Leopard's Run

by Christine Feehan

  “I promised her I would help her,” Ashe said.

  She looked around the room. Pots, pans and dirty dishes were piled high. Flour coated the floor and was on nearly every surface. She didn’t even know how that had happened. The cute little torch that she was supposed to use delicately had nearly started a fire. The worst was, she really had been working hard. Very hard. She had absolutely nothing to show for it but a very messy room that looked like it would take a cleaning crew of twenty or so to put it right.

  Ashe wasn’t given to crying. She just wasn’t, but she felt the burn behind her eyes and hastily turned away from both men. She’d never had any interest in cooking or baking, but she’d always thought it would be easy enough if she just put her mind to it. She’d done that. She’d really tried, but not one single thing she’d made had come out right. She certainly couldn’t sell any of the goods she’d done, not in Evangeline’s exclusive bakery with its really great reputation. Not even the one sponge cake that had sort of turned out. It was a little lopsided, but the taste was right. Okay, very lopsided, and caved in completely.

  “She’ll know you tried,” Gorya said. “We’ll help you clean up.”

  Jeremiah hopped off the table and went straight to the pile of dirty dishes. “No worries, I’m good with soap.”

  She knew he was trying to make her feel better by volunteering to help clean up but that meant she didn’t look as stoic as she hoped. She must look close to tears. That was just plain humiliating.

  “I’m going to try this last thing. These are Fyodor’s favorite cookies. If nothing else we can bring them home with us if they turn out and we decide we can’t open. I’ll get them on the trays to bake and while they’re baking I’ll make the caramel cages that she puts over some of them.”

  “You go ahead and try—” Jeremiah broke off. “You do that,” he corrected. “I’ll start the cleanup.”

  Ashe took a deep breath. She could do this. For Evangeline. For Timur. She didn’t want all of his men laughing at him behind his back, making fun of him because she couldn’t cook. She had learned one thing from this horrible experience. Well, maybe two. She detested baking and all things to do with kitchens and she hated the sound of fire alarms.

  She wasn’t going to get distracted. It wasn’t like she had to keep track of ingredients. Evangeline had already done that. Of course, she was going to put the other ten things she’d ruined that Evangeline’d had in the refrigerator out of her mind and just think of these cookies as her first attempt. They were going to be perfect.

  Very carefully, she laid out the cookies on the trays. Dozens of trays. She made certain each cookie was perfectly round. Each time she cut the dough with the little circle or star, she ended up with rough edges, but she smoothed them meticulously. She refused to think of time marching on, or the bang of the dishes as Jeremiah rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher.

  “They look good,” Gorya observed.

  “I’ve got the ovens exactly the right temperature this time,” she said, nervously checking the ovens for the fifth time. “But look anyway, just to be certain, Gorya.” She was not asking for Jeremiah’s help again. She’d tried that before and he’d been a Neanderthal.

  “If you’re looking for three fifty, you’re right on target,” Gorya said.

  She glared at Jeremiah over her shoulder and gave a little sniff of disdain. Very, very carefully, she carried one tray at time to the ovens and shoved them in. She’d tried before to carry two trays of tart pastries and had dropped them upside down on the floor of the kitchen. She might have been tempted to try to save them, but not in front of Jeremiah, who had laughed like a hyena, or Gorya, who’d kept a straight face and crouched down to help her pick them up from the flour- and sugar-covered floor.

  “You know, the first trays are going to be done before the last ones,” Jeremiah called helpfully.

  She almost dropped the tray she was inserting into the second oven. There were racks in each oven, evenly spaced, but Evangeline had said something about the middle racks she couldn’t remember.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Gorya snapped. “She’s doing fine.”

  Ashe tried not to look anxious. “Do you think he’s right?”

  “Set the timer. These are going to be great,” Gorya assured.

  “I think I’m falling a little in love with you,” she said and sent Jeremiah another glare over her shoulder as she set the timer.

  Jeremiah was completely unfazed by her glare. He didn’t drop dead and he didn’t wither on the spot.

