Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc. Book 7)

by Zoe Chant

  He woke up, startled, and floundered for a moment before he remembered where he was. “Yeah?”

  Destiny was crouched by the side of the pool, carefully staring out and over his head. “Your clothes are dry now. I’ll just turn my back.”

  Ethan dragged himself out of the pool, feeling like he weighed as much as the hell pig. It took forever just to get dressed, and he was trembling from exhaustion by the time he was done.

  “Okay,” he said, still sitting by the edge of the pool.

  Destiny turned around, and seemed to see him for the first time. Creases of concern appeared around her beautiful brown eyes. “I wish I hadn’t left you here. I didn’t think you’d just sit in the water this whole time!”

  “I didn’t mean to. I dozed off.”

  That only made her look more worried. “Ethan… Don’t take this the wrong way, but you really don’t look good.”

  He opened his mouth to deny it, then reconsidered. She was his friend and his partner on this mission. She needed to know what he was and wasn’t capable of. Pretending he was stronger than he was to save his pride could put her at risk.

  “I don’t feel good,” he admitted

  She squatted on her heels beside him and laid her palm on his forehead. It was cool and soothing. “You’re so hot. Damn, I wish the med kit hadn’t come open.”

  Absently, he said. “Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which fills up first.”

  Destiny made a face. “What a charming image. You learn that saying in the Marines?”

  “Worse. My dad.” He wanted to bite his tongue as soon as the words were out of his mouth. As far as he was concerned, and definitely as far as Destiny was concerned, that asshole didn’t exist. “Hand up?”

  She put her arm around his waist, he draped his arm across her shoulders, and they stood together. The world swung around in a sickening yellow blur, then stabilized.

  “I found a good place,” Destiny said. “Secure. And not far. It even has beds!”

  “With mattresses?” Ethan asked.

  “Yup. They’re kind of dusty, but I pulled a couple off and banged them around some, so they should be good.” She met his incredulous gaze, and said, “I’m not joking. Apparently the palace got furnished first—which stands to reason, right? No gold or anything. Looks like the real valuables got cleaned out. But the furniture and some of the furnishings are still there. You’ll see.”

  He knew she wasn’t making it up, but he still didn’t quite believe it until he saw it for himself. The palace was unmistakable for anything else, a beautiful confection of ornately carved towers and elegant domes, and surrounded by a moat with an actual drawbridge. The stream which flowed from the baths was channeled into the moat, though the water wasn’t as clear as it was in the baths. Lilypads floated in the greenish water, and fish swam lazily within the depths. And—

  Ethan recoiled. “Is that a snake?”

  “Yup. Very poisonous. Don’t fall in.”

  He looked back down, careful not to lean. Several white snakes hung in the water, writhing unpleasantly. As he watched, one made a sudden sideways dart and snapped at a big silvery fish three times its size. The fish thrashed for a few seconds, then went belly-up. The snake undulated up to it, unhinged its jaws until they were a gaping abyss lined with needle-sharp fangs, and engulfed the entire fish in a single gulp.

  “Yikes,” Ethan muttered. “Guess we won’t be taking any refreshing swims around the palace.”

  Destiny grinned. “Maybe not around, but in. It has an indoor swimming pool.”

  “It does not—” Ethan began, then decided that he should believe everything Destiny said no matter how insane or unlikely it sounded. She hadn’t steered him wrong yet. “Snake-free, I presume.”

  “Completely.” She laughed. “It’s not literally a swimming pool. It’s a giant bath, like the one outside but fancier. But it’s deep enough to swim in.”

  They crossed the drawbridge, and Destiny pulled it up after them. He would have felt guilty about not helping her, but it was on a pulley system that was clearly designed to be easy to handle from the inside. Besides, he liked watching the play of muscles on her shoulders and back. A light mist of sweat lay over her brown skin, making it gleam like polished wood.

  I could watch her pulling weights forever, he thought. I could watch her do anything forever. The way she moves is so beautiful. Like a dancer. Like a martial artist. Like a tiger.

