Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc. Book 7)

by Zoe Chant

  As the dragon-thing ponderously swiveled its heads for another try, Ethan gathered her, Justin, and Nick into a tight huddle, and breathed, “The others will distract. I’ll take black. Nick, green. Justin, blue. Destiny, white. Whoever finishes first takes red.”

  As the dragon heads reared back to attack again, Destiny yelled, “CHICKEN TIME!”

  Merlin became a chicken-sized raptor and rushed the dragon-thing, leaping up and down and screeching. Destiny and the others nearest to her transformed and leaped for their targets. The monster swung its nearest head (the white one) toward Merlin, but before it could cut him to pieces with slivers of ice, Destiny was upon him.

  Her claws sank in, but it was hard to keep her balance on the slithery, squirmy neck. She tried to bend her head to bite, but a slimy tentacle grabbed her around the waist and yanked hard.

  A glint of silver sparkled, and the pressure released. Roland stood with one hand pressed to his side and one holding his sword high. Half a tentacle fell at his feet.

  “Come back, Roland! You’re next!” Carter called, as he twisted a tiny tool. Ransom’s collar dropped to the floor with a clatter.

  Nick managed to get atop the green neck, but was shaken off; his wolf claws couldn’t dig in the way a big cat’s could. Undeterred, he leaped and snapped at the green head, dodging blasts of acidic slime. Pete ran forward, ducked under a jet of acid, and boosted Nick up. His shoulder muscles bulged with strain, but he held his position until Nick could sink his teeth into the green dragon’s neck.

  A tentacle whipped out and slapped Justin off the blue dragon’s neck. He fell to the floor, rolling to escape a lightning bolt. The blue dragon head darted to follow him. Shane and Catalina leaped for it, their lithe black and yellow bodies moving as one, and landed on its neck. Justin hissed and clawed at it from the floor, dodging lightning bolts as his friends tried to sink their teeth in.

  Beside Destiny, Ethan was trying to get a grip on the black head, biting and slashing. But a nest of tentacles pulled him off and flung him hard to the floor.

  The fire-breathing red dragon head bent over him and drew in a breath. Destiny released her hold on the white dragon neck and jumped down to protect Ethan. But as she landed beside him, she realized that she was too late. She’d only share in his fiery death.

  Better to die with Ethan than live without him, she thought.

  But the blast of flame didn’t come. Bewildered, she looked up. A beast she had never seen was ferociously attacking the red dragon head. It was a black hound the size of a pony, shaggy and fierce, wreathed in black smoke and with fiery eyes like windows into Hell.

  Ethan and Destiny scrambled away. Justin stopped taunting the blue dragon head and, shielded by the giant hound, leaped on to the neck of the red dragon. He clung to it, biting and clawing, as the black hound snarled at it. The red dragon head jerked back, its tentacles cringing away, as if even that fire-breathing monster was intimidated by the hound’s burning regard.

  Destiny had no time to figure out what was going on, only to see what still needed to be done. No one was attacking the white dragon head. It twisted sinuously to spray everyone with dagger-sharp shards of ice. Ethan and Destiny leaped for it together. Their teeth and claws sank in as they sought to bite hard enough to kill it.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Destiny saw that Catalina’s butterfly kitten and Shane’s moth kitten were flying at and distracting the dragon head they fought, Nick’s little dragon was doing the same for his, and Justin’s Cerberus puppy was leaping up and down and snapping at the tentacles that tried to drag him off.

  “Everyone!” Roland shouted. “Bite NOW!”

  Destiny bit down as hard as she could.

  CRUNCH.

  The thing that had been Lamorat collapsed with an immense thud, followed by an immense splat a split second later as all the tentacles hit the floor.

  Destiny and the others scrambled off it, shifted to human form, and backed away, eyeing it warily. It was a huge heap of ugly fanged heads and tentacles, so tangled up that she couldn’t trace the necks back to the body. Not that she’d want to.

  “Looks like Eel Day at the Venice fish market,” Justin remarked.

  “I’m crossing Venice off my list of places to visit,” Catalina said.

  “Does anyone have any more spare clothes?” Destiny asked plaintively. Justin and Catalina might be comfortable standing around stark naked in an evil lab in front of people they barely knew, but she certainly wasn’t.

