Bewere the Night

THE SINEWS OF HIS HEART by Melissa Yuan-Innes

Rachel Feng missed the funeral, but she still got to see her dead cousin while she was stuck in the back of a Chinese taxicab.

Cho, the deceased cousin, or at least his identical twin, signaled her from a white Range Rover in the right-hand lane of Harbin’s main highway.

Rachel clutched her burgundy faux Prada handbag. Her damp fingers slipped off the cheap leather. This could not be happening.

On the other hand, a lot of weird crap had unrolled lately, from Rachel’s newfound love for steak tartar to Cho’s alleged funeral scheduled five hours from now. She’d recognize Cho’s bulbous nose anywhere. It ran in the family and dominated Rachel’s otherwise delicately-featured face. At least her nose wasn’t cocked to the left, the way Cho’s had remained after one too many fist fights.

Cho took a hard right and bumped to a stop on to the side of the road, which looked too narrow to handle a Range Rover, but a cyclist swerved around him like this was business as usual.

Rachel knocked on the Plexiglas separating her from the taxi driver. “Pull over, please,” she called in English. He didn’t turn around. All she could see was his well-trimmed, graying hairline, the weathered back of his neck, and the cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth. She rummaged her brain for the correct Mandarin and finally dredged up a “Stop! Please!”

She pressed the lever to roll down her taxi window. Humid smog smacked her in the face. A woman’s voice said, in English, “Please do not touch any button” and the window began to roll back up again.

“Stop! It’s my cousin!” she yelled back in English, and through the glass, she called, “Cho! Is that you?” She jammed her arm into the remaining window gap, but when the glass kept rolling upward, she yanked her hand back and hammered on the Plexiglas taxi divider instead. “Let me out!”

The taxi crawled a few more feet on the highway. The woman’s voice said, “I’m sorry. We have not yet reached your destination.” Rachel had read somewhere that, since the 2008 Olympics, Beijing drivers used portable translators in their cabs. Too bad the translation only seemed to work one way. She craned her neck to stare out the back window.

Cho popped his door open and jumped out of the vehicle. She recognized the tilt of his head and the way he kicked the pavement, although he’d grown a little potbelly over the past fifteen years and he wore a camouflage hat and matching jumpsuit, like he was in the military.

It was him. Why the heck had she flown down for his funeral when he was alive and driving a Range Rover? Her aunt had said he’d been mauled by a tiger, which sounded so 18th century anyway. Maybe it was all an elaborate plot to get Rachel to fly from Canada to China? Or, more likely, Rachel was hallucinating after traveling for 24 hours?

She ripped open her wallet and grabbed some Chinese cash. She waved it at the driver and yelled, “Take it!”

He finally met her eyes in the mirror and rolled down the divider. “No,” he said.

Something about his expression made her hesitate for a second. The whites around his dark irises. The lift of his eyebrows. Then she figured she must be getting heat stroke in the confines of this greasy little cab. She left the money on the seat and yanked on the door handle.

“Wait!” he said in Mandarin. “It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be meeting a ghost.”

She nearly laughed. She’d heard about Chinglish, that weird combination of Chinese + English = charming nonsense. But with her rusty Mandarin, she could make up Chinglish out of her own head. She opened the door.

The driver muttered to himself, but he finally wove his way on to the highway shoulder and popped open the trunk. She seized her luggage and wheeled it toward her cousin as fast as her running shoes would take her.

It was Cho. For sure. She spotted the scar under his left eyebrow from when he fell skateboarding, showing off in front of eight-year-old Rachel and her sister before their family emigrated. He’d developed a red nose and broken veins on his cheeks. Her aunt had never mentioned booze, but no doubt it had played a role in any alleged tiger mauling.

“Cho. I thought you were … ” Dead. But the words locked in her throat. She felt all wrong in China, a Chinese girl who could hardly speak Chinese. She wished again her family could have come with her. She tried again. “It’s good to see you, cousin.” Nervousness bubbled in her stomach. A burning pain lodged behind her heart, even though she too young for heartburn. She pressed her hand to her heart. Her seemed to rebel lately.

