Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 2 ◆

THREE DAYS LATER GLEN FERRIS, WEST VIRGINIA HAWK’S NEST STATE PARK

It began here. In this unassuming little town. In the savagely hewn, subtly cruel mountains of West Virginia. Hell began here. A nightmare began here.

It began with one man, one woman and a vision of monsters, of creatures that could be controlled.

So long ago. A lifetime ago. A heartbeat in time, a drop of red in an ocean of blood.

The mountains rose around the peaceful little town of Glen Ferris, nestled in the mountains like a babe in a mother’s arms. It hadn’t changed much, despite the passage of time and the technology that had birthed a new species. Glen Ferris remained more or less the same. Sleepy, quiet. Quaint.

There was no sign of the vast network that had once worked to shelter and protect the Breeds that had known this area as one of safety. There was no hint on the quiet streets, or in the mountain homes, that these people had once risked their own lives, and the lives of their families, for creatures that weren’t man and yet weren’t animal. Just as there was no hint of the evil that had once visited and stayed much too long.

It had begun here. Despite the attempts of the citizens of these mountains to save those Breeds that had been brought to them, still, hell had begun here. A hell that so few had known of. A hell that had birthed a darkness that wouldn’t disappear, that growled in the night, that screamed in silence.

Here. Within these mountains. Within the home of a man and woman, and with the knowledge and cooperation of those who looked on.

There was no forgiveness. There would be no mercy.

Glen Ferris had been a haven for many, and yet for a few, it had been an agony worse than anything that could have been suffered in those labs. Those Breeds who escaped, they couldn’t have known the hell that had existed on the perimeters of freedom.

And now it was time to pay for that hell. It was time for one man and one woman to know that vengeance awaited them.

They had created hell. They had created the means to their own destruction.

Horace Engalls and Phillip Brandenmore had experimented on Breeds. Breeds had been tested, dissected, experimented upon for years untold by a brother and sister, by a wife and husband.

It would be over soon. Soon, the world would know more than they could have ever imagined. Just as they would know those who had helped.

“The past never dies.” It was a whisper caught by the night breeze. “It lives on in my memory. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Those who had died in the past months were no more than peons to the powerful family. Two-bit ass kissers who had carried out orders and begged for favors. A doctor, a police officer, a lawyer, a former sheriff and a former mayor. They had participated. They had helped, but none had done so much to collaborate in that hell as the one that would die this night.

H. R. Alonzo. So few knew who he was, what he was. The great-grandson of the man who had donated his sperm to create the first Breed. A man who should have aided, who should have protected those his great-grandfather had fought to protect.

Vanderale had seen to his son’s rescue, his freedom and his safety. So long ago. More than a century had passed since the escape of the first Leo, aided by his father, a high-ranking member of the Genetics Council. Alonzo should have continued that aid. He should have donated his fortune to protecting rather than destroying. He should have never reached out to destroy the Breeds. He should have never searched for what was never meant to be his.

Drawing Alonzo back here had been so very easy. Laying the groundwork for what was to come had been a stroke of genius. Engalls and Brandenmore had begun their own downfall with their experiments into the phenomenon the Breeds were experiencing known as mating heat. They alone had believed they could duplicate the antiaging that those mated Breeds were experiencing. They hadn’t found the fountain of youth they searched for, but they had found something else. A drug that would deceive those Breed senses, that for a time hid the scent of man from the senses of the animal.

But the secrets they sought still eluded them.

They had failed. The information they had nearly killed to obtain had been denied them. But it was the opening needed. It was the first crack in an impenetrable shield that Brandenmore and Engalls had kept around themselves. It was a shield that would be further damaged by the death of one man.

H. R. Alonzo.

The Reverend Alonzo.

He waddled along the forested path now, a flashlight in his fat little hand, his face sweating, glistening beneath the moonlight. He waddled like a duck, tromped through the forest like a fat little lamb to the slaughter.

How very apt.

“Insane is what this is,” he muttered, the sound of his voice carrying clearly through the night. “Son of a bitch, ordering me to a meeting like this,” he continued to mumble aloud. “As though it would matter if we met at the house.”

