Bengal's Heart

by Leigh, Lora

  “We know all that,” Jonas pointed out.

  “What we didn’t know was that Banks was originally part of that group,” Cabal told him. “Myron remembered his father mentioning that Banks was part of the group until they began to suspect that he had betrayed one of the Breeds early on.”

  “There weren’t a lot that came through here,” Rule stated. “A few dozen.”

  “But compared to those created, that’s a high number,” Cabal pointed out. “A few dozen escaped Breeds during that time would have been a problem for the Council.”

  “And the Council would have made it a problem for the Deadly Dozen,” Lawe stated. “They were the trackers when everyone else failed.”

  “Because they had connections where they were needed to track escaped Breeds,” Cabal agreed. “Banks was one of the Dozen, there’s no doubt of that. But why wait this long to strike back at the group? And how many of them were located in this area?”

  “Most of the escaped Breeds were hiding in this area,” Jonas stated.

  That was true. For some reason, the West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky mountains had been the preferred haven for Breeds escaping across the world.

  One here, a few there—somehow most of them had made it to the States, and into the few groups within a three-state radius willing to hide them. Few of the groups knew about one another. Many of the Breeds were unaware of other individual groups. It was a matter of safety. If others didn’t know where they were located, or the Breeds in each group, then they couldn’t be betrayed under torture.

  “What I’d like to know is how Brandenmore and Engalls managed to capture Breeds in this area and experiment on them without the Council or the groups aiding the Breeds knowing about it,” Lawe growled. “You’d think someone would have put a stop to it long ago.”

  “The Deadly Dozen worked not just for the Council, but also for Brandenmore and Engalls,” Jonas pointed out. “They bought captured Breeds off the Dozen. When they returned to the Council with a dead Breed, they were paid again. It didn’t matter how they died, all they needed was their heads. Brandenmore and Engalls didn’t mind in the least removing a head.”

  It was sickening. The horrors the Breeds had faced in their attempts to be free had sometimes been as harsh as the horrors they had faced within the labs.

  “What I’d like to know is how the hell the killer is creating this carnage without leaving so much as a scent of himself on the victim. He rips their throats out with his teeth. There should be DNA, something.”

  There should be, but there wasn’t, not so much as a trace.

  “We were trained not to leave anything to identify ourselves,” Jonas stated. “That means scent, saliva, whatever. There are ways to hide it.”

  “But there was only a very small group of Breeds with that advanced training,” Rule pointed out. “It wasn’t general knowledge.”

  “Coyotes weren’t trained in the more advanced covert areas,” Jonas mused. “Jaguars were, Lions were.”

  “Wolves were also left out of that training for the most part,” Cabal stated as he remembered the lists of training areas and the Breeds considered the strongest in each of them. “Jaguars and Lions were considered their best killers.”

  “Yeah, we rock.” Lawe snorted at that statement.

  “At least we were considered good at something,” Rule stated mockingly. “It kept us alive.”

  “Six deaths and not a single clue, none of us were that good,” Jonas said coldly. “Even I’m not that good. Scent is something you can’t hide. You can mask it, but there’s not even a sign of masking. It’s as though a ghost is attacking and killing these men. And, gentlemen, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Did any of them? Hell, ghosts, fairies, happily ever afters—they were all lumped into the same category. Fairy tales.

  “So where does that leave us?” Lawe asked. “Six dead men and no clue to the killer. You know he’s going to strike again, and soon. Banks and H. R. Alonzo were just the beginning. He’s not sticking to the no-names anymore. He’s going after the big guns.”

  They hadn’t even been aware that Alonzo was part of the Deadly Dozen. Only after his death had they found proof that he had been a part of the hunting group.

  “High-profile names,” Jonas growled. “Just what the hell we need.”

  “And a reporter on our ass,” Lawe grunted as he glanced at Cabal with a mocking grin. “We’re going to have fun hiding this one.”

