Hidden Passions (28 page)

Oh, and also he had fists like wrecking balls.

"Any time you want to call it quits," Tony suggested, recalling what Chris had said about the cat's temper.

Jonah peeled his lips back and bared his fangs. He was panting a little.

"I could offer to suck your cock," Tony said. "If that's an incentive."

Jonah flushed with anger, all the warning Tony got before he flung himself up and rushed forward.

Tony made sure he wasn't there to be hit. Jonah blurred at him again, and again Tony dodged. When events unfurled at super-speed, small differences in brain chemistry mattered. Maybe Jonah's perceptions were dulled by anger. Certainly, they weren't as sharp as Tony's. The cat overshot so far his shoulder bounced off the magic dome. The barrier clanged like a muffled bell.

Tony hoped the collision hurt.

"You see how this works," he said. "I can keep this up all night, making you look stupid."

Jonah sped toward him with his claws out.

Tony's ribs were now healed enough. He flipped through the air over the attacking tiger. He was where he wanted then, behind his opponent.

The tiger began to turn around . . .

Tony didn't think he'd ever moved so fast. He couldn't change, but he let his wolf's reflexes merge into his. He didn't even
think
as he shot his arms over the tiger's shoulders, grasping him by the chin with his fingers locked to form a cup. He yanked hard to tip Jonah's powerful neck backward.

The technique was based on a simple rule. Where the head went, the body followed. Tony swung his rear leg back, twisting his body in the same direction that he was pulling the cat's jaw. His rotation increased the cat's momentum. Tony dragged his forearms downward with all his strength. With his spine off kilter, Jonah's balance began to go. He toppled sideways, and Tony went with him, riding him to the ground so he could control the fall.

This was cop shit. Subdue the perp before he can pull a weapon and get him into cuffs. The cat hadn't experienced anything like it while sparring at his local gym.

Tony didn't waste the advantage. He used one bent shin to pin Jonah's neck to the grass, putting his weight behind it to increase the pain of the compression. A palm squashed flat on Jonah's face ratcheted up the discomfort and muscle strain. Then, to make sure the cat remained discouraged from struggling, he got the one arm Jonah wasn't lying on into a thumb-to-wrist twist-and-lock. That did things to a person's nerves the average person couldn't ignore.

Jonah's gasp of agony told Tony it was new to him.

"Okay," Tony said. "You're done now. I can keep pressing on your neck until you pass out, or you can cry uncle. I really don't care which."

"Fuck . . . you," Jonah gasped, still trying to wriggle free.

Tony increased the pressure on all his pressure points.

Jonah screamed at the grinding pain. Tony wished he hadn't defined a pin as shoulder blades to the ground. He'd had Jonah trapped for more than ten seconds, and he'd have liked this to be over.

He didn't kid himself that the cat was ready to surrender.

Jonah's eyes glowed through his screwed-shut lids, his energy boiling with thwarted rage. Sadly, rage wasn't all the upsurge in his energy signified.

"Fuck," Tony said, noticing a telltale distortion in Jonah's back. Muscles moved there that weren't supposed to. Despite his excruciating pain, despite the rules he'd agreed to, Jonah was trying to shift into his tiger form.

"Don't be an idiot," Tony snapped, twisting Jonah's backward facing wrist harder. "You shift, you lose the challenge. Chris keeps his position, and the instant the barrier falls, every wolf in this place attacks."

Sweat rolled down Jonah's face, all his muscles trembling with effort. "Not . . . before I rip . . . out your throat."

The cat was a damned berserker, unable to back down. Tony didn't let himself hesitate. He lifted his weight a fraction and then plunged it down on the cat's neck again. A soft cracking noise ensued. Jonah's eyes snapped open, white showing around their rims as he finally froze.

"You hear that?" Tony said, fighting an urge to wince. "That's your C5 vertebra fracturing. If you struggle with this pressure on it, you'll be too hurt to change. At the least you'll end up in a wheelchair. I wager you'd hate that worse than dying."

"You wouldn't," Jonah said, only his mouth moving.

"That's where you're wrong. I don't care about you like your beta does. I care about ending this."

Jonah panted and ground his teeth.

"Call 'out,'" Tony said, "and I'll have help for you in seconds."

