Jungle Blaze

by Lexy Timms

  Not that it was her fault. She had little control over that. Without him there to monitor it, she would change and leap out an open window before she realized where she was, or even what she was. She’d woken up several times as a cat, always in a tree or stalking a barking dog on the other side of a fence. She never hurt one, she never would. He suspected it was the hunt she wanted. But every time she suddenly realized where she was, she had to try to figure out how to get home again. Sometimes, that wasn’t easy. Especially since this city was still fairly new to her.

  And each time she changed increased the risk that someone would see her and report a fully-grown lioness running loose. This time, she was calmed. This time, she fell asleep next to him, her soft skin touching his, her chest rising and falling, her long, lovely legs spread over the mattress in blissful slumber.

  An hour from now, she might be tearing the sheets as her body broke and reformed. Or two. Or three. Or not at all. Taylor tried to sleep around that, nodded off when his body demanded it, when it screamed for a little rest. The times when he pushed too hard, stayed up too often, those were the times he ended up outside in his bathrobe, hunting a lioness with a glass of water. Splashing her face was the best bet he had to startle her awake.

  For the moment, he lay in the darkness, staring at the ceiling and breathing the foul city air. It was a nice change from the clean, muggy breath of the Amazon rainforest or the cloying jungles of Africa. Here, there were millions of people getting on with their lives and not one of them was hunting him or Angelica. Here, the greatest danger was the expressway during rush hour. Here in the polluted skies, no one knew where they were.

  Should have killed the bad one when you had the chance.

  He sighed. That was new. What changes Angelica was going through overwhelmed him, but he was trying to save her and deal with his own issues stemming from Melinda’s interference. She’d forced him to change at her will, had experimented on him—the only test subjects she’d had were lions, so he was the first white tiger she’d seen... and she had been curious.

  But before Melinda, he and the cat never interacted. The cat called him the “other memory”, a small voice that consoled caution and helped the cat stay under the radar of man; for his part, Taylor was human without any real memory of when he was a tiger. But that had all changed. Now it was like sharing a brain with another person. Correction, it was sharing a brain with another person. The cat spoke to him now. That was a lot to deal with and, frankly, he was never sure he wasn’t just going crazy.

  We did kill her.

  No, the fat one.

  That was the name the cat gave Griselda. She was a large, round woman who looked like someone’s futzy grandmother. She also ran one of the world’s most intricate drug cartels. She’d seen him change. She’d been the financial backing behind Melinda. She was still alive.

  I can’t just kill for no reason... yes, I now see that there was a reason. But at the time I had no idea that she was going to be a part of our lives forever.

  The cat didn’t respond. Taylor got the feeling he was sulking.

  You don’t kill without cause, either, he reminded the cat. He sighed in the silence of his mind and found himself drifting off. He jerked awake and lifted his head to study his love. She slept soundly. He lay back down and closed his eyes.

  It was barely moments before he was awake. Very awake.

  “ANGELICA!” he screamed, and clapped his hands.

  She jerked awake and gasped. She turned and looked at him. He could see her realize that her body was shifting. She closed her eyes and concentrated, the hair receded from her legs, and her hands smoothed out again into long elegant fingers.

  “I’m sorry.” She sounded tired. Defeated. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

  He rolled over and wrapped an arm around her. “Let’s try again,” he said. He even sounded exhausted to himself.

  Chapter 2

  “Hello?” Taylor wondered if he sounded as raw as he felt. Of course, it was rude of whomever it was to call at... well, it was after 9:00. All good little agents should be up by now anyway. The problem wasn’t being up, the problem was still being up.

  “Don’t come in to work. Not today. Not tomorrow.”

  Taylor blinked. He’d been trained and had a great deal of experience thinking fast on his feet, it was a hazard of the profession, but he was still asleep, or still not asleep...

  “Randall?”

  “A certain military man has been asking questions about you and the good doctor. Leading questions. Regarding the late Dr. John’s experiments.”

  Taylor was suddenly, dreadfully, awake. The breath caught in his throat and he tried to think what he needed to ask first. There were too many questions to sort through. He went with the obvious. “I thought that was buried.”

  “It was.” Randall’s tone was apologetic. A touch angry. “And sealed. This is something else—I don’t know where this came from, but the military applications...” He left the rest unsaid.

  Maybe it wasn’t the first time that it occurred to someone that an army full of soldiers who could flow over the battlefield in a formation of tigers and could instantly heal non-fatal wounds would be a great benefit. But it was a first coming from his own government. He glanced at Angelica as she shifted, stretched sleepily. Suddenly she seemed too vulnerable, too close to, well, everything. The District of Columbia wasn’t the best place to be right now.

  “How bad is it?” Taylor asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

  Angelica sat up and looked at him, eyes still full of sleep. Of concern. He reached for her, taking her hand in his.

  “Bad.” Randall’s voice was low. He spoke rapidly. “They’re looking into your security clearance. Your background.”

  It took him a minute to catch the emphasis. If they were looking into his background that meant his history, his family. What was it Dr. John said? Something about studying his people? Had she written something down? Said something to someone about the idea? He thought of the sleepy little community he’d grown up in. They’d fled to America long ago to escape this kind of notice.

