Tiger Magic

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The voice of the Lupine who’d spoken—Graham McNeil—rumbled in the too-small room. Not enough air in the room either, Liam observed. They’d all soon be gagging on the smell. Alphas feeling competitive had a fine scent.

Eric Warden, a Feline and the leader of the Las Vegas Shiftertown, came forward to greet Liam. Liam pulled the man into a brief, tight hug, and Eric returned it, as strong as ever.

They kept the hug short, greeting only, even though they’d become good friends, so the other Shifter leaders might not think they were forming an alliance. Shifter leaders, as a group, were paranoid.

“Liam,” Graham said behind Eric.

Graham was sort of co-leader with Eric of their Shiftertown. He condescended to return Liam’s greeting embrace, but the hug shouted that Graham would be just as happy to break Liam’s neck in other circumstances.

“What did you bring him for?” Liam asked Eric, jerking his thumb at Graham. “I can’t believe he’s your bodyguard.”

Eric and Graham had tangled in the past. Eric’s sister or son didn’t qualify to be Eric’s backup, but Liam was surprised Eric would venture out alone with Graham, who’d made it no secret that he thought he’d be a better Shiftertown leader than Eric. Eric usually brought Nell, a bear Shifter and his neighbor, whose glare could stop the most formidable Shifter in his tracks.

“Didn’t trust him enough to leave him behind,” Eric said. He gave Liam his laid-back smile, but his jade-green eyes were sharp with watchfulness.

“Good thinking,” Graham said, though his body language said, Fuck you.

“Besides, he’s met Tiger,” Eric said, ignoring Graham. “And Nell’s busy with her new mate. Cormac, you know him. Those are the only reasons I’d bring Graham. Graham’s afraid to fly, and he bitched about it the whole time.”

“Huh,” Graham said. He was a big man with flame tattoos on his arms and buzzed dark hair, his wolf-gray eyes holding more intelligence than he let people see. “If the Goddess wanted me to fly, she’d have made me a bird Shifter. An eagle.”

“Penguin,” Liam said.

Graham frowned at him. “Penguins don’t fly.”

“I know.”

He growled. “Yeah, you’re funny, Irishman.”

“Can we start?” The Shifter who’d called this meeting was a Lupine named Bowman O’Donnell, who ran a Shiftertown in North Carolina. He stood at the head of the table, impatient, his dark eyes fixed on Liam. His bodyguard was a lean, mean-looking Feline, with tattoos of cheetahs chasing themselves around his arms.

Twenty other Shifter leaders and their bodyguards took up the rest of the room. Some slouched in seats as though they’d rather be anywhere doing anything but this; others were alert, eyes on Liam, interested.

Liam hid a sigh, trying to make himself sit down and be calm, but he knew he couldn’t be. Tiger was his responsibility, and the other Shifters could scent Liam’s worry about this meeting. That is, if they could smell anything in a room full of Shifter leaders trying to out-alpha one another.

Liam waved his hand in front of his nose as he took his seat. “Can we open a window?”

Several of the other Shifters chuckled. Bowman didn’t look amused.

“If we do this fast, we can get out of here into fresh air,” he said. “Or polluted air. Cities suck.”

More laughter. Bowman’s Shiftertown was in the middle of tall pine woods in the hills. Liam had visited once and had been impressed by the place’s natural beauty. Bowman had gotten lucky.

“So you have a Shifter living with you who can heal himself from gunshot wounds,” Bowman said. “We heard about the second shooting, and that this tiger Shifter basically grew himself a second skin.”

Goddess, word spread fast. Liam and his family had said nothing, and Glory, as crazy as she was, could be trusted to keep secrets. So could Liam’s trackers.

But Shifters had scent and good hearing, and Liam’s neighbors weren’t all so in love with the Morrisseys that they wouldn’t gossip about them and their households. Shifters didn’t need computers and electronic social networks to spread news far and wide. They only needed a chat on a front porch.

“He didn’t grow a second skin,” Liam said. “He’s still in bed recovering.” And doing other things, with Carly, he’d heard through the walls, but Liam chose to keep that information to himself. If these concerned Shifters thought Tiger was already mating, who the hell knew what they’d do? “He did, though, expel the bullets from his body without trying, and the wounds closed up. But he’s weak and tired, not out tearing apart the world.”

“He’s dangerous,” Bowman said. “We don’t know what he is, or how those humans made him, or what he’ll do. Or what he’ll become.”

