Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc. Book 7)

by Zoe Chant

  “I don’t need a power.” Roland didn’t raise his voice, but his even tones nevertheless conveyed a sense of fury held barely in check, a fury that could burn down the world. “I don’t need a weapon. I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

  “Silence.”

  “It won’t work, you know,” Justin said conversationally. “Sure, it’s a nice trick to keep us silent and still just by telling us so. But you’re not doing anything different than a common thug who ties people up and gags them.”

  Ethan was very interested to see that this, more than anything else, seemed to get to Lamorat. The wizard’s thin face flushed with anger. “Silence!”

  Justin didn’t speak again, but his expression clearly conveyed that the order had only proved his point.

  “Is that the best you can do?” Shane inquired. “You took him and me and Catalina. You hurt us. You changed us. But you couldn’t break us, and you couldn’t keep us. And you still can’t.”

  “That wasn’t me!” Lamorat snapped. “I mean us. That was Apex. We’ve improved on their methods. You three renegade felines found your mates, and that gave you the strength to not only break free, but stay free. Until now, of course. But these four were made by us.” He waved his hand at Roland, Merlin, Pete, and Ransom.

  “And you did something different to them?” Ethan inquired, keeping up his role as Mr. I’m Just Curious, No Need To Silence Me.

  “We did indeed,” Lamorat replied with immense self-satisfaction. “We destroyed their ability to recognize and bond with their mates. And as for those of you who already have mates, it’s not too late to change that. We’ll put you through the updated process, and sever you from your mates forever.”

  Despite himself, a chill went through Ethan’s heart at the wizard-scientist’s confident words. Was that really possible? Could anything short of death break the bond between him and Destiny?

  “Love makes a mate,” Destiny said, squeezing Ethan’s hand. “Not the other way around. Nothing can ever stop us from loving each other. You can silence me if you like, but that just means I’ll stand here silently thinking you’re an idiot.”

  Lamorat stared at her like he couldn’t believe his ears. “What did you just call me?”

  “An idiot,” Merlin said cheerfully. “A nitwit. A fool. A numbskull. A nincompoop. A ninnyhammer. A turnip-brain. A—”

  Lamorat had apparently been stunned into silence himself by Merlin’s stock of synonyms, but “turnip-brain” snapped him out of it. “Silence!”

  For the first time, Pete spoke up. “Like Justin said. Any dumbass can make people stop talking. You’re not doing anything different from slapping duct tape over our mouths. I’m not impressed.”

  “You… creatures… think I need to impress you? You’re nothing! Worthless!” The wizard glared around the room, then his gaze settled back on Pete. “You, Valdez. You’re a big talker when you think you’re the only one in danger. But you’re not. You have a daughter you’d die to protect. And I know where she lives.”

  Pete’s entire body tensed as he tried to lunge at Lamorat, but he couldn’t move from where he stood. As he opened his mouth to shout out his rage, the wizard smirked cruelly and said, “Silence.”

  Pete has a daughter? Ethan thought. He mentally calculated ages, realized that she couldn’t be more than fifteen, and was torn between fury at a man cruel enough to threaten a young girl and bewilderment at why Pete had never even mentioned that she existed.

  “And you,” the wizard said, turning on Ransom. “Quiet as a snake in the grass. I silenced you first so you couldn’t warn the others, but maybe I didn’t need to. You’re a born betrayer.”

  Ransom, of course, said nothing. Could say nothing. But Ethan saw a flicker of some unknowable emotion in his dark eyes, and felt a chill. Was Lamorat just trying to drive a wedge between them, or did he know something they didn’t?

  To Merlin, he said, “Both your powers are so appropriate for a man who changes identities like other people change clothes. What will your friends think if they ever learn the truth behind your innumerable lies?”

  Merlin shrugged and spread his hands in a broad gesture of unconcern, but it looked forced.

  Lamorat turned to Ethan, who felt himself tense. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me, he told himself, but the old saying rang hollow. After his childhood, the version of it that he believed was Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cause permanent damage.

