Dark Peril (5 page)

The jaguar and eagle stared at one another a long time, neither blinking, neither giving ground. The jaguar studied the sky predator, vaguely wondering what it meant when a daytime hunter was moving about at night in the tapering rain. She was too weary to have much interest in the answer, and was the first to break eye contact. Here, in the ruins of two villages slaughtered, where wailing ghosts howled for revenge, was not the place to find the rest she so badly needed. She continued her journey, picking her way through the broken stones and half-buried foundations to the tall Kapok tree where the eagle perched.

Majestically the bird rose into the air, circled the Mayan ruins and dropped lower to peer at what was left of the foundations of more recent destruction. The sharp eyes examined the ground as it flew overhead, then it dipped even lower, nearly skimming the jaguar before rising abruptly, the giant wingspan taking the large raptor back into the cover of the canopy.

The jaguar felt the beat of those powerful wings as it passed so close to her. She raised her head and watched until the eagle was out of sight, her only reaction before she took to the tree, using her claws to aid her ascent. She stood for a moment looking at the empty sky, feeling absolutely and utterly alone, her sorrow a heavy burden. She couldn’t afford to feel sorrow. She needed this trip to dredge up anger; no, not anger—that wasn’t enough to sustain her when she was alone and exhausted and wounded. She needed a well of rage, a weapon honed by years of fighting evil, fighting for women who couldn’t fight for themselves.

She found a comfortable crook in a wide limb and settled her aching body, sheltered from the endless rain, and tucked her head on her paws, looking down at the wreckage of her village. The ruins receded and she stared at the destruction of what had once been her home. The overgrown brush disappeared in her mind, and the sacred spot was no longer a blood-soaked graveyard but a place of the living with four small houses and a cornfield and vegetable garden.

At once she could hear the sound of laughter, of children playing on the cleared ground, kicking a ball around. Her younger brothers, Avery and Adam, both looked so much like her beloved stepfather. He’d been so tall and handsome, his face always smiling, lifting her high in the air and spinning her like a top, making her feel like a princess there in the midst of the rain forest. There was her best friend, Marcy, as well as Marcy’s brother, Phin, a tall, serious boy who loved to read. Marcy could always get him to play their games with her winning smile and big green eyes. Their parents . . .

The jaguar blinked, trying to remember the names of Marcy and Phin’s parents. How could she forget? She would never forget these people. She was the only person left to mark their existence. Agitated, she rose, her sides heaving, panting, tongue lolling as she struggled with her sluggish brain to recall the two people who had been so good to everyone in the small homestead.
Annika and Joseph.

Breathing heavily, she settled once more on the branch. The third house belonged to Aunt Audrey, her mother’s younger sister, with her daughters Juliette and little Jasmine, her newest cousin. She was very close to Juliette, as they were less than a year apart in age and went between the two houses all the time. The fourth structure held the majority of the children—four boys and two girls, all orphans the couple, Benet and Rachel, had taken in and parented.

They lived and worked and played deep in the forest, far from other civilizations, and they were taught to secrete themselves in nearby caverns and underground tunnels. Unfortunately the caves were often under water, and they had to be careful never to be trapped inside when the tunnels flooded. But still, every few days their parents would conduct drills, running fast, not looking back, going through water to leave no tracks.

Phin was the oldest of them, and she often followed him, peppering him with questions about the outside world and why, at times, they had to hide so quietly. He looked sad, and he’d drop his hand on the top of her head and tell her how special she was. And that they all had to watch over her.

The jaguar sighed. The rain fell down and she lifted her face, allowing the drops to wash the tears from her muzzle. It did no good to weep for the past. She couldn’t change what had happened; she could only try to prevent others from feeling her pain and loss.

As she looked down on the ruins, the laughter of the children turned to screams as men poured from the jungle, and with them, great cats, claws rending and tearing, ripping out the throats of the boys. Adam and Avery were caught in the middle of the cornfield. The three of them were playing hide-and-seek and suddenly the great jaguar-men were surrounding them. They bashed in the heads of her brothers without mercy, spilling brains and blood on the ground and trampling the cornfield. She tried to run, but she was snatched up by one of the great brutes and taken into the clearing where Phin and her father fought, back-to-back, trying to prevent the men from dragging her mother from the house.