The house. It wasn’t a house. It was hell. It was a place of pain, of blood and of death. It was where it had begun. And now the ending was within sight.

The night was a whisper of cool spring air. The trees swayed with the breeze, a ripple of water could be heard as it played along the stones and boulders of a centuries-old stream. The scent of fresh, clean water filled the air, almost washing away the smell of sweating human flesh and an evil, rotting mind.

Alonzo. His vast fortune supported the efforts of the Genetics Council. His rhetoric argued against the humanity of the Breeds, argued for their imprisonment, their death.

“Come alone,” Alonzo continued to snarl as he made his way to the small clearing he had been directed to. “As though it matters now.”

Had it mattered then, so many years ago? Had it really mattered where Alonzo had met his cohorts? They had thought it had. As though it had been some secret little game. Meeting here, in this clearing, where the blood of Breeds had soaked the ground more than once. Where bodies were still buried. Where the screams of Breed children could still be heard. Where one agonized scream still echoed through the mountains.

Alonzo huffed and puffed, his light wavering as he reached the clearing and slowed to a stop.

Right there. How many times had he stood right there, beneath the breadth of a huge oak, and stared into the clearing with a smirk? Chuckled gleefully at the screams that echoed around him. Participated in the torture and in the pain of creatures that hungered only for freedom.

“So where the hell are you?” Alonzo called out. “I don’t have time for games tonight, Phillip.”

“Phillip doesn’t play games here anymore.”

Alonzo’s obese, foul body swung around. His florid features reflected first surprise, then shock.

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?”

There was a hint of fear now. That provided the needed edge of satisfaction.

“I’m the past, Reverend,” he was informed softly as the satisfaction and pleasure grew. It always did, when the prey finally knew fear itself. They had once played here, and now they could play again.

Playtime. A smile came and went. What was play? What Breed could answer that question or understand that ideal?

Alonzo’s beady little eyes narrowed. “How do you know about this place? Phillip would never have told you.”

“Phillip has actually told me many things.” She shrugged negligently. “Tell me, Reverend, do you still enjoy playing with death?”

Oh yes, death was returning to these mountains. Blood would stain the ground here once again, and it would begin with HR.

The fat little bastard’s face paled. “Phillip wouldn’t dare have me killed. You better check your orders, because he knows what will happen if anything happens to me.”

Ah yes, the ever present threat.

“Yes, Phillip knows well what will happen.” A breath of a promise, of death, filled the air.

There was no secret there, not because Phillip or his insane little wife had told it, simply because the Deadly Dozen, as they had once called themselves, always protected their own asses against one another. That fact had been learned the first time the blood of a member had been shed. The others should be worried by now. HR should have been concerned enough to use caution in coming here.

Tonight, death would lose another member of its evil little group.

Alonzo could sense it, it was there in the waves of fear beginning to fill the air. His heartbeat echoed in the night, the stench of his cowardice wrapped around the senses.

“You’re not going to kill me.” The bastard tried to bluff. He should know better.

Canines flashed in the night. Alonzo’s gaze locked on the sight as his heavy jowls trembled.

“You were here. You smiled.” Agony twisted and bloomed in colors of red. “You laughed as they died. I’ll laugh now as you die.”

Forcing back the pain didn’t always work. It was always there, always spearing the soul like a poison-tipped sword as the voice weakened and became hoarse.

Alonzo swallowed; a whimper nearly left his throat.

“You’ll never get away with it.” Terror was thick in the mountains once more, but this time, it wasn’t a Breed’s terror. It was just a human’s. A human of no worth.

“Perhaps getting away with it isn’t my aim.”

“You’ll destroy the Breeds,” Alonzo charged furiously as he began to back away. “My death won’t go unnoticed.”

“They don’t even know who I am, why should I care about them?” It was a hiss of fury, of hatred. “Let them deal with it however they will. You are no longer an equation in their battle.”

He stumbled, then righted himself. His eyes widened. His face went white.

