by Nara Malone
He watched her for a clue that she understood. He hadn’t been able to penetrate her mind at all. He moved closer again and she didn’t respond. It was like she was looking through him. He knew, didn’t need telepathy to guess which way those mental wheels turned.
“Our babies,” he repeated. “Our Pantherian babies.”
She exploded from the couch and he jumped back behind the chair.
Marie snarled and stalked him on suddenly steady legs. Intent gleamed in her eyes, his ability to read it blocked by a force of will he had never encountered.
Adam held his ground while his own mind screamed at him to shift. He stepped from behind the chair. He had to establish some kind of trust in order to take care of her. She wouldn’t hurt him.
Fury boiled in her stare. A chill spread through his belly. In an eye-blink her head slammed into his chest, knocking him flat on his back. As he suspected, the news her babies weren’t human didn’t sit well. He hardly dared draw a breath while she towered above him, eyes glowing.
Sweat soaked his t-shirt. Tension sparked and crackled in the air. Visible electric arcs shimmered and went out, like summer lightning. Her power unnerved.
From the corner of his eye he saw Ean’s shadow, cast by the hall light.
“Adam, I think she could fry us with a thought.”
Don’t give her ideas, he whispered with his mind, afraid to risk moving his lips to shape words, let alone irritate her further with human speech.
She crouched possessively over Adam, hissing warnings at Ean.
Adam felt Ean raising energy to shift.
No, Ean.
He could feel stubbornness in Ean’s intention. A hard wall.
Ean, please?
Ean wavered.
Marie looked down at Adam. She lifted her right paw and planted it in the middle of Adam’s chest. It was as effective as a gun to the head. The claws curled, razor points pressing through his shirt into his skin as the pressure grew. Her paw was bigger than his head. Ean couldn’t help now. He could feel his heart leap and thump like a rabbit in a trap. She could scoop it from his chest in less than a heartbeat. She knew it.
What Adam didn’t know was how much self-control she had. It took time for the human and tiger consciousness to learn to work together.
A growl rumbled in her chest and vibrated through his bones. She crouched lower, her nose an inch from his and showed him all those sharp teeth, longer and thicker than his fingers. His heart scrabbled under her paw, seeking refuge in his throat. He tried to draw a breath, his lungs burned under her weight. She might be imprisoned in a body she didn’t understand, for reasons she didn’t understand, but she was not powerless.
Adam licked his lips, could taste the salty sweat there. Point taken.
She withdrew. She stalked, stiff-legged to the doorway, butted Ean aside and kept going. He heard crashing and the sound of splintering wood.
“That was the dining room chairs,” Ean said, sliding his back down the wall to sit in the doorway. “Better them than us. She’s gone under the table.”
Adam closed his eyes. His heartbeat slowed but his limbs felt like water. “Let’s leave her be for now.”
“Good plan.”
Adam hoped one day they would look back on this and laugh. Right now, they were too scared.
Chapter Eight
Adam kept a respectful distance from Marie, as much as the tight quarters of a tiger-filled kitchen would allow. He leaned against the counter, coffee in one hand, the other working painful knots from his stiff neck. He and Ean spent the night sleeping in the dining room doorways.
“You remember your first shift?” Ean asked. “For me it was like a perfume store had exploded in my head.” He handed Adam a fluffy stack of buckwheat cakes, butter and maple syrup dripped down the edges in amber streams and pooled on the plate.
Adam put the plate on a kitchen chair and waited for Marie to take an interest. The scent of butter, syrup and hotcakes had his mouth watering. He watched her sniff a path from the kitchen door to the hallway. Something more intriguing than breakfast had her attention.
Aware that normal speaking voices jarred her, Adam answered Ean in a soft voice, just above a whisper. “For me it was the sound. I couldn’t get over how shifting turned the volume up. The swish of grass under a paw sounded like wind through a cane field.”
