Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 14 ◆

Death smiled at the sight of the lights flipping off in the cabin. Death would have laughed, but something deep inside a frozen heart refused to allow the amusement to go quite that far.

It was a mating. There was no doubt of that. Cabal St. Laurents and Cassa Hawkins were mates. It was one more sin to add to Death’s conscience.

Death touched the shoulder that was still sensitive, even after twenty years, and still bore the bite of a mate. A mate long dead.

Snow drifted in the air; the cold formed like freezing vapor and eased along the forest floor. The mist from the gorge not far away sent frozen fog to cover the land, even now, so close to spring. So close to the anniversary of Death.

There was a job to be done, and it didn’t matter the regret now, or the fact that a mate would soon be lost once again. The past refused to die; Death had to help it along. That meant they all had to die. Everyone who had been a part of that massacre so long ago had to be taken from this world.

It didn’t matter that Cassa Hawkins hadn’t been a part of that massacre at the time. Truth was, she had been a part of her husband’s life later, and her husband had been part of that massacre. The husband would come now. He would find a way, he’d slip from his hole and come here once he learned his precious wife had mated a Breed.

Douglas Watts had been so young the night Death had been created, barely eighteen and following in his father’s evil footsteps. But still, it was an evil that refused to die. And Cassa, his precious wife, had helped him later to betray the Breeds—that put the mark of evil on her soul as well.

As far as Death was concerned, Cassa was as much a part of the Deadly Dozen as her husband had been, and she would have to die.

Luring her here had been easy. The pictures, the emails, the threat of framing the Breeds. The world would one day know that Breeds were no more than humans and humans were no more than Breeds. They all had the ability to kill, and they could all die. Proof of that had already begun.

Death hadn’t expected the mating though. That thought flitted through a mind that was torn with the decisions made that now must be followed through. Losing a mate was a horror no creature should have to endure. It was a pain unlike any other. Each breath taken without that mate was a nightmare that never eased.

Death slid slowly back from the cabin, easing along the path that the snow hadn’t yet covered but would soon. It wouldn’t do to leave proof that eyes watched and an enemy waited. The Breeds that chased Death through the silence of the night could never understand the mission that lay ahead. They couldn’t understand why their lives didn’t matter any more than those of the humans.

Cassa’s day would come. It was right around the corner, her blood marked to be spilled if her husband didn’t arrive. But first, another’s blood would soak the valley of Death. Another’s blood would still the demons rising inside Death, tearing at the mind, searing the soul.

The seventh of the Deadly Dozen. It was time for him to die.

Cabal curled around Cassa like a living blanket, keeping her close to his chest, holding her warmth inside each pore that he could press against her.

He was a man that had never relished sleeping with others. He had bedded enough women over the years, but as his brother could attest, the intimacy of sharing a bed with them was something Cabal hadn’t found much pleasure in.

Until Cassa. He had fought it at first. He’d tried not to need it, to need her. Now he would have dared Cassa to find another place to sleep, at any time, after tonight. She would spend her nights here in his arms, no matter what he had to do to achieve it.

He brushed back the long, tangled strands of her hair to stare at her sleeping profile. She slept deep, hard, her slight breathing brushing against his arm where she lay. She had slept the night away with the same deep intensity. But he couldn’t say her sleep had been dreamless. She had shifted about throughout the night, muttering to herself a time or two, a frown working between her brows.

Did she relive the horrors she had seen during her years as an investigative reporter? he wondered. She had been there the night his lab was attacked, and during his rescue. She had seen the slaughter that had taken place in the pit of death; she had seen his wounds and his rage during his rescue.

He stared across the room, fighting those memories himself now. That was a place within his soul that he tried not to revisit too often. Too many of his family had died in that pit. A dozen men and women who had given their lives to ensure that he lived, despite his protests. They had thrown themselves in front of him, blocked him, kept the blades that sliced through the metal walls from impaling him.

So much blood had filled that pit before he had managed to escape. So many lives had been lost. Because a betrayer had been harbored in the midst of the rescuers. Because Cassa’s false husband had betrayed them all.

Damn, Douglas Watts had sowed a hell of a mess. He was still living, albeit a bit miserably, but those whose lives he had touched carried the bitter wounds of his actions.

What would she do if she learned the bastard lived?

