Here There Be Tigers (38 page)

Thoughts of Mitch made her throat tighten. Was
he even alive? She had no way of knowing and was afraid to even
bring up his name to Petrov. If the man realized how much she loved
Mitch, he’d use that emotion against her.

Petrov paused after opening the small barn
door, his head up. He glanced around and seemed to scent the air
before moving outside. His actions reminded her to open her
awareness and feel for other tigers. Unfortunately, beyond the
three with her, she couldn’t sense anything. She knew more had to
be out there somewhere, though, so she tried to keep her awareness
open, though doing so took concentration.

She was pushed through the door without a
pause. They marched her over the uneven soil past the truck and
toward the woods. Full darkness and only a sliver moon made it
difficult for her to see in the open area around the barn, despite
her good night vision. Once they reached the woods, she’d be nearly
blind. She knew if she was only human, with none of her mother’s
blood, she probably wouldn’t be able to see as well as she could
now. How well could the shifters see in the woods?

She squinted into the heavy darkness as they
moved into the trees, attempting to make out something of her
surroundings. She managed to see dark tree shapes against barely
lighter space, but that was the best she could do. She had to rely
on the two men still holding her arms to keep her from falling. As
it was, they caught her several times when she tripped on downed
branches or stepped into uneven depressions in the soil. She
expected Stephen at least to curse her clumsiness, but both men
simply hauled her back to her feet without comment each time she
faltered.

Maneuvering through the rough undergrowth took
all her concentration. After what felt like miles, they entered a
clearing. Six men waited there, absolutely silent. No shuffling, no
movement, no conversation. She didn’t even realize they were there
until they moved to surround her. She’d been so focused on staying
upright, she’d forgotten to sense for other shifters.

Too late to bemoan the lapse now. She wasn’t
sure it would have done her any good anyway. Stephen and Joseph had
never given her any room to escape. Even knowing what she was
walking into wouldn’t have prevented the inevitable.

A quick flash of light from a storm lamp
brightened the area, casting the clearing in murky illumination.
The men moved in closer, and her heart rate jumped. She opened her
awareness and tried to gage if they were all tigers or not, but the
number of them, all crowded so close defeated her. Like in
Gregory’s cabin, she just felt an encompassing aura of danger and
couldn’t pinpoint the location of any of the individuals. Was that
the number of tigers around her now? Or were at least some of the
men human?

They were all in human form—tigers or not. For
some reason that worried her more than if they’d been in tiger
form. While she didn’t want her throat ripped out by a tiger, and
she sure as hell didn’t want them to tear bits out of her with
predatorily sharp teeth, she didn’t think they’d actually rape her
in tiger form. In human form…

She swallowed and forced herself to remain
still. Running from a predator was the worst thing she could do.
They were sure to smell her fear already. No point in making things
worse by triggering their chase instinct. But it took a great deal
of control to keep still.

Joseph and Stephen held her at the center of
the clearing as the others paced around her in a tight circle.
Their silence drew her nerves out to breaking point. She tried to
see their faces. Was Vlad one of them? His two brothers who’d been
with Petrov at John’s cabin? Would Vlad participate in raping and
killing her, despite his earlier help? Despite being her half
brother?

She realized she didn’t recognize any of the
men circling her. One looked a little like Petrov, so she thought
that might be the brother she hadn’t seen. But Vlad and the brother
she’d shot weren’t here. Questions rose, but she knew she wouldn’t
get answers and was afraid to give away a possible advantage. Vlad
had claimed he didn’t want her dead. If he was around, he might
stop this.

But he’d helped her before behind his father’s
back. He didn’t want Petrov to know. He’d hardly step forward now,
surrounded by Petrov’s allies, just to save her.

She was on her own.

And she had no idea how to get out of this
alive.

Her heart hammered as the men circled closer,
drawing out her tension and fear. She knew they were doing this on
purpose, so she tried ignoring her growing panic, but it grabbed at
her throat and tightened a band around her chest. Screams and
curses clawed at her throat. Anything to break the silence, to
disrupt the snap-wire tension drawing her tight.

When the men were close enough to touch Stephen
and Joseph, they all stopped and faced her. The two directly in
from of her looked her over, their gazes focusing on her breasts
and legs. She was panting from fear, her chest rising and falling
rapidly, and the movement brought a sadistic little smirk from one.
Controlling her breathing was impossible, though, not when they
remained quiet, unmoving and threatening all at once.

Her throat and mouth were so dry she wasn’t
sure she’d be able to scream now, even if she could force one out.
She tried swallowing, but there was no moisture to wet her throat,
and her efforts to relieve her lips only increased the one man’s
smile.

When Petrov cleared his throat, the sudden
sound made her jump and an involuntary squeak escaped. The men
chuckled. She snarled and cursed silently, but at least they were
making some sound. Anything was better than the awful
silence.

Then Petrov spoke, and she wished for the
silence again.

“
The first to have her,” Petrov
said, “will be the first to touch her.”

The men surged forward in a wave of hungry
violence.

Nila screamed as hard fingers and strong hands
grabbed at her. Joseph and Stephen both dropped their hold, leaving
her free. She didn’t try running—she didn’t have the room for it.
Instead, she fought, swinging her fists with as much force as she
could muster, aiming for whatever bits of flesh she could hit,
using all the strength she had left and the adrenaline of her fear
to feed her fight. She clawed, punched, kicked, and bit anything
that got close.

She wasn’t strong enough to defeat them, but
she had no intentions of allowing them to gang rape her. If she was
going to die anyway, she intended to make them kill her before they
had their fun.

