Tiger's Claws Read online

  Tiger’s Claws

  Leslie Chase

  Contents

  Copyright

  1. The Cell

  2. Tigers in the Dark

  3. Home Sweet Home

  4. The Tiger Himself

  5. Plans and Counterplans

  6. The Castle

  7. Meeting the Masters

  About the Author

  Cover Design by Kasmit Covers

  Editing by Sennah Tate

  Copyright 2015 Leslie Chase

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All characters herein are over the age of 18. All sexual activities are between consenting adults who are not blood related.

  Tiger’s Sword is a four-part serial:

  Book One: Tiger’s Hunt

  Book Two: Tiger’s Den

  Book Three: Tiger’s Claws (this book)

  Book Four: Tiger’s Heart

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  Created with Vellum

  1

  The Cell

  Lenore awoke, dazed and aching, blinking against the bright light overhead. There was a chill in the bare brick room, and beneath her was a simple bed with a hard mattress. To her relief, she found that she was fully dressed under the blanket.

  Lenore was also thankful that her captors had placed her shoes under the bed. The floor was made of bare concrete, and going barefoot sounded unappealing. It was a small mercy from kidnappers, but Lenore hoped it meant that things weren’t as bad as she had feared. After being dragged from the car and knocked unconscious by strange attackers, she needed all the reassurances she could find.

  The small room was empty apart from the bed, a light overhead, and a featureless door. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of her purse or her phone; that would have been too much to hope for. Lacking anything else to do, she tried the door handle, not at all surprised to find herself locked in. Kicking the door in frustration achieved nothing, but caused pain to blossom in her foot.

  “Hey!” she shouted, hammering on the door with a fist. “I‘m awake in here!”

  Someone had bandaged the cut on her hand while she’d been unconscious, she noticed. It stung dully as she smacked the door, making her wince, but the heavy wood remained unmoved.

  Perhaps she should have been afraid, but waking in an unfamiliar room again was frustrating. Being kidnapped and dragged off was frightening, of course, but her anger was stronger than her fear for now.

  There was no answer to her shout, just a heavy dead silence. Kicking the door again in frustration – gently this time, she’d learned from her first kick – she frowned, trying to think about what to do. She didn’t seem to have much in the way of options other than waiting for someone to realize that she was awake, so she sat back on the bed, her frustration and fear mounting.

  She had no way to tell what the time was, or how much time passed while she sat there, fuming and planning what she’d say to Sir Daniel when she got a hold of him. Certainly it was long enough for her to start to feel thirsty, and start to worry that her captors had forgotten they’d put her there.

  Eventually, though, she heard footsteps outside the cell. Lenore leapt to her feet at the sound, and hammered on the door again, not wanting whoever was outside to pass her by.

  A key turned in the lock, and she stepped backwards, suddenly nervous. It was easy to imagine herself confronting a kidnapper who wasn’t there, but now that she wasn’t alone, keeping hold of that attitude proved difficult. The door swung open, and standing there facing her were two of the black suit clad attackers who had dragged her from the car. Neither carried an obvious weapon, but one look at them told Lenore that she’d stand no chance if she tried to fight. Each of them was tall, strong, and they had an undefinable aura of violence about them. Something about them told her they’d be more than happy to carry out their orders violently if they had to.

  “Please come with us, miss,” one said. It didn’t sound in the least like a request.

  “Where are you taking me?” Lenore asked, trying to stay confident in the face of them. She heard her voice shake as she spoke, and made an effort to hold onto her anger. It wasn’t easy.

  “No questions,” the other snarled, less smooth than his companion. “Move.”

  Seeing no alternative, she moved. The corridor outside was a narrow, poorly-lit space, a bare bulb dangling on a cord from the ceiling providing the only light. There were several other doors, each looking just as heavy and solid as the one on the cell she’d just left. What is this place? Who has a basement full of prison cells? Lenore wondered as they came to a stairway, an iron spiral rising up into the floor above. One of the men headed up ahead of her, the other bringing up the rear.

  It’s almost as though they think I’m a threat, Lenore thought, confused. Or maybe they’re used to handling people who’re able to fight back? She shivered at the thought. Was this a prison for shifters? She didn’t know how strong a tiger was exactly, but the door on the cell had been thick and heavy. Maybe it would have been enough to hold even Maxwell.

  The staircase took them into a large, damp room, circular and walled in bare brick. It was busy, more people in black moving about it with a purpose, none of them paying Lenore’s arrival the slightest bit of attention. The men with her escorted Lenore around the edge of the room, while she tried to see what was going on.

  What she saw didn’t make much sense to her – the room was brightly lit with electric lights, but the men were busy setting up candles and drawing chalk lines in a complex pattern. Lenore didn’t understand the significance, but it was clearly meaningful to the man orchestrating the work from the edge of the room

  Sir Daniel’s voice echoed in the room, his upper class twang amplified by the stonework of the room. He ignored her as he finished giving instructions, comparing the multi-colored chalk lines to the diagram in the leather-bound book he held. “No, no – not there, idiots. Tidy up that line. This has to be perfect.”