The tiger wouldn't. Tony read the intransigence in his face. Hoping he didn't actually kill him, Tony set his jaw and pressed harder with his knee. At last, Jonah's eyes rolled back. The instant he was unconscious, the magical walls whooshed down like a silk curtain. Tony leaped off his opponent.

"Call an ambulance," he cried. "He needs medical attention."

Tony had forgotten about Evina's friend Freda. The paramedic rushed over with her bag and knelt beside Jonah. The tiger was still and pale.

"I broke his neck," Tony said, not sure how clearly the watchers had seen through the barrier. "He was trying to change. I didn't know how else to make him give up."

"He's not breathing," Freda said. She bent over his back to listen. "I've got no heartbeat."

Tony cursed. Shifters could heal a lot of damage, but spinal injuries were tricky. Freda whipped a collar around Jonah's neck, rolled him over very gently, and started CPR. Evina ran over to help her.

Intense emotion had caused Tony's eyes to shift. He saw Jonah with supe vision. The cat's energy had contracted to a fist-sized star in the center of his body. Tony had seen auras do this before. Not even once had it been a good sign.

He looked toward the crowd and found Roald watching the cat's aura too.

"Roald," Tony said, too wrought up to call him
sir
. The pureblood shifted his very calm gaze to him. Tony wished he could predict how the unpredictable fae would answer his request. His race had their own rules for doing or not doing magic in the Pocket. "Can you heal the injury to his spine?"

"Probably," he said. "Are you certain that's what you want? His spirit remains angry."

"Please," Tony said. "With all of us to help, we can control him until he calms down."

The fae seemed unconvinced, but he stepped to Freda's side anyway.

~

All Chris could think as he watched Tony and Jonah fight was that this was happening because of him. Though he wanted to present an unruffled front, he couldn't refrain from wrapping his arms around his ribs. Probably it was just as well. If his hands had been free, he'd have attacked someone. The pureblood, maybe. Roald had the power to end this by bringing down the ring.

Not that he would. Chris doubted a punch from a tiger would have much effect on him.

Jonah's punch had an effect on Tony. Blood sprayed from his lover's nose as Jonah's roundhouse smacked his head sideways. Tony recovered, jumped back, and responded with a kick. Overcome with anxiety, Chris shoved a thumbnail between his teeth.

A warm hand landed on Chris's arm. "This isn't your fault," Syd said. Vasur stood a little ways behind him. No one else was in Chris's immediate vicinity, tiger or otherwise. Either they sensed he needed space or were treating him like a leper.

Considering the outcome of the challenge was undecided, the show of support meant something. Chris wished he had the presence of mind to appreciate it. At the moment, the best he could do was nod.

"Jonah's been angling for this to happen for a while," Vasur said.

They hadn't seen fit to warn him. Of course, Chris hadn't acted on the warnings he'd sensed himself. Now Tony was acting instead of him.

"Jonah hasn't beaten the wolf yet," Syd said reasonably. "He's landing a few hits."

A few hits wouldn't settle this. Like everyone else, Chris was squinting to compensate for the blur of the magical barrier. No sounds passed through it, which made the fight's swift violence appear surreal. God, he hoped Tony wasn't crazy. In the list of things Tony thought Chris couldn't survive, he should have included his own death.

"Ooh," the mostly shifter crowd burst out. Jonah had gotten behind Tony for an attack, slamming him facedown onto the ground underneath his weight.

Shit
, Chris thought. Were Tony's ribs broken? Before he could decide, Tony plunged a clawed hand backwards, deep into Jonah's gut.

"Ouch," Vasur said, wincing sympathetically.

As Tony wrenched away, Chris's heart was beating a mile a minute, like a jackhammer in his throat. He was going to pass out before either of the combatants.

"Keep it together, boss," Syd said.

Chris realized his claws had sprung out. This wasn't good. He was still the beta. He had to act like one. "I'm all right," he said, forcing his arms to drop and his back to straighten. "One of you stand with Liam. I don't want him to feel alone."

Syd gave him a strange look, but went off to do it. Vasur moved a step closer and crossed his fireplug arms, the pose unexpectedly protective.

"The wolf's got game," he said when Chris glanced at him. "Maybe he isn't doomed."

Chris fought an inappropriate urge to laugh. Tony would have been bowled over by his praise.

