Nischal [leopard spots 9] (3 page)

Preston’s heart was going to palpitate right out of his damn chest. He swallowed quietly when he really wanted to gulp and both scream accusations and threats, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

“I’ve seen you both in Falls City and Alice.” Not lies at all. Preston had been in both Texas towns, following Suraj and Yangani. He just hadn’t got very close to them.

“You weren’t in the groups who came to see the leopards,” Suraj said firmly. “I would have spotted you immediately with that orange hair.”

“No, I was waiting to get the information from the large cat rescue group that I needed before I approached you.” Preston dug his wallet from his back pocket. “We’ve received several complaints about this ridiculous roadshow of yours.” He opened his wallet and took out a card. “Here’s the group I’m with—”

“Fuck you and your group,” Yangani spat out. “Leave before I call the police!”

Preston almost laughed out loud at that. “You’re going to call the police on me? Really?” Then he did laugh as he tucked his wallet back into his pocket.

“You find that amusing—why?” Suraj asked.

Preston held the card up again. “Because I have enough information on you and your, er,
sister
, that I think calling the police would only cause you two more trouble than it would me.” Damn, his back was beginning to ache from the scrapes. Preston struggled not to squirm.

“How so?” Suraj asked, taking a step towards him. “You really do look familiar.”

That was not a good thing, and it had been a risk to show himself, but Paul had bleached his hair blond and used fading creams on his freckles. He’d also been thinner, going to great and unhealthy lengths to achieve a svelte figure. Preston had hoped their differences would shelter him from discovery, but he had to admit he might have been wrong about that. Suraj was studying him intently.

“Why do you look so familiar to me?” Suraj murmured, reaching out to touch Preston’s hair. “I would have remembered this…”

Something shifted in the man’s eyes, some remembered thing that made Suraj’s expression go blank as he fisted his hand in Preston’s hair. “You little fucker,” Suraj snarled.

Oh shit, he’d really screwed everything up!

Chapter Three

Nischal put two and two together right before Suraj did. Preston, despite the difference in hair colour and a few pounds, was a dead ringer for another man who’d caught Suraj and Yangani’s attention over a year ago. Nischal didn’t know what exactly had happened to that guy, but he knew it hadn’t been anything good.

Whatever was going to happen to Preston would be just as bad, if not worse. Yangani was already pulling a hypodermic out of her bag. Nischal had never seen her do that, not for a human before, but it didn’t surprise him. She was every bit as twisted as Suraj.

Preston and Suraj were locked in a scuffle. Suraj, for all that he was taller and more muscular, was having a difficult time hanging onto Preston. He had Preston by the hair and neck. While Nischal growled in frustration, Suraj tightened the arm around Preston’s neck and leant back, lifting Preston’s feet from the ground.

Nischal yowled, anger spiking his adrenaline. He’d thought Suraj and Yangani seduced men and robbed them, but now he had to admit he’d deliberately stopped his wonderings there. They obviously intended to kill Preston.

Sabin joined him at the fence and yowled in protest. It felt good having his brother there, shoulder to shoulder with him.
Like we used to do, when we were free.

They’d been kept weak, drugged and hopeless. No longer, Nischal vowed. There was something about Preston, something that called to Nischal. Maybe it was the knowledge that an innocent man was about to die. Maybe it was because Nischal had licked his wounds, tasted his blood—and that in turn had caused all kinds of chaos in Nischal’s body. He’d wanted to fuck Preston through the fence, in whatever manner he’d be allowed to.

Confusion was familiar to Nischal. Numbness was, too. This great fury rising in him, the need and desire, those were new and confusing and frightening.

And irresistible. He wouldn’t let Preston die.

Shift
, he told himself.
Shift, shift, shift
! Months of not being able to turn from beast to man did not magically change. Nischal couldn’t shift—his muscles and bones were locked in this form.

Sabin knocked into him and Nischal snapped at him. Sabin swatted him across the cheek then hit the fence. Nischal looked to Suraj, to Preston whose eyes were beginning to bulge as his kicking feet slowed. Yangani stood by watching with a sick smile in place as she held the syringe.

