Savage Boy. Nick Cole

always looks for company, Boy. Always.

      Then I’ll be ready. Whatever it is, the best I can do is to be ready.

      He climbed to the top of the bell tower and looked out from the arches. The Big Lion, the male, was on his feet and staring into the darkened west. A thin strip of red dawn cut the eastern desert in half like a hot knife. The Boy followed the Big Lion’s gaze into the dark, and saw three male lions, smaller—­not by much, manes almost as big—­pacing back and forth in the dark.

      The females were drawing the cubs back from the Big Lion.

      If there is going to be a fight, the newcomers might not know I’m here. If they win, then this could be good for me.

      SHE LIMPED TOWARD her mate.

      Had she ever been special to him?

      She liked to think so. She liked to think there was something special between her and him that her sisters had never known. Would never know.

      She’d seen him fight other males before. The desert was full of their kind. The mule deer and wild animals had been abundant in all the years she had known and the prides had grown large. And now, from some unknown pride much like her own, the young lions had come to find mates for themselves amongst her pride. Just as he had once found her.

      Limping forward to stand behind him, she could at least do that for the love of her existence. She could at least do that. But when he turned, she saw the flash of anger in his eyes, warning her to get back, and maybe something she had never seen before. Fear.

      He roared again. It was his way and his answer to the challengers. His roaring anger at the horse within the bell tower had most likely summoned these challengers out of the dark. She knew his roar, beautiful and safe to her, had cost them all.

      She lay down in front of her sisters, between them and her mate—­their mate—­and watched.

      When the battle started in earnest, it transformed from a storm to a whirlwind in the space of a moment. The newcomers, baiting the big male halfheartedly, as though they might leave at any moment, suddenly came at him at once, silent, focused, hopeful.

      His great claws pinned the first and he sank his jaws into the back of his challenger’s neck. She heard the crunch of bones and knew that one was finished, though it continued to flail wildly, its claws drawing blood across her mate’s belly.

      Another challenger circled wide and landed on her mate’s back after a great pounce. The challenger was unsure what to do next. The third came in hard at his flank and began to tear away great strips of fur and skin with claws that looked long and sharp.

      Here was their leader, she thought. He had been smart enough to wait.

      The Male shook the one in its mouth as he tried to draw his victim upward.

      She cried out for him to be done with that one and to handle the other two, but her cries were drowned out by his as he roared and whirled on the leader. He batted at the flanker, who tumbled away and then turned the momentum into something to fling itself right back at the Male.

      The challenger on his back held on for dear life and she could sense the fear in that one. That one didn’t have it in him to sink his fangs into her mate. He was the runt. He would never have a pride of his own.

      The Male pinned the lion he’d cast off; it was his technique, she knew, to use his size to subdue and strangle his enemies. Enraged, he crushed the leader beneath him and tore out his throat.

      Her paws, kneading the soft sand of the desert, relaxed. She knew he had won. He would be wounded, badly if the blood streaming down his belly was any indicator, but he had at least beaten these challengers. She was proud of both him for his strength and herself for her faith and love.

      Thunder broke across the darkness like dry wood split sharply.

      Thunder was what she’d thought the sound was, and for a moment she’d expected lightning. But the sudden white light that would illuminate the land never came. Instead she watched him roll off his foes in a great spray of blood.

      The Back Biter rolled away, confused. For a moment the runt raised a paw as if he might step this way or that, flee or attack. Then another bolt of thunder erupted, and a fraction later the Back Biter’s head exploded.

      In the wind she found a new horse and acrid smoke; a mule also.

      Her sisters were fleeing into the night.

      The young whimpered.

      She turned back to him and crossed the short space to his body. Her eyes were on his mane and the face that had once expressed so many thoughts to her. So many thoughts that she knew she had never known him completely.

      He was still.

      Asleep.

      Beautiful.

      Noble.

      Even when she heard the thunder erupt again, near and yet as if part of a dream she was only waking from, she watched his face.

      The bullet struck her in the spine.

      And she watched him.

      She watched him.

      She watched him.

      Chapter Ten

      “ALL MY SKINS is ruin’t!”

      Early light had turned the night’s carnage golden. The Boy listened to the man below.

      “This one, that one over there! Hell, Danitra, all of ’em.” Then, “Maybe ’cept this one.”

      The Boy listened from the shadows of the bell tower.

      You be careful now, Boy! There’s little good left in this world.

      “Might as well come out!” thundered the voice. “Seein’ as how I saved ya and all such.”

      He knows I’m here. And he has a gun. Not like the rusty “AK Forty-­sevens” and broken “Nine mils” we would find sometimes. His gun is different, like a polished piece of thick wood. As though it were different and from some place long ago.

      For all that Sergeant Presley had tried to explain about guns to the Boy, he’d never guessed one would’ve made such a sound, like the crack of distant thunder heard from under a blanket.

      He patted Horse and climbed up into the high arched openings once more.

      “There ya’re!” roared the man.

      He was barrel-­chested and squat. He wore dusty black leather and a beaten hat, hair dark and turning to gray. He stopped his cutting work to look up from one of the lions, holding a large knife in his bloody hand.

      “These are mine,” he said and turned back to his business with the hide. “Any more in there besides you?”

      The Boy said nothing.

      “That means nope,” said the stranger.

      “My horse.”

      “Well you better get down and get him out of there.”

      The Boy continued to watch the man as he skinned the lion, swearing and sweating while he made long, sawing cuts, then stood, wiped his knife and pulled back a great streak of hide.

      “C’mon boy. I got work to do. No one else here but me and my horse and Danitra. She’s my mule.”

      He set to work on the next lion.

      “This one’s even worse than the last! That was a mess. Coulda done that better myself. What tribe you with, boy?”

      The Boy said nothing and continued to watch.

      “You with them tribes out in the desert?”

      The Boy remained silent.

      “Well pay it no mind. I’ve got to get these hides off and cut some meat. So if you don’t