Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 21 ◆

Death watched; Death stalked. But as Death sat in the woods across from the inn and watched the shuttered windows, there was an edge of weariness that crept through the mind and through the soul.

Blood stained not just the hands, but the soul as well.

“He escaped.” Myron James sat to the side, and in his voice Death heard the same weariness, the same old bitterness. “He’s on his way here.”

Of course Watts was on his way here. It was here that it had all begun, here that the Reaper had had his greatest triumph.

Three women. Three beautiful women that had been destroyed by his evil.

“Cabal’s going to try to stand in our way,” Death informed the other man. “He’ll keep guard over the reporter, that’s going to throw a wrench in it.”

“Not if we draw her away from him.” Sheriff Danna Lacey’s voice was fraught with agony.

God, so much pain. It beat at him, tore into the center of his being and lashed at the animal he had always kept careful control of.

Drawing Cassa Hawkins away from her mate wouldn’t be that easy. The animal known as Death knew this. The man, the man understood it, regretted it.

Suddenly, there was so much regret. So much blood scenting his entire body that sometimes he wondered if there was a way to survive the fallout.

Watts would be dead soon, he would make certain of it. There was nothing left to live for except the executions to come. There was no reason to worry about a future or roads not taken. There was only this, only Death.

“She’s not to be hurt.” He hardened his voice, injected the steel needed to ensure that his orders were carried out.

“Since when do we care about her?” Danna was the only one foolish enough to question him. “She came here. She made the decision to place herself in danger.”

“Because we drew her here.” He straightened from his crouch, his eyes still on the inn.

He could sense the four men inside, plotting, maneuvering to learn who he was. He was a dead man. He was Death. He would remain the shadow they could never identify, his life depended on it.

“Are you certain the Coyotes that rescued him will keep us apprised of his location?” Myron straightened as well, his voice rough with his own memories, his own pain.

“They know the cost if they don’t.” Death shrugged. “Either way, Watts will die, even if I have to go hunting myself.”

He stared back at Myron, seeing the pain on his face and in his eyes. That pain had only grown over the years since Illandra’s death. Since his mate had died on that ill-fated mission. A mission Death had selected her for.

The guilt that weighed him down was heavy. It stacked on his shoulders until there were days he felt as though he would collapse under the strain.

God help him, it had been too long, too many years that he had lived as a shadow, waiting, watching.

“We should take her before he arrives.” Danna’s voice was thick with unshed tears, her scent was thick with a pain she never allowed free.

Death shook his head. He felt the breeze as it moved around him, feathered through his hair, and suddenly the memories were so clear, so crisp. The feel of soft hands rubbing at his scalp, the whisper of her kiss, her laughter. The knowledge that she had betrayed him.

So much betrayal. His life had begun in betrayal, and it would end with it. He had known that for far too many years. Had accepted it.

Serena had died by the hand of those she had betrayed him to, and their child was paying the cost, even now he feared. The child they had cut from her body.

Pain fueled rage. It bit inside his soul with sharpened fangs and tore at his guts with rapier claws. Damn her to hell. She had thought she would be safe, that the bastards that searched for them would keep their word to her. She had never paid attention to the blood they had spilled or the proof of those that had already been betrayed.

Where was the child? Only Watts knew the answer to that. He had taken the baby with him. The Council had never known of the child that disappeared that night. But Watts did. Death demanded its due. The child was all he had left to live for—the child, and the deaths to come.

“Rick, we have to get her away from them before Watts arrives,” Danna argued. “She’s what he’s coming for.”

He shook his head. “That’s what he wants us to think. That he’s coming for her. That he’s coming to take back what belongs to him. Watts has no feelings for this woman, and he doesn’t care one way or the other who she fucks or mates. No, he’s coming back here to save his own ass, Danna, and we both know it. He’s coming here to kill me. Because he knows he’ll never be safe as long as I live.”

And now that he was free, Watts would want to ensure that freedom. The only way to ensure it would be to kill the one man he knew he would never escape.

Patrick Wallace. Death.

“Cassa walked into this with her eyes open,” Danna snapped. “She knew she would be facing a killer.”

“She doesn’t deserve to die,” Myron argued heatedly. “For God’s sake, Danna, we’ve both lost mates. Do we really want to force another to live as we have?”

“Did they care when we lost our mates?” Patrick kept his voice low, commanding. “We’re still at war, Myron, don’t let propaganda tell you any differently. We use the weapons at our disposal, and that is all Ms. Hawkins is here, a weapon against Watts. How or if she survives isn’t my concern. Finding my child and killing that bastard is my concern.”

“Will it bring them back?” Myron was the one Patrick had always known would falter at this point. He would falter, but he wouldn’t betray them. For that reason he was still alive.

“Nothing can bring them back,” Danna whispered, and they both looked to him, as though he had the power to turn back time and return the laughter to them.

“Nothing can bring them back,” he told them. “All we can do now is make them pay. With each one we kill we learn more. There’s four left to go besides Watts. I want them all dead. Every one of them.”

He would never live to see that final closure. The Breeds would stop him; Jonas Wyatt would eventually figure out who he was. The pills Danna had managed to steal from Brandenmore’s labs wouldn’t last forever.

Patrick had taken a risk in sending the pills to Cassa Hawkins. It had been a calculated risk, but it had drawn her here. She was now distracting the Bengal he was having problems with, distracting Jonas, and soon she would distract Watts. That was all he needed. Just one moment of time to strike.

“If we kidnap her before he arrives, before Jonas has a chance to throw a net around her, then we can draw Watts straight to you,” Danna argued. “If we wait, we could lose out on the goal we’ve been fighting for.”

