Tempting the Fire (31 page)

“It’s in the jungle,” Logan said smoothly. “We staked it out as bait to catch another one. It’s perfectly safe.”

Yes, and she was the fucking tooth fairy. Oh, he appeared to be telling the truth—his voice was steady, his gaze fixed on hers and he was as calm as a frozen pond—but Phoebe had never trusted a soul in her life, and she assumed everyone was lying about everything. Melanie was the sap who would believe grass was purple if someone told her it was.

“You’ll take us to it.”

“No,” Logan said, “we won’t. The sun is barely up and the jungle is still dark. We’ll have to wait until this afternoon.”

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m being practical. This jungle is crawling with guerrillas and drug cartels and their booby traps. Messing around without full light is suicide.”

He wasn’t worried about any of that and she knew it. Neither was she. “We can handle ourselves. You will take us within the hour.” When he opened his mouth to say something, she cut him off. “Need I remind you that we have your sister?”

“You bitch,” Richard rasped. “This was never part of our agreement!”

“We’re paying you more than enough to alter the agreement.” She smiled at Logan, thinking that maybe she’d add one more item to the contract. After all, you could never overcharge a battery.

LOGAN QUICKLY ASSESSED THE ITOR WOMAN. SHE LOOKED

LIKE she could damned well handle herself, but she was, no doubt, dispensable to 177

Itor. Capturing her and insisting on a trade for Caroline wouldn’t work. His best bet was to head into the dark jungle and hope to capture the fucking chupacabra, which was exactly what they were doing now.

Once Phoebe discovered Sela was a cryptozoologist, she’d immediately chosen her to come along. Logan’s father remained back at camp with the Itor men and all the others, including Dax.

Sela was directly behind him, with Phoebe behind her.

Phoebe’s last words before they left camp still rang in his mind.

Your father will be the first one killed if you try anything stupid in the jungle. Caroline second. And the cryptozoologist, she’s third.

When she’d pointed at Sela, he’d refused to allow himself to have any kind of reaction. Letting this Itor agent know he was in love with Sela meant certain death for her.

Thankfully, his father had kept his mouth shut, didn’t mention Chance at all. And it was the only thing to hold on to as they tramped through the jungle floor in the near dark of the early morning.

Six miles in, Phoebe stopped. “I don’t think any of you know where this thing really is.”

Logan turned to her. “That’s not true,” he said, his heart freezing when she grabbed Sela around the neck and pointed the gun at her head.

“Really? Prove it.”

Fuck. He gestured to the north. “In that clearing.”

“Then you go draw it out,” Phoebe said.

Logan didn’t hesitate. He feinted left, then turned and kicked Phoebe’s legs out from under her. Both women—and the gun—went flying, and within seconds Logan had Phoebe on her feet, his arm around her neck.

“Stop fucking with me—you need me as much as I need you right now.

And don’t think for a second that I won’t kill you because I’m worried about other people,” he growled, before he pushed her away from him.

She smiled, as if she’d enjoyed the choke hold, and yeah, this chick was fucking nuts. “We’ll see if you’re spewing truth,” she told him as she clicked her radio to call her minions back at the camp.

Just then, Logan heard sounds he would’ve been more than happy never to hear again.

Sela shoved to her feet and moved to his side.

As they drew closer to the growling and snarling, Logan held a hand up and Phoebe lowered her radio. It sounded like the beast had … perhaps it had gotten hold of another wild animal. Or a drug runner.

But as they broke into the small clearing, the reality proved to be much more dangerous.

Two chupacabras were locked together in mortal combat, a dance of death that could easily extend to all of them if they weren’t careful.

“Two of them,” Phoebe whispered.

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Logan’s blood ran cold—the lie he’d told Phoebe earlier, about staking out the chupa in order to catch another one, had come true … in the worst way possible. Because one of those chupacabras engaged in a death battle on the jungle floor was Chance.

How the hell had the guy escaped?

Sela was clutching his arm. “Marlena,” she mouthed when he tore his eyes off the snarling beasts, her eyes shifting to the right, where the beautiful woman stood in the relative safety of the trees, holding a tranq gun.

Marlena would have to know which chupa was Chance, although for the life of him, Logan couldn’t tell the two beasts apart.

