Whack!
“Twenty-one!” roared the multitude.
With every hit, with every vicious stroke that elicited howls of agony from almost all the previous victims under the cane’s unforgiving bite, but produced nothing from Jacqueline but that awful, unyielding silence, Morgan felt a growing certainty she was witnessing something holy.
When the count reached twenty-five, Alejandro held up his hand.
“Enough.”
Álefe, the tribe’s usmi—the hooded punisher, literally translated as “he who shows the way”—lowered his arm and stepped back, breathing hard. Jacqueline sagged against the tree, swaying on her feet, her face a mask of agony. From her position, Morgan couldn’t see Jacqueline’s back, but Hawk’s guttural moan when he turned to look at her told her everything.
Alejandro jerked his chin at the usmi’s two assistants, who jumped to comply with their master’s command. They released Jacqueline’s wrists from the shackles and chains, one at a time. When she was free she collapsed into their arms, boneless as a rag doll.
“Let him go,” said the Alpha to the four holding Hawk. They did.
He sprang to his feet. He sprinted to her. He shoved the two males aside and gathered her up—gingerly, tenderly, fury and anguish twisting his handsome face—hooked one arm under her knees, pressed her chest to his, and cradled her head with his other hand, leaving her bleeding back untouched. Without a word, he turned and strode swiftly away into the darkness with a semiconscious Jacqueline in his arms. The crowd parted silently for them to pass.
Everyone watched them go.
Xander said under his breath, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. What the hell has gotten into Hawk? Why would he care so much about her? Did you see his face? The way he fought? And the human . . . why would she do that for him? For Nando?”
“I don’t know,” Morgan answered in a whisper, just as the first of the tears crested her lower lids and began to stream down her cheeks. She swiped them angrily away before anyone could see them.
This had been her idea. Though the Alpha had approved it and even pretended he’d not only agreed to it but had also thought it up in the first place, it was Morgan who had wanted this, who had risked this very outcome. She’d brought the woman here, knowing all the dangers, all the ways an outsider could be harmed or worse, and yet she’d hoped they’d somehow navigate the murky waters together to find a common ground, a safe place where they could come to understand each other. A place where they might learn to live peacefully, so they could show the rest of the world it could be done.
Now that hope was as flayed and bloodied as Jacqueline Dolan’s skin.
What would she tell the world of them now that she’d been beaten bloody within ten minutes of her arrival, beaten so badly her knees wouldn’t even support her own weight?
The old man in white stepped forward into the clearing. He was kalum, the priest, Keeper of the Ancient Ways, the oldest, most venerated member of the Manaus tribe. Without speaking, he turned in the direction Hawk and Jacqueline had gone, gazed into the darkness, then bowed low at the waist.
One by one, the crowd began to follow his example, paying their respects in silence, until the only one left upright was Alejandro.
The Alpha gazed impassively at the lowered backs of his subjects, then turned and walked slowly away.
The fury was a thing inside of him, an animal of bloodlust and blackness that wanted to claw its way out of his skin.
Hawk couldn’t remember the last time he felt such pure, unbearable rage.
With Jacqueline cradled limp and bleeding in his arms—breathing shallowly, white with shock—Hawk went to his home, his pace just under a run so he wouldn’t jostle her. Cursing his lack of a ladder and the proper tools to make a pulley, he entered his home the way he always did when in human form.
He climbed the rope.
With Jacqueline a dead weight over one shoulder, he slowly and carefully pulled them up with both feet twisted around the rope, one hand pulling as his powerful legs pushed, an arm wrapped around her thighs. He navigated them carefully through the circular opening in the floor that opened into the lower level, and, once he had his feet beneath him again, took her upstairs.
He laid her on her stomach on his bed as gently as he could, wincing when she moaned.
She was conscious, but barely. When he straightened and got his first good look at her raw back up close, it was all he could do not to scream at the top of his lungs and break every piece of furniture in the room.
Alejandro would pay for this.
He knelt beside her, brushing the hair gently from her face. “I have to wash you, namorada . . . clean the skin to ensure there’s no infection. Then there’s a salve . . . you’re going to be fine, okay? I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to take care of everything.”
Her lashes fluttered. He glimpsed her eyes, blue, hazed with pain. She whined, a small, high noise in the back of her throat. Her lids drifted closed.
God, what had he done? How had he let this happen? He’d promised her no one would hurt her; he’d promised her only moments before they came here that he’d protect her and now . . .
Every curse Hawk had ever heard flooded his brain, and he wanted to shout them from the windows. He wanted to kill something with his bare hands. He wanted to make someone bleed.
He rushed to prepare the salve that would help her. Because he so often needed the salve himself, he kept most of the ingredients dried in glass jars in the cupboard. There were a few items that had to be fresh, an antimicrobial herb and a vine whose leaves were an analgesic, so he went into the forest for those, hating to leave her but having no choice. When he had gathered and prepared all the ingredients, he ground them to a paste with a tincture of other medicinal extracts, and returned to her side with clean cloths and a large bowl of cool water.
