[Project Nemesis] Jungle Fever (6 page)

            “
Merde
,”
he grumbled, jerking her hands away from him.  “You shoulda just said you
wanted ta see the show.”

            “I thought it was
obvious,” she said.

            He moved enough
she could look over his shoulder, but by then, she could see the cougars were
tired but not looking to retreat.

            They circled each
other, testing limits, occasionally swiping and grabbing.  Snarling viciously,
the cougars tried to make themselves seem bigger and badder than they actually
were.

            She felt herself
preen when she realized that she had three strong males protecting her.  Shaking
her head at the thought, she muttered, “What the fuck?” under breath.  But she
couldn´t help it, their presence was messing with her mind.  Most of the time
she´d spent with them, she´d felt partially sickened at the thought of them--they
were savages, but another part of her was secretly turned on by them.

            To be proud that
these three guys who had captured her and were going to use her as ransom, were
protecting her as well, was just too weird.  Now she knew that they could turn
into cats, she could understand why the men had been acting weirdly around her
all the time, they were attracted to the pheromone that she was bathed in.  All
that chest rumbling and shudders had been freaking her out!  It wasn´t very
flattering to be desired solely because she was covered in chemicals, but it
wasn´t important and it meant they were more interested in her scent rather
than her body!

            Perhaps it would
give her a better opportunity to seduce them or use her wiles to get away—if
they were helplessly attracted to her because of the pheromones, she just might
have a chance.

            The intensely
female part of her didn´t like feeling that one bit, the hunter and soldier was
relieved.

            One of the
panthers saw an opening and jumped a cougar, ripping his throat out.  The suddenness
of it surprised her.  She gasped, digging her nails into Remy’s shoulders.

            Blood spewed from
the golden cat, bathing the greenery with red as it flailed in death throws. 
Yvonne shuddered in horror, closing her eyes against the scene in front of her,
wishing she hadn’t fought so hard to see what was going on, wishing she could
plug her ears against the screams of the dying.  Her nosiness had revealed the
horror of just what she was up against, just who she was traveling with. 

            She heard Rafael
hiss at the cougar fighting him, and he must have bitten the smaller animal.  A
yowl of pain echoed through the jungle and she heard the other cat crash
through the brush back to whatever bush it had run out from.  She knew that the
cougars had not been there to make friends--they´d all been fighting to kill or
maim, maybe even take her, but it still made her feel sick when she replayed
the scene in her mind.

            She hated
violence.  That this was a necessity for their lives wasn’t lost on her.

            Taking a steadying
breath, she leaned back against the tree trunk, rested her head and tried to
delete that gory picture from her mind, but she didn´t think she´d ever be able
to manage that.

            Yvonne had always
been sensitive where animals were concerned.  Her mother had abandoned her as a
baby and she´d spent the majority of her childhood in a variety of care and
foster homes.  She´d been unhappy her entire childhood—she’d been a wild child,
but she´d had to be, just to cope.  She´d lived with so many families that she
hadn´t known whether she was coming or going.  In nearly every home she´d lived
in, she´d been beaten or mistreated.  She was lucky nothing worse had happened
to her.  She´d met a girl at an orphanage—Louise—who’d been raped by one of her
foster parent´s sons.  The boy had been arrested and she had been sent back to
an orphanage, but it had made Yvonne so angry to hear that poor girl´s tale,
especially when a couple of weeks later, she´d tried to kill herself.

            She´d only been
fifteen at the time, luckily her suicide attempt hadn´t succeeded, but it had
not only scared Yvonne, who had been thirteen at the time, it had pissed her
off to the point where her behavior had worsened.  She was caught in a vicious
circle.  By the time she reached David, she´d been fourteen years old and a complete
hellion.  David and Moira, his wife, had lived on a farm.  David had retired at
fifty-five, and Moira was a teacher.  She´d spent more time with David, since Moira
was always working, and at first she hadn´t trusted him--she´d trusted no man
since she´d heard Louise´s tale.  But slowly, David had broken down her
barriers, and they´d become firm friends.  He taught her not only how to hunt
and track, but how to care for animals too.  She´d tended the farm with him,
one Christmas they´d gifted her with a puppy, and that dog had been her best
friend until the day she´d died ten years later.

            It had damned
near broken her heart.  It had hurt her much more than her divorce ever had. She´d
always had an affinity to animals, had for a long time, and to see one being
killed, hurt her, even if it was a monster, a shape-shifter.  Worse yet, these
weren’t just animals, they were humans trapped in beastly bodies.

            What had she done
by coming here?  Would they save a special place in hell for her for what she’d
done?

            When she´d taken
this assignment, she´d tried to put out of her mind what could be happening in
the facility.  Tried to ignore the fact that they were running tests on
animals, but she´d been greedy, too eager to erase the enormous tax debt her
ex-husband had saddled her with.

            Yvonne was
ashamed of herself.  She really was.  Her greed and avarice had pushed her into
this situation--it was her own fault.  Now she’d be lucky if she could get off
the island in one piece, unharmed.  Hell, she’d settle for just getting out of
here alive.

            She could worry
about her eternal soul and penance later.

            She watched the
two men prowl around the area, sniffing here and there, tracking or searching
for more cats.  When they were satisfied that they were alone, they shifted
back into human form.  The scars on Armando mostly covered his arms and legs. 
The rest of him was golden brown, male beauty.  As if sensing her eyes on him,
he looked up and caught her gaze.  His brown eyes darkened to nearly black.

            She shuddered,
relieved when Remy moved away but felt cold all of a sudden.

