Carly’s face softened. She was looking at him as she had on the highway, one hand on her hip, her gaze roving him. Her eyes, so beautiful with their gray on green, met his. “You’re flattering, I’ll give you that.”
She came to him, her scent filling him, calming him. Tiger forgot about Liam trying to challenge him, Dylan ready to kill, even Connor waiting anxiously in the doorway. Carly was Tiger’s world.
He smoothed her hair and pressed a light kiss to her lips. Kissing was a fine thing.
“I really have to go,” Carly said. “Stay here and talk to Liam about whatever he needs to say to you, or he might burst a blood vessel. But I promise, I’ll come back, and we’ll have that long talk.”
Tiger touched her face. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight, not without protection. But he didn’t want the Morrissey brothers, or their dad, anywhere near her. “If I stay, Spike goes with you.” He gave Liam a hard look. “I trust him.”
Liam moved his hands out to his sides, though the grim lines didn’t leave his face. “At least you’re giving me that. Stay put, Tiger—please. There are some things you need to know.”
* * *
Tiger made sure Carly was safely away, driven by Spike in Dylan’s truck, with Connor on her other side. Tiger didn’t fully believe the two of them could keep her safe, but he also knew that the strike yesterday had been against him, not Carly. The man had shot at Carly so Tiger would protect her.
He thought of the way the man had stood next to Tiger after he’d fired the first shots, watching. The man had been waiting for something. Testing him. And he hadn’t killed Tiger, had left him and all the others alive.
“There’s no easy way to put this,” Liam said when they walked back into the house. Dylan followed them to the kitchen—Tiger knew the man would stay until satisfied that Tiger was no longer a threat. “The other Shifter leaders want me to put a Collar on you. A real one.”
Tiger touched the silver and black chain with the Celtic knot at his throat that Sean and Liam had manufactured. Unlike real Collars, this one wasn’t laced with Fae magic and microchips. Who the Fae was that had turned out the new Collars, happy to help the humans subjugate Shifters, Tiger had to wonder. And why someone like Dylan hadn’t killed him, Tiger wondered as well.
“I won’t wear the Collar.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Liam said. “They’re scared of you. They want you to take a Collar or else for us to kill you.”
“You can’t kill me.” Tiger knew that. None of them could.
“I don’t want to,” Liam said. “I want to help you. But you have to cooperate.”
“I can’t take a Collar,” Tiger repeated. “I can’t do what I’m made to do if I have a Collar.”
Liam had been reaching for the refrigerator, probably to take the edge off their tension with Guinness, but he stopped. “Now that’s interesting. What were you made to do?”
“I don’t know. But I know the Collar will prevent me.”
“I see.” Liam opened the refrigerator and reached inside, coming out with, yes, a dark brown bottle with Guinness Stout on the label. “What do you think it might be?”
“They never told me. But the way I recovered from the shooting must be a part of it. The second time faster than the first. I’m changing.” He let out a breath. “It’s tiring. I’ve never felt this tired before.”
Liam lowered the beer, not drinking. “You also had a lot of sex, my friend. Hours of it. Can’t blame you—she’s a lovely lady. As far as I know, that’s the first sex you’ve had since you arrived. Sure you’re not just exhausted from pleasure? It can wipe you out—in a different way from fighting. And much more fun.”
“Being with Carly didn’t tire me.” Tiger warmed, remembering rolling her onto her back, still inside her, with her pliant to take him. He’d loved her slowly, kissing her while she kissed him. He’d never wanted to stop, never wanted to leave the bed. Real life had been far away, unimportant. “The healing though. That burned.”
“I’m sure.” Liam shook his head. “I wish we had a Shifter healer here to look at you. Andrea’s good, but her talent is natural, not learned. She hasn’t made a study of Shifters.”
“But we know someone who might tell us what’s going on inside him,” Dylan said. “If it’s magical.”
Liam flicked his gaze to his father, then his eyes took on a faraway look as he considered. “True. If he’ll talk to us. We’ll need Sean. And Andrea.”