Marie stepped carefully, her nose glued to the tile, like a train engine fastened to an invisible track. Her tongue flicked out to taste the air, scooping up scent to sample its flavor. She would pause and lift her head slightly, then some new scent would catch her and her nose connected itself to follow a new track. Her tail swayed seductively when she moved.
Ean shot Adam a pained look when she paused to rub her cheek against a doorjamb before passing through. Female scent marked strategic spots around the house in the way a woman might dab perfume behind a knee or an ear. She was torturing them, unaware how her instinctive behavior made them crave her.
Adam followed her while Ean finished preparing breakfast.
In the living room, she rolled on her back and wriggled on the carpet. One paw hooked the coffee table and sent it flying. She lifted her head and blinked at the shattered pieces, then snarled at Adam, as if he needed reminding her current opinion of him wasn’t good. Then she returned to scratching her back.
Adam’s clothes weighed on him like chains. He longed to be naked, lying right in the spot where she had rolled, drinking her scent through his pores. His skin itched with the need.
“I could scratch those itches,” he offered.
Marie rolled to her feet, teeth bared. The claws of one paw caught in the carpet, distracting her. Marie studied her paw. The tug and lift in the carpet were perceptible as she flexed her claws.
“Let me help—”
She flexed the claws of the other paw and then the scratching reflex took hold. Adam winced as the expensive carpet parted in strips like paper through a shredder.
“I can see we’re going to need some rules,” Adam muttered and then said louder, as she really got into it, “Stop that.”
Ean came up behind him and leaned around him to see what was up.
She looked straight at him, extended her right paw full length and a new patch parted with a sound like a giant zipper opening.
“I think she just dared you to make her.”
She left off the carpet and headed for the couch. Was that a gleam in her eyes? Her hindquarters bunched and she crouched.
Adam started forward. “No Marie, you’re too…” He thought better of what he was going to say. The word”heavy” echoed in his brain when she leapt, almost gracefully, and landed with a thud on his sofa. The legs popped off and the interior gave way so that Marie sank through to the floor.
She hadn’t expected that. She cowered in a defensive crouch and then bolted past them knocking Adam into Ean in her rush to escape. One couch cushion was still attached to her back paw.
More wood cracked and splintered in the next room. The two remaining dining room chairs from the sound of it. And sure enough, they found her under the dining table, the chairs scattered like kindling around the perimeter, the torn cushion in the corner. Her head and shoulders fit under the table and the back half of her hung out. Her tail swished like a furry windshield wiper over gleaming hardwood. The long lace tablecloth trailed to the floor, except where it was draped exotically above her hips. Ean cleared his throat. Adam didn’t need to read his mind to know what was on it.
* * * * *
From: Adam Kamenev ([email protected])
To: Jake Sequoia ([email protected])
Subject: Hybrid Research
Hi Jake,
I trust my father is well. Knowing his distaste for electronic gadgets, I assume you are still handling communications for him.
I’m doing research on rare genetic traits among Pantherians, specifically the Panthera tigris tribe. Would you ask the magus if he has ever seen evidence of leucism (w
hite tigers in case you’re wondering) in this tribe? Also, send me any information he might be able to pass on about early attempts to create hybrid species, in particular, around what decade he thinks they may have achieved the capability to produce hybrids.
Thanks,
Adam
From: Jake Sequoia ([email protected])
To: Adam Kamenev ([email protected])
Subject: You knew it wouldn’t be that easy
He wants to know what you’re on to.
Nice try,
Jake
To: Jake Sequoia ([email protected])
From: Adam Kamenev ([email protected])
Subject: Moi?
I’m not on to anything, at least not anything I want to put in email. In fact, it might be best to leave his answer in the usual cyber drop. I’ll come to see him as soon as I can break free of a complicated situation here. He can grill me then. And while I’m thinking of it, there’s a database I need purged of certain info and a deposit of funds to be delivered. You know where to find the details.