  He needed to stop obsessing over what he couldn’t have and count his blessings that he had her at all, even if it wasn’t the way he wanted. She was the best friend anyone could ever want, and he could count on her to help him rescue his men. It was better to be able to look at her beauty, even if he couldn’t touch, than to have never seen it at all.

  Yeah. He’d just keep telling himself that.

  Chapter 9

  Destiny

  O nce the drawbridge was up, Destiny relaxed a little. Even in the wildly unlikely event that Apex had tracked them to a city they’d only found by chance and no amount of deliberate searches had ever discovered, the water vipers would make short work of any rampaging hell pigs. Ethan had the safe place he needed to rest and recover.

  If rest is all he needs, an uneasy voice within her muttered.

  He looked terrible, pale and sweating and trembling just from the effort of staying on his feet. When she slipped her arm back around him, she could feel how hard he was working just to breathe. By the time she got him to the room that she suspected had been the maharajah’s bedroom, she was practically carrying him.

  She laid him in the bed, took off his boots and belt, then, suspicious that he’d been hiding an injury, his pants and shirt. The black bruise on his side had spread past the edges of the tape she’d laid across his ribs. Broken ribs, for sure. Internal injuries? Pneumonia, like she’d surmised? Some other infection? All of the above?

  He shivered, and she pulled the covers over him. He lay still, eyes closed, looking far more vulnerable than she’d ever seen before. Destiny stroked his hair, which was damp with sweat and very soft. He didn’t stir. The air rasped in his throat.

  She wished she knew more about medicine than what she’d learned in a basic battlefield aid class, plus what she’d picked up from her paramedic pals. Then again, she suspected that the problem wasn’t her lack of knowledge, but her lack of supplies. What would Shane be able to do if he was here? He’d probably just know the exact name and dosage of the antibiotics he didn’t have anyway.

  No, said her tiger. Knowledge is exactly what you need.

  Destiny jumped, startled and uneasy. Her tiger’s voice had sounded so… forceful. Normally she was playful or lazy. Cranky, at most. And then there’d been those revolting demands to rip out the daeodon’s throat and drink his blood…

  Yes, hissed her tiger. It would have been so satisfying. Next time, I won’t let you hold me back.

  Forget about… Destiny didn’t even want to think it. Any of it. …all that stuff. What did you mean about me needing knowledge?

  Medicine doesn’t just come from tablets. Those… The tiger snarled the next words with anger and revulsion. …those pills of yours don’t come from a factory. There’s medicine all around you, if you just remember it. Remember! The last word came out in a silent roar that left Destiny reeling.

  She tried to remember the herb-gathering trips she’d gone on with Mataji. They hadn’t been in this exact sort of terrain—her area had been less of a jungle, more of a forest, and Mataji had said that Destiny’s own herb, sherneend, only grew atop a single mountain. But she’d pointed out other herbs that she’d said grew in the entire region.

  Unfortunately, Destiny had been more interested in flying kites, catching lizards, and generally raising hell with Mataji’s rowdy grandkids. Now she wished she’d spent less time gathering long seed-pods to dry into rattling brown swords to fight mock duels with, and more paying attention to the priceless knowledge Mataji had to impart. If she’d only known!


  You do know, her tiger growled impatiently. Focus your silly human rattle-brain, and remember!

  Destiny closed her eyes and tried to relax, letting the memories come. Mataji had been spry for her age, trotting briskly along in her slapping flat sandals, with the edges of her green sari forever threatening to drag in the mud but somehow always staying spotless. She carried a cane, but just used it to bang on the ground to get attention, or to point. Destiny pictured that cane pointing, and tried to see what it pointed at.

  A low creeper with white flowers. Mataji had said the dried flowers eased menstrual cramps. That had embarrassed Destiny horribly at the time since her period hadn’t even started yet, but it was kind of funny in retrospect given her go-to excuse for her actual pills.

  A spiny red fruit that could be steeped in alcohol to make a liniment to rub on sore muscles. Destiny could use some of that right now, but it wasn’t as if she needed it, and anyway they didn’t have any alcohol.

