“Tiger, what’s wrong?” Maria asked.
Ellison glanced up. Tiger’s warning rumble escalated, and then he roared.
Ellison, Ronan, and Broderick sprang away from the door as it gave, the wolves diving flat as Tiger did. Ronan, too big to do anything but back up, knocked over a delicate gilded side table, the trinkets on its top shattering.
The steel door burst open, and two large, sleek wildcats hurtled out, straight into the wolves and Ronan.
Maria screamed. Tiger rose, but instead of rushing to aid the others, he ran at Maria, herding her back onto the foyer’s balcony. Once she was there, he turned and sprinted back down the hall.
What was Bradley doing with Shifters?
Her chest constricted. Oh, mother of God. What happens to the cubs when they get too big to handle? she’d asked Pablo.
The cheetahs had been wearing Collars, so not feral. Stolen, she guessed, from a Shifter family somewhere. How long ago? Had the clients given them back to Bradley once they tired of them? Had they been here all this time? Prisoners? How many more did he have?
The hallway was a confusion of fur and snarling, yelps and roars. She saw Ellison fall, cheetah claws raking across his fur. He was up in a second, wolf maw closing over the cheetah’s neck. He could break it in the next moment.
“Ellison!” she shouted. “Ellison, they’re cubs!”
Chapter Fifteen
Ellison showed no sign of hearing, but the second cheetah, squirming away from Ronan, knocked into him. Tiger was roaring, but not fighting. Maybe he understood. Tiger was always so protective of the cubs.
Maria had seen Scott crazed from his Transition, striking out before Ronan or Rebecca could stop him. If these two were going through the same thing . . .
They’d stop at nothing to fight their perceived enemies, their killing instinct wound high.
Bradley must be behind them, in that room. Or was he? Would he have run into a room from which there was no escape?
Maria looked swiftly around, taking in the layout of the hallway relative to the rest of the house. She turned and hurried down the stairs and looked out the front door, the gun awkward in her hands, but she feared discarding it. The other guards were subdued, not dead.Ellison’s pickup remained in the driveway, but the limo was gone. Had the driver fled? Or had he driven around to pick up Bradley, who could have escaped out the back? Maria moved through the house again, looking around for another way out—faster than trying to run around the vast building and encounter who knew how many walls or other obstacles.
In the rear of the ground floor, Maria found a kitchen, a huge, elegant room with stainless steel appliances and warm wooden cabinetry. Maybe she should show it to Pablo, and have him take photos for his girlfriend.
A door from this led out to a wide area between the house and five-car garage, a building that looked as though it had once been a stables. An iron stairwell snaked down the house next to the kitchen, a fire escape. High above was an ornate door, closed, that led back into the house.
Bradley wasn’t on the fire escape. He was running across the yard toward the garage. The limo raced up from the other side of the house, dust flying as the driver headed to help Bradley.
Maria raised the gun. It was not very big, but square, like a machine gun with a very short barrel. She aimed down at the limo’s tires and squeezed the trigger.
Three bullets spurted from the weapon, and the kick nearly knocked her off her feet. The shots came nowhere near the tires—they popped into the ground by the limo driver’s door and open window.
The limo stopped, the driver staring at Maria with fear on his face. She lifted the gun again, her hands shaking.
The limo jumped forward, swung around, and raised dust roaring off the other way. Bradley glared after it, then at Maria, and ducked inside the garage.
“Ellison!” Maria yelled. “Ronan! Bradley’s out here!”
Her shouts brought no one. The man was going to go for whatever car was in there and get away.
Maria aimed the gun again and fired a few shots to ping against the ground in front of the garage doors. The weapon’s metal felt hot in her hands, and the gun’s kick, though she was ready for it this time, still made her take a few steps backward.
All was silent within the garage. Maybe fear of a young woman with a gun she obviously couldn’t control would keep Bradley in place for a moment.
Maria risked it. She ran back into the house, through the kitchen and out to the staircase hall. The fight had moved to the balcony above, the wolves and cheetahs rolling in a free-for-all, Ronan having backed off as though waiting to find a good opening. Tiger crouched on the stairs, growling, unhappy.
And where had Pablo disappeared to? The man was nowhere in sight, though Ellison’s truck was still in front. Pablo hadn’t taken it, made good his escape, and stranded them there. But where was he?
The iron railing above her creaked and strained. As Maria looked up, one of the supports snapped. The railing teetered under the weight of the fighting animals, then came down. With it tumbled the wolves and cheetahs—one wolf, Broderick, scrabbling to keep his hold on the balcony until the last minute.
Maria fled out of the way. Ellison hit the stairs on his back, the cheetahs’ limbs flailing until they landed on him, claws raking as they struggled to gain their feet. Ellison, still wolf, rolled out from under them, coming to a stand on four paws, panting hard.
Broderick managed to crawl back up to the upper floor, shifting to his half beast to do it. He morphed to fully human as he stood up, trying to catch his breath.