“Good thing they stayed home,” Dylan said in his dry voice.
“Aye,” Liam said. “Tiger, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
* * *
Sean and Andrea met them on the strip of green behind the houses, in the clump of trees that Tiger avoided for some reason. He’d never thought about why he didn’t like to go there, but something in him made him steer around it whenever he walked down the long common ground.
Sean had brought his sword. Tiger eyed it in its sheath on Sean’s back. A few months ago, he’d watched Sean drive the blade of the sword into the body of an elderly Shifter, the man sighing in relief as his last breath went out of him. His body had crumbled to dust, and the Shifters who’d gathered for the parting ceremony had said prayers, both grieving and thanking Sean for freeing the man’s soul.
Tiger wasn’t sure how a sword could do that, but he saw again the threads that connected it to Sean, and connected Sean to Andrea, as he had when Andrea had started healing him after the accident. Sean unsheathed the sword, which rang faintly, and Tiger stepped back, well out of its reach.
Sean pointed the sword forward, holding it toward nothing. Andrea put her hand over his on its hilt.
“Dad,” she said.
“Open up, it’s the in-laws,” Sean added.
“He’s not big on humor,” Andrea said in her calm way.
Sean grinned. “I know. That’s why I do it.”
A light slit the air. Tiger growled and stepped back again, hackles rising. In the ten months he’d been here, he’d never seen this. He’d never smelled the acrid stench that came out of the slit, which had Liam wrinkling his nose, and Sean looking stoic.
A figure appeared in the opening. He was tall, thin, almost angular. White hair hung over his shoulder in a long braid, and he wore a shirt of linked rings over white leather, a black cloak rolling back from his shoulders.
“What?” he snapped. His voice was rich and full, with a hint of Irish.
“Nice to see you too.” Andrea released the sword and went to the man, enclosing him in her embrace.
The man’s sharp face softened as he allowed the hug, closing his arms around her in return. “Andrea. Child. Let me look at you.”
“I haven’t changed since the last time,” Andrea said.
“Give an old man the delight of seeing his daughter. How’s the wee one?”
“Kenny’s fine. Growing fast.”
“Don’t bother telling me he looks like me or has my nose. He’ll be mostly Shifter.” The man glanced at Sean. “Will smell like one too.”
“Better than the stench of Fae,” Sean said, but with no rancor behind the words.
“I’ll ignore that,” Andrea said. “Father, Liam wants you to meet Tiger. Tiger, Fionn Cillian, my father. My real father. He’s a Fae.”
The Fae moved his gaze from Andrea to Tiger. He stiffened, his stance becoming defensive, a warrior reacting to a threat. “What is that?”
“His name’s Tiger,” Andrea said. “Because, you know, he’s a tiger.”
“I’d never have guessed.” Fionn took in Tiger’s multicolored hair, his build, his golden eyes. “No Fae made that.”
“That’s why we’re curious,” Liam said. “Can you tell us how he was made? Or maybe, how he wasn’t?”
“Why don’t you ask his parents? Presumably pure tiger.”
“He doesn’t have parents,” Liam said. “He was concocted in a lab. None of us, including Tiger, know how.”
“I’d have to tou
ch him to find out,” Fionn said. “And I don’t want to come near him. He’s ready to rip my head off. I can see it in him.”
“He’ll behave,” Andrea said. “Won’t you?” She slanted Tiger a warning glance, and Tiger made her happy by nodding.
Fionn’s lips thinned. “You dragged me across a dimension for me to put my hand on a tiger Shifter? What do I get in return?”
“An hour with your grandson,” Andrea said.
Fionn’s face softened. “You fight dirty, daughter. All right.”
He stepped through the opening without any problem, the cold, nostril-curling smell clinging to his cloak. Fionn stopped in front of Tiger, the man tall enough to look at him eye to eye.
“Don’t try anything,” Fionn warned. “I might not be able to turn into a beast, but I’ve trained as a fighter for more years than anyone here has been alive. Hold still.”
Fionn stripped off a skin-fitting leather glove and pressed his bare, long-fingered hand to Tiger’s chest.
