Bengal's Heart

by Lora Leigh

  Guilt seared her with a slash of pain that raced across her chest, and a sense of fear that never failed to weaken her knees. And he sensed it, just as he always did. She watched his eyes darken, his body tense as the scent of it reached him.

  “I haven’t killed you yet,” he growled. “I’d imagine you could drop the fear now, Cassa.”

  “Perhaps it’s just a case of feminine wariness?” She asked a question rather than making a statement. Breeds could smell a lie, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of smelling hers.

  “And arousal?” His head tilted to the side as though the knowledge of it were a curiosity to him.

  “I bet a lot of women are aroused by you.” She was careful to keep her tone even, calm. No nervousness, no hint of guilt. She’d learned over the years how to cover most responses when around Breeds. They sensed too much, knew too much. And Cassa had far too many secrets.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” he stated, as he continued to watch her much too closely. “Why fear me now?”

  Cassa could only shake her head. And stare. She stared at those golden flecks in his eyes, unable to break the hold they had on her. She wanted, no, she ached to touch him, and that was by far the most dangerous impulse she had ever known. And the thought of that need infuriated her. He was the last man in the world she should ache for. The last one that she should need, and she knew it.

  “What do you want, Cabal?” She bit the words out as she tried to hold back her anger and her need.

  His gaze narrowed. The look was a warning, and it was one that common sense suggested she heed. Unfortunately, common sense had never been her strong point.

  “I hear you’ve been spending quite a bit of time with the Feline Breed doctor, Ely Morrey,” he stated. “Why?”

  Why? Why, because she was afflicted, that was why. Because her body insisted on retaining some damned hormone within it that she had picked up when she had lost her sanity eleven years ago.

  She remembered the moment clearly. The second she had touched her fingers to her lips and tasted Cabal’s blood on them. Such a small thing. It shouldn’t have been enough, and actually, it hadn’t been enough to begin mating heat. But it had been enough to affect her in curious ways. Ways that Dr. Morrey was still attempting to decipher.

  Mating heat was the Breed curse. Some Breeds claimed it was their strength; others saw it as a weakness. Of course, it did depend on whether or not the Breed was mated.

  “I’m working on a story.” That was definitely a lie, and there was no way to hide the scent of it.

  A dark blond brow lifted with mocking curiosity.

  “I hate it when you lie to me,” he warned her softly. “You’ve been making visits to Ely for the past several years on a regular basis. You would have written the story by now.”

  Cassa’s chin lifted at the deliberate arrogance in his tone.

  “Ely’s a friend of mine, Cabal, just as the other wives at Sanctuary are friends. I don’t need an excuse to visit with them any more than you need an excuse to visit with your pride leader, Callan.”

  It was a deliberate attempt to get him off the subject of Ely. Everyone knew that Cabal recognized no Breed as his pride leader. He had lost his pride, his family, during a rescue that had gone to hell, and he claimed no other.

  “Stop trying to distract me,” he growled as he moved closer.

  Cassa could feel that nearness. She swore her body heated by several degrees when he moved closer.

  “I wouldn’t dare attempt to distract you.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe as she glared at him. “Don’t you have better things to do than to harass me? Shouldn’t you be out shooting at Breed enemies or lurking in the shadows for some reason?”

  His jaw tightened. To say he was displeased would be putting it mildly. But she had never pleased this particular Breed in any manner. She doubted she would begin tonight.

  “Are you in mating heat?”

  The question had her staring at him in shock. Excitement raced through her now, just as it always did anytime they came anywhere close to a confrontation. She could feel her body flushing with heat, her heart racing furiously.

  “If I were, would I be here arguing with you?” she snapped back. “I’d be with my mate, wouldn’t I?”

  Unfortunately not. Her mate was standing in front of her, and he was known as the Breed poster boy for sexual excess. The son of a bitch had had more women under his belt in the past eleven years than most men could achieve in two lifetimes. He was a tomcat, plain and simple.

  She watched as his jaw tightened further, as his nostrils flared in his attempt to catch the scent of mating heat.

  Cassa wondered how the mates of Breeds could stand knowing that any Breed in the vicinity could tell when they were in heat and aroused. It had to be horribly discomforting. She knew for a fact that the physical discomfort could become excessively painful, and in some cases, dangerous.

  She would have preferred to have stayed as far away from mating heat as possible.

  “You’re up to something.” His lip lifted in irritation. It was incredibly sexy the way he flashed a single canine while glaring at her.

  She scoffed at him in reminder. “I’m a television investigative reporter. We’re always up to something, Cabal. It’s part of our job description.”

