Page 10 of Ignited

He’d imagined himself setting her free. Her hero. A fucking fairy-tale prince, rescuing her from the evil sorcerer holding her captive.

Yeah, right.

But today, even while he was making fun of himself for his stupid fantasies, even while he was spending the last of his money on certain black-market specialty explosives, he couldn’t shake the thought. He’d even talked his older brother into bringing him back to the show and paying his way in. His brother’s date—an annoying bitch named Ginger—was not happy about it.

The magic act ended and the animals left the tent, while the clowns came in. Under cover of the raucous music, Boomer muttered to his brother that he had to pee, slipped out of the bleachers and went outside. The animal tent was right behind the show tent, attached by a canvas tunnel. There was an opening where the tunnel met the animal tent, with a carnival hand standing there to keep people out.

He was smoking. Stupid idiot, Boomer thought. It was a windy night, and he knew from the glimpses he’d gotten that the floor of the tent and tunnel were covered in straw and sawdust. If this yahoo dropped his smoldering butt on the ground, he could set the whole damn carnival on fire.

The fire danger was why Boomer had scrapped all his ideas about fancy exploding diversions, and gone with the simplest plan. He walked casually around behind the tent and ducked into the shadows, the carnival hand paying no attention to him. Pulling out his hunting knife, Boomer made a long vertical slit in the tent canvas and stepped inside.

Even back here, his sensitive wolf nose picked up the smell of smoke. That guy was going to end up with lung cancer, which he totally deserved.

Boomer walked slowly between the two rows of cages lining the tent. The animal performers were at the back, nearest where he’d come in. Bear, lion, panther, leopard. They all still had their jeweled collars on. And they all looked at him with the cold intelligence of shifters, rising to their feet and pressing up to the bars of their cages as he went by.

He should talk to them, ask them if they were really shifters, but they scared him. He didn’t know hardly any shifters except his brother, and some of these had eyes full of crazy.

Halfway down the tent, he came to the white tiger’s cage. Beyond that was kind of a staging area, covered in straw, where they lined up the animals before they went through the tunnel inro the ring.

The tiger also rose to her feet and came to the front of the cage.

Up close, she was huge—bigger than his wolf—and lethal-looking. But there was still that something in her eyes, that made him unable to look away.

“Are you a shifter?” he asked her softly. “Can you Change?”

He heard a rustling behind him, the other animals moving restlessly in their cages, but none of them Changed or spoke.

He felt like an idiot, but he said, “My name is Boomer. I’m a shifter too. A wolf. Nod if you can understand me.”

Her gaze moved to the front of the tent, where the carnival hand had been standing outside. The smell of smoke was stronger now, but Boomer couldn’t see him.

The tiger stared at Boomer again—and slowly dipped her head.

Holy fucking hell. “Can you Change?” he asked again. She shook her head slowly, once each way.

“Do you want to leave here?”

Her eyes widened and she dipped her head in another nod. He heard huffing and soft snarls from the other animals behind him. Shit. They all wanted to leave—of course they did. But he didn’t know if he should free them. They looked like they’d kill the next person they saw.

“I’ll get you out,” he said to the tiger, slinging his backpack off his shoulder and unzipping it. “Back up. Away from the door.”

She narrowed her eyes, considering, and then backed up across the cage.

Boomer packed plastic explosives into the cage lock, stuck in a detonator, lit it, and moved away. “Stay there,” he told her.

There was a small explosion—hardly even worth the name, but it still made noise that the tent hand might hear. The lock popped, and the door opened an inch.

“Come on,” he said, looking uneasily at the front of the tent. He couldn’t smell the tent hand anymore—just the smoke, even stronger than it was before. “There’s a slit in the back of the tent. We’ll go out that way.”

She pushed the cage door open and jumped down from the platform, her muscles flowing like water. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

She took a step toward the back of the tent, then looked at the other collared animals. They were flinging themselves against the bars, building themselves into a silent frenzy. She looked back at him.

Shit. He’d never thought there’d be others. But he had enough explosives…

“Fuck,” he muttered, then said to her, “I’ll try.”

He went across to the lion’s cage and started packing the stuff into the lock. “Back off,” he said, as the lion crowded the front of the cage. “Do you want an explosion up your nose?”