  “You told me this was taken care of, that there wouldn’t be any repercussions.” His voice was sharp. It wasn’t fair to blame Randall. He’d been a friend as well as a boss, and had violated a dozen or so internal regulations to protect Taylor’s secret, but the chill that had hold of his guts wasn’t being rational let alone fair. If that footage of his change, if any notes of who and what he was, still existed then Taylor had endangered his own family, not to mention his community. Whatever came next would be on his head. And for better or worse, Randall was the bearer of the news.

  They were against me leaving the community in the first place for this very reason. I asked them to trust me. I promised them this wouldn’t happen.

  “This didn’t come from my office.” Randall hissed. “And you know the footage we captured in Africa was accidently destroyed.” There was a slight pause. “I made sure of it personally.”

  Taylor gathered his thoughts. Make that a couple dozen internal regulations and a few federal laws that his friend had violated for Taylor’s sake. For Angelica’s sake. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Look... I...”

  “Yeah, I know,” Randall said. “It’s okay—I freaked out a little, too.”

  By this point Angelica was mouthing questions, trying to figure out what was going on. Taylor shook his head, motioning for her to wait. She sighed a little and flopped back against the pillow. Bits of stuffing flew in all directions. It hadn’t been a good night for bedding.

  Don’t get distracted. Focus.

  He returned his attention to Randall. “Can you find out where this came from?”

  “I’m working on it, but it happened somewhere in the inner workings of the Pentagon, completely bypassing the normal network.”

  “That’s telling all by itself,” Taylor thought out loud and rubbed his forehead. “So, whoever it was, they had full acc
ess to someone with a lot of brass.” There weren’t too many people on that particular list.

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “Someone connected to the slave ring?”

  Angelica’s head shot up. Her eyes took on a frightened look.

  Although Dr. Johns had denied knowledge of it her research was, at least in part, funded by a human trafficking operation run from a refugee camp. When Taylor and Angelica busted up the operation, at least one very prominent American general disappeared and hadn’t been seen since. The repercussions were still being felt.

  “It’s an angle we’re perusing.” Randall’s voice was strained. Taylor could match the look that went with it: the pursed mouth, the frown etching heavy lines into his forehead. Worried, Randall looked like a man in severe need of a digestive aid.

  “I’m sorry,” Taylor sighed. “I know you are... I...I need to call home, I guess.”

  “Yeah. That would be a good idea.” Randall paused for a moment and added, “Probably not from this phone. For that matter, I’d be very careful about what you do or say for a time.” He thought for a minute. “Tell you what: you two need a good vacation, a chance to rest up from all your hard work in Africa, so why don’t you go home, let Angelica meet the folks, take a little time, just the two of you.”

  “Thanks, but...” Taylor shook his head. There was too much to do and taking Angelica anywhere until her training was done was risky. She could very well turn in front of someone. The idea of her losing control on an airplane was terrifying. Of course, most of the problems they’d been having were because he’d been the one to change in front of someone. Becoming a white tiger in front of the head of a drug cartel, for example. He was about to ask Randall if they’d pursued that particular lead, when Randall added a little gem to think about.

  “I’ll make it official,” he said. “I’ll call it an investigation and put your lady on as a consultant.”

  Taylor looked at the phone in his hand. It was a very generous offer. If going back to Minnesota was ‘official’ business, then all the expenses around it were paid. Airfare, hotel, car rental, all of it.

  It’s not like any of this is his fault. But he’s not taking it well. Like this is personal. He’s feeling bad that the information got out.

  “That’s... thank you,” Taylor said and looked up at Angelica, who was about to burst from curiosity. The way her muscles were twitching it was all she could to not lean over and plaster her ear against the phone to find out what was going on. That she was respecting his space was amazing and wonderful and one of the reasons he loved her. He smiled, and reached out to touch her cheek. “I’ll think about it, okay? Let me see how the call goes and figure it out from there.”

  “All right, but let me know. I’ll come up with a charge code, just let me know what you need,” Randall said, then added quickly. “Within reason.”

  “Private jets are very reasonable,” Taylor pointed out with a grin.

  “Glad to see you’re feeling better.” Randall snorted and hung up.

  Angelica was on him the second he dropped the phone back on the nightstand. “What was that all about?” she asked, wrapping herself around him and looking very seriously into his eyes.

  I don’t want to tell her.

  She was too eager, too interested. Too... her. Bright and beautiful and everything he’d ever dreamed. And he was about to destroy her world. She’d been so good about the change so far, dealing with the frustration of the uncontrolled transformations with a certain aplomb, even if it scared her. And he knew it did. Her body was completely out of her control at this point, yet so far she’d never once given in to the fear. Not only that, she was having to rely on him to get her through the night. For someone as independent as Angelica, it was a hard transition to let go and allow someone else to take care of her, when she was the one used to doing all the caregiving.

  “Taylor?”

  Her expression became guarded. Uncertain.

