by A. Star
Bones were loud as they broke in the magical process she had regularly endured since her early adolescence. Sinew stretched and popped. Cracking and snapping noises filled the room, followed by other wet, fleshy sounds before a large tiger filled up much of the free space at the end of her bed.
She breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the twitchiness subsided, her night’s calling nearly fulfilled.
With a worried, feline glance back at the locked door, she turned and leapt through the window, her large paws silently hitting the dirt just beyond the narrow hedge as she took off into the night and the concealing darkness.
With the last meeting finally completed, Gareth all but kicked Cade out of the house. His friend left with an understanding laugh and Gareth went in search of his new bride. How odd those words sounded, he thought, but he liked it.
Given that it was late, he checked his (their) room first, but she wasn’t there. So he tried the guest room next, and found the door locked. This wasn’t disconcerting until he knocked, and there was no answer. He knocked again, calling her name, but still no answer. He frowned, wondering why she wasn’t answering her door.
He was suddenly at war with himself over what to do. If she needed some privacy, he didn’t want to invade it...but then why didn’t she just answer him and say so? What if there was something wrong, he wondered next, and he didn’t do what he could to find out...but then maybe that was just paranoia.
So, he went in search of Bobby, to ask how she had been through out the day; if it had seemed like there was anything wrong.
He didn’t give time to the one worry that burrowed too deep to be listened to: that she was somehow unhappy with him.
Although the run through the woods lining the Kendrick property was wonderful and refreshing, and the tiger within didn’t want to go home, she knew that she couldn’t risk being out of the house too long. It would raise too many questions, so she forced herself to return and leap back through the window.
She brought the change back to human and was just finishing putting the window back in order when there was a knock on the door. Her heart skipped a beat, maybe two, as she swallowed hastily and made sure nothing looked amiss.
“Enter,” she called.
“Irina.” It was Gareth, and he sounded relieved. “Your door is locked.”
Cursing herself in Russian, she hurried to the door and opened it. “Sorry,” she said with a faint smile.
His dark brows were knit.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, leaning to one side to peer past her. She didn’t try to obscure his view, even though she worried she had left some clue behind in her haste.
“Of course,” she said. “Why would it not be?”
He frowned. “I came by your room before and knocked, but you didn’t answer.”
Again, she cursed inwardly. “I must have been in the bathroom,” she covered, a little awkwardly, but smiled. “Very sorry I did not hear you.” She thought fast, wanting to not linger on that but knowing that any attempt to move to something else would be obvious. “I hope you did not worry.”
Gareth nodded slowly. “A little, but I...I thought it must be something like that.” He smiled, but she could tell it was a bit forced and she hated herself. “I was just done with work for the day and wanted to see if you wanted to spend some more time together, maybe watch a movie or something.”
She managed another nod, keeping it from being too quick or shaky. “I would like that,” she said. “Do you have TV in your room? We could watch in bed.” This time her smile came a little easier, and his looked like it did too.
“I do,” he said. “That would be nice.” Apparently the thought of snuggling in bed to watch a movie helped ease his earlier concern, and for that she was grateful. With her tiger still so near the surface, it appealed to her as well on levels that he couldn’t know about, but the thought of just curling up beside him made her feel warm and safe.
Despite its rocky start, the rest of the evening went well. Gareth seemed to get over any concern or suspicion, and Irina felt calmer now that she had made her shift. They watched some action movie that he liked, but she found kind of silly. (She was a shapeshifter and couldn’t even do some of the things these guys did.) But it didn’t matter. They had the chance to be grateful for Bobby’s optimism again before settling in for another night’s rest.
Gareth was back to work the next morning, and Irina was again left to her own devices.
She couldn’t risk a shift during the daylight hours, so instead she decided to go out. Sandra offered to drive her, since she knew Gareth wouldn’t need to go anywhere, and they decided to do some shopping. Irina maintained that she wasn’t going to be an extravagance, but she did realize there were a few things she needed, as her last shopping trip had been cut short by a dress and Gareth had insisted she take one of his cards.
Irina had a chance to do a little browsing alone when Sandra had to step outside the store to take a call from her daughter’s school. Irina didn’t give much thought to being on her own until a rough hand yanked her into the empty well of a broken escalator. Only her surprise allowed it to happen, because her attacker was human and shouldn’t have been able to grab her like that, but then she also didn’t want to cause a scene. She couldn’t allow herself to come under the gaze of the American police.
A knife pressed against her throat and a hand went over her mouth. “You put us on a merry chase, little girl,” the voice said in a faded British accent. She didn’t know him, of course, but she knew precisely where he’d come from.
How had they already found her here?
She glared at him but said nothing. Her heart pounded so hard it almost drowned out all other sound and she felt her muscles tremble. Inside, her beast roared and growled, scratching and clawing to get out and tear this human idiot to pieces, but he seemed to know that she wouldn’t want to draw attention to herself.
“You gonna play nice?” he asked.