  With a grin, Justin ostentatiously turned his back, then bent to pick up his backpack. She was too relieved to care about him mooning her when he tossed it over his shoulder. She scrambled into the spare clothes as the rest of the non-mythic shifters did the same. When she turned back around, she saw that everyone was dressed, the fiery-eyed hound (which she had by now figured out had to be Ransom’s shift form) was still a hound, and an audibly frustrated Merlin-raptor was maniacally switching between chicken and turkey sizes.

  A clang of metal made Destiny jump. She whipped around, only to see that Carter had finally succeeded in getting Roland’s collar off. The noise had been the metal bouncing off the floor.

  She heard an unpleasant sucking sound, and swung back in the other direction.

  From the midst of the enormous pile of heads and necks and suckers, a slimy tentacle as wide as her waist was blindly feeling its way out.

  “Everybody back!” Roland shouted.

  They instinctively obeyed his commanding voice. He stood alone, facing the mass that was once again beginning to writhe, a tall man who looked small before it, a dark silhouette in a white room.

  Roland spread his arms wide. Flames blossomed along his arms, but he didn’t burn. Instead, his arms became fire. They stretched out behind him, and for the briefest moment he was a man with wings of streaming flame. Then his entire body transformed in the blink of an eye. He hovered in midair, burning wings outstretched, a magnificent bird made entirely of fire.

  Destiny had never seen anything so beautiful. She could feel the heat, as hot as a furnace fit to melt steel, but it didn’t burn her. She could see the brilliance, bright as the mid-day sun, but it didn’t hurt her eyes.

  A phoenix, she thought, and was filled with awe. I never knew they were real.

  The phoenix cried out in the high pure voice of a hunting hawk, and dived. He left a trail of flame in the air. A single blazing feather at the tip of one wing touched a single reaching tentacle. For a split second, the reviving monster was outlined in white-hot fire.

  The light dimmed, and the bird of fire was gone. Roland staggered. Pete jumped to steady him. In the center of the room, only an immense gray heap in the shape of tentacles and dragon heads remained. And then a breath of air touched it, and it collapsed into a shapeless pile of ash.

  A door slid open. Rafa, Lucas, and Fiona piled in with guns drawn.

  “Humans, freeze!” Rafa yelled. “Dog-thing! Dinosaur! Lie down!”

  The huge black hound turned its burning eyes toward him. Destiny could swear she saw a familiar expression of world-weary cynicism in them. And then the hound dissolved in a wisp of smoke, leaving behind only Ransom and his own sardonic gaze.

  “Still want me to lie down?” he inquired.

  “He’s one of the good guys,” Ethan said hurriedly. Waving his hand to encompass Merlin, who was now vacillating between chicken and human-sized raptors, he said, “And so’s he. And these guys.” He indicated Roland, Pete, and Carter.

  Fiona gave Carter a cold stare, and didn’t lower her gun. “I wouldn’t be so sure about him.”

  Justin put his arm around her shoulders. “He did fly us here. And he’s been very helpful.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” Carter said.

  “That wasn’t a ‘dog-thing,’” said Lucas. “That was a hellhound. But I thought they were legendary.”

  “So speaks the dragon,” replied Rafa. “But who are you all?”

  Ethan quickly introduced everyone,
adding, “And I’ll tell you the rest of the story on the way home.”

  Fiona looked down at the Cerberus puppy, which was panting happily at Justin’s feet. “I can’t wait.”

  “Same,” said Rafa, glancing from the butterfly kitten clinging to Catalina’s shoulder to the moth kitten clinging to Shane’s to the blue dragon on Nick’s forearm and finally and most incredulously, to the Cerberus puppy, which was now licking Fiona’s hands with three small pink tongues.

  “Have you finished searching the base?” Destiny asked.

  Lucas nodded. “Not a stone left unturned.”

  “We threw everyone out,” Rafa said. “Some of them piled into planes and took off, and the rest of them fled into the jungle. Either the Indian police will find them and deport them, or something in the jungle will find them and eat them.”

  “Hopefully the latter,” said Shane, reaching up to stroke the gray kitten on his shoulder. It rubbed its head against his chin and purred.

