Chapter 41 Restraint
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Tamar felt the light spilling over her, but took no comfort from it. There were three of them now, the newcomer older than the other two. She didn't like people. Ordinary people always treated her like she was some sort of freak. These were Malachi's people, though. She couldn't, shouldn't, hurt them. The only problem was, she was being bombarded by a mix of scents and sensation. The cat wanted out to play, and it was so close to the surface, she could feel it scratching.
It was there as a safety measure. If her human mind couldn't deal with a given situation, her less than human side would take over, and it was never pretty afterwards. She became an animal, killing with as much discrimination as a leopard on the Serengeti plains.
"Stay out, please!" Tamar screamed until the room shook, yet they wouldn't listen. She had to make them listen.
So, when the first of them entered, the girl she came around and roared her challenge to her. Yellow eyes pierced the shadows, jaws large enough to bite a person's head off, vocalizing their anger and despair. Yet the woman kept coming. She wouldn't stop, and in the glare of the single functioning emergency light, her hair looked red. Red, the same color as the Generals.
"No, you can't be here. I won't let you be here!" The voice roared, and Tamar sprang.
The first thing that indicated that things inside the hold weren't going as planned was the scream. It was bloodcurdling, and when Prevost's scream was added to it, the two men standing guard outside rushed to help their shipmate.
"I told her she shouldn't have gone in there alone." Bixby yelled to his chief.
Before either man could take more than a few steps, something flew out of the cargo bay. It was wrapped in dungaree pants and a dungaree shirt, but it was the hair that told both men what had happened. Bloody blonde hair.
"Sam!" Mark screamed and changed course, sprinting to where she had finally come to rest after hitting the deck and bouncing.
His chief made for the door, then stopped at the issuing of a low hiss.
"Stay away from me, leave me alone." The rasp was from the throat of a cat with a human tongue.
"This is Senior chief Samuelson, we have a situation in hanger bay ninety-seven, one of my people are down and I'm requesting a security detail here ASAP." He replaced his comms devise to his belt and tried to get a good look inside the shadowy cargo hold.
Giving up after a few minutes, he took out his flashlight and aimed its piercing beam into the small compartment. The instant the beam penetrated the darkness, his world exploded. A tornado of teeth and claws and long black hair hit his chest, sending him over onto his back.
"Why won't anyone just leave me ALONE!" The voice was now of a small girl, and he looked up to see a face out of nightmares' darkest dreams.
The grip was like iron, the claws like razors. He felt the slashes to his arms as he raised them to defend himself and realized this thing was going to kill him if he didn't do something fast. So, rocking back onto his shoulders, then onto his back, he rolled himself over, taking his attacker with him.
His attacked growled in frustration as she slid off him onto the deck, coming to its feet in an instant. In that instant, the little bundle of black fur and claws was taken off its feet by a flying tackle from Bixby. His superior weight and momentum forced the creature to the deck, Bixby ramming his knee into its spine.
"You fucking bitch! Sam's barely breathing. What the hell are you?" He screamed down at her.
"Where is he?" the creature beneath him wailed through its mouth full of teeth.
"What is it taking about, Chief?" Bixby looked towards the older man.
"I have no idea. Who would it be looking for?" Samuelson picked himself off the deck and walked towards where Tamar was being held, face down on the deck.
"The man who came in that fighter. I have to find him, please. I'm holding on by my claws. I have to find him."
"Holding onto what?" Mark asked, pressing his knee down harder.
Tamar felt them coming. There were twelve of them in all. Their boots were hard soled and well wore, each of them at least two hundred pounds by how hard they were pounding the deck, and she knew what they were there for. To catch her, lock her up, keep her from Mal. The thought sent her blood burning and her control was a thing of the past.
The fool on her back had a broken arm before he knew she'd moved. Planting all of her toes on the deck, she flexed them all at once. The motion slid her forward so fast she was on her feet with his arm in her fist before his brain could register the movement. A twitch of her fist later and he was going to be wearing a cast for the next few weeks, if not longer. His scream presaged the arrival of the security squad she'd heard the other man call.
Whirling to face them, a thin smile came to her face. She could kill each one of them, and she knew it. The sweat on their skin smelled like honey to her. It called to her like a voice in the dark.
"Take a bite. Nothing can stop you here. These are merely human; they can't stand against you. Kill them!" So much of her wanted to. It would be so easy. They moved like they were in thick mud compared to her senses, so easy.
Then a memory came to her, unbidden, but welcome. A vision of Malachi, of him leaning over her, grasping her hand and pulling her to her feet. He was the most powerful thing she'd ever met, yet he had never failed to reach down and pick her up when she needed it.
These guys were just doing what they were told, and she really couldn't blame them. They'd never seen anything like her. To them, she was the enemy, and the only person on board that could tell them who she was, she couldn't find.
"Look guys, I don't want to hurt any of you. Just leave me alone and point me towards Malachi, and we'll all leave here with as many bones as we came here with." She raised both hands, palms forward.
"There are twelve of us and only one of you. So why don't you just get on your stomach before we have to use force?"
Looking up at the man speaking, Tamar could tell right away why he was the leader. When men have to follow someone, they are more apt to follow someone they can plainly see as more masculine than they. This man was the picture of manliness. Standing well over six feet, closer to seven feet, his shoulders were broad, his waist slender. His black skin glistened under a fine film of sweat from his present run. If anyone was going to lead these eleven men, it was this man.
"I can't do that. I have to find my Malachi, and you'd have to get a few more dozen of you to even slow me down." She hissed, dropping into a defensive crouch.
"Okay guys, we take this thing by the book. Attack pattern trinity, go!" With a curt hand signal, all twelve men fanned out into a pattern that would allow all of them to attack her from different angles.
"Fine!" Tamar roared. "You're all lucky my Mal taught me the value of human life, or you'd all be dead, every, last, one of you!" The world around her slowed and she sprang.
It was as if she was unconnected with the flow of normal time. Every man was pinned in place as she moved towards them. Tamar could see the senior chief bent over the woman as she hurtled out of the cargo bay. The slim man who was with her when she first woke up. He was in a relationship with her, no one else knew, but her smell was all over him. Much too intensely for it to be just friends.
The big man's orders had barely left his lips and Tamar was on him. She took him off his feet with one jab to his upper chest. Clinging to him as he fell, she slammed his head into the deck with enough force to crack his helmet. His body went limp, and she was off him and onto the man next to him without ever touching to the floor.
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