“Come on. I’ll show you the tigers,” he said.

“Tigers?” He spoke English with a Mandarin accent, so maybe she’d misunderstood him. Or maybe “tigers” was slang for how he talked about his family, the way English people would talk about bearding the lion in his den. “I’m on my way to, ah, see your mother and everyelse here.” She showed him the printout of the funeral home information. He stared at the paper blankly. She was so punch-drunk tired, she wanted to say, You’re supposed to be dead. What happened to you? Instead, she said, “Can you take me there? Do you want to come?”

“Come,” he repeated, and jumped back into the Range Rover. He must have been lighter than he looked, because the vehicle didn’t sink under his weight at all.

She hesitated for one more second. “Cho. Can you take me to see Auntie—”

“Come,” he repeated, and revved his engine.

She tossed her own luggage in the back before she climbed beside Cho and dialed Auntie’s number. It rang five times before it switched over to voice mail.

Meanwhile, Cho took the first exit off the highway and the signal faded.

Rachel cursed and texted Auntie instead. It slipped through the ether. “Cho picked me up. See U soon.”

Auntie immediately texted back, but before Rachel could open it, the signal died again.

Rachel shoved her useless phone in her shorts pocket. “Do you have a phone?”

Cho lit a cigarette held between his lips while he held the wheel steady using his knees. Just when Rachel felt like lunging for the wheel and driving herself, the tip of the cigarette glowed orange, the smoke curled around his face, and Cho grabbed the wheel in his left hand. He said, “No.”

Man. Who didn’t have a phone in this day and age. “How far is it, anyway?”

Cho shrugged. “Nothing’s far in Harbin.”

Rachel squinted at the road signs, but most of them were in Chinese. All Rachel knew about Harbin was that it was located in the northeast corner of China, it was famous for its ice festival, and Cho’s family had moved there almost ten years ago. Rachel had downloaded a map of the city, but Cho seemed to be taking the back roads and she couldn’t read the calligraphy. She said, “Is this the way to the funeral home?”

Cho smiled around his cigarette. “Trust me.”

After twenty-four hours of traveling, she really wanted to. She rolled down the window and closed her eyes.

The smoke curled in the cab, haloing Rachel’s face, but somehow the tobacco didn’t stink as much as it usually did. Muggy air drifted in from the window. Surprisingly, the weather in Harbin in August didn’t seem all that different from Toronto.

A ghost, she remembered the taxi driver saying, but she pushed the thought away and flickered in and out of a dreamless sleep. At last, she woke up with a dull headache and a dry mouth. The moon rose behind clouds, but the sun still glittered in their rearview mirror. At least it was cooler, but hours must have passed.

This ain’t no funeral home. She cleared her throat. “Cho. Can we stop for something to eat?”

No response. They hit a pothole and Cho steadied the wheel.

She reached for his sleeve, but he moved away before she made contact. She realized they hadn’t touched each other, not even an air kiss. Which was okay—who knew how to greet a cousin you hardly remembered and never visited—but still.

“Cho? Food? Supper? I’m kinda dying here.”

He didn’t even look at her.

She unearthed an airline packet of pretzels in her bag and sipped her water. Soon the bottle would be empty and she’d have to pee. Either he’d let her out or she’d have to fight for the wheel. She laughed a little at the thought.

“Not long now,” he said.

Rachel ran her hands over her arms. She’d waxed them before her trip, but the hair grew back thicker and faster, just like her girlfriends used to warn her before she started shaving her legs. Only, for the first time, her arm hair glinted orange, as if she’d hennaed it. So in the past two months, Rachel had transformed from the typical Chinese girl with minimal hair to a ginger beast who paid regular visits to the esthetician but somehow couldn’t make time to see a doctor to figure out whassup. Just one more sign that her life and her careened out of control.

