Leopard 02 - Wild Rain

I’ll have to put in drains.”
    As Rio worked on cleansing the puncture site, Fritz opened his mouth, exposing his long, wicked canines, and yowled horribly. Rachael took a deep breath and kept her gaze locked on Rio, on his face rather than on his hands, afraid if she looked at the cat’s teeth she would do a little screaming herself.
    Franz answered Fritz, pacing anxiously back and forth in agitation. Without warning, he suddenly leapt onto the bed, nearly crushing Rachael’s legs. Pain rushed through her body, took her breath and forced a small, strangled cry from her throat. For a moment the room spun, tilted, went black.
    “Rachael!” Rio’s voice was sharp, compelling, calling her back. Rio’s arm swept Franz from the bed.
    “Stay the hell down,” he snarled, his voice rumbling with menace.
    To Rachael’s surprise, her hands were still in Fritz’s fur. She applied more pressure as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting him to do that.”
    “You’re doing fine,” he said. “Can you go on?”
    “If you can, I can,” she answered.
    He looked at her then with his vivid green eyes, something she couldn’t quite name swirling in the darker depths. His gaze drifted over her face, almost as if he were drawing strength from just looking at her. He turned his attention back to the cat.
    Rachael let out her breath slowly, fighting down the bile rising in her throat from the throbbing pain in her leg. She would do anything to see that look on his face. A sharing. A connection. She listened to the sound of his voice as he talked softly to the cat, reassuring it as he stitched the deep wound. She found herself stroking the fur with her free hand as the animal trembled, but stayed still for Rio’s ministrations.
    Rachael waited until Rio was working on the second puncture wound. “How did this happen?”
    “There was a big, spotted leopard, a male, in the forest. He attacked Fritz. Fortunately he dropped him without crushing the windpipe.”
    She looked at the deep angry scratches on Rio’s body. “You went up against a leopard trying to kill your pet?”
    Swift impatience crossed his face. “I told you, Fritz and Franz are not pets. They’re my friends. I didn’t save Fritz, he was trying to protect me and he put himself in harm’s way.”

    Rachael bent over the animal in her lap, examining the chunk missing from the ear. “So this one is Fritz?”
    He nodded as he peered closely at his work. “This puncture wound is not as deep as the other one. I’m going to give him something for the infection. The leopard did this deliberately.”
    “Why?” She didn’t look at him when she asked. Rio had bitten the words out between his strong teeth, almost as if he said them without thought, angry at the leopard for hurting the smaller cat. She sensed that Rio was on the verge of telling her something very important.
    Rio glanced at her. “I think he was hunting for one of us. I just am not certain which. At first I thought it was me, but now I’m not so sure.”
    She heard the thud of her heart and counted the beats. It was a trick she often used when she was in a dangerous situation and wanted to appear calm or when she needed more information and didn’t want to react too fast. Something inside her went very still when he turned his direct, piercing gaze on her.
    There was something there she couldn’t quite read. A swirling dangerous mixture of beast and man.
    Rachael knew cats’ eyes contained a layer of reflective tissue behind each retina which allowed them to concentrate all possible light during the darkest nights, or in the darkest forest. Called the tapetum lucidum, the membrane acted like a mirror, allowing the light to bounce back through the retina a second time for maximum ability to see. The membrane also reflected light back in iridescent colors of yellow-green and red, both of which Rachael had observed in Rio and in the clouded leopards.
    “Why would a leopard be hunting one or the other of us, Rio?” she prompted. It didn’t make sense that the large cat would care which of them he killed and ate.
    There was a long silence broken only by the sounds of the moaning wind, the steady fall of rain, Franz pacing back and forth in agitation. Rachael was certain Rio could hear the pounding of her heart.
    “I don’t think he was a leopard as you know a leopard. I think he was a different species altogether.”
    Rio’s voice blended into the night, held secrets