  “Now I just have to make the caramel cages.” Even she heard the trepidation in her voice. She had messed up every single thing that required her to mix any ingredients and this looked very hard. Like expert hard.

  “I’ll help,” Gorya said.

  “I won’t,” Jeremiah called from where he was spraying water over pots and pans. “I’m going to sit back and watch the show.”

  She resisted throwing a knife at him, but she imagined it while she studied the recipe. She had to read it three times before the image of Jeremiah pleading for his life faded. That was the problem, her mind just wouldn’t stay on mundane things like baking.

  “This looks difficult, Gorya.”

  “One step at a time. First step.”

  She took a deep breath, and measured out sugar, corn syrup and water into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and turned on the heat. “It’s supposed to be medium-high, whatever that means. Is it medium, or is it high? Why don’t they just say so you don’t have to guess,” she groused, chewing her lip. She was sweating. Actually sweating.

  “I’ve got it,” Gorya said and adjusted the heat.

  “I know there was a candy thermometer around here somewhere,” she looked around a little helplessly. “I’m supposed to insert it and cook the sugar until it reaches three hundred and eleven degrees. Insert it where? What does that mean?” She pushed back her hair with her forearm. She wasn’t about to contaminate her sugar concoction.

  Gorya found the thermometer and put it in the saucepan. Ashe breathed a sigh of relief as she stirred the sugar. “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the ovens,” Gorya said. “We’ve got them all on and that’s heating the room.”

  She could have kissed him. It wasn’t that she was overheated because she was so nervous. There was no way she was ever doing this again. Fyodor would have to hire a qualified baker. Was it a baketress? Was there such a thing? She had to keep her mind on what she was doing. She looked at the recipe again.

  “I have to wait for it to get to the hard crack stage. What’s that?” She looked at Gorya for advice.

  “Babe, I have no idea what that means,” he admitted. “Those cookies smell good though. Really good. I think you did it this time.”

  She wasn’t about to point out that Evangeline had done it. The dough had been prepared the night before and left in the refrigerator. Of course, so far she hadn’t messed them up like everything else.

  Ashe sent Gorya a smile, still carefully stirring. “I hope so. Could you open the back door and let in some cool air? Or do you think it will mess up the sugar and it won’t get to the hard crack stage, whatever that is.”

  Jeremiah burst out laughing “Hard crack stage? That sounds like you’re cooking up some kind of drug instead of candy.”

  She spun around, hands on her hips. “That’s it. I’m kicking you out.” She pointed to the door. “Now. Go away.”

  “Come on, Ashe. You finally have cookies in the oven that smell like they aren’t the charred remains of zombies. I need sustenance. I’ll be good.”

  “No, you won’t.” She knew he wouldn’t, but he did look hangdog. That particular expression was going to get him out of trouble for certain. She felt sorry for any woman who fell in love with him.

  Gorya laughed at her. “I knew you’d give in as soon as he gave you that puppy dog look.”

  He moved easily between the two metal islands locked in place in the cente
r of the room, striding toward the back door. The two metal surfaces had been immaculate when she’d arrived in the kitchen. Now, they were a mess. She had no idea how they’d gotten that way. She’d never seen them like that when Evangeline was baking. Even when she rolled out dough and flour covered the surface, they never looked like this. She imagined she might have to buy the bakery new islands, they were that bad. It might be better than having to clean them.

  She bent over the recipe, frowning as she found and laid out the small domes to use to make the cages. Some were flatter than others, but she began to coat each of them with cooking spray.

  “Thoroughly coat,” she murmured aloud, over and over.

  “Is the record stuck?” Jeremiah asked, turning toward her, laughing.

  A blast of cool air swept through the room and she gasped, dropping the spray can and hurrying to her sugar, afraid it would ruin it. As she turned to run, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gorya crumple to the ground like a rag doll. The sound of a muffled gun was simultaneous. She knew instantly the weapon had a silencer on it. Contrary to popular belief, silencers didn’t completely stop the sound of a gunshot. Her father had fired bullet after bullet from various guns until she could tell him what they were just by the sound.