            Despite her
aversion to their violence, she couldn´t help but appreciate the beauty of
their

bodies, but her distaste for
the killing and fighting must have shown on her face.  Armando stalked over to
her, grabbed her by the arm, and pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger.
 “You think me a monster,
chica?
” he hissed at her.

            “Yes!” she
snarled, unafraid.  She leaned into the tree as his eyes narrowed angrily at
her.  He crowded her with his body, his fury and disgust evident.

            She knew that if
she´d been a man, he would have attacked her.  She couldn´t help but sigh in
relief when he moved out of her personal space.  His body was still tense from
the fight, parts of him covered in blood, she shouldn´t have answered his
question, but she was relieved that they hadn´t noted her attraction for them,
and also, the act that she´d witnessed had horrified her.

            But then, that
had been Armando in cat form.  Sure, the cats had human qualities and vice
versa, but that didn´t mean that the form they were in at that moment didn´t
take control.  A cat under attack would never allow a threat to escape from his
grasp, he would kill it and know that he no longer had to fear for his life.  Survival
of the fittest, the most basic rule of nature, and she couldn´t forget that.  Just
because the genetically altered cats could use the human part of their brain to
their advantage didn´t mean that the cat didn´t rule at all times.

            They were as much
animal as they were human.

            The thought
should have disgusted her.  Instead, she felt pity for them and the monsters
they’d become.

            “Chill,
hermano,
”
Rafael warned his cousin, and quickly grabbed him on the shoulder and
squeezed. 

            “I´m chilled.”  Armando
shrugged Rafael´s hand from his shoulder, looked coldly at her, then told the
group, “We need to get to the water.  She´s attracting all the other cats.  Let´s
get a fucking move on.  But know this,
muñeca,
” he snarled, “I´m no
monster, you´re fucking boss is the monster.  You think I wanted to be this,”
he held out his arms, “well, I didn´t. I never asked for this shit. Remember,
who your boss is--at least I´m not in cahoots with one.”

Chapter Four

            Not a word was
spoken as they set off again through the jungle.  Armando´s words seemed to
reverberate inside her head, condemning her, sentencing her without trial.  But
was it really without trial?  She had told herself many a time to suck it up
and get on with the assignment.

            She knew that she
had talked herself into this job because of the money.  She´d ignored all of
her beliefs and principles and allowed herself to conveniently forget them, so
how could she judge Armando?  She couldn´t.

            He was right, she
was working for a monster, a monster that wanted the experiments to go on, when
they should have never even started.  She had aligned herself to the bad side,
and all for money.  She was the baddy in all this, no matter her work.  As she´d
grown up, she stopped her wild child ways, and had always tried to remain on
the right side of the law.

            Whatever was
going on here had to be against the Geneva Convention.  Experimentation on
human beings without their consent—this was the stuff of nightmarish science
fiction.  She was in the wrong here.  What really sickened her though was that
she was actually working for the law—that’s what she’d been led to believe, and
before now, she hadn’t had any reason to doubt the validity of what she’d been
told.

            She’d had to
believe that here in this jungle, she was acting on her government’s side of the
law.  The cats in this jungle were, for a better word, AWOL, and she had been
hired to bring them back to the fold before the ecological system was destroyed
or altered irreparably.

            Her mind was
focused completely on her thoughts, so much so, that she didn´t realize that
they´d apparently reached their destination.  She only looked up when she heard
Rafael splashing through a small pool.

            She smiled to herself
as she remembered reading somewhere that jaguars love to swim or be in water--the
cat in him must be purring in satisfaction.  The small pool was fed by a
waterfall trickling down jagged, moss-covered rocks.  Ferns dimmed the sunlight
and waved in a warm breeze, making light dapple across the pool’s surface.  It
was extremely rocky, and through the clear water she could see that rocks
extended into the pool itself.  It was an odd shape, almost oblong, with four
rocky quarters to it.  Each looked like a rather uncomfortable bath.  The
waterfall, although small and not very strong, obviously kept the water fresh
since there was no smell of stale water.  She couldn´t see where the water
actually ran on to, but the whole area looked wonderfully refreshing after
having sweated, fought, and walked through the whole humid mess that was a
jungle.

            Yvonne could
practically taste the water, it smelled so fragrant.  She looked forward to
jumping in, could almost feel the cool freshness of the water.  Her skin tingled
in reaction, she couldn´t wait to feel that chill on her hot skin.  She walked
into the pool--she didn´t have to be asked or told!

            She knew that she
was only here because of the musky pheromone.  For the first time that day, she
thanked God that she had been sprayed with the stuff, since it meant that she
could cool herself down here in this lovely nook that she would probably never
see again.

            She waded in
fully clothed, not caring that her clothes would be dripping and soggy by the
time she´d finished, she knew that it wouldn´t take long for them to dry in the
heat of the jungle, and it was lovely to be able to wash the grime from her
clothes as well as herself.  The water was chilly but refreshing, a definite
contrast to the intense heat outside of the pool.

            She didn´t relish
walking back into it.  Although the coolness of the water was slightly rejuvenating,
she was dead on her feet.  She needed to rest, she felt strange, not herself.  She
couldn´t pinpoint exactly why, but she just felt odd.  On edge.

            But that was
normal, she was trying to escape these men and return back to her own team.  In
truth, she just wanted to run home and face her debts some other way.  Maybe
she could scrounge up enough money to pay a lawyer to help her out.  Something.

            She didn´t want
to run back to her team, only to be faced with the prospect of having to trap
Remy, Rafael, and Armando and return them back to what obviously had been hell
for them, and all so that she could pay off her dues and not go to prison.