White Tiger

by Jennifer Ashley

  Tiger-striped.

  Why the thought popped into Addison’s mind, she didn’t know. The man said nothing, did nothing, only waited. As though he’d done this before.

  “Kendrick!” The shout came from beyond the broken front windows. The voice was harsh, a mean edge to it. “Get your sorry ass out here!”

  Kendrick. Addison wouldn’t have pegged that name on the solidly built guy on top of her, but then, it kind of went with his odd hair and green eyes.

  To her alarm, Kendrick started to rise.

  “No, don’t!” Addie whispered frantically.

  The kids remained in place, eyes wide, frightened but waiting. The man called Kendrick got his feet under him but remained in a crouch next to Addie. His motorcycle boots were dusty, creased with wear. Denim stretched over heavily muscled thighs directly in her line of sight.

  “If you go into the freezer and shut the door, can you get out again?” he was asking her. “You won’t be locked in?”

  Addie stared at him, barely registering the question, then she nodded. Bo wasn’t stupid enough to have a freezer without a handle on the inside. He’d be the most likely person to get caught in there, and he knew it.

  Bo—dear God, he’d be coming in soon, and these guys would shoot him like they shot poor Jimmy. She had to warn him . . . with her cell phone all the way across the room in her locker.

  Kendrick’s voice rumbled next to her. “When I give you the signal, I want you to take the cubs and go into the freezer with them. Shut the door and stay low. Can you do that?”

  Cubs? Oh, he meant the little boys. Addie cast an eye over them where they lay close together, bodies touching. Cubs—why the hell did he call them that?

  “If I don’t come for you in fifteen minutes, take them out the back way and drive them toward Rock Springs. There’s a shut-down gas station just before you get to town. If I don’t meet you there . . .” Kendrick stopped, the ache in his eyes real as he cast his gaze over the boys. “Take them somewhere safe. Take care of them. Promise me.”

  Addie put her hand on his arm, sinking fingers into the warm denim of his coat. “You can’t go out there. Let’s run out the back together. My car’s not far from the door.” If it didn’t go into one of its hissy fits and refuse to start, if it had enough gas to make it thirty miles down the highway.

  Kendrick’s green gaze fixed on her, and he put a broad finger over her shaking lips. “Promise me, Addison.”

  He’d never spoken her name before. The kids called her Addie, since Robbie had read her name tag and asked her what kind of name Addison was. She’d told them to use the shortened version. Kendrick had listened but never called her by name. Never said much to her at all, actually.

  Now his deep voice around the syllables tingled through her blood, and Addie’s heart squeezed to one hot point.

  She gulped a breath. “I promise. But what the hell do you think you’re going to do against a bunch of guys with automatics?”

  Guys who were getting impatient. “Kendrick!” the man outside shouted. “You don’t want us coming in there. Come out and face us.”

  Kendrick turned from Addie and grabbed the long bundle that held his sword. He’d even managed to bring that back here with him.

  He quickly unrolled the folds of the cloth and drew from a sheath a long broadsword with a wide blade and a thick hilt. The sword looked very, very old, the blade a soft silver color, not shiny like modern steel. The hilt and blade were covered with symbols that looked like writing but no writing Addie had ever seen.

  “You can’t fight guns with a sword,” Addie protested. “Are you nuts?”

  Kendrick’s eyes sparkled with sudden heat. “If you mean crazy, yes I am. I’m one crazy bastard, which is what’s going to save my sons. Be ready.”

  “But what are you going to do?” Addie asked in a worried whisper.

  “What I have to.” Kendrick reached out and traced one scarred finger down Addie’s cheek.

  Addie lost all her breath again. His touch traced fire, his eyes softening as the rest of his square face remained grim. Dark whiskers brushed his skin, the bristles also black mixed with white. Addie had a sudden, insane curiosity about whether his hair was like that all the way down . . .

  The look in Kendrick’s eyes changed to one of consternation, and Addie realized she’d become fixed in place, staring at him.

