Chapter 18 #2
The recoil kicked my shoulder. The man went down screaming, both hands on his thigh.
At least his grin was gone.
Andrew stared at me, shocked. I could see the recalculation going on behind his eyes. The Lucy he knew would have dropped the rifle and come when she was called. The Lucy he knew wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. But the Lucy he knew didn’t exist anymore.
“Lucy, sweetheart. Put the gun down. You’re not a killer.”
“You sure about that?”
Warrick threw two men off him and saw Davan on the ground, Kess kneeling next to him. The sound that came out of him wasn’t human.
Then his eyes found me. I watched his grief snap into something focused and furious.
Three of Andrew’s men were between Warrick and me. He went through the first one without slowing down. The second swung at him. Warrick caught his arm and twisted. I heard the bone snap.
But more were coming, circling wide, trying to flank him. Every time he dropped one, another took his place.
A man rushed Warrick from behind. Warrick caught him, threw him into the SUV hard enough to dent the door panel. But two more had his arms, and a third was coming in with something metal—a baton, a pipe, I couldn’t tell—and Warrick was pinned.
Andrew raised his gun toward Warrick.
“Put the rifle down, Lucy. Or I shoot him in the head.”
“Lucy, don’t you fucking dare—” Warrick’s voice, raw, furious, muffled by the gravel and the men on top of him.
But I knew in that moment I had a choice: I could keep the rifle, or I could keep Warrick. Not both.
I set the rifle down. Straightened up.
“Lucy, pick up the goddamn rifle!”
Andrew smiled. The old smile. Good girl. See how easy that was?
“Now walk toward me.”
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I would never willingly go to Andrew ever again.
“Lucy—”
“I put the gun down. That’s all you’re getting.”
His smile thinned. He took a step toward me. From the right, I heard a deep growl.
The growl came from the ground. From under the pile of men. It started low, so low I felt it in my feet before I heard it with my ears. It climbed, and it kept climbing, and it became something that didn’t belong in a human throat.
Warrick’s body was already changing. I could see it from where I stood—his back widening, his shirt splitting, the skin underneath rippling with something that shouldn’t have been possible.
One of the men looked down, and his face went blank with terror.
He threw himself off. Another two tried. They weren’t fast enough.
Then men were thrown sideways. A scream.
Bones cracking and reshaping, fur spreading white across a body that was expanding past anything human.
Paws hit the gravel, and four hundred pounds of white tiger stood in front of us.
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
October sun on his coat, turning the white fur incandescent, the pale gray stripes sharp as brushstrokes.
Despite all the blood and violence, he stood there looking magnificent.
The clearing went silent. Every man had stopped moving. I could see it on their faces—the moment the brain catches up to what the eyes are seeing and refuses to accept it.
Another growl came from the left. I turned to see a tiger there as well, fur the colour of dark amber. Smaller than Warrick but built like a loaded spring. Kess rose off the gravel on four paws and stalked toward the men.
The clearing became something I will never be able to describe properly, and I don't want to.
Two tigers against twenty men. The men had guns and numbers and tactical gear, and none of it mattered.
Kess hit the line of mercenaries like a wrecking ball, low and fast and utterly silent.
One man went down, then another. A third got his weapon up and fired.
She leaped, her front claws slammed into his chest, and her jaws closed around his face.
Warrick was slower, more deliberate, his eyes solely on Andrew.
Andrew fired. The bullet hit Warrick’s shoulder.
He didn’t stop, though. He kept stalking forward, eyes locked on Andrew.
Andrew fired again; the shot went wide. A man dove between the tiger and Andrew, knife out.
The tiger swiped one massive paw, and his claws disemboweled the man.
A second man got his weapon up and fired.
It didn’t help. The sounds were wet and real and nothing like television.
Three of Andrew’s men threw their guns on the ground and ran for the trees. Whatever Andrew was paying them had stopped being enough.
The tiger turned toward Andrew.
Andrew ran. Flat out, sprinting for the nearest SUV. He got his hand on the door handle just as four hundred pounds of white tiger hit the hood like a wrecking ball.
The metal screamed. The whole vehicle slammed down on its suspension, the hood crumpling inward.
Andrew stumbled back from the door as the tiger rose up on the crushed metal above him.
The tiger opened his jaws, and a sound came out of him that I felt in my sternum; a roar so deep and so raw that every bird in the forest took off.
His ears went flat, head down, as he stepped off the hood one slow paw at a time. No rush. Every step deliberate. The way a predator moves when the chase is already over and both of them know it.
Andrew backed up. The gun was still in his hand. He raised it and fired it into the tiger’s chest.
“No!” I screamed. I stopped breathing. For one terrible second, Warrick staggered. One step back, his front leg buckling, blood blooming dark against white fur.
No, no, no, get up, please get up—
He got up. Planted his paw. Steadied.
Andrew made a sound. He fired again. His hands were shaking so badly that the shot punched into the dirt three feet left.
If Andrew hit Warrick again, he would kill him. There was no way, tiger Shifter or not, that anything would survive that many bullets.
“Andrew.” I’d picked the rifle back up. When, I couldn’t tell you. It was in my hands, and it was aimed, and I was steady. Completely steady.
Andrew turned, eyes flickering to the barrel.
His eyes widened, and I realized he was scared. Not of the tiger. Of me.
I shot him in his shoulder. He spun sideways, his gun flying from his hand, then he dropped to one knee.
Warrick was on him before Andrew could move.
I didn’t look away.