“It isn’t big enough.”
“Could we build it up?”
“The wind is blowing the wrong way.We’d smoke ourselves out.”
The implication sank in.“You mean that if it comes for us, you have to try to kill it.”
“Yes,” Subhas replied shortly.
Neil’s throat tightened.“Can someone do that with a single arrow?”
Subhas’s jaw flexed with tension.“It will likely take more than one.”
Neil pictured an infuriated tiger with an arrow in its flank tearing into the camp—or stuck full of darts like a pin cushion, falling down to bleed out on the rain-soaked ground.
One image filled him with fear—the other with a terrible sense of grief.
The tiger emerged from the shadowy trees with a shiver of silent movement.Muscle rippled under striped fur turned pale with contrast in the gloom of the night and the low, smoldering flicker of the campfire.Power gleamed in every sleek, graceful movement.The step of a massive paw.The shift of a shaggy head, golden eyes glinting through the darkness.The careless flick of a sinuous tail.
The animal was beautiful… and Neil had absolutely no doubt that it was fully capable of slaughtering him.
The tiger shook itself, raindrops flying from its coat in a sparkling shower—then stared into the cavern.
The air around Neil went taut, pulled between the men with their arrows and the elegant beast in the rain-glittering night.
Across the cavern, Jignesh held his bow in wiry, weathered arms.His eyes flicked to Subhas, the question in them clear without speaking a word.
Should we shoot?
Constance saw it as well.Her face twisted with dismay at the idea of all that graceful strength falling into the mud in a mess of torn fur and blood.
Neil’s own sense of helplessness choked him—until it abruptly shattered.
Afraid of flames…
The solution burst across his mind like a blow to the head, as obvious as it was patently lunatic.
Neil fought the urge to burst into hysterics.
The tiger shifted, coiling with readiness.Subhas’s mouth drew down with worry and determination.Jignesh’s bowstring tightened.
Constance’s expression hollowed with grief.
“Don’t,” Neil burst out lowly, the word as fierce as a prayer.
Subhas shot him a furious glare.
Neil ignored it—and sprinted for his blanket.
This is madness, he thought as he snatched up the leather scabbard.
I’m about to get myself mauled by a tiger,he reasonably deduced as he stumbled out into the rain.
Jignesh made a quick, disbelieving outburst.Neil sensed the arrows trained on his back—because he had just put himself between them and their target.
The tiger swiveled its head, fixing him with an unblinking golden stare—even as the world turned to a mosaic through the rain-spattered glass of his spectacles.
“I’m an idiot,” Neil acknowledged aloud.