  “Jeremiah!” She yelled to him as she sprinted toward the fallen man. He was closer and already his head was turning toward Gorya, who was sprawled half in and half out of the kitchen.

  Jeremiah got to him first, stepping to the side of the door and reaching with one hand to snag the shoulder of his shirt. Up close, Ashe could see blood spreading fast across the pale blue material until it was the only color she could see.

  “Get back!” Jeremiah yelled as he jerked hard to pull Gorya in.

  The shooter clearly was behind the Dumpster to the left of the door and had shot at a close angle. He fired again and Gorya’s leg jerked. Then Jeremiah was falling back, still dragging Gorya. Ashe saw blood on Jeremiah’s shoulder and pain clearly etched into every line of his face. She leapt across the doorway, took hold and shut it as Jeremiah managed to get Gorya all the way inside. She slammed the lock into place and then pushed the rolling trays in front of it, taking the time to lock them in place. They were light and wouldn’t hold for long, but it was all she had.

  Whirling around, she saw immediately that Gorya was in trouble. “Jeremiah, get on your feet. You have to help me.” She poured authority into her voice. She could see he was in shock from the pain. She reached for Gorya. She was leopard, and she was strong. Her parents had taught her all kinds of skills and made certain she trained daily.

  Miraculously, Jeremiah got up, swaying, but up on his feet. With his good arm, he helped her drag Gorya to the far end of the room where the small bathroom was.

  “There’s a first aid kit under the sink. You keep him alive,” she ordered. “I’ll hold them off. Call for Fyodor and Timur. Tell them we’ll need a helicopter. He won’t make it waiting for an ambulance to get him there.”

  “Ashe,” Jeremiah started.

  “Don’t argue. You’re a mess.” She slammed the bathroom door shut and raced back to the two metal islands Evangeline had as her workstation. They were long and sat in front of the door leading outside. Both were on rollers. She unlocked them and rearranged them, leaving enough room for it to open. Sooner or later they were going to get inside. She guessed by the sounds outside, it would be sooner. She put them wide enough to block either side of the door, forcing whoever came in to go down the middle between the two islands. She locked them in place.

  She knew Jeremiah would call for help so she didn’t waste time there. Instead, she looked around the kitchen for weapons. There were plenty. She had been trained in guerilla warfare and hand-to-hand combat. She knew how to call up her leopard to use her skills in fighting, and she knew how to run like hell when the situation demanded it. This time, there would be no running. She had to protect the two wounded men. Ashe raced around the kitchen, preparing her battleground.

  When she was done, she hit the light switches, not that it would do that much good if she was facing leopards, but she liked the cover of darkness. She knew where everything was, but she stayed very still, crouching low just in front of the two islands, with her chosen arsenal. The scent of burnt sugar permeated the air. Running, she added another cup of water and more sugar, just dumping it in the pan. She left the burner on.

  She didn’t have time to make a survival gas mask; in the fifteen minutes it would take to make it, this fight would probably be over. She glanced down at her watch to note the time. She had no idea how many were in the alley, but there was more than one shooter.

  Gorya had been shot at an angle, the distance close. The shooter had definitely been hiding behind the Dumpster.

  Jeremiah had been shot from a completely different angle. He’d protected himself from the shooter behind the Dumpster, but that had exposed him to someone on the roof of one of the buildings across the alley. Even as she was figuring out how the two men were shot, she sprayed water on the windows from the hoses at each of the three sinks. It was long range for the one on the other side of the room, but the sprayer was fairly powerful and it hit dead center. She didn’t want a river, just enough.

  The flour was next. She threw it at the windows, coating them, one after another, sending a prayer to the universe that it would stick. At least it would cut down on the attackers’ vision. She hurried back to the front of the two islands and waited, counting her heartbeats. She didn’t have to wait for long.

  A volley of bullets came through the window, shattering the glass. She waited, counting her heartbeats. The breath moving in and out of her lungs. Her hands were steady as something hit the back door hard jarring the tall, rolling trays.