  Finally satisfied, he turned to look at her, his cold gray eyes looking her up and down with an intensity that made Lenore flinch. His smile was tight, close-lipped, and didn’t reach his eyes. “Ah, I see you’re back with us, Ms. Kimble. Good, good. We are very nearly ready for you.”

  “What’s going on here? How did you even find me?” Lenore asked, trying to sound angry rather than afraid. It was a challenge - whoever these people were, there were dozens of them, and they’d been perfectly willing to kidnap her violently. Who knew what other awfulness they had planned for her?

  “Really, it’s nothing to be concerned about, my dear. This is all a lot of show, in fact. An unfortunate necessity which we’ll soon be done with, and then you can go on your merry way unburdened by all this nonsense. Won’t that be a fine thing? And you can rest assured that you’ll be well compensated for your contribution, your time, and your later silence.

  “As to how we found you, well. I am sure that the tigers thought themselves ever so clever, and it’s true that they have a great deal of protection against magical tracking. The sword couldn’t point me to you while you were in their lair, and that does make things difficult. The trouble with that kind of cleverness is, it’s easy to outsmart oneself.

  “I knew you were with him, of course. I knew that my spells couldn’t find you. And so I knew that you must be in one of their protected spaces. There simply aren’t that many of them, so I paid some private detectives to keep an eye on the comings and goings at each one. It cost a pretty penny, let me tell y
ou, to get everything ready on such short notice, but I don’t mind paying for results.”

  Clapping his hands together and rubbing them gleefully, Sir Daniel began to pace. He seemed full of energy, on fire with an intensity which was more frightening than his squad of mercenaries. “I doubt that very much has been explained to you, my dear, by your new ‘friends’ the tigers. Never mind, never mind. You don’t really need to know the details. What matters, what’s important to you, is that we are on the same side. Those ‘magical’ types want things all their own way, don’t they? Well, that’s not right, not at all. And we mundanes should stick together, I think.

  “All I need from you is your cooperation in a little ritual. It will free you from the spell that Mr. Walters has put you under, and take you out of this whole situation entirely. It will also disconnect you from the sword I’m carrying, which is really how you got involved in this whole mess. Doesn’t that sound good?”

  Disconnect me from Maxwell? The thought sent a wave of fear through Lenore, but she couldn’t deny that no longer being hunted by maniacs sounded more than a little appealing. Still, the idea of never seeing Maxwell again was painful, like an ache in her soul.

  She became aware of Sir Daniel’s cold eyes on her, watching her reaction with a disconcerting alertness. One thing she was certain of: this man didn’t have her best interests at heart, no matter what he said. His eyes told a different story, looking down at her as though she were nothing more than an unruly chess piece which needed to be cajoled into making the move he wanted.

  “I thought the bond between me and Maxwell was meant to be forever?” she asked, playing for time while she tried to work through her feelings. Sir Daniel’s smile widened and actually reached his eyes this time.

  “So I believe, yes. Very traditional, till death do you part and all that. But magic is a marvelous thing, and I am certain that I can nonetheless save you from it.”

  I bet you think you’re clever, Lenore thought, suppressing a shiver. But you just told me what you want to do, and I really don’t want you to kill Maxwell. We may have had a fight but this isn’t right.

  That didn’t tell her how to get out of this, though. “If I do go through with this, what does that mean?”

  “That’s what the ritual here is for, my dear. The ‘magical community’ as they call themselves is very proud of their monopoly on sorcery and the like, but that’s nonsense, really. They’re born with a few tricks they can do, but with enough work we ‘mundanes’ can replicate their powers. And still they lord it over us. I ask you, is that fair? I am Sir Daniel Hawthorn, my ancestors have been lords since the Norman conquest, and they hold themselves higher than me due to a little natural magic!”

  His voice rose as he spoke, and he gestured wildly with the book in his hand. Lenore shrank back, noticing that his men were shooting him nervous looks. No one in the room seemed comfortable with his ranting, and perhaps he saw that. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he steadied himself and continued.

  “Anyway, as I was saying, I have learned enough magics of my own. The only difference is that I need a power source for my spells, whereas the so-called sorcerers of their community can get by with their own energy. The sword will make a fine power source, but alas, before I could get my hands on it, you bound it to yourself. Most unfortunate for me, but rather fortunate for you since I will pay you a million pounds to relinquish it willingly. What do you say?”

  He was smiling again, his ranting forgotten, apparently. A million pounds was a lot of money for Lenore. Outside of fantasies of winning the lottery she’d never had a hope of earning that much in her life. She had to admit, it might have tempted her. She knew that he meant Maxwell harm regardless of what happened and she doubted he had any intention to pay. Someone who organized museum robberies with guns and multiple kidnapping attempts didn’t strike her as someone who was likely to be honest in his business dealings.

  It did mean that he needed her to cooperate, though, and that meant that she had at least a little leverage. She hoped, anyway. Her heart pounding, Lenore tried to work out how to apply it.