A sob welled up, a strangled wail the throat of the jaguar couldn’t quite handle. She panted, her face to the sky, tears burning, mingling with the drops of the rain. Adam and Avery were gone from her, brutally thrown aside, their bodies tossed like garbage. She remembered the dizzying ride as she was tucked under an arm and rushed through the field, the corn hitting her face, blood spatter everywhere. She saw a man with a machete kill Benet and then the four boys behind his fallen body, even the youngest: little Jake, who was only two. Rachel fought them back using a gun, firing at the men to keep them away from the three little girls. One of the men used a shotgun, and Rachel lay broken and bleeding in the doorway of her house. The men trampled her body while they pulled the screaming girls from inside.

There was so much blood. So much. It ran red and then black and shiny when the moon came out. Someone started a fire, burning their homes and gardens to the ground around them. Phin turned his head and looked directly at her as one of the jaguar-men thrust a knife into his kidney. They stared at one another, his mouth open in a silent scream, matching her mouth. Her captor threw her on the ground beside Phin’s crumpling body and she watched in horror as the life drained out of his eyes.

Her stepfather fought valiantly, trying to protect her mother. She lost track of the stab wounds in his chest and back. A great big man cut his throat, ending the fight, and her mother was dragged from the house by the same man, the blood of her husband covering his hands. He hit her mother repeatedly in the face and shoved her at the men before going to each body to make sure no man or male child remained alive. And then he turned toward the girls.

Inside the jaguar, her heart pounded, and she tasted fear and the beginnings of rage. Rage. She reached for it. Needed it. Tried desperately to let it pool inside her as the horrible man caught her thick mane of hair and dragged her across the blood and into the house where they brought each of the young girls.

They must have scouted the small village because the men went looking for Audrey, Juliette and Jasmine. Thankfully, the three were gone, off getting supplies, hiking to the river to meet the supply boat when the attackers had struck. Their attackers were jaguar-men—shapeshifters looking for women who could still shift into animal form. So many had done as her mother had done, found a human man who would stay and love them—raise a family with them. But that had weakened the shapeshifter species, and now fewer and fewer females could provide a shifter. Some of the men, led by a rare black jaguar, had begun forcing the women into servitude, essentially using them as breeders. Any children not capable of shifting were purged.

Solange Sangria stared down at the ground soaked with the blood of her ancestors—and the blood of her family. She could only return here in the form of the jaguar, unable to face the loss in human form. She could weep, with the rain soaking her face and her heart shredded, remembering looking into the eyes of that great black beast, great yellow-green eyes weighing her worth. Her father—
Brodrick the Terrible
. The man who had forcefully mated her mother because of her pure blood and then, when she escaped, had relentlessly hunted her. He had finally found her and slaughtered her husband and sons and the rest of those residing in their small village, children of parents he deemed unfit to walk the earth.

She would forever remember that unblinking stare. Cold. Ruthless. A man who should have loved her as his daughter, but who only saw her worth if she could successfully breed a shapeshifter.

The girls had been tied down and then the torture began. One by one. The girls were forced to watch as each was slashed with small cuts and then larger ones, over and over, in an effort to provoke a jaguar into emerging to protect the child. One by one, when no cat emerged, in front of the others, the leader—her father—declared them worthless. The girl was murdered and her body thrown out of the house into the clearing with the others.

Then it was her turn—the last girl. The man who had sired her worked on her meticulously, using a large blade, his icy fury growing as he tried to provoke her cat into revealing itself. The pain was excruciating. He slashed her legs until she bled, until her mother pleaded and struggled and finally shifted into the form of a female jaguar only to be knocked out and restrained by the men. They’d taken her mother away, leaving Solange facing her steely eyed, merciless father. He was called Brodrick the Terrible for a reason.