  Little brown seeds, to be chewed for toothache… A jagged-edged green leaf, to be crushed and applied to wounds… A yellow flower, for coughs…

  The images came thick and fast, crowding at her mind. Her tiger was right. She did have everything she needed, at least as far as knowledge was concerned. She just had to go out and hunt for it.

  Yesss, hissed her tiger. Be a hunter!

  Right. Sure, Destiny promised, trying to keep her uneasiness out of her mental voice. Let’s go stalk the wild geranium.

  “Hey. Hey, jarhead. Wake up.”

  She had to shake Ethan before he opened his eyes, and even then it was a moment before they focused on her.

  “Do you need me?” he mumbled.

  I always need you, she thought before she could stop herself. I need you more than I need air to breathe.

  She crammed that thought into a box and sat on it. “No, I’m fine. I have to go out and get something. I want to leave my gun with you, just in case. Okay?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes were already fluttering shut.

  She laid it on a little bedside table within reach of his hand. Then, doubtful, she asked, “Could you shoot?”

  “Always, mudpuppy.” His voice was weak, but she knew it was the truth.

  She took his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Destiny hurried along the streets. She barely noticed the beauty around her, she was so knotted up with ten different kinds of worry. What if she didn’t recognize the herbs after all? What if they didn’t grow here? What if she got the wrong ones, and poisoned Ethan? What if—

  Inside her head, her tiger roared with fury. Shut up! Shut up, and hunt! Then let ME hunt!

  Destiny rocked back on her heels, jolted out of her anxiety and into a whole new one. She was tempted to yell back at her tiger, but God knew what sort of fury that would unleash. Instead, she made herself reply calmly. I am hunting. And I need hands to pick the herbs, and then I have to carry them in a backpack, and then I have to grind them or boil them or something. You can’t do any of that. You want Ethan to get better, right?

  Yes, growled her tiger. We will protect Ethan. Go, silly girl! Protect him, PROTECT HIM!

  The roar was loud enough to make her head ring. As she left the city and began to poke through the jungle outside, she couldn’t help hoping against hope that Mataji had been wrong about the whole “only on a single mountaintop” thing and she’d find a nice patch of sherneend, gray-green and ready for picking.

  With smug satisfaction, her tiger said, You will find none of that here. Then, an instant later, Are you blind? There, there!

  And there it was: a patch of the little yellow-flowered herb that soothed coughs, almost invisible under a layer of dead leaves. Destiny picked the lot of it, then, rather grudgingly, said, Thanks.

  Her tiger purred.

  And then she saw the entire world with new eyes. It was as if she was looking at one of those magic pictures that looked like a bunch of random dots until you stared at it long enough, and then it became a vase of flowers. The jungle was no longer a hard terrain to be overcome, it was a supermarket with everything free for the taking. There were fruits and there were vegetables and there were spices, there was a tree whose twigs could be chewed and used as toothbrushes, there was a vine that could be stripped and dried and twisted into rope. And there was an entire pharmacy full of medicinal herbs.

  Unfortunately, most of them weren’t the ones she needed. She impatiently passed over leaves that settled upset stomachs and roots that cured athlete’s foot, bark for headaches and berries for cramps and a flower that could be made into a rinse for oily hair.

  What about that? asked her tiger when she hesitated over a plant with pale leaves and tiny purple flowers. I don’t remember that one.

  I think Mataji showed me that one when you were asleep, Destiny replied. It’ll make Ethan feel better, but…

  Then give it to him, her tiger growled impatiently. Stop dawdling and pick it!

  Destiny didn’t feel like getting into yet another argument with her tiger. She picked it. There was no harm in that. But she’d let Ethan decide whether or not he wanted to take it.

  She also harvested a jagged-leaved herb she could crush and apply to his wounds. But she had no luck finding anything useful for fever or pneumonia. Maybe none of those grew where she was. Or maybe if she kept searching, eventually she’d find some… but when she checked her watch, she saw that she’d already been gone for hours. She didn’t like leaving Ethan alone that long, especially when there might be enemies about, gun or no gun. Reluctantly, she headed back into the city.