  “I guess I just want to understand what you’re after,” she said, doing her best to look near tears. Fortunately, that wasn’t very difficult under the circumstances. “I’m really confused.”

  He smiled condescendingly as he answered. “That is completely understandable, my dear. All that is required of you, though, is that you sit through a small ritual in which you willingly give up the sword to me. Don’t worry, there won’t be any need for you to remember any lines or anything, it’s literally as simple as you giving me the sword when I ask for it. There will be a boring half hour or so of listening to me chant in Latin, I’m afraid, but that’s unavoidable.”

  Prick, she thought, trying not to let her annoyance show on her face. On the other hand, his disdain for her was useful. “That doesn’t sound too bad. And then this would all be over?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, eyes narrowing. He looked predatory, but unlike with Maxwell there was nothing attractive about it on him. “You transfer the mystical link to the blade, and your part in all this is over. You get to walk away with a million pounds, more than enough to compensate you for your troubles, and to transform your life.”

  “Don’t you need to spill blood to own the blade? I mean that’s how I got it, isn’t it?”

  He frowned; that question hadn’t been part of his script, obviously. “Ah, well. Yes. You also know it doesn’t take much blood, don’t you? I have plenty of staff, and I pay well enough for a few drops of their blood, so that’s not an issue.”

  I bet it isn’t! Lenore’s mind filled with the sudden image of handing him the sword, only to have it stuck through her heart, and shivered. She didn’t know if that was what he planned, but she was quite sure he wasn’t planning on her leaving this room alive. She simply knew too much.

  “Can I… think about it?”

  Sir Daniel’s frown deepened. “My dear Ms. Kimble, there’s really not much to think about, is there? Why, we can be done in a couple of hours if we start straight away. Soonest begun, soonest done, eh?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t think straight, this has all been too much for me!” It wasn’t far from the truth, in fact. Fear and anger filled her, tears welled in her eyes, and her head throbbed.

  “Well.” He paused, looking around the room at his preparations. “I don’t want this to take long, Ms. Kimble. Frankly, I want to be done with the matter, and I thought you would too. So I’m afraid I must press for an answer.”

  Lenore bit her lip, feeling his anger held in check by an effort of will. She shook her head. “I need to know what’s happening,” she said, trying to sound firm. She clearly did have a little leverage, even if it would only last until he had the sword. The longer she could keep him talking, the better. “I don’t think that you’re doing all of this to just own a pretty antique.”

  He sighed, and shook his head, giving her a look which mixed exasperation and a hint of amused indulgence, as though she were a persistently begging pet. “Very well. You’re right, it’s not just that, of course. So: these shifters are a menace to our natural rights, for all of us ‘mundanes’ as they call us. Can you imagine the gall of them, thinking themselves better than me!”

  His voice rose as he spoke, buried emotion coming to the fore yet again. His face was red, flushed with anger and wounded pride, and Lenore could feel his need to be understood, to explain how righteous he was. She tried to keep her face blank, easy to talk to, and let him continue. “The connection between the sword and the tigers of the Walters family is a clear magical link. If I have the sword, then I can channel their magic into me, and I can right this wrong. I can take their power and use it as it should be used, by a proper English gentleman and not some jumped-up half foreign commoners!”

  His voice had risen to a shriek by the last word, and he fumbled with a handkerchief, dabbing at the sweat on his forehead. The whole room fell s
ilent, everyone looking at him, though Sir Daniel seemed oblivious to his henchmen’s stares. In a calmer tone, he continued. “Dear me, my apologies Ms. Kimble. I do get a little emotional on the subject, as I am sure you can understand.”

  “Of, of course,” she stammered, trying and failing to match his calm tone. A spark of amusement flared in his eyes.

  “I appear to have frightened you, for which you have my apologies. Still, you can see how this is all a matter of righting a wrong now, can’t you? So do tell me you’ll play along nicely, and we can get this settled in a moment.”

  Lenore’s heart pounded with fear, not just for herself now, but also for Maxwell. What would happen to him if this plan worked? Maybe having his magic stolen would just leave him a normal man, but she doubted it - the tiger was a part of him after all. She couldn’t be a part of doing this to him, to his family - but what would happen to her if she tried to refuse this madman?

  Letting her tears out with a small sob, she did her best to look overwhelmed and helpless. It wasn’t much of a stretch. “I - I can’t! I can’t think, I’m sorry! Please, just give me a little time to decide.”

  “Sir,” one of the guards put in diffidently, “we could always persuade her?”

  Lenore paled, not liking the sound of that one bit. Sir Daniel cocked his head to the side, considering for a second, before shaking his head. “No. No, I don’t think that would be appropriate, not just yet. We have a little while until the preparations are complete, and Ms. Kimble is clearly frightened already. Why don’t you take her back to her accommodations to think about her options for a while? I shall make certain that everything here is fully ready, and then we can resume our conversation. How does that sound?”

  Lenore sniffled and nodded, her heart pounding. It hadn’t escaped her attention that she hadn’t been offered any options other than cooperating, but at least this would give her a little time to try and think of a way out of this trap.