Page 14 of Flock Around and Find Out (Flocking It Up #3)

I clutched the stun gun in my hands as though that was going to make this all better. It had been about an hour so far, and I’d had to admit, Galen had been right.

Much like when we’d walked, I saw no signs of critters around the hut. They must have smelled the tiger, knew they wanted no part of that mess, and kept their distance.

If only I could make that same choice.

To be fair, I wondered if it might not be safer out there. If rabbits and deer and other cute creatures stayed away, I had a feeling I should probably follow their lead. In fact, I noticed I hadn’t even heard the flutter of wings anywhere around here.

They must have recognized that the tiger was one hell of a threat.

And here I was, sitting at his house, waiting, as though I had an invitation.

Yep, dumb plan all the way around.

At least this had been Galen’s dumb plan rather than my own. It was nice not to be at fault for once. Not to be the one causing the issues this time. If I got mauled, I could blame Galen for his stupid ideas.

It was sort of a nice and rare position for me.

For once, Galen could be the bad guy. That’s right! If he got me killed here, not only could I haunt him, but I was pretty damn sure that at least Kelvin would be pissed.

Knot might make his life a living hell—maybe. I never knew exactly where I stood with Knot, after all.

The crunch of dead underbrush had me turning toward it. “Took you long—” My snide comment cut off when it was not Galen walking into the clearing but rather a massive tiger.

Yep, Galen’s getting the whole poltergeist treatment for this one.

“Hey there,” I said as I tucked the stun gun into my pocket and stood, my hands forward as though to prove I didn’t have anything they might consider a weapon. “I’m friendly, see.” I smiled widely.

The tiger bared its teeth and snarled.

Me being friendly wasn’t the issue here, was it? It was all well and good if I was friendly, but the real problem was whether it was.

And it did not seem to be.

“Look, I came here to talk to you.”

It came forward, step by step, head down. It reminded me of when a house cat stalked something—the slow, methodical movement, the focus, the twitching of its tail.

I tried to imagine this tiger as just a really big house cat.

Nothing to worry about, right?

Right?

My little pep talk did little for my mood, to be honest, but I still tried it.

“We’re not there to hurt you or bother you. Well, a little to bother you, I guess. I need to ask you a question.”

The tiger pounced forward, and only my reflexes—honed by years of near-disaster events occurring—allowed me to leap out of the way, just avoiding its massive, outstretched paws.

Murder mittens indeed…

I hit hard ground but rolled, getting back to my feet, trying to keep at least a little distance between us.

I got the sense that it played with me, of course, because I doubted I stood much of a chance against a fucking tiger. There was a reason it never went well when idiots climbed the fences in the zoo to pet the kitty.

“It’s about the Weres. Their getting sick, losing control. We think you might know something that could help us stop it.” I paused, then added with a nervous laugh, “Do tigers actually live in this jungle? It just occurred to me that I could be an idiot talking to an actual tiger. Boy, wouldn’t that be embarrassing? Huh, guess you don’t really see the humor in that. That’s okay, my humor is a sort of learned torture,” I rambled, my gaze skirting the peripheral just look for anything I could use.

A stick? A rock? I had the stun gun still tucked in my pocket, but that required getting far too close to the bitey bits for my comfort. It had seemed like a great idea before, like I were invincible, but now?

Now I got why Galen had given me such a chiding look when I’d shown it off like a get out of death free card.

“You don’t want to eat me,” I assured him. “I eat crap all the time. I also pet random animals, so who knows what sort of weird diseases I might have. It’s much better to just let me go.”

The tiger rushed me again, this time giving me much less room to maneuver. It pinned me, but he didn’t appear to use his claws, since there wasn’t any tearing pain. Nothing but a crushing weight against my leg.

I yanked but to no avail. I couldn’t get free, couldn’t pull away from him.

Fuck.

The tiger stared down at me, its massive weight trapping my leg. I was entirely at its mercy, which was not a place I wanted to be.

I had no idea what else to do, so tried something that was likely not pleasant for either of us—I shifted.

A flightless bird wasn’t that useful against a tiger, but that wasn’t the reason I did it.

Instead, it was that rush of fire that licked across my skin. It was enough to burn off my clothes.

I felt like the tiger had earned a little singed fur for its behavior. In fact, maybe it would teach them some manners, because they sure as fuck didn’t seem to have any of their own.

I didn’t know how much damage it would do—if any—but it couldn’t feel good, right? Unless the asshole one was hardcore masochist, but I’d take that over getting mauled to death any day.

I wasn’t a sadist at heart, but to get out of this? He could call me Mommy for all I cared.

My body twisted, that fire destroying my very nice outfit—including the fancy boots Galen had bought me—but it seemed to do what I needed.

The tiger let out a pained sound, one that was at least a little angry, as it leapt away, hissing.

I took the chance to stretch my wings, reacquainting myself with this form. I didn’t use it often enough to really understand it, which meant each time I did it, I had to get used to it again.

Of course, the time to get used to it wasn’t when a fucking tiger wanted to eat me, so I’d have to find my wings, and fast. Instead, I fluttered, the closest to flying I could manage, which allowed me to get atop the hut. There weren’t any trees around for me to get to, and even if I could, I was pretty sure tigers could climb. I looked around, searching for a rock cliff, for anything that would give me some much-needed distance.

Nothing.

A howl came from the distance, one pained and furious. Galen? Well, at least that implied he hadn’t gotten killed.