“You don’t want to do this.”

“I did the others. The doctor, the lawyer, the sheriff and the mayor, the police officer.” The words were a sigh of pleasure, almost of ecstasy. “It was good, Alonzo. I tasted their fear, I feasted on their blood. And it was good.”

He froze. Like a deer caught in the brilliant rays of a headlight.

“You,” he breathed. “You’re the one that killed them.”

A chuckle filled the night. The last Breed they could have suspected. It was perfect. It was just perfect revenge. Just a study in exacting revenge.

“It was I.” It was a soul stained with blood, with death, with the need for more. “And now it’s your turn.”

His head shook. His body shook. What was the saying? Like a bowlful of Jell-O? It wiggled and trembled and swayed with terror.

“You can’t do this,” Alonzo wheezed.

Canines flashed again. Sharp, extended. Prepared.

“Good-bye, you little motherfucker. May you burn in hell.”

He turned to run, but there was really no place to run. His screams tore through the night, but there was no one there to care. The gurgle of death, the spurt of blood, the sound of flesh ripping open was a symphony that filled the soul, as the taste of tainted blood touched the tongue.

It had begun here. In these mountains. The dream of freedom had turned to horror. Pain and death and the knowledge that there was no true life, no true freedom. There was this though. The taste of blood. The feel of a diseased soul leaving the body, and the sound of a scream of triumph as life slowly gave its last gasping attempt to survive before succumbing to death.

Alonzo had once sought a Breed known for her killing abilities. She had been called Death. But she hadn’t been Death. She had been living, breathing. She had a soul, a mate and a life. That wasn’t true death. Death had no soul. It had no mate. It had no life. True death had no dreams and no heart.

Crouched over Alonzo’s lifeless body, tasting his blood, feeling it like warm silk flowing through fingers that knew only cold, knew only pain. This was Death.

And Death screamed in triumph rather than pain. Death howled in pleasure rather than horror.

Or was it all the same?

NEW YORK CITY

The email arrived after midnight. Cassa Hawkins stared at the pictures in the file and tried once again, without hope, to use the tracking program she’d installed to track the origin of the email.

User location unknown. The answer was always the same, but this file, just like the others that had come in the past few weeks, held blood and horror. They were emails she knew the Bureau of Breed Affairs was tracking as well, straight from her damned computer. Her tech person still couldn’t figure out exactly how they were doing it, but she knew they were. Jonas Wyatt, the Bureau’s director, had been quite clear when he had called the day before and warned her to stay out of Breed business.

Cassa stared at the photos. The violence in them sickened her, causing her to swallow tightly to hold back the bile that would have risen in her throat.

She should call Cabal, or at the very least Jonas, she thought. She should do something more than the attempts she had been making to track the emails and the locations of the deaths.

Unlike the others, this email contained at least the location of the murder. The killer had even been nice enough—she snorted at the idea—to send a detailed map of where the body could be found, as well as a letter.

Good evening to you, Ms. Hawkins. You will find enclosed the proof of H. R. Alonzo’s execution, completed on this day, just after midnight.

Glen Ferris, West Virginia. It began here, Ms. Hawkins, and with God’s help, it will end here. You should know, the past never dies. As long as there is a memory, there is life. I hold the memories. I hold life. And I’ll take yet more.

I’ve tasted their blood and now I hunger. I’ve warmed myself with their fear, and I’ve laughed in joy at their deaths. And there will be more.

Six down.

Six to go.

Tell the world. There is no honor, there is no hope. I am what was created.

Tell the world. Grief ripped through her chest at the thought. If she actually went on the air with a story showing a Breed kill, the consequences would be horrendous. The world, unstable as it was in its opinion of Breeds, would turn against the creations instantly.

Their safety depended on the world believing in the justice and the honor that Breed Law demanded. It depended on the goodwill of citizens who were as fickle in their loyalties as they were in their trust.

She pushed her fingers through her hair and swallowed back a curse before saving the file and encrypting it on her laptop. She couldn’t risk its discovery, not yet, not until she figured out exactly what was going on in Glen Ferris.

