“Fluffy! No!” Nora yelled as her new best friend hit the ground and rolled into a crack hissing with steam.
Nora snarled as she faced the humans. “I will tear off your face and eat it,” she yelled. Only to realize a second later she couldn’t keep her promise. Unless she planned to kill Peter too. He’d probably notice if she turned feline and started chewing on people.
She had to settle for running at the humans. A bullet grazed her shoulder. Not incapacitating, but since they might get luckier than a Stormtrooper and manage a headshot, she pretended to go down.
Peter didn’t like that. “You mother fuckers. You shot her.”
“We’ll shoot you, too, if you don’t get out of the way,” the leader of the group boldly stated as he sauntered forward.
The thud of a fist hitting flesh resulted in a howl of pain and a guy shouting, “Want me to shoot him?” Him being Peter, who’d slugged the leader of the humans.
She’d have to protect him. She dug her fingers into the ground and prepared to spring.
“Not yet,” said the fellow rubbing his jaw. He smirked as he pulled out the key and waved it. “I say we let him see what’s in the box then kill him so his ghost can have all kinds of regret.”
It was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard, and yet the fellow seemed so pleased with himself. Smug fucker. As he strutted past her, she coiled herself, ready to pounce, only to freeze as a new player joined them.
A woman with russet hair entered the cave, and before anyone could react, she shot two of the humans, aimed at a third, and said, “Put down your guns. Or you all die.”
Everyone listened.
Heck, Nora kind of wanted a gun to toss down in homage. That was some fine shooting and threats.
Rising to her feet, tickled by a sense she should recognize the girl, Nora readied to confront her. Only she was ignored as the newcomer focused on Peter and said, “I am Svetlana Koznetsov! You killed my grandmother. Prepare to die.”
Chapter Sixteen
Shades of Princess Bride made the woman’s declaration strange. Things got crazier as a tiger stepped out from the tunnel.
It was his red balloon moment.
The one that woke him in a sweat at night.
That made him wish he had a gun.
The evil tiger that haunted him rubbed against the granddaughter of Irina Koznetsov.
“I didn’t kill Irina.” Peter pointed. “That did.”
“Grandmother’s tiger would have never eaten her. She’s owned it her whole life,” Svetlana declared, petting the feline head, obviously not taking note of the glare it shot her way. “It used to babysit me when Grandma had her afternoon naps.”
“Your grandma’s tiger has a taste for human flesh. Trust me, I know.”
“It’s a meat eater. It’s in its nature,” defended the stupid girl.
“How long have you been following me?” he snapped.
“Since you resurfaced a few weeks ago. Although I’ve been looking since you killed my grandmother and stole the key.” Svetlana kept her weapon steady as she headed for the guy with the key.
One of the attackers moved. Without turning her head, Svetlana shot him in the leg, and he’d have sworn he heard Nora mutter, “Nice.”
“What do you know about the key?” he asked.
“That it’s important. I can’t believe as a child I used it to make that stupid junky light for my grandma. When I showed a picture of it to a friend of mine who studies ancient legends, he just about lost his mind because it was identical to a key in some story he did a dissertation on. Imagine my surprise when I came for a visit to see my grandmother and the damned thing was gone. Stolen. And I found poor kitty locked in a cage with Grandma’s shredded clothing.”
“Proving the cat killed her.”
“Because you gave it no choice, locking them in together.”
He didn’t know how to argue with someone this irrational. “I knew I shouldn’t have come back to Russia.” All his problems stemmed from here.
“Hand it over.” Having reached the leader of the goons who’d stolen the key, Svetlana held out her palm. The guy hesitated only a second in front of the gun pointed at his face. Her fingers curled around the key. “Now to see what all the fuss is about.”
“Grawr.” The tiger apparently had issues with the plan.
“Don’t get pissy with me, kitty. I brought you along to teach him a lesson. So get on with it,” Svetlana snapped.
As if it could understand, the tiger stepped toward him, but he held his ground. Running would just make it easier for the animal to take him down. Then again, he didn’t put his chances high in hand-to-claw battle either.
Nora stepped between them.
The tiger snarled.
And Nora…
Well, Nora snarled back.
He recoiled in surprise. It was rather realistic as cat sounds went.
The tiger paused before sidling as if to go around her.
“You really don’t want to do that,” Nora said in a soft threat.
“I’d listen to Nora if I were you,” announced Zach as he suddenly stepped into the cave, hands held out as if unarmed. For a place that had supposedly been hidden for a long freaking time, it appeared to have a lot of visitors.
“Who the hell are you?” Svetlana asked, clutching the key while pointing her gun.
“The guy who hates the cold and yet happens to be in Russia, inside a volcano in the middle of a big-ass freezing tundra. Now, are you going to put down your gun, or should I just assume I’ll have to kill you?”
That was harsh even by Peter’s standards, and this guy was usually Nora’s partner. It only reinforced his belief that Nora must work for the mob.
Svetlana looked as if she’d argue.
Zach shrugged. “Have it your way then.”
“I will!” Svetlana fired, but Zach was already moving, slipping into a thickening mist rising from the vents in the floor.
It was then Nora acted, whirling, her foot arcing and connecting, knocking the gun out of Svetlana’s hand then grabbing the Russian girl by the wrist and twisting. Svetlana cried out.
“Give me the key.”
“It’s not yours,” Svetlana snarled a second before all hell broke loose.
Fluffy suddenly popped into view and dove on one of the original goons. Goon number two started firing. Peter heard a roar as the tiger threw itself at him. Everything got fast and slow and blurry and too big at the same time.
Flying fur. Shouts. Gunshots. Snarls.
And that was when it happened. Peter began hallucinating again, but this time, instead of thinking he saw a tiger shifting into an old woman, he saw his lover turned into a lion. He blinked, and it just happened. Human one minute, big golden feline the next. The lion slammed into the tiger. They went down in a spitting, heaving mass of fur.
Then his psychotic break went even deeper as Zach appeared from the mist, a big, naked man who turned into a lion with a bushy dark mane.
But the shock of his mind making him think that people around him were turning into animals wasn’t what took him to his knees. For that, blame the bullet.
Chapter Seventeen