He stared down at her, questioning within himself the decision he had made so long ago to allow Watts to continue living.

It had been that cruel streak he harbored within him. To kill Watts would have been too easy. Too merciful. He’d wanted the man to suffer and to suffer hard.

Had Cabal instigated the demise of his own future with that decision though? Would he be the first Breed to lose a mate to a former lover, to a man who had lied even to the point that the judge who had wed them had been false?

Once this assignment was completed and the identity of the Breed killing humans was revealed, then, Cabal promised himself, he would take the time to learn more about his new mate. More than just her stubbornness and her loyalty. He would learn what made her laugh, what made her find joy. He had a feeling that Cassa hadn’t known great joy in her life.

And then perhaps he would know if he had her loyalty over that which she had once given the man she believed was her husband.

Glancing toward the window, he drew in the scent of the snow outside. The late winter air gave the forest a fresh, clean scent as well as a blanket of white to wrap the world outside within.

The fire he had laid just after Cassa went to sleep was still burning, the glowing embers and low flames lighting the bedroom through the open ceiling of the living room.

Moving from the bed, he tucked the blankets carefully around his sleeping mate before pulling on his jeans and easing from the bedroom. He could hear the Breed Raiders easing up the road to the cabin. Jonas would be in one of the vehicles, he knew. The director rarely left anything to chance, especially in a mission as delicate as this one.

A rogue Breed killing humans wasn’t something to ignore. As Cassa had stated the night before, it could show the world the true face of the Breeds, and that was something they weren’t quite ready for.

Moving to the front door, he watched as the two Raiders, the powerful ATVs the Breeds used in mountainous and desert settings, pulled into the drive.

Leaning against the door frame, he watched as Jonas moved from the first vehicle, followed by his bodyguard and driver, a human simply called Jackal. The second vehicle held the two enforcers, Lawe Justice and Rule Breaker. The names rarely failed to cause Cabal’s lips to twitch in amusement.

It wouldn’t do to let either Breed see that amusement though. They were rather proud of the names they had chosen for themselves.

As Jonas neared the house, he paused, his eyes narrowing on Cabal as his nostrils flared. Cabal knew the director was taking in the scent of the mating, as well as Cassa’s scent as it surrounded Cabal’s body. Now there would be no doubt in Jonas’s mind that the mating was completed.

“Hell, I thought you’d at least wait until this assignment was over,” Jonas growled.

Cabal narrowed his gaze back at him. “I’d waited long enough.”

And that was the damned truth. He’d held back because he’d sensed Cassa’s need to do so. That need was no longer there, for either of them. He should have held back for the sake of the mission, but the animal inside him didn’t give a damn about the mission. It cared about the mate, and the animal was closer to the skin than he had ever imagined.

He watched as Jonas grimaced before staring back at Lawe and Rule.

“Hey, Boss, don’t look at me,” Lawe ordered him. “I told you, I’m steering clear of that mating shit.”

“It gives us the heebie-jeebies,” Rule drawled.

Jonas grunted at that. “At least someone is still sane.” The look he gave Jackal was mocking.

The other man stared back at him stoically, as always. Jackal didn’t talk a lot. He did his job and spoke when he had to.

“Coffee’s inside,” Cabal informed them. “I have caffeinated for the four of you.”

He’d stick to the decaf for now. He didn’t need any additional problems where the mating heat and Cassa were concerned. Caffeine tended to make the symptoms worse. If his current state of arousal was any indication, he didn’t need anything to hype them.

Jonas looked around the clearing, his jaw tense before he shook his head and moved for the porch. “Pack up. You can head back to Sanctuary with your mate,” he stated as he reached the steps.

Cabal chuckled at the thought. “Forget it, Jonas. This will finish out here, and we both know it.”

“Not with that mate of yours tracking every move you make,” Jonas said coolly. “This investigation is too serious, Cabal. We can’t risk her.”

Cabal shook his head at that. “She already knows just as much as we do. The killer sends it to her whether we want him to or not, Jonas. We can’t afford to ignore that.”

He hated it. There was nothing he hated more than the fact that a killer was drawing his mate into these murders, but he couldn’t stop it. In the early hours of the night he’d admitted that he couldn’t keep her out of this. As long as there was a Breed going rogue, as long as he was drawing Cassa into this, then there was no way to keep her out of it.