  For some reason, he liked to forget that little fact. Then she forgot it as well, as he moved closer. Just that quickly, his harder, stronger body was flush against hers, as she backed herself right into the wall.

  She stared up at him in shock. A distant part of her brain quickly analyzed the strange sensations that shot through her. Flames seemed to scorch her flesh; she swore she broke out in a sweat, and her nerve endings became so sensitive that even the whisper of his breath against her cheek was a stroke of pleasure.

  Sweet Lord have mercy, she thought. She was throbbing from head to toe, and so ready to throw him to the floor and fuck him that it was pathetic. She wanted to ride him. She wanted to feel all that male power and sleek, hard muscle brushing against her naked flesh, driving inside her.

  Her vagina clenched, her womb spasmed and the liquid heat that trickled between her thighs should have been embarrassing. She was so ready for him her knees were weak.

  But if she was ready for him, it was nothing compared to how ready he was. His cock pressed into her lower stomach through their layers of clothes, his expression gone enigmatic, but his eyes, the gold flecks in his eyes, were richer, deeper than ever before.

  “This is your warning,” he growled, as his hands clenched against the wall by her head. “Keep pushing me, Cassa, and I won’t stop next time.”

  “You’ll stop.” She could barely speak. Excitement churned through her system, making her voice as weak as her knees. “You won’t rape me.”

  “I won’t,” he agreed as his gaze flickered over her face. “But we both know mating heat will. Don’t we, mate?”

  Her lips parted in surprise. She had known, but she hadn’t realized he had. How long had he known? For how many years had he been screwing everything in skirts when he had known all along what was building between them?

  Before she could blast him, deny him or spurt out a protest, he pushed away from her, turned his back and strode from the kitchen. The only sound in the house after he opened the front door was the sound of that plate shattering on the door where his head should have been.

  “You bastard!” she yelled furiously, anger churning inside her now. “You tomcatting, whore-mongering snake.” Another plate flew for emphasis and shattered against the wall. “Your mate my ass!” She kicked an end table. “Not in this lifetime.” Would she ever admit it? she finished to herself silently.

  Because to admit that, she would have to admit so much more. To needs that haunted her through the night, and truths that dogged her through the day. She would have to admit she loved him. And that was something Cassa refused to do.

  ◆ CHAPTER 2 ◆

&nbs
p; THREE DAYS LATER GLEN FERRIS, WEST VIRGINIA HAWK’S NEST STATE PARK

  It began here. In this unassuming little town. In the savagely hewn, subtly cruel mountains of West Virginia. Hell began here. A nightmare began here.

  It began with one man, one woman and a vision of monsters, of creatures that could be controlled.

  So long ago. A lifetime ago. A heartbeat in time, a drop of red in an ocean of blood.

  The mountains rose around the peaceful little town of Glen Ferris, nestled in the mountains like a babe in a mother’s arms. It hadn’t changed much, despite the passage of time and the technology that had birthed a new species. Glen Ferris remained more or less the same. Sleepy, quiet. Quaint.

  There was no sign of the vast network that had once worked to shelter and protect the Breeds that had known this area as one of safety. There was no hint on the quiet streets, or in the mountain homes, that these people had once risked their own lives, and the lives of their families, for creatures that weren’t man and yet weren’t animal. Just as there was no hint of the evil that had once visited and stayed much too long.

  It had begun here. Despite the attempts of the citizens of these mountains to save those Breeds that had been brought to them, still, hell had begun here. A hell that so few had known of. A hell that had birthed a darkness that wouldn’t disappear, that growled in the night, that screamed in silence.

  Here. Within these mountains. Within the home of a man and woman, and with the knowledge and cooperation of those who looked on.

  There was no forgiveness. There would be no mercy.

  Glen Ferris had been a haven for many, and yet for a few, it had been an agony worse than anything that could have been suffered in those labs. Those Breeds who escaped, they couldn’t have known the hell that had existed on the perimeters of freedom.

  And now it was time to pay for that hell. It was time for one man and one woman to know that vengeance awaited them.

  They had created hell. They had created the means to their own destruction.

  Horace Engalls and Phillip Brandenmore had experimented on Breeds. Breeds had been tested, dissected, experimented upon for years untold by a brother and sister, by a wife and husband.

  It would be over soon. Soon, the world would know more than they could have ever imagined. Just as they would know those who had helped.

  “The past never dies.” It was a whisper caught by the night breeze. “It lives on in my memory. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  Those who had died in the past months were no more than peons to the powerful family. Two-bit ass kissers who had carried out orders and begged for favors. A doctor, a police officer, a lawyer, a former sheriff and a former mayor. They had participated. They had helped, but none had done so much to collaborate in that hell as the one that would die this night.

