Bengal's Quest

by Lora Leigh

  Kill Graeme? He may well kill her, but he’d never kill Graeme. And once Graeme realized what had happened here . . . Oh, Raymond, how I would love to hear your screams.

  Right now, the only screams she could hear were the ones in her own head. The amplification of pain had agony resonating from her wrist. Her ribs were pounding and she was terrified one may be cracked. Her stomach was on fire from the kick to it, and fear was a vile taste in the back of her throat.

  How long she lay there she wasn’t certain. The pain radiating through her nerves had eased, but the broken wrist and bruised ribs had yet to stop screaming. That would take a while. She remembered that. She was barely four the first time the scientists had broken bones while she was under the obscene effect of that drug. Four years old and she had believed her G had deserted her, that he’d let them hurt her. Until she’d been returned to the cells to see the tears that streaked the savage, agonized expression on his face and the restraints that held him to his cot.

  He hadn’t deserted her then, but he had deserted her eight years later. He’d left, only to return for vengeance and blood. He’d probably gloat that she’d been caught so effectively after destroying the cameras. Or would he? He’d been enraged when he found Raymond and Linc there. Would he be angry instead?

  With Graeme, it was anyone’s guess.

  No, it wasn’t, she realized. Graeme would go insane if he saw her now. The maddened creature lurking inside him would emerge with such a need for vengeance that there would be no stopping it. He wouldn’t rest until those responsible for her pain suffered a hundred times worse. When they died, it would be only after he’d inflicted all the torture possible to inflict. Jackals could take a lot of pain, they could withstand it for weeks. Raymond would take more finesse to keep him alive for the pain she knew Graeme would mete out.

  She belonged to him. She always had. He had stood by stoically when the therapies had left her screaming, her body feeling as though it were being torn apart as they reshaped who and what she was. But the few experiments Brandenmore had ordered had left him crazed.

  The door began opening again, slowly. There was no scent to herald this arrival. It wasn’t Raymond, it wasn’t a Jackal.

  The shadow that entered the room was far different from Raymond’s. Taller, more powerful.

  Graeme.

  He was the bogeyman, and the scent of icy merciless death radiated around him and filled her with an overwhelming fear that who she faced now may never allow the Graeme she knew to return.

  “Now, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time?” he asked softly, the ice easing as just a hint of anger tinged his voice. “Would you like a bit of help, my little cat?”

  • CHAPTER 7 •

  Like a bit of help?

  He was kidding, right?

  Damn him, she’d known he would gloat when the insanity took hold of him. He just had to show all that superior attitude before helping her off the damned floor and getting rid of the trash downstairs.

  She’d call him an ass, but it didn’t apply.

  Graeme had moved past the ass phase at fourteen, surpassed prick before he was fifteen and made maniac look like a picnic by the time he was seventeen. Now, at thirty-six and in the grip of a rage that was far beyond primal, he was simply asinine. Insane and asinine

  Cat wanted to scream at him. She needed to curse him. If she managed to get out of this she was going to . . . what?

  It wouldn’t exactly do her any good to tell Mommy on him, now, would it.

  She didn’t have one.

  Dammit.

  The bastard moved lower, practically lying down on the carpet beside her so he could stare into her eyes.

  So she could stare into his eyes.

  A hard amber flecked with jungle green glittering like fire and obliterating both the pupil and the whites of his eyes stared back at her. Black stripes bisected his bronzed flesh, primal stripes, they were called. A Bengal’s primal marks would show up along his body from face to ankle. The sight of it would be completely sexy, she thought, irritated that she’d even considered such a thing.

  He just stared at her for what seemed forever. He didn’t smirk, didn’t sneer, just stared back at her. She’d never known this part of him. She’d sensed it a few times at the research center, lurking beneath the killing rage, but it had never really emerged. And now that she was seeing it, she fully understood why his name could cause the Council’s scientists to tremble in fear. What had Dr. Foster created when he created this creature.

  Graeme shook his head then, his expression one of mocking disapproval. “I’m so disappointed. I trained you better, little cat. Much better. What the hell happened?”

  Disappointed? He was disappointed?

  A heavy breath left his lips when she didn’t speak. But then, the asshole knew she couldn’t speak.

  She hated him! Right now, she simply hated him.

  “Come on, baby, let’s get you off the floor.” He finally lifted himself to a crouch beside her, his arms sliding beneath her to lift her against him.

  She was boneless. Unable to stiffen, to speak or even to scream as the weight of her hand began settling in her wrist.

  The agony was indescribable.

