Bengal's Heart (43 page)

“But you drew me into it,” she reminded him angrily. “You sent the emails, the pills, and you drew me here. Don’t deny it.”

“I did exactly that.” Suddenly, he was before her, his hands flat on the table, the fury flickering in his eyes. “To distract your mate. That was your only job. To keep him out of my damned way. But you had to go and decide you were going to get your answers anyway. You couldn’t let well enough alone.”

“Bullshit.” She came to her feet, glaring back at him. “You knew I wouldn’t leave it alone. You knew I’d do everything in my power to get this story.”

His brow lifted. A sardonic curl of his lips attested to the truth of her accusation as he eased back from her. Manipulating bastard.

“I could fail.” He straightened, drawing to his full height as he stared back at her, the chill in his gaze once again. “If I fail and word leaks to the world of the killings that have taken place here, then I want someone with influence to know the truth.” He shook his head wearily. “It’s not my desire to destroy the Breeds in the public eye, Ms. Hawkins.”

“Why did you draw Wyatt in if you didn’t want his help?” She wasn’t finished, and she didn’t care much for his explanation. “Why did you leave it to him to clean up your mess?”

“Because I knew he would.” He shrugged easily, as though it really didn’t matter to him one way or the other how Jonas was forced to clean up after him. “And if anyone knew where Watts was being held, then Wyatt would. I knew he was alive. There have been too many rumors, too much information against the Council that’s come out, that only he would have known. I knew Wyatt had Watts, and I wanted him. There was no way to keep Wyatt out of it.”

“Breeds and their schemes,” she sighed. “You’ve made a mistake, Patrick. Your own arrogance and need for blood is going to destroy you.”

“They already have,” he said simply, solemnly. “Years ago, Ms. Hawkins. They did that years ago.”

Cabal entered the woods surrounding Sheriff Lacey’s home just as she was pulling into her driveway. Myron James pulled in behind her, his expression creased with anger as he got out of his car and slammed the door furiously.

“He said he wasn’t going to do this.” He was in the sheriff’s face within seconds, the freckles standing out on his pale face as he confronted her. “What the fuck is going on?”

“He didn’t do this.” She pushed back against his shoulders, jerking away from him and glaring back at him. “He would have told me before he did anything this fucking insane in my county.”

“I told you he was out of control,” Myron continued to argue. “Who else would have done it, Danna? There’s no one else that would have kidnapped Cassa like that. No one else is that fucking crazy.”

“Crazy” was a good description of any man that dared to touch Cabal’s mate, let alone take her from him.

“He wouldn’t have done it.” Danna shook her head furiously as she turned and stalked to the house.

Cabal eased in closer, moving in along the house, listening carefully as they entered.

“Who else could have done it, Danna?” Myron yelled, the anger thick in his voice. “You know he did it.”

“He’s not answering his sat phone. Again.” Frustration filled her voice. “Rand and Jason were on-site, they haven’t heard from him either. No one can contact him.”

There was a note of fear in Danna’s voice now.

“God! I checked the cabin. He’s not there either.” Myron paused. “The cabin was cleaned out, Danna. Everything. It’s empty as hell.”

Silence filled the house as the scent of fear and sadness seeped from the building. As though they were mourning him.

“He’s okay.” Danna was fighting to believe that. Cabal could hear it in her voice. “He has to be okay, Myron.”

Myron didn’t say anything for long moments.

“Have you called Walt?” Danna finally asked. “I couldn’t reach him earlier.”

“He wasn’t answering,” Myron stated. “And he has David. If Walt and David are missing, then the rest of the Dozen could have figured out that he’s still alive. If they have, then he’s screwed.”

Cabal snarled silently, gripped the doorknob and in one smooth motion opened the door and stepped into the sheriff’s kitchen.

He had his weapon on them even as Danna reached for hers.

“Now, we don’t want to do that, Sheriff,” he drawled as he watched both of them pale.

He knew what they saw. The stripe across his face, and the other stripes now running down his body. The markings of his genetics that only surfaced when the animal inside him rose to the fore. When a killing fury was on him. And there was a need for blood now. A need to kill.

Danna eased her hand back from her weapon as Cabal stepped forward and jerked it from its holster.

“So Banks is alive?” He stepped back. “And good ole Walt is taking care of him.” He eyed them both with a hard smile. “Where has he been hiding him?”

Danna and Myron glanced at each other, fear thick in their scents and their expressions.

“Come on now, let’s keep the bloodshed to a minimum. I’d hate to have to hurt one of you.”

Danna shook her head. “He doesn’t have your mate, Cabal. We would have known if he did. Rick was insistent that he wouldn’t strike at her. She was just here to distract you.”

“Consider me distracted.” He smiled thinly. “Now, where is Walt’s cabin? Don’t make me go looking for it. You wouldn’t like the consequences and neither would they.”

“Cabal, we weren’t involved in this.” Danna’s voice broke with fear and nerves. “This wasn’t planned.”

He lifted his lip in a curl of anger, revealing the canines at one side of his mouth. The stripes on his face darkened with his rage, only barely contained.

“Do you want to die today, Sheriff?” he asked her before he turned to Myron. “Do you want to see your daughters grow up and have children of their own? I could make certain you don’t live to see that if you prefer.”

He would make certain of it. He’d stood back and denied his mate for too many years. Out of arrogance, out of stubbornness, for whatever reason. Now that he had claimed her, he wasn’t willing to lose her. Not for any reason. Especially not a rogue Breed’s hunger for vengeance.

He turned his head, staring around the house, inhaling slowly. He could barely detect that hint of cinnamon in the sherrif’s house now. The same scent that had caught his senses before when he had been here. The same scent he had detected in the air during Cassa’s kidnapping.