“Hell, just what we need, a damned journalist involved in my business,” Jonas cursed.

“Come on in, Jonas,” Cabal sighed. “We don’t have a lot of time before she wakes up.”

Not much time at all. The mating heat was a fever that couldn’t be ignored for long, and Cabal knew it. Already the need to touch his mate, to taste her, to possess her was rising again within him.

The hormonal treatments she had been taking over the past years had helped those first few days. Adjustments were always required as time went on though, and Cassa hadn’t had an adjustment to counter the rise in hormones that mating heat was causing.

It wasn’t as hard on the male as it was on the female mate. At least Cassa had had the foresight to start the hormonal treatments ahead of time. That would ease it for her, delay conception, sometimes, and lighten the stress on the body from the need for sex.

It didn’t take away the need. There was no way to eliminate it, or to allow for the separation of mates for long periods of time. Jonas was stuck with Cassa in Cabal’s life for the moment.

“We don’t need this, Cabal,” Jonas growled as they entered the cabin and headed for the kitchen. “This situation is too damned delicate. We have to find this Breed, and when we do, we can’t risk a journalist being aware of the fact that I have no damned intentions of turning him over to Breed Law.”

Yeah, that was pretty much what Cabal had suspected. The rogue Breed had managed what no one else had. He killed without leaving a scent or a trace of his identity. There was no way to track him, no way to identify him.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to hide the fact that the bad guy doesn’t die in the end,” Cabal muttered. He knew Jonas. The man had the ability to make things work out in his favor.

“You’re going to completely fuck this assignment up, Cabal,”

Jonas bit out as Cabal moved to the coffeepot. “He’s going to kill again, and soon. We both know he will. Do you really want your mate in the middle of that?”

Hell no he didn’t, but he knew there was no way to get her out of it now. Not without making her hate him, making her run. He wasn’t about to force her again, he’d already tried that once. It hadn’t worked then, it wasn’t going to work now.

Cabal prepared the coffee before saying anything more. He didn’t have an argument for Jonas and he knew it. There was no damned way to explain to the other man that Cassa would hate them all if she was pulled out of this.

He’d wrestled with it most of the night. He’d come up with a thousand different ways to pull her out, and he knew that not a damned one of them was going to work.

“Cabal has a point, Boss.” Lawe spoke up as Cabal poured the coffee. “The killer contacts her when he doesn’t contact us. We could use that.”

“You don’t use my mate.” Cabal turned back to him with a snarl.

Jonas’s bark of laughter echoed through the room as Cabal jerked around to meet the other man’s mocking gaze.

“Hell, Cabal, it was no more than you were suggesting yourself,” Jonas informed him angrily. “Get off your mating high horse and settle the fuck down. If we’re going to figure out how to handle this situation from here on out, then I need your head clear, not filled with the need to fight or fuck.”

That was Jonas, blunt to the bitter end.

Pushing his fingers roughly through his hair, Cabal paced to the other side of the room as Jonas moved to the coffeepot. Cocking his head, he listened for any signs of movement from the bedroom and prayed Cassa would sleep just a while longer.

“Have you found anything out?” Jonas finally asked.

Cabal shook his head at the question. “Not enough. David Banks had a meeting in Charleston the day before he disappeared. He met with Brandenmore and Engalls, but we already knew that. The afternoon he disappeared he was supposed to meet with a reporter here in town, Myron James. He never showed up for that meeting.”

Jonas rubbed at his jaw thoughtfully. “We weren’t aware of that before.”

“Sheriff Lacey mentioned that Banks asked her for Myron’s phone number. When I questioned Myron about it, he admitted Banks called and requested a meeting. Said he had some information Myron might be interested in.”

“Any idea what the information was?”

Cabal shook his head. “He didn’t tell Myron, or Myron wasn’t telling me. I couldn’t sense any deceit though. There are secrets in this town, Jonas, plenty of them, but Banks didn’t seem to be privy to many of them.”

“He was a former mayor,” Lawe pointed out. “Mayors get all the gossip.”

“Not all of it,” Cabal said. “The movement that began here about thirty years ago to hide escaped Breeds wasn’t well known. There was only a small group of men and women involved in that. Banks wasn’t one of them.”

“We know all that,” Jonas pointed out.