Something snapped through Tiger like an electric shock, shooting through his chest in a bite of pain. His mind whipped back to the dark basement, where researchers had shocked him, jolt after jolt, Tiger screaming, not even aware that he’d opened his mouth.
He brought up his hand to smack Fionn away, but Fionn had jerked back well before Tiger moved.
“What the hell?” Fionn growled. “I told you not to attack me.”
Tiger opened his eyes. The lab disappeared, and he drew a breath of humid Austin air, now tinged with Faerie. “I didn’t,” he said, voice rasping. “You shocked me.”
“No, my friend. I don’t carry a thousand volts in my body. I’m Fae. I don’t even like the human concept of electricity. That was all you. Throwing me out.”
Tiger stared. He’d not consciously reacted to Fionn’s touch.
“It wasn’t Fae magic that surged up,” Fionn said. “In fact, there’s not a glimmer of Fae magic in his entire body. I got that much.”
“There’s Fae magic in all Shifters,” Dylan said. “Passed down through the generations. It’s what formed us in the first place.”
“Not this one.” Fionn shook out his hand and slid his glove back on in quick jerks. “I don’t know what he is. Now, take me to Kenny.”
He put his hand on Andrea’s shoulder and walked off with her, finished with Tiger. Which left Tiger in the middle of the three Morrisseys.
“I can’t take the Collar,” Tiger said before any of them could speak. It would incapacitate him, maybe kill him, and he couldn’t let it. Not yet.
The sensations in his body and mind confused him and made him angry. Without a word, he turned from them and started down the green.
He headed for Spike’s house. Spike had gone with Carly, which left Jordan alone with his mother and grandmother again. Dylan should have stayed with them. Tiger would make sure they were all right, as well as see if looking after Jordan would soothe his jangled nerves. He had to think, and he had to make some decisions.
The simple cell phone Liam urged him to carry at all times buzzed on his belt. Tiger snatched it up, hoping it was Carly, not Liam demanding he return home.
The number was not one he recognized. He clicked on the phone as Connor had taught him and growled, “Yes?”
“It’s Walker. Get somewhere you can talk to me alone. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Carly answered the phone at the small desk tucked away in a corner of Armand’s gallery, all but hidden so customers wouldn’t see that they worried about anything as gauche as business.
Connor was napping in the back office after having complained some more about last night’s lack of sleep. Spike and his tatts had earned the interest of an artist who’d come to see Armand, and the artist was looking Spike over, having him stand in sunlight and so forth.
“Gallery d’Armand,” Carly said in her best quiet but friendly tones. “How may I help you this afternoon?”
“I need you to get away from Connor and Spike,” Tiger’s voice was almost a whisper. “And meet me.” He gave directions to a spot in the warehouse area south of Ben White, near the freeway.
Get away from Connor and Spike? Carly didn’t dare glance behind her at Spike, who might read in her body language that she was suddenly nervous. “I’m not sure I can,” she said.
“Talk to me like I am a shopper. Don’t change your voice.”
A shopper. He meant a gallery patron. Carly drew a breath. “Well, I’m certain we could accommodate you, sir,” she said briskly, “though it might be a little bit of a challenge.”
“Don’t take Dylan’s truck. The Bureau men know what it looks like.” A hesitation. “So do the Shifters.”
He wanted to evade Shifters too? Shifters like Liam? What the hell had happened?
Carly couldn’t ask with Spike behind her, even though he was all the way across the gallery. She’d learned by now that Shifters had great hearing.
Tiger’s voice was quiet, but she read the agitation in him. He was asking her to make a choice.
Liam had been adamant that Tiger not leave Shiftertown, and Carly had seen the rage between Liam, Tiger, and Dylan. Tiger wasn’t the most normal of guys, even for a Shifter—she’d seen that in the way others treated him and in the way the others lived their lives. Liam, Sean, Spike, Ronan—they had children, families, friends, a defined place in the Shifter world. In the same way, Carly had a loving mother and three great sisters, friends, and a job with Armand and Yvette, a childless couple who treated her like a daughter.