He stared back at her, his heart heavy. How much she had lost. Not just her mate and her child, but her very soul. Sometimes he felt the vacancy within her, and knew the pain this would have caused his treasured baby brother.

How Raine had loved this woman. His first smile had been because of her laughter. His first night without nightmares had been because of her presence in his bed. His first tears of joy had been the day they had learned she carried his child.

The night Raine died, a part of Danna had died as well. The night those bastards had held her down and the Reaper had stolen her soul, and the life of her child, Danna had ceased to exist as a woman. She had emerged from that hell broken, irrevocably damaged and without the mate who could have eased her spirit.

They had buried Raine without his head, but Patrick had known they had buried Danna’s soul with him.

“Taking her before Watts arrives would be a mistake,” he finally ordered them both. “We wait until he’s here.”

“The risk is too great,” Danna bit out fiercely. “Rick, they’ll be ready for us then.”

“They’re ready for us now.” He shrugged. “They’ll be more distracted once Watts arrives and so will she. We wait.”

He moved away from them, heading up the hill, using the trees to hide his presence, knowing he would blend into the forest in a way that even another Breed couldn’t track.

He was good at hiding. He was damned good at what he did. He was even better at it than he’d been twenty-two years before. And he had been good then.

He should have followed his first instincts that night and taken that Coyote youth through those mountains alone. He shouldn’t have listened to his own mate. He should have left her safe at their farm, he should have known it was a trap.

The youth was wounded, in pain, desperate to reach the location where he knew he would be safe, where a litter mate had promised him haven.

He was also one of the Council’s prized creations. One of their most advanced engineered Breeds.

He hadn’t listened to his instincts though, and because of that, so many had died. And still suffered.

“Rick, don’t walk away from us.”

The hold that materialized on his arm drove him into action. A snarl tore from his lips, vicious and primal, before his fingers wrapped around Danna’s throat and he was pushing her into the heavy trunk of the bare oak tree behind her.

The smell of fear and submission filled the air, though it was tinged with anger and pain. She gazed back at him furiously, her eyes watering with tears, and suddenly he saw her sister. Sweet, soft Serena. The betrayed and the betrayer.

“Back off.” He pushed away from her, enforcing his calm, enforcing Death rather than the man that wanted nothing more than to lie down and give up the fight that he knew was never ending.

Rick. Patrick. Patrick Wallace. Death. He was a man without a soul, pretty much as Danna was a woman without her own.

He had hoped at one time that they could console each other, but it had never happened. There was no touch but Raine’s that she could tolerate. And for him, there was only the memory of the woman he had thought Serena was.

“You can’t just walk away,” she argued, grabbing his arm even as he tried to do just that. “We have to decide now what we’re going to do.”

“We aren’t going to do anything,” he snarled back at her. “I will kill Watts, just as I killed the others. That simple.”

“Not this time,” she cried out. “I have the right to be there. Myron and I both have the right.”

They had the right, but he had the authority.

“You forget one thing, little cat,” he bit out coldly. “I give the orders here. Not you, not Myron. I’ll take care of Watts.”

Neither Danna nor Myron had any business being any further part of this. Their hands weren’t stained with blood yet; he wouldn’t have them stained with Watts’s blood. That was his responsibility, just as it had been twenty-two years before. He had failed then, he wouldn’t fail now.

“I have the right.” She glared back at him, her eyes stone hard. Eyes like Serena’s, the same color, nearly the same face. But she wasn’t Serena. She wasn’t a betrayer. She was the one that had loved, that had lost and that had suffered through the years after that loss.

“Little cat.” He sighed the endearment. Her mate was pure Lion. Raine had been as wild as the wind and just as impulsive. “Let me take care of this.”

“Like you took care of that damned Coyote,” she suddenly sneered. “You just had to save him, didn’t you, Rick? Just had to help him. You knew the whole fucking pride would follow you, and you just had to do it.”

He shook his head. “As I would have any Breed, Danna. You know that.”

He wouldn’t excuse it. That was his responsibility as well.

“A Coyote,” she cried. “A dirty fucking mongrel that didn’t have the right to live.”

“We all have the right to live.” He removed her fingers from his arm and stared back at where Myron watched, his gaze filled with such pain, with such regret.

Even the love of his wife Patricia hadn’t been able to dim the pain that festered inside him. That love had eroded over the years because of something Myron had been unable to help. Because of an affection he couldn’t give the woman who had given him her heart.

So much waste. And he accepted the fault for it. It lay on his soul and he had learned to live with it.

“I’ll take care of this,” he told them both then. “Then I’ll take care of the others. The Breeds might have been unwilling to kill Watts by using the truth serums on him, but I have no such fear. I promise you that.”

He would get what he needed, and he would watch the man die. Slowly. Patrick wanted to savor his death. He wanted to watch each labored breath until Douglas Watts took his last and then no more.

He lived for it. Ached for it.

Turning from them, he left them where they stood, though he wasn’t confident they would obey the order he had given to stand down. He needed Watts alive for just a little while, just long enough to get the names of the final members of the Dozen. Names that those who had died previously were unaware of. It seems they hadn’t even trusted one another. Not all of them. None of the men knew exactly who all of their hunting party was. They weren’t disguised just on hunts, but at other times they’d met as well.

They had been paranoid about their protection, but not paranoid enough. Elam March had trusted Ryan Damron. Ryan Damron had trusted Aaron Washington, and so on. Now he had only four other names to acquire. Once he acquired those names, his job would be done. His life would be done.

What was there left? He doubted his son still lived, but he had to be certain. They had killed Serena and cut their child from her while he had been with his pride escorting the Coyote through the forest.

Beautiful, lying Serena. Sweet, sweet Serena.

He still didn’t understand. He doubted he ever would. He simply lived with the consequences of her actions. And he would die with them.