  His tiger snorted. Words and talk may bother humans, but fangs and claws are what kill them.

  You missed the part where it’s supposed to rhyme, Ethan replied. But his tiger’s remark gave him as much strength as the warm grip of Destiny’s hand.

  “Ethan McNeil,” sneered the wizard. “Rejected by your own parents. Unloved by the very people who—”

  Destiny interrupted. “And I’m a freak of nature and Catalina’s a reckless woman who doesn’t know females are meant to be scared and Nick’s a criminal and Shane and Justin were assassins, blah, blah, blah, we all have things you can throw in our faces. And you know what? Nobody cares!”

  Lamorat glared at her. “Si—”

  Destiny’s nails suddenly dug into his palm. Ethan didn’t know her exact plan, other than the general idea of “stall and distract him,” but her urgency was unmistakable. He didn’t just need to distract the wizard in general, he needed to distract him now.

  “Merlin was right,” Ethan said loudly. “You are stupid. You think you can make us into your pet assassins? Don’t make me laugh! You already tried that with Shane and Catalina and Justin, and you failed miserably!”

  “I don’t want you as assassins, you fool!” Lamorat snapped. “That was Apex. Little government minions with little ambitions. The wizard council and I have something much more ambitious in store for you all.”

  The wizard began to glance away. Once again, Destiny dug in her nails. But she didn’t need to. Ethan had spotted the urgent flick of Ransom’s eyes toward him, and the deceptively cool way that Shane had also glanced at him. Whatever was going on was out of Ethan’s line of sight. But the others were depending on him to keep Lamorat from noticing. Ethan couldn’t let them down.

  “Who gives a shit?” Ethan demanded in a tone even ruder than his words. “Whatever it is, we won’t do it. And you can’t make us!”

  “You forget,” sneered the wizard, looking back at him. “It’s the mate bond that gives you strength. I’ve already ensured that your new friends here will never form one. And as for the rest of you, I can break yours.”

  “Bullshit! You think anything you say can make my mate turn against me, or me turn against her? You actually think you can wave your magic wand and break our bond?” Ethan jeered. The anger in the wizard’s narrow eyes was cold, not hot. For the first time, Ethan feared him. But he’d gone too far to turn back now. “Let’s see you try it! Gonna sprinkle me with sparkly magic bond-breaking glitter dust? Gonna—”

  “Silence!” shouted the wizard.

  The silence that fell was broken by Destiny’s sudden jeer of “Turnip-brain!”

  “ALL OF YOU! SILENCE!”

  And that was that. Ethan hoped he and Destiny had done enough. They’d definitely gotten Lamorat’s full attention. The wizard was giving him a glare chilly enough to turn Hell into a ski resort.

  “You’re forgetting that I control you. All of you. Utterly. Time for a demonstration of what that means. Everyone, watch and see the price of defiance.” The wizard bared his teeth in a cruel parody of a smile. “Ethan McNeil. I order you to kill your mate.”

  Chapter 16

  Destiny

  T he wizard’s words echoed in Destiny’s ears: “Ethan McNeil. Kill your mate.”

  She’d seen that Lamorat could control them. Even now, she couldn’t make herself speak. But she still couldn’t believe that Ethan would ever hurt her.

  And so she felt no fear of him. She saw the corded tension in his body and the set determinati
on in his eyes, and she feared for him. He was fighting the wizard’s order as hard as he could—as hard as it was possible for a man to fight. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, can both survive the collision?

  Destiny’s own love and determination burned through her. Her tiger roared, and her woman’s strength fused with her tiger’s fury. It wasn’t enough to break the wizard’s hold. But it was enough to crack it.

  “I love you,” she forced out through lips that would barely move. “I’m not afraid.”

  And Ethan replied, though he too had been silenced. His whisper sounded like a tiger’s growl. “I love you. I’d die before I’d hurt you.”

  “Kill her,” Lamorat ordered again.

  Ethan folded his arms across his chest, but otherwise didn’t move. His face, which had gone red with effort, suddenly went white.

  “I take back my order,” Lamorat said quickly.

