Dark Peril (10 page)

Solange padded softly along the labyrinth of interlocking branches forming the arboreal highway. The animals and birds, still cowed by the passing of evil, simply shivered as she moved past them toward her destination. She went fast—she’d covered many miles throughout the day to get to the site of her childhood home, and now had a long way to go in return. It was faster using the canopy to travel, but several times she was forced to go to the forest floor.

The wound on her hip broke open, seeping more blood. She couldn’t afford the scent in the air. With a sniff of impatience, she made her way to one of her many stashes throughout the forest. Deep inside a cage of roots she had hidden a small waterproof box. A set of clothing, weapons, ammunition, dried food, clean water and a medical kit waited for her. She had to shift and sew up the wound.

It was always important in the rain forest to cleanse and close a wound, applying an antibiotic cream—and this was no exception. Infections were rampant, easy to get and easy to die from. As a rule she was meticulous with wounds, and the fact that she’d traveled all the way to the place of her family’s slaughter without caring for the lacerations told her a lot about her mental state. She needed to find a way out or she was going to die soon. She had nothing left to give—and that shamed her.

She shifted back into her jaguar form. It was easier to handle the deep emotion threatening her sanity when buffered by her animal, especially at the realization that there would be no end to Brodrick’s depravities. There were so few women in the rain forest, or even living on the edge of it, that Brodrick had resorted to using the vampire database to find jaguar-women in other countries. He had them kidnapped and brought to him. That was how Annabelle had been taken. Her husband was human, from what Solange had understood, but that hadn’t stopped the men Brodrick had hired from kidnapping her.

The human society was in close league with Brodrick, although she’d noticed that all the men guarding the laboratory were afraid of him. As they should be. Brodrick was as cruel and depraved as any vampire, and just as cunning. He knew the rain forest—it was his home turf. Her reputation had grown over the years, and by now, he would know there was a pureblood female shifter wreaking havoc with his plans. He despised disobedience, and his punishments were swift and brutal. He demanded complete submission, especially from a female. He would want her alive—her one advantage. The males she encountered would be handicapped by trying to bring her to Brodrick still breathing.

She hurried now, loping occasionally. They would burn the body of the jaguar male she’d killed tonight to keep their presence hidden. They would want Annabelle’s body to burn as well. Hopefully Brodrick would be there to direct the operation personally, but if not, and she managed to send him another body or two, he would stay to hunt her. He would never be able to take a slap in the face like that from a female. He would move heaven and earth to find her. She would let him and she would kill him. She expected to die, but she wasn’t going alone. She would rid the remaining jaguar-women of his evil presence even if it meant paying with her death.

She could hear the roar of the river and she went to her belly, listening, sniffing the air, looking for signs in the animals as well. She scented the presence of at least two males, jaguar-men, but not in their animal forms. Their senses would be a little duller, their hearing less acute. She worked her way south of them until she came to another of her small stashes, again sheltered from the elements by the roots of a tree. This box was longer and held her weapons, carefully cleaned, with a wealth of ammunition. She shifted and dressed quickly, strapped on a knife, a crossbow, extra arrows and her rifle. She wasn’t the best with a handgun, although she wasn’t bad, but at a distance she was a damned good shot with both a rifle and crossbow.

She made her way through the forest, keeping to the animal trails. She had the advantage of being small and compact, allowing her into spaces the larger jaguar males might not go to pick up her scent. She crawled on her hands and knees some of the time and other times she slid on her belly to get to the site she’d chosen for her attack.

She took a good careful look around, scent-testing the air, before she went up the tree. It was much more difficult to go half human, half cat, but she’d used the technique often over the years so she could climb to the canopy fast and yet bring the weapons and clothing she might need.

She settled into the crook of the tree, listening to the sounds coming from the river’s edge. A lot of swearing. Muttering. She narrowed her vision, peering through the leaves to survey the rocks. From that angle, she couldn’t see a body. They had to have moved it, or perhaps the body had come off the rocks into the water and had been swept downstream. Evidently that was the conclusion the two men had come to.