He saturated the cloth in the water, wrung it out, and caressed Jack’s arm. She hadn’t moved from how he’d left her, sprawled facedown on his bed.
“Okay, Jacqueline. I’m going to start. I’ll wash away the blood first, then apply the salve. I need you to try and stay as still as possible.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I know it hurts. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
She made a faint noise of acknowledgment, but didn’t open her eyes.
The strap of her bra had broken during the lashings. He cut the elastic around her shoulders but otherwise left it intact so he didn’t have to move her to get it out from beneath her body. Then he began.
As soon as he touched the cloth to her naked back, she gasped and jerked as if she’d been electrocuted.
“I know. I’m sorry. I know.”
He stroked her arm, trying to soothe her, cooing soft words of encouragement as he gently washed away as much of the blood that had streaked down her lower back and sides as he could. The usmi had avoided the delicate kidney area, thank God, but there would be scars.
There would be so many scars.
Twenty-five to be precise.
Her breathing had changed from shallow to ragged, strained. He looked up from his work to find her staring at him, her lips twisted, eyes glazed in agony.
She whispered, “Boy, that was a real barrel of laughs.” She cracked a smile. Then her eyes squeezed shut, her face crumpled, and she began to cry.
That was worse than anything yet. Her tears were like a sword thrust straight through his chest, punching the breath from his lungs, leaving him weak-kneed and trembling.
Hawk lowered his forehead to hers. Her skin was hot, burning hot.
“Finish,” she pleaded, the barest of whispers. “Please . . . Hawk . . . get it over with.”
When he pulled back he had to look away and swallow, trying to gather his wits and his strength, trying to understand how things had gone so wrong so quickly, trying not to
give way to tears himself.
Mercifully, his dead father’s voice remained silent.
He finished washing the streaked and caked blood from her skin. He applied a thin layer of salve with the lightest touch possible. He laid clean strips of cotton over the ointment, removed her boots and socks, and gave her small sips of water and a tonic to drink that would help the pain and help her rest.
Hawk sat on the floor next to the bed and held her hand until she fell into a still, silent sleep. He stared out the windows through the night, watching over her, keeping vigil until the light rose soft and pink over the tops of the trees.
Then he went downstairs, leaned over the porch railing, threw back his head, and screamed so loudly it sent every bird in the trees within a quarter mile into panicked, shrieking flight.
The New York Times, Tuesday, October 1, 20—
JOURNALIST MISSING, FEARED DEAD
Jacqueline Dolan, veteran reporter and senior war correspondent for the New York Times, has been reported missing. Last seen by a neighbor on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 25, Ms. Dolan initially rose to prominence with her coverage of the Iraq war. The first female reporter to be embedded with an infantry regiment on the front lines of a conflict, she was also one of the youngest reporters ever hired by the New York Times. Over the past decade, she has reported on hundreds of international military conflicts, and has traveled with US troops to war zones in foreign countries on more than a dozen occasions.
A police search of Ms. Dolan’s apartment uncovered no clues into her disappearance, but friends and family speculate she may have been the target of retaliation by the subjects of her Pulitzer-nominated opinion piece, “The Enemy Among Us.” A treatise on the duty of the human race to preserve our culture and history in the face of the Shifter invasion, “The Enemy Among Us” was widely lauded as the driving force behind the adoption of new anti-Shifter legislation both in the United States and abroad, and sparked heated debate on the topic.
For now the investigation is ongoing, but anyone with any information about the current whereabouts of Ms. Dolan are encouraged to contact their local police department . . .
Aside from being a dragon, being a dolphin had to be the most kickass thing in the world.
Slicing through the water at a speed of just over eight knots, Jenna was having the most fun she’d had in a long time. In spite of the seriousness of her mission and the current—awful—outlook for peace between the Ikati and humans, the simple pleasure of leaping over and swimming through seventy-two-degree seawater with a group of twelve other dolphins was sublime.
Pod, she corrected herself, glancing at the sleek forms swimming beside her. A family of dolphins was called a pod.
Though she must look odd to them, pure white as she always was in animal form in contrast with their pearl gray, they’d accepted her with the happy, curious ease of Labradors greeting a newcomer in a doggie park. She’d flown most of the way across the Atlantic toward Morocco in dragon form because it was fastest—skirting the landmass of Spain and evading airplanes where necessary by Shifting to Vapor—but, famished and tired after almost ten straight hours of flying, she decided to rest.
Over the open ocean, there was nowhere else to rest but in the water.
So in she went.
Fish were plentiful, the water was warm, and echolocation proved to be awesome. It took a while to get the hang of communicating through her nasal passages, but if the other dolphins thought her clicks and whistles slightly strange, they didn’t mention it.
The urge to stay in this form was strong, but Jenna was close to her destination now. She had to focus on the task at hand.
She squeaked a farewell—it sounded a bit like a creaking door—thrust hard with her powerful tail, and sailed high out of the water and into the air, where she promptly Shifted to a gull.
A moment of disorientation and some awkward wing-flapping, and she was off.
