Page 59 of Flock Around and Find Out

The crunch of dead underbrush had me turning toward it. “Took you long—” My snide comment cut off when it was not Galen walking into the clearing but rather a massive tiger.

Yep, Galen’s getting the whole poltergeist treatment for this one.

“Hey there,” I said as I tucked the stun gun into my pocket and stood, my hands forward as though to prove I didn’t have anything they might consider a weapon. “I’m friendly, see.” I smiled widely.

The tiger bared its teeth and snarled.

Mebeing friendly wasn’t the issue here, was it? It was all well and good if I was friendly, but the real problem was whetheritwas.

And it did not seem to be.

“Look, I came here to talk to you.”

It came forward, step by step, head down. It reminded me of when a house cat stalked something—the slow, methodical movement, the focus, the twitching of its tail.

I tried to imagine this tiger as just a really big house cat.

Nothing to worry about, right?

Right?

My little pep talk did little for my mood, to be honest, but I still tried it.

“We’re not there to hurt you or bother you. Well, a little to bother you, I guess. I need to ask you a question.”

The tiger pounced forward, and only my reflexes—honed by years of near-disaster events occurring—allowed me to leap out of the way, just avoiding its massive, outstretched paws.

Murder mittens indeed…

I hit hard ground but rolled, getting back to my feet, trying to keep at least a little distance between us.

I got the sense that it played with me, of course, because I doubted I stood much of a chance against a fucking tiger. There was a reason it never went well when idiots climbed the fences in the zoo to pet the kitty.

“It’s about the Weres. Their getting sick, losing control. We think you might know something that could help us stop it.” I paused, then added with a nervous laugh, “Do tigers actually live in this jungle? It just occurred to me that I could be an idiot talking to an actual tiger. Boy, wouldn’t that be embarrassing? Huh, guess you don’t really see the humor in that. That’s okay, my humor is a sort of learned torture,” I rambled, my gaze skirting the peripheral just look for anything I could use.

A stick? A rock? I had the stun gun still tucked in my pocket, but that required gettingfartoo close to the bitey bits for my comfort. It had seemed like a great idea before, like I were invincible, but now?

Now I got why Galen had given me such a chiding look when I’d shown it off like a get out of death free card.

“You don’t want to eat me,” I assured him. “I eat crapall the time.I also pet random animals, so who knows what sort of weird diseases I might have. It’s much better to just let me go.”

The tiger rushed me again, this time giving me much less room to maneuver. It pinned me, but he didn’t appear to use his claws, since there wasn’t any tearing pain. Nothing but a crushing weight against my leg.

I yanked but to no avail. I couldn’t get free, couldn’t pull away from him.

Fuck.

The tiger stared down at me, its massive weight trapping my leg. I was entirely at its mercy, which wasnota place I wanted to be.

I had no idea what else to do, so tried something that was likelynotpleasant for either of us—I shifted.

A flightless bird wasn’t that useful against a tiger, but that wasn’t the reason I did it.

Instead, it was that rush of fire that licked across my skin. It was enough to burn off my clothes.

I felt like the tiger had earned a little singed fur for its behavior. In fact, maybe it would teach them some manners, because they sure as fuck didn’t seem to have any of their own.

I didn’t know how much damage it would do—if any—but it couldn’t feel good, right? Unless the asshole one was hardcore masochist, but I’d takethatover getting mauled to death any day.

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