In Like a Lion (6 page)

Chapter 6

Anjali pasted the phone to her ear and glanced at the door. She didn’t know what was going on here, but suddenly she didn’t want to be caught on this phone. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Jake’s brother, Kyle. Who’s this?”

She froze. What to say? Despite the caller ID, he could be anyone. Jake hadn’t mentioned a brother. But his voice was so similar to Jake’s. “My name is Anjali Mehta. I’m Jake’s . . . doctor.”

“He’s sick—injured?” Something about the way Kyle Mara asked the question made Anjali think he didn’t believe his brother could be either of those things.

She was about to explain her role when something made her stop. “Jake said he’s alone—he has no family.”

The voice on the other end grew rougher. “He probably thinks that. But it’s not true. My brothers and I were separated when my mother died. Jake is the youngest. I’ve been trying to find him for years.”

The pain in his voice struck a chord in Anjali. What would she give to have her family back?

Drumming the fingers of her free hand on the desk, she sorted through the ethical concerns at a million kilometers a second.

Though she
was
a medical doctor, Jake wasn’t her patient, and if the man on the phone was who he claimed to be, what right did she have to keep a sick man from his only family?

“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Mara, but Jake is very ill. He’s schizophrenic.”

“Damn.” Silence crackled on the line for a moment. “When you said he’s locked up . . . he’s in a mental institution, isn’t he?”

“It’s more of a private research facility, but yes, he is restrained for the safety of himself and others.”

“Fuck.”

Anjali grimaced at the crudity of the swear word, but she sympathized. She could hardly imagine what it must be like to track down a brother after all these years and discover he could never be a part of your life.

A heavy sigh gusted over the line. “Look, give me the address. I’m coming there. Something urgent is going on here, but I can be there by Friday—”

A sound out in the hall made Anjali cut him off. Whatever was going on, she suddenly didn’t want to be caught on the phone. “I’ll contact you later. Someone is coming.”

She heard “Wha—” but she flipped the phone closed and laid it back where it had been.

Kincaid entered. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Anjali jumped to her feet. “That’s all right. I haven’t actually finished the DVD, so I’ll have to get back to you with my questions.”

She gave him what she hoped was a friendly smile and breezed out, her mind shuffling through the strange events of the day.

Back at her office, she found herself staring at her computer screen for minutes at a time. Why hadn’t she asked Kincaid about the video? The footage was weird, but sinister? Why was her ‘spidey’ sense tingling?

Ugh!
The castors on her chair protested as she shoved back from her desk hard. There was no way she could concentrate on blood chemistry and questionnaires while her brain buzzed with questions and her body hummed with only one urge—to go and see Jake.

As she made her way down the hall, Anjali marveled at how quickly things could change.

Two days ago, her life had been normal, even dull. And the Kincaid building had seemed like any run-of-the-mill medical research facility.

Now, the walls of the corridor—their caramel color had always reminded her of an Indian sweet called
ladoo
—seemed oddly proportioned, skewed like in a nightmare.

In the blink of an eye, the whole atmosphere of the facility had gone from benign to ominous.

Anders was behind the desk in the antechamber. She gave him a half-hearted smile and snuck a peek at the monitor by his desk. Jake reclined on the bed, apparently asleep.

She paused, hating to disturb him, but her desire to see him up close was too intense. She nodded at Anders. He strode to the heavy door and unlocked it.

With Jake asleep, she went up to the bars. He shifted, turning to face her and she could see his eyes moving beneath the tissue-thin lids. He dreamed.

He flew in the dream. His body cut through the air like a shark through water. Behind his back, massive wings beat the night air. He twisted into a barrel roll, peering through his legs at the space behind him, and saw the moonlight playing off the iridescent midnight-blue scales on his tail. A dragon’s tail.

He wasn’t surprised he was a dragon in his dream; he was often enough. What surprised him was the compact white dragon flying beneath and slightly in back of him.

She—and he knew it was a she—soared up closer and he admired the opalescent traces of blue, gold, purple, teal, and red reflecting off her armored hide and sheer ivory wings in the moonlight.

He descended to fly beside her. She turned her head and her amethyst gaze met his. Even in dragon form he recognized her. Anjali.

The dragon knew what the man did not. They were mates. Fated to be together.

They flew over water, their reflections gliding along beneath them. The joy of flying free made him twist and spiral in the air. His chest was full to bursting.

He was meant to be here, free in the open air.

Beside him, Anjali matched his movements, keeping pace.

He delighted in the synchronization of their acrobatics, the sensation of flying as one. Finally, she dropped lower, skimming the surface of the waves with her belly. He could see she tired and turned to lead the way back to a cove guarded by towering evergreens, where a crescent of silver sand beckoned.

He landed on the beach. Anjali settled next to him, then twined her long neck with his in a tender caress.

