Bayon/Jean-Baptiste (Bayou Heat) (11 page)

Keira smiled, despite the fact that she was being clenched hard enough to crush the breath from her lungs.

She was surrounded in the heat and scent of family, her cat purring in bone-deep satisfaction.

“Are you real?” Parish asked, his voice thick with emotion.

She rested her head on the solid width of his chest. “I’m real.”

“I’ve dreamed of this moment a thousand times only to wake and find that you were still gone. Goddamn, I’ve been so alone.”

“Not so alone anymore.” She lifted her head with a smile. “I hear you’ve mated.”

His bleak features abruptly softened with blatant adoration. Keira would never have believed it of her brother if she hadn’t seen it for herself.

“My Julia. She completes me.”

“I get that,” Keira agreed, glancing toward Bayon, who had stepped away to give them privacy for their reunion. A low growl had her sharply turning back toward her brother. “Don’t start,” she warned, her eyes narrowed.

Parish gave a bark of laughter as she slipped back into her role as older sister, unwilling to take shit from her brother even if he did have several inches and a hundred pounds on her.

“Keira,” he growled. “I’ve missed you.”

“Brother,” she breathed before forcing herself out of his arms and glancing toward Bayon.

Later they would have a proper reunion. Now they had to concentrate on protecting their people.

Moving to her side, Bayon regarded Parish with a grim expression. “Do you have the traitors?”

Parish jerked his head toward the building. “Inside.”

“Are they still alive?” Keira demanded.

A humorless smile stretched Parish’s lips, the promise of death in his eyes. “For now.”

“Good.” Keira headed for the back steps of the building, her murderous fury heating the air. “I want some answers.”

“Keira.”

She ignored her brother, taking the steps two at a time.

“You’re wasting your breath,” Bayon murmured before he was jogging to catch up with her.

A portion of her tension eased as he lightly placed a hand at her lower back. Just having Bayon near returned the courage she’d feared had been stripped from her twenty-five years ago. A steel door opened and a male Pantera offered her a slow nod of respect before escorting them into a secret chamber hidden behind the shelves of the storage room.

None of the humans drinking in the front bar had any idea there were meeting rooms, a high-tech surveillance room, and two large guest rooms for Pantera separated from them by a sound-proofed wall.

They found Vincent and Savoy on their knees, both stripped naked with iron shackles around their wrists and ankles.

The two Pantera were both older than Keira. Vincent was built on solid lines with brown hair and dark gold eyes while Savoy was a tiny female with reddish hair and eyes the color of spring grass.

Standing behind them, Talon held a gun toward the back of their heads, despite the prisoners’ mutual appearance of utter resignation.

No one was taking chances.

Talon, who had still been in training when Keira had been kidnapped, straightened his shoulders and snapped a salute.

“Welcome home, commander.”

“Just Keira now,” she insisted, glancing toward her brother who entered the room to hold his loaded gun at the prisoners. “I’m absolutely confident that Parish has done a brilliant job and I intend to concentrate on tracking down the son of bitches who kidnapped me.” Her attention turned toward the kneeling Pantera. “Starting with these two.”

“They’re all yours,” Talon murmured, taking a step back.

Vincent slowly lifted his head, his face gaunt and his eyes shadowed with guilt. “Please, forgive us.”

Parish made a sound of disgust, but Keira leaned forward, needing answers. “I want to know why.”

“We didn’t know—”

“Stop,” Keira snarled. “I don’t want excuses, I want answers.”

Vincent licked his lips, glancing toward his cowering mate. “Savoy was one of the first females to fail in becoming pregnant. It was…” He halted to swallow the lump in his throat. “Difficult.”

“I tried everything,” Savoy timidly offered, her once beautiful face lined with regret. “The old herbal remedies, human drugs, even artificial insemination when it became available, but nothing worked. At last I went to see a voodoo priestess in New Orleans.”

Keira narrowed her gaze. “And she told you to kidnap me?”

Savoy shook her head. “No. She promised she had a potion that could ensure my fertility, but only if we agreed to help her people.”

Bayon pulled a dagger from the sheath at his lower back, running a finger along the lethal edge.

“What people?” Bayon demanded.

Vincent curled his lips in disgust. “They were humans.”

Bayon continued to stroke his finger along the dagger’s blade. “What help did they demand?”

Sweat beaded Vincent’s face. “They wanted to study the Wildlands.”

Keira scowled. “What?”

Vincent grimaced. “They said that they were ecologists who were afraid that there was some disease that was attacking our homelands. They were certain they could help if they had access to study the places where the magic was still strong.”

Bayon snorted. “And you believed them?”

“Yes,” Savoy breathed, tears in her eyes.

Keira folded her arms over her chest, in no mood to offer sympathy. Maybe they’d been driven to desperation at their inability to conceive. Nurturers had an inbred need to care for others. But unlike Bayon’s mother, who’d devoted herself to human children who needed her love, they’d thought of no one but themselves.

She didn’t believe for a minute that they hadn’t been well aware they were putting the Wildlands at risk.

“Then why keep it a secret?” she snapped.

Vincent flinched. “They said they’d approached the elders with an offer of assistance only to be denied because of the elders’ belief that humans are inferior to Pantera.”

Bayon’s low growl vibrated through the air. “So you brought them through the borders and allowed them access to our deepest secrets and vulnerabilities?”

“We thought they wanted to help,” Savoy said.

Keira grabbed the woman’s chin, forcing Savoy to meet her gaze that burned with the memory of twenty-five years of hell.