  As she turned a corner, she startled a big white deer. It leaped over a low wall, then bounded toward the jungle.

  Destiny’s tiger lunged forward.

  No! Destiny shouted inwardly. Not now. We can get a deer any time we want.

  Not food, her tiger snarled. I want to chase. I want to hunt NOW!

  It felt like the beast would explode through her skin, tearing her to bits in an effort to set herself free.

  Destiny found herself down on her knees on the hard stone streets, clutching her head in her hands and shouting aloud. “Stop! I have to bring the herbs to Ethan! If you take me over, he could die!”

  Her tiger backed down with a final, resentful snarl.

  Destiny got shakily to her feet. She could feel the beast within as a raging, uncontrollable presence, not only in her mind but in her body, in her entire being. She’d defeated the animal for now, but she had no confidence that she could do so again. It was stronger than she was. It always had been. And now she’d lost her only defense against it.

  She hurried back to the palace, pulled the drawbridge, and went to check on Ethan. He was still asleep, and didn’t even seem to have moved. She stood for a moment looking down at his sleeping face, at his sandy eyelashes, the nape of his neck. She had the crazy impulse to bend over and kiss it…

  …which was not what he needed. Maybe if she was his mate, her touch alone might soothe him. But she wasn’t, so it wouldn’t, so she wouldn’t.

  Destiny practically bolted out of the room before she could change her mind. She found the palace kitchen, which had a lot of sealed jars she decided were better left unopened, and also pots and pans and a cooking hearth, which she used to prepare the herbs.

  We could have fresh venison right now, sweet and tender, if you weren’t so stubborn, growled her tiger.

  We’ll hunt for deer later, Destiny promised. I don’t have many outfits, remember? I want to undress before I shift.

  Why bother? Fur is better than stupid clothes.

  Destiny didn’t dignify that with a response.

  She carried a tray up to Ethan, set it on the table by the bed, and shook him awake. “Hey, jarhead. Buddy. Ethan, come on. Wake up.”

  He was hard enough to rouse that she thought he’d been closer to unconsciousness than sleep. His blue-green eyes were glassy, his face flushed. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine
. I made you some herbal remedies. Here, take this. It’ll help your cough.” She gave him a spoonful of sticky syrup. Then she held up the mug of tea she’d made from the herb with pale leaves and purple flowers. “This one… Let me tell you what it is, then you decide whether or not you want to take it.”

  He rubbed his forehead like his head hurt. “That sounds ominous. Are you not sure whether it’s mushrooms or toadstools?”

  Destiny rolled her eyes. “No, jarhead. I know exactly what it is. That’s the problem. It’s a… kind of a pick-me-up. It’ll help with the pain, knock your fever down, give you more energy and a clearer head…”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “It’s not a cure, or even a treatment. It’ll make you feel better for a little while, but once it wears off, whatever’s wrong will still be wrong. Worse, probably, since you’ll have been running around doing things when you should’ve been resting.”

  The moment she said those last words, Destiny wished she hadn’t. Eagerly, Ethan said, “Run around? It could get me back on my feet? For how long?”

  “No idea. Might be a few hours, might be a few days.”

  “Days, huh? Think it could last long enough to get me to the base?”

  Destiny bit her lower lip. “I really don’t know. Like I said, it could just be a couple hours. Or it could last just long enough to get you to the base, then you collapse once you’re inside.”

  “I’ll take that risk.” He held out his hand for the mug.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive, mudpuppy. Hand it over.” He struggled to sit up, then fell back. Destiny helped him sit up and lean against a bunch of brocade pillows, then steadied his hands around the cup. She’d found it in the kitchen; it was made of fine porcelain painted with a delicate pattern of jungle vines.

  Ethan sipped the concoction and made a face. “Tastes like old socks.”

  “How do you know what old socks taste like?”

  She thought he was going to say it tasted like old socks smelled, but he chuckled and said, “Because Ellie stuffed one of hers in my mouth when we kids.”