Chapter Eleven
“There it is again,” Josh said a bit later as they reached the river and turned to hike along its edge.
The terrain was rough. It was clearer if you walked further down the embankment, but they couldn’t afford to get so close to the water that they would be at a disadvantage against anything that slipped from its depths. Instead, they were forced to make their way along the edge of the grasslands amid sharp blades of grass and brambles that scraped against their skin, having left in only light clothing rather than the more durable khaki garments they had purchased.
“It sounds like vehicles,” Thomas said this time. “Someone is up ahead.”
“Do you think it’s them?” Josh asked.
“No, I don’t think so. I think they probably came in on foot, in shifted form. I didn’t see any evidence that there were vehicles nearby, and I doubt they would have gotten up here without us already having heard them pass by.”
“Maybe that is what I heard earlier,” Josh observed.
“Maybe, but I have a feeling it wasn’t,” Thomas told him. “Let’s just be really quiet and see if we can get closer. Maybe it will be park rangers, and we can get a lift in without having to risk shifting and being seen once we get closer to illuminated areas of the city.”
They eased quietly up the bank, the sun slowly sinking in the sky above them. By the time they approached the source of the noise, twilight had fallen all around them and made it hard to see what was happening just ahead. All they could hear were voices shouting back and forth to one another.
“Hurry up, get them in the truck before they wake up. Last thing we need is angry cats on our hands before they get in a cage.”
“We’re trying. These things are heavy. And I can barely see anything in front of me.”
“Hold on. There ain’t no one out here for miles. I’ll turn on some lights.”
A moment later, the clearing ahead of them was suddenly flooded with light from a spotlight atop one of the two trucks parked there. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust, but when they did, horror sank in. They were poachers!
The man who had turned on the lights stepped around the truck and picked something up from the ground. Kara noted in disgust that it was the severed horn of a rhino. He picked up two more and tossed them onto the back of the truck, alongside a series of cages that flanked the back opening. Two were filled with the still forms of tigers, and the other man was struggling to get another into the remaining cage. The truck parked beside it contained a larger cage that held a baby elephant who paced in the tiny space it was given and made sad noises, no doubt trying to call out to its mother.
“Someone needs to get a muzzle on Dumbo before we head back through town. He is going to wake everyone in the city with that incessant mewing,” the man said, walking over to help with getting the tiger on the truck. “Come on, let’s get this one on the truck and get back out there. We need two more of these.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to shoot them than to just tranquilize?” the other man groaned.
“We can cap the other two, but these have to go in alive. They are going to a collector. I hear he is staging exotic animal fights with them.”
“Shit. I’d pay good money to see that.”
“With what he’s paying us for them, you could afford the show, my man.”
“I’ll look forward to my cut of that,” he grunted as they hefted up the sleeping tiger and locked it into the cage.
Kara was horrified. These men were monsters. They were taking these incredible creatures from their homes and sending them on to a fate that was undignified and cruel. And the elephant? She could only assume it would be sent off to some two-bit circus or zoo that had purchased it for a fraction of what they would have paid a reputable source.
“They are going to kill more tigers once they secure those. We have to stop them, Thomas,” she whispered.
“It’s not our place. We have to get ourselves home safely,” he told her quietly.
“No. We have to help them,” she insisted, starting to step out into the clearing.
Thomas grabbed her by the arm, pulling her back with a fierce hiss. “No, Kara! If what that shifter said is true, you are in no condition to be fighting. Josh and I will handle it.”
“Barb, stay back here with Kara. I want both of you out of sight while this goes down.”
“Fine by me,” Barb replied. “Be careful. They obviously have guns if they are planning to kill more tigers.”
“Always,” Josh replied, kissing her on the cheek.
“Okay. Let them finish what they are doing. Wait until they get a little further away and then we’ll go in for them. I don’t want to risk Barb or Kara getting caught up in any of this,” Thomas told him.
“We’ll be right back,” Josh told the two women before heading off behind the two men, who had already started walking back out onto the plains with high-powered flashlights.
Moments later, a shot rang out. Kara felt her blood run cold as a man began to scream and the sound of flapping wings filled the night air. She didn’t want to imagine what was going on in the distance.
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Barb moaned, obviously terrified.
“It’s going to be okay. It’s stopped now. They are probably on their way back. Let’s go open those cages so the animals can get free when they wake up,” she told her, hoping that doing something would help quell her own fear.
“Yeah. Okay,” Barb said uncertainly, following her as she walked toward the vehicles.
They were busy trying to open the heavy latches on the cages when they heard the sound of movement behind them. Whirling around, they found themselves surrounded by tigers. They weren’t the Bengals they had encountered the night before. Instead, they were the larger ones, obviously the shifters from the shelter.
“Barb, get in the truck. Lock the door,” Kara told her.
“What about you?” Barb said, her voice trembling.
“Just do it,” Kara told her firmly.
Barb slipped slowly around the truck, walking backward without taking her eyes off the tigers. When one of them took a step forward, she turned and ran just as Kara shifted and bore down heavily on it, knocking it off its feet. She whirled around, coming up in preparation for a fight and saw both Thomas and Josh swooping in from overhead. They dropped the lifeless bodies of the poachers on top of the tigers and landed.
Thomas resumed his human form, leaving Josh to stand protectively in front of him. Josh spread his wings and let out a whoosh of fire into the sky rather than directly at them. They retreated to a safer distance and paused, one of them beginning to shift back into human form. Kara could see that it was the leader as she and Josh stood side by side, ready to attack if necessary.
