Dragon Warrior (Midnight Bay) (30 page)

“T-that wasn’t a wolf,” Maddy stammered—only to scream when whatever was on the roof landed on the wolf on the hood.

And as the truck shook and shuddered, it looked to Maddy like the mother of all cat and dog fights was taking place not three feet in front of her.

“Yes, take that, ye bastards!” William shouted. “Let’s see how ye like dealing with a soul warrior!” He squeezed Maddy’s arm when she screamed again, when the two fighting animals slammed into the windshield as the wolf tried scrambling up over the cab to get away. “You’re going to be okay now, lass. Help has arrived.”

“H-help?” she hoarsely sobbed. “William, that . . . it’s . . . that’s a
panther
!”

More yelps sounded over the pounding rain, and the leaves shook and the truck shuddered violently. Something slammed into the back fender, and what sounded like an angry feline hiss was followed by several more yelps moving away.

It stopped raining so suddenly it was like someone had shut off a faucet, and the air outside the truck started to glow an eerie green. Maddy whimpered again when the truck rocked, and she turned in her seat to see . . . to see . . .

“W-William, is t-that a tiger?” she whispered in the stark silence, staring at what looked like the mother of all Bengal tigers sitting in the back bed of the truck, staring at them through the rear window. Its head was nearly as wide as the whole back window, its sharp green eyes the size of tea saucers; and when it opened its mouth to run its tongue lazily over its snout, Maddy saw fangs longer than her fingers.

“William,” she whimpered, slinking down in her seat.

“Easy,” he said just as softly. “He’s not here to harm us.”

“Y-you
know
him?”

He studied her face. “He’s an old friend, Madeline, and he’s on our side.”

She blinked at him. “We have a side?”

William actually grinned at her and reached out and squeezed her hand—the one that still happened to be holding her gun. “Aye, lass—the good side.”

The truck suddenly started rocking back and forth, and Maddy looked over her seat to see the tiger make a circle and then suddenly lie down with a yawn.

And then she heard the passenger door open.

“William!” she hissed, grabbing his arm. “What are you doing?”

He got out, practically dragging Maddy with him because she refused to let go of his shirtsleeve, even as she stole a frantic glance at the bed of the truck. William turned as soon as his feet hit the ground, and very gently pried her hand off.

“It’s okay, Madeline. He’ll protect you while I’m gone.”

“Gone? But you can’t
leave
me here!”

“I have to go after Ke—the panther. You’ll be perfectly safe, I promise. Just stay in the truck until I come back for you.”

“William, no!” she cried, reversing their grip and trying to pull him back inside. She looked back and saw the tiger watching them intently, although it was still lying down. “Please don’t go out there. Those wolves could come back.”

He shoved his pistol in his belt and took hold of her wrist, and gently pried himself loose. He then opened the back door, reached behind the seat, and pulled out his antique sword—only now it was in a leather sheath with long straps. He closed the rear door and stepped back to look in at her as he slid the straps over his shoulder, settling the sword diagonally across his back. He smiled. “I wouldn’t leave ye if I wasn’t certain you are safe here, Madeline. But I really need to go help the panther.”

“Why can’t
he
go help the panther?” she asked, nodding toward the tiger.

“Because he’s not allowed to, lass.” He started to close the door but hesitated. “You stay put until I get back, ye understand? Lock the doors and don’t open them for . . . anything. And Madeline?”

“What,” she snapped, glaring at him.

He smiled. “Whatever ye do, don’t shoot the tiger.”

Chapter Twenty

M
addy held her breath as she watched William force his way through the branches, stopping only to look the tiger in the eye and give it a nod—to which the tiger nodded back!—before he disappeared into the oak leaves glistening in the eerie green light. Maddy collapsed over the console and buried her face in her hands with a shuddering sob, unable to believe he had left her.

Alone.

With a
tiger
.

This had to be some stupid, bizarre dream.

Yeah, that’s what this was. It was really last night, not tonight, and she was in her bed at home, having fallen asleep while trying to decide if she wanted to have an affair with William. And she was so afraid she might fall in love with him that she’d dreamed up this bizarre scenario. First he would try to kill her with amazing sex—because only in her dreams could a guy have that kind of stamina—and then he’d leave her alone in a truck with a man-eating tiger that was supposedly going to protect her from man-eating wolves.

Oh, and why not throw in a large black panther—which William simply
had
to go help—just to make things really interesting.

She cried harder, her loud sobs echoing in the stark silence of the truck.

Until she heard what sounded like slurping. Maddy slowly sat up, turned in her seat, and saw the tiger’s large tongue
licking
the rear window.

He stopped to stare at her.

Only she couldn’t stifle an involuntary sob, and the tiger licked the window again.

She sucked in her breath and held it, and he stopped.

And then she screamed when music suddenly started blaring, and pulled her legs up with a whimper when something moved against her bare feet on the floor.

Finally realizing it was her cell phone ringing and vibrating, Maddy snatched up her purse, dug around inside it, and found the phone. Glancing over to see the tiger’s intense eyes focused on her, she opened the phone, praying to God it was William.

“Hello,” she whispered tightly. “Maureen?” she squeaked, keeping a wary eye on the tiger. “What? He thinks he’s starting to die
now
?”

The tiger perked up, and Maddy lowered her voice. “He can’t, Maureen. You tell Hiram he has to wait until morning to start dying.”

Maureen, the weekend night nurse at River Run, went silent, and Maddy realized just how absurd that had sounded. “Look,” she said, closing her eyes and hanging her head. “I really, really can’t get there for . . . until after sunrise,” she told her, assuming that when the sun came up, everything—including her affair with William
and
the torn condoms—would evaporate into the ether where they belonged.

