onto her knees, ready to launch herself at de Jager, and then froze as he lifted the pistol and pointed it at her.
Behind the barrel of the gun, de Jager’s mouth twisted into a greasy grin. “Not so fast, sweetheart. You just—”
A black and orange flash rushed past Toni and smashed into de Jager. She had barely a moment to realize it was Jack before he sent gun and man flying in different directions with a single sweep of his powerful paws.
Toni was used to cat shifters, but a tiger was something totally different. She slowly stood up, taking in the scene in front of her. The tiger – Jack – was bigger than a normal tiger, reaching as high as Toni’s shoulder even on all fours. Muscles bunching under his striped fur, he stood over de Jager, dwarfing the cowering man. A growl ripped from his throat as he padded forward.
“You wouldn’t dare, you filthy brute,” hissed de Jager. “You think I’m the only one who took on your contract? I might have tracked you down first, but if I turn up with my throat torn out you won’t be able to move in these woods for our people. You and those fucking kids won’t stand a chance.”
Jack lowered his head. Toni heard his voice inside her mind, although he kept his golden eyes fixed firmly on de Jager.
“Right,” Toni agreed, not trusting herself to mindspeak without blasting the whole forest. Her adrenaline was spiking, filling her body with nervous energy. She looked back across the clearing at the sniper, who was beginning to groan softly.
So she hadn’t killed him after all. She wasn’t sure whether she was more relieved or annoyed that this meant he was still a problem.
She looked back at their would-be captor in time to see his eyes slide across the ground to his gun. It must have been ten feet away from him. Toni couldn’t tell whether he was stupid, or desperate, enough to go for the weapon with four hundred kilograms of growling tiger standing over him, but she briskly walked over and picked it up anyway.
“Backpack,” Toni confirmed. She didn’t want to talk too much with de Jager listening in.
Jack punctuated this last, silent exclamation with a sharp growl. De Jager was slinking backwards toward the van. The vehicle wasn’t likely to do much damage against Jack’s supernatural bulk at this distance but if de Jager could get the engine running, he might escape. Toni pointed the gun at him.
“Stop moving!”
De Jager laughed, but Toni could see the whites around his eyes. Even if he was trying to hide it, he was afraid.
She knew that Jack was thinking the same thing; if she let her attention slip toward him, then she could almost start to smell de Jager’s fear as well as see it, just as Jack could.
Interesting. She tucked that thought away for later.
De Jager licked his lips. “You know … the deal I mentione
d. Let’s change it up a bit. I can tell my employer this whole contract is a dead end – nothing in it – I’ll make sure they leave you alone…”
“And leave you free to hunt down other shifters?” Toni cried out. “Jack, stop him!”
De Jager lunged for the van door. Jack had started moving before Toni’s warning left her lips. He leapt forward in one smooth movement and struck de Jager to the ground. He lay still.
“Bastard!” Toni shouted. “What kind of monsters does he think we are?”
Toni punched her hands into fists. To her surprise, there were tears in her eyes. “Did he think we would really take him up on that offer? Let him go free to attack other innocent shifters? I’d rather die!”
She felt warm fur under her hand. Jack was standing next to her; she realized she was shaking, and put out her arms to steady herself on his solid bulk. “I’ve done everything wrong this weekend. Even if he killed me, I couldn’t let him hurt anyone else.”
Her shakes turned into uncontrollable sobs. Everything that had happened that weekend seemed to wash over her in one unforgiving tide. Her failure to protect the twins. Her failure to contact her sister, to let anyone know what was going on. Even Jack had almost died because of her. Toni shut her eyes tight in a hopeless attempt to stem the flood of her tears and wrapped her arms around herself.
There was a soft, organic noise, Jack laid a human hand on her arm. She let him pull her toward him, into his warm embrace. He smelled like dirt, and sweat, all the tangible reminders of the tragedy they had only just avoided – but behind that, she sensed his own, personal smell, warm and animal and pure. She flung her arms around him and held on tight.
“I thought I had – I thought I was going to lose you,” she mumbled into his chest. “When I saw de Jager shoot you – if I hadn’t distracted you, if I hadn’t made such a mess of things—”