Colleen Houck - Tigers Voyage (Book 3 in the Tigers Curse Series)

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2011 by Colleen Houck

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For my parents, Bill and Kathy
who put off all their adventures
to raise a brood of seven

Contents

forget thee?

by John Moultrie

Forget thee? If to dream by night and muse on thee by day;
If all the worship deep and wild a poets heart can pay;
If prayers in absence breathed for thee to Heavens protecting power;
If winged thoughts that flit to thee a thousand in an hour;
If busy fancy blending thee with all my future lot
If this thou callst forgetting, thou, indeed, shalt be forgot!

Forget thee? Bid the forest-birds forget their sweetest tune;
Forget thee? Bid the sea forget to swell beneath the moon;
Bid the thirsty flowers forget to drink the eves refreshing dew;
Thyself forget thine own dear land, and its mountains wild and blue.
Forget each old familiar face, each long-rememberd spot
When these things are forgot by thee, then thou shalt be forgot!

Keep, if thou wilt, thy maiden peace, still calm and fancy-free,
For God forbid thy gladsome heart should grow less glad for me;
Yet, while that heart is still unwon, oh! bid not mine to rove,
But let it nurse its humble faith and uncomplaining love;
If these, preserved for patient years, at last avail me not
Forget me then; but neer believe that thou canst be forgot!

B ehind the thick glass of his Mumbai penthouse office once again, Lokesh tried to control the incredible rage slowly circling through his veins. Nothing had gone according to plan in the Baiga camp. Even the villagers had turned out to be weak and disloyal. True, he had captured Dhiren, the white tiger-prince, and taken a vital piece of the Damon Amulet from the girl, but he hadnt been able to finish what hed started.

Breathing deeply to calm his rage, he pressed his fingers together and deliberately tapped them against his bottom lip as he pondered the fight. Theyd possessed special weapons. His underlings had discovered thatthe weapons were somehow tied to the goddess Durga. Clearly, there was somekind of magic involved, and it wasnt the weak country magic of the tribe.

Magic was a tool, a gift to be used by those wise enough to understand and manipulate it. A trick of the universe that only a few sought and even fewer could harness. Lokesh had it, and he would use it to bring him even more power. Others thought him evil. He didnt believe in good and evilonly in powerful and powerless. Lokesh was determined to be the former.

Why Durga? Perhaps the goddess is somehow guiding them.

Like good and evil, he didnt believe in gods. Faith was a crutch, a convenient way to control the masses who would become mindless slaves, choosing not to use whatever meager intellect they possessed. Believers sat at home and wept and prayed, prostrating themselves for divine assistance that would never come.

An intelligent man takes matters into his own hands. Lokesh frowned as he remembered the girl slipping from his. To her, it must have seemed like he ran. Hed sent in reinforcements, but the idiots had returned empty-handed. The command center had been destroyed. The cameras and video records were missing. The Baiga, the tiger, and the girl were nowhere to be found. It was extremely vexing.

A chime rang as his assistant entered the room. Lokesh listened as the man nervously explained that the tracking device hed implanted in the prince had been found. The man opened his shaking hand and dropped the smashed remains on the desk. Without a word, Lokesh picked up the broken chip and, using the power of the amulet, threw it and the quivering assistant out of the sixtieth-story window. He listened to the assistants screams as he dropped floor by floor. Just when the man was about to hit bottom, Lokesh murmured a few words that opened a hole in the ground under his assistant and buried him alive.

Disappointing distractions dealt with, he pulled his hard-won prize from his pocket. Wind whipped through the broken window, and the sun rose higher above the bustling city, casting a beam of light on the freshly acquired fourth piece of the amulet. Soon, he would unite all the pieces of the amulet and would finally have the means to accomplish what hed always dreamed of since hed learned of the amulets existence. He knew that the completed amulet would fashion him into something new something more. Something perfect. Though he had deliberately prolonged starting the process and relished the anticipation almost as much as the victory, it was time.

The moment had arrived.

A crackle of pleasure raced through his blood as he touched the fourth segment to his precious amulet collection.

It didnt fit.

He turned, twisted, and tilted the wedge, but it would not mold to the others. Why? I snatched it from the girls neck in the Baiga camp. It wasthe same amulet piece she had worn in both visions.

Instantly, a heavy black shadow of loathing fell upon him. Gnashing his teeth, he crushed the offending amulet imitation and let the powder trickle through his tight fist as each cell of his body burst with a blazing tempest. Sparkles of blue light popped and crackled between the digits.

Waves of anger washed through his mind, pummeling against the thin barrier of his skin. Without an outlet to assuage his violent urges, he clenched his fists and buried the power deep within him. The girl! Shetricked me!

Anger pulsed at his temples as he considered Kelsey Hayes. She reminded him of another from centuries ago: Deschen, the tigers mother. Now there was a woman full of fire, he rememberedunlike his own wife whom he had killed when she bore him a girl, Yesubai. Hed wanted a son. An heir.