“No,” she ground out. “You allowed your own selfish desire for a child to blind you to your betrayal.”

Tears streamed down the female’s pale face. “I’m so sorry.”

Abruptly dropping her hand, Keira straightened. Beating them to a bloody pulp wouldn’t give them the answers they needed.

Unfortunately.

“What else did you do for the bastards?” she demanded.

“Nothing. I swear,” Vincent said, clearly trying to draw her attention away from his sobbing mate. “When we didn’t conceive we were determined to break our agreement with the priestess. She sent us a message to meet with her at the cabin, but there were human males there who threatened to expose us if we didn’t keep our promise. Then—”

“Then Keira appeared and we panicked,” Savoy finished for him.

“We only meant to disable you long enough for us to escape.” Vincent held Keira’s gaze, silently pleading for her understanding. Yeah. When hell froze over. “But the humans put a metal collar around your neck and told us that they’d kill you if we didn’t continue to bring them into the Wildlands.”

Parish stepped forward, his anger a tangible force in the air. “You should have come to me.”

“We couldn’t,” Vincent insisted. “They swore that as long as we did as we were told that Keira wouldn’t be hurt. Otherwise—”

Keira made a sound of disgust. “And you just trusted their word?”

“Of course not.” Savoy licked her dry lips. “They sent us pictures of you each week. They claimed it was to prove you were still alive, but we always understood that it was a warning that you were still in their clutches and that your life depended on us fulfilling our end of the bargain.”

There was an explosion of curses from Bayon and Parish, but Keira kept her attention focused like a laser on the traitors.

“Even if you knew I was alive, you couldn’t have possibly known they weren’t torturing me.”

Vincent cleared his throat. “The collar.”

Keira scowled at him in confusion. “What about it?”

“I had a chance to study it while we were in the cabin,” he admitted in a strained voice. “It was made of an unfamiliar metal alloy, but I could detect a magically-enhanced toxin coating the inside of the collar.”

Shit. Bayon’s suspicions had been right. There was something about the collar that had been poisoning her.

“That doesn’t explain why you assumed I wasn’t being abused.”

“The toxin was potent enough to cripple you, which meant it would be lethal to a human. Even touching your skin would have made them extremely ill.”

Keira grimaced. Now she understood why they’d gone to such trouble to avoid all physical contact. Even when they took her to the bathroom, they’d kept their distance, using the electrical shocks to warn her of the dangers of trying to escape.

And, of course, they couldn’t risk removing the collar. Not when they couldn’t know for certain how swiftly her strength would return.

Not until they were ready to kill her.

She shied away from the thought that the nasty Roger might have been contemplating raping her dead body.

She shuddered. She had no forgiveness for the two traitors. Not when they’d left her at the mercy of those animals.

“They might not have raped me, or beat me with their fists, but they tortured me every day I was in that cage.”

Vincent lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry.”

Feeling her tremble, Bayon stepped close enough to wrap her in the comforting scent of his cat.

“Did you ever watch to see what they were doing?” he demanded of the two.

Vincent gave a slow shake of his head, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “They claimed they were taking samples, but I fear they were performing some dark ritual.”

“They have to be the ones causing our homelands to rot,” Parish growled, his gun pointed directly between Vincent’s eyes. At that short distance it would be a lethal shot. “Did you tell them of Ashe’s pregnancy?”

Savoy made a low sound of distress. “No, they already knew.”

“But you told them where she would be?” the Hunter persisted.

Vincent gave a jerk of his head. “Yes.”

“Fuck.”

Keira lightly grabbed Parish’s wrist, keeping him from squeezing the trigger. They were all battling against the primal lust for revenge. For now they had to put the welfare of the Pantera ahead of vengeance.

She held Vincent’s wary gaze. “How many other traitors are there?”

The older Pantera frowned at the question. “None that I know of.”

Talon slapped the back of his head. “The truth.”

“That is the truth,” Vincent rasped, a spark of gold smoldering in his dull eyes. His cat might be cowed, but it wasn’t dead. “We never spoke of our bargain with any other Pantera.”

“Shit.” Bayon exchanged a frustrated glance with Keira. “There could be a dozen and we would never know.”

“There’s a way,” Savoy said in soft tones.

“Tell me,” Keira commanded.

“The priestess demanded that we be marked to prove our loyalty,” the older female admitted.

Keira lifted her brows. “What mark?”

“The soles of our feet.”

Together Keira, Bayon and Parish moved to stand beside Talon, all of them studying the outline of a raven that had been branded onto the meaty flesh of their heels.

Keira shuddered. It wasn’t the full Mark of Shakpi, but Vincent and Savoy should have suspected that it represented their ancient enemy.

Parish sent her a questioning glance, clearly asking permission to take control. She gave a discrete nod. She hadn’t just been trying to avoid confusion among the Hunters as to who was their leader when she said she was happy to let Parish remain in his position of authority.

It would take her time to fully recover from her years of being held captive by the humans. And just as importantly, she was determined to track down every bastard who’d been responsible for attacking their homeland and make them suffer.

“Talon, you need to find a way to begin searching for that mark without letting anyone know what you’re doing,” Parish commanded the younger male Pantera.

“Are you shitting me?” Talon protested. “I can’t start randomly inspecting people for a brand without making them suspicious.”

“Just do it.”

“Christ."

Talon rolled his eyes, but obediently headed toward the doors. Keira was one of the very few who’d ever been a match for Parish when he was in full commando-mode.

Vincent cautiously reached out to take his mate’s hand. “What will you do to us?”

Parish nodded a head in her direction. “Keira, it’s your choice.”