Nischal tipped his head in agreement and hoped he had understood his brother right. They backed up several feet then charged the fence.

The electrical current wasn’t there. When had been the last time, before today, that he had checked? At first, he and Sabin had tested the fence daily, but the shocks had been very painful, and eventually, they’d given up. They’d got so used to being kept in with that amped-up fencing, they just kept on assuming it was still being used.

Nischal cursed himself for being stupid. He’d seen Preston touching the fence. He’d fucking licked Preston through it, and yet his mind hadn’t picked up on the fact that there was no shock to him or Preston. He was a brainwashed fool. He’d bet his pride, what was left of it, on Suraj having stopped supplying a current to the fencing some time ago. And Nischal had been too stupid to catch on.

The fence swayed. Yangani shrieked and Suraj let go of Preston for a second. It was all Preston needed. He dropped to his knees and twisted his stocky torso around as he swung his fist. The contact with Suraj’s groin made Nischal’s balls hurt.

He backed up and ran at the fence again. Once he could have easily cleared the ten-foot height. Sabin could have, too, but now—well, now it didn’t matter. He needed to get to Preston before the man was killed.

Yangani was faster than Nischal had thought she’d be, though. She was on top of Preston and stabbing him with that hypodermic before Nischal could clear the fence. Then he was—clearing the fence, sailing over it with only a bit of scraping at the end. He hit the ground with a thud, his legs not used to any sort of a workout now.

Then all hell broke loose. Bullets kicked up the dirt around him. Yangani screeched. Blood spurted. Suraj screamed. Another bullet came close to hitting Nischal and he got his feet under him. He sprang into the air with as much strength as he could muster.

Sabin’s yowl caused him to turn around, spinning on his paws. Sabin leapt, his eyes on Nischal’s. Nischal’s heart stopped as his brother clambered over the fence.

“Tranq the goddamned leopards!” someone shouted, someone who wasn’t familiar to Nischal at all. He saw men and women then, ones dressed in black clothes and carrying scary-looking guns. Things were shouted, bullets fired—he didn’t listen as he turned back to watch Sabin land on the ground. Sabin took a leaping start—and two darts hit him in the chest.

No!
Nischal didn’t yell it, of course, and he couldn’t roar like a lion. The sound he loosed came from his very soul as he watched his brother fall. He started to run to him only to see a man lining Nischal up in his sights. Nischal wasn’t going to be captured again.

He felt more energy than he’d had in months as he twisted aside to avoid a dart. His claws dug into the ground and he pushed off, leaping so far away the guy shooting at him gasped, “Holy fuck!”

“They can leap something like twenty feet,” someone yelled and Nischal thought,
If they only knew the truth
. If only he were healthy. He’d show them what a shifter leopard could do, how far he could leap.

He needed to get to Sabin and Preston, but whatever was going on was more than he could manage. There were too many armed people, too many bullets and if he got killed, Sabin would be alone with no one to watch out for him.

“Someone get that fucking leopard!”

Nischal wasn’t going to let that happen, either. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be caught. Then he and Sabin would probably never be free again. That was a risk he wouldn’t take.

But he couldn’t figure out how to get to Sabin or Preston. Nischal ran until he was sure he was out of sight. The fairgrounds were too open, though. He had no good place to hide, and he needed to see if he could shift, because that would save him. Being a human would get him out of the crosshairs.

So he ran, leaping over small fences as he entered what he thought were private lands. He found a stream that was barely more than a trickle of water, and after drinking deeply, he traipsed down it to help hide his tracks. While he loped, he tried to figure out what had happened back there. Some kind of law enforcement sting, he supposed. They wouldn’t have done such a thing for two leopards being abused, but Suraj and Yangani hadn’t just been doing that, had they?

As much as Nischal had been out of it, lost in despair and hunger, he had to admit he’d also been deliberately blind to his captors’ deviances. How many young men had he seen them slip off with? Three? Six? Nischal couldn’t remember exactly, but he remembered the one who resembled Preston, the blond man who’d screamed and screamed.