The coast loomed wide and desolate ahead of her, a strip of virgin sand with a rocky scrub landscape beyond that opened to the vast Sahara, far in the distance. A stiff headwind hindered her progress, and with her small gull wings working much harder than larger dragon ones, Jenna was exhausted by the time she reached the outskirts of the sprawling, inland city of Marrakech. In the purple-gray dusk, it shimmered beneath her like a mirage.
Scent and noise and heat rose, buffeting her in waves. Roasting meats, kebabs, and couscous from the souks; cumin, coriander, and the warm musk of curry from the spice markets; sweet honey and baked bread from the chebakia vendors in the medina, the soft chivvies of women calling their children home for dinner from their play in the dusty streets.
She pushed on, determined to find Caesar’s hideaway near the Atlas mountains by nightfall. Perhaps she needed to Shift to something a little bigger beforehand.
The air felt strange.
Though the peculiarity of his Gift of Immortality had the unfortunate side effect of leaving him unable to Shift to panther, or anything else for that matter, Caesar did enjoy the heightened senses of his kind.
Tonight his senses told him something was amiss.
It was like . . . an electric charge in the air. Like a storm descending, only without any physical evidence a storm would produce. He stood at the uppermost point of the kasbah, in the crenellated turret that overlooked the fortress and the desert beyond, eyes scanning the night sky.
No thunderclouds, no wind, no telltale darkening of the stars that foretold the oncoming rush of sand from a sandstorm. Nothing.
And yet . . .
High overhead, a falcon soared, making wide, lazy circles. Caesar narrowed his eyes, watching it turn. He’d never seen a pure white falcon before.
Peregrine. Female.
He knew it was female because they were always larger than the males, and this one had a wingspan to rival a vulture’s. That was where the similarity ended, however; this bird was beautiful and regal, nothing at all like the ugly scavengers that looked more like enormous, long-necked vampire bats, some kind of hideous prehistoric carrion eaters.
Strange . . . the falcon seemed to be looking back at him. Watching him with keen, intelligent eyes.
It folded its wings against its body and slanted into a hunting dive.
Which seemed to be aimed straight at the spot he was standing.
Knowing that the peregrine falcon was the fastest member of the animal kingdom, capable of reaching speeds well over two hundred miles per hour in its characteristic dives, Caesar took a step back. Then another, as the bird rocketed toward him, set on what seemed an imminent collision course.
He jumped into the safety of the turret stairwell with a shout of anger as the falcon swooped right down over his head, black talons extended.
“Crazy fucking bird!” he screamed at it as it passed overhead and swept soundlessly out of sight.
When he again chanced a glimpse out of the turret, he spied the tail end of the bird, receding into the distance toward the mountains, jagged as shark’s teeth against the sky. It banked right and soared for a moment, then turned back in his direction.
“Nico!” he hollered down the spiral stairwell of the tower. “Get up here with your bow!”
It was probably breeding season. The stupid thing most likely had a nest nearby and was in protective mama bird mode, but he had enough problems—he didn’t need an insane predaceous avian to add to them.
As he wanted with anything that annoyed him, Caesar wanted it dead.
And Nico was the best archer he had.
He trotted down the steps, reaching the bottom just as Nico arrived with his bow and quiver of arrows.
Caesar pointed up the staircase. “Bird. Big, white. Kill it. Then bring it to the kitchens; I fancy roasted falcon for dinner tonight.”
Nico bowed. “Sire.”
Confident Nico
would make quick work of the task and he’d soon be dining on fresh bird breasts, Caesar strolled off down the echoing stone hallway.
Before dinner, he had a meeting with Marcell. There were many, many more rooms that would soon be filled aside from those in the nursery.
Very soon.
“We’ve completed work on the aqueduct. If all goes well with the testing, we should have fresh running water by tomorrow morning.”
Caesar shook his head, marveling at the genius of his first-in-command and favorite guard, Marcell. Only yesterday he’d successfully installed the diesel generators that, in conjunction with a freezer, allowed Caesar to have that coveted desert luxury: ice.
Leaning back into his chair in what he thought of as the library, though there were no books, only soaring ceilings and a lot of empty space, he steepled his fingers beneath his chin and smiled.
“Well done, Marcell. Just in time, too. I anticipate we’ll need as much fresh water as we can get within the next few weeks.”
Standing as he always did whenever Caesar was present, Marcell cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve had word?”
“I have. They’re on the move. Won’t be long until Weymouth’s part of the Plan is complete. And quite honestly, I think work on the subterranean dig needs to be stepped up. Substantially. Otherwise we simply won’t have anywhere to put them all.” He watched a long-legged spider crawl over the sill of the window across the room. With no glass to keep the outside out, the empty casements were conduits for the myriad insects, arachnids, and creepy crawlers of the desert.
Spiders gave Caesar the heebie-jeebies. They just looked so . . . evil. And this one was doubly sinister because it was albino. Ugh.
“As you wish, Sire. I’ll double the crew and accelerate the deadline.” He paused. “If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, Sire?”
Caesar turned his attention back to Marcell.
“I find a little . . . incentive always helps motivation. If the men were to have a reward awaiting them if they finish ahead of schedule . . .”
Darkness Bound (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 18