Amber walked meekly with the guards, trying not to be too obvious about looking around. The dog-catcher was lying unexpectedly loose at her shoulders, and when she glanced at the man holding the pole, he glared back and fingered a button on the handle. The other guard, walking behind her with the gun trained on her, cleared his throat, and Amber put her head down and continued to shamble with them. She was short, so it was easy to walk slowly and look like she was using a normal pace.
The looseness of the noose around her neck got her brain spinning.
They were expecting a mountain cat—an American mountain cat. A big mountain cat. If she shifted, the dog-catcher would be tight around the neck of a big cat. But around her small cat shape…
As quickly as the idea occurred to her, Amber put it in motion, shifting as she pretended to stumble.
Her clothing fell away from her cat form even as she jumped—straight through the noose—and scrambled for the wall of the mesh enclosure they were walking past. She heard the crackle of the dog-catcher rather than feeling it through her thick fur, and realized belatedly that it must be electrified. She wasn't sure if she would have made this attempt if she'd known that, but it was far too late now, and her coat, meant for cold mountain winters, had protected her from the worst of it.
She climbed in a panic, the agility of her cat form driving her, and as the guard behind her fired and missed, and missed again as she switched directions up the enclosure and reached the roof.
She heard the zoo erupt into roars and animal cries of encouragement. A human voice even cried out, “Go, kitty cat!”
“Shit!” the guards said in unison.
More wild shots followed her. Needles hissed by as Amber made it up to the roof of the enclosure. She ran and leaped to the next. She was already two cages away while the guards were still peering up onto the first. Then she switched directions entirely and leaped across the path to a new row of cages.
Her night sight let her see better than she had as a human, and her height gave her a clear view. Lights all along the wall had come on, showing her that she had no real chance of getting over them—though she could probably squeeze between the barbed wire with little damage thanks to her coat, she was too small to make it to the top of the wall to try; nothing was built up close to it. She noticed the cameras, too, now swiveling back into the enclosure to try to find her, and had a glimpse of a helicopter on one of the low roofs towards the back.
“Goddamn it, do you see it?” one guard called to the other.
“Beehag said it was a mountain cat, not a goddamn little cat!” the other complained.
Their voices were clear to Amber's excellent hearing.
Instead of immediate escape, Amber looked for hiding spaces, and found one in a pile of construction materials towards the end of the zoo. While the cameras were still re-positioning to try to follow her, she dashed out of sight down the side of one of the enclosures and flattened herself to fit in a tiny space on top of a pile of rocks, under dimension lumber and roof tiles. From here, she could see a dozen more hiding places that she'd be able to make it to in short order, and she had a good vantage for seeing oncoming intruders.
She could actually see that the entire zoo was actually much more suited for containing big animals. She'd be able to get out, she felt, with her first taste of confidence as the adrenaline began to release its hold on her. She just had to lie low, and she'd be able to sneak out of the front gates when the timing was right.
“Call it in!” one of the guards was saying.
“Fuck no, you call it in,” the other protested.
Eventually, they worked out who was making the call, and the little two-way radio crackled in return as they explained their mistake.
“Escaped?” Even over the poor quality radio from a distance, Amber recognized Alistair's voice, and it made the hackles on her neck rise.
The guards fell over each other to justify their actions, and Amber gave a little cat smile to hear them describe her as basically supernatural.
There was a moment of silence in response, and then Alistair's crisp accent. “She won't get far. We've got her mate here.”
Mate?
Amber knew without a doubt that they meant Tony, and it was everything she could do not to bolt from her hiding hole right then to find and defend him. But what did they mean by 'mate?' She could all but hear the emphasis that Alistair was putting on it.
The waiter at the resort had used the same word.
Whatever they meant by it, she knew that Alistair was right—knowing that they had Tony—that they might hurt Tony to get her, meant that Alistair had Amber as surely as if that noose had been tight around her neck.
