How long could tigers hold their breath?
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
By the time she arrived at fifty Mississippis, she had to raise her snout above the water line.
A bullet zinged past her nose and splashed into the water.
She gasped and ducked underwater again. Human Rachel remembered Auntie bragging that Cho was an excellent shot. He could kill her.
Heck, the pond was so shallow that even a terrible shot could aim a dozen bullets in her direction and hasta la vista, baby.
But he wasn’t killing her. Why?
He wanted her to get back in his Range Rover.
He wanted to present her to the tiger who’d killed him and let it kill Rachel.
He wanted to sacrifice her. Somehow, he thought it would help him, or at least his foul spirit.
She hunched her close to the pond bottom and began skulking away from Cho.
The pond grew shallower as she worked her way to the opposite bank. Her ears poked out of the water. She heard the Range Rover paralleling her progress and retreated into the center of the pond.
A bullet zinged by her left whisker. She plunged into the water again.
When she surfaced, gasping for breath, she heard the Range Rover drive away.
Had Cho given up? It seemed unlikely. And yet Rachel took the opportunity to breathe deep the night air. Never had it smelled so sweet, even though her own death hung like a specter in the air. How could she escape from this concentration camp for tigers?
Should she bolt for the main gate? But how could she cross it, without Cho’s transmitter? And even if she did escape, would she remain a tiger or revert to human once the sun rose?
All too soon, the Range Rover roared back toward the pond. Cho’s laughter drifted toward her on the night wind. But instead of firing another shot at her or luring her with his voice, he killed the engine and leaned against the vehicle.
He lit a cigarette.
Rachel ducked underwater once more. When she resurfaced, the breeze wafted toward her and she smelled tiger.
She paused and sniffed again.
It was not Rachel’s own changed smell, but the ripe scent of a mature female tiger who had been caged too long and fed only a few stringy chicken necks in the past two days.
Cho could not cross the pond water. But a tiger could.
He had unleashed the killer tiger on Rachel.
Cho held his cigarette between two fingers and yelled, “See ya, cuz! No hard feelings!”
Rachel kept her ears and eyes above the water. She wanted to see how many tigers would come after her. Cho had said the female who killed him was very fast, but the others were inept.
She half-expected the tigers to ring the pond and then, at some feline signal, attack her at once. She probably still smelled human, at some level; she could still think in words, after all.
But she could see nothing except the Range Rover bleached by moonlight and Cho’s eternally smoking silhouette.
She finally spotted something crouched on the ground. Even in this quasi-forest, with just rocks and the occasional tree as camouflage, she would have missed this hunkered figure watching her from about one hundred feet away.
“Get her!” Cho yelled suddenly. “Go on! Kill her and let me be!”
Still, the figure huddled close to the ground.
Rachel tried to remain still in the pond water. She would have run except she was lame and at least in the water, one of her enemies was held at bay.
Slowly, slowly the killer tiger wove its way to her. Not racing like a lion, or even stalking proudly like a housecat, but creeping close to the ground. Even Rachel’s tiger eyes and ears could barely detect it creeping toward her, padding soundlessly on its paws, its stomach certainly brushing the ground. It wove from rock to tree to rock, making its way to her.
“Finally,” Cho muttered.
Although Rachel knew she had to concentrate on the tiger, she glanced at her cousin, leaning against the Range Rover.
Rachel edged closer to Cho, even though it brought her closer to the killer tiger. Cho spat at the ground and laughed.
The killer tiger sidled closer. Fifty feet. Ten feet.
Rachel would fight to the death in this pond. Even if the end came very fast.
The killer tiger crouched at the mouth of the pond, partially hidden by the reeds. For just a moment, the killer eyes gleamed green in the moonlight.
Then it sprang silently at Rachel, mouth open, teeth bared.
At the same moment Rachel burst out of the pond. She landed in the reeds. Her ankle protested, but not too badly; Rachel had managed to land with most of her weight on her other three paws. She was learning.
Meanwhile, the killer tiger landed in the pond with a splash.
And Rachel raced toward Cho, who dropped his cigarette and fumbled for the door of the Range Rover.
The killer tiger snarled. Rachel heard it splashing in the pond.
Rachel sprang at Cho’s throat.
He was a ghost, but he could touch Rachel, so he was solid and therefore vulnerable.
Cho managed to thrust open the door of the Range Rover, but Rachel’s teeth cut into the muscles of his shoulder and he stumbled.
Cold. Cold flesh. It numbed her teeth. Her head ached. But she could taste her cousin’s blood, ever so faintly. It maddened her.
He fought to enter the carapace of his car, but she sank her teeth deep and ripped the flesh off his back.
He screamed and fell on his back, pulled down by the force of her attack.
The hunter-tigress landed beside her, but Rachel didn’t pause. She surged forward and sank her teeth into Cho’s throat. Her teeth clicked together inside his flesh and she reared her head backward, lifting his off the ground before his neck vertebrae snapped, the neck muscles ripped apart and his flopped to the ground.
Rachel tore open his abdomen and swallowed the pink sausages of his intestines. She licked the urine out of his bladder like it was a fleshy chalice. She chewed his still-beating heart, the blood squirting out sideways.
She gorged herself until she could eat no more.
She opened her eyes and saw Cho’s decapitated head. Its face was spattered in blood, but his open eyes and mouth were frozen in a rictus of horror.
And the killer tigress snarled.
Rachel backed away from Cho’s corpse, hoping the tigress would consume Cho’s easy flesh rather than attack Rachel again.
But the tigress ignored Cho’s body. Instead, she fixed on Rachel with her eyes gleaming iridescent green.
And Rachel received a picture of tigers pacing in their cages, surrounded by mounds of feces and even dead tiger corpses the authorities hadn’t bothered to clear away. She saw human hands wringing a deformed baby tiger’s neck. She saw mounds of tiger corpses in a deep freeze, their eyes dull, their flesh collapsing, with only their black stripes to identify them.
And Rachel understood. The killer tigress would allow her to live only if Rachel helped these tigers.
Rachel tried to transmit a picture back. A picture of herself in her favourite red dress and heels and faux Prada handbag. She thought, “I’m not a tiger! I can’t help you!”
The hunter-tigress sent more images. A giant green glass vat, filled to the brim with a clear liquid. Rachel couldn’t read the Chinese characters, but the full-sized skeleton in the vat spoke for itself: an adult tiger. Tiger wine.
This was the tigers’ fate. Unless Rachel stepped in.