Rachel said, “I’m going to have to stop soon. Seriously.” But her eyelids sagged again and she stretched out her legs, stifling a yawn.

Cho turned on the radio. Even though it was in Chinese, she understood words here and there. Like something about the full moon and were-tigers.

Cho changed the station to a hard rock station where a guitar wailed almost as loudly as a man yelled about his ex-girlfriend.

“Wait.” Rachel pushed herself upright. Her shoulder ached from resting against the jouncing window. Her brain still rested in the foggy state between sleep and wakening. It felt like the worst hangover of her life. “What was that about were-tigers?”

Cho pushed the cigarette to the other corner of his mouth using only his lips. “Superstitious bullshit.”

“I want to hear it.” She fumbled for the radio buttons.

Cho pushed her hand away. It was the first time he’d touched her. His hands felt so cold, they hurt her skin. Like ice.

Like death.

Rachel rubbed her hand warm again. The guitar shrieked a solo above her pounding heart. She said, “What’s the big deal?”

Cho snorted. “Nothing to know. You Westerners have your werewolves. We have were-tigers. Only old mothers believe in them.” He smirked. He glanced at her. In the darkness, his eyes looked like obsidian.

“That’s kind of cool, though,” said Rachel. “I’ve never heard of them.” She pulled out her iPhone, but it still showed no service. Too bad. She wanted to Google about were-tigers and take her mind off her increasingly creepy cousin.

“Next you’ll be believing that our family is related to the tigers.”

Rachel glanced at him sidelong. “Why would I think that? I think we’re a lot closer to monkeys. Charles Darwin and all that.”

Cho puffed on his cigarette. While Rachel waved away the smoke, he shrugged and said, “No reason. No one believes what the old mothers say, always crying about evil spirits roaming the earth.”

Rachel stared at her phone. The battery showed only one bar power. She must’ve played too many tunes. “Do you mind if I plug it in?”

“Be my guest.”

The converter for her phone charger fit in the Range Rover’s socket, but the energy lines never perked up on her phone. And then Cho killed the music and said, “We’re here.”

Seconds later, Rachel looked up from her phone and smelled cat urine and dust.

Cho accelerated past a faux Chinese temple decorated with a banner sign in Chinese characters. A smaller sign staked into the ground declared this the HARBIN TIGER REFUGE.

“What the—” Rachel said. The hair on her head and yes, her arms prickled with danger. Evening had fallen around them like a shroud.

Cho reached toward a box mounted on his visor and pressed a button. A metal gate clanked open. He gunned his way through it.

Rachel said, “Cho. This isn’t funny.” In the distance, concrete barracks carved black outlines against the sky.

Above the thrum of the engine, an animal snarled.

Not just any animal. A tiger.

Rachel’s heart nearly stopped.

“Get me out of here.” Goosebumps rose on her arms. When she ran her tongue over her teeth, they felt too large and sharp for her mouth.

Cho pressed the gas pedal even harder. “No one wants to be here.”

“Then why are you—”

A tiger answered. The most eerie sound of her life: a moan rose into the night air, sounding almost human yet thoroughly alien.

Rachel fumbled with the door latch, but she knew it was too late. Like the dumbass heroines in horror movies, she had just stumbled into the equivalent of facing down a murderer armed with nothing but cheerleader pom-poms. If she didn’t break her bones jumping out of the car, a tiger would still maul her.

Cho had to be a foot taller and 40 pounds heavier than her. She wished she had a gun.

She heard a snarl, the angry sound of a very large cat, and she had to work hard to control her voice. “Cho. I don’t know if this is a game to you or what. But if you don’t turn this car around, I am going to call Auntie and she will have your head.”

He eased off the gas and puffed on his cigarette. Thank God. Her grip loosened on the door handle. Stupid Cho, still playing games even though he was 30 years old and he should know better.