  Sounding very pleased with herself, Fiona said, “The self-destruct is ready to remote-activate as soon as we’re all out.”

  “You didn’t find any prisoners?” Roland asked, as if he couldn’t help himself. But his sad eyes told Destiny that he already knew the answer.

  “None,” said Fiona. “Did we miss someone?”

  “No.” After a moment, Roland added, very quietly and more to himself than to anyone in the room, “I’ll never even know her name.”

  Destiny, who was standing nearby, heard him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I wish we could’ve gotten here sooner,” Ethan said.

  Roland shook his head. “I woke up wearing that collar. Whatever they did to me, they did right away. And she was already… gone. The only person who could’ve saved her was me, back in the US. If I’d convinced her to leave me… If I hadn’t rolled my car in front of her, so she felt obliged to help me...”

  “That was her choice,” said Ransom. “It’s better to die as yourself than become a person you’d despise.”

  “What the professor is trying to say,” Pete broke in, “is it wasn’t your fault. You tried to save her. She tried to save you. Sometimes things just don’t work out, no matter how hard you try.”

  “This place—these sorts of places—break people,” Carter said.

  “I didn’t save anyone either,” Shane said softly.

  “Yes, you did,” Justin said to Shane. “You saved me.”

  “And me,” Catalina added.

  “Roland, you saved people too,” said Merlin. “All of us. Just now. When you became a phoenix to burn the hydra—”

  Suspiciously, Pete inquired, “Exactly how do you know what all these weird creatures are, anyway?”

  Merlin smiled brightly. “Once I was the guest host for a quiz show in Moldava where the topic was mythology.”

  “Yeah, right,” Pete snorted.

  “Let’s get out of here. We can catch up on everything later.” Rafa again looked from Nick’s little dragon to Justin’s baby Cerberus to the winged kittens. “Grace is going to be so disappointed that I arrived too late to get her a weird little pet.”

  “Maybe there’s more in some other room,” Catalina said hopefully.

  Lucas glanced up from the floor where he’d been kneeling. “I don’t believe so. Fiona and Rafa and I checked the base very thoroughly. We saw some Apex workers loading sedated dinosaurs into a plane with a forklift—”

  “I hope you recorded its flight path so I can avoid it when they wake up mid-flight,” Carter remarked.

  “—but no mythical animals. You see this?” With one long, elegant finger, Lucas indicated a patch of the floor that was very faintly shimmering. “That’s the trace of a portal.”

  “I remember now!” Destiny exclaimed. “There was a flash of light, and Lamorat said they’d gone through a portal.”

  Lucas stood up and dusted off the knees of his pants. “Yes, a very few magical beasts have that ability. One of them must have been imprisoned here, and once it was freed, it created a portal to allow the rest to escape.”

  “But where did they go?” Destiny asked, reluctant to give up on the idea of her very own winged kitten.

  “I assume back to their places of origin, where they must have been captured. There are still a few secret, hidden, protected places in the world where magical animals live.” Indicating Nick’s blue dragon, Lucas said, “We have dragonettes in some parts of my own country. They rarely bond with humans. You should feel very lucky, Nick.”

  The dragonette trilled and delicately plucked something from Nick’s shoulder. Leaning closer, Destiny saw that it was a long, shining silver hair.

  Lucas chuckled. “I should say, you and Raluca should feel very lucky. I believe your dragonette intends to bond with you both. Just like the Cerberus pup has chosen two pack leaders.”

  Justin and Fiona, who were on the floor playing with the three-headed puppy, glanced up. She said, “I want to name him.”

  Justin spread his hands. “All yours.”

  “Trio,” she said. “It means trio in Italian.”

  “Perfecto,” Justin replied, grinning.

  Trio barked as if in pleased acknowledgment. Once per head.

  “I’ll wait for Raluca,” Nick said.

  “Got a name for yours?” Shane asked Catalina.

  “Carol.” She scritched the butterfly kitten behind the wings. Carol stretched luxuriously and purred. “For Carol Danvers. You know, Captain Marvel.”

  “I know.” Shane smiled at his mate. His moth kitten lay draped across his shoulder, claws dug in to keep its hold, but Shane obviously didn’t mind. “Mine’s Shadow.”

