by Zoe Chant
Tony came to through a haze of confusion and misery. Sunlight was just beginning to peer over the high walls, and he realized he was lying in a thin pile of straw over a concrete slab with fine chicken wire over it, and it was dreadfully uncomfortable in his human form.
There were thick bars all around him, and he could see more bars overhead. A small lean-to in one corner provided some protection in case of rain. There was a shallow tub of water.
He was aware of desperate thirst, and his tongue felt oddly thick. His hands and feet were scratched, and he remembered the barbed wire that had scraped them on his way over the wall.
Tony...
The voice in his head was not, he felt, exactly directed at him. It was an internal lament, a cry of pain and longing and confusion.
“Amber!” He said it out loud as well as through animal speech, reaching out for her with his mind.
Her surprise and relief did not exactly have words, but felt like a tackle hug. How are we doing this? she asked.
Some shifters just can, Tony explained. Where are you? Are you alright? Are you... free?
He got an impression of crouching in a small dark place with her answer. I'm nearby, just to the east, she said. I can see you, but I don't want to show myself. They haven't caught me yet.
Get out of here, Tony told her fiercely.
I'm not leaving you, Amber insisted.
They'll use me to try to capture you, Tony told her flatly. Better that you aren't here at all. You have to get out.
I'm not leaving you, Amber repeated stubbornly.
Use logic! You know you can't fight them all. You can get help, at the resort.
She didn't answer for a moment, then asked, What's a mate?
Tony sat up gingerly. The drugs had left his limbs feeling odd and as if all the joints were too big. You're my mate, he told her gently, mindful of how frightened she had gotten when he called her beautiful. You're the one other person who completes me, the one true match for my soul and body. He couldn't help but remember her body, all curves and velvet skin against him.
Amber was quiet in his mind, contemplating. And you know your mate at once when you meet?
Tony nodded. With every inch of your spirit. At least, he had. Had she?
Her laughter was a rich caress of his mind. I thought I was going a little crazy when we met, she confessed.
I had never seen anything in the world as gorgeous as you, Tony told her, deeply relieved. And I will never forgive myself if you get captured because of me.
You got captured because of me, Amber pointed out.
Tony had no answer for that, but wordlessly pleaded that she see reason and leave while she could.
Reluctantly, she finally answered. I'll go, she agreed. But only to get help. I'm coming back for you.
Tony had a sense of her, ghosting out of her hiding place and darting from shadow to shadow, her attention entirely on staying quiet and out of sight.
He wanted to implore her to be careful, but didn't want to distract her from her stealth. Instead, he stood, cursing his wobbly legs, and shifted into a tiger to explore the cage with the extra senses that came with it. The water smelled good, so he indulged in a deep, refreshing drink.
He smelled Beehag before he saw him: Indian spices, fine wool, and just a touch of whiskey.
“Ah,” the odious man said, stopping before Tony's cage. “I like it when my guests stay in animal form. Some of them have to be... convinced to do so.”
Mostly to spite him, Tony shifted back into a human, and stood up to scowl through the bars, arms crossed. He was actually glad for the week at Shifting Sands; being nude felt comfortable and powerful, when a week prior to that, it would have felt like a weakness.
Beehag frowned, but didn't look surprised. “Your cooperation isn't necessary, anyway,” he said with an arrogant shrug. “You aren't really my goal here.” His eyes glinted as his face slid into a smug smile. “She's a pretty little thing, isn't she? And surprisingly clever.”
Tony wanted to reach through the bars and take the man by the throat, but knew it would be futile. There were two men with guns flanking the billionaire, and Tony suspected that they weren't both loaded with tranquilizer darts by the way the second guard was holding his.
Beehag had a black plastic box in his hand, and he lifted it. “She won't get far,” he promised. “She wouldn't leave her mate. Not when he was in such agony.”
Tony gritted his teeth, waiting for one of them to take a shot. But Beehag simply pressed a button on his box, and electricity jolted through him.
It was impossible to stand still, and there was nowhere to escape–the energy was coursing through the floor and the bars and not even the straw was enough to keep it from burning up his feet. The shock was not strong enough to kill him, but it was bitterly, burningly painful, and Tony couldn't keep back the yell of agony or keep his muscles from convulsing. It stopped just when he felt like he couldn't take another moment, and he stared through the bars at Beehag in impotent fury, panting and clenching his fists.
“Do you know what a shifter's weakness is?” Beehag asked in his silky voice. When Tony didn't reply, he went on anyway. “A shifter can't help but shift if they are in enough pain...” He lifted the box again, and although Tony was braced for it this time, he was still not ready for the piercing pain.
True to Beehag's observation, Tony shifted without meaning to. He even tried to fight it, briefly, and was disappointed to find that the pain was no less in cat form. His tiger, however, was more capable of dealing with the pain, and his human self could only whimper at the torment while his tiger roared and flung himself uselessly at the cage.
Beehag stopped the electricity at last, and Tony paced the cage in tiger form, still staggered from the experience. He was not sure he would have been able to shift back if he had wanted to, he was so shaken by the torture.