Thanks,
Adam
To: Adam Kamenev ([email protected])
From: Jake Sequoia ([email protected])
Subject: Done
Now I’m curious. I found the details you left for me. It only took me an hour to unlock the files; you’re slipping. There was no data on your kitty at the clinic. So technically, I don’t think I’ve broken any laws for you—yet. Don’t worry, the magus has stumbled on a stray kitten of his own and isn’t paying attention to the hornet’s nest you’re sticking your nose in. Take care, Adam, and work fast. You can’t keep things from him for long. In fact, if the two of you would put your heads together, you might find you’re stalking the same prey.
Always at your service when it is this intriguing,
Jake
* * * * *
Adam pushed back from his desk and gazed out the window. A light snowfall painted a lacy curtain on the other side of the glass. Ean had shifted and taken Marie out to play. She was near the edge of the wood, body taut with concentration as she investigated an important bush. She was well camouflaged in the snow, the long shadow of trees the perfect backdrop for her coloring.
Ean was bumping her with his head, prancing playfully, giving every sign that he was interested in sex.
Adam turned away and went back to his work. He wasn’t jealous. Pantherians didn’t get jealous. Marie wouldn’t be thinking like a Pantherian. Her upbringing demanded monogamy. Conception required two males. Raising her babies didn’t. He pushed those thoughts firmly away.
So what did Jake mean that his father had found a stray kitten? He tapped a pencil on his notepad. The only information he’d shared about Marie had been her name, the date of her visit to the clinic and the clinic name and address. If there were no details to erase, Jake wouldn’t know anything about the current situation. Codekitty was the user name for Marie’s web space. If Jake had worked that out, he must realize the programming work he’d been doing for Adam was really for Marie.
Adam thought he had things covered at her job. Jake did the work they left her and Adam uploaded it to the site. He’d concocted a string of stories to make sure her job was there when she wanted to go back. He’d even prepared the way for the sudden appearance of several newborns in Marie’s life. After the babies arrived, Marie’s fictional sister would pass on due to complications in childbirth and Marie would be named guardian. Plans this complex, especially when humans were involved, rarely proceeded without a hitch.
Ean’s vocalizing carried in from the yard. Adam was glad she allowed at least one of them near her. Ean could keep her safe. Marie crooned an answer. The pencil snapped in half. Adam tossed it in the trash basket.
Think. Think. Whatever Jake knew, he was trying to tell Adam that Marie was not a lone aberration. That didn’t rule out her being an aberration rather than an experiment that somehow got away. It just made it less likely. He needed to visit his father. He dreaded visiting his father.
Two feline voices rose in harmony. Adam pressed fingertips to his temples. Ean should know better than to be so loud. He sent the thought.
He could not go out there. He couldn’t look. He wouldn’t think about why he couldn’t.
The rabbit scrabbled in her box. Adam tried to ignore her too but finally gave in. Lilly had grown two feet and gained twenty five pounds since she’d come to live with them. He should have known better than to give Marie a present he’d originally gotten from his father. She’d started out a harmless little blue-eyed fluff of fur that fit in the palm of his hand. Maybe he should have taken his cue then. Blue eyes weren’t a common trait in rabbits.
He kept Lilly in his lab out of Marie’s reach. Marie wouldn’t harm Lilly, all Pantherians were vegetarians. The rabbit couldn’t adjust to the idea of being carried about in a tiger’s mouth. He lifted her in his arms, holding her belly up and she fit there in the curve of his arm, making him think of holding his children just so. Intelligence studied him from behind sapphire eyes. There was no mistaking that feeling of a spark, a connection. Lilly was more than a rabbit. She wasn’t Pantherian. What did that leave?
* * * * *
Ean stayed close but tried not to intrude on her exploration. Marie would get freezer burn on her nose if she kept pushing through the snow like that. It was barely an inch deep. She lifted her head and thrust that long pink tongue out to catch crisp, lacy flakes that danced on her breath before landing and dissolving.
