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Hey! Zhan trotted up to him. How is Neona? I miss her.
Zoltan smiled at the leopard. She’s fine. I brought you some food. He removed the plastic container from the ice chest and set the tuna in front of the cat.
I love this stuff! Zhan butted his head against Zoltan’s leg, than proceeded to eat with gusto.
Zoltan rubbed the cat’s head. With Neona gone, I was worried you wouldn’t have anything to eat.
The cat looked up and licked his mouth. The other women feed me. And the were-tigers give me food, too. They think I’m cute. He went back to eating.
Zoltan snorted. The rascally cat was working both valleys, probably getting twice the food he was used to. Keep this up, and you’ll be too fat to hunt.
“Zoltan!” Howard strode toward him. “We were wondering when you’d get back. Can you tell the warrior women to come over here? Angus wants a meeting in thirty minutes.”
“All right.” Zoltan teleported to Neona’s house and set the ice chest down next to the old one that was now empty except for a half-full bottle of Living Water. He had intended to spike his new bottles of blood, but he decided against it. He couldn’t afford to mess up his teleportation abilities. And Neona’s wish to revive his sperm was probably hopeless.
He found the four remaining women in the cave and walked with them to the rock wall. He levitated down as they climbed down the rope ladder. Angus was gathering everyone in front of Frederic’s cabin. The evacuation team had made it back from their trip around the world, but they looked exhausted.
“Have you found Xiao Fang yet?” Freddie asked as she took a seat on a rock by the stream.
“He could be traveling with Han’s army,” Angus replied. “Or he may be hidden at one of Master Han’s military bases. I’ll ask for some volunteers in a moment so we can check Han’s compound in Myanmar, in case Xiao Fang was left there.”
Angus waited for everyone to take a seat, then he continued. “First off, I can report that Nima and the dragon children and eggs have been safely delivered to their new home. Master Han doesn’t know that, so his army is still moving this way. Russell is following them now, and Carlos tracked them during the day. They estimate the army will be here in three nights. That gives us tonight and tomorrow to get ready.”
Carlos’s adopted son and young trainee, Emiliano, raised his hand. “If the dragons are safe, why don’t we just leave? Wouldn’t Master Han give up and go home if he doesn’t find the dragons here?”
“There’s still the Living Water,” Angus replied. “Han may not know about it, but we can’t risk him moving into Beyul-La and taking control of it.”
“And we have to fight him sooner or later,” Howard added. “If we can get rid of this group of three hundred, Han will have only four hundred left.”
Lydia snorted. “How do we get rid of three hundred? There are only fifty of us.”
“We got rid of two hundred,” Freya reminded her.
Angus nodded. “We’ll use a similar strategy. According to Russell, Han’s army isn’t sending out search parties. There’s no need when they know exactly where they’re going. They’re moving quickly, so they’re light on supplies. In order to feed three hundred, they’re sending out raiding parties to loot the local villages as they pass by.”
“Then we attack the raiding parties?” Howard asked.
Angus nodded. “That’s what I’d like to do, but I have to warn you. Russell says the raiding parties number from twenty to twenty-five, and they’re all armed with AK-47s.”
“We confiscated a bunch of AK-47s from the monastery,” Jesse said. “We could just shoot ’em down!”
“We may have to do that,” Angus admitted. “But I still prefer to keep them alive and transform them back to normal. If we can capture four or five of these raiding parties, we can whittle the army down to two hundred.”
“Then what?” Jimmy asked. “We’re so outnumbered. And we can knock out only one at a time with those darts.”
“Is there something that would knock them all out at once?” Zoltan asked.
Angus winced. “A gas that strong runs the risk of killing them. And us. ’Twould be hard to control outdoors.”
“How about an enclosed place . . .” Zoltan’s breath caught as an idea struck him. “What about the cavern? It’s big enough to hold two hundred soldiers. We could trap them in there.”
“Why would they go in there?” Jimmy asked.
“They’re coming for the dragons, right?” Zoltan replied. “Darafer will know from Xiao Fang that the dragons are living in the cavern.”
“So the army makes a beeline for the cave,” Angus thought out loud. “How do we trap them inside?”
“I’ll rig some kind of trapdoor,” Howard offered.
“But what about the Living Water?” Lydia asked. “It’s in the first cave room. They’ll pass right by it.”
“Can we drain it?” Angus asked.
Lydia shook her head. “It’s fed by a spring. The water would come back.”
“We need to drink a cup every month or we’ll start to age,” Freya said.
“We could hide it,” Howard suggested. “We’ll build a floor over it and cover it with sand and rocks.”
“And we’ll keep the area dark,” Jesse added. “They’ll run right past it without seeing it.”
“Once we have the soldiers trapped, they’ll start panicking,” Angus warned. “ ’Twill be too dangerous to teleport in.”
J.L. raised a hand. “Stun grenades. The blast of light will blind them, and the bang will deafen them. We can use ones with multiple detonations and tear gas. They’ll be so dizzy and disoriented that they’ll be easy to shoot with darts.”
Robby nodded. “A good idea, but we’ll have to be verra careful. Our sight and hearing is even more sensitive than theirs.”
“So we go back in to shoot them with darts and take them— Wait.” Angus winced. “The clinics are almost full. Where will we put two hundred more soldiers?”
“We could leave them in the cavern,” Zoltan suggested. “We teleport Leah and her team inside, put the soldiers into stasis, and start the treatment. In a few weeks, the soldiers can leave the cave, back to normal.”
“All right. We’ll work out the details later.” Angus looked everyone over. “I want the women and shifters working on the cave. Vamps—ye’re coming with me. Let’s go!”
Over the next few hours, everyone was busy. Howard and the other shifters went over the rock wall to Beyul-La, and there they worked on disguising the Living Water and making a trapdoor that would fall down and close off the cavern.
Zoltan teleported with Angus and the other Vamps to Han’s compound in Myanmar. Only a few soldiers were there, and they were easily knocked out and delivered to Tiger Town. Xiao Fang was nowhere in sight.
Russell called with the location of a raiding party, so the Vamps teleported there. After a few tense minutes of dodging bullets, they managed to capture twenty-three soldiers. An hour later, they repeated the mission and captured twenty-two more. Between missions, Zoltan teleported to Tiger Town to deliver the chocolate chip cookies to Neona and Norjee. They were staying in a guesthouse now, for every bed in the clinic was taken.
After a third mission, Angus called it quits for the night. Zoltan grabbed his ice chest and went back to Tiger Town. Thankfully, he’d experienced only one more problem with his teleporting. He’d teleported to a tree to escape a barrage of gunfire, and his feet had missed the branch. He’d managed to grab anther branch with his hands to keep from falling.
It was after three in the morning, and Norjee was sleeping on a pallet in the guesthouse. Most of Tiger Town was asleep. Quietly, Zoltan led Neona through a maze of buildings.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“The bathhouse. I made arrangements with Jia so we could have it to ourselves.”
“Who is Jia?”
“She’s the one in charge right now while the Grand Tiger is gone. She’s his cousin.” Zoltan escorted her up the steps to a small building and kicked his shoes off at the door.