  “Right.” Addie broke away and quickly scrambled the short distance on hands and knees to the freezer door, sitting down next to the three boys.

  “Robbie.” Kendrick transferred his hard gaze to the oldest boy and took a firm grip on the sword. “Take care of them.”

  “Yes, Dad,” Robbie whispered, his gray eyes round, his look old for his age.

  “I’ll take care of them,” Addie said, putting her hand on Robbie’s thin back. “You just take care of yourself.”

  Kendrick sent her another long look that held a hint of a smile, a feral one. Then he . . . leapt.

  It was weird—he sprang from a crouch up to the pass—the shelf where the cook put the completed dishes—then was through it and down the other side. It happened in only a second, from the time Addie drew a breath to releasing it again. Kendrick was gone, making no noise at all.

  Signal—Addie was supposed to wait for a signal. Kendrick hadn’t said what signal. She should have had him make that clear, but then, she’d never been in a situation like this before. She didn’t have a checklist of what she needed to know.

  Shouting sounded outside, but she heard nothing from Kendrick. If he’d hidden himself somewhere in the diner, he wasn’t making a sound.

  Robbie sat up next to Addie, huddling with his arms around his knees. The two littler boys remained on their stomachs, silent and waiting. Addie’s body was cold, the floor hard under her butt, fear making her chest ache. She put her arm around Robbie but he didn’t lean into her. He was trying to be brave but she felt him shiver.

  The kids shouldn’t be here. She had to get them to safety, call the police or the sheriff or at least 911. But, as Addie had realized, her cell phone was across the room in her locker, along with her purse. She kept the keys to her car in her pocket, but the rest of her life was in the small locker on the other side of the kitchen.

  More shouting came from outside, men’s voices raised in anger, then gunshots, violence boiling around her world.

  All at once a man screamed, the sound high, harsh, and full of terror.

  Had that been Kendrick? Please, no. Addie’s heart thudded until it sickened her.

  Another male scream came, and then a long, low growling filled the spaces between the noise, like a wild beast on the loose.

  At the animal sound, the boys perked up. Brett and Zane sat up, eyes sparkling. Robbie even grinned.

  The growling escalated and became snarls of vicious rage. There was more shouting, screaming, gunshots. A man, yelling, charged straight into the diner, glass crunching under his feet. Addie saw him through the pass, a big man, who turned around and fired behind him. The sound of the gunshot was right on top of them, deafening.

  Addie clapped her hands over her ears. The man swung back to the pass and tried to jump up through it. He saw Addie and their eyes met for a brief moment, his wide and frantic.

  And then what looked like two giant white paws caught him around the waist. His mouth opened, and his face screwed up in terror.

  Addie couldn’t hear his screams—the pistol banging at close range had robbed her of that sense. She was grateful because the man’s open mouth must be emitting horrible sounds.

  He grabbed at the pass, his fingers finding no purchase in the stainless steel. Then he was gone, dragged down, a bloody streak left in his wake.

  A moment later, Kendrick’s sword clattered through the pass, the blade falling hilt downward into the kitchen. Robbie scampered forward and grabbed it
.

  “Freezer,” he said, his small mouth exaggerating the word. Addie suspected he couldn’t hear either.

  She and the little ones got the gist. Addie reached up and pulled open the freezer door, shoving the boys inside. Robbie ran in, dragging the sword that was longer than he was.

  Addie flicked on the light inside the freezer, then closed the door and dragged a few crates of frozen meat in front of it. The door opened outward, but anyone coming in would have to fight their way past the heavy crates after that.

  It was cold in here but would be bearable for a short amount of time. The single light bulb illuminated shelves filled with boxes and boxes of frozen beef, veggies, premade pies, anything the customer wanted. Bo wasn’t a great believer in organic, or even fresh, food.

  Fifteen minutes. That was about how long they could stay in here without getting hypothermia, or so Bo had told her. Addie checked her watch, her heart pounding, her blood hot. Her body temperature had to be so high that hypothermia wouldn’t stand a chance.