A sudden, sharp pain exploded through him. He glanced down to see dark blood running down his leg. He’d been shot in one of his few vulnerable areas, a thinning of the scales on his underside where his powerful leg joined his body.

Men rushed the clearing. They cast a net over Anjali, poking her through the links with long poles. She screamed in pain and fear. He trumpeted his anger to the moonlit, cloud-studded skies and attacked.

Anjali watched Jake’s muscled chest fill and empty as he slept. Guilt rode her. Observing him while he was so vulnerable felt wrong, but she couldn’t make her hungry eyes turn away.

Her gaze traced the sleek contours of his chest down the ridges of his abdomen past his navel to the tiny sprinkling of hairs above the drawstring of his pants. She rubbed her collarbone.

She was despicable, lusting over a man she didn’t really know, a man who, though physically the strongest she had ever met, was in an extremely vulnerable position. Setting her shoulders, she swiveled to go. And her feeble brain had managed to forget why he was here. He wasn’t just some random subject—he’d earned his captivity with blood.

Jake moaned in his sleep. Turning back toward him, her gaze found his face. He seemed to be snared deep in the tentacles of a nightmare. He thrashed on the long, narrow bed. A low mutter followed the moan. She strained to make out his words. “No,” she made out, and then a flash of light stunned her eyes. And when the spots cleared from her vision, a huge sleeping dragon filled the space where Jake had been, head and forelimbs on the bed, hindquarters on the ground.

What the
—? She rubbed her stunned eyes. How could this be?

She scrutinized the floor for a hidden trapdoor, anywhere Jake could have slipped away, but the vast creature covered the sealed concrete.

Whoever had created the dragon had been a master. The giant creature was a dark, midnight blue. Thousands of scales scattered the fluorescent light overhead in a rhapsody of purples, greens, and blues, all shifting with each lift and lower of the dragon’s massive chest.

Though its eyes never opened, it breathed and moved and—spoke. “Anjali,” it said, the voice low and layered, like multiple keys struck on an organ. “No, Anjali!”

And though it violated every logical, sensible idea Anjali had ever entertained, she replied, her mouth dry, “Jake?” She licked her lips.
What are you doing, Anjali? This is nothing but an illusion, some magician’s trick.
She brushed away the reasonable thoughts and leaped into the fantastic. “Wake up, Jake. You’re having a nightmare. Everything is fine.”

Chapter 7

The heavy mantle of sleep parted and Jake opened his eyes. Anjali stood near his cell, eyes dark and wide with something he couldn’t name.

“Jake?” she said, her voice trembling.

He shifted to stand and realized something was very wrong. He wasn’t viewing her from the normal level of the bed. And his eyesight was sharp, far sharper than normal, with a far different field of vision.

The dream had triggered his psychosis.

Damn.

Why was she staring at him that way? She clearly knew something was wrong, but how?

He turned his head, burning with shame, feeling as he always did the bitter slap of his brain’s betrayal. “Get out.” His voice sounded distorted to his ears, as if it came from the depths of a bass drum.

Anjali’s eyes widened further. “But . . .”

“Get out!” He bared his teeth and charged the bars.

Anjali jumped back, then ran, her low heels tapping a distress signal on the polished concrete floor.

Anjali focused on calming her tripping heart, propping herself against the cool blocks lining the hallway, and letting the solid surface ground her. What the hell had just happened?

Suddenly an idea occurred to her. She sniffed the dry, institutional air. Maybe someone was using some sort of gas on Jake to cause hallucinations and it was affecting her. But why?

And what about the discs? She hadn’t hallucinated them.
Ay, Bhagwan!

Was it possible she had just seen a man turn into a dragon? Had heard a dragon speak to her?

Confusion drove her past Anders without acknowledging him. She pressed frigid fingers to her overheated cheeks. She was a scientist. She believed in only what she saw, tasted, touched. How could she believe this impossible event?

But you did see it, Anjali
, she reminded herself. What had happened had no rational explanation, no grounding in the world she knew, but she
had
seen it.

As a scientist she had to accept the evidence, no matter how improbable.

There was simply no reason for anyone to spend so much money merely to fool one minor medical researcher. She had no pull, no connections. If there was something to be gained by such a hoax, she couldn’t decipher it.

Jake was able to turn into a dragon.

And if she was to believe the DVDs, a lion as well.

Before she even knew where she was going, Anjali found herself in the elevator on the way to Mr. Kincaid’s office.

Her feelings of menace earlier about her boss and the building were ridiculous. The man had never been anything but supportive and compassionate. He would explain everything. Plan firmly fixed in her mind, she rolled her shoulders. Mr. Kincaid must have a good reason for holding back this information.

Anjali caught a glimpse of herself in the reflective metal of the elevator doors. Her hair fell in a tangled mass around her shoulders, only a small portion still braided, and her eyes were dark pits in her face.

She combed her fingers through the thick strands and started to re-braid, but her hair was suddenly slippery and unmanageable. She gave up, settling for more finger combing.