  “You won’t hide much from that woman,” Jonas informed them all.

  Cabal felt a burst of pride at the disgust in Jonas’s voice. Cassa was known for her ability to ferret out information despite Jonas’s wishes otherwise. She wrote the stories he hated and published them whether he liked it or not. Not that she ever published anything damning, but she didn’t mind a bit to tell the truth about what she did publish.

  For a long time they had been able to keep her from learning anything that could hurt them. Those days were over. She already had information that could destroy the Breed community, but she had held back.

  “So what are we going to do?” Lawe asked. “Let her in, or what?”

  “Or what,” Jonas snapped. “Yeah, let’s let her in. Let’s just tell her how we’ve been protecting a rogue Breed and allowing him to kill our enemies for us rather than sending out teams to protect those we suspect of dying next.”

  Cabal almost grinned at the thought of that.

  “Do we even know who might be next?” he asked the director. He had no doubt that Jonas had a clue somewhere. The man usually did.

  “Not yet,” Jonas snapped. “That’s not the point. Hell, if I did know, I’d still stand aside and let him finish it. He’s better at it than I am.”

  “Sooner or later someone is going to accuse the Breeds of these murders,” Cabal warned him. “The Dozen know they’re being hunted now. One of them will start squealing in fear sooner or later.”

  Jonas’s smile was tight and hard. “That’s what I’m waiting on. We get one of them, then we get them all.”

  Cabal had already figured that plan out. Jonas ran from murder scene to murder scene cleaning up the mess. He searched for clues; he was looking for the killer, but even more, he was waiting on one of the members of the hunted group to raise his ugly little head.

  “How much longer do you think it will take?” Cabal questioned the other man.

  Jonas shrugged. “Alonzo is the most high-profile of the six dead. We’ll let him remain missing. Tanner has a handle on public relations, and we’ve managed to get a few rumors started that the Council itself was fed up with him, but his buddies will know differently. I’m hoping his death will force one of them out.”

  “Six left to go.” Lawe shook his head. “Do you think they’re all still alive?”

  “That kind of evil rarely dies young,” Jonas stated as he poured himself another cup of coffee and paced to the window of the kitchen.

  Cabal watched as the director frowned out the window, staring into the snow-laden dawn.

  “Evil rarely dies young, period,” he finally said as he turned back to them. “And what we’re dealing with here is a Breed that’s trying to change that. I want him caught, but I’ll be damned if I’ll force a human’s justice on him.”

  “Murder is murder, Jonas,” Cabal reminded him. It was something Jonas had preached at them often enough when it came to a Breed’s death.

  “There’s a difference between murder and survival,” Jonas snapped back at him. “We’ve managed to cover up these deaths to this point, and I’d like to keep it that way.” His eerie silver eyes flickered in anger. “And need I remind you the hell these men visited on Breeds in the past? They didn’t just capture a few and return them to the labs. They sold them for research. Research that if our information is correct was more horrendous than anything the Council did. They deserved their deaths.”

  Cabal couldn’t argue that point. The information they were slowly amassing against Brandenmo
re and Engalls was enough to give even a Breed more nightmares. If they could manage to acquire proof, or a single witness to those horrors whom they could force to talk, then the two men that headed one of America’s largest pharmaceutical and research facilities would be subject to Breed Law. And Cabal had no doubt in his mind that Jonas would push for the limits of punishment where the two men were involved.

  “Now figure out how to catch our Breed,” Jonas ordered him. “And while you’re at it, see if you can’t figure out why the hell the bastard doesn’t have a scent.”

  “Possibly because he’s hiding it.”

  They all turned to the door. Weapons cleared their holsters and aimed at the nosy little reporter poised at the entrance to the room, as Cabal jumped in front of her, his heart racing in horror at the threat those weapons posed.

  She didn’t flinch; she didn’t back away. Her long hair lay in tangled waves against the material of one of his shirts as her bare toes peeked out of the hem of her jeans.