“That ought to bring her,” Beehag said, deeply satisfied. Somewhere down the pens, a single wolf raised its voice in a howl of sympathy. The rest of the zoo was eerily quiet.
Chapter Twenty-One
Amber darted from shadow to shadow, skittering through open drainage channels, under equipment, and across roofs, where she dared. There were traps, but they were lazy things, obvious and baited with meat, and she was not distracted, thinking ahead to her escape.
There was too much open space between the gates and house; she wasn't sure how to get from one to the other, or how to get through the gates once she got there. She tried to keep a map in her head, adding more to it as she noted landscapes and oddities, like the helicopter on a warehouse roof towards the back.
She nearly fell off the rain gutter when the pain began.
“Tony!” she cried, but he was too lost in agony to hear her or answer.
Beehag.
If he had been in her reach, she would have gleefully clawed his eyes out at that moment.
She nearly turned back, but she knew that the British asshole was just waiting for her. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, but it didn't involve falling into his trap like a stupid fool. It might have broken her heart to realize he was hurting Tony, but it didn't take more than a moment of rational thought to realize that he was doing it deliberately.
It only steeled her purpose. She was going to return to the resort. She would ransack Tony's cottage–he must have secret government super-spy contacts she could reach. They probably had helicopters, or maybe dragons. She'd tell them everything, and make them promise to send help, then come back and turn herself in to make them stop hurting him. She'd promise cooperation, if they let him be, and generally delay everything long enough for rescue to come.
When Tony's agony let up, she didn't try to contact him. She knew her will would waiver if she let herself touch his mind again.
Instead, she crept along to the front of the house, keeping to the valleys of the roof and watching for the cameras. She could hear a crash and commotion, and suspected that they were mobilizing–
did they guess that she would try to escape? She expected them to be ready for her near Tony's cage; she had hoped that they would be distracted from the gates for that time.
To her surprise, the gates were open, and the beat-up van from Shifting Sands was wedged between them. Four guards with weapons–Amber had no idea if they were real ones or only tranquilizers, but wasn't willing to risk finding out the hard way–were surrounding it. They clearly looked flustered.
Jimmy was loudly protesting from the driver's seat that they were scheduled, that Mr Beehag had arranged a tour. “Just radio Mr. Beehag! I swear, he's expecting us!”
Amber's ears flattened against her head in confusion. The van was completely full of resort guests. As she watched, Magnolia made her ponderous way out of the side door, calling over one of the guards to take her imperious hand as the van tipped under her weight.
“Here, darling, stop waving that around and come help a lady down!” she commanded, and the guard actually did so, putting his hand out reluctantly to steady her.
The other resort guests weren't guests at all. Amber recognized a flash of Scarlet's distinctive hair in the passenger seat, and the person out after Magnolia was the surly gardener, who didn't so much as pretend to be friendly before punching the guard who had his hand captured in Magnolia's.
“So uncivilized,” Magnolia said with a sniff as they began to brawl in earnest, but she didn't let go of the guard, demonstrating unexpected strength as he twisted and tried to break free. The gardener made short work of him, given his handicap, and Magnolia gently lowered the unconscious man to the ground after only a short flurry of blows.
Chef, out next, immediately asked if she was alright, not even giving the remaining three guards a glance.
“He didn't hurt you, did he?”
“I'm fine, sugar,” Magnolia insisted, straightening her hat. “You're a dear to ask!”
Scarlet dismounted from the passenger seat like a queen, with her staff fanning out behind her as they scrambled out of the van like some kind of shifter clown car.
The remaining three guards fidgeted in place, swinging their guns from one target to another nervously. The youngest of them finally picked up their radio. “Um, sir? We've got trouble at the gate. Guests. Er... the resort lady. And... some staff, I guess. A guard is down.”
“Tell Mr. Beehag that Scarlet Stanson is here to discuss some of the terms of our contract,” Scarlet suggested sweetly, folding her arms and giving the guard a steely stare.
Several other guards ran up then, taking positions with partial cover and training their weapons on the motley crew. The first three took more confident stances and the boy with the radio looked back at Scarlet defiantly.
Then the last person disembarked from the van wearing a brilliant yellow lifeguard shirt, and shifted immediately into a dragon four times the size of the van. To a man, the guards all stepped back and re-positioned their hands on their guns.
The youngest guard picked up his radio again and said with a wavering voice. “Miss Scarlet is here... uh... to talk about a contract. They brought a dragon, sir...”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alistair Beehag stood in from of Tony's cage, looking almost bored. “You know,” he said, condescendingly, “It isn't really worth all this fuss. I give my guests everything they could possibly need. I assure you that Miss Allen would be quite safe here. She would even stop trying to escape, eventually; they all do.”
Tony shifted back into human form, because he could again, and because as a tiger it was getting difficult to keep himself from throwing himself at the cage walls in sheer fury.
“You're a chicken-shit jackass son of a bitch,” he snarled.
It wasn't as satisfying as he had hoped. Beehag only laughed.
He went on conversationally, “Some of these shifters have been here fifty years,” he explained. “My father collected them when he was a young man, and passed his collection to me. Did you know that shifters live as long as humans even in their animal forms exclusively? It would be a wonder to the scientific community if they got their hands on some of my guests. Amber is quite young–I imagine she will live out a very long life here.”