“I agree,” Liam said. He leaned back in his chair, hands resting lightly on his abdomen. “But he’s a nice guy. I’m not going to kill him.”

“No, but you need to put a Collar on him.” Bowman didn’t move, but his meaning was evident: Put a Collar on him, or we tell the humans and let them make the decision what to do.

“We talked about that, remember?” Liam said. “After I tried it. I thought the Collar was going to kill him—and he’d have killed me right then if I’d attempted it a second time. Tiger’s not like a normal Shifter. The Collar might hurt him beyond repair, or it might kill him. Or it might do nothing at all.”

“Yes, we talked about it,” another of the Shifter leaders said. “Then you decided to fake a Collar for him. How’s that working out for you?”

“It’s fine as long as we keep him contained.”

“But you didn’t keep him contained,” Bowman said. “Day before yesterday, he was in the house of a wealthy human man, tearing it up, then he went crazy in the hospital and had to have Shifter Bureau send in goons. I don’t even know what happened yesterday.”

“He and one of my trackers were run off the road,” Liam said. “A man who looked like a Shifter Bureau goon shot him, then walked away.”

“Walked away?” Bowman asked, curious.

“Didn’t stick around to see if he’d made the kill. I was wondering about that.”

Graham broke in. “Probably he figured no one could survive twenty bullets from a machine pistol in the back.”

Bowman shot Graham a look of irritation. “Bodyguards aren’t allowed to talk in Shifter council meetings.”

“Screw you,” Graham said clearly. “What council? You never invited me to these meetings when I was leader of my Shiftertown. Shifter leaders getting together to discuss things. That’s fucked up.”

The Feline guarding Bowman leaned forward, slanting Graham a look of challenge. Graham laughed at him. “You want to try it with me? Bring it on, cat.”

The cheetah smiled and rubbed one hand over his arm tattoos. He showed his teeth, eyes turning golden yellow.

“Enough,” Bowman growled. “Can we stay on point? Liam, we need you to Collar the tiger. Keep him controlled and out of trouble.”

“I told you, the Collar might kill him. I can’t do that to another Shifter.”

“If you don’t, we will,” Bowman said, and about half the leaders nodded agreement. “He attracts too much human attention to our business. If he causes more trouble, humans will start poking around to see what’s going on, why he’s not being controlled, why he can’t be controlled. If they find the fake Collar, we’re all screwed. We can’t afford to have humans figuring out too much. Precarious times, Liam.”

Liam sat back, growing uncomfortable. Bowman had a point. Humans thought they had Shifters corralled and tamed. Tiger, uncontrolled, might bring human scrutiny too far into Shiftertowns, where the humans could find all kinds of things Shifters wanted to keep hidden.

“We also need to find out everything we can about this tiger,” Bowman went on. “Hack into the humans’ research, figure out what they were up to. They created him from scratch, but how? Who did they use? The more we know, the more we can contain this. And if the tiger needs to be eliminated . . .” Bowman’s gaze was all for Liam. “Then we eliminate him.”

Goddess, had Dylan had to put up with shite like this? Probably. Liam wished for his father’s strength, a little of his ruthlessness, and most of all, his penetrating stare, the one that could make all other Shifters back down in quiet terror.

The lion inside Liam began to growl, his hackles rising. “You aren’t leader of the leaders, Bowman. Tiger’s in my Shiftertown, and I’ll decide when he’s too much of a danger.”

“You feel sorry for him,” Bowman said. “I get that. But it’s clouding your judgment. He should have been taken out right after he was found. There’s no way he can adjust, and there are cubs to think about.”

“Tiger lives in my house with my cub, and he’s amazing with her,” Liam said. “Watches over her as well as I and her mum do. He’s protective, and the cubs like him.”

“You’d better hope your judgment isn’t misplaced,” Bowman said.

“And I am keeping an eye on him. Or I would be, if I weren’t being dragged out to sit in stinky back rooms in bars with a bunch of Shifters with their knickers in a twist.”

One of the other leaders stood up. “I say we put it to a vote. Liam puts a Collar on the tiger. If Liam can’t handle him, we take the tiger out. All in favor?”

“A vote?” Graham asked, incredulous. “I’ve seen everything now.”

The other Shifters, ignoring him, put up their hands. Almost all of them. Liam got to his feet.

“Screw this. You don’t come into my Shiftertown and mess with my Shifters.”

“And,” Eric said in his calm way, “there’s the problem of being able to kill Tiger at all. How do you propose to do that? A Shifter who can survive bullet wounds? When I first found him, it took two tranq shots just to make him sit down.”