“What we didn’t know was that Banks was originally part of that group,” Cabal told him. “Myron remembered his father mentioning that Banks was part of the group until they began to suspect that he had betrayed one of the Breeds early on.”

“There weren’t a lot that came through here,” Rule stated. “A few dozen.”

“But compared to those created, that’s a high number,” Cabal pointed out. “A few dozen escaped Breeds during that time would have been a problem for the Council.”

“And the Council would have made it a problem for the Deadly Dozen,” Lawe stated. “They were the trackers when everyone else failed.”

“Because they had connections where they were needed to track escaped Breeds,” Cabal agreed. “Banks was one of the Dozen, there’s no doubt of that. But why wait this long to strike back at the group? And how many of them were located in this area?”

“Most of the escaped Breeds were hiding in this area,” Jonas stated.

That was true. For some reason, the West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky mountains had been the preferred haven for Breeds escaping across the world.

One here, a few there—somehow most of them had made it to the States, and into the few groups within a three-state radius willing to hide them. Few of the groups knew about one another. Many of the Breeds were unaware of other individual groups. It was a matter of safety. If others didn’t know where they were located, or the Breeds in each group, then they couldn’t be betrayed under torture.

“What I’d like to know is how Brandenmore and Engalls managed to capture Breeds in this area and experiment on them without the Council or the groups aiding the Breeds knowing about it,” Lawe growled. “You’d think someone would have put a stop to it long ago.”

“The Deadly Dozen worked not just for the Council, but also for Brandenmore and Engalls,” Jonas pointed out. “They bought captured Breeds off the Dozen. When they returned to the Council with a dead Breed, they were paid again. It didn’t matter how they died, all they needed was their heads. Brandenmore and Engalls didn’t mind in the least removing a head.”

It was sickening. The horrors the Breeds had faced in their attempts to be free had sometimes been as harsh as the horrors they had faced within the labs.

“What I’d like to know is how the hell the killer is creating this carnage without leaving so much as a scent of himself on the victim. He rips their throats out with his teeth. There should be DNA, something.”

There should be, but there wasn’t, not so much as a trace.

“We were trained not to leave anything to identify ourselves,” Jonas stated. “That means scent, saliva, whatever. There are ways to hide it.”

“But there was only a very small group of Breeds with that advanced training,” Rule pointed out. “It wasn’t general knowledge.”

“Coyotes weren’t trained in the more advanced covert areas,” Jonas mused. “Jaguars were, Lions were.”

“Wolves were also left out of that training for the most part,” Cabal stated as he remembered the lists of training areas and the Breeds considered the strongest in each of them. “Jaguars and Lions were considered their best killers.”

“Yeah, we rock.” Lawe snorted at that statement.

“At least we were considered good at something,” Rule stated mockingly. “It kept us alive.”

“Six deaths and not a single clue, none of us were that good,” Jonas said coldly. “Even I’m not that good. Scent is something you can’t hide. You can mask it, but there’s not even a sign of masking. It’s as though a ghost is attacking and killing these men. And, gentlemen, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Did any of them? Hell, ghosts, fairies, happily ever afters—they were all lumped into the same category. Fairy tales.

“So where does that leave us?” Lawe asked. “Six dead men and no clue to the killer. You know he’s going to strike again, and soon. Banks and H. R. Alonzo were just the beginning. He’s not sticking to the no-names anymore. He’s going after the big guns.”

They hadn’t even been aware that Alonzo was part of the Deadly Dozen. Only after his death had they found proof that he had been a part of the hunting group.

“High-profile names,” Jonas growled. “Just what the hell we need.”

“And a reporter on our ass,” Lawe grunted as he glanced at Cabal with a mocking grin. “We’re going to have fun hiding this one.”

“You won’t hide much from that woman,” Jonas informed them all.

Cabal felt a burst of pride at the disgust in Jonas’s voice. Cassa was known for her ability to ferret out information despite Jonas’s wishes otherwise. She wrote the stories he hated and published them whether he liked it or not. Not that she ever published anything damning, but she didn’t mind a bit to tell the truth about what she did publish.

For a long time they had been able to keep her from learning anything that could hurt them. Those days were over. She already had information that could destroy the Breed community, but she had held back.

“So what are we going to do?” Lawe asked. “Let her in, or what?”