He had spent hours torturing her, certain she could shift, as both her mother and he were from the most powerful line of jaguar-men. A lineage revered by the others. She had steadfastly hidden her cat from him, obeying her mother, knowing her father was evil. To survive the pain she had filled her young mind with childish thoughts of revenge. She lay for hours—days. The nights and days ran together, and the man who had fathered her had been patient, uncaring of her discomfort, making tiny cuts into her skin, poking, as if with his knife he could peel back her human skin and find her jaguar form.

She had said nothing. In the end, she hadn’t cried. Not even when he grabbed her matted, bloody hair and threw her from the bed to the floor, shaking his head in disgust. “A child I sired and she’s no good to anyone,” he pronounced. “Truly worthless.”

She saw the great claw coming at her throat to tear her open, and she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t tried to move out of the way, staring straight into his eyes defiantly. She would never forget the horrific pain tearing through her, the blood gushing as he tossed her body carelessly aside to lie among the dead on the blood-soaked ground.

Solange had no idea how long she lay unconscious, but when she woke, it was daylight. She was thirsty and every bone in her body felt as if it had been broken. The jaguar-men were gone and all around her were the bodies of her friends and family. She stumbled to her feet and wandered through what looked like a slaughterhouse. The ground was red and damp, and already insects swarmed over the bodies.

She had no idea why she was still alive when her throat gaped open and blood clotted, sticky and wet. She went to each body, trying to awaken them, an eight-year-old girl alone in the forest with everyone she knew and loved dead—slaughtered. Thirst drove her to the sinkhole where the underground river beneath the limestone ran. She drank and once again lay down to allow the darkness to take her. She woke to the sounds of screaming. Her heart slammed hard in her chest and terror held her frozen. Had they returned? That horrible man with his cold, dead eyes judging her worthless?

Aunt Audrey burst through the jungle, Juliette at her side, following the blood trail to the sinkhole. Tears ran down Audrey’s face and Jasmine cried in her arms. She fell to her knees beside Solange, pulling her niece into her embrace, and the four of them wept endlessly for everyone they loved.

The jaguar stretched, easing her weight from the injured leg, blinking while her eyes ached and her heart twisted with terrible pain. So many more deaths she couldn’t prevent, and she was so tired. So very tired. How did one keep hate alive? And how could she continue to fuel the rage so that she could continue with her mission? Most of all, how did one remain completely, utterly alone?

Her cousin Jasmine was pregnant, and Juliette was mated to a Carpathian male. She might say those men were the scourge of the earth, but in truth, she was happy for Juliette. And Jasmine was now in their care. She loved Juliette and Jasmine as sisters and didn’t want this life for them, yet someone had to rescue women from the monsters preying on them in the forest.

She rested her muzzle on her paws and allowed her eyes to close, summoning her only companion. A myth. A dream. Juliette and Jasmine would laugh if they knew how man-hating Solange really survived the terrors of her life. She reached for her dream lover, the one man who got her through every horrific event. And God knew, tonight she needed him desperately. She reached in her mind, knowing the dream so intimately now. His voice first—so gentle and compelling. How many nights had he sung her to sleep? She loved his song, that haunting melody she would never forget as long as she lived.

The Amazon was a place where legends and myths came to life, where reality and dream met. Where sky, earth and the underworld were joined by the great temples of her ancestors. Throughout history, the shamans had revered the spirit of the jaguar, knowing the shifters hunted as both man and animal, day or night, taking command of the unknown. Long ago, when she was deep in a limestone cave, her wounds severe, hopes fading, she had conjured up a companion—a legend come to life in her mind. Maybe she’d been delirious, and maybe, like now when she needed him, she still was.

He had to be a warrior, of course. She needed to be able to respect him. She’d dreamt of him, sometimes at night, sometimes during the day, slowly allowing him to take shape in her mind. He was tall, with flowing black hair, broad shoulders, strong arms and a man’s face. He’d fought many battles and, like her, was weary of being alone, but knew he would only have her in his dreams. He would come to her after his battles and he would lay down his arms and find solace in her.