Dark Peril (3 page)

Something had blown a hole through the metal from the outside, and a fire had started. The smell of smoke couldn’t mask the stench of rotting flesh rising to make his skin crawl even deep within the form of the bird.
Vampire.
The scent was there, although faded, as if many risings had gone by since the undead had visited this place. Still, the wail of the dead rose from the surrounding ground.

The right side of the building was blackened and the hole gave glimpses of the interior. A very recent battle, perhaps in the last couple of hours, had taken place here. The sharp eyes of the eagle could see the furniture overturned inside, a desk and two cages. A body lay on the floor, unmoving.

Two men—human, he was certain—stood outside the building in combat gear, large guns strapped to their shoulders. One tipped a bottle of water to his mouth and then stepped back into the relative shelter of the doorway, trying to avoid the steady rain. The second stood stoically, the water drenching him, as he said a few words to the first guard before moving on to circle the building. Both watched vigilantly, and the guard in the doorway favored his left leg, as though he’d been injured.

The eagle watched, motionless, hidden in the thick, twisted branches and umbrella leaves up above the clearing. It wasn’t long before a third man appeared, coming out of the forest. Naked, he was thick-chested with stocky legs and heavily muscled arms. He carried another man over his shoulder. Blood streamed down his shoulder and back, although it was impossible to tell if it was from the unconscious man or him. He staggered just before he reached the door, but the guard didn’t move to help him. Instead, he stood to one side, the muzzle of his gun barely raised, but enough to cover the newcomers.

Jaguar-men. Shapeshifters. There was no doubt in Dominic’s mind. Someone had attacked this facility and done a considerable amount of damage. Obviously the human guard was leery of the jaguar-men, but he allowed them into the building. The second guard had hung back and covered the two shapeshifters, his finger on the trigger. Clearly it was an uneasy truce between the two species.

Dominic knew the jaguar-men were on the verge of extinction. He had seen the decline a few hundred years earlier and knew it was inevitable. At that time, the Carpathians had tried to warn them of what was coming. Times changed and a species had to evolve in order to survive, but the jaguar-men had refused the advice. They wanted to stick to the old ways, living deep in the forests, finding a mate, impregnating her and moving on. They were wild and bad-tempered, never able to settle.

The few jaguar-men Dominic had spent any time with had tremendous feelings of entitlement and superiority. They viewed all other species as inferior, and their women were seen as little more than a vessel to carry offspring. The royal family had a long history of cruelty and abuse toward their women and female children, a practice the other males viewed as example and followed. There were a few rare jaguar-men who had tried to convince the others that they needed to value their women and children, rather than treating them as property, but they were considered traitors and were shunned and ridiculed—or worse, killed.

In the end the Carpathians had left the jaguar-men to their own devices, knowing the species was ultimately doomed. Brodrick the Tenth, a rare black jaguar, led the males just as his father and his ancestors before him had done. He was considered a difficult, brutal man, responsible for the slaughter of entire villages, of the half-breeds he deemed unfit to live. It was rumored he had made an alliance with the Malinov brothers as well as the society of humans dedicated to wiping out vampires.

Dominic shook his head at the irony. Humans couldn’t distinguish between a Carpathian and a vampire, and their secret society had been infiltrated by the very ones they were trying to destroy. The Malinovs were using both species in their war against the Carpathians. So far, the werewolves hadn’t come down on either side, instead staying strictly neutral, but they existed, as Manolito De La Cruz had found with his lifemate.

Dominic spread his wings and moved closer, tuning his hearing to catch the conversation inside the building.

“The woman is dead, Brodrick. She went over the cliff. We couldn’t stop her.” There was weariness and distaste in the voice.

A second voice, one filled with pain, added, “We can’t afford the loss of any more of our women.”

The third voice was lower, a growl of sheer power, stunning in the absolute authority it carried. “What did you say, Brad?” The voice conveyed a distinct threat, as if the very idea of any of his subjects having a thought of his own in some way made him a traitor.

“He needs a doctor, Brodrick,” the first voice hastily intervened.