Still, she said nothing. Fear and anger warred inside. The human wanted to be afraid, but the cat wouldn’t let her be. The beast wanted to fight.
He was only human, she thought. It shouldn’t be too hard to get the upper hand on him, but then what? She couldn’t report it, but she’d have to go home. Maybe she could tell Gareth, but then she’d have to tell him the rest... She couldn’t run. She couldn’t leave him. The idea of severing the bond they’d formed was like a kick to the chest, and yet, she couldn’t put him in danger either. The impossibility of the moment, of the choice before her, was almost enough to let the panic rise past the tiger and surface. Almost.
“You gonna play nice?” he demanded again, pressing his hand harder against her mouth until the back of her head hit the wall.
Her noise twitched with her growl just before the beast broke loose, a little, and she got her mouth open enough to bite him hard on the hand. He began to yell but when her head bashed into his, he collapsed. The shapeshifter bone density was harder than a human being’s. Losing no time, she spit some of his blood from her mouth and tore off his belt, binding his hands and leaving him on the unmoving escalator. Either he’d get away or they’d find him, but he certainly wouldn’t be able to tell anyone why he was really here.
She hurried from the store and nearly collided with Sandra, who was just on her way back in. The other woman must have taken note of Irina’s out of breath condition, because she frowned with concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” Irina said, trying to not sound so breathy. “Yes, I’m fine.” She swallowed, willing her thudding heart to calm itself. “I hope everything is well with your daughter?”
Sandra looked unconvinced, but nodded. “Yeah, it’s fine,” she echoed Irina’s answer. “Do you...need to go home?”
Irina nodded. “Yes, that would be good.”
With a break in the day’s work, Gareth was just sitting down to lunch with Bobby, a little disappointed that Irina was again missing in action. He looked at his ass
istant and asked, trying not to sound worried or paranoid, “Where’s Irina today?”
Not sensing anything amiss, Bobby replied easily enough, “She’s out shopping with Sandra. They said they’d be back this afternoon.”
Relaxing, Gareth nodded and started eating. He allowed his thoughts to drift to the past two nights, because that was much more enjoyable than thinking about work. It apparently showed, however, because Bobby was grinning.
“You know,” he began, “it’s only been a few days, but this whole house feels different just having her in it.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Gareth agreed with a smile. “I don’t think I’d have ever guessed it was possible.”
Bobby laughed. “Me neither,” he said. “But here it is.” He paused. “It’s great that she’s here, but so sad how it all went down. I mean, feeling like she had to leave Russia after her parents died in that wreck in St Petersburg.”
Some small alarm went off in Gareth’s head. “St Petersburg?”
Unaware of his employer’s thoughts, Bobby nodded casually. “Yeah, she said that’s where the car crash happened that killed her parents. Just awful, I mean, just twenty-something and lose both your parents at once?” He shook his head sadly.
Gareth nodded, but it was distantly. His mind was whirring, alarmed.
Because she had told him it was a car crash in Moscow.
It occupied his mind through the next few hours of work. A small detail, but how did you forget the city your parents died in? And if it wasn’t an issue of memory, then it was a lie, and why would she lie?
Small though it might be, a seed of doubt wormed its way into his brain and ignored all the feelings of the past days. It latched on to her not answering her door the night before, and the strange way she had acted when she finally did. He didn’t know what it meant. They were such small things, in and of themselves, but suddenly he was worried. He had heard and read the horror stories of other women looking for men in the US to marry, who were ultimately gold-diggers and scammers. Not that you couldn’t find an American-made one of those, but his circumstances made him think to the ones he’d read about when going online and beginning this whole endeavor. And suddenly, he was worried.
The worry grew as he forced himself to work, because he just had more time to think about it.
When he finally heard the car doors shutting in the driveway, he wasn’t able to contain it any longer and left his office on the instant to talk to Irina, who was just walking inside with Sandra and carrying a noticeable lack of shopping bags. Sandra nodded at her employer, cast a worried glance at Irina, and excused herself.
Gareth didn’t pay much mind to the exchanged look, feeling all his focus on Irina. She looked a little out of sorts, and part of him wanted to ask why, but the rest was consumed by a need to know what was going on. Why had she lied to him? What else was she lying to him about?
Was another woman he let in not to be trusted after all? And after all this?
Irina seemed to see the storm clouds in his eyes, and she looked frightened. He ignored it and asked coldly, “Where did your parents die?”
She hesitated, and slammed home another nail. “St Petersburg,” she finally said.
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m...I’m not,” she stammered, but he could read it in her eyes. That gaze that had held so much between them was now revealing much more.
He felt his ire rising. “When we talked before, you said it was Moscow.”
She closed her eyes, in acknowledgement of being caught.
“Where were you last night?” He drove home another point, angrier by the heartbeat.
“I can’t tell you,” she whispered. He saw a silver sheen lining her eyes, tears, but he ignored them. A talented actress could always summon tears on command, right? Still, the sight tugged at him and he had to hold back his reaction to it.