  The instant the wizard finished speaking, Ethan collapsed at her feet.

  Destiny’s heart almost stopped. She wanted to drop down beside him, to check his pulse and breathing, but she couldn’t move. All she could do was stand there and watch and wonder, in the worst moment of her entire life, if he had died so he wouldn’t hurt her.

  Then she saw his chest move as he inhaled, and the rush of relief almost made her collapse herself. Maybe it would have, if she wasn’t already under magical orders to stand.

  “I took back my order because I may still have some use for him,” Lamorat said. “If I’d let it go one more minute, the strain of trying to defy me would have stopped his heart. So that’s where we stand. You can obey me, or you can die.”

  He paused, obviously expecting a dramatic silence to fall. After all, no one was able to speak.

  In that pin-drop silence, the barely audible whirr of the miniature drill that had been going the entire time they’d been distracting him was suddenly very noticeable indeed. Lamorat whipped around just in time to see dust drift down from the last of the pencil-tip sized holes that had been drilled around his hidden door.

  But not in time to do anything about it. The door fell in, forcing him to jump back. It smashed down a bare inch from his feet.

  Drat, Destiny thought. She’d seen Fiona pull that trick before, and she’d hoped the door would hit him over the head.

  But the figure standing in the hole in the wall where the door had been wasn’t Fiona. It was a man Destiny had never seen before.

  “Let them go,” the stranger said.

  “Silence!” Lamorat snapped.

  “Nope,” replied the stranger. “I like the sound of my own voice. That’s the one thing you and I have in common.”

  Destiny’s spirits rose. Whoever the man was, he was obviously on their side, and Lamorat couldn’t control him. So he must not be a shifter. She wondered who he was.

  Lamorat frowned in concentration. “Freeze!”

  The man in the doorway gritted his teeth. With obvious effort, he took a step forward.

  “I know you,” Lamorat said. “You’re Subject Nine. Carter Howe.”

  “Got it in one.” Carter Howe took another step forward.

  Destiny watched him with even more curiosity. She’d never met him before, but she knew who he was. He was the tech billionaire who’d been presumed dead in a plane crash. In fact, he’d been kidnapped and held by Apex until Fiona and Justin had released him. But she’d been under the impression that he was a shifter, though she didn’t know what kind, so she didn’t know why Lamorat’s power wasn’t working on him.

  Lamorat edged a step backward, though unfortunately not close enough for anyone to touch him. “I read your file closely, so as not to repeat past errors. You were Apex’s failure. Broken. Ruined. The fact that you can resist me at all only proves what a monstrosity you are. Still, even that thing inside you can’t fight me for long. FREEZE.”

  Carter wavered, stumbled, and nearly fell. He had to grab one of the empty cages to catch himself. Then he pushed himself upright again. He and Lamorat stared at each other, locked into a silent showdown.

  And Destiny, who had been fighting all along, felt the wizard’s hold on her loosen. She still couldn’t budge from where she stood. But she could kneel down beside Ethan and take his hand. His eyes didn’t open, but he traced the letters O and K on her palm with his nail.

  Thank God, she thought. She doubted that he’d faked his collapse, but he’d obviously recovered a lot more than he was letting on.

  If only they could distract Lamorat a little bit more, they might break his spell entirely. Maybe if they all shouted at once…?

  Shane gave a tiny jerk of his chin in Lamorat’s direction.

  A gray blur dropped from the ceiling. The wizard let out a very undignified shriek as Shane’s gray moth kitten wrapped itself around his head with all four legs, like the face-hugger in Alien.

  “Go!” Catalina yelled. Her butterfly kitten flew to Lamorat, landed square in the middle of his chest, and began to enthusiastically shred his coat and everything underneath.

  At the same moment, Nick let go of his little dragon and Justin released his Cerberus puppy. The next thing the beleaguered wizard knew, two puppy jaws were biting his left ankle and one was biting his right, and his pants were on fire at the crotch.

  With a howl of pain and anguish, the wizard shifted.

