The Man Within (20 page)

“Thank you for staying with me,” Roni said softly, moving to the couch, trying to still the nervous shaking of her hands. She laid the gun on the cushion beside her as she curled up in the corner, watching the other woman.

Dawn followed suit, though she took the chair opposite her, propping the rifle against her knee as she watched Roni with shy curiosity.

“Taber’s one of our best fighters,” she said in that soft, melodic voice. “He won’t let anyone get up here. And if they did, I wouldn’t let them past the door.”

A thread of steel ran beneath the last statement. There was barely enough light to see by, but Roni glimpsed the flash of rage in her eyes.

Roni hadn’t had a chance to really talk to Dawn, or any of the other family members she had known in Sandy Hook. Not that anyone could really have claimed to know Dawn. She was rarely seen in the small town, and when she was, she rarely talked. There was something too silent, too heartbreaking, in the quiet features of her face. As though she carried a cloak of nightmares about her at all times.

“The estate here is gorgeous,” Roni finally said, desperate to keep the other woman talking. She needed to concentrate on something other than the possible dangers Taber would face outside. “How did you find it?”

A mocking little smile played about the lush fullness of Dawn’s lips. “The estate was given to us, actually, along with a nice little lump sum of money to help aid the other Breeds being found in various locations. Several of the Council members were high-ranking heads of our government.” Her voice sang with an earthy, haunting quality.

“How many are there so far?” Roni asked her curiously.

“So far, we have nearly a hundred Feline Breeds on site working to secure our place in society in Washington. More come in monthly…” Her voice trailed off, as though the thought of those coming in struck a chord of resounding pain within her soul.

“I’m sorry.” Roni didn’t know what to say.

A gentle smile crossed Dawn’s lips, filled her expression. “Don’t be sorry, Roni. We are alive and isn’t that what matters?” It was obvious that Dawn asked herself that question often.

What was it about her? Roni had never understood the quiet aura that always surrounded the other woman. She had seen the men of the county when they were around her. Rough, hard-edged men suddenly softened, their smiles gentling. Men who would have often made lewd advances to any woman as beautiful as Dawn had cast their eyes to the floor, shame marking their expressions.

Her looks weren’t so unusually striking as to stop traffic. She was slender, delicate, with thick silken hair and large brown eyes that always seemed so haunted. And perhaps that was it, Roni thought. Her eyes seemed to tell a tale that Dawn never whispered.

“Everyone looks at me like that.” Dawn shook her head in apparent confusion as Roni watched her.

Roni sighed deeply. “I’m sorry. You seem…so sad. I guess before I never realized why.”

“And you do now?” There was no insult intended in her voice, just weary acceptance.

“I don’t think so.” Roni shook her head slowly. “I think it’s more than the situation, more than your entrance into society. How old were you when Callan brought you out of the labs?”

And there was the answer. Her eyes flashed. Nightmare, memory and terror.

“I was fifteen. Sherra was eighteen. That was more than ten years ago. It seems only yesterday sometimes.” She shook her head, a weary smile crossing her face. “They made us tell them about the labs during the Senate hearings and the closed trials of some of the Council members. Sherra cried.” Her voice dropped. “Like she did in the labs, before Callan took us out. She has never cried like that since our escape. Callan picked her up out of the witness stand and carried her out of the proceedings. It was weeks before she could awaken without screaming.”

“What about you?” Roni asked her gently.

Dawn shook her head, lowering it before giving her a soft, broken smile. “I just don’t sleep, Roni. Not for long and not very deeply. What’s the point when the monsters can take you again and again and again?” She shuddered and came to her feet, her head tilting, her eyes suddenly narrowing as the gun fell naturally into her grasp.

“What…?”

“Shhh,” Dawn hissed softly. “Listen.”

She heard it then. A scratch, a scrape at the balcony doors. Her eyes widened in horror as she grabbed the pistol, moving along the wall, careful to stay as far to the side of the glass doors as possible.

Dawn moved like a shadow then. She jerked the comm. link down from its position on the back of her head, adjusting the mic as she listened intently. The scratching came again, followed by a careful shuffle of the doors.