The story involved more than just the deaths Jonas and Cabal had spoken of the night before. It involved much more than the Reverend H. R. Alonzo’s execution at the hands of the very creatures he preached as abominations and the scourge of God. This involved the preservation of an entire race of individuals fighting for survival.

HR was executed just after midnight. She looked at the time on the laptop. It was just after one in the morning. One hour.

She covered her face with her hands and blew out a hard breath. She couldn’t report this, not yet. But she couldn’t let it go either. She needed to know more.

Jumping to her feet, Cassa jerked the silken robe from her shoulders and tossed it to the bed. She threw open the doors to her closet and pulled out jeans and a sweatshirt, before striding to her dresser for socks and underclothes.

Glen Ferris, West Virginia, was perhaps a nine- to ten-hour drive. She could make it. She’d be dog tired by the time she got there, but she could do it.

Twelve hours, she guessed, before she could even get started finding the location. And if the body were still there? The ramifications of what she was preparing to do began to flash through her mind.

She dressed quickly, threw several outfits into a bag and grabbed an additional, already packed overnight bag from her closet. She shoved hiking boots into her bag as well as a pair of flat dressier shoes. She laced sneakers onto her feet, then grabbed her purse and cell phone.

She was hitting speed dial as she packed her laptop.

“Marv, it’s Cassa, wake the hell up,” she snapped into her news director’s answering machine. “I don’t have all night here.”

She tapped her foot, waited until the machine beeped, then hung up and called back.

“What the bloody fuck do you want, Hawkins?” Marv Rhi nard snarled with sleepy ill humor as he answered the phone.

“I’m out on a story,” she told him as she zipped up the laptop bag, pulled the strap over her shoulder and headed for the door. “Have Shelley cover me. I’ll call you and let you know what’s going on as soon as I know.”

“What’s the story?” Marv was definitely awake now.

Cassa didn’t fly off on wild-goose chases, and he knew it. If she was dumping her airtime on her stand-in, then there was a reason, and usually a damned good reason.

“I’m not sure enough of the details yet, Marv,” she informed him as she locked the door and moved down the hall to the elevator. “I’m heading to Glen Ferris, West Virginia, now. I’ll call you once I’m there.”

“It’s those damned Breeds.” Frustration filled Marv’s voice now. “Do you know those bastards are causing hell’s own mess from one end of the planet to another? There was a report last week that Wyatt threw some scientist into a volcano. I needed you in Hawaii to check that out.”

“I’d love the vacation, Boss, but no go. The volcano thing is old news and lies at that.” Or so she hoped, though she doubted it. Jonas Wyatt would definitely go for the volcano if it was feasible. “This is bigger, if it pans out. I’ll let you know more as soon as I can.”

Marv cursed again. “Fuck. I hate it when you do this. The viewers don’t like Shelley nearly as well.”

“Well, they’ll have to suck it up or watch the competition. Tell Shelley to flash cleavage and maybe a little thigh while she’s reporting. Ratings will skyrocket.”

Marv was likely foaming at the mouth, if the virulent string of curses she heard was any indication.

“Look, I have to go,” she stated imperatively as the elevator doors opened in the lobby. “Shelley will do great. The stories are waiting on her, or you can rerun some of the older stories. Try the one about that Breed Mathias and the kid he and his wife adopted. That was an interesting piece.”

The former Breed assassin and his wife had rescued an abandoned baby several months before and were now trying to adopt it.

“God, you’re pissing me off,” Marv snapped. “Fine, I’ll go through the old footage and see what we can set Shelley up with. But this better be damned good, Cass. I better see blood at the very least.”

Her stomach was still roiling at the thought of the blood she had seen. She didn’t think Marv really wanted to be a part of the massacre of the Breeds that would occur if that were shown.

“I’ll see what kind of gore I can get you, Marv,” she promised as she entered the garage and headed for her car. “I’ll call soon. I promise.”