Dominic watched as a large man dressed in loose jeans and an open shirt emerged from the house. His hair was long, shaggy and very thick. Dominic knew instantly he was looking at Brodrick, the ruler of the jaguar-men. His prince had decreed the Carpathians should leave the species to its own fate, otherwise Dominic would have been tempted to kill the man where he stood. Brodrick was directly responsible for the deaths of countless men, women and children. He was consumed with evil, drunk on his own power and the belief that he was superior to all others.

Brodrick looked at the two guards contemptuously. “What the hell are you doing hanging out in the doorway? You’re supposed to be doing a job.”

The second guard kept his gun pointed in Brodrick’s direction even as the two human men moved in opposite circles, the one who’d been sheltering in the doorway limping badly, confirming Dominic’s belief that he’d been wounded. Brodrick scowled up at the rain, allowing it to pour onto his face. He spat in disgust and stalked around to the side of the building where the fire had been. Crouching, he searched the ground. He was thorough about it, leaning down to sniff, using all senses to pick up the trail of his enemy.

Suddenly he sat back on his heels, stiffening. “Kevin, get out here,” he called.

The jaguar-man who had carried the wounded one hurried out, barefoot, but in jeans and pulling on a T-shirt that strained across his chest. “What is it?”

“Did you get a good look at whoever broke in and freed Annabelle?”

Kevin shook his head. “He’s a hell of a shot. He took out two guards, the bullets so close together everyone thought only one shot had been fired.”

“There aren’t any tracks. None. Where the hell was he? And how did he know the precise place to blow the building to free Annabelle? There were no windows.”

Kevin glanced in the direction of the guards. “You think someone helped him?”

“What happened out there?” Brodrick gestured toward the forest.

Kevin shrugged. “We went after Annabelle. She ran through the forest toward the river. We thought maybe it was her man, the human she spoke of, coming to try to save her. We didn’t need weapons to fight him, so we both shifted. We’d be faster traveling through the forest than Annabelle, even if she shifted.”

It had been logical thinking, Dominic conceded from his lofty perch above them, but they’d lost the woman.

Brodrick shook his head. “How did Brad get shot? And where’s Tonio?”

Kevin sighed. “We found his body just on the other side of the caves. He’d tangled with another cat. Brad was kneeling beside him, and the next thing I knew, he was on the ground and we were pinned down. I had no weapon and I shifted to try to circle around and find the shooter, but I couldn’t find any tracks.”

Brodrick swore. “It’s her.
She
did this. I know it was her. That’s why you didn’t find any tracks. She took to the trees.”

Neither said who
she
was. Dominic wanted to know who the mysterious woman they obviously hated—and feared—could be. Someone he wouldn’t mind meeting. Four of the five De La Cruz brothers had lifemates. Could the elusive woman be one of their lifemates? It was possible, but he doubted it. The De La Cruz brothers would not want their women in battle. They were men with fiercely protective natures, and coming to this part of the world had only increased their dominant tendencies. They had eight countries to patrol, and the Malinov brothers would know how impossible it was to cover every inch of the rain forest. They would never, under any circumstances, send their women out alone. No, this had to be someone else.

The eagle spread its massive wings and took to the air. The sun was beginning to fade, making him a little more comfortable, but the whisper of the parasites grew louder, tempting, pushing his hunger to a ravenous level, until he could barely think straight. It was only the bird’s form that kept his sanity as he tried to adjust to the rising level of torment. As the night grew closer, the parasites went from sluggish to active, stabbing at his internal organs while the vampire blood burned like acid. He needed to feed, but he was becoming more and more worried that insanity was grabbing hold and he wouldn’t find the strength to resist the temptation of a kill while feeding.

Each rising he’d woken voraciously hungry, and each time he fed, the parasites grew louder, pushing for a kill, demanding he feel the rush of power, the rightful rush of power, promising sweet coolness in his blood, a feeling of euphoria that would remove every pain from his weary body.

He kept to the shade of the canopy as he expanded his exploration, heading for the site of the battle, hoping the eagle could spot something the men hadn’t. He found the cave entrances, very small and made of limestone, but these didn’t seem to curve back underground to form the labyrinth of tunnels as the cave system miles away had done. There were only three small chambers and in each he found Mayan art on the walls. All three caves showed evidence of occupation, however brief, but violent in some way. There were dried spots of blood in all of them.