“Alpha one. We have a breech.” Dawn’s voice was so soft Roni barely heard it as the other woman moved to her, covering her as she motioned to the bedroom.

Keeping her weapon at her shoulder, Roni moved quietly around the room, her breath nearly strangling her as she fought to keep the fear to a manageable level.

She got as far as the bedroom door and stopped. The slow slide of the balcony door had her eyes flying to Dawn in alarm.

“Fuck. Get up here!” Dawn’s voice was soft as she spoke into the comm. link, carrying no further than Roni as the other woman motioned to her and they headed quickly to the bedroom door. “We’re evac. We’re evac.” She slid the locks free, opening the door as she checked outside quickly before moving from the room.

Roni followed quickly, her finger caressing the trigger of the gun as she held it ready, checking behind them often, fighting to hear above the pounding of her heart. The hallway was dark, silent, as they moved quickly along the corridor.

“We’re heading to Merinus’ room, Taber. Get up here. They’re on our asses now.” Dawn opened another door and they moved through it as a sudden curse echoed from the open door of Roni and Taber’s room.

Dawn locked the door with a silent movement and turned back to the room. Merinus and Sherra were waiting, both armed, both watching the darkness from the side of the balcony doors that room held as well.

But Merinus and Callan’s room wasn’t a suite. It was one large bedroom and completely open except for the attached bathroom.

“They’re moving toward us,” Sherra hissed into her own mic as she and Merinus moved into the center of the room. “They know the location of the bedrooms and we’re sitting ducks. Goddammit, Kane, get me some help up here.”

“Taber and Callan are on their way,” Dawn reported as they all moved quickly for the only shelter left to them.

The bathroom was as large as Taber’s, but still, it afforded few places that could be used to stop a bullet. Roni placed herself in front of Merinus instinctively. Dawn and Sherra pressed them back, though, shielding them from anyone who would attempt to come through the doorway. Priorities, Roni thought sadly.

Sherra and Dawn considered themselves expendable in the place of the only two mates to the brothers they had fought beside for so many years. Just as Roni considered herself expendable against the life of the child Merinus carried. And yet, they were all pawns as well, because someone knew the Breeds’ weaknesses and they had found a way to strike.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Taber had promised Roni she would be safe. He had told her to lock the door. Not to leave the room. No one would get to her. The acrid taste of failure coated his mouth. He had been wrong.

He entered the back of the house at a low crouch, his rifle held ready as he swept through the kitchen then stood aside to allow the other half-dozen men who followed him entrance. His blood pumped with the demand that he rush upstairs, that he blow the bastards to hell and back, but he knew the risk to Roni would only be greater.

Kane’s men were moving on the balconies to trap the bastards. Now Taber and his men would move up the stairs to catch them on this end. Rage burned low in his gut, making it a fight to maintain control and proceed, as he knew he had to.

“We have a breech.” Dawn’s voice was low, steady and calm, but Taber could hear the horror that backed each word. “We’re compromised, Taber.”

Each man had received the same transmission. Silent as the night, as deadly as the animals their DNA mixed with, the men surged up the stairs. They caught the first four outside Callan’s room as they were opening the door. The assassins never knew what hit them.

Taber wrapped his arm around the neck of one and twisted with a sharp, deadly move that resulted in the muted satisfying crunch. The others fell the same way, only to be pushed aside as Taber opened the door slowly.

He went in at a crouch, throttling his roar of triumph as they met the other group of would-be assassins in the middle of the room. Their eyes widened in surprise at the force they met as they turned to make their escape. At the same time, Kane’s men stepped through the balcony entrance.

“Oh look, Callan, they want to play,” Taber drawled as one raised his weapon. It was shot out of his hands before he could pull the trigger.

“Keep the women in there, Sherra.” Callan’s voice was cold, deadly, as he stepped farther into the room and smiled the cold smile of death Taber had rarely seen on his face. “Hello, gentlemen. If you had knocked, we could have conversed civilly,” he stated a bit too mildly. “Your entrance into my home has left much to be desired.”

Taber lowered his weapon as Callan handed his off to him. “Tell me, Taber, what should we do with such rude guests? Make nice, or have a late night snack?”

