Hour of the Lion by Cherise Sinclair (reading a book txt) 📕

'Got it.'

The suit scowled at the lion. 'Go ahead and do whatever you want to get answers out of the kid. He‘s dying anyway.'

Swane‘s eyes lit and he smiled. 'I need to pick up a few things to use, then I‘ll start. You‘ll have your answers.'

Torture? Vic‘s stomach turned over. As they walked up the stairs, she realized they intended to leave her caged with the cougar. Vic pushed her face into the wire. 'Let me out of here!'

The basement door closed, and the overhead bulb snapped off. The only illumination came from the tiny windows near the ceiling. Bad light for her, good light for a mountain lion. Her shoulder hurt like hell, and blood soaked her shirt sleeve, running down her back and sides.

Blood? Just what she needed, a way to smell like a cat‘s supper. She turned her head slowly.

The cougar watched her, eyes slitted, ears back. The one cat in the world that didn‘t think she was its best friend. Even worse, it looked as emaciated as the kid had been. Its fur was dull and patchy and the golden eyes were sunken.

It looked really, really hungry.

'Nice, kitty,' she murmured in a low voice. 'We‘re stuck here together, so let‘s just be mellow about it, okay? My name‘s Victoria, but my friends call me Vicki.' Her ops team had called her Vic, and right now, that was short for victim.

The cat watched as she sidled sideways toward the cage door. She knelt, checked the lock.

Generic combination padlock. She could do this if her hands were free. And if the cat didn‘t decide it was hungry for human tartare.

To her relief, the cat‘s ears tilted forward and its eyes rounded. A second later, the cougar blurred.

Thinking her vision was screwing-up, Vic rubbed her face against her jean-covered knee, then raised her head.

The young man lay sprawled across the wire floor.

'Jesus-fuck!' She jerked back, falling against the wire. That was no drug-induced hallucination. Eyes narrowed, she studied the cage. There was no hidden door to pull a panther out and shove in a boy. Gritting her teeth, she stayed wedged in place. People didn‘t just turn into animals, and animals didn‘t turn into people. No fucking way.

The kid blinked at her blearily, ran a tongue over cracked lips, and said in a hoarse voice,

'Nice to meet you, Vicki. Sorry about the clawing and uh, tooth-marks.'

Vic‘s hands closed into fists. He was definitely no longer a mountain lion. 'What are you?'

she whispered.

He struggled to raise his head and gave her a pitiful smile. 'Some people call us Daonain or shifters. Me, I prefer werecats.' He glanced toward the stairs, and she could see him trying to hide his terror.

'A shifter,' Vic said, staring at the battered young man. Up close, the poor kid appeared in even worse shape, she thought with a welling of pity. 'Oh, sure—like in some Ann Rice novel or something?'

'She does vampires, not shifters, thank you very much,' he said stiffly.

'Oh, yeah. I knew that.' Vic pulled at her wrists. Swane had done a good job on the knots—

there was no give there to exploit.

Suddenly, the kid‘s words registered— people call us shifters. 'Us? Us? Like, there‘s more of you?'

'Well, duh.'

'Jesus, take a nice, simple walk and blunder into the Twilight Zone. So what‘s with getting you to bite me?'

'Don‘t you watch TV? It‘s supposed to turn you into a werecat.'

'You aren‘t fucking serious—turn me into a werecat?' Vic‘s breathing stopped. She turned her fear into a glare at the kid.

'I told them biting wouldn‘t work.' His voice carried anger and guilt as he whispered, 'I tried and tried to tell them.' His gaze avoided the dead woman. 'We‘re born as Daonain.'

Her breath eased out. 'There‘s a relief.'

'Yeah, I bet.'

Vic yanked at her bindings again, hissed as the skin on her wrists tore. 'Look, cat-person or whatever, do you think you can untie me without...um—'

A trace of humor appeared in his light green eyes. 'Without having you for supper? Not a problem.' He tried to rise and failed, his chest heaving as if he‘d just jogged a mile. Looking even paler, if possible, he motioned her to him instead. 'I only lose control when I‘m drugged.

Or suddenly hurt.'

Bending to walk under the low top, Vic crossed the cage, her knee grinding with each step.

'Or, uh, scared.'

She froze a few feet from him. 'You turn into a cougar when you‘re scared?' The way her voice rose higher at the end was purely humiliating. She cleared her throat. 'Yeah, well, you‘re not afraid of me, right? And not really scared this minute...right?'

He snorted. 'I‘ve been terrified since they caught me a month ago.'

She didn‘t move. Cats can‘t see you if you don‘t move—she‘d heard that somewhere. But probably, being only two feet away might ruin that effect.

His sigh was almost a laugh. 'Get over here. I won‘t trawsfur—uh, change into cat form—

unless they come back. Cross my heart.'

The childish phrase pulled at her emotions; really, he couldn‘t be more than seventeen or so.

Just a baby. And a very sick baby to boot. Where he wasn‘t bruised, sliced, or burned, his skin was an unhealthy yellowish-white. No wonder she‘d managed to get away from him despite being tied.

It still took a fair amount of courage for her to turn her back on him so he could work on the rope.

A couple of extremely long minutes later, she was free. She hunched over her hands, trying not to scream as the blood began to circulate. It felt like she‘d plunged her hands into a barrel of shattered glass. Shit, shit, shit. She sucked in air, breathing hard against the pain, while she opened and closed her fingers.

'Untying you won‘t do any good,' the boy said. 'We‘re still locked in.'

'Not for long, buddy,' she muttered. 'What‘s your fucking name, anyway?'

'It‘s Lachlan—and you sure swear a lot.'

'I‘m planning to stop.' She winced at his disbelieving look. 'Really.' And the assholes who grabbed her should get totally fucked