“Better be damned soon or—” Cassa cut off the or else that usually followed. Marv was damned good with the threats and even better at yelling for hours on end if anyone was willing to listen to him.

She tossed her bags into the trunk of her car before sliding into the driver’s seat and hitting the ignition. A ten-hour drive was going to suck. Too bad the news station didn’t have their own plane; she could have used the lift.

Tossing the phone to the seat beside her, she roared from the parking garage and headed out of the city. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as she fought to keep from speeding. She needed to be there now. She needed to find out what the hell was going on and why a Breed was now attempting to turn world opinion against them.

It didn’t make sense. The Breeds could be merciless, she knew it, she had seen it firsthand. But never without reason. And though H. R. Alonzo no doubt deserved a bloody death, if even half of the charges the Breeds laid against him were true, still, there were courts and trials for a reason.

Breed Law protected the Breeds against men like Alonzo. It was the reason the law had been written and was now the framework for justice at any time that Breeds were involved.

The Bureau of Breed Affairs had been established to ensure that Breeds, as well as non-Breeds, followed those mandates, and that the creations man had made were preserved in both safety and freedom.

For the most part, the world supported them, but if those pictures were flashed across the news screen without a damned good story in Breed favor to back them, then world sentiment would turn against them fast.

She glanced at the cell phone as she pulled to a stop at a traffic light and debated calling Sanctuary. She could talk to Merinus and Callan; the pride leaders of the Felines would send a team to investigate, and they would assuredly give her the story. If Jonas Wyatt and Cabal didn’t poke their busy little noses into it, just as she knew they would.

The deaths documented in the files she had received were the very ones Jonas and Cabal had been discussing the night before at Haven. Except, H. R. Alonzo hadn’t been on the list.

Alonzo had been a thorn in the Breeds’ sides since they first revealed themselves. According to Cassa’s research, he was also most likely a part of the shadowy organization known as the Genetics Council, though she doubted he was part of the inner twelve.

It was a story she was working on. Alonzo and several others who spoke out often against the Breeds were rumored to have ties to what was left of the Council. Most of the organization had been disbanded once the members themselves were revealed and convicted of having conspired to create, torture and murder the creations known as the Breeds.

Now Alonzo was dead. Who else would die?

Cassa breathed out roughly as she left the city, hit the interstate and sat back for the drive ahead. If she got there fast enough and managed to locate the area where Alonzo’s body was now lying, then she might have a chance to find a few of the answers she needed.

Eleven years as a television investigative reporter had given her the experience; a knowledge of the Breeds was an additional bonus. Now she could only hope that she was the only one who had received that file. If she was lucky—and she was praying she would get lucky—then she might have something to bargain with when she was forced to call Wyatt.

Her own pictures. She would need those. The file was good, but it wasn’t good enough. Pictures could be faked. Technology was amazing and still growing at a rapid pace. There was no way to prove those photos were, in fact, pictures of men who had died at the hands of a Breed.

Only Banks’s body hadn’t yet been found. Alonzo’s was a new addition, but she had no doubt that Jonas would ensure that his murder was covered up. Jonas was damned good like that. So good, a shiver of fear snaked up her back.

But Jonas wasn’t the only one with a knack for doing whatever was needed to protect his people. Cabal was also slowly gaining that reputation. The playboy of the Breed society. The whore-mongering tomcat. He was also whispered to be one of the Bureau’s best silent assassins.

He wasn’t an enforcer. He wasn’t even listed with the Breed registry. For a reason, she guessed. Breeds listed with the registry had to turn in blood and DNA samples. They couldn’t turn in fingerprints because those had been burned away in the labs.

She knew what those labs were, the hell the Breeds had endured. If one was now taking vengeance, then God help her, she couldn’t blame him. But she knew that the rest of the world would do more than blame the Breed, they would turn on all of them.

There was only one way to ensure that didn’t happen. She needed to know why. A face had to be put to the killer, a history. That was her job.

Now she just prayed that Jonas, and most especially Cabal, wouldn’t catch her before she managed to do it. If they did, then she didn’t have a chance in hell.