  She looked like a little girl playing grown-up games. Games that could get her killed.

  As he shielded her body, several things registered at once. She had managed to slip up on them, something that should have been impossible. Unless she had no scent. His nostrils flared as he tried to draw in the essence of her, just as he knew the others were doing.

  There was nothing there. No mating scent, no arousal, no smell of his lust on her body. It was as though Cassa were a ghost, with no substance, with no scent.

  He turned, gripped her arms and stared down at her in shock as he fought to smell the woman he had just spent the night spilling his seed into. There should be some trace of a scent. Any scent.

  “What the fuck,” Lawe muttered to his side. “Jonas?”

  Behind him, he felt Jonas shift, move. He knew the other Breed was doing exactly what Cabal was doing, trying to find a scent so elusive it didn’t exist.

  Cabal narrowed his eyes on her, searched her face and realized the implications in a single heartbeat.

  “Gentlemen, here’s your killer’s secret.” She lifted her hand and in the middle of her silken palm was a small white pill. “A scent blocker. Sent to me by the killer, reportedly created by Brandenmore Research. This is how your rogue Breed is getting by you.”

  ◆ CHAPTER 15 ◆

  Cassa watched Cabal’s profile several hours later as they made the trek back down the mountain in the all-terrain Raider he was driving.

  He was still angry. His profile was hard, his expression cool, and she’d noticed that the amber glitter in his eyes seemed duller. That was rage, because the dark green was more brilliant and seemed alive with the anger surging through him.

  Panic had threatened to overwhelm her ever since morning, when she had given Jonas one of the small pills that had been sent to her, and explained just how well they worked. Jonas hadn’t been happy that she had eavesdropped on his conversation with Cabal the night of the Coyote alpha’s wedding reception. Cabal seemed even less pleased with her.

  She remembered her first, ill-fated marriage. Whenever Douglas had become angry, she had carried the bruises, sometimes for weeks at a time.

  Now, more than a decade later, she was sitting in a vehicle with a lover whose anger swirled in the air around her. There was an edge of fear, uncertainty. She hadn’t allowed herself to ever be placed in a position again where she had to worry about a lover striking her. She was beginning to wonder if perhaps she had bit off more than she could chew with Cabal. If she thought Douglas was dangerous, then her Breed lover was a hundred times more so.

  He was angry with her, and what made the situation even more precarious for her was that she wasn’t certain why he was so furious.

  Her interruption of his meeting that morning could be the cause, she thought. It had been a rather dramatic entrance. She had taken the pill when she had heard the Raiders advancing up the driveway, not long after Cabal had left the bed.

  She’d had every intention of telling Cabal about the drug. It was too dangerous to hold secret for very long. If the Breeds’ enemies got their hands on it, then Sanctuary or Haven, either one, could be breached easily by the Council’s Coyotes and soldiers. No Breed mate would ever know a moment’s security, and every Breed child born would be at risk.

  “Your attitude is starting to irk me.” Cassa forced herself to go on the offensive. “If you’re pissed off, then you could do me the courtesy of telling me why.”

  He shot her an irate glance. An irate Breed was really rather commonplace, she assured herself.

  “You could have warned me about that pill before Jonas arrived,” he pushed between gritted teeth. “And what the hell are you doing risking yourself by just taking some damned drug that an anonymous killer sent to you? Have you lost your mind?” There was the anger. His voice rose with it.

  “Don’t yell at me, Cabal,” she ordered him with more bravado than she felt. What she felt was sheer panic. He was angrier than she had first thought. “I took a risk admittedly, but it was one that paid off.”

  “It could have paid off with your life.” His hands clenched around the steering wheel as he navigated the mountainous path. “Son of a bitch, Cassa. Did you even think before you did it? Did you even consider the risks?”