The cigarette tip glowed a speckled red in the darkness. Smoke billowed out of his nose. Then he said, “Too late. The tiger already got it.”

Rachel couldn’t scream. The breath huffed in and out of her lungs in short, uneven breaths.

A low growl, almost subterranean, seemed to vibrate their vehicle. Cho accelerated into the darkness, toward the concrete barracks, “Stupid. They said the tigers aren’t even good hunters. They take forever to kill a cow when a tourist pays for us to give them one.”

“Are you telling me you’re dead?” she asked in too high a voice. She lowered it. She smiled even though her lips and hands trembled. “Look. Cho. We’re family. I came here for your funeral, okay? Let me go.”

He huffed out a laugh, closing his lips around the cigarette. Then he ground the butt into the ashtray and hit the gas. “Yeah. You’re family. Only family blood can save me now. A life for a life. Sorry, cuz.”

This was what she understood: he wanted to kill her.

The barracks were only fifty feet away.

Thirty feet.

Twenty.

She could hear the tigers snarl. She could hear them pace. She could smell them, the sharp scent of urine, the heavy overlay of feces, and the stinging undercut of bleach, thoroughly foreign and yet somehow familiar.

She refused to die.

She refused to let this fucker, dead or alive, cousin or ghost, drive her to her doom.

She grabbed the base of the gear shift, under his fingers.

His hand closed over hers. His flesh felt cold and implacable.

Her fingers splayed open involuntarily, as if he’d shocked her with icy electricity.

She clenched her fist around the gear shift and tried to downshift. If she stalled the car, she might be able jump out without killing herself.

“An eye for an eye. A life for a life,” said Cho. He plucked her fingers off the gear shift and crushed her hand in his arctic grip.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Only the terrible cold of his hand muted the pain.

“You had it easy in Canada. Now you might as well do some good, saving my life. Or afterlife.” He chuckled, a hollow sound that frightened her as much as the tigers huffing in the background.

She didn’t understand his blather, but she grasped the basics: he intended to kill her.

And he didn’t have control of the gear shift.

She swung her free hand toward the gear shift and knocked it out of gear.

The engine whined. More importantly, the Range Rover suddenly slowed.

Cho swore and released her hand.

She laughed wildly and groped for the door handle,

He smashed his fist into her ear.

Pain.

She heard sobbing and realized it was coming from her own throat, but the sound seemed dampened beneath ringing in her ears.

Her right hand still flailed in the air, searching for the door handle, but between the tears in her eyes and the tinnitus, she was trapped for a few crucial seconds while he got the Range Rover under control and pulled up to the tigers’ lair.

The bunker was actually a series of cages, like wire condominiums, one abutting the other, each holding a tiger or two or three.

A dozen pairs of eyes fixed on the Range Rover, glowing green in the headlights. Pacing tigers paused to evaluate the intruders. Sleeping tigers lifted their heads.

Rachel could hear them breathing. Some of them made funny, stacatto breath sounds.

One of them snarled. A short, angry rasp that rent the air and temporarily overrode the ringing in her ear.

Rachel caught her breath. The pain in her ear subsided a little. Cho said, “We don’t feed the tigers a lot. Costs too much. Poachers can sell tigers for the cost of a bullet.”

“So they’re hungry,” Rachel said stupidly. She wiped the tears out of her eyes, smearing them across her face.

A tiger moaned, a mournful and eerie noise that straightened Rachel’s spine and made sweat pop out of her pores.

“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take you to the one who killed me. She was fast.”

Rachel grabbed the door handle and launched herself out of the vehicle.

She’d take her chances with the tigers.

Cho cursed, but she was already running, flying as fast as she could, away from the tigers, away from her crazy cousin. Back to the gate, which was illuminated by large fluorescent lights.

Night air plastered itself to her body. Her left ear still felt blocked. But she sprinted onward, even though she heard Cho curse and rev up the engine once more.