“You need to back off. These two men were poaching tigers, and we stopped them. Isn’t that something you should have been doing?”
The man stood looking at him wordlessly for a moment. Then he motioned toward the other tigers, who began to shift back into their human forms.
“Okay. Call off your birds of prey there,” he told Thomas.
Thomas motioned behind him for Josh and Kara to shift. Barb tried to look away from the bodies that lay contorted on the ground in front of them. She was glad that she hadn’t been there to see what had befallen them first hand. It was a part of who they were that she hoped to never truly experience.
“We caught these men caging these tigers and this elephant. They were going after more tigers, but they didn’t plan on taking the rest alive. The ones in the cages were for some sort of collector that intended to use them for fighting. I don’t know where the elephant was going. I’m assuming the ones they were going to find when we followed them were for pelts.”
“Son of a bitch,” the man muttered, motioning to the men behind him to help the elephant down out of the cage. “Don’t worry with the tigers. They’ll climb out if you just get the doors open for them, but it is too far a drop for the little gray fellow. I’m guessing they walked him up some sort of ramp. Find it and get it back up to help him down.”
The men immediately did as he asked. Kara noted that one of them was Khalib as he stepped out of the shadows and into the light. Thomas scowled at him and stepped in front of her, covering her nakedness from her shifting, while Barb came around from where she had been in the truck. She held a blanket in her hands and wrapped it around Kara.
“We’ll leave you to handle this, then,” Thomas said, nodding around them.
“No, wait. I’m sorry. Let’s talk about why you are here. Come back with us to the shelter, and we’ll discuss whatever it is you really came here to do.”
“I don’t think there is anything for us to discuss with you anymore,” Thomas said, before dropping his head.
“I have a feeling that not everyone in your party would agree,” he replied, nodding toward Kara.
Thomas sighed and looked at her. She knew that he would do what she wanted, because he knew this had been important to her. They had come all this way, and it would be a shame to go back home having learned nothing from their trip.
“Do you want to talk to these people, Kara?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly, her voice almost a whisper.
“Then we will go back and let you do what you need to do,” he replied before turning toward Josh. “Josh, there is no reason for you and Barb to stay. If you want to get yourselves back to the hotel and make arrangements to go back home, then I support that notion fully.”
“Barb?” Josh asked, pulling her toward him. She shook her head solemnly as she spoke.
“I’ll not leave here without them, and I know you don’t want to either,” she told him.
“I don’t, but it is unfair to you to not give you a choice,” he said.
“Our choice is made then. We’ll stay here with Kara and Thomas.”
“All right then, some of the guys will take care of this little problem and we’ll get back to the shelter. We were nearby, following at a distance to be sure you left when we heard the shots and ran in, so we’re on foot. Might take too long to walk back in human form.”
“I agree. We’ll shift and meet you back here,” Thomas replied.
“And your human?” the man asked.
“Josh will give her a ride. He’s like a giant pet to her,” Thomas laughed, surprising them all with any sense of discernible humor in their current situation.
“Very well then,” he said, turning toward his men that were working on freeing the elephant. “Get that elephant free and just leave the tiger cages open like I said, then come back to the shelter.”
“What about the men?” one of them asked.
“Just leave them there. I’m sure someone will tip the rangers off anonymously, and they can try to figure out what happened to them. The trucks will trace back to someone and those rhino horns laying on the bed will be enough to resolve what they were doing here when some sort of animal got the best of them. Be careful, though. I doubt that those two managed this alone. There could be others lurking about somewhere if they haven’t had sense enough to get far away from here by now.”
“Will do,” the man told him, helping the others get the wide wooden planks they had found alongside the cage into place so they could coax the elephant down.
“How will he find his way home?” Barb asked, concerned about the young creature.
“His mother will hear his cries and come for him. This part of the sanctuary is bordered on three sides by water and on the other by an artificial wall that makes it inaccessible except by water or access from a gate built into the barrier, so she can’t be too far away. Hopefully, they didn’t harm her in the process of taking her baby.”
“If it’s closed off, how did they get in here?” Kara asked.
“Good question. One that they’ll have to sort out, no doubt. All right, let’s get going.”
With that, he and the remaining men shifted and went bounding off into the night. Kara, Thomas, and Josh followed suit, soaring quietly overhead with Barb perched on Josh’s back as they passed overhead, arriving at the shelter area well before the others.
“I wonder if there is any food left in the kitchen,” Thomas said.
“Seriously? How can you even think about food right now?” Kara asked.
“Hey, I didn’t get to finish my food earlier! I’m hungry!”
“You’re unbelievable,” she said with a little laugh.
“I know. You’re stuck with me, though,” he said.
“Not a chance. I can walk away any time I want,” she replied.
“Can you?” he asked, reaching out to stroke his hand across her belly.
“Oh, God. Do you think he is right about that? I mean, could I be?”
“I don’t know. I thought we’d been careful, but I guess we’ll have to find out when we get out of here. Are you upset about it if you are?”
“Not a chance,” she admitted, smiling up at him.
“You two should get a room,” Josh commented as he walked into the door.
He had been a little slower in flight so as not to lose Barb in the trip. It was harder to hold on if he went at his normal speed, and he usually had sort of a makeshift saddle for her to keep her from falling. It was something that Thomas poked endless fun at, but he had found his friend Owen appreciated that he had made him one, too, so that his wife, Amy, who was also human, could be safe if he wanted to take her out for flights above the water.