Treecat Wars (36 page)

I do not
want
to realize!
The thought flashed through his mind.
They mean us evil—they mean
her
evil—and evildoers deserve whatever comes to them!

Yet even as he rebelled, he knew she was right. This was no death fang, devoid of reason. These were two-legs, and he could not slay such as they as he would have slain a death fang or a snow hunter. Not unless there was clearly no other choice.

Perhaps not
, he thought grimly.
But if they do not
leave
me another choice
….

* * *

Later, it was all a blur in Stephanie’s memory.

She felt Lionheart flash from her shoulder into the branches of an overhead tree. She sensed her father grabbing her mother, pushing her behind him and reaching for Stephanie herself. But she ducked under his hand, because one of the vague shapes coming out of the shrubbery carried a weapon of some kind in his right hand, and Stephanie dived for it.

He was a third again her height and undoubtedly outweighed her two-to-one, but she didn’t think about that at the moment. She got her hands on his wrist, shoved it upward with all her strength, and kicked him in the right knee as hard as she could.

Stephanie Harrington would never be a tall woman, but she was a genie, genetically engineered to live in a gravity well thirty percent higher than that of humanity’s birth world, and she was scared to death. The combination of her enhanced muscles and that blast of pure adrenaline had unfortunate consequences for the lead mugger, and he screamed in anguish as his kneecap shattered.

Something hissed past Stephanie’s ear, and the trank dart buried itself in the tree’s bark. She twisted from the hips, getting her shoulders and back into it, and the injured mugger released the tranquilizer pistol. It thudded to the ground, and she heard a high, falsetto squeal from the second assailant in line.

* * *

Climbs Quickly recognized the sound. He had heard it before when Speaks Falsely had faced the young death fang at Bright Water Clan’s nesting place. It was one of the two-legs’ weapons, but not one of the ones that killed instantly, and he saw another one of it in one hand of the second attacking two-leg.

He launched himself from his tree-branch perch as the two-leg Death Fang’s Bane had kicked collapsed, wailing and clutching at his injured limb. He arced over Death Fang’s Bane’s head and struck the second two-leg’s weapon hand with both hand-feet and his remaining true-hand, and his claws sank deep.

His victim howled, waving his right arm frantically as the knife-clawed demon ripped at him. The thug had no idea how fortunate he was, how easily Climbs Quickly could have shredded his entire forearm. In fact, he thought that was
exactly
what the treecat was doing, and he flung away the tranquilizer pistol, beating at the hissing cream and gray monster with his left hand.

Climbs Quickly’s true-feet raked the two-leg’s other hand, and he hissed again—this time in fierce satisfaction—as the evildoer cried out in fresh pain. He would have preferred to spend a little more time dealing suitably with anyone who threatened
his
two-leg, but there were more of them behind the first two, and he abandoned his initial victim to hit a second assailant in the chest.

* * *

Stephanie released the first mugger’s wrist to go bounding after Lionheart. It was a mistake.

Despite the anguish of his broken kneecap, the thug managed to get one hand up and grabbed her ankle as she went by. She fell, sprawling forward, just managing to catch herself on her hands before she landed flat on her face.

“
Stephanie!
”

She’d never heard Karl sound quite like that, but she had no time to dwell on it at the moment. Instead, she twisted to one side and her free foot slammed into her attacker’s chin. It wasn’t as clean and powerful as the kick which had broken his kneecap, but it was more than sufficient to encourage him to let go of her ankle.

She rolled away from him, flinging herself back to her feet, but before she could come back upright, Karl went past her. He couldn’t see exactly what happened next, but whatever it was, it didn’t take very long. She heard a sharp, meaty thud, then a grunt of exertion, a gasp of what was probably pain, and over all of that a strange voice screaming “Get it off!
Get it off
!”

And then, suddenly, it was all over.

The man she’d kicked was curled in a knot, cradling his broken kneecap with one hand and trying to comfort his equally broken jaw with the other. The first man Lionheart had hit was on his knees, clutching his freely bleeding hands and forearms against his chest. The one who’d been screaming to “Get it off!” was backed against a tree trunk, his tunic and shirt shredded, his chest oozing blood from at least a dozen shallow cuts, while Lionheart crouched in front of him, lashing his tail and hissing. It was obvious from the thug’s expression that he had absolutely no interest in challenging the treecat’s obvious rage a second time.