  “They’re coming through in another minute, Jeremiah,” she called out. “I’ll hold them off as long as possible. Keep Gorya alive no matter what.”

  Timur loved Gorya. She knew the two cousins had been raised as siblings, and Gorya might as well have been Timur’s blood brother for how close they were. He wasn’t dying. Not today and not by cowards ambushing him.

  “He’s bad, Ashe,” Jeremiah called. “I should be out there and you in here.”

  She ignored the macho male bullshit that demanded a wounded man protect her when she was perfectly capable. “I was trained for this, by my parents.” She tried to reassure him, hoping his ego wouldn’t have him abandoning Gorya to cover her unnecessarily. “I’ll call you if I need you. Just keep him alive.”

  The door shook, and the blow sounded even louder. She was tempted to go unlock it so it wouldn’t be destroyed. She looked around the kitchen. She’d pretty much already single-handedly managed to destroy Evangeline’s beautiful little kitchen—without the intruders. The door shuddered again and burst inward, narrowly missing the two islands that formed a hallway.

  A hail of bullets laid down cover and the first assailant burst through the door, his gun in his arms, finger on the trigger. He was already looking left to right as he stepped forward right into the corridor she’d set up. Behind him, a second man followed in tight, standard formation. She had counted out the seconds of the blasts of the guns. When the first man stopped firing, she stood and threw the knife she’d pulled from the block, all in one motion.

  The knives weren’t balanced, but she was used to that. Not a single knife her father had made her practice throwing for hours on end, every day throughout her childhood, had been balanced. She hit the first man right in the throat, and as he started to go down, she threw the second knife and dove for cover.

  The first man gurgled horribly in the dark. The second man yelled, his voice trembling with shock and pain. She’d hit him, but he was spraying the room with bullets. A few came close, but he had no real idea where she was. She could tell by the way he was yelling that he was hurt, but she didn’t know how badly.

  She tossed a long-handled metal spoon right into the shelves of pots and pans. It made a terrible racket, enough to
draw the fire from the injured man. Bullets hit Evangeline’s prized collection of cooking pots and saucepans. Ashe crawled on her belly, using toes and elbows to propel her forward.

  Her target had climbed over the metal table. She’d covered each tabletop with a mixture of oil and jalapeno juice. He’d slid on his back across the oily surface, thinking to use it to get closer to his target. The jalapeno juice came into contact with any bare skin he had. He started cursing. She silently thanked Evangeline for making her jalapeno muffins for early morning workers.

  Ashe could see drops of blood dripping onto the white flour on the floor as he came closer. She waited until she was certain he was right on the mark she’d made and then she was up, the handle of the pot containing the boiling sugar and syrup in her hand. She threw the contents in his face, stepped forward and wrenched at the gun in his hands.

  She found herself looking at a leopard. A very, very angry one. If he’d allowed his leopard out, he wouldn’t have been able to hold on to the gun. He flailed around, screaming as the sugar attached to his skin, burning. As he tried to scratch it off, the jalapeno juice on his fingerless gloves added to the fierce burn, but he wouldn’t release the weapon.

  She heard the spit of another gun, and a bullet just cut across her temple. She caught up the fryer as she whirled around, flinging the contents at the man with the sugar burns. He screamed as the donut oil hit him square in the chest, neck and face. She kept him between her and the other gunman.

  “Dave, drop to the floor, drop to the floor!” the other man yelled.

  Dave’s leopard glared at her, struggling with his crazed counterpart to shift into his cat form, but Dave wasn’t thinking clearly and wouldn’t release the weapon, fighting the burns and the leopard at the same time.

  She counted to herself. Her father had drilled it into her that if she was using a human shield, a member of the opposition, it would take no more than ten to fifteen seconds before his friends would most likely shoot him to get to her. She dropped to the floor and heard the shot. David dropped, his screaming abruptly cut off. She found herself staring into his eyes and watched as the leopard’s life in him faded as well.