  Reality receded just a bit. Everything flashed and exploded around her as the pain detonated along her nervous system, amplified by the paralytic and exploding over and over again through her senses.

  For a second, Graeme froze. Then carefully, very carefully, as agonized, silent howls of shattering pain reverberated through her head, he slid one arm beneath her wrist to support it.

  His eyes were locked on hers as he lifted her, watching her, and she wondered if he could see the pain there. If he could sense not just her but the animal inside her screaming in agony.

  Oh God, it hurts. Oh God, G . . . mindlessly she cried out for him as she always had in the labs.

  As she often did in her nightmares.

  A hard growl, rife with rage, rumbled from the chest she was held against.

  They’ll die for this, little cat, the words whispered through her mind, shocking her with his ability to connect with her there. They will die painfully.

  He laid her on her bed, settling her head against her pillow, his gaze still connected to hers. Gently, almost reverently, he settled her arm to the bed last, ensuring her wrist was cushioned to ease the pain as much as possible.

  “Poor little cat, my Cat.” His tone grated with guttural fury. “That’s okay, baby, they’ll never have a chance to hurt you again.”

  Never have a chance to hurt her again?

  What had he done?

  Lifting his hand, he trailed his fingertips down her cheek, and even amid the pain there was the faintest sensation of pleasure.

  He was going to drive her crazy, make her just as insane as he was.

  “You’re mine,” he told her, his voice hardening as he stared into her eyes. “My little cat. No other is allowed to harm you in such a way without paying for it dearly. What I have done, what I will do, is my right as your mate.”

  No one but him, right?

  He glared down at her. “I have never harmed you physically,” he answered the thought. “Never, Cat, would I see you harmed. No matter your belief.”

  When this crazy drug wore off she was buying a ticket so far away from him that it would take him a lifetime to track her down. She should have done that at the first rumor that a crazy Bengal was tracking someone in the desert.

  He grunted, the sound beastly. “After all your hard work to draw me to you?” He tsked. “I had already found you, you know.”

  She was going to kill him.

  He simply chuckled as she strained against the drug holding her immobile.

  “They’re waiting for me, just as they left you waiting,” he promised then. “Come on, now, let’s see what damage has been inflicted so I can take care of the trash in the other room.”

  It was going to hurt.

  She w
anted to beg him to be careful. She wanted to scream as his touch neared her wrist. Just before the point where the explosive pain would rupture through her, he stopped.

  “Broken wrist,” he snarled, breathing in harshly and shaking his head. He moved his fingertip slowly, only barely whispering over the skin, to her fingers.

  Moving to her other arm he checked it, then her legs. And still, he watched her eyes. Even when she couldn’t see his, she knew he was watching hers.

  Could she bear it if he hurt her further? She expected it. It could still come. He would be that diabolical. Trick her into believing he wouldn’t push the barriers of sensory agony only to break them.

  Such distrust, little cat. I am the monster the world will forever know should you be taken from it. You are all that holds what little sanity I can call my own in place. And you would distrust me so? The mockery in the thought was tinged was such a well of complete icy intellect, logic and merciless hunger for the enemies blood that terror skated through her.

  He moved to her neck, collarbone.

  She could see his eyes now.

  Fury mixed with madness and some emotion she couldn’t define.

  His hand lifted, a single finger extending, and as she watched, a lethally sharp, strong claw extended from the tip, splitting the skin as it emerged and came into view.

  Yeah, neat trick. She could do that too. Without the blood staining her nail.

  His lips quirked as she felt him, she actually felt him, somehow merged with her, reading the pain-filled mockery and fear.

  Lowering his hand, he sliced her gown straight down the middle.

  Silk fell away from her, baring her breasts, the naked mound of her sex. She had never had curls between her thighs. As with all Breed females, body hair on her arms, armpits, legs and between her thighs was nonexistent.

  She should be completely embarrassed. Cat knew she should be. She had never been able to bare her body to anyone, especially a man. She was still a virgin, though she doubted that state would remain long if her earlier response to him was any indication.

  Bending closer to her, Graeme stared at the area just below her breasts. His fingertips whispered over it, tested the discoloration around it before lifting his gaze to hers once again.

  “It’s not broken,” he promised.

  Then his eyes, the gold in them burning, moved back to her breasts. From there, his eyes narrowed, looking lower, easing to her thighs as Cat watched him from her periphery, trying to hide her fear of what he would do from the connection he’d made while in the grip of the beast he’d become.