Tiger had no one. In the warmth of the Shifter community, the Shifters either feared him or watched him, ready to stop him when he went over the top. Tiger was alone in a crowd.
What Carly had observed in the three days she’d known him was that every time Tiger went berserk, it was to defend himself or someone else. Couldn’t they see how gentle he was with the kids, how much the kids liked him? No child trusted a person they’d seen hurt others.
Carly’s father had been a bad person. Difficult for a twelve-year-old girl to understand when her father leaves without a word. An adolescent takes it personally, and Carly did. She’d spent a long time wondering what had been wrong with her before realizing that she hadn’t done anything wrong at all.
Thinking back over what life had been like with her father—his alcoholic tempers and compulsive gambling, his daylong harangues at her mother—Carly had come to the adult conclusion that he’d had a lot of problems he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge, problems that had made Carly’s home life hell for twelve years.
Tiger was absolutely nothing like him.
All this went through Carly’s head in the few seconds Tiger waited for her answer.
Carly could turn around and call out for Spike, telling him that Tiger was running from Shiftertown for whatever reason. Or she could believe that Tiger had a very good reason for wanting her to meet him and to keep Spike and Connor from finding out and following.
She chose.
“I’ll take care of it,” Carly said, speaking in her helpful-assistant tones. “Don’t you worry.” She heard Tiger’s breath of relief, and she decided to risk a question. “And how did you find the number for our gallery? Were you referred?”
Tiger sounded puzzled as he answered. “Phone book.” And he hung up.
Carly bit her lip as she reached into the desk drawer where she kept her purse and pretended to look for something. Connor was in the office, where a back door led to the small parking area on the alley. She knew she’d never get past him without waking him up. If she went out the front, past Spike, even with the excuse of going out for gelato or whatever, Spike would follow her.
She felt Spike’s gaze on her. Carly pulled a lipstick from her purse, frowned at it, and said, “Yvette, I’m just going to the ladies’.”
Yvette, who’d been in low-voiced conversation on the other side of the gallery with Armand, nodded. Carly’s palms sweated as she dipped her hand into Yv
ette’s purse resting next to hers and took out Yvette’s car keys. Carly slid them noiselessly into her own purse, then took up the purse and put it over her shoulder.
She walked as casually as she could through the alcove that held two very nice but small restrooms and one broom closet. Neither bathroom had windows, so the movie staple of the woman or man climbing out the bathroom window to escape everything from a bad date to death by assassins was out. Beyond the broom closet, however, was the emergency exit.
Armand, fortunately, didn’t have a fire alarm rigged up to the door. But if Carly opened it, the glare of the sun outside might shine back down the hall.
She had to risk it. Carly waited until several loud vehicles passed in front of the shop. Spike turned to glance at them. At the same time, Carly opened the back door a little, slid through, and closed the door as quietly as she could.
Yvette’s car was five feet away. Now to hope that Connor hadn’t woken up and was looking out the office window.
Carly got into the car, closing the door so it only clicked. She set her purse on the passenger seat, put on her seat belt, and started the engine.
No one came flying out through the office door or the emergency exit. Carly backed the car out of its parking spot as slowly as she dared, then drove down the alley.
She passed the backs of four more shops before she turned onto a small driveway that led out to the main street. From here she turned right, even though she needed to go left to get back to Austin. She didn’t want to risk driving past the gallery and its wide plate-glass windows.
Carly had to drive around a few blocks, once down a street that was still dirt, before she emerged onto the main road again. Then she drove as fast as she dared. At any moment, Spike would figure out that she was taking way too long in the ladies’ room, or Yvette would go in and find her not there. Spike and Connor would leap into Dylan’s truck, and they’d be on her ass in minutes.
There was only one paved road, a two-lane highway, that led back into Austin, so she couldn’t take a circuitous route to lose any pursuit. If Carly drove too fast, she might get pulled over, giving Spike a chance to catch up. Too slowly, and he’d catch up anyway.
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