Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc 7)

The images came thick and fast, crowding at her mind. Her tiger was right. She did have everything she needed, at least as far as knowledge was concerned. She just had to go out and hunt for it.

Yesss, hissed her tiger. Be a hunter!

Right. Sure, Destiny promised, trying to keep her uneasiness out of her mental voice. Let’s go stalk the wild geranium.

“Hey. Hey, jarhead. Wake up.”

She had to shake Ethan before he opened his eyes, and even then it was a moment before they focused on her.

“Do you need me?” he mumbled.

I always need you, she thought before she could stop herself. I need you more than I need air to breathe.

She crammed that thought into a box and sat on it. “No, I’m fine. I have to go out and get something. I want to leave my gun with you, just in case. Okay?”

“Yeah.” His eyes were already fluttering shut.

She laid it on a little bedside table within reach of his hand. Then, doubtful, she asked, “Could you shoot?”

“Always, mudpuppy.” His voice was weak, but she knew it was the truth.

She took his hand and squeezed it. “I’ll be back soon.”

Destiny hurried along the streets. She barely noticed the beauty around her, she was so knotted up with ten different kinds of worry. What if she didn’t recognize the herbs after all? What if they didn’t grow here? What if she got the wrong ones, and poisoned Ethan? What if—

Inside her head, her tiger roared with fury. Shut up! Shut up, and hunt! Then let ME hunt!

Destiny rocked back on her heels, jolted out of her anxiety and into a whole new one. She was tempted to yell back at her tiger, but God knew what sort of fury that would unleash. Instead, she made herself reply calmly. I am hunting. And I need hands to pick the herbs, and then I have to carry them in a backpack, and then I have to grind them or boil them or something. You can’t do any of that. You want Ethan to get better, right?

Yes, growled her tiger. We will protect Ethan. Go, silly girl! Protect him, PROTECT HIM!

The roar was loud enough to make her head ring. As she left the city and began to poke through the jungle outside, she couldn’t help hoping against hope that Mataji had been wrong about the whole “only on a single mountaintop” thing and she’d find a nice patch of sherneend, gray-green and ready for picking.

With smug satisfaction, her tiger said, You will find none of that here. Then, an instant later, Are you blind? There, there!

And there it was: a patch of the little yellow-flowered herb that soothed coughs, almost invisible under a layer of dead leaves. Destiny picked the lot of it, then, rather grudgingly, said, Thanks.

Her tiger purred.

And then she saw the entire world with new eyes. It was as if she was looking at one of those magic pictures that looked like a bunch of random dots until you stared at it long enough, and then it became a vase of flowers. The jungle was no longer a hard terrain to be overcome, it was a supermarket with everything free for the taking. There were fruits and there were vegetables and there were spices, there was a tree whose twigs could be chewed and used as toothbrushes, there was a vine that could be stripped and dried and twisted into rope. And there was an entire pharmacy full of medicinal herbs.

Unfortunately, most of them weren’t the ones she needed. She impatiently passed over leaves that settled upset stomachs and roots that cured athlete’s foot, bark for headaches and berries for cramps and a flower that could be made into a rinse for oily hair.

What about that? asked her tiger when she hesitated over a plant with pale leaves and tiny purple flowers. I don’t remember that one.

I think Mataji showed me that one when you were asleep, Destiny replied. It’ll make Ethan feel better, but…

Then give it to him, her tiger growled impatiently. Stop dawdling and pick it!

Destiny didn’t feel like getting into yet another argument with her tiger. She picked it. There was no harm in that. But she’d let Ethan decide whether or not he wanted to take it.

She also harvested a jagged-leaved herb she could crush and apply to his wounds. But she had no luck finding anything useful for fever or pneumonia. Maybe none of those grew where she was. Or maybe if she kept searching, eventually she’d find some… but when she checked her watch, she saw that she’d already been gone for hours. She didn’t like leaving Ethan alone that long, especially when there might be enemies about, gun or no gun. Reluctantly, she headed back into the city.

As she turned a corner, she startled a big white deer. It leaped over a low wall, then bounded toward the jungle.

Destiny’s tiger lunged forward.

No! Destiny shouted inwardly. Not now. We can get a deer any time we want.