  “Shadowcat? Like Kitty Pryde from the X-Men?” Catalina asked.

  “Just Shadow.”

  “That’s a good name too.” Catalina noticed the look of envy that Destiny had obviously failed to suppress, and patted her on the back. “You’ll get your flying kitten. When Carol and Shadow grow up, they’ll have kittens and then everyone can have one!”

  “That will require some patience,” said Lucas. “Mythic animals have a very lengthy childhood. Those kittens will still be kittens for years to come.”

  “How cute!” Catalina exclaimed. “I mean, what a shame.”

  Rafa made a “forget about it” gesture with his big hands. “Don’t worry about it. Grace and I will have our hands full with our baby pretty soon! Same with Hal and Ellie. The last thing couples with new babies need are new pets—especially a new pet that can fly or set the carpets on fire.”

  “I wish—” Pete broke off, then reconsidered. “Well, cat’s out of the bag now.” Catalina snickered. Ignoring her, he went on, “My daughter would’ve liked one. That’s all. And that’s all I’m going to say about her, so don’t even think of asking.”

  Lucas broke the silence. “Journey and I travel too much to have pets.”

  “I work too much,” said Roland.

  Ransom said, “The last thing I need is to be responsible for another life.”

  “I wanted one,” Merlin said. Then, ever hopeful, he said, “Maybe they’ll turn up later.”

  “You heard Lucas,” Pete said crushingly. “Secret hidden places. Wherever they went, it won’t be any place any of us will be.”

  Ethan and Destiny glanced at each other. She said, “Want to make sure we don’t pine away for a flying kitten?”

  “New babies of our own?”

  “One at a time, jarhead.”

  “Can’t count on that,” Ethan said with a smile. “Twins run in my family.”

  Chapter 17

  Ethan

  T hey emerged from sterile white corridors into the heat and life of the jungle, where they were greeted by the sounds Ethan had come to know: the chatter of monkeys, the songs of birds, the chirps of crickets, the rustle of creatures in the leaves. It was the world that had shaped Destiny into the woman that she was, and now it had shaped him too.

  “Want to come back some time?” Ethan asked her. �
�I’d love to meet Mataji and the rest of your friends. And go trekking.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that,” she said. “We could hike as humans and hunt as tigers.”

  “But first, I’m buying you a new sparkly dancing dress to replace the one that got wrecked the night we met. And then I’m taking you to a club.”

  “Only two years late. Man, there’s so much we haven’t done yet.”

  She sounded excited and happy, not sad. Ethan too had moved past old regrets. So they’d missed out on two years: so what? They had the whole rest of their lives ahead of them, this time to spend together.

  Fiona and Carter led the way to an airplane parked on the otherwise empty airfield.

  “Gorgeous plane,” Destiny remarked with a touch of envy. “Yours, Carter?”

  “Yes, of course.” Carter glanced at Trio, who had frisked up the steps and was jumping up and down at the door, barking to be let in. Carol flew from Catalina’s shoulder and circled above Trio’s head, making teasing dives and swoops at him. “Those beasts better be housebroken. Maybe you should lock them in the bathroom.”

  Everyone with pets glared at him.

  “Trio’s better-behaved than some humans I could name,” Fiona remarked icily. “Perhaps he’s not the one who should be locked in the bathroom for the duration of the flight.”

  Carter opened his mouth, then closed it. He mounted the steps without another word. Once everyone was inside, they crowded round and watched as Fiona turned on a small monitor than had feeds from inside the base. She double-checked every room and corridor to make sure no living person or being had been left inside, then hefted a small black box. Ethan recognized it immediately: a remote detonator.

  “Who wants to do the honors?” Fiona asked. “Justin?”

  “I’ll let someone else have a go,” he replied. “I’ve already had my shot.”

  Unexpectedly, Ransom spoke up. “I’d like to.”

  Fiona glanced around, but when no one else objected, she handed the box to him. He cupped it in his hands and closed his eyes for what felt like a long time before he pressed the button.

  BOOM!

  The shock wave shook the plane as the monitor feeds went black. Outside, the moon illuminated the cloud of dust and debris that rose from the destroyed base.