  H. R. Alonzo. So few knew who he was, what he was. The great-grandson of the man who had donated his sperm to create the first Breed. A man who should have aided, who should have protected those his great-grandfather had fought to protect.

  Vanderale had seen to his son’s rescue, his freedom and his safety. So long ago. More than a century had passed since the escape of the first Leo, aided by his father, a high-ranking member of the Genetics Council. Alonzo should have continued that aid. He should have donated his fortune to protecting rather than destroying. He should have never reached out to destroy the Breeds. He should have never searched for what was never meant to be his.

  Drawing Alonzo back here had been so very easy. Laying the groundwork for what was to come had been a stroke of genius. Engalls and Brandenmore had begun their own downfall with their experiments into the phenomenon the Breeds were experiencing known as mating heat. They alone had believed they could duplicate the antiaging that those mated Breeds were experiencing. They hadn’t found the fountain of youth they searched for, but they had found something else. A drug that would deceive those Breed senses, that for a time hid the scent of man from the senses of the animal.

  But the secrets they sought still eluded them.

  They had failed. The information they had nearly killed to obtain had been denied them. But it was the opening needed. It was the first crack in an impenetrable shield that Brandenmore and Engalls had kept around themselves. It was a shield that would be further damaged by the death of one man.

  H. R. Alonzo.

  The Reverend Alonzo.

  He waddled along the forested path now, a flashlight in his fat little hand, his face sweating, glistening beneath the moonlight. He waddled like a duck, tromped through the forest like a fat little lamb to the slaughter.

  How very apt.

  “Insane is what this is,” he muttered, the sound of his voice carrying clearly through the night. “Son of a bitch, ordering me to a meeting like this,” he continued to mumble aloud. “As though it would matter if we met at the house.”

  The house. It wasn’t a house. It was hell. It was a place of pain, of blood and of death. It was where it had begun. And now the ending was within sight.

  The night was a whisper of cool spring air. The trees swayed with the breeze, a ripple of water could be heard as it played along the stones and boulders of a centuries-old stream. The scent of fresh, clean water filled the air, almost washing away the smell of sweating human flesh and an evil, rotting mind.

  Alonzo. His vast fortune supported the efforts of the Genetics Council. His rhetoric argued against the humanity of the Breeds, argued for their imprisonment, their death.

  “Come alone,” Alonzo continued to snarl as he made his way to the small clearing he had been directed to. “As though it matters now.”

  Had it mattered then, so many years ago? Had it really mattered where Alonzo had met his cohorts? They had thought it had. As though it had been some secret little game. Meeting here, in this clearing, where the blood of Breeds had soaked the ground more than once. Where bodies were still buried. Where the screams of Breed children could still be heard. Where one agonized scream still echoed through the mountains.

  Alonzo huffed and puffed, his light wavering as he reached the clearing and slowed to a stop.

  Right there. How many times had he stood right there, beneath the breadth of a huge oak, and stared into the clearing with a smirk? Chuckled gleefully at the screams that echoed around him. Participated in the torture and in the pain of creatures that hungered only for freedom.

  “So where the hell are you?” Alonzo called out. “I don’t have time for games tonight, Phillip.”

  “Phillip doesn’t play games here anymore.”

  Alonzo’s obese, foul body swung around. His florid features reflected first surprise, then shock.

  “Who the fuck are you and what do you want?”

  There was a hint of fear now. That provided the needed edge of satisfaction.

  “I’m the past, Reverend,” he was informed softly as the satisfaction and pleasure grew. It always did, when the prey finally knew fear itself. They had once played here, and now they could play again.

  Playtime. A smile came and went. What was play? What Breed could answer that question or understand that ideal?

  Alonzo’s beady little eyes narrowed. “How do you know about this place? Phillip would never have told you.”

  “Phillip has actually told me many things.” She shrugged negligently. “Tell me, Reverend, do you still enjoy playing with death?”

  Oh yes, death was returning to these mountains. Blood would stain the ground here once again, and it would begin with HR.

  The fat little bastard’s face paled. “Phillip wouldn’t dare have me killed. You better check your orders, because he knows what will happen if anything happens to me.”

  Ah yes, the ever present threat.

  “Yes, Phillip knows well what will happen.” A breath of a promise, of death, filled the air.

  There was no secret there, not because Phillip or his insane little wife had told it, simply because the Deadly Dozen, as they had once called themselves, always
protected their own asses against one another. That fact had been learned the first time the blood of a member had been shed. The others should be worried by now. HR should have been concerned enough to use caution in coming here.

  Tonight, death would lose another member of its evil little group.

  Alonzo could sense it, it was there in the waves of fear beginning to fill the air. His heartbeat echoed in the night, the stench of his cowardice wrapped around the senses.

