Chapter 4: The Tiger

On her third morning on Ghostfall, Maxine heard something big tear through the scrap hills.

She was in the yard, stirring a pot of vine stew over her left palm.

Bram stood beside her, peeling roots he had found under a wrecked hangar.

Rhys was on the wall of old hull plates, watching the horizon with his arms crossed.

Lucan sat on a barrel, doing nothing and doing it loudly.

"Oh," Lucan said. "That's Dax."

The sound stopped.

Rhys turned his head toward it. "He's back early."

"Is that bad?" Maxine asked.

"He's the only one of us the Fever takes whole," Rhys said. "Bram loses himself. Dax loses everyone else."

A shape came over the top of the nearest scrap hill.

It was a tiger as tall as a horse, orange and black, with golden eyes that had gone completely red.

The beast hit the yard in one leap and slid on the rust, claws shrieking against the ground.

It saw Rhys on the wall.

It crouched.

"Everyone inside," Rhys said, jumping down. "Now."

He drew a long knife and stood between the tiger and the others, as calm as a man waiting for a tram.

Maxine saw the faint pale scar down his forearm, the shape of four claw marks.

Old ones, she thought.

And someone had never said a word about them.

The tiger gathered itself to spring.

Maxine ladled stew into a bowl, wiped the rim with her sleeve, and walked out from behind the pot.

"Maxine!" Bram bellowed.

"Don't," said Lucan, in a voice with no joke left in it.

She kept walking.

The tiger swung its huge head toward her, and the red eyes fixed on her chest.

She could feel the heat coming off its fur.

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