The Range Rovers headlights advanced on her, illuminating the road ahead of her as if he wanted to help.

The motor growled louder. And louder still.

Rachel came down hard on the side of her right foot, twisting her ankle. Pain lanced up to her knee. She fell on both hands and knees, screaming at the latest agony, but also furious at herself.

This was it. She might as well wear a sign that said “KILL ME, CHO! LET ME HELP YOU OUT!” She crouched there on skinned knees and bloodied palms, waiting for the Range Rover to mow her down.

Instead, she felt the full moon shine on her back.

Rachel had never felt the moonlight before, but tonight, it felt like a coolness washing over her body, a subtle hum in the air.

A blessing.

She felt her face recalibrate, the nose lengthen into a snout.

Fur sprouted out of her skin.

She could smell dirt and diesel and fear. She could detect traces of poultry and other game animals. She could feel the muscles lengthen in her shoulders and legs and her chest broaden.

A tail broke out through her hind end. Somehow, that was the most painful part.

She screamed again, half in terror and half in jubilation. Her brothers and sisters gnashed their teeth and roared in their bunker.

Rachel Feng. Were-Tiger.

Cho roared behind her, scant meters from her tail.

Rachel began to run. Slowly at first, but gathering speed, her paws pushing into the pavement, her legs springing into the air.

Her ankle gave a starburst of pain every time she landed on it, but she tucked the pain deep inside her and raced off the road.

She wove around the sparse trees. The Range Rover bounced after her, but she could her it slow down, crashing around rocks, grinding its gears.

Tiger Rachel smelled water. Real water. A pond. She veered south, racing toward the pond.

Human Rachel dimly remembered her grandmother saying that ghosts had trouble crossing water.

Human Rachel also thought water might slow down the Range Rovers.

One, two, three more leaps and—splash! Into the pond.

The cool water made her yelp with shock, but she waded into its depths. The muddy bottom soothed her ankle a little but slowed her progress. The pond was only about fifty feet across and no higher than her chest, tangled with reeds. Still, she picked her way to the middle of the pond.

The Range Rover bumped to the edge of the pond. Cho killed the engine, so now all Rachel could hear was the sound of her breathing and her limbs moving restlessly in the water.

Although the wind blew away from Rachel, she could still smell something putrid waft from the vehicle. Death. Putrefaction. She no longer doubted that her cousin had died and, for whatever reason, he wanted to kill her, too.

Cho called to her. “Rachel. Rachel.” His voice sounded like honey, warmer than her grandmother and more alluring than a lover.

Involuntarily, Tiger Rachel moaned, a mournful, eerie return call, less controlled than a wolf’s howl.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Cho said, in English.

She took a step toward him. Her paws splashed through the water before she stopped herself, breathing hard.

“I will take care of you,” said Cho. “You don’t have to worry any more.”

Rachel closed her eyes. She swished her tail through the water, tracing a figure eight. Why was she so drawn to him?

“Kitty,” said Cho again.

Rachel’s ears rose toward his voice.

“Come with me or you will die and they will throw your in cold storage with hundreds of other dead tigers. They will make tiger wine out of your bones and sell your meat in the caféteria. They will sell your whiskers on eBay.”

Rachel’s tail swished from side to side. Human Rachel remembered eBay.

“Come with me. I’ll take you home.”

Rachel took another step. Twenty more steps and she would mount the muddy banks of the pond.

Cho popped open the back door of the Range Rover. “It’s big enough for you here. I trust you. I know you won’t hurt me. I’m your flesh and blood. I love you.”

The moon shone on his face, making him look pale and innocent. She took another step.

The wind shifted slightly and she smelled rotting flesh again.

Her mouth opened and she grimaced, forcing the smell into the cavern of her mouth so she could explore it.

Decay.

Betrayal.

She snarled. No, she’d never go back to this rotten man, this ghost, no matter how much his words seduced her.

