Black Tiger

Chapter two

Ash glanced at Sally. She sat tight-lipped in the passenger seat, her knuckles white where she gripped the edge of the seat. Not happy. He could understand her point of view but the poacher had been lucky he hadn't suffered a worse fate.

"Huh. You should have killed him." His alter ego's words rumbled in his head.

"And have them looking for a man-eater? We've had this conversation." He could hardly explain to her that he knew the man was a poacher. The fool couldn't resist taking a trophy, one claw that marked the tigress and her killer. He'd followed the scent and left the tracks around the house himself, knowing the villagers would end the matter without the need for bloodshed.

She wouldn't even look at him. Oh, it was probably just as well. The pictures of her Kumar had shown him when he was recruiting didn't do her justice. Short, dark hair that curved around her face, tanned skin and eyes the same dark blue as a baby tiger's. Maybe she had a temper to match.

"I like that," the were-tiger said.

"What?"

"That she has a temper."

"Oh, shut up." He glanced at the girl. "I thought tomorrow I'd let you sleep late and conduct short sessions in two villages. But if you feel you need more time…"

"That's fine," she snapped "I've worked on less sleep. I'd rather get started immediately."

End of that conversation. She turned away from him, gazing out the side window, her body tense.

The cruiser breasted a hill and started down into the village of Kinpoor. She sat up, peering through the windscreen. "Are we there, yet?"

"Nearly. One more village and then we'll enter the park."

At the outskirts of the township he slowed down and waited while a skinny, slab-sided cow with the typical Brahman hump, twitching ears and sad, soft eyes, ambled out of the way. She gazed around her, round-eyed.

"Have you been to Asia before?" he asked.

She gave the ghost of a smile. "Just ten days in Bali when I was a student."

This must be very new, very different for her. The opposite of his own introduction to the world, when he'd left India to study at Cambridge. He'd been miserable until he'd learned to accept what was.

He drove on, easing down the street. A scooter carrying a man, and a woman holding onto a child, wobbled past a cart piled high with corn stalks. Scooters and bikes were everywhere, in the road or leaning against walls and trees. Revving engines, beeping horns and the conversation of people filtered through the windows of the car.

"It's so noisy. And so many people," she said.

"Yes, very different from a modern, Western city like Melbourne. The people have different expectations, different values, too."

"Like evicting people over a superstition?" Her voice dripped contempt.

He pushed down the tremor of annoyance. He couldn't expect her to understand. "It may have been a last straw, it may have been a vindictive neighbor planting tracks. They may have just had it in for him for some other reason. But it is up to the panchyat—the village council. I have no power there.

He pressed his foot on the accelerator as soon as he could. "Besides, are you so sure something like that could not happen in Australia?"

"No." She snapped the word without even thinking.

"No-one has ever been ejected for being the wrong color, the wrong nationality, the wrong religion?"

She sucked in a breath, frowning a little. He must have hit a nerve. Just outside the village, the towers of Tengai palace gleamed white above the enclosing hedge.