In Enemy Territory - Shannon West Page 0,83

his face in his hands. After a little silence, he looked back up at Ryan hopefully. “Back at the prison, Larz told Kylon that King Davos was coming. He said he’d be here soon to save us. Do you think he could get here in time?”

“I hate to tell you, Rasc, but I don’t think so. The starcruiser was several days behind us, and as near as I can tell, Mikos and I have been here on the planet only about two days.”

Rasc felt his whole body sag. “I was afraid of that.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay then. So the general said to make a plan. What are we going to do?”

****

In the few short minutes they had with Prince Mikos’s tiger, Larz had been able to confirm it was him, though he couldn’t explain how he knew. They stood outside the glass enclosure and gazed in at him, and fury swept over Kylon as he watched Mikos’s tiger pacing restlessly back and forth, turning occasionally to snarl and grumble at the glass. He knew Larz was feeling the same anger.

“And now, gentlemen,” the General said from behind them. “It’s time for you to transform as well. I have separate enclosures for you. I understand tigers are solitary creatures, and I don’t want you to fight it out until you fulfill your purpose. Come with me.”

Larz put a hand on his arm as he was turning away. “If he does what he says and turns us loose to hunt for Ryan and Centarlo, there may be nothing we can do. You have to accept that. If you come back to yourself, and find that you’ve-you’ve killed one of them, then…”

“I won’t.”

Larz shook his head sadly at him, but there didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Kylon considered shifting now before he reached the enclosure and at least being able to kill the general before this thing started. He’d be dead almost immediately too, of course, as the guards would surely fire on him. But at least Rasc might be safer with one less tiger stalking him. Decision made, he actually started to transform when he felt a crashing blow on the back of his head and he fell to his knees, in stunning pain and not completely conscious. He was vaguely aware of his body being dragged into another enclosure and felt the darkness drawing near. His last thought before he blacked out completely was of Rasc. He had to keep him in his mind—the way he looked a few minutes ago when he clutched the front of Kylon’s shirt and that beautiful face looked up at him so trustingly. He’d do anything he could to keep him safe. And if he did wake up to find that his tiger had…killed Rasc, he was pretty sure he’d simply kill himself. There wouldn’t be any way he could go on.

The thought surprised him so much with its truth and its power that he carried it with him, his last thought before he slipped into unconsciousness.

Chapter Fourteen

When the guards came back a few hours later, Ryan and Rasc had managed a few hours of sleep. Rasc would never have believed he could, but he’d been so exhausted from everything that had happened, he’d slipped into a deep sleep before he knew what hit him.

Before they slept, he and Ryan had roughed out a plan of how to proceed. They would stay together, try to elude the tigers if they could, and if they couldn’t and they realized one of them was stalking them, they had a plan for that too. Ryan’s idea was to head straight into the jungle and then follow as direct a line as they could to get to the coastline. Once on the coast, they would follow the trail that had led them back to the general’s house. Once there, they would get inside and try to kill him.

To call it an extraordinarily long shot was way too generous, but Ryan said the general would think it the last thing they would ever try—to come back to his stronghold, full of guards and a madman who wanted to kill them. So that was exactly what they would try to do.

The guards gave them each a knife, a water bottle, and a small pouch of food containing energy bars, fruit, and nuts. They took them then to the edge of the jungle and turned them loose. They would have only a