“Okay, Bagheera. Okay, good kitty.” She held her arms out and backed into the trees behind her. The panther circled, its soft paws extending claws the size of daggers. It snarled, nose crinkling up in a sign of pure malice and jaws that opened like the pearly gates of hell. Sharp teeth jutted from the bottom and the top, making the rows of sharp little razors almost overkill.

Overkill. Good word. ‘Excellent summation’ as Taylor would say. Speaking of whom—

“TAYLOR!” The scream was useless, a gesture of defiance against the inevitable. He was unconscious with a severe concussion, and was likely to die there on the river bank from lack of medical attention. His doctor was about to be processed through a panther.

Another roar split the air.

Even the birds were silenced. Gone was the chatter of monkeys; the persistent drone of insects even seemed to halt as the world silenced.

It took Angelica a minute to realize that the panther hadn’t been the one to make the sound.

In fact, the panther turned, angry at the intrusion.

“WHAT THE HELL?” Angelica froze. What she saw couldn’t exist. What was standing in the clearing wasn’t possible, not here, not in South America. Someplace where there were elephants, maybe... maybe.

A monstrously huge white tiger strode majestically into the clearing from the jungle. It stopped and stared at the panther, licking its lips, its tail twitching.

It was as large as the black cat, and its claws were less like daggers and more like small swords that dug into the ground as it idly flexed. It lowered its head and bared its fangs in an angry snarl that left no doubt as to its mood. The panther maybe had the grin from hell, but this... this beast was the apocalypse on four legs.

It roared, and the sound shot through her and she forgot to breathe. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real, and yet here it was, right in front of her. The panther circled wide, its repast—Angelica—completely forgotten in the face of the newcomer.

The tiger moved with delicate efficiency, though it was all muscle and meat and as big as a horse. As big as a house, as big as a mountain. Angelica only then realized that she’d fallen. Her legs had given out on her as the two titans circled each other. She was the prize. She stared up at them, awestruck by their terrible beauty.

With a snarl, like splitting lightning, the panther leapt and threw out its paws. The stilettos extended in a fatal hug.

The tiger roared, the last echoing peal of thunder, and leapt also, to the side of the panther. It spun in mid- air and slashed out at the panther, raking the massive claws and sharp swords over the black cat’s flank. Angelica saw three deep red gashes open on the panther’s side, her mind immediately cataloguing the injury.

One of them was a deep incision, in one area actually exposing the rib. The meat on the shoulder was cut, possible nerve damage to that leg.

The panther landed and sprang to its feet. The front left leg didn’t seem to want to respond.

Some nerve damage, but it’s not a fatal blow. Not yet.

The tiger resumed its stance, looking like it was striking a pose. It was the self-declared king, and though it watched the panther closely all it did was blink. It licked its lips.

The panther hissed at the tiger and limped off under one of the waterfalls. It went in like a cat would, seeking shelter to heal. Or to die.

That left the tiger. And Angelica.

The lady and the tiger. It repeated in her mind over and over like a sing-song nursery rhyme.

“On the other hand, I was right,” she said to the tiger as it neared her. “You are as big as a house.” Her limbs trembled as she gathered them beneath her, slowly, tediously slowly, preparing to rise. If she were going to die, she’d do it on her feet, fighting. She glanced away, looking for something she could use as a weapon, noting the heavy stick lying in the grass nearby. Her breath grew heavy in a chest no longer wanting to rise. She wanted to vanish, to crawl away under the earth, but the eyes... the eyes of the beast were captivating, mesmerizing. She knew she was being hypnotized, a mouse facing a barn cat, frozen in fear.

The cat’s head was the same size as her torso; the body was large enough that she could ride it if she were the lady in the poem? How did it go?

Her mind supplied the words, chanting them out, the limerick sticking in her head as she watched the slow movement of the cat as it circled her.

There was a young lady of Niger...

The cat’s eyes blinked once, slow and heavy. She felt her eyelids droop in response.

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;

Her limbs sagged. What was the point? Lethargy made her grow still.

They returned from the ride,

The cat’s tail twitched. It looked so much like the way a housecat’s tail would twitch that for a moment she forgot that this creature was death personified. She stretched forth her hand without thinking, wanting to feel the fur on its head.

With the lady inside,

The cat stilled, watching her. Eyes narrowed.

And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Not a lovely thought. One claw would have covered her face from hairline to chin. It walked up to her, confident in its superiority. She realized suddenly what she was doing and drew her hand back, making a small involuntary sound as the animal stepped closer, hovering over her.

The cat’s breath, surprisingly, smelled clean. That was all she could think of. It smelled clean. I’m going to be eaten by a tiger who brushes—she dared to steal a glance—his teeth.

It was most definitely a male. The haunches on the cat were powerful; it looked like it could pull out a tree by its roots. The head was single large block of fur-covered marble and the tail of the beast was thick, though it no longer lashed the air the way it had. In fact, the tail was quite calm.

The cat licked its lips again and Angelica cried out as the long razor-sharp teeth lifted her way. It placed its nose... his nose against her, and she could feel the little hairs tickle her face.

This is it. I’m going to die. With a smile on the face of the tiger...

The cat sniffed her once and looked into the jungle. It stood over her, its attention turned to the trees. She looked reluctantly, wondering what fresh hell was going to take her now.

She realized the cat was looking in the direction from where she’d entered the clearing.

She turned back to the tiger but it was already gone, bounding away on silent, deadly feet. It got as far as the tree line and snarled a warning at the waterfall and vanished under the trees.

Angelica was running before she realized that she’d made it to her feet. She ran blind and only found her first marker because she literally ran into the branch where it hung. She took a moment to throw up, retching all the nothing that was in her stomach, her body proving its emptiness over and over, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was still alive, though for how long it was impossible to say.

She desperately searched for the next marker and saw it flapping in the distance like a crooked finger, calling her deeper and deeper into the growth.

By the time she’d reached her watch, she was able to pull it off and somehow managed to strap it onto her wrist with a shaking hand. She could hear the river from where she was and pushed her way through to the bank, stumbling to a bewildered halt.

He wasn’t there.

She turned around. Again. This wasn’t the right place. Somehow she’d come out downstream or upstream, somewhere far from where she’d left Taylor. The river was there, the bank was there with the marks of her struggle to pull Taylor out of the water, but Taylor himself was gone.

Crocodiles take their prey and bury them under the water to eat later.

It couldn’t be, she refused to allow it, to accept it. “TAYLOR!” she screamed, with all the pent-up fear and panic of facing down two predators, one so close she could still smell its breath. “TAYLOR!”

She ran along the bank of the river and stopped short. She could just make out the image of the plane rippling as the water ran over it. She traced back from there to the bank and found again the marks where she’d pulled him up out of the water.

Angelica screamed until her throat burned raw and tasted like blood.

Extreme strain to the vocal cords, damage includes tearing and hyper-stretching.

Taylor’s belt lay in the mud beside her. A bundle of cloth lay strewn next to that. His clothing, stained in blood. The tough jeans were intact but the shirt had been ripped to shreds.

No wonder the tiger didn’t eat me. It was already full.

Angelica couldn’t stop the voice in her head any more than she could stop screaming.