The eyes did not blink.

  That was the detail Suzie's brain fixed on in the stretched, electric seconds after she turned the torchlight toward the far end of the cave — not the size of the creature, not the sound of its breathing, not even the slow and deliberate placement of each enormous paw as it moved toward her across the stone floor. Just the eyes. Burning amber in the torchlight beam, steady and unblinking, watching her with the flat, patient focus

  It was not a tiger.

  The shape was wrong — lower to the ground, broader in the chest, the head heavy and wide with a jaw that looked like it had been designed specifically around the concept of not letting go. A wolf

  And it had smelled the blood.

  Suzie did not move. Her hand stayed flat on Knight's chest — that slow, struggling heartbeat still pressing back against her palm, faint but present, faint but there — and she kept her eyes on the wolf and ran through her options in the span of about two seconds.

  The options were not encouraging.

  The torchlight. She had that. She angled the beam directly at its eyes and it slowed — one step, two — its head dropping slightly, adjusting to the light. But it did not stop. It turned its face slightly sideways to avoid the direct beam and kept coming, unhurried, because it understood in the deep wordless way that predators understand things that the light was not a threat. It was just an inconvenience.

  *"Knight,"* Suzie said, very quietly, her voice stripped of everything except the essential. *"I really need you right now."*

  Knight did not move.

  The wolf took another step. Close enough now that she could hear its breathing — slow, deep, rhythmic — and smell it. Warm and wild and ancient.

  Suzie pressed her hand harder against Knight's chest and closed her eyes for one single second.

  Then — from the cave entrance behind her — came the sound of running feet.

  ---

  Outside the cave, John had seen the bats.

  He was a police officer, stationed at the lower mountain checkpoint, and he had spent enough years on this beat to know that a sudden mass exit of bats from a cave opening did not happen without a reason. Bats did not abandon their roost for nothing. Something had gone in.

  Stolen story; please report.

  He gathered his squad with a look and a gesture — no words needed, they had worked together long enough — and they began moving up the trail with the measured, deliberate pace of people who were armed and trained and in no particular hurry to be surprised.

  ---

  Gill had been up a mango tree.

  He had climbed it with the practical efficiency of someone who grew up doing exactly this, pulling himself up branch by branch until he had a clear sightline down the mountain trail. He had been scanning the treeline for any sign of tiger movement when he saw them instead — uniformed figures, moving in formation, the glint of equipment catching the fading light.

  Police.

  He dropped out of the tree faster than he had climbed it, landing in a crouch and straightening immediately. *"Mrita."* His voice was low and urgent. *"Officers. Coming up the trail. Four of them, maybe five."*

  Mrita's head snapped toward the direction he was pointing, then immediately swung the other way — toward the cave.

  *"Suzie's still in there,"* she said. It wasn't quite a question. Her eyes had gone to the cave entrance and stayed there, reading the stillness around it with a kind of focus that was less than comfortable.

  *"She's been in there too long,"* Gill agreed.

  Mrita made the decision in about half a second. *"We go in. We can wait it out — another hour and it'll be dark enough that they won't see us coming out."* She was already moving. *"Come on."*

  They ran.

  ---

  The cave swallowed them exactly the way it had swallowed Suzie — immediate, total darkness, the temperature dropping several degrees the moment the entrance was behind them. Gill pulled out his phone and turned on its flashlight. The beam swept the cave interior and both of them stopped moving at exactly the same moment.

  The scene in front of them took a full second to process.

  Suzie was on her knees beside an enormous golden tiger, her hands pressed against its chest, her face bent close to its great head with an expression of focused, desperate concentration. The blood packet lay open beside her. The torchlight was angled toward the far end of the cave.

  Mrita opened her mouth.

  Then she saw what the torchlight was pointing at.

  The wolf was perhaps six meters away — still moving, head low, eyes locked on Suzie with the complete tunnel-vision of a predator that had committed to a decision. It had not yet registered the new arrivals. Or if it had, it had decided they were secondary.

  *"Stones,"* Gill said immediately, not loudly, already bending down. His hands found the cave floor — loose rocks, several of them, the irregular kind that fit well in a palm. He straightened up with three in one hand and two in the other and without pausing to think about it too carefully he threw the first one.

  It hit the wolf on its left shoulder with a sharp, hard crack.

  The wolf flinched — a full-body movement, its head snapping toward the new threat, the tunnel vision broken. It made a sound low in its chest. Not quite a growl. More like a recalibration.

  Mrita had already grabbed stones of her own. She threw two in quick succession — one clipped the wolf's flank, the second skipped off the cave floor just in front of it, the sharp sound ricocheting off the stone walls and filling the cave with noise. *"Hey!"* she shouted, because noise mattered, because predators understood disruption. *"HEY!"*

  The wolf turned.

  It looked at Mrita and Gill — assessed them with those flat, burning eyes in the span of a breath — and made a new decision. It lowered its head and began moving toward them instead, slow and deliberate, abandoning Suzie entirely with the pragmatic focus of something that chooses its battles based on proximity and opportunity.

  Gill threw another stone. It landed square on the wolf's nose.

  The wolf snarled — a sound that bounced off every wall and seemed to come from everywhere at once — and kept coming.

  Mrita grabbed Gill's arm. They backed toward the cave wall, keeping the phone's flashlight pointed at the wolf's eyes, throwing the last of the stones in a steady rhythm. The wolf flinched at each one but did not stop. It was close enough now that Gill could see the individual hairs of its coat, the texture of its breathing in the cold air.

  On the other side of the cave, Suzie had not looked up once.

  Her entire world had narrowed to the size of a tiger's chest.

  "Please," she was saying, barely audible over the noise Mrita and Gill were making. Her hand pressed down in a slow, "Please. Please. Come back."

  The heartbeat under her palm had been fading. She could feel it — each beat slightly further from the last, the rhythm losing its argument with the silence between each pulse. The blood packet beside her was nearly empty. She had tried tilting more into his mouth. His throat still did not move.

  *"You spoke to me,"* she said, her voice low and fierce and private. *"Two minutes ago you said hi. I heard you. So you are still in there."* She pressed harder. *"Knight. Come back."*

  Silence.

  Then — like a door being forced open by something enormous on the other side —

  A gasp.