Tony might have flung himself at the cage even in human form if the bastard had kept going on, but fortunately one of the guards' radios crackled to life.
“Um, sir? We've got trouble at the gate. Guests. Er... the resort lady. And... some staff, I guess. A guard is down.”
Beehag sighed, as if it was just a little inconvenience, but there was a glint to Tony's eyes that he didn't like.
With an imperious gesture, Beehag sent half of the guards scurrying to the front of the estate like ants.
The remaining guards barked orders into phones, and didn't seem the slightest bit fazed when a panicked message came over the radio: “Miss Scarlet is here... uh... to talk about a contract. She brought a dragon, sir...”
Far from being alarmed, Beehag actually clapped his hands. “Oh, this is a good day,” he said gleefully. “I have been unsuccessful in tempting that one away from the resort since it first arrived, but I've had a cage prepared for it all this time. Well away from the others, of course. And I've made all the precautions for capturing it.” A gesture to the remaining guards sent them scurrying.
“I hope you will forgive me for bringing our conversation to such an abrupt end,” Beehag said dismissively. “I am not yet sure if I will have further need of you, but I will keep you alive until I have the mountain cat safely in hand. Until then!”
Tony did fling himself at the cage then, roaring in anger and shifting as he leaped.
Beehag only laughed as he walked away, and flipped the switch on his control one last time to deliver blistering jolts of pain into the snarling tiger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Amber writhed in counterpoint to Tony, snapping at the air as she kept herself from bolting by instinct back to the terrible zoo.
When it stopped, she lay panting for a long moment, anger clouding her vision as much as the echo of Tony's pain.
More guards were spilling out of the house, taking cover behind a waist-high wall that had appeared merely decorative, but now seemed very cleverly defensible. Several had moved out along the walls, looking poised to close in on the gate if the interlopers moved out onto the lawn.
Scarlet and her staff hung back, not entirely willing to leave the partial cover that the van provided or abandon their escape route. The staff, most of them unarmed, looked nervous, but Scarlet appeared unruffled, in her tidy business skirt and heels. The dragon roared and snapped its big wings, but Amber thought it didn't look as intimidating once the shock of it had passed.
These new guards did not appear to be of the same easily-cowed stripe as the first ones, and Amber could hear them talking among themselves as weapons were passed out.
“These will turn 'em human, even the dragon,” one assured another. “Aim for the bits between the scales. Beehag wants them all tranqed because he's not sure what they are, especially the red-haired bitch.”
Amber had a sinking feeling in her heart; the resort staff, plucky as they appeared, was no match for the uniformed, armored task force that faced them. There was little she could do, even behind the lines of the enemy. She was astonished by how many guards had boiled out of the estate–there must be two or three dozen men. Knowing that the guns they held were tranquilizers didn't make it any easier to take them out.
It was too bad she couldn't free the inhabitants of the zoo to fight with them.
As soon as the idea occurred to Amber, she was in motion, scrambling quietly back over the roof to the back of the house. If everyone was here, distracted by Scarlet's invasion, then there couldn't be more than a token guard back at the security room–where the locks to the cages must all be controlled.
She leaped easily down to the ground using a plumeria tree by the back door. To her frustration, it was locked. In human form, uncomfortably naked, she paced, trying to come up with som
e new plan, any shred of an idea.
She flitted back into cat form at the sound of officious footsteps and hid in the shadow of a big planter by the door.
Beehag.
He was smiling confidently and tapping a black box in his hands. With a lazy swipe, he used his keycard to open the door with a whir and a click.
Why wouldn't he be confident, Amber thought despairingly. He knew he had all the advantages.
Still, she wasn't going to give up yet. She held her breath, and darted in at his heels, as quiet as a whisper and as nothing more than a shadow behind him. She followed him down the corridor until they came to a closed door. Alistair swiped his card, and then put his thumb on a small screen by the security panel. The door whirred and opened with a little pop.
Amber followed him, barely getting her tail swished in behind her before the door closed with a hiss and a click. She knew she couldn't have made it in undetected if Beehag hadn't been so distracted.
One wall was a panel of screens, showing all the parts of the compound. Animals paced in dozens of cages, looking clearly agitated; they must know that something momentous was happening. Amber's eyes went immediately to search for Tony, and found several cages of tigers, one pure white and black, and two the more common orange and white and black. More screens showed the front lawn, and it was to these screens that Alistair immediately went.
Behind him, Amber's attention swung to the opposite wall, where a rack of weapons hung. She couldn't tell if they were real guns or tranquilizers, but it didn't matter to her now.
Quietly as she could, she shifted to human, standing up slowly and reaching for one of the rifles.
“Fools!” Beehag said mockingly, making her freeze in place.
But he was only talking to the guard who sat there, and the figures on the screen. A quick glance showed that Scarlet had moved away from the van and was speaking to guards, her hands up in a position of surrender. There was no sound from the screen, but Amber thought that her posture had more defiance than yield to it. She released the safety on the gun before taking it down, and a fortunate shift of a chair covered the sound.