  “You’re not going to kill me.” The bastard tried to bluff. He should know better.

  Canines flashed in the night. Alonzo’s gaze locked on the sight as his heavy jowls trembled.

  “You were here. You smiled.” Agony twisted and bloomed in colors of red. “You laughed as they died. I’ll laugh now as you die.”

  Forcing back the pain didn’t always work. It was always there, always spearing the soul like a poison-tipped sword as the voice weakened and became hoarse.

  Alonzo swallowed; a whimper nearly left his throat.

  “You’ll never get away with it.” Terror was thick in the mountains once more, but this time, it wasn’t a Breed’s terror. It was just a human’s. A human of no worth.

  “Perhaps getting away with it isn’t my aim.”

  “You’ll destroy the Breeds,” Alonzo charged furiously as he began to back away. “My death won’t go unnoticed.”

  “They don’t even know who I am, why should I care about them?” It was a hiss of fury, of hatred. “Let them deal with it however they will. You are no longer an equation in their battle.”

  He stumbled, then righted himself. His eyes widened. His face went white.

  “You don’t want to do this.”

  “I did the others. The doctor, the lawyer, the sheriff and the mayor, the police officer.” The words were a sigh of pleasure, almost of ecstasy. “It was good, Alonzo. I tasted their fear, I feasted on their blood. And it was good.”

  He froze. Like a deer caught in the brilliant rays of a headlight.

  “You,” he breathed. “You’re the one that killed them.”

  A chuckle filled the night. The last Breed they could have suspected. It was perfect. It was just perfect revenge. Just a study in exacting revenge.

  “It was I.” It was a soul stained with blood, with death, with the need for more. “And now it’s your turn.”

  His head shook. His body shook. What was the saying? Like a bowlful of Jell-O? It wiggled and trembled and swayed with terror.

  “You can’t do this,” Alonzo wheezed.

  Canines flashed again. Sharp, extended. Prepared.

  “Good-bye, you little motherfucker. May you burn in hell.”

  He turned to run, but there was really no place to run. His screams tore through the night, but there was no one there to care. The gurgle of death, the spurt of blood, the sound of flesh ripping open was a symphony that filled the soul, as the taste of tainted blood touched the tongue.

  It had begun here. In these mountains. The dream of freedom had turned to horror. Pain and death and the knowledge that there was no true life, no true freedom. There was this though. The taste of blood. The feel of a diseased soul leaving the body, and the sound of a scream of triumph as life slowly gave its last gasping attempt to survive before succumbing to death.

  Alonzo had once sought a Breed known for her killing abilities. She had been called Death. But she hadn’t been Death. She had been living, breathing. She had a soul, a mate and a life. That wasn’t true death. Death had no soul. It had no mate. It had no life. True death had no dreams and no heart.

  Crouched over Alonzo’s lifeless body, tasting his blood, feeling it like warm silk flowing through fingers that knew only cold, knew only pain. This was Death.

  And Death screamed in triumph rather than pain. Death howled in pleasure rather than horror.

  Or was it all the same?

  NEW YORK CITY

  The email arrived after midnight. Cassa Hawkins stared at the pictures in the file and tried once again, without hope, to use the tracking program she’d installed to track the origin of the email.

  User location unknown. The answer was always the same, but this file, just like the others that had come in the past few weeks, held blood and horror. They were emails she knew the Bureau of Breed Affairs was tracking as well, straight from her damned computer. Her tech person still couldn’t figure out exactly how they were doing it, but she knew they were. Jonas Wyatt, the Bureau’s director, had been quite clear when he had called the day before and warned her to stay out of Breed business.

  Cassa stared at the photos. The violence in them sickened her, causing her to swallow tightly to hold back the bile that would have risen in her throat.

  She should call Cabal, or at the very least Jonas, she thought. She should do something more than the attempts she had been making to track the emails and the locations of the deaths.

  Unlike the others, this email contained at least the location of the murder. The killer had even been nice enough—she snorted at the idea—to send a detailed map of where the body could be found, as well as a letter.

  Good evening to you, Ms. Hawkins. You will find enclosed the proof of H. R. Alonzo’s execution, completed on this day, just after midnight.

  Glen Ferris, West Virginia. It began here, Ms. Hawkins, and with God’s help, it will end here. You should know, the past never dies. As long as there is a memory, there is life. I hold the memories. I hold life. And I’ll take yet more.

  I’ve tasted their blood and now I hunger. I’ve warmed myself with their fear, and I’ve laughed in joy at their deaths. And there will be more.

  Six down.

  Six to go.

  Tell the world. There is no honor, there is no hope. I am what was created.