“Which is why we need to act now,” Bowman said. “Who the hell knows what else he can do, or what he’s become capable of? We need to contain or kill him before he hurts one of us.”

Liam barely held on to his temper. “I agree about finding out all we can about him. But those other decisions are mine.”

“Not anymore, Liam,” Bowman said. “You’re holding a potentially lethal weapon. If it gets out of control, it could spell the end for all Shifters. Living in Shiftertowns was a decision pushed through by advocates for Shifters, if you remember. Humans who didn’t want to see us treated like lab rats or slaughtered outright. But the humans will shove us back into cages and drug us until we die if they think we can turn into whatever this tiger Shifter is. You know it, Liam.”

“Yes,” Liam had to say. The word tasted sour in his mouth. “But it’s still my decision.”

“Like I said, not anymore.” Bowman stood up casually, as though they weren’t talking about the life and death of one of Liam’s friends. “We should go before people start wondering why so many Shifters are in town.”

Meeting adjourned, in other words. Several of the leaders and their bodyguards got up and exited without saying good-bye. Others lingered, would drift away a little at a time. A mass exodus would be a bad idea.

Bowman had to pass Liam and Eric on his way out. Graham stepped enough in Bowman’s way that Bowman would have to make physical contact to get around him.

“So they let a dickhead like you run a Shiftertown?” Graham said, giving Bowman his gray-eyed stare.

“I’m doing what I have to do to protect my Shifters,” Bowman said, meeting his gaze without flinching. “It’s my job.”

“If Tiger was living in your house you might understand better, I’m thinking,” Liam said.

“If he was living in my house, he’d already have a Collar.” Bowman turned his body to slide past Graham without touching him. “See you, Liam. Eric.”

Eric remained. He was about the same height as Liam, a little leaner, tanned from Las Vegas sunshine. He folded his arms and leaned against the back of a chair. “You can return him to our Shiftertown if you want,” Eric said. “I know I kind of forced him down your throat.”

“You didn’t.” Liam ran a hand through his hair, hoping he could get the smell of angry Shifter out of it when he got home. “I was the one with the arrogance in thinking I could control him, even without putting a Collar on him.”

Eric didn’t argue with him, Liam noticed. Or bother trying to make him feel better. “Want to grab a beer? Lunch?”

“No, I need to be getting back.” Liam sighed and unhooked his sunglasses from his T-shirt. “And I need to think.”

“I’m driving,” Spike said, the first words he’d spoken since they’d walked in. He held out his hand for the keys. “If you’ll be thinking the whole time, I need to do the steering.”

“Call me when you want advice,” Eric said. “You know I’m good at giving it.” He showed his teeth in a grin while Graham rolled his eyes.

Spike, now holding the keys, walked out and had the pickup started by the time Liam finished his parting embraces with Eric, then Graham. Liam got into the truck, Spike navigated through the busy streets back to the freeway, and they headed south, Liam slumped against the door.

“You didn’t mention Carly,” Spike said as they sped down the 35, past downtown and Reunion Arena, and into the southern reaches of the city. “Or that he was shagging her most of the night last night.”

“Shite, are all the rooms in my house bugged?”

“The windows were open. Tiger’s kind of loud. I didn’t hear, but Deni did. She told me. So did her cubs. And Ellison. And Connor—his bedroom’s right under Tiger’s. Glory mentioned it too.”

“Gobshite,” Liam muttered. “If it’s all over Shiftertown already, Bowman must know. Or he will soon. I didn’t say anything about Carly because I don’t want the other leaders too worried about Tiger taking a mate. At the same time, Carly’s the only person I’ve met who can calm him down. Connor can, sometimes, but not like Carly. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“If she has his cub . . .” Spike veered around a slow truck and car. “Bowman might want to kill it too.”

“I know.” Neither Liam nor Spike wanted to think about that, both men having cubs they loved. “Or at least Bowman might want to pen it up and watch it. Goddess, they’re worse than the humans.”

“They don’t want Tiger’s existence to make humans decide it’s too dangerous to let Shifters live.”

Spike never talked much—but when he did talk, he proved he was more than muscle, more than a stupid fighting Shifter, as too many Shifters thought him. Even Liam had made that mistake once.

Spike had distilled the entire meeting into that one sentence.

“I know,” Liam said again. He let out a breath. “If Tiger has to die, it’s going to be me who kills him. I’m not giving him to Bowman or anyone else in that room, not even Eric. I owe Tiger that much, at least.”