"Oh boy," Vasur said, drawing Chris's attention back to the fight.

Tony was flipping through the air over Jonah's head--something Chris hoped he wasn't doing to be flashy. Landing neatly, he grabbed Jonah's chin from behind and twisted him around. To Chris's amazement, Jonah fell like a tree. Tony got him prone and pinned so quickly the cat had no chance of escaping.

"Shit," Chris breathed, marveling at the move.

Simple though it had looked, the cat was trapped. He couldn't get out from under Tony's various presses and holds. The tiger's face was turning red from pain.

"Why aren't they ending it?" Vasur asked.

"Jonah won't call 'out,'" Chris realized, zeroing in on their moving lips. "He won't admit Tony bested him."

"Fuck," Vasur said. "He's trying to change. He's going to make the wolf kill him."

The prediction was barely out before Tony lifted and brought his weight down again. Chris couldn't swallow back a sound of distress. He was breaking the cat's neck. Jonah went limp, and the fighting ring's walls flickered. An instant later the barrier was down. Tony jumped off Jonah and called for an ambulance.

The fight was over. Tony was alive, but Chris barely registered his relief. Evina's friend Freda ran to Jonah with her paramedic gear. Chris could tell she wasn't finding signs of life.

He jogged forward to see if he could help.

"Can you heal him?" Tony was asking Cass Maycee's dad.

The fae seemed to be agreeing. He moved to Freda's side. Evina was there too. Roald knelt, laying his hands over Jonah's unpleasantly twisted neck.

"This has to be fast," the pureblood said, his hands beginning to emanate a sparkly glow. "His life force is almost gone. Please brace yourselves to control him."

Evina looked up at Chris from her kneeling position.

He knew what she was thinking. If Jonah healed and then changed, his tiger could do a lot of damage. His mental state was likely to be same as when he went unconscious.

"Do it," his alpha said.

Chris flashed into his tiger form. A second later, Vasur and Syd did the same. Chris's beast grunted at them in satisfaction. Like him, it was happy to have allies.

Jonah shifting into an enraged tiger brought him back to business.

The defeated cat scattered his healers like ninepins. They weren't hurt, but Chris wasn't sure that was deliberate. Seeing himself surrounded, Jonah snarled a threat at his three clan mates. They weren't intimidated. Bristling, crouched, Syd and Vasur edged closer.

"Think, Jonah," Evina said, still in human form and on her feet again. "I know you're disappointed you didn't win the challenge, but none of us wants to see you hurt. We want to work this out."

In spite of everything, Jonah thoroughly shocked Chris by swiping at Evina with his claws out.

The alpha jumped back too quickly for him to slash her. Nate started to move toward her protectively, but she shook her head. She must have worried her husband would further antagonize the cornered cat.

"We can work this out," she repeated. "You haven't broken the law. You're young and strong, and there's so much you can do with your life if you control your anger now."

Her implication registered with Jonah the same time it did with Chris.

Jonah wasn't going to work on her crew after this.

Probably he wasn't going to be a firefighter.

Jonah growled, backing up in a hunkered down position. Syd and Vasur padded forward to cut off his retreat. Jonah noticed them closing in. His tiger turned, gathered its great striped haunches, and bounded straight for the building's ledge.

Chris swore inside his head. He didn't know how many stories above the avenue they were, but certainly too many for the cat to survive a fall.

"Jonah, no!" Evina called.

The tiger launched himself into the air.

"Save!" Tony cried. "Save the tiger!"

Chris had no idea what he was about until three St. Bernard size streaks zoomed into the air. The green dragon was in the lead. He caught Jonah by the scruff, jerking his descent short. Verdi flapped madly to hold up the heavy cat, the burden almost too much for him. Seeing him struggling, Scarlet and Auric darted in to help. The girl dragon got the tiger by the tail. Grabbing what he could, Auric clamped his toothy muzzle around the cat's forelimb.

The sharp noises the cat let out said this was both a shock and uncomfortable.

The giant gargoyle took to the air as well, probably to ensure his proteges could manage their unbalanced load.

They managed it, more or less. They flew Jonah back above the roof, bobbled him unsteadily to the pool, then dropped him into the water with a large splash.

"Shoot," Tony said as the gargoyle landed gracefully beside him. "Sorry, Grant. I should have asked you to take care of that."