  “Not while you’re unable to fight,” he snapped, furious with the moment of uncertainty she’d felt. “Dammit, Cat, as beautiful as you are, my only intent is to ensure you’re not in need of medical attention before I take care of that vermin that dared do this.”

  His lips thinned in fury, the stripes crossing his face blacker than they were last time, as though they lightened or darkened according to the level of his anger.

  He returned his gaze to her thighs and her mound, and she knew he’d found the faintest trace of the scars there.

  A fingertip brushed over her upper mound, the sensation so different, so heated and extreme, that the fierce pleasure radiated over the echoing pain in her wrist and the areas Raymond had kicked.

  “You’ll tell me how this occurred,” he whispered, the sound almost too low to hear. “No one marks what’s mine and doesn’t pay dearly for it.”

  They paid by my hand.

  The Coyote she suspected Raymond had ordered to punish her years before had found his blood running from his neck as he awoke in the desert several nights later. She hadn’t called the Unknown, she’d found him herself and exacted her vengeance. He looked at her one last time, regret flickering in his gaze.

  “You’ve turned into a beautiful woman, little cat,” he growled, reaching across her to draw the sheet over her body.

  She could still see him as he moved, reaching for a pack she hadn’t known he’d laid on the floor. It took only moments for him to show her the pressure syringe he held in one hand.

  “It will ease the effects of the paralytic. Your ability to move will return far quicker and it’ll ease the pain of the broken wrist.” He placed it at the side of her neck and activated the injector. “And any Council bastard stupid enough to inject you again will find it has little effect on you. Consider it an immunization.”

  He’d always been all about the immunizations, she remembered.

  Cat barely felt the burst of pressure that sent the drug into her vein.

  Pulling back, he touched her cheek, his thumb hovering just above her lips before he paused glaring down at her. “I have matters to attend to downstairs now. Two Jackals and one Nation chief. They’ll be able to scream for you. I always thought it rather cruel to paralyze the ability to scream, didn’t you? I believe I’ve adjusted that nasty little drug to allow for the screams,” he promised her.

  He’d lost his mind.

  And he was going to have who scream for her?

  Raymond and those Jackals he’d secured?

  He thought she wanted to hear that?

  She had never tortured any of the Council Breeds she had been forced to kill. She had never wanted to hear their screams. Hell, the sight of blood even made her queasy. She couldn’t stand to look at it for long.

  She stared back at him as he watched her eyes, knowing his freaky ability to read her thoughts would allow him to sense her complete distaste of such a thing.

  Another rumble of rage vibrated from him as a heavy frown jerked between his brows. “Fuck. Council’s gotta be using defective genetics. I swear to God, where have all the bloodthirsty Breeds gone? The ones with balls? Breeds don’t have balls anymore,” he snarled down at her. “Is it too much to ask? Too much to expect a Breed to want blood? We were fucking created to crave the taste of blood. What the hell happened to you? I gave you all the right genetics. I know I did.”

  She had actually never craved such a repugnant thing.

  Cat remembered this rant, though it had obviously strengthened over the years. Graeme had become discontent with the level of courage and fight in his enemies even before their escape from the lab.

  “Don’t want to hear their screams, do you, Cat?” He sounded disgusted now. “Of course you don’t. Now, just what made me think any differently? The fact that they wanted to hear your screams, perhaps? How about all those years I taught you better than to have mercy for your enemy?” he snapped furiously. “By God, I know I did.”

  The stripes across Graeme’s face seemed to flare and darken again as madness lit his gaze and the amber of his eyes glowed like golden fire.

  “I can’t believe this,” he muttered, straightening, still glowering at her. “Cannot fucking believe you. I know I taught you better than this. I remember it . . .”

  He seemed to be having quite the conversation with himself. She wondered if he ever needed anyone to participate other than himself.

  Yes, he’d tried to teach her to show no mercy. He’d taught her how to kill, taught her to separate justice and vengeance. He’d taught her blood was necessary to survive. But he hadn’t taught her to enjoy it, though she knew he seemed to.

  He seemed to. Inside, though, deep, where he thought no one could sense it, Graeme regretted far more than even he suspected.

  At least, he once had.

  What had happened to him?

  The need to reach up and touch the harsh line of his lips, to draw them to hers, was like a hunger she couldn’t push aside. The need to push away the insane fury in his eyes destroyed her.

  “Pity, Cat?” he sneered, flipping the sheet over her bare body. “Is that pity I can feel reaching out to me? For me?” Demonic amusement flashed in his eyes. “Save it. Those bastards downstairs need it far more than I do.”