He would have to give away Marlena’s position if he was to save Chance’s life.

“There’s a woman in the trees across the way,” he told Phoebe. “She’s with us.”

Phoebe’s eyes trained on Marlena. “Shoot her.”

“No!” Sela yelled.

“You don’t get a say.” Phoebe raised her gun to take a sniper-like shot at Marlena, but Logan palmed the barrel and shoved it down.

“One of the chupacabras is half human—he was infected when bitten. She’s the only one who can identify him.” Logan hoped so, anyway.

“Really? Two chupacabras—and one is a half and half. I like that,” she murmured. “Tranq them both. Now.”

“The tranq doesn’t work on the full chupacabra,” Sela said urgently.

“Tranqing Chance now ensures his death.”

“Chance? Stupid name. And I’m supposed to stand here until one of them kills the other?” Phoebe stifled a yawn. “Seriously, you people need to find better ways to have fun.”

A scream straight from the depths of hell silenced everything in the jungle, and then one of the chupacabras suddenly leaped toward Logan, snarling and screeching, and fuck me, this was going to end badly.

Logan had no idea which beast was now half on top of him, jaws snapping, threatening to rip his throat out. He kicked and rolled, but even with the strength of his bioware, the thing was stronger. Fetid breath stung his eyes and claws ripped into his skin. Panic, the heart-stopping realization that he could die, swamped him. And then, with no warning, the other chupa was jumping on the first one’s back, taking it to the ground right next to Logan. He rolled, fired two tranqs at point-blank range into each creature’s flank, but not before he heard a horrible crunch.

One of them had broken the other’s neck.

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For several long seconds, no one moved. Not even the birds in the trees.

And then, gunfire shattered the air. The whiz of the bullet vibrated Logan’s ear, followed by the surviving chupacabra’s bloodcurdling scream.

It rocked backward from the force of the slug’s impact, its blood exploding from the hole in its abdomen. Its red eyes fixed on Logan, hatred burning like coals as two more bullets slammed into its muscular body.

Then two more.

The beast stumbled sideways, its legs wobbly, its chest heaving, and as it collapsed, the gruesome sounds of bones snapping and muscle stretching joined Marlena’s horrified cries.

The chupacabra’s body writhed on the ground, and with agonizing slowness, Chance emerged, his breaths shallow and rattling, his skin morphing from grayish scales to pale, bruised flesh. The transformation would have been incredible if Logan didn’t know that Chance was dying.

Bullets couldn’t kill the purebred chupacabra, but Chance was only half …

and obviously not bulletproof.

Logan released a breath and pulled himself to his feet. He heard Marlena’s screams behind him, and Phoebe’s laughter, and he curled his hands into fists, because he knew that trying to kill that bitch would lead to both Sela and Marlena getting hurt.

He was at Chance’s side before Marlena, checking for a pulse, and heard Sela attempting to keep her friend back.

There was so much damned blood that Logan couldn’t tell where all the bullets were. He applied pressure to Chance’s abdomen in an attempt to stanch the bleeding, knowing full well it wouldn’t be enough.

They were hours away from camp. He could run with Chance, leave the women with Phoebe, but …

“Save him, Logan,” Marlena was telling him now. She’d struggled away from Sela and was rushing to Chance. Her eyes glistened as she bent down to whisper in Chance’s ear.

The usually bustling Amazon seemed so quiet now, the noise deadened by the sudden, gaping loss of life, as if the jungle were in mourning.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Chance drew a shuddering breath and opened his eyes.

“Holy Christ,” Logan muttered. Marlena continued whispering, and son of a bitch, Chance nodded as if in response to whatever she said to him.

“Thank God,” Phoebe said. “I need one of them alive.”

180

Logan stared in amazement. The blood that had been running through his fingers had slowed, turned dark as if coagulating.

If he didn’t know better, he would say that Chance was … healing. Right in front of his eyes. He was dying and healing at the same time.

He heard Sela catch her breath behind him, felt her hand on his shoulder, and he wondered what the hell on God’s green earth was happening. None of this was natural and yet … by the way Marlena looked at Chance, she didn’t care.

Just like Sela looked at him.

“Chance, can you hear me?” he asked, and Chance nodded. Logan took his hands away and stared at the hole in Chance’s gut. It was puckering, closing, right before his eyes.