“I can’t believe this, Irina. I trusted you,” he sighed, truly disappointed and hurt. Before his anger got the better of him, he turned away and headed back to his office. They’d talk about this later, after he had calmed down.
“Gareth, wait!” she called and he heard her footsteps jogging after him, following him into the office and shutting the door.
“Get out, Irina,” he snapped without looking at her.
“Nyet!” she said firmly. “I had to lie about my parents.”
He turned to face her, wondering what the hell she was going to say next. “Why would you have to lie about something like that?”
An inner battle crossed her beautiful features and the anger with her made his heart ache worse than anything he’d ever known, yet he couldn’t let it go. He had not told her about his injury, but it was a lie of omission. This was outright and felt of something deeper, he could sense it.
“My parents did not die in car crash,” she finally confessed, “but were murdered.”
“What?” This was making less and less sense. “Why the hell would you lie about that? Why would you feel you had to?”
She swallowed visibly, shoulders rising and falling with her breathing. “Because of why they were murdered.” She paused and a cascade of tears fell down her face, skin flushing beneath them and he felt his insides rent apart with the desire to comfort her. The sadness in her features unbearable to him. Yet he didn’t.
“Why were they murdered?” he asked quietly.
“If I tell you,” she replied, very softly, “you aren’t going to believe me.”
“Try.”
Irina choked back a sob and sunk to the floor, like he’d just told her she was going to be executed and was waiting for the bullet. “I’m not...human, Gareth,” she said, head dropping.
That didn’t really sink in. “What?”
She lifted her face and met his gaze. There was such sorrow and yet something else, pride perhaps? “I am not human. I am a shapeshifter, a were-tiger.” There was the briefest of pauses and then the rest tumbled out of her mouth in a gush of emotion. “So were both of my parents, and there are men sweeping my mother country. They are killing all of us and we do not even know why. We are all trying to get out of country before we are killed, but Gareth, I think they found me here too because there was a man in the store that—“
“Irina!” Gareth almost shouted. “Are you insane? How can you expect me to believe that you’re a creature who doesn’t exist? How do you expect me to believe that you’re not human?! It’s ridiculous!” His brain just couldn’t process what she was saying. He began to feel light-headed and flushed, sweating. He had to get out.
“Because it is truth!” she exclaimed, smacking her hands on the floor in frustration. “I do not tell you because I know you will not believe me when I come here. I know how it sound, but it is truth!”
For an instant, the way she knelt on the ground with her hands pressed to the carpet, the image of a big cat did flash before his eyes. But it was chased away as quickly as it had appeared and the world began to get fuzzy.
“I can’t...” he said, maneuvering his chair around her, “I can’t listen to this. I have to go...” He left the room as quickly as he could, leaving her calling his name behind him.
Irina pressed her face into the carpet and sobbed before a short-lived wail wrenched her heart from her chest. It was over. She was dead, and everything good that had happened and been felt these past days was broken. It was all over.
At least her last days were pleasant ones.
Pulling herself from her knees, she refused to just lay down and die. She knew Gareth could never be convinced. So few humans could be and even those that were usually wanted to kill what they didn’t understand. She had to leave. She had to run before that became her and Gareth.
She didn’t blame him. She had known he wouldn’t listen. He was only human. How stupid she had been!
But she had really thought they’d had a chance... It had felt so good, so right, and so happy.
Running through the hall, she rushed into her
bedroom and opened her computer to see if she could figure out what best to do next. Her email was open and there was a message from Oksana, but it didn’t tell her anything new.
They know. Have man in US. How long can tiger hide in forest there?
She didn’t know if that was a very good idea. A tiger of her size would not be able to hide for very long, though there were some deep woods in the area. If she could just get to them, it might work. But she would have to be careful. She didn’t want to go feral, like some had, and lose all her humanity, but she would be harder to track as a cat in the wilderness than as a human, a sitting duck in this house, with a paper trail stuck to her shoes.
Irina choked down another sob and began to look around the room, trying to form a plan, but she didn’t get very far before she realized that her window was open. And she didn’t remember leaving it that way.
“Left your window open, little girl,” said a voice with a faint British accent from the door to her bathroom.
It took a few hours, but eventually Gareth calmed down. He didn’t pass out in the process, for which he was grateful. He still thought the woman must be psychotic to say the things she had, but maybe... He didn’t know, but maybe he could get her some help. Maybe it wasn’t a lost cause. Because the feeling inside was just too strong to let go so easily. There had to be a way to make it work, even if she was having some lunacy issues.
So that’s what found him outside her door that evening. He knocked and called her name, but there was no answer. He frowned and his anger stirred, but he put that aside. After what had happened earlier, he probably wouldn’t have answered him either.
“Irina,” he called, knocking again. “We need to talk. I’m sorry about earlier. Please let me in...” He put his hand on the doorknob and found it unlocked, so he pushed it open and felt his heart clench at what he saw.