And then there was Karl, and Stephanie’s eyes widened as she saw one man lying unconscious and another down on one knee, been sharply forward and obviously trying not to whimper in pain while Karl twisted his arm up behind him, high enough to press his wrist against the back of his neck.

“Are you all right, Steph?” Karl demanded, and she nodded.

“Y-Yes,” she said, and flushed furiously as she heard the catch in her voice. Then she whirled. “Mom! Dad!”

“We’re fine, Steph!” There was a shaky edge in Richard’s voice, too, but he managed to smile as he stood hugging her mother. “We’re fine. Thanks to you and Lionheart—and Karl.” He cocked his head, looking at the younger man. “That was very, ah,
efficient
of you, Karl,” he said.

“My dad always said it was important to know how to take care of yourself, Dr. Richard,” Karl replied with a brief smile. “He was pretty serious about teaching us how to do it, too.” He shrugged. “I earned my black belt three T-years ago. Never really expected to need it, though.”

He gave Richard another smile, but his attention seemed to be focused on Stephanie.

“You’re bleeding, Steph,” he said a bit sharply, and Stephanie looked down as she realized she’d bloodied one knee through her shredded trousers when the first thug tripped her.

“Only a scraped knee, Karl,” she said quickly.

“Good. In that case—”

“Security!” a voice snapped, and the beam of a powerful hand lamp speared the battered group. “Everybody just stay where you are till we get this straightened out!”

* * *

“Stephanie, I am
so
sorry this happened!” Gwendolyn Adair shook her head, her expression more distraught than Stephanie had ever dreamed she could look. “I can’t imagine how they managed to get onto the grounds in the first place!”

“Whoever hired them must’ve hacked our security protocols, ma’am,” the senior uniformed guard said unhappily. “The LPD says they were loaded to their uni-links, anyway.”

“But why?” Marjorie Harrington asked. “I mean, I’m sure the members of your cousin’s club have to be rich enough to be worth mugging, Ms. Adair. But why go to all the trouble of hacking your security and then jump on
us
, instead?”

“’Fraid I can answer that one, too, Dr. Harrington,” the security man said heavily. “The police found an animal carrier in the shrubbery. I’m guessing they meant to trank the lot of you, including Lionheart, then shove him into the carrier.”

“They wanted to
kidnap
Lionheart?!” Stephanie demanded.

“We don’t know that yet, Stephanie,” Gwendolyn replied. “It does sound as if it could make sense, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet.”

Stephanie looked at her, feeling the residue of too much adrenaline still burning through her. It wouldn’t be much longer before she started to shake, she reflected, but something about Gwendolyn bothered her. There was a flicker of uneasiness, as if something wasn’t quite right. It was almost like….

Of course something isn’t “right,” you dummy!
she told herself.
Someone just
tried to mug you all and kidnap Lionheart!

She snorted mentally at the thought. She was pretty sure she was still feeling the echoes of Lionheart’s emotions along with her own, which probably helped to account for at least some of the tension jangling down her nerves. And whatever else might be true, Gwendolyn Adair was nothing like Tennessee Bolgeo, no matter how frazzled her nerves might be at the moment! Besides—

“I’m quite sure they would have thought of it as
stealing
him, not a kidnapping, Ms. Harrington,” another voice said, and she turned to find yourself facing a man who looked so much like an older version of Gwendolyn that she knew instantly he must be the Earl of Adair Hollow. Now he shook his head, his expression regretful in the bright lights his security personnel and the police were stringing up around the crime scene.

“Like Gwen, I’m terribly sorry that this could have happened to you here at the Charleston Arms,” he said sincerely, holding out his hand to her. She shook it almost dazedly, and he extended it to her parents, in turn. “I assure you that we usually take much better care of our guests,” he told them.

“These guests seem to have turned out to be able to take care of themselves, George,” Gwendolyn pointed out, and he smiled slightly.

“Indeed they do,” he agreed and shook hands with Karl. “Nicely done, Mr. Zivonik! In fact, all of you did remarkably well…including you, Lionheart.”

