Emins’ Mate(39)

The three of them turned and tromped into the house, leaving the younger generation standing there looking after them.

"Huh," Danil said. "AJ, thank your dad for making that a hell of a lot easier than it could have been."

Anton scowled. "He should have made it harder. You don't come with us."

AJ whirled, her eyes narrowed and her hair covering one eye. "You don't get to tell me what to do and I'm coming if I have to rent a car myself. So shut the hell up, Malashovik. Because I don't think I can take 20 hours of your grumpy bitching."

With that, she turned and marched into the van, buckling herself in for good measure.

Anton clapped his mouth shut. Usually she was sweet as pie. And amenable, too. He rarely saw her that fired up. He savagely ignored the delicious tug in his gut. Why did he like it when she yelled at him? God, he was a sick bastard. He slid into the seat next to her. Half because he knew it would further piss her off and half because he wanted an excuse to feel the heat of her arm for the foreseeable future. She grimaced at him and turned to the window. He'd take it.

Maxim deftly squashed the argument between Dora and Danil by snatching the car keys out of her hand. "I drive," he said. "I drive a firetruck for a living. I drive the passenger van." Besides, he needed the distraction. He'd barely slept since he'd met the little blue-haired witch at the bar the other night. First he'd thought of her as a mermaid because of the hair. But he was pretty sure she'd put a hex on him. Yup. She'd sexed him up real nice, cursed him, and abandoned him cold. Hadn't even left her name for balm. He slammed the door closed behind him and tried not to growl.

The rest of the crew piled into the van as well. And they were off.

Twenty hours and a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches later, Glory spun in a slow circle in a patch of sun, her hair like a streak of fire in the air. She was home. On the edge of her very own woods. The group had agreed to split up for the time being. Dora and Danil went to speak with the woman who'd called the tip in. Maxim, AJ, and Anton were headed to the place where Glory had been originally captured by Navuka. And Emin and Glory were headed to home base. The cave where she'd been raised.

Her mother shouldn't be far from there. And Glory could barely wait. She vibrated with energy as she tugged Emin into the woods after her. It would take much longer in her human form, two hours when it could have taken less than 20 minutes in her tiger form. But she'd seen the logic that it was wiser to act like she wasn't a tiger right about now. Not when they had no idea how closely Navuka was watching the woods.

Still, it took about everything she had not to sprint ahead. She settled for pointing every little thing out to Emin.

"Look! That's where I learned how to pounce. My mother would hide behind that rock there and I'd have to figure out how to sneak up on her. And look! That was always my favorite tree branch to nap on. It's got just the right curve, you know? And that glint through the trees? That's a lake that has the best tasting fish you'll ever find in your life."

The bubbling thrill of being back at home and showing it to the man she loved carried Glory all the way through the two-hour hike to the middle of the forest. It wasn't until they were about a quarter mile from her home cave that something in Glory's stomach started to drop.

There were no signs that a tiger was living in the woods right now. There were no scratch marks on the trees. And Glory could smell a lot more small game than usual. Rabbits and squirrels, and there were even deer nearby. That wasn't a good sign. She fell silent as they softly approached the cave, set back far into a craggy hill, covered over mostly with brush.

"Mom?" Glory softly called through the trees. She already knew. If her mother had been there, tiger form or not, she would have literally smelled them a mile away. She would have known her daughter had returned long before she'd heard her voice.

But Glory pushed forward anyways. Emin took her hand. He knew it, too. Glory pushed the overgrown brush aside and stepped into a cave that hadn't been occupied in months.

There was a film of dirt over everything. All of the little things they'd added to make their tiger lives more comfortable, leaf beds, water bowls, blankets woven from grasses, were scattered and picked apart by scavengers. Glory carefully stepped through the wreckage, crouched so that she could walk to the back of the cave.

She found what she was looking for. Etchings on the wall. That she'd made as a little girl. A mural of her life. The letters and words from when her mother had taught her to read. Scratched drawings of tigers and hawks and butterflies. Her name, a hundred times, just for the joy of it.

"You made art here," Emin said, sliding his hand across her shoulders, drawing her close as tears spilled over her cheeks.