  “Someone in the Pentagon found out about us,” he said finally.

  I want to give her the reassurance that everything would be all right. But right now he didn’t have enough information to do that. And he refused to lie to her.

  She froze. Expressionless. She didn’t speak. He wasn’t sure she could. He could see her mind working, the implications coming on her faster than she could take it in.

  “How?” It was barely a whisper.

  “Randall’s trying to figure that out. I don’t know. But...” He took a breath and then took her hand, holding it tight. “In order to join the CIA... hell, in order to get clearance while still in the Marines, they had to do an extensive background check on me.” He could see that it didn’t register with her and so he elaborated.

  “People—military people—had to go out and interview my parents. All my relatives.”

  “Okay, I still don’t follow,” Angelica said. “To work with Doctors International they talked to my mom, too.”

  Taylor licked his lips. “Remember what Melinda said? She said that I opened ‘another supply of test subjects’, she just needed to do some research into my background.”

  “Melinda is dead,” Angelica said, and dark shutters fell over her eyes. “She was unbalanced, disturbed.”

  He was losing her, back into the morass of her dreams. He took her chin in his hand, forcing her to lift her head and look at him.

  “You can’t go there right now. I need you to listen to me. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You think there aren’t people in the Pentagon just as disturbed as she was? Hell, these are the same people who used LSD on people without their knowledge, who sprayed DDT on children in swimming pools.”

  “But...” Angelica was trying to understand. “They can’t just take an entire town—”

  “You mean like Melinda did?”

  “But this is America—things like that don’t happen here!”

  “Yes,” Taylor looked into her eyes so she would understand him. “Yes, they do. And with alarming frequency.”

  She seemed smaller suddenly. More fragile. Damn, he hated doing this to her.

  “So, what do we do?” She might have been scared out of her mind, but he loved her for asking. That’s my girl. Don’t let fear keep you down.

  “We?” Taylor echoed, and smiled. “You need to continue your exercises. Don’t moan, you have to control this...”

  “But they’re not working,” Angelica protested, rising to the bait. “And I feel stupid.”

  “It’s how we’re trained,” Taylor insisted, glad he could give her something to focus on. To take the sting out of the news she’d just gotten.

  Angelica dropped her head to her chest. “Fine,” she said with all the enthusiasm of a rebellious teen. She sat up. “And what are you going to do?”

  “I think this is a really good time to call home,” Taylor said and dug in the drawer for a new burner phone. Maybe he was being paranoid, but Randall was right. He would have to be cautious from here on out. He found one and rummaged around for a sim card to fit. “Let’s just hope they’ll think the same when I tell them.”

  Angelica left him to it and padded into the bathroom. Taylor watched her go. She was a beautiful woman, dark curls cascading down her back. He eyed her trim waist, that beautiful backside, and for a moment wanted nothing more than to call her back to the bed where they could do their best to forget the world and all its dangers for an hour. She glanced back at him once, eyeing him with brilliant eyes, and smiled when she saw that his body was reacting to what he’d been looking at. She twitched her hips playfully and shut the bathroom door.

  He fell back against the pillows and sighed.

  Back to the matter at hand.

  Minutes loaded, he dialed a number he’d not used in a long time but would never forget. “Hey, Dad...”

  Chapter 3

  Dulles had been the stuff nightmares were made of. It took a very long time for them to get to the plane and past secu
rity. Taylor had overnighted a package to himself—care of his parents’ farm in Minnesota. Still, unarmed and even wearing slip-on loafers to get past security made him feel distinctly vulnerable, despite the fact that he could call upon the tiger if things went south. Right now he trusted no one—except for Angelica.

  But you won’t. The tiger is there, but the last thing you need right now is to show it to anyone.

  It was a lie, but one he needed to tell himself right now. If her life was in danger he wouldn’t hesitate to protect her. The tiger thrummed just beneath the surface, agreeing with quiet vehemence.

  Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

  They were told to report to a gate, and then the flight was changed to another gate at the other end of a very long terminal. They ended up running to make it in time. No one even apologized. They were given coach tickets, though he’d paid business class, and he was forced to shoehorn his 6’5”-frame into a seat made for someone Angelica’s size. His knees rubbed the seat in front of him and the tray table wouldn’t lie flat. Then the guy in that seat reclined and Taylor let out a howl of pain.

  “Maybe we don’t fly this airline anymore,” Angelica said, holding his hand.

  “Is there an airline called ‘Separated’? That’s what I want to fly right now.” His fingers curled around hers until she grimaced. “Sorry.” He loosened his grip. Marginally. He knew that he was grouchy, it was late nights and stress, but this flight wasn’t helping.

  He ordered coffee once they were airborne. As luck would have it they were out. He asked for a 7-Up and the waitress blithely dropped a Sierra Mist on the tray table she tried to force flat over his aching knees in unwanted helpfulness. He pulled himself up in the seat in self-defense so he could straighten his legs and save his kneecaps from further damage.

  “Please remain in your seat, sir!” The airline hostess was positively seething at this point, somehow managing to put her frustration on him, as though it was his fault the seat had been sized for midgets.