He took to the sky again, a vague uneasiness in his gut. That bothered him. He had seen horrific sites of battle, torture and death. He was a Carpathian warrior, and his lack of emotion served him well. Without a lifemate to balance the darkness in him, he needed the lack of emotion to stay sane over a thousand years of seeing cruelty and depravity. Yet the sight of the blood in that cave, and the knowledge that women had been brought there by the jaguar-men to be used as they wished, sickened him. And that should
never
happen. Intellectually, perhaps. An intellectual reaction was acceptable, and the honor in him would rise up to abhor such behavior. But a physical reaction was completely unacceptable—and impossible. Yet . . .

Unsettled, Dominic expanded his search to include the cliffs above the river. The rain continued, increasing in strength, turning the world a silvery gray. Even with the clouds as cover, he felt the bright heat invading as he burst into the open over the river. A body lay crumpled and lifeless in the water, caught on the rocks, battered and forgotten. Long, thick hair lay spread out like seaweed, and one arm was wedged in the crevice two large boulders made. She was faceup, her dead eyes staring at the sky, the rain pouring over her and running down her face like a flood of tears.

Cursing, Dominic circled and then dropped. He couldn’t leave her like that. He just couldn’t. It didn’t matter how many people he’d seen dead. He would not leave her, a broken doll with no honor or respect for the woman she’d been. From what he’d gleaned from the conversation between Brodrick and Kevin, she had a family, a husband who loved her. She—and they—deserved more than her body battered by water, left to swell and decompose and be fodder for the fish and carnivores that would feast on her.

The bird settled on the boulder just above her body, and he shifted, covering his skin with a heavy cloak, the hood helping to protect his neck and face as he crouched low and caught her wrist. He was strong and had no trouble pulling her from the water and into his arms. Her head lolled back on her neck, and he saw the bruises marring her skin and the prints around her neck. There were circles, black and blue around her wrists and ankles. Again he was shaken by his reaction. Sorrow mixed with rage. Sorrow was so heavy in his heart that it slowly blotted out the rage.

He took a breath and let it out. Was he feeling someone else’s emotions? Did the parasites amplify emotions around him, adding to the high the vampire received from the terror his victim felt—from the adrenaline-laced blood provided? That was a possibility, but he couldn’t imagine that a vampire could feel sorrow.

Dominic carried the woman into the forest, every step increasing the heartache. The moment he entered the trees, he scented blood. This had to have been where the second battle had taken place and Brad had been wounded. He found where the third jaguar-man had shed his clothes and gone on the hunt, hoping to circle around and take the shooter.

There were few tracks to show the jaguar’s passing, a small bit of fur and a partial track the rain had filled, but it wasn’t long before he found the body of the cat. There had been a battle here, one between two cats. The dead cat’s prints had been heavier, and spread farther apart, indicating he was larger. But the smaller cat had obviously been a veteran fighter; it had killed with a bite to the skull after a fierce struggle. The foliage was soaked in blood and there was more on the ground.

Dominic knew the jaguars would return to burn the fallen cat, so after carefully studying the ground to commit the victorious jaguar’s prints to memory, he carried the woman to the most lush spot he could find. A grotto of limestone covered in tangled vines of flowers would be her only marker, but he opened the earth deep and gave her a place to rest. As the soil closed over the woman, he murmured the death prayer in his native language, asking for peace and for her soul to be welcomed into the next life, as well as asking that the earth receive her body and welcome her flesh and bones.

He stayed a moment while the rays of the sun sought him out through the cover of the canopy and rain, burning through his heavy cloak to raise blisters on his skin. The parasites reacted, twisting and shrieking in his head, his insides a mass of cuts that caused him to spit blood. He pushed some of them from his body through his pores. He found that if he didn’t decrease the number, the whispers grew louder and the torment impossible to ignore. He had to incinerate the writhing mutated leeches before they slipped into the ground and tried to find a way back to their masters.