The earl went down on one elegantly tailored knee, showing rather more aplomb—and nerve—than most of the security and police personnel had as he extended his open palm to the bloodstained treecat. Lionheart cocked his head, looking at him for a moment, then laid his own three-fingered true-hand on the exposed palm. The earl stayed that way for several seconds, then nodded courteously to the treecat and stood.

“I realize this wasn’t exactly the beginning of the evening you had in mind when we invited you,” he told his guests. “Nonetheless, I do hope you’ll honor us with your company after all. I deeply regret having been out of the Star Kingdom until tonight, and I would consider it a personal favor to have the opportunity to speak with all of you—and especially you and Lionheart, Ms. Harrington.” He smiled winningly at Stephanie. “Speaking on behalf of the Foundation, I believe this may be the beginning of a long and close relationship.”

* * *

Climbs Quickly rode on his two-leg’s shoulder as she, Shadowed Sunlight, and her parents moved towards the enormous living place. The echoes of combat still reverberated deep inside him, and he forced himself to draw a deep mental breath as he fought to damp them out.

It was hard, and not least because yet again he had discovered evildoers among the two-legs. He had no idea exactly what
these
evildoers had had in mind, but did it matter? How was he to convince the rest of the People that they could truly trust the two-legs when things like
this
kept happening? And did even the two-legs around him truly know what had just happened and why? The mind-glows were so brilliant, and so roiled by the two-legs’ reactions, that he could taste very little of their deeper emotions, and he reminded himself not to read too much into that stormy sea feelings. There was a great deal of shock in most of them—and almost as much anger as shock, in some—and the intensity of it all made his head ache.

And, oddly enough, the two who seemed angriest of all were the ones who were clearly in charge of all the other two-legs in this living place. Perhaps, as its elders, they felt a special responsibility for what had almost happened? That much, at least, would make sense.

* * *

“Well,
that
didn’t work out very well, did it?” Oswald Morrow muttered as he and Gwendolyn followed Adair Hollow and the Harringtons across the park.

“No, it didn’t,” she conceded with an icy smile which contained very little humor.

At least she didn’t have to be concerned about anything leading back to her. She’d hired the thugs through an anonymous electronic intermediary. All they’d known was that someone was prepared to pay them upwards of a quarter million Manticoran dollars if they could deliver the treecat to him. They’d been informed that they would receive the location for the delivery once they had proof the treecat was in their possession. Nothing had been said one way or the other about the humans in the treecat’s vicinity, although given the caliber of her disposable henchmen she’d anticipated a certain amount of serious injury.

Of course, she’d also anticipated that they would never get off the Charleston Arms’ grounds with their prize. The access code she’d provided them with had gotten them
in
through the facility’s security, but their mysterious employer had obviously missed the fact that getting
out
again required a different code entirely. Besides, if things had gone properly, they would have been in no condition to think about going anywhere.

Anything that could hold a hexapuma at bay even briefly should have made short work out of shredding faces and throats with gory abandon, and that was exactly what she’d expected. What she’d
planned
on. Who would ever have imagined the treecat would show such restraint? Especially when Gwendolyn had gone to the trouble of making sure Stephanie’s parents would be present for the event. If anything could have been calculated to send her into a panic and goad Lionheart into an…extreme reaction, that should have done it. But had he cooperated? No, of course he hadn’t!

“Countess Frampton’s not going to be very happy about this,” Morrow whispered as they approached the restaurant’s front steps. She shot him a venomous glance, and he shrugged. “At least I’ll be able to tell her it wasn’t
my
fault,” he said.

“Well, she’s just going to have to be unhappy then, isn’t she?” Gwendolyn replied sharply. “It didn’t work out as planned, but the fact that the little monster
didn’t
kill anyone isn’t going to get anywhere near as much coverage as we’d have gotten if he
had
killed someone.” She showed her teeth in another humorless smile. “Like I said before, it’s not like we would’ve changed the Foundation’s mind whatever happened, and I should be able to spin the ‘exotic animal poacher’ threat in a way to help encourage the protective reservation mindset. It’ll be a harder sell, of course, but I’ve had lots of practice managing Cousin George and his little band of philanthropists. And sweet little Stephanie and Karl are going to go home thinking of me as their friend. That offers all kinds of possibilities, don’t you think?”