The aluminum doors slid open, leaving Anjali staring into the hall across from the lift. An antique mirror showed that Darcy was not at her desk. Anjali heaved a sigh. Good, she wouldn’t have to explain why she wanted to see her employer.

Maybe the secretary knew about Jake’s otherworldly talent—maybe everybody did except her, but she just couldn’t see herself saying, “I want to ask Mr. Kincaid about the psychotic shapechanger downstairs.”

But was Jake psychotic? The thought stopped Anjali in her tracks.

He’d apparently killed. The names of his victims had been listed in her files. She had seen pictures from the scene of his foster father’s death.

But his foster father had been abusing him, and her boss had obviously withheld crucial information from her. What else might he have hidden—or distorted?

She found it suddenly difficult to get oxygen, and her heart stung at the violence of her emotions.

Jake could be innocent.

An innocent man imprisoned because of some agenda she could only guess at.

A man who believed he was insane. She remembered the defeated grief in his eyes during that first interview when he’d said—what were his exact words?
I’m one hell of a threat
.

Tears seared her eyes. Even given her new suppositions, his earlier statement carried the ring of truth.

Insane or not, who knew how much control he had in one of his other forms? As a dragon, he had been as massive as he’d been beautiful, not to mention the claws like knives and the three-inch teeth. And she had heard of lions in Africa reaching as much as five hundred pounds.

He
was
a threat.

Anjali wrapped her arms around her chest and headed for Mr. Kincaid’s office, arranging and re-arranging the words she had to say. “It has come to my notice that—”

That what? That Jake is a . . . a . . . What word should she choose? Shapeshifter? Shapechanger? Were-something?

She froze with her fist hanging over Mr. Kincaid’s door and backed away. It all sounded crazy.

She needed more data.

The elevator dinged. Darcy was probably heading back. Not wanting to make up a lie, Anjali lunged for the door leading to the stairs.

Once on the stairwell, she halted, catching her breath, her inner scientist in control.

This was a medical puzzle like any other. What she needed to do was dive into a solid scientific investigation.

She started down the stairs, but a picture popped into her head.

A cartoon coyote taking a swan dive into what he thinks is a crystal clear lake. Seeing the dry lakebed beneath him, his eyes bulge to the size of dinner plates. Arms windmilling, he tries to climb the empty air before punching a coyote-shaped hole in the dirt.

She shook her head and trotted down the stairs. Where had that come from? This was a respectable company. She wasn’t going to end up a crater in the desert. She opened the door to the hallway, shooting a glance at the camera in the ceiling—most likely.

After Anjali left, Jake closed his eyes.
Thank God.
No way did he want her to see him lost in the grip of his delusions.

A lingering scent traced through the air on a current propelled by the HVAC system. Cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and woman. He inhaled deeply. She smelled like heaven.

She’d looked like a hell.

At least, he was sure she probably thought so. Her hair had hung to her hips in a midnight black tumble of waves. Her eyes had seemed huge in her fine-boned face. He could see something was troubling her. Even in the tumult of his madness, he’d longed to comfort her. Wanted to be the person she ran to when she needed reassurance.

Did she have someone like that? Was she married? He shouldn’t care, but he did.

She wore no ring, but maybe Indians didn’t.

No. He would have smelled the mark of another male. And she held herself with the self-contained consciousness of a woman without much experience.

Far different from the women who’d wanted to use him, but found themselves his victims.

He caught the beginnings of a growl at that thought and moved to the mirror over the washstand in the corner, finding his own human face staring back at him. He had been so swept up in his thoughts about Anjali, he hadn’t even noticed the ebb of his illness.

Though he hated to look at himself—Anders, and others, had made it clear he was no prize in the appearance department—he’d never had any trouble convincing women to let him close enough to steal from them. What was it that women liked about this face? Eyes, nose, mouth, he had the same as any man. Sure his features were even, but he found them sharp, even ugly. Maybe the problem was he knew the man beneath the face.

A man so at the mercy of his insanity, he would smile and sweet-talk a woman all while robbing her blind.

Disgust made him turn away from the mirror.

He had no right to think about Anjali. Still, her face lingered in his mind.
Did
she have someone to go home to? What would it be like to be that man?

He stared at the metal grill over the bulb in the ceiling. A bulb covered so he couldn’t break it and use it to hurt himself, or someone else.

Even if he were free, he could never trust himself. Anjali could never be more than a fantasy, a dream, like a normal life or having a family.

Anger made him growl, and he snagged his book from the bed, hurling the paperback against the back wall.

His hand trembled as he lowered it back to his side, and he realized it wasn’t just his hand, his whole body shook.

His knees buckled. He was barely conscious of the pain of hitting the rigid cement floor. How much longer could he continue like this?

The rational part of him knew he belonged locked away, but the other part of him, the part where the madness dwelled, grew more powerful every moment. And that part raged against his captivity. That part would do anything to be free.