  She worried about the youngest boys, though. They were small and wouldn’t be able to survive this cold as well as she or even Robbie could. Especially when they were . . . taking off their clothes?

  “Stop!” Addie said. She could hear again finally but it was as though someone had stuffed cotton into her ears. “I don’t have any blankets in here. What are you . . . ?”

  Zane and Brett calmly finished stripping off their jeans, shirts, and underwear, even socks and shoes, folding them into neat piles. Robbie stepped in front of Addie as she tried to go to them.

  “Let them,” Robbie said in a loud voice. “It’s the only way they’ll survive.”

  “What are you talking about . . . ?”

  Addie choked to a halt as the two little boys’ bodies began to jerk. She started for them again but Robbie grabbed her hand and held her back with a surprisingly strong grip.

  The outlines of Zane and Brett blurred, and then, before Addie could register what happened, she was staring down at two very small white tiger cubs, both of them blinking green eyes like Kendrick’s up at her.

  Addie opened her mouth, barely able to hear the surprised sound that came out of it.

  “It’s okay!” Robbie called up to her. “They’ll stay warmer with fur.”

  Addie gaped down at him. “What about you? Are you a tiger too?”

  Robbie shook his head. “Lupine. But I’ll be all right. What time is it?”

  Addie for a moment couldn’t remember how to find out. Her watch burned cold on her wrist, and she jerked it up in front of her eyes. When she figured out how to read it again, she deduced they’d been in there maybe three minutes.

  What the hell was happening to her life?

  Those men shooting up the place were after Kendrick specifically—they’d called him by name. This hadn’t been a random act. They’d been chasing him, and Kendrick had known someone was after him.

  They must have been after him for a while. Why else would he always take such care not to sit in front of the windows, to keep himself between his sons and the door?

  And why hadn’t he mentioned that his sons were white tigers?

  The cubs’ black-and-white stripes matched the stripes in Kendrick’s hair, and their eyes were the same shade of green as his. That must mean that Kendrick was a . . .

  No, that was insane. People didn’t become wild animals, unless they were . . .

  Shifters.

  Addie never seen a Shifter before in her life. She’d watched documentaries about them on television, seen news reports, had heeded warnings to stay away from them.

  Not that she’d even needed to worry about it before. Shifters didn’t run around in middle-of-nowhere towns like Loneview, didn’t mix much with people at all. What were called Shiftertowns had been formed in Austin and around San Antonio, but Shifters didn’t leave them to come visit this out-of-the-way place. Addie never paid much attention to Shifters—they weren’t part of her world.

  And now one had come to her diner to eat pie.

  Four Shifters, actually. The two little tigers huddled together and against Robbie. They blinked for a while, then Brett and Zane closed their eyes, and danged if they didn’t drift off to sleep. Addie pulled a crate full of frozen pies over to them and sank down on it.

  Addie’s hands were growing numb, from fear or cold, she wasn’t sure. She checked her watch every two minutes—the minute hand had never moved so slowly. Finally she simply started counting seconds to give her agitated mind something to do.

  On the dot of fifteen minutes, Addison rose, signaled the cubs to stay behind her, and softly clicked open the freezer door.

  The waft of warm air felt good. She’d never complain about Texas heat again.

  Her foot crunched on glass, but other than that, all was silence.

  That silence was broken when a man stumbled in through the open back door. He was big and hard-muscled, like Kendrick, but his clothes were in shreds, and blood coated his face and body.

  The man saw Addie. He stared at her in great surprise, eyes of a very light blue widening. Then his knees bent, and he sort of folded up and collapsed to the floor, landing on his back. His head made an audible crack on the tile.

  Addie started for him. He’d been one of the shooters, she was certain, but he wasn’t armed now. He looked beaten down and pathetic.

  Another sound made her look up. Kendrick came through the door, likewise bloody, and he was stark naked.