  Like a dragon, he didn’t shift instantaneously. When dragons transform, the air around them begins to sparkle until they vanish within the glow; when the sparks wink out, the new form appears in the place of the old. So Destiny knew what was happening when the air around Lamorat began to thicken and seethe with flashes of light.

  She tried to help Ethan to his feet, and found that she could do it, but didn’t need to; he stood up easily, put his arm around her, and pulled her away. The spell that had held the humans in place seemed to have broken entirely; everyone was backing away from the wizard, watching him warily. The pets too were sensibly flitting or zooming or darting or bolting back to their owners.

  Destiny had no idea how dangerous the wizard’s shift form might be, what it might be, or even how big it could be. She was uneasily conscious of the size of the room, and particularly of its unnecessarily high ceiling. And also that the wizard-cloud was blocking all the exits. They were very likely about to be trapped in a room with something very, very large.

  “Carter! Can you get their collars off?” Justin indicated Roland and Ransom.

  Carter examined the collars, then opened his coat. Destiny was boggled to see that the interior of the expensive designer overcoat had been altered to include a high-tech mini tool belt. “Yeah. Just keep whatever that thing is off me while I do.”

  “Got it,” said Justin. “I thought you were staying in the plane. Thanks for coming to the rescue.”

  Carter made a brushing-off motion with one hand while running something like a Star Trek tricorder over Ransom’s collar. “You’re welcome. Don’t expect it to ever happen again.”

  The rest of them formed a protective circle around Carter, Ransom, and Roland. The lightning cloud around the wizard was becoming more and more active, and getting bigger and bigger, pierced with flashes of green, blue, red, white, and even black light.

  The cloud vanished, leaving them staring up at a gigantic, five-headed monster.

  At first Destiny couldn’t even comprehend what it was. The heads resembled those of dragons, but they were attached to long, sinuous, snake-like necks. And the necks were attached to a stumpy body with four squat legs, all of it covered in extremely tough-looking plate armor. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the heads were circled by octopus-like tentacles, some long and thin, some short and fat, but all covered with suckers and dripping slime.

  The necks writhed, the tentacles writhed harder, and the heads made experimental-looking darts in and out. Destiny was relieved to see that they couldn’t reach anyone… yet.

  “Not half as cute as you,” Justin muttered, patting his Cerberus pup. All three h
eads let out nervous whines as they stared up at the monster.

  All five heads suddenly reared back. Instinctively, everyone dove aside. Destiny and Ethan clutched each other as they tucked and rolled. A wave of heat passed over her head, she heard a roar and crackle and hiss and clatter and splash, and she smelt a revolting combination of sudden stinks.

  As they slammed into a set of empty cages, she looked up just in time to see the scarlet dragon head breathing out a burst of flame, the white head spraying a barrage of icicles, the green head spitting green slime that melted the walls and floor where it hit, the blue head shooting a bolt of crackling lightning, and the black head emitting a cloud of toxic-looking smoke.

  “Fuckin’ A,” muttered Nick. “Seriously?”

  Destiny was immensely relieved to see that no one had been badly hurt, though Roland was slapping out a fire on the sleeve of Carter’s coat and Shane, plucking a needle-sharp icicle from Catalina’s shoulder, had murder in his eyes. All the pets had flown or scampered free, as far as she could tell. She had a moment of alarm when she couldn’t spot Shane’s kitten, then decided that like its master, it preferred to lurk unseen.

  “Convenient that they’re color-coded,” Merlin remarked.

  “Just like a dungeon crawl,” said Ethan encouragingly. “We’ve got this, nerd girl.”

  Destiny tapped her ear, then her mouth: It can hear us. Don’t plan aloud.

  Ethan nodded, then glanced around speculatively. They were on the same side of the room as Justin and Nick. Carter, Ransom, Roland, Shane, Merlin, and Catalina were on the other side. Destiny’s eyes met Ethan’s, and she knew that they were thinking the same thing. They just needed to find a way to explain it to the people they couldn’t whisper to…

  Then she knew how to signal at least one of them. And once he knew his job, hopefully the rest would follow.