Instead, he just shifted back to tiger and shoved his massive body inside; glass broke all around him. He knew the advantage of surprise was blown, but he didn’t care. As a natural ambush hunter, he knew a friggin’ ambush when he saw one.
And Tock was in the middle of an ambush without her usual backup of psychotic honey badgers.
He shook the glass off his fur and headed toward the door. He briefly paused, though, when he heard grunting and thuds.
Now running, he hit the closed door with all his weight and took it down. He stood on the splintered wood and watched while Tock repeatedly stabbed a man in the neck, her entire body on top of his shoulders, legs around his neck.
Another man came toward her and she stopped stabbing long enough to slash the second man’s throat, then slash again. This time straight across his face, ripping him open from forehead to underneath the jaw before burying her knife into the throat of the victim she was currently riding like a horse.
Both men dropped and she expertly landed on her feet.
Shay shifted back to human. “Outside—”
She held up her gloved hand. “I know. Ambush. They’re here for me.”
He thought about asking her why, but he probably didn’t want to know. Something else was wrong. He could feel it.
“Are you okay?”
She shook her head and he reared back a bit when her left eye wobbled, meaning it was not firmly in its socket. He wanted to scream and cover her face with his hand, race her to the hospital. But a honey badger wouldn’t appreciate any of that. And honey badgers were weird anyway when it came to healing. Few even got the fever that helped all other shifters heal naturally. Instead . . . they just sort of pulled themselves back together. Or, even stranger, didn’t seem to notice any damage. He clearly remembered watching Max MacKilligan dig a bullet out of her shoulder with her claws. There was blood and some grunting, but within a few hours, she was completely healed and her arm worked fine. She wasn’t even affected by blood loss.
See? Weird.
Still . . . Tock didn’t look right even for a honey badger.
Shay heard cracking sounds and he watched in horror as the broken bones around her eye snapped into place, securing the eyeball. He thought she was out of trouble until Tock gestured with her right hand to a spot over her shoulder. “Get this out for me, would you?”
She turned and he saw a big syringe hanging from her spine. He cringed and quickly grabbed it, but a simple tug didn’t pull it from her back. He pulled hard again and again until it finally came out, leaving a small hole in the skin and a milky white substance leaking down onto the floor.
“Uh . . . Tock?”
“Yeah.” She turned and faced him, gazing at the syringe in his hand. “I know.”
“You know what?”
She didn’t answer right away, still staring at the syringe. But finally she looked up at him and said, “This doesn’t feel right.”
“Of course not. Someone shoved something into your spine.”
“Yeah, but poisons. I’m a badger. But . . . this is different. Something’s different.”
He didn’t understand what she was trying to say. Tock wasn’t a big talker but she was always clear in her communication.
Maybe she was just freaked out. He didn’t blame her.
“What’s different?” he urged. “Tell me. I’ll fix it.”
She didn’t respond, though. She simply dropped to her knees, then forward, crashing into his legs.
“Tock? Tock.” He lowered her to the ground, crouching beside her. “Tock? Talk to me.”
But it seemed she couldn’t. Her eyes were wide open and her body was rigid. He’d found her and her badger friends passed out on his floor before. Filled with poison from some snake or whatever that they’d all willingly eaten. At the time, he’d thought they were all dead. They hadn’t been breathing and their hearts had stopped for a time, but no. They weren’t dead. They were just honey badgers high on snake poison.
But this situation was different. This time her heart was beating. Her breathing was steady. He could hear both. Yet she seemed . . . frozen. Stuck. Her muscles rigid. Her eyes unblinking.
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing five armed men. Not the ones he’d already dealt with in the parking lot because these guys had recently bathed and used body spray.
The men were about to exit when they saw a naked, bloody Shay crouching beside their prey. They paused, confusion on the parts of their faces he could see—everything around the eyes and bridge of the nose was covered by balaclavas.
Shay roared. The loud sound startled the men. They began firing but he’d already flipped up and by the time he’d punched his way inside the wall, he was tiger again.
He moved easily through the darkness until he reached the elevator. He shifted briefly to open the hatch in the hall ceiling, and shifted back so that he could jump down without making a sound despite his massive cat size.
The men had already moved into the hallway, their heads turning this way and that, searching for him. They didn’t know what they’d seen, but they were smart enough to know they’d seen something.
Shay low-crawled up to the one closest to him before going up on his haunches and slamming his front paws against the man’s back. Not only knocking him into the man ahead of him—putting both on the floor—but snapping the first one’s spine and crushing his ribs.
The rest of the men turned toward him and away from Tock. Shay swatted his paw one way and the arm holding an automatic rifle flew. He bit down on a shoulder and forced another man to his back. He lifted his back legs up at the same moment and unleashed his back claws so that he tore open a chest and, moments later, pulled the balaclava off a face. All in one move.
When his back legs had landed again, he readjusted his maw from the shoulder to the jaw. Then he spun around, using the screaming man he held to knock down the remaining prey. He crushed the jaw between his fangs—mostly to stop the annoying screaming but also . . . why not?—while lifting a front paw and slamming it against the other man’s face. His claws tore off skin, muscle, and bone, leaving nothing but a half-empty skull.
With all the new attackers finished off, he took a step toward Tock. But he heard the ding of the elevator again and spun around to face it, standing over her body. Ready to kill whatever came through that door.
Hackles up. Fangs bared. Bloody drool pouring from his mouth and onto poor Tock, Shay readied himself for whatever might come through that elevator door. He lowered the front of his body so he could easily launch himself into the fray.
The elevator door opened but no one came out. Not immediately.
Then he saw the tip of a silencer move slowly around the edge of the door, and he unleashed a roar in warning. The silencer froze, then lowered and she suddenly appeared in the hallway.