“You should have hauled her up onto the bank, Kevin,” one complained.

She recognized the speaker. She’d wounded him. She’d hoped she’d done a better job, but he was walking on his own now.

“I was too busy hauling your ass back to the lab to stop the bleeding. You would have died out here if I hadn’t, Brad,” Kevin snapped.

The jaguar-men were famous for their ugly tempers. Neither wanted to follow the river for miles in the hopes of finding the body, but they had no choice. It was a law they all lived by, to destroy all evidence of their species. The two men stood looking down over the bank, and then spat, almost simultaneously, their disgust evident. Solange bit her lip hard, furious that they would show such disrespect to the woman they had so brutally used—the woman they’d driven to suicide. She put the rifle to her shoulder, took a breath, finger on the trigger, and put Kevin squarely in her sights.

There was always that moment when she wondered if she could do this—if she would hesitate and alert them to her presence, allowing them to kill her first. She’d never be taken alive. She’d rescued too many women and seen close-up what they did to their victims, and would never allow herself to fall into their hands. Jasmine, her cousin, had been taken by these same men. Solange detested them. They deserved to die. Every one of them had committed murder, killing men, women and children. Yet . . . She felt that horrible moment stretch out in front of her. Could she do this again? How much of herself would she lose regardless of whether it was justice? The cost of taking lives had gone so high she was no longer certain that she was willing to pay.

She squeezed the trigger. Kevin jerked, and the sound of the shot reverberated through the forest as the body slowly crumpled, a hole blossoming in the back of his head. Brad twisted around, leaping into the air as he tried to locate the source of the sound even as she squeezed off the second shot. The bullet caught him in his shoulder, spinning him as he began his fall from the cliff’s edge to the raging river below. He shifted in midair, frantically trying to tear at his clothes as he plummeted into the roaring water.

Bile churned in her stomach, rising to her throat as she wiped sweat from her face. The second man would probably live, but he would be out of commission for a while. She’d have to hunt him later. And she could never stake out another body again; they’d be waiting for her. Already she was automatically putting weapons in the proper place for a descent, trembling the entire time but moving out of pure experience and reflex. She had to move fast and get out of the area. Brodrick traveled with a group of fighters and she wasn’t in any shape to fend them off. Sound traveled at night and they would have heard the gunshots.

A bird shrieked. She leapt from the branch, hand outstretched, catching at the thick, woody liana vines hanging from all the trees and swinging hard, using her forward momentum to drive her across to the next vine. Her arms were nearly yanked out of their sockets as she hurled her body across open space toward the next tree. She managed to pull herself onto a branch, shifting her weight to give herself the best leap toward the vines hanging between the next two trees.

She glanced over her shoulder as she jumped, and saw the huge black jaguar running along the branches of the tree she’d vacated. Her heart slammed hard in her chest, her breath exploding out of her lungs.
Brodrick the Terrible.
For a moment she was a terrified child again. The eight-year-old girl with her family dead around her and the man, larger than life, staring at her with flat, dead eyes, driving the point of his knife into her skin to try to provoke her cat into revealing itself.

Don’t panic,
she chided herself, forcing her brain to work as she moved between the trees. She changed her course subtly, always one step ahead of that fierce, angry cat. He was too heavy to use the vines, forced to run along the branches. Her advantage was the air, and she went for the trees without interlocking branches, forcing him to slow in his chase, making him go to the forest floor to follow her progress. Below her, he raged, running, snarling, his roar filling the night.

After that first initial shock, Solange held her terror in check. She knew this part of the rain forest, probably better than Brodrick did. He had no idea she was his daughter, the one he thought he’d murdered and thrown away as garbage years earlier. She had a few advantages if she kept her head. She caught the vine that would take her into the tree nearest the fast-flowing river. Swollen from the endless rain, the water flooded the banks on either side and churned and rolled over the rocks, creating a series of rapids. She moved through the trees overlooking the river.