Cho recoiled from her sound. Good. He was frightened. Perhaps he’d search for easier prey.

Instead, he reached into the back of his truck and pulled out a gun.

Rachel gasped a breath into her tiger lungs and ducked under the water. She didn’t dare swim away. Any movement would help him track her,

Underwater, she couldn’t hear his lulling voice.

Underwater, she couldn’t breathe.

How long could tigers hold their breath?

One Mississippi.

Two Mississippi.

By the time she arrived at fifty Mississippis, she had to raise her snout above the water line.

A bullet zinged past her nose and splashed into the water.

She gasped and ducked underwater again. Human Rachel remembered Auntie bragging that Cho was an excellent shot. He could kill her.

Heck, the pond was so shallow that even a terrible shot could aim a dozen bullets in her direction and hasta la vista, baby.

But he wasn’t killing her. Why?

He wanted her to get back in his Range Rover.

He wanted to present her to the tiger who’d killed him and let it kill Rachel.

He wanted to sacrifice her. Somehow, he thought it would help him, or at least his foul spirit.

She hunched her close to the pond bottom and began skulking away from Cho.

The pond grew shallower as she worked her way to the opposite bank. Her ears poked out of the water. She heard the Range Rover paralleling her progress and retreated into the center of the pond.

A bullet zinged by her left whisker. She plunged into the water again.

When she surfaced, gasping for breath, she heard the Range Rover drive away.

Had Cho given up? It seemed unlikely. And yet Rachel took the opportunity to breathe deep the night air. Never had it smelled so sweet, even though her own death hung like a specter in the air. How could she escape from this concentration camp for tigers?

Should she bolt for the main gate? But how could she cross it, without Cho’s transmitter? And even if she did escape, would she remain a tiger or revert to human once the sun rose?

All too soon, the Range Rover roared back toward the pond. Cho’s laughter drifted toward her on the night wind. But instead of firing another shot at her or luring her with his voice, he killed the engine and leaned against the vehicle.

He lit a cigarette.

Rachel ducked underwater once more. When she resurfaced, the breeze wafted toward her and she smelled tiger.

She paused and sniffed again.

It was not Rachel’s own changed smell, but the ripe scent of a mature female tiger who had been caged too long and fed only a few stringy chicken necks in the past two days.

Cho could not cross the pond water. But a tiger could.

He had unleashed the killer tiger on Rachel.

Cho held his cigarette between two fingers and yelled, “See ya, cuz! No hard feelings!”

Rachel kept her ears and eyes above the water. She wanted to see how many tigers would come after her. Cho had said the female who killed him was very fast, but the others were inept.

She half-expected the tigers to ring the pond and then, at some feline signal, attack her at once. She probably still smelled human, at some level; she could still think in words, after all.

But she could see nothing except the Range Rover bleached by moonlight and Cho’s eternally smoking silhouette.

She finally spotted something crouched on the ground. Even in this quasi-forest, with just rocks and the occasional tree as camouflage, she would have missed this hunkered figure watching her from about one hundred feet away.

“Get her!” Cho yelled suddenly. “Go on! Kill her and let me be!”

Still, the figure huddled close to the ground.

Rachel tried to remain still in the pond water. She would have run except she was lame and at least in the water, one of her enemies was held at bay.

Slowly, slowly the killer tiger wove its way to her. Not racing like a lion, or even stalking proudly like a housecat, but creeping close to the ground. Even Rachel’s tiger eyes and ears could barely detect it creeping toward her, padding soundlessly on its paws, its stomach certainly brushing the ground. It wove from rock to tree to rock, making its way to her.

“Finally,” Cho muttered.

Although Rachel knew she had to concentrate on the tiger, she glanced at her cousin, leaning against the Range Rover.

Rachel edged closer to Cho, even though it brought her closer to the killer tiger. Cho spat at the ground and laughed.

The killer tiger sidled closer. Fifty feet. Ten feet.

Rachel would fight to the death in this pond. Even if the end came very fast.

