thought.
“Not long now,” he said.
Rachel ran her hands over her arms. She’d waxed them before her trip, but the hair grew back thicker and faster, just like her girlfriends used to warn her before she started shaving her legs. Only, for the first time, her arm hair glinted orange, as if she’d hennaed it. So in the past two months, Rachel had transformed from the typical Chinese girl with minimal hair to a ginger beast who paid regular visits to the esthetician but somehow couldn’t make time to see a doctor to figure out whassup. Just one more sign that her life and her careened out of control.
Rachel said, “I’m going to have to stop soon. Seriously.” But her eyelids sagged again and she stretched out her legs, stifling a yawn.
Cho turned on the radio. Even though it was in Chinese, she understood words here and there. Like something about the full moon and were-tigers.
Cho changed the station to a hard rock station where a guitar wailed almost as loudly as a man yelled about his ex-girlfriend.
“Wait.” Rachel pushed herself upright. Her shoulder ached from resting against the jouncing window. Her brain still rested in the foggy state between sleep and wakening. It felt like the worst hangover of her life. “What was that about
Cho pushed the cigarette to the other corner of his mouth using only his lips. “Superstitious bullshit.”
“I want to hear it.” She fumbled for the radio buttons.
Cho pushed her hand away. It was the first time he’d touched her. His hands felt so cold, they hurt her skin. Like ice.
Like death.
Rachel rubbed her hand warm again. The guitar shrieked a solo above her pounding heart. She said, “What’s the big deal?”
Cho snorted. “Nothing to know. You Westerners have your werewolves. We have were-tigers. Only old mothers believe in them.” He smirked. He glanced at her. In the darkness, his eyes looked like obsidian.
“That’s kind of cool, though,” said Rachel. “I’ve never heard of them.” She pulled out her iPhone, but it still showed no service. Too bad. She wanted to Google about were-tigers and take her mind off her increasingly creepy cousin.
“Next you’ll be believing that our family is related to the tigers.”
Rachel glanced at him sidelong. “Why would I think that? I think we’re a lot closer to monkeys. Charles Darwin and all that.”
Cho puffed on his cigarette. While Rachel waved away the smoke, he shrugged and said, “No reason. No one believes what the old mothers say, always crying about evil spirits roaming the earth.”
Rachel stared at her phone. The battery showed only one bar power. She must’ve played too many tunes. “Do you mind if I plug it in?”
“Be my guest.”
The converter for her phone charger fit in the Range Rover’s socket, but the energy lines never perked up on her phone. And then Cho killed the music and said, “We’re here.”
Seconds later, Rachel looked up from her phone and smelled cat urine and dust.
Cho accelerated past a faux Chinese temple decorated with a banner sign in Chinese characters. A smaller sign staked into the ground declared this the HARBIN TIGER REFUGE.
“What the—” Rachel said. The hair on her head and yes, her arms prickled with danger. Evening had fallen around them like a shroud.
Cho reached toward a box mounted on his visor and pressed a button. A metal gate clanked open. He gunned his way through it.
Rachel said, “Cho. This isn’t funny.” In the distance, concrete barracks carved black outlines against the sky.
Above the thrum of the engine, an animal snarled.
Not just any animal. A tiger.
Rachel’s heart nearly stopped.
“Get me out of here.” Goosebumps rose on her arms. When she ran her tongue over her teeth, they felt too large and sharp for her mouth.
Cho pressed the gas pedal even harder. “No one wants to be here.”
“Then why are you—”
A tiger answered. The most eerie sound of her life: a moan rose into the night air, sounding almost human yet thoroughly alien.
Rachel fumbled with the door latch, but she knew it was too late. Like the dumbass heroines in horror movies, she had just stumbled into the equivalent of facing down a murderer armed with nothing but cheerleader pom-poms. If she didn’t break her bones jumping out of the car, a tiger would still maul her.
Cho had to be a foot taller and 40 pounds heavier than her. She wished she had a gun.
She heard a snarl, the angry sound of a very large cat, and she had to work hard to control her voice. “Cho. I don’t know if this is a game to you or what. But if you don’t turn this car around, I am going to call Auntie and she will have your head.”
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.