“Or what,” Jonas snapped. “Yeah, let’s let her in. Let’s just tell her how we’ve been protecting a rogue Breed and allowing him to kill our enemies for us rather than sending out teams to protect those we suspect of dying next.”

Cabal almost grinned at the thought of that.

“Do we even know who might be next?” he asked the director. He had no doubt that Jonas had a clue somewhere. The man usually did.

“Not yet,” Jonas snapped. “That’s not the point. Hell, if I did know, I’d still stand aside and let him finish it. He’s better at it than I am.”

“Sooner or later someone is going to accuse the Breeds of these murders,” Cabal warned him. “The Dozen know they’re being hunted now. One of them will start squealing in fear sooner or later.”

Jonas’s smile was tight and hard. “That’s what I’m waiting on. We get one of them, then we get them all.”

Cabal had already figured that plan out. Jonas ran from murder scene to murder scene cleaning up the mess. He searched for clues; he was looking for the killer, but even more, he was waiting on one of the members of the hunted group to raise his ugly little head.

“How much longer do you think it will take?” Cabal questioned the other man.

Jonas shrugged. “Alonzo is the most high-profile of the six dead. We’ll let him remain missing. Tanner has a handle on public relations, and we’ve managed to get a few rumors started that the Council itself was fed up with him, but his buddies will know differently. I’m hoping his death will force one of them out.”

“Six left to go.” Lawe shook his head. “Do you think they’re all still alive?”

“That kind of evil rarely dies young,” Jonas stated as he poured himself another cup of coffee and paced to the window of the kitchen.

Cabal watched as the director frowned out the window, staring into the snow-laden dawn.

“Evil rarely dies young, period,” he finally said as he turned back to them. “And what we’re dealing with here is a Breed that’s trying to change that. I want him caught, but I’ll be damned if I’ll force a human’s justice on him.”

“Murder is murder, Jonas,” Cabal reminded him. It was something Jonas had preached at them often enough when it came to a Breed’s death.

“There’s a difference between murder and survival,” Jonas snapped back at him. “We’ve managed to cover up these deaths to this point, and I’d like to keep it that way.” His eerie silver eyes flickered in anger. “And need I remind you the hell these men visited on Breeds in the past? They didn’t just capture a few and return them to the labs. They sold them for research. Research that if our information is correct was more horrendous than anything the Council did. They deserved their deaths.”

Cabal couldn’t argue that point. The information they were slowly amassing against Brandenmore and Engalls was enough to give even a Breed more nightmares. If they could manage to acquire proof, or a single witness to those horrors whom they could force to talk, then the two men that headed one of America’s largest pharmaceutical and research facilities would be subject to Breed Law. And Cabal had no doubt in his mind that Jonas would push for the limits of punishment where the two men were involved.

“Now figure out how to catch our Breed,” Jonas ordered him. “And while you’re at it, see if you can’t figure out why the hell the bastard doesn’t have a scent.”

“Possibly because he’s hiding it.”

They all turned to the door. Weapons cleared their holsters and aimed at the nosy little reporter poised at the entrance to the room, as Cabal jumped in front of her, his heart racing in horror at the threat those weapons posed.

She didn’t flinch; she didn’t back away. Her long hair lay in tangled waves against the material of one of his shirts as her bare toes peeked out of the hem of her jeans.

She looked like a little girl playing grown-up games. Games that could get her killed.

As he shielded her body, several things registered at once. She had managed to slip up on them, something that should have been impossible. Unless she had no scent. His nostrils flared as he tried to draw in the essence of her, just as he knew the others were doing.

There was nothing there. No mating scent, no arousal, no smell of his lust on her body. It was as though Cassa were a ghost, with no substance, with no scent.

He turned, gripped her arms and stared down at her in shock as he fought to smell the woman he had just spent the night spilling his seed into. There should be some trace of a scent. Any scent.

“What the fuck,” Lawe muttered to his side. “Jonas?”

Behind him, he felt Jonas shift, move. He knew the other Breed was doing exactly what Cabal was doing, trying to find a scent so elusive it didn’t exist.

Cabal narrowed his eyes on her, searched her face and realized the implications in a single heartbeat.

“Gentlemen, here’s your killer’s secret.” She lifted her hand and in the middle of her silken palm was a small white pill. “A scent blocker. Sent to me by the killer, reportedly created by Brandenmore Research. This is how your rogue Breed is getting by you.”