Would he lose Sabin for his complacency? Nischal stopped in the shallow water and cried out. Not his brother, not his! He needed to head back to the fairgrounds and see what was happening. He urged his body to shift, he begged and pleaded with fate, with the gods, but he was locked into his leopard form.

Nischal tipped his head back and snarled at the sky. He was hot and angry and scared. Hungry, but that was a feeling he’d grown accustomed to. More than anything, he was frightened. The land around him was barren, dry except for the small dribble of water beneath his feet. This wasn’t his home, wasn’t Nepal or the snow-covered mountain ranges he’d loved so much.

No, this was a hot, miserable land and he was alone. He’d run off and left his brother and Preston, though why that man mattered at all, Nischal didn’t know.

He had to go back. He needed to make sure Sabin wasn’t harmed. The tranquiliser darts would keep him out for an hour, maybe. How long had Nischal been fleeing?

Nischal turned around and began running, but the wind carried with it the scent of hunters. Men, women, at least half a dozen of them, and they were coming for him. Nischal understood why. They couldn’t have a wild beast roaming the countryside. If he were only a leopard, he’d truly be a danger. But he was more than the body imprisoning him.

Fear spun him around again and he began running, full leaps and bounds and strides. He saw a branch low enough for him to reach. Higher than a human could easily get to. Nischal leapt and scrambled up the tree. He hoped there was enough distance between him and the humans pursuing him to keep him safe for a while.

Shift, shift, shift!
Nischal closed his eyes and concentrated. Thinking was hard when he hadn’t been doing much of it for so long. He’d made stupid mistakes today because of that. Not anymore. He was going to get his head out of his ass and find Sabin. He’d check on Preston, too. Make sure the man hadn’t been hurt or killed.

Nischal remembered how he used to meditate and just
be
. When he’d been human before, he’d known how to call to his leopard nature. Nischal had loved being mixed spirits, human and cat. He’d lost his human side and needed it back.

Calm my mind. Calm. Close my eyes. Breathe slowly, in…hold…out.
The routine came back to him as if he’d never ceased doing it, and though Nischal was in leopard form, he began to relax. His mind grabbed onto the once-familiar routine, and his muscles eased, his tendons remembered just as his bones did, his DNA did, that there was more to him than this one form.

It hurt. More than even his first shift had. Agony, searing, maddening, tore through his entire body. It washed over him in waves as he screamed, except no sound could get past his throat as his body morphed. Nischal thought he was dying, being literally turned inside out. There’d never been anything even remotely like this in his life.

Yet eventually it began to wane. Nischal shook and whimpered as he gasped repeatedly. Gods, he ached everywhere. Even his eyelids were cramping.

But he felt bark on his skin, and he forced his eyes to open. He blinked and blinked. His vision wasn’t quite as sharp—neither were his other senses. He swallowed, or tried to, but coughed around his dry throat.

And he saw skin. Dirty, bruised skin.

It worked. Thank the gods it worked!
Now he just had to figure out what to do next. He couldn’t stay in the tree. He was naked, the bark was abrasive, and there would be hunters of some sort coming for him.

Clothes, food, somewhere to hide. That was what he needed, then he would set about finding Sabin and checking on Preston.

Nischal’s pulse raced and he pictured the man in his mind. What was it about Preston that had caused Nischal to be attracted to him? There’d been many men in many groups that Nischal had seen, but he hadn’t given a shit about any of them.

He could blame the drugs, the starvation, the depression that being a prisoner had caused. Whatever it was, the feeling pushed at him to find Preston, so he would. He’d see if Suraj and Yangani were dead, alive, in jail, whatever. There had to be news about them. A raid by law enforcement in a small town would be the talk of the place. Nischal only needed to clean up, eat and find some clothes, then he could make his way back to the town.

There was no victory in his escape, nor any in his ability to turn back into a human after the initial surprise. He’d left behind his brother. He’d abandoned Sabin. Nothing would make that right.

Chapter Four

Jesus, had he been hit by a tank? Preston moaned as he tried to roll over. He ached from his head to his heels.

“Relax, Mr Hardy, you’re fine.”

Preston knew that was an outright lie, and it scared him into forcing his heavy eyelids to open. Blurry vision had him blinking, then he made out a woman’s face.