He eased off the gas and puffed on his cigarette. Thank God. Her grip loosened on the door handle. Stupid Cho, still playing games even though he was 30 years old and he should know better.
The cigarette tip glowed a speckled red in the darkness. Smoke billowed out of his nose. Then he said, “Too late. The tiger already got it.”
Rachel couldn’t scream. The breath huffed in and out of her lungs in short, uneven breaths.
A low growl, almost subterranean, seemed to vibrate their vehicle. Cho accelerated into the darkness, toward the concrete barracks, “Stupid. They said the tigers aren’t even good hunters. They take forever to kill a cow when a tourist pays for us to give them one.”
“Are you telling me you’re dead?” she asked in too high a voice. She lowered it. She smiled even though her lips and hands trembled. “Look. Cho. We’re family. I came here for your funeral, okay? Let me go.”
He huffed out a laugh, closing his lips around the cigarette. Then he ground the butt into the ashtray and hit the gas. “Yeah. You’re family. Only family blood can save me now. A life for a life. Sorry, cuz.”
This was what she understood: he wanted to kill her.
The barracks were only fifty feet away.
Thirty feet.
Twenty.
She could hear the tigers snarl. She could hear them pace. She could smell them, the sharp scent of urine, the heavy overlay of feces, and the stinging undercut of bleach, thoroughly foreign and yet somehow familiar.
She refused to die.
She refused to let this fucker, dead or alive, cousin or ghost, drive her to her doom.
She grabbed the base of the gear shift, under his fingers.
His hand closed over hers. His flesh felt cold and implacable.
Her fingers splayed open involuntarily, as if he’d shocked her with icy electricity.
She clenched her fist around the gear shift and tried to downshift. If she stalled the car, she might be able jump out without killing herself.
“An eye for an eye. A life for a life,” said Cho. He plucked her fingers off the gear shift and crushed her hand in his arctic grip.
Tears sprang to her eyes. Only the terrible cold of his hand muted the pain.
“You had it easy in Canada. Now you might as well do some good, saving my life. Or afterlife.” He chuckled, a hollow sound that frightened her as much as the tigers huffing in the background.
She didn’t understand his blather, but she grasped the basics: he intended to kill her.
And he didn’t have control of the gear shift.
She swung her free hand toward the gear shift and knocked it out of gear.
The engine whined. More importantly, the Range Rover suddenly slowed.
Cho swore and released her hand.
She laughed wildly and groped for the door handle,
He smashed his fist into her ear.
Pain.
She heard sobbing and realized it was coming from her own throat, but the sound seemed dampened beneath ringing in her ears.
Her right hand still flailed in the air, searching for the door handle, but between the tears in her eyes and the tinnitus, she was trapped for a few crucial seconds while he got the Range Rover under control and pulled up to the tigers’ lair.
The bunker was actually a series of cages, like wire condominiums, one abutting the other, each holding a tiger or two or three.
A dozen pairs of eyes fixed on the Range Rover, glowing green in the headlights. Pacing tigers paused to evaluate the intruders. Sleeping tigers lifted their heads.
Rachel could hear them breathing. Some of them made funny, stacatto breath sounds.
One of them snarled. A short, angry rasp that rent the air and temporarily overrode the ringing in her ear.
Rachel caught her breath. The pain in her ear subsided a little. Cho said, “We don’t feed the tigers a lot. Costs too much. Poachers can sell tigers for the cost of a bullet.”
“So they’re hungry,” Rachel said stupidly. She wiped the tears out of her eyes, smearing them across her face.
A tiger moaned, a mournful and eerie noise that straightened Rachel’s spine and made sweat pop out of her pores.
“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take you to the one who killed me. She was fast.”
Rachel grabbed the door handle and launched herself out of the vehicle.
She’d take her chances with the tigers.
Cho cursed, but she was already running, flying as fast as she could, away from the tigers, away from her crazy cousin. Back to the gate, which was illuminated by large fluorescent lights.
Night air plastered itself to her body. Her left ear still felt blocked. But she sprinted onward, even though she heard Cho curse and rev up the engine once more.
The Range Rovers headlights advanced on her, illuminating the road ahead of her as if he wanted to help.
The motor growled louder. And louder still.
Rachel came down hard on the side of her right foot, twisting her ankle. Pain lanced up to her knee. She fell on both hands and knees, screaming at the latest agony, but also furious at herself.
This was it. She might as well wear a sign that said “KILL ME, CHO! LET ME HELP YOU OUT!” She crouched there on skinned knees and bloodied palms, waiting for the Range Rover to mow her down.
Instead, she felt the full moon shine on her back.
Rachel had never felt the moonlight before, but tonight, it felt like a coolness washing over her body, a subtle hum in the air.
A blessing.
She felt her face recalibrate, the nose lengthen into a snout.
Fur sprouted out of her skin.
She could smell dirt and diesel and fear. She could detect traces of poultry and other game animals. She could feel the muscles lengthen in her shoulders and legs and her chest broaden.
A tail broke out through her hind end. Somehow, that was the most painful part.
She screamed again, half in terror and half in jubilation. Her brothers and sisters gnashed their teeth and roared in their bunker.
Rachel Feng. Were-Tiger.
Cho roared behind her, scant meters from her tail.
Rachel began to run. Slowly at first, but gathering speed, her paws pushing into the pavement, her legs springing into the air.
Her ankle gave a starburst of pain every time she landed on it, but she tucked the pain deep inside her and raced off the road.
She wove around the sparse trees. The Range Rover bounced after her, but she could her it slow down, crashing around rocks, grinding its gears.
Tiger Rachel smelled water. Real water. A pond. She veered south, racing toward the pond.
Human Rachel dimly remembered her grandmother saying that ghosts had trouble crossing water.
Human Rachel also thought water might slow down the Range Rovers.
One, two, three more leaps and—splash! Into the pond.
The cool water made her yelp with shock, but she waded into its depths. The muddy bottom soothed her ankle a little but slowed her progress. The pond was only about fifty feet across and no higher than her chest, tangled with reeds. Still, she picked her way to the middle of the pond.
The Range Rover bumped to the edge of the pond. Cho killed the engine, so now all Rachel could hear was the sound of her breathing and her limbs moving restlessly in the water.
Although the wind blew away from Rachel, she could still smell something putrid waft from the vehicle. Death. Putrefaction. She no longer doubted that her cousin had died and, for whatever reason, he wanted to kill her, too.
Cho called to her. “Rachel. Rachel.” His voice sounded like honey, warmer than her grandmother and more alluring than a lover.
Involuntarily, Tiger Rachel moaned, a mournful, eerie return call, less controlled than a wolf’s howl.