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I was about to be ed I was their target The chase was on

My hind legs bunched and pushed, and I leaped through the air A pair of glea, outstretched claws thrust upward and raked harh my fur,across the dirt road toward a gaping black rent in the earth

I gauged the distance across the ers were practically on top of h a wall of icy air that hovered above that yawning hole I did not leap straight across the long, skinny ers would do the saht, they couldn’t leap as far

I ed the distance and came down too soon As s fleard, claws extended and searching for purchase in the rocky ground My body slammed to a painful stop, so hard that my claws almost lost their tentative hold in stone Yet they held A swoosh of air ruffled e of the mine shaft and plued to heavebody up a few inches and sink narled tree root when fire exploded in my back A pair of claas entrenched in ht of a tiger

I screamed The sound echoed to the depths of the shaft and back The tiger clung desperately toto the tree root Inch by inch, those claws ripped doard through er’s body I screaive up my hold on the tree root and plummet into the shaft below if it meant the end of pain But then the claws slipped froed into the hole The third and final tiger, though, did not stir the air around me

A shadow, almost impossible to see even beneath the full e of the sunken y I needed to scraony every time I moved so much as a claw

The er jumped My ribs strained and cracked as the ht body, its ht settled, its teeth sank into er’s neck, biting as hard as I could

My teeth sank into fur and er shook ht eyes, showing liunfire The tiger, about to take my life with its jaws, jerked up and looked in the direction of the echoing shot And I, with the last bit of strength I possessed, liftedup and into the tiger’s throat

Like a hangnail snagging on silk, the tiger’s skin caught under my claws It wasn’t until hot blood poured over e And then, as lifeless as a sack of feed, the tiger collapsed on led to breathe

I clawed my way out from under the beast Every bit of me hurt, except the tip of , and the skin onblood--I could s with the stench of other hun blood off olden fur I didn’t knohat else to do, I was in such a state of raw animal instinct Just sat there and licked and licked and licked

I probably would have sat there till the sun came up if I hadn’t been snapped back to reality Gunshots, three in a row and getting closer, reminded er, but it was gone What I saw shattered iant striped skin of a tiger was abrown hair I had seen hiiven Naalyehe of thefor me--Rolf Heinrich Blue tinted his dead lips and the lazed, frozen eyes Blood coated his neck and half his torso, blood froed wounds slashed in his neck by a pair of razor-sharp claws Mine And barely visible in all the blood was a turquoise choker digging into his flesh

Panic overwhelmed my better senses I clamped down on the ankle of the naked corpse, felt my teeth slide into the cool skin, and pulled It didn’t take e it over the edge The e the fifty-yard dash, all evidence of one