Wild Tiger Chase | Book #2 (Complete)

61: the gold runs dry (Part I)

— Léon —

A cold breeze shook the tree leaves, making them rattle⁠—snakes ordering invaders to go away.

Léon looked up to the canopies above, then at the mango trees in the center of the clearing. The sickness' tendrils had already reached them.

They would die too, and it wouldn't take long.

Jackal seemed to notice that. The white shadow connecting her to Toni dispersed, and Jackal's muscles relaxed. Her shoulders sunk, her stance grew smaller, and she closed her jaw as well as she could.

Léon's stomach dropped a few inches. Eyes widened, he looked from Satina to Toni, watching the small changes in the latter's expression. Toni blinked a few times, slowly as if processing Satina's order.

"I said—give back all the powers you stole," Satina repeated.

Toni raised his trembling hands and covered his face.

With a dull sound, Jackal freed the claws in her right hand from the tree trunk. Her shark eyes, wide, black, and bottomless, were trained on Satina.

Shit.

"Rob!" Léon shouted.

Rushed steps approached with the odd tempo of a hurt person. Léon tugged his scythe backward, trying to keep Jackal from biting Satina, and Rob reached her in time to hold her arm and stop her attack.

As the breeze intensified, Jackal muttered under her breath, "You chose the first option. You'll kill him and deny me what I want."

"Will you honestly tell me you want to save him?" Rob said in a strained voice. His boots grated the ground. He grunted and supported one foot on the tree, trying to hold Jackal back.

"I do not—but I have a deal, and I always fulfill my part in a deal!" Jackal shouted.

The breeze turned into a gale, sucking leaves and blades of grass towards Toni.

"Shit. What's happening?" Satina mumbled.

Léon dug his heels and leaned back; he doubled his grip on the scythe and shut his eyes. Moments before, this was his attempt to save Satina. Right now, as Jackal bit down the snath and arched forward, this was his attempt to save himself.

"Just hold on tight!" Léon shouted.

Rob's foot slid off the tree trunk. He cried out as the windstorm pulled him; Jackal managed to lace her arm around his waist and stop him from being dragged away. She udes the strength of the wind to impale her claws on Rob's stomach. Rob wailed in pain, and his cries were accompanied by Léon's desperate shouting.

Finally, the wind slowed down to a stop. In that short moment of calmness, Satina slid her arms away from Jackal's neck, Léon dematerialized his scythe, and Rob stumbled a few steps away, trying to stop the bleeding with one of his hands.

The four of them shared a confused glance... and started to fight again.

It would have been funny if Satina's blood wasn't smeared all over Jackal's face, if Rob didn't look like a sack of wounds and broken bones, and if Léon's rage wasn't already threatening to consume him again. From afar, Rafa tried to throw long, thin crystal needles that stuck on Jackal's arms, back, and legs, but that wasn't enough to slow her down—and Rafa was getting tired.

They all were.

With a loud roar, Jackal threw Rob across the clearing and used the momentum to break the crystal needles pierced into her right side. She gave Léon a hard punch in the stomach and stepped away to gaze at Satina. There was something in her eyes. Something that went way beyond honoring deals. Was it fear? Desperation, maybe? What pushed Jackal to keep going?