  No, they were beyond pity, but it wasn’t pity she felt. It wasn’t compassion or sympathy. What it was, she wasn’t certain, but it h
urt to see the soul-deep fury raging in his eyes.

  Where had it come from? Even in the labs it hadn’t been rooted so deeply inside the essence of who and what he was.

  “You don’t want to know what let the monster free, little cat,” the beast snarled. “But you will know the price your enemies will pay for striking out at you.”

  A savage growl rumbled in his chest as his lip lifted in a snarl. “And, I hope you can ignore what you don’t want to hear, because I want to hear their fucking screams.” He thumped his chest with one hand. “And by God, I was created with enough balls to make sure they scream loud and long.”

  Of course he was.

  He was Graeme. Gideon. G. All the parts of the Breed she had adored with every fiber of her being. But she’d never been unaware of the strength and determined savagery inside him. It was the pure mercilessness she’d been unaware of.

  Turning, he stomped—Graeme stomped?—back to the bedroom door and slammed it closed behind him.

  Graeme stomped? Oh God, that couldn’t be a good thing . . .

  What, she wondered, would happen when he returned? Once he’d heard the screams, spilled their blood and rendered them lifeless?

  Where would the madness go then? What would its focus be once he’d killed . . .

  She couldn’t allow it to happen, not here, not for her or like this.

  Raymond Martinez needed to answer for his crimes, not escape them so easily. And the Bureau needed to know about the existence of the Jackals. Graeme needed to let Jonas take care of this, build a rapport with the Bureau that would protect him should suspicion of who he was ever come to light.

  Dammit. When was that fucking drug going to ease so she could move?

  So she could stop him. Because he damned sure wasn’t listening to her anymore.

  • • •

  Damn her.

  Fucking damn her.

  Those bastards were going to rape her in her own bed while she was paralyzed by that crazed Council drug and she didn’t want to hear their screams?

  Well, he did.

  He wanted them to scream until their voices broke, until they were rabid with the fucking pain, insane from it. They were fucking Jackals, they might actually make it worthwhile to torture them.

  Raymond Martinez would scream for a long time, he was sure. That bastard wanted to live. He wanted to live a long time. Long enough to spend that fucking case of cash and gold those Council misfits had given him as payment for Cat. And he knew. The son of a bitch fucking knew his daughter lived in Cat. That Claire Martinez’s spirit was still a part of Cat. And he didn’t care.

  Moving back to the living room he crouched next to the two Jackals first.

  Bastards.

  He’d taped their lips to keep them from screaming and distracting him before he was ready to deal with them.

  Damn her. Damn that woman . . .

  He ripped the adhesive from their lips, smiling at their grunts of discomfort.

  Even Jackals were weak-kneed little pussies after all.

  “You think that’s uncomfortable?” he muttered. “Discomfort is the first vivisection and you can’t scream. It’s feeling their fingers probing at your organs and innards and praying for death as you piss yourself.”

  Silent screams. Silent prayers.

  The Jackals stared back at him with cold, hard purpose, watching, waiting, searching for a weakness.

  He smiled slowly, satisfaction rumbling in his chest at the flicker of unease in the biggest one’s pale yellow gaze.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?” he whispered. “Do they still call me the bogeyman?”

  “They’ll be pleased you’re still alive,” the Jackal rasped, barely able to speak. “As well as your mate.”

  The monster, the freak without mercy, compassion or any semblance of warmth, jumped further into his senses; the sound that left his throat was demonic.

  “I have no mate,” he growled. “I have only the obligation to protect those of my Pride, Jackal. My only purpose. My only reason for being.” Because the mate would suffer without them.

  And in a way it was true. When the monster was free, all bonds, all affection, all respect was obliterated. Only one purpose filled him. Protecting the mate only Graeme could claim.

  And he was convincing. He could smell it on them.

  “I’ve made the strongest Council Coyotes piss themselves within ten minutes,” he observed then. “How long will the two of you last before the scent of your urine offends my senses?”

  He’d give them at least fifteen minutes. These two looked pretty strong. And Jackals were tortured from childhood, their training a reign of terror designed to ensure only the most brutally strong survived. Before they reached age ten, only one littermate would still live. The only one strong enough to watch the others starve so he could eat. The one strong enough to murder all who stood in the way of his escape from the putrid, waste-packed cell they were locked into.

  “She would have me know mercy,” he growled, and hope flickered in their eyes.

  Graeme smiled. A curve of his lips that dimmed hope and brought the knowledge of certain death instead.

  “She doesn’t know, they to