Good, I wanted to kill him myself. No one else deserved the chance. I’d earned that shit.

I hopped around on the top of the hut, searching for a way out, an escape route. The tiger was faster than me—no doubt about that. I didn’t see a path that I could take that it couldn’t, or one that would slow it down enough. Maybe going tree to tree? Of course, if I missed a hop, I was fucked.

The hut shuddered, and I swiveled my head to find the tiger perched at the side, having leaped up from ground level.

Nice kitty…

I doubted it could decipher that from the squawk I’d just let out, like a language that it didn’t speak, as I backed away.

My feet reached the end of the hut, my nails curling slightly as I realized I had no more room. I sure didn’t want it to land on me from above, so jumping down seemed a bad choice.

Of course, bad choices went out the window when the tiger pounced at me.

Instinct took over, and I fluttered, trying to avoid the strike. I didn’t make it high enough to fully escape, but at least the tiger didn’t grab me between its paws like a toy. Instead, it batted me on the side as it stretched, fucking up my amazing fluttering and sending me careering down.

I hit the ground hard, the air and most of my thoughts flying from me at the impact.

Ouch.

I normally would have said I’d never shake that off, but fear of dying did amazing things to a person’s stamina. As I rolled, getting my feet beneath me, I spotted something black beside me.

The stun gun .

I’d dropped it before I’d taken my crow form, so it hadn’t gotten ruined.

I shifted again, that familiar flame licking across my body. Dirt clung to my skin as I reached over, grasping the stun gun, not giving a damn that I was naked in the middle of the fucking jungle.

This felt totally on point for my life.

I grasped the stun gun, placing my finger on the trigger, praying it still worked. I’d get one shot at this.

The tiger looked pretty mad, so I doubted it was all that willing to listen to me.

What exactly happened to a Were when hit with this sort of voltage, I didn’t know. Maybe I should have tested it out on one of the pack that I didn’t like first. For all I knew, the Were would shake it off as though nothing had happened.

It was still my only option, so I told myself it would work.

I crouched slightly, trying to gain the best balance I could. I curled my toes into the dirt, reorienting myself in place, ignoring the aches of my body from the fight already. This was it. One shot. It call came down to this.

“I didn’t want to do this,” I told the tiger. “All I wanted was a little question answered, so don’t blame this on me. This is your people problem. You should take a class or something—they have them online—” My tirade was cut short by the tiger moving forward in a rush.

It didn’t pounce this time, didn’t leap, instead coming at me in a full run. At the last moment, it lifted from the ground, paws out, and I twisted to the side. Not enough to avoid it entirely, but enough to hopefully get its flank.

I hooked an arm around it, dug the stun gun into its side, then pressed the button.

An absolutely horrid sound left it—high pitched and frantic—as we hit the ground. Its massive weight pinned me, but as quickly as it happened, it lessened.

The tiger hadn’t gotten off me, and it took a moment to realize what had happened as I shoved the no-longer-furry form off me.

Had the stun gun forced a change? It was like the tiger couldn’t hold that shape anymore, having been thrown back into a human body.

A moaning, incoherent, barely conscious human body.

Which made me recognize that this human was actually pretty damn good-looking…

He had long, black hair, braided back, and sharp features. His eyes opened and closed at random intervals—and not together—like he was still trying to work them out, but when they did open, I got the thrill of enjoying some of the darkest brown eyes I’d ever seen.

Wait, no, don’t ogle the dangerous tiger-man.

I patted to the side for a rock and held it up, above him. I heard Kelvin in my head telling me to swing. This tiger might have been feral, unable to help us, if he could have ever done so, but I knew he seemed to want me dead.

Except… I couldn’t. As I saw him shaking his head, I felt too terrible.

Instead, I held the rock like a threat. “Are you done yet? I told you this wasn’t what I wanted.”

He blinked slowly, his gaze seeming to lock on me. “You’re not going to kill me?” The words were heavily accented, though I couldn’t tell where the accent came from. Maybe something Mediterranean?

“I told you already—I’m not here to hurt or kill you. You need listening skills, too.”

He stared at me for a long, tense moment. The truth was that I didn’t know how long a stun gun would affect him. It meant he might just manage one good swipe that took me out before I could do a damn thing, but this was too important.

The answers he gave us could mean the difference between saving the Weres or losing them all—including Galen. That was worth this risk.

Instead of lashing out, however, the man started to laugh. It was a deep, full belly sort of laugh, the kind that makes it impossible not to laugh at least a little right along with them.

And sure enough, after a moment of staring at him like he was a fucking nut job, I joined in.

Maybe we were both nut jobs.

We laughed so hard it was nearly a hysterical cackle at the end and I dropped the rock to the side. What the fuck was this?

Another roar—closer this time—echoed through the tree line just before a huge, hulking beast.

Yeah, Galen sure knew how to make an entrance, didn’t he? I wasn’t sure if it was that he saw I was safe or if the entire sight forced him to skid to a halt, but at least it made him take pause.

Here I was, naked, straddling another naked man, both of us laughing as though we’d just heard the funniest joke in the world while being high off nitrous.

He paused, then shifted back to human—and fuck, did he look good like that—then crossed his arms. “What the fuck is going on here?”

He didn’t curse much, but this was probably a pretty fair time to whip one out…

“Long story,” I said, then looked down at tiger boy and collapsed to the side, laughing again.

Fuck, was life weird.