“Who is Rick?” He turned back to the sheriff, the name filtering through his mind for possible Breeds that he could identify.

Danna inhaled swiftly at the name, perhaps only now realizing she had used it. She shook her head slowly, her eyes sheen ing with tears.

“Rick,” he mused, a picture flashing before his mind. A picture found on the bank of the river where Cash Winslow had died. A picture of a Breed who should have been dead.

“Patrick Wallace?” His eyes narrowed on the sudden dilation of her pupils. She wasn’t trained to lie. She was good. Damned good. But still an amateur. Easily read and easily deceived. “Where is he, since it’s obvious he’s no longer dead?”

Danna stared back at him levelly. “Patrick Wallace died twenty-two years ago.”

Cabal tilted his head and stared at her before straightening and roaring back in her face in rage. “Where is he?”

He could sense the lie. He knew a liar when he sensed one.

“Oh God.” Terror raced through her; the stench of it was nearly overwhelming.

“Get back, Danna.” Myron pushed in front of her, using his own body to shield her as Cabal advanced on them. “Look, Cabal, we don’t know shit!” he yelled back. “Whatever the hell happened to your mate, we don’t know shit about it. We don’t know where Walt has Banks, and we don’t know where Rick’s at.”

“Who is Rick?” he snarled in Myron’s face.

“Patrick Wallace,” he answered truthfully. “But in the labs he was known as Azrael.”

Cabal almost blinked back at him in surprise and in shock. Azrael had killed himself, six other Breeds and an entire lab of soldiers and scientists more than thirty years ago. He had been created in a hellhole in Libya. His Lion genetics were crossed with the genetics of a young woman rumored to be a descendant of an ancient, bloody pharaoh.

Each DNA sequencing that had gone into the creation of Azrael had been precise. Nothing had been left to chance. He was their prize. He had become their death. And it was believed he had become his own death due to feral fever.

“Azrael,” Cabal murmured. He had been a legend among the Breeds when he lived. There had been no Breed bloodier, or more merciless, than he.

Eyeing them both for long moments, he reached out first to jerk Myron’s sat phone from its belt clip, before pushing past him and taking Danna’s.

Opening the call log, he shook his head and muttered. “Amateurs.”

The numbers were clearly displayed, giving him all he needed.

Tucking the phones into the narrow pocket on his mission pants, he smiled coldly. “It’s been a nice visit, but it’s time for me to go now.”

He had no compunction about knocking them both out. It was that or kill them, and the need to kill was already rising hard and fast within him.

After making sure they were unconscious, he pulled two pressure syringes from his pack and a vial of sedative. They needed to stay out for a while. He didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with the interference they would cause.

Using the sheriff’s restraints, he secured them by the wrists and ankles and left them lying on the kitchen floor. If either of them had an ounce of intelligence, then it wouldn’t take them long to get free. But it would give him enough time to do what he had to do. They were going to nap for a while anyway.

Cabal reengaged the comm link as he left the house, and pulled the sat phones free again as he hit the secure line to Jonas’s link.

“I’m going to kill you when I find you,” Jonas promised with lethal deliberation.

“You have a bigger problem. Azrael is alive.”

There was a long silence, dark and dangerous, across the link.

“That’s not possible,” Jonas finally answered, his voice cold. “His DNA was identified at the scene.”

“You said yourself when we found Alonzo that these kills reminded you of Azrael,” Cabal reminded him. “That’s because they are his kills. I suspect the six Breeds he led are here with him as well. You need to get an accounting of your Breeds, Director. All kinds of problems are beginning to crop up here,” he finished sarcastically.

“It’s not Azrael.” Jonas denied it again. “He’s dead, Cabal. Whoever this is is just doing a damned good job of impersonating him. Do you have anything else?”

Cabal shook his head. Jonas didn’t want to admit Azrael was out there, simply because there would be no controlling that particular Breed.

“I guess giving you the sat phone number I have for our god of death would be a bad idea then,” he drawled. “I was hoping you could trace it, but I think I can handle that little chore now.”

“Don’t make me kill you painfully, Cabal,” Jonas warned him, and it wasn’t an idle threat.

There would be payment for literally going rogue on the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs. That wasn’t usually a wise move. However, in this case, it had been Cabal’s only possible move.

“Sorry, Director. Some things are more important than the bottom line.” He disconnected the link as he mulled over Jonas’s insistence that Azrael was indeed dead. The director should have learned by now that nothing was definite where Breeds were concerned.

There had been too many Breeds that were believed dead but had turned up alive in the past few years. It wouldn’t surprise Cabal in the least to learn that Azrael was indeed still alive.

Moving away from the sheriff’s house, he pulled one of the small remote sat detectors from his pack and plugged the sat phone into it. Pulling up the numbers once again, he chose the one he figured was most likely the rogue he was searching for. The number dialed the most often.

Tucking the unit back into the leather holder, he loped through the forest to the area where he’d stored his rifle and larger pack before entering the cabin. He should have the location he was searching for soon. Once he had that, he would have his mate’s kidnapper.

His muscles were tense, and rage still thundered through his blood as he fought to hold on to his much needed control. Now wasn’t the time to let the animal free, to allow the killer to hunt. The man had to keep a measure of control for the time being. Until his mate was safe. Then the animal could have his vengeance.

God help all of them if Cassa had been harmed. There would be no force on earth that could save any of them. Danna Lacey, Myron, Azrael or whoever the hell he was—it wouldn’t matter. If Cassa was harmed, then Cabal had no reason to live.

He almost paused at that thought. Living had always been the one hunger that had gotten him through the hellish existence of the labs. Nothing had mattered but survival. When most of his pride had died, when he had realized there was no way to save them, even then, survival had been paramount.