“This one’s dead for real, unless that return-from-the-dead thing is something all chupacabras can do,” Phoebe called from where she was nudging the chupacabra with her boot.

Behind him, Sela shifted, called back, “You can still get a lot of information from it—probably more than you can from a live one, since you can perform a necropsy. That chupacabra will still be a big asset to Itor.”

Phoebe snorted. “Nice try.”

There was no way Itor would walk away empty-handed, not when they had a half man, half beast they could turn into some B horror movie supersoldier who miraculously healed from life-threatening bullet wounds to the chest.

Logan leaned down, told Chance, “We’re in some trouble, but I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Chance nodded, closed his eyes again.

“We’ll carry him back. Both of them,” Phoebe ordered.

Marlena launched herself at Phoebe, slamming the other woman to the ground. She was no match for the Itor agent, but the fierceness of her intent couldn’t be denied.

The women rolled, hitting trees and grunting, as fists flew. Marlena got in a nice right hook, and blood spattered from Phoebe’s nose before Phoebe pinned Marlena, a knife to her throat.

Logan glanced at Chance—the man was fighting so hard to get up that the veins in his neck and forehead bulged.

“Let her go!” Sela kicked Phoebe in the ribs, and as much as Logan enjoyed watching her kick the shit out of the woman, alarm trickled down his spine—one wrong move would get his sister killed.

Cursing, he took Sela in his arms, restraining her against his chest, even as she spat obscenities at him and Phoebe. Phoebe stood, keeping her boot on Marlena’s chest.

“She’s very pretty. Itor would have many uses for her,” Phoebe said as Marlena jerked out from under the boot. Phoebe smirked—clearly, she’d allowed Marlena to escape. She gestured to Chance. “If he can’t walk, we’ll drag him to camp.”

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Logan took a deep, calming breath. “I’ll carry him. He shouldn’t be jostled.”

Phoebe shrugged. “It’s your back.”

“You’re a font of compassion,” Logan muttered as he gathered the SEAL

up, easing him over his shoulder.

Phoebe cocked her head at the dead chupacabra and pointed at Sela and Marlena. “You two will carry the creature.”

His fury must have shown on his face, because Sela covertly held up a hand and mouthed, “It’s okay.”

No, nothing about this was okay, but he kept his cool as she and Marlena hefted the beast, and they marched, single file, out of the jungle, the way they’d come in.

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON BY THE TIME THE ACRO FOURSOME

reached the outskirts of the GWC camp after hiking the thirty or so miles from the crash-landing site.

As always, the Amazon wasn’t like Stryker remembered. When he wasn’t here, he tended to romanticize the jungle, think about the cool adventures he’d been on. When he was here, he realized that it was sort of like being in the middle of hell, except he was pretty sure hell would be more fun than this.

Not that hanging out with Akbar wasn’t an adventure. His mentor was one of the fiercest fighters Stryker had ever encountered.

They’d worked together from the start, with Akbar teaching him things about combat and patience, and Stryker would never have come this far without Akbar’s steady encouragement and rock-solid work ethic.

Our gifts are work—you’re not taking the easy way out, Akbar would say.

You need to develop every aspect of your power—harness it, rein it in, never let it control you.

It hadn’t been easy—Stryker knew it never would be—but men like Akbar made things a lot more bearable.

His parents first realized he had his gift during a typical four-year-old temper tantrum. He’d terrified the shit out of everyone, including himself, convinced that the house was falling down on him.

Which, of course, it almost did.

He was pretty much scared straight from that point forward, and although the ACRO scientists and doctors talked with him about what happened, he didn’t ever go there again—until he was seven, and that too was an accident.

It had taken a long time to gain precise control, and it didn’t always work.

Stryker always had to be especially careful here—the Amazon was already uncontrollable, wild, and he was never sure how the jungle would react to his powers. And really, taking out a chunk of the Amazon was something Dev would be royally pissed at … he was trying to take ACRO green as much as possible.

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He looked over his shoulder at Gabe, who was sitting near Annika. Akbar had forced Annika to lie down and rest and hydrate and she had grudgingly complied. She’d done a fine job of chuting down into the jungle and had handled the hike like the pro she was.