Tiger trailed his hand down the sweet softness of Carly’s belly. Early-morning sunshine had strengthened and poured into his bedroom, the summer heat coming with it.

Carly opened her eyes a crack, looked at him, and let out a little moan. “Oh, no way I can do it again. Not yet.”

Tiger glided fingertips around her navel. Inside, tiny in her abdomen, new life would be stirring. He sensed it already, and the thought filled him with both a joy and a fear.

“No,” Tiger said. “Now is for resting. And pancakes.”

“Thank God for that.” Carly rolled onto her side, facing him, snuggled against his chest. “I’ve never had that much sex in my life. Not in one night. Wait, I think not ever.”

Tiger traced her cheekbone. He couldn’t stop touching her. “I like front to front.”

Carly laughed, shaking delightfully. “I figured that out. So do I.”

He pressed a kiss to her hair. “Then, after pancakes . . . ?”

Carly’s laugh started up again. She rubbed a hand across Tiger’s healed side, and the caress both tickled and warmed him. “You have superstrength. I’m an ordinary human woman. You have to give me a little bit of a break, to recover. After that, we can talk.”

Tiger cupped his hand around her arm. “I’d never hurt you, Carly.”

He spoke nothing but the truth. Carly lifted her head and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “I know.”

Tiger lost himself in kissing her for a moment. Why hadn’t anyone told him that the strange practice of pressing lips was this satisfying? No, not satisfying. More than that. He needed to learn new words from Connor. Hot. Sensual. Wonderful.

After a long time, Carly lifted her head and drew a breath. “Being with you is . . . I don’t know. Amazing.” She sounded like she was having trouble finding words too. “Now, what about those pancakes? You making them?”

Tiger laughed. He hadn’t laughed out loud since . . . Had he ever? Once or twice with Connor, but never like this. The laugh filled his stomach, then his lungs, then came out between his lips, his smile stretching his face.

A new sensation. Another miracle from Carly.

“Liam cooks,” he said. “Or Sean comes over. Sean’s better. They won’t let me near the stove. Or knives.”

“You don’t need knives. You have those really sharp claws I saw when you turned into a tiger.”

She stopped and shivered, and Tiger’s laughter dissolved. He hadn’t given Carly time to process that she was with a man who could become a beast. He didn’t want her to have time—time was what he didn’t have. Tiger didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.

They finally left the bed and pulled on clothes, Carly gasping and pressing her hands to her face when she saw herself in the mirror over his dresser. Tiger had no idea why she thought she looked awful, as she said. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

He took her down to the second floor and to the house’s one bathroom, where Carly shut him out while she ran water and kept up a conversation through the door that he couldn’t make out. Didn’t matter; he just liked hearing her voice.

Carly came out, her hair damp and combed, her face clean of makeup and dust. Tiger took her hand and walked her downstairs to the ground floor, where the smell of pancakes on the griddle filled the big kitchen.

The man standing at the griddle, a towel tucked into his jeans as an apron, was Sean, not Liam. A quick scenting told Tiger Liam wasn’t in the house.

Sean’s mate, Andrea, sat at the kitchen table, her cub on her lap. She held the little boy’s hands while he stood on her thighs, his little bare feet pressing her jeans. Kenny Morrissey was seven months old with a round, chubby face and gray eyes like his mother’s.

Connor puttered around the kitchen as well, fetching things out of the refrigerator for Sean. He glared when he saw Tiger and Carly walk in.

“Goddess, how much sleeping do you think I got with your bed banging away over my head all night? I thought Liam and Kim were bad.”

Carly turned cherry red. “Sorry, Connor.”

“I should run up to bed right now and catch some shut-eye. Either that or I’m trading rooms with you, Tiger. That one used to be mine.”

“Really sorry.” Carly cleared her throat. “Mind if I have some of that juice?” She gestured to the pitcher of orange juice and glasses on the table, the movement elegant.

“Help yourself.” Andrea bounced Kenny and smiled into his face. “Oh, yeah, little man. You’ll be walking soon, won’t you? Look at you go.”

Tiger paused to touch his hand to Kenny’s head, loving the light eiderdown feel of his hair.

“Want to hold him?” Andrea asked him.

For answer, Tiger slid his hands around Kenny’s body and lifted him. Kenny cooed, recognizing Tiger’s touch. Tiger cradled Kenny against his chest, holding him steady in the cup of his palm.