“Is he really dying, or could he have just had a bad dream?” she asked, figuring there might be an epidemic of nightmares going around. “Have you called Dr. Petty? No, I realize he has the DNR order, but we need an order for pain medication if . . . if he needs it. Petty needs to come in.”

She sighed again. “Okay, look; you tell Hiram that I will be there just as soon as I can. And Maureen? If he starts having pain, could you . . . oh, never mind. I’ll try to find a way to get there,” she finished, closing the phone.

She simply couldn’t bring herself to ask Maureen to dispense that kind of medication without a written order. Maddy dropped her head into her hands and quietly started sobbing again. What in hell was she supposed to do now?

She’d given her word to be there for Hiram, but she was stuck in this stupid truck with a stupid tiger, abandoned by a man who’d promised to be there for
her
.

Oh God, she didn’t want Hiram to die!

She wanted all of her residents to live forever, so they could keep badgering her into being a better person. Every day she went to work was an adventure; somebody would do or say something outrageous that would make her keel over in laughter, all of them worse than Sarah when it came to making her stay one step ahead of them.

They kept her sharp and grounded; and like William, she valued their wisdom.

And, by God, she’d promised Mr. Man, and no stupid wolves or stupid tiger were going to stop her from keeping her word. And if William Killkenny thought she was going to just sit here in his stupid smashed truck while he ran off to battle evil forces . . . well, he was about to discover there was a
wee
bit more to the woman he wanted to have an affair with than just a bunch of horny hormones.

Maddy started looking around for her sandals, and thanks to the eerie green light she found them on the backseat. She slipped them on, crawled over the console into the passenger seat, and opened the door a crack—all the time watching the tiger.

It immediately sat up.

She just as immediately pulled the door shut.

The truck rocked when the big cat jumped out of the bed on the passenger side, and Maddy hit the button to
lock
the door.

Standing on the ground now, its head level with the window, the tiger stared at her; its ears perked forward, its breath fogging the window, and the tip of its pink tongue lolling out between its monstrous fangs.

Well, shit. How come it let William walk right by without paying him any mind, but when she tried to get out, the damn cat decided to get out of the truck, too?

“Go away. Shoo,” she said, waving it away, her voice sounding unusually loud in the eerie silence. “Go haunt someone else’s nightmare.”

It started licking the glass.

Maddy hung her head to stare down at the gun in her hand.
Don’t shoot the tiger
, William had said.

But the tiger was stopping her from getting to Hiram.

Well, it and a bunch of demon wolves.

The passenger door suddenly opened—even though she honest to God had
locked
it—and Maddy scrambled back across the console with a frantic yelp, hitting her hip on the steering wheel and banging her head into the driver’s window. She brought her gun up even before she’d finished righting herself, but the tiger was gone.

And now she didn’t know if she was relieved or even more terrified.

The leaves rustled just outside the door, and she could see its fat tail sticking out between the branches, and just barely make out its sharp green eyes staring back over its shoulder at her. It made a soft snuffling sound and moved slightly deeper into the tree—taking the eerie green light with it.

“No, come back! I promise I won’t shoot you. Just don’t abandon me, too!”

It made that gentle sound again—half purr, half woof, and sort of . . . encouraging.

Maddy climbed back over the console and slid her feet to the ground. Keeping her gun raised, she looked around the dark foliage and tangle of tree branches and took a shuddering breath just as she heard a few drops of rain hit the roof of the truck.

The nursing home was less than a quarter-mile away, across the library lawn and just up the side road. “Wait!” she called to the cat, turning to get her purse. “I have to leave William a note, or I’ll never hear the end of it,” she muttered, deciding that talking to a tiger had to be less insane than talking to herself. “But please don’t start talking back to me,” she whispered as she dug in her purse for something to write on.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t leave,” she pleaded, actually holding up the pen and a paycheck stub. “I’ll just be a second, I promise.”

Seeing that the cat was still standing there, its eerie green glow illuminating her side of the truck—the driver’s side being pelted with wind-blown rain now—Maddy quickly scribbled her note: “Gone to nursing home.”

She leaned in and set it on the console, slung her purse over her shoulder, and turned to the tiger. After checking to make sure the safety on her gun was on, she took a deep breath and started fighting her way through the branches toward the library.

As soon as she broke free of the tree and stepped onto the soggy lawn, she immediately thought of the very first time she’d met William. It had been raining then, too, and he’d walked out of the library with Eve’s mother in his arms, right after a blinding flash of white light had lit up every window in the three-story building.

The same building everyone had been pointing rifles at because they claimed a dragon had been seen carrying Mabel inside.

A dragon no one had seen since.

Rain started pelting Maddy’s back, and the wind lifted her skirt. “Dammit, wait up,” she called out, running to catch up to the tiger ambling across the library lawn as if it
knew
where she was going. She peered into the darkness surrounding them, able to see the wind was still blowing and that it was still raining buckets—except inside the bubble of green light.

“N-nice cat,” she whispered, following it. “You’re a really big fellow, aren’t you?”

The damn cat had to weigh as much as a moose, and she guessed that if it decided to eat her, she’d be gone in one gulp. “M-my little girl, Sarah, would love to meet you,” she said, needing to fill the silence so she wouldn’t hear her mind screaming that she was crazy. “We’ve been reading
The Chronicles of Narnia
, and you sort of remind me of one of the main characters, Aslan. Only he’s a lion, not a tiger.”