Leopard's Wrath

by Feehan, Christine

  Kris lifted his weapon, but Amory calmly put his hand on it and lowered it. “The old man, Antosha’s father, took it. We’ll go in quietly and get it back. I’m sorry about Antosha. He was a decent sort, but he was dying anyway. No one wants to hurt Ania.”

  Mitya used Amory’s inattention to creep within several feet of him. So close. Dymka had the traitor’s smell in his nostrils. He pulled his lips back several times, exposing his teeth, his body nearly shaking with the need to kill.

  “You killed Antosha, Amory.” Vikenti made it a statement, careful to keep his voice a distance from where he was. “You’re responsible for his death.”

  Kris had zeroed in on the exact bush where he thought Vikenti hid. He even took a step out from the safety of the long porch. Again, Amory restrained him with a hand to his arm and a shake of his head. Amory looked around carefully. The trouble was, he was focusing several feet out, expecting the main attack to come from that distance, not two feet in front of him.

  “He should have been dead three years ago,” Amory continued.

  “You did that?”

  “I was part of it. We needed to get into the house.”

  Dymka exploded into action, wholly fixated on Amory. Beside him, Sevastyan was on Kris, knocking the weapon from his hand, just as Mitya was doing with Amory. Dymka’s teeth closed over Amory’s arm and bit down. Amory screamed, but he was already shifting, fast, just as he’d been taught. The enemy had infiltrated Drake’s organization and he’d been given the best training for his leopard, shifting under the worst circumstances.

  He used his claws to rake Dymka’s belly, desperate to get the big cat off him. The two tumbled over each other, rolling, the bites vicious, trying to find a way past the loose skin to get to vulnerable organs.

  Sevastyan knew Mitya, and knew if he wanted answers, he would have to keep Kris alive if at all possible, because Dymka