Brodrick roared again and leapt at the thick liana just as she grasped it, her momentum swinging the wooden rope toward her destination. She felt the jerk and her heart jumped in her throat. Her body slammed into the branch hard, hands reaching desperately for a purchase. She missed with her left hand but her right caught the gnarled branch firmly. She managed to grip with her left and kept moving, using her weight as a pendulum to swing herself onto the branch.

She ran along the branches, fitting an arrow into her crossbow. Brodrick scrambled up the trunk and landed behind her, hard enough to shake the tree. She faced him, standing her ground, looking into those evil yellow eyes. He stared at her, motionless, in a crouch, prepared for a rush. She felt the pull of his mesmerizing power, those eyes burning over her, marking her as prey.

She held the crossbow at her hip, loosely aimed, and stared into his eyes. She let him see her loathing. She despised him. There would be no respect. No give to this monster. And no fear. She would
never
show him fear again. His lip curled at her insubordination. Grown jaguar-men, experienced fighters, bowed before him, but here she was, a lowly woman, meeting his stare, not looking away—daring to
challenge
his authority.

Solange made certain that he could see her contempt. Her defiance. Her complete revulsion of everything he was. Taunting him. She knew him. She’d studied him. He demanded complete reverence, and he got it through intimidation and cruelty. All must bow before him, especially women. He hated the women who carried life in their bodies but refused to follow his will. They were put on earth to serve their men, to be used in whatever way the men saw fit, and yet they’d fled the rain forest and his authority to find human males. It was a slap in his face and he despised them. Every chance he got he punished them in demeaning and brutal ways. She knew her defiance would enrage him—and she wanted him enraged.

They stared at one another for a long time, neither blinking. She saw the power gathering in his muscles, the fierce directness in his stare.

“It’s been a long time—Father.” She spat the word.

The jaguar stilled, muscles going rigid. She’d thrown him off his attack. She kept his gaze, playing the life-and-death game with him.

“You wanted royal blood. Am I the only one you didn’t manage to destroy?”

She saw the hesitation—the puzzlement. He wanted a female shifter of pure blood, but where had she come from? And
royal
blood? In all the hundreds of female children he’d destroyed, he wouldn’t remember one. He would want her alive. He knew she was a shifter and that she was fast at it. There were so few women left who could shift.

She waited patiently, breathing. In. Out. Waiting for him to hear what she said. Not pure. Royal. She saw the moment he understood
. Father
.
Royal.
Yeah, he put it together. He shook his head, clearly shocked, his eyes never leaving her face.

She flashed her teeth. “Aren’t you going to say welcome home—
Daddy
?”

It was a taunt. A dare. A female challenging him.

He snarled and began to shift—as she knew he would. She had only seconds. He was fast—faster than she’d imagined he could be. She brought up the crossbow and shot an arrow straight into his shifting throat. Turning, she leapt into the next tree, moving fast, knowing if she hadn’t killed him, he would come after her.

She heard the roar, caught the spatter of blood on the leaves around her and kept going. The jaguar was enraged, and a wounded cat was doubly dangerous. Something big crashed onto the tree behind her and the entire tree shook, nearly dislodging her. She threw herself precariously onto the next branch, scrambling to get across the shaking limb. Tree frogs jumped out of her way. A lizard burst out from under leaves and ran. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye but didn’t slow, leaping to the next tree, landing in a crouch to whirl around and let fly a second arrow.

The black jaguar looked hideous, all teeth, blood running down its neck to the broad chest. There in the darkness his eyes glowed red, fixed on her, angry and determined, his ears going flat when he saw the loaded crossbow. The arrow took him high in the shoulder and he roared his anger, the sound reverberating through the forest.

Birds shrieked, rising from the canopy in spite of the darkness, taking to the skies to avoid the vengeance of an enraged jaguar. Solange knew better than most just what force a large cat could hit with, and as Brodrick sprang at her, she dove to the next tree. Her hands missed the branch and her heart somersaulted. Her outstretched arms slammed into a thin branch. The crack was audible, but she grabbed out of sheer desperation. Her fingers wrapped around the limb and the jaguar landed hard on her back, claws ripping flesh.