Ean crouched close by. She wouldn’t look at him. She didn’t like him as a tiger and she usually sulked under the dining room table until he switched back to his human form. But this morning she’d sat with her nose pressed to the kitchen window and he’d told her he’d take her out, but only as a tiger. While he hadn’t heard guns today, hunters still worried him.
She was sitting very still now, ears twitching. He guessed she was enchanted by the whispery music of falling snow.
She flopped on her side. She sent him her fiercest look with a warning growl and then flipped over on to her back, wriggling in the snow, four paws batting the air.
Ean relaxed and stretched out on his side, gazing into the distance. The posture an invitation he hoped she would recognize.
She cocked her head to check what he was up to and went still.
Ean watched her without seeming to. Marie stayed on her back but the telling twitch of her tail told him she was confused, agitated. He pictured her curled safe and warm against his side. He wondered if she would understand.
She rolled to her belly and studied him, the pull of instinct proving stronger than her fear. She crept closer, pausing, looking about. She mewed once, a soft confused sound so different from her usual snarls and hisses that Ean thought he might have imagined it. She inched forward and mewed again.
Ean made no outward response. He kept his breathing soft and shallow. He trained his gaze on the river and kept it there, with only occasional peeks to follow her progress. With supreme effort he managed to keep his tail still, draped nonchalantly over his rear paws.
Marie’s ears were in radar mode, scanning constantly for a hint of danger. Her tail whipped and writhed like a snake, sending plumes of white powder into the air.
She’d approached to the point that her head was a foot away from his right front paw. She stretched her neck as far as she could. It was bad tiger etiquette, bad form. It was much safer to start explorations of another tiger at the back end. If he meant her harm the quick swipe of a paw or snap of jaws could have delivered it. Later. Later he would teach her defenses. Now the only thing he wanted to teach her was love.
Her tongue tasted the air near him. Her fur stood straight up and he noted the rippling wave of her skin moving as her entire body tested the charged air around him. She stretched more and gave his paw a tentative lick. She looked up at him then, wide blue eyes unblinking.
A spark leapt from her eyes into him. His heart went to marshmallow
and his lower half went to beast. He would do anything to please her. To have her. Need pulsed through his veins, a need to be close, to rub his fur against hers. He closed his eyes against her stare.
She licked again, a long stroke covering his paw and up his foreleg. It was the wrong direction but he didn’t care. He peeked at her. Her pink tongue made wide, wet furrows. Her eyes were closed and she had that same look she got when he fed her cinnamon rolls hot from the oven and she licked the icing that dripped from his fingers. He felt savored.
He sang a mating song, his voice riding up and down the notes like fingers teasing sound from the strings of a guitar, up and down the scale, sending his love to resonate in the hollows of her bones. She answered. The music of their voices wrapping round each other created energy that softened the whole body, like a massage from the inside.
Adam’s sharp warning zapped through Ean’s brain. He fell silent and, taking her cue from him, so did she. They were nose-to-nose now. Falling snow whispered love when it kissed the earth. The wind whispered love to the trees. She started to purr and he allowed a soft rumble of his own to play harmony along with hers.
Resentment melted away as easily as snowflakes on her nose. A sweet sense of peace, of coming home rose up to take its place. The homecoming feeling had been sneaking up on Marie from her first day as a tiger, but she had refused to trust it, or them.
Playing in the snow with Ean, something tugged her so hard that it focused her vision, like looking through new glasses to discover a world that had always been there but your eyes couldn’t see. She really was a tiger. And she was more than that. This is who I am, she thought. This is where I fit.
She crept close carefully, afraid he might disappear, and scared that even with joy unleashing a thousand butterflies in her belly, she could still be wrong.
She sniffed the fur on his paw and snowflakes went up her nose making her sneeze. He stayed still, letting her learn him. She turned her head toward the river, to see what fascinated him. She tried to imagine what it must be like to have grown up as him. Either one, man or tiger held power to be marveled over. Both at once—incomparable.