Her size and their numbers actually worked in
her favor. They weren’t working as a single unit but were
struggling against each other to get to her. She slipped around,
dodging their longer reaches, slipping out of their holds. Her
sweat and blood slicked her arms, making it difficult for any of
the men to get a good grip on her. She cursed as she fought,
swiveling to each new threat, clawing at clothes and flesh in kind.
The men growled and cursed too, and when she connected particularly
well, their howls made her shout in triumph.

Her satisfaction never lasted as their groping
grew more violent. One managed to hold onto her arm long enough to
toss her. She hit the ground hard, knocking her momentarily
breathless. But the move had sent her beyond the circle of
attackers. They all dove for her at once, getting in each other’s
way. She used their disorganized attack to scramble backward on her
hands and feet.

She thought she heard laughter but didn’t have
the time to consider it. She already knew Petrov was enjoying this
show.

His reaction fueled her anger, though,
increasing her determination to hurt and maim and force them to
kill her before they could rape her. Her limbs were heavy, her
blows inaccurate and her body screamed, at the edge of its
endurance, but adrenaline and being truly pissed off lent her
power. She managed to gain her footing even as the six men tried
pinning her down. She wiggled and thrashed, taking supreme
satisfaction in every grunt of pain and curse of frustration from
her attackers.

Then a roar filled the clearing, so loud, so
full of rage, all other motion stopped. Nila’s heart jumped,
rushing to keep up with the new spike of adrenaline.

Death echoed in that roar.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

The six men attempting to molest Nila spun
around, hunting the trees for the threat. She scrambled to put her
back to a tree so they couldn’t attack her from behind, then
searched the clearing, too. Petrov, Stephen, and Joseph stood back
to back facing different directions, staring intently into the
darkness. A part of her noted that neither Stephen nor Joseph had
joined the attack on her, but she was too busy worrying about
survival to think about that too closely.

Another roar tore through the night. Goosebumps
raced over her skin and her stomach muscles tightened. A moment
passed in silent anticipation, then a single tiger flashed into the
clearing, ripping out the throat of two men before Nila even got a
clear look at the beast.

It only took one look to know who it
was.

Mitch, in tiger form, spun to face the
remaining four attackers. Two of them were backing off and
beginning to shift. The other two attempted to circle him, making
it harder for him to attack more than one at a time. She looked
around for Petrov, Joseph and Stephen. Stephen and Joseph had
backed to the edge of the clearing, their backs also against a tree
as they scanned the woods. To her surprise, neither of them
attempted to shift to tigers. Petrov, on the other hand, had moved
closer to Mitch and his body convulsed, muscle and sinew popping
and stretching. She watched only long enough to know Petrov was
changing into his tiger form before looking away from the grotesque
vision.

Mitch crouched a few yards away, staring
straight ahead rather than at any of the four combatants he’d
engaged. Without hint or warning, he blurred and the man to his
left screamed, a sound that was cut short by a gurgling noise.
Before the man on his right could do more than lunge at him, Mitch
spun and raked his claws down the man’s face and chest, all the way
to his groin. His sharp claws opened the man up, eviscerating him
and filling the clearing with the stench of ruptured
bowels.

Nila gagged at the acrid smell, though she felt
no pity for the man. She held a hand to her nose to block some of
the stench as she scanned the edges of the clearing again. Was
Mitch alone?

The roar of another tiger answered Mitch’s,
this one belonging to one of the two attackers who’d managed to
complete his shift. Rather than meet the tiger’s attack, Mitch
leapt away and mercilessly ripped a hole in the man still in the
middle of his change. The sounds and sights of that death were so
horrible, Nila’s brain refused to recognized the details. They’d
probably haunt her in dreams later, but for now, she couldn’t
process the sight and stay sane.

The sounds were impossible to escape, though,
and the combination of blood and ripped guts made bile rise in her
throat. She swallowed hard, forcing down the need to throw up. She
turned toward Petrov. He was almost finished with his
change.

She opened her mouth to shout a warning at
Mitch when the clearing suddenly filled with five new tigers. Two
cornered Stephen and Joseph, two charged Petrov, now in tiger form
and roaring his anger, and one joined Mitch. The attacker facing
Mitch and his new partner crouched low, looking as if he intended
to leap at Mitch. Then suddenly, he bolted, so fast Nila’s mind
took several moments to realize he’d run away. Mitch’s ally took
off after him and Mitch swung around to face Petrov.

Petrov growled and chuffed at the three tigers
circling him. His white fur was a bright beacon in the dark
clearing. Nila took a deep breath. She assumed Petrov would give up
now that he was outnumbered. Especially after Mitch, all by
himself, had decimated Petrov’s allies in a matter of
minutes.

Her mother’s mate didn’t seem to take the same
view, however. He launched at Mitch, ignoring the other two tigers.
They blurred into motion too fast for her to follow, their fight
rolling through the clearing in barely discernable patches of white
and orange, light and dark. The storm lamp cast jumping shadows
around the trees, a time-lapsed like display of
violence.

She couldn’t believe this was happening again.
She couldn’t believe she had to stand by and watch helplessly as
Mitch fought a life or death battle to save her. Again! Would this
be their future, with Mitch always having to defend her against
monsters like her mother’s mate?

She didn’t dare follow those thoughts down
their logical path. Not here, not now. But her throat closed up and
tears threatened as she tried to see the fight swirling in front of
her.

A furious roar rattled the trees, the ground
actually shuttered under the battle. Nila gasped as a spray of
blood shot out from the fighting pair, so much blood it looked like
a river.

Silence descended on the clearing so suddenly
her ears rang. She had to hunt for the two battling tigers because
her senses were several moments behind their actual movements. When
she spotted them, relief nearly brought her to her knees. Mitch was
crouched several feet away from Petrov, his eyes open, his lip
curling in a blood tinged snarl. Though it was hard to tell in the
weak yellow light, he seemed to be breathing steadily and she
couldn’t see any mortal wounds.