Taber allowed the snarl curling his lips to rumble through his chest. There was no mistaking the wary looks the assassins were now giving them.

“I missed dinner,” Taber said clearly. “How about a snack?”

The four men jumped in startled surprise as twelve fully grown Feline Breed males growled in hungry menace.

“Wait.” One of them spoke nervously, holding his hands out, his gun held in a clearly non-threatening manner as he laid it on the floor. “No harm, no foul…”

“No harm, no foul?” Callan asked mildly as he eyed the gun on the floor before raising his head to stare at the man with brooding fury. “Wrong. You broke into my home, attempted to harm my woman, and you think you’re just going to walk out of here?”

“We’re just doing our job.” One shook his head desperately. “Come on, Lyons, you’ve always let us go before.”

Taber recognized the voice. One of the mercenaries who had been sent home in defeat years before, smarting from the lazy, amused chase Callan had given him.

“The rules changed, Brighton,” Callan snapped. “You don’t just walk away anymore.”

“Callan, we question them first.” Kane moved into the room, watching the Breeds warily. “You know the score.”

“I know they’re dead.” It was as though the very air itself stilled with that announcement.

There was no mercy in Callan’s voice, no weakness. “We’ll send them back to their owners in pieces. Isn’t that how they sent back our scout last month?”

Taber’s jaw tightened at the memory of it.

The four assassins shifted nervously within the room.

“Come on,” Callan dared them. “Show me what you’re made of. Personally, I smell the stink of a coward.”

“Callan…” Taber warned him carefully. “Step back, man. This is no time for mistakes.”

The mistake being an accidental death. “Think of Merinus and the babe. She would have to go on without you.”

“Callan.” Her voice was faint, frightened.

“Kane, get this shit out of here. Lock them up with the other bastard you’re holding until the garbage runs. We’ll send them out then. Maybe in pieces.”

It was a threat that pushed the intruders into action. A flare of brilliant light pierced the darkness, blinding them as the assassins made their bid for freedom. Weapons were dropped as the Breeds used senses well honed from years in captivity. They couldn’t see, but they could smell, hear and taste the evil flowing around them.

Taber’s knife cleared its sheath at his side as he reached the first man. The weapon sliced through flesh, severing the jugular vein. Blood sprayed around him as he dropped his enemy to the floor and turned for another. The brilliancy of the light had dissipated and he came face to face with Roni’s horror-filled expression.

Rage and grief filled him because he knew what he looked like. He knew, because he had seen Callan in a similar rage. His canines were bared, blood covering the lower part of his face, his chest. Another man’s blood. The animal gloried in the scent of it; the feel of his enemy’s defeat, the knowledge that this time, Taber had been victorious. But the man he was screamed out in rage against the fates, the cruelties, and the single instant that his mate had seen the carnage and the animal within.

The agonized roar that echoed through the house was one of rage, pain and a protest against the realities of a life never asked for, never imagined. A protest against the loss of innocence he glimpsed in Roni’s eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The roar was unlike anything Roni had ever seen or heard. She stared at Taber in shock as his head went back, his chest expanded and the primal sound of rage and anguish ripped from his throat.

Everyone stilled. The assassins lay dead. There had been no mercy. Roni hadn’t expected any. But neither had she expected to see the bitter, raging pain in Taber’s eyes as he dropped the assailant, either. Blood covered him, staining his cheek, his neck, the black cloth of his shirt, and running in a rivulet along the hardwood floor beneath his feet.

God help her, how was she to ease so much pain? She wanted to run to him, to clean the blood from him and whisper how thankful she was that he lived, but she was held rooted to the floor, tears whispering down her cheeks as she witnessed the one thing she knew Taber would not have wanted her to see.

As the sound of his fury echoed around them, his head lowered, his green eyes glittering with an intensity she had never witnessed before and an expression that terrified her. His legs ate the distance between them as he moved to her, gripping her wrist and jerking her along behind him as he headed for the door.

“Taber…” Callan’s protest was cut off when Taber turned back to him with a snarl so threatening, so demanding, that the other man stood back, shaking his head in regret.