  Kendrick gazed at Addie, and she looked back at him. His green eyes stood out in his dirt-and-blood-streaked face, holding both insane fury and great unhappiness.

  Addie heard the tiger cubs and Robbie come out behind her, but the three remained together, huddled against the door of the freezer.

  Kendrick and Addie studied each other over the body of the injured man, Addie barely able to breathe.

  “Guardian,” the man whispered.

  Kendrick dragged his gaze from Addie and moved it down to him. The man looked back up at Kendrick, fear and shame in his eyes. The one word had been a plea.

  Kendrick growled in his throat, his fist closing as though he held his sword, though Robbie still had the blade, guarding it across the room.

  “You endangered my cubs,” Kendrick said, the rage in his voice making the man on the floor flinch.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know they would be here with you. Forgive me, Guardian. Take them far away, because more will be coming.”

  “How many more?” Kendrick asked him, voice hard. “And why? Why have you turned on me? I put my ass on the line for twenty years making sure you stayed free, no Collars, no Shiftertowns.”

  The man shrugged wearily against the floor. “There are at least fifty of us, maybe more. They’re tired of hiding, tired of running.”

  “Dying is better?” Kendrick demanded. “Or living imprisoned?”

  “We made ourselves prisoners. You know we did. We want out.”

  Kendrick said nothing. When he looked up at Addie again, she saw stark grief in his eyes, not outrage, that this man, whoever he was, had turned against him. As though the betrayal had been Kendrick’s fault. He flicked his gaze away once more, back to the man at his feet.

  “It’s over, my friend,” Kendrick said.

  “I know.” The man could barely speak. “I’ve lost. I accept my defeat.”

  “Your defeat is your death.”

  “I know. Please, Guardian, don’t let me linger here.”

  Addie knew she should call the police, an ambulance. She should haul ass to her locker, grab the phone, and call. No way could she or Kendrick save this guy on their own. The man was going into shock, his eyes unfocused, body shivering, breath ragged.

  But Addie couldn’t move. She remained fixed in place, staring at the tableau—the bloody man
on the floor, Kendrick above him, gazing down at him in anguish.

  “Robbie,” Kendrick said, without looking up. He held out his hand.

  Robbie immediately lifted the big sword, laying the blade gingerly across his other palm so he wouldn’t drag it on the floor as he carried it to his father. Kendrick gave his son a look of thanks as he closed his hand around the hilt. Robbie backed away as though he knew what Kendrick was about to do.

  No! the thought shrieked in Addie’s head. No, he can’t just kill this guy . . .

  Kendrick dropped to one knee. He put his hand on the man’s forehead, his arm shaking but his bloodstained fingers rock steady. The man’s body relaxed, his eyes softening as he sighed with relief.

  “Thank you,” the man said. “Forgive . . .”

  Kendrick gave him a nod, then stroked the man’s hair, as he might do with one of his sons, to comfort him.

  “Goddess go with you,” Kendrick said softly.

  Then he rose, raised the sword overhead, and plunged the blade into the dying man’s heart.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Addie cried out and leapt at Kendrick, but too late. The sword went straight through the man’s chest.

  The man grunted in pain, then his eyes cleared, and he looked suddenly happy. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Those were the last words he spoke. His body shimmered with a silvery light and then, before Addie’s eyes, the man dissolved into dust. The dust fell to the floor, swirled into a fine mist, and was gone, out the open door.

  “Holy shit, you killed him!”

  The words sprang from Addie’s mouth before she could stop them. Kendrick, who’d bowed his head, the sword’s point resting on the floor, looked up at her, his green eyes luminous with tears.

  “He gave me no choice,” he said.

  “What about the others out there?” Addie’s voice went up a notch. “Did you kill them too?”

  Kendrick took one stride to her where she stood frozen and terrified. “You need to go, Addison. Take the cubs to safety for me, as you promised.”

  “But—”

  “Your police will come. I can’t let them find my sons. Please.”