The killer tiger crouched at the mouth of the pond, partially hidden by the reeds. For just a moment, the killer eyes gleamed green in the moonlight.

Then it sprang silently at Rachel, mouth open, teeth bared.

At the same moment Rachel burst out of the pond. She landed in the reeds. Her ankle protested, but not too badly; Rachel had managed to land with most of her weight on her other three paws. She was learning.

Meanwhile, the killer tiger landed in the pond with a splash.

And Rachel raced toward Cho, who dropped his cigarette and fumbled for the door of the Range Rover.

The killer tiger snarled. Rachel heard it splashing in the pond.

Rachel sprang at Cho’s throat.

He was a ghost, but he could touch Rachel, so he was solid and therefore vulnerable.

Cho managed to thrust open the door of the Range Rover, but Rachel’s teeth cut into the muscles of his shoulder and he stumbled.

Cold. Cold flesh. It numbed her teeth. Her head ached. But she could taste her cousin’s blood, ever so faintly. It maddened her.

He fought to enter the carapace of his car, but she sank her teeth deep and ripped the flesh off his back.

He screamed and fell on his back, pulled down by the force of her attack.

The hunter-tigress landed beside her, but Rachel didn’t pause. She surged forward and sank her teeth into Cho’s throat. Her teeth clicked together inside his flesh and she reared her head backward, lifting his off the ground before his neck vertebrae snapped, the neck muscles ripped apart and his flopped to the ground.

Rachel tore open his abdomen and swallowed the pink sausages of his intestines. She licked the urine out of his bladder like it was a fleshy chalice. She chewed his still-beating heart, the blood squirting out sideways.

She gorged herself until she could eat no more.

She opened her eyes and saw Cho’s decapitated head. Its face was spattered in blood, but his open eyes and mouth were frozen in a rictus of horror.

And the killer tigress snarled.

Rachel backed away from Cho’s corpse, hoping the tigress would consume Cho’s easy flesh rather than attack Rachel again.

But the tigress ignored Cho’s body. Instead, she fixed on Rachel with her eyes gleaming iridescent green.

And Rachel received a picture of tigers pacing in their cages, surrounded by mounds of feces and even dead tiger corpses the authorities hadn’t bothered to clear away. She saw human hands wringing a deformed baby tiger’s neck. She saw mounds of tiger corpses in a deep freeze, their eyes dull, their flesh collapsing, with only their black stripes to identify them.

And Rachel understood. The killer tigress would allow her to live only if Rachel helped these tigers.

Rachel tried to transmit a picture back. A picture of herself in her favourite red dress and heels and faux Prada handbag. She thought, “I’m not a tiger! I can’t help you!”

The hunter-tigress sent more images. A giant green glass vat, filled to the brim with a clear liquid. Rachel couldn’t read the Chinese characters, but the full-sized skeleton in the vat spoke for itself: an adult tiger. Tiger wine.

This was the tigers’ fate. Unless Rachel stepped in.

Rachel huffed. It was the first time she tried to speak “tiger,” but she wanted to convey her understanding.

“I’ll try,” Rachel thought, and moaned aloud.

When the moon disappeared and the sun rose, perhaps Rachel would remain a tiger, imprisoned in this tiger concentration camp or shot as Cho’s second murderer.

Or, when the sun rose, Rachel might revert to human form and the killer tigress might kill her.

But if she didn’t, Rachel could appropriate the Range Rover and dump its owner’s before maneuvering her way back to Harbin and negotiating an end to this tiger concentration camp. Rachel could let the tigers in and out of their cages, thanks to the keys hanging on Cho’s belt. And if Rachel found a legitimate piece of land, somewhere the tigers could live and feed one day, in dignity …

The hunter-tigress walked away from Cho’s body, back to the pond. She sniffed the water and began to lap it up.

Rachel joined her. The water tasted like algae and dirt and something entirely different: hope.