  She gave a little shrug. “I always consider the risks, Cabal. Whoever sent that drug and the proof of those killings doesn’t want me dead yet. He has something to prove. To the Breeds as well as to me. Killing me wouldn’t serve his purpose quite yet.”

  Because the past hadn’t come full circle yet. Cassa knew that. The killer had other plans in store for her, the only question was whether or not she would survive them.

  Was it foolhardy? Risky? No doubt. She had admitted that going in. But after more than a decade of doubts, recriminations and guilt, she knew she couldn’t do anything less than see this through now.

  She had dropped the ball during the rescue of the German facility where Cabal had been imprisoned. Because of her husband, so many had died. Because she had trusted Douglas to care about the story even though her marriage was failing. And she had been wrong.

  Now she had a chance to make certain that this rogue Breed didn’t destroy the Breed community as a whole. She refused to drop the ball on this one. She refused to back down.

  “And all you thought of was yourself?” he asked, his voice lowering, darkening.

  Cassa gave a bitter little laugh. “Who else should I consider?”

  “Friends?” He snarled. “I know you have many of them, don’t deny it.”

  She didn’t try to.

  “Look, this is my job. It’s my life.” Cassa turned to him, her own anger mixing with her fear. “I weighed the consequences and took the risk. It was my choice to make.”

  His lips thinned as he narrowed his gaze at the road. His hands didn’t relax on the steering wheel.

  “You knew we were mates when you took it,” he accused. “Did you consider me?”

  “Oh yeah, let me think about that one,” she bit out sarcastically. “No, I didn’t consider your opinion of it quite simply because I assumed you really didn’t give a damn. It’s not as though you gave the impression that you were ready for a mate, Cabal. A harem maybe.”

  She hated that. The playboy of the Breeds. Or at least he’d been considered one half of a play team before his brother Tanner mated.

  She watched as his jaw bunched, and she wondered if his molars were strong enough to stand the force of his teeth gritting together.

  “I’ve never had a harem,” he stated angrily.

  “Whatever.” Cassa blew out an irritated breath and flicked her fingers in his direction. “You were just fucking your way through the world. I understand.”

  And she hated it. The thought of those women touching him, having him, touching those sexy-as-hell stripes while she still had yet to do so made her crazy. She curled her fingers at the thought of touching those oddly colored markings and tried to push past the image of her lips running
over them.

  A man shouldn’t be this sexy or so damned irritating.

  “You don’t understand a damn thing,” he informed her. “If you weren’t constantly running scared, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like an animal chasing a rabbit. You ran from me every chance you had.”

  “I simply stood aside to keep from being trampled by the hordes of lusting women,” she bit back acerbically.

  But she had been frightened, and she knew it. Frightened of the strength of her desire as well as the past that she feared he would never forget or forgive her for.

  “You were scared, just as you’re scared now.” There was a hint of censure in his tone. “When have I ever made you believe I would hurt you, Cassa?”

  She was silent at that question. He had never done anything to make her believe he would lay a hand on her. Unless she were the enemy, and then there would be no saving her from him.

  God, wasn’t that a cheerful thought, considering the fact that she had been the reason for the worst betrayal of his life and still he hadn’t given any indication of the amount of blame he assigned to her.

  “You’ve done nothing to make me believe you would hurt me, Cabal,” she answered wearily. “If you sensed fear, maybe it’s for other reasons.”

  “Your husband?” He cast her a brooding look. “That wasn’t in the investigation Jonas had done on you.” She guessed she should congratulate herself for having hidden the abuse she’d suffered so well that no one had guessed. If anyone had suspected, then the Breeds would have had that information. They knew every damned thing. Sons of bitches couldn’t keep their noses out of other people’s lives.

  “Then what makes you think it was my husband?” she asked archly.

  He grunted at that. A completely feline sound of irritation.

  “I read the report on you as well as that of your husband, Douglas Watts,” he informed her. “He wasn’t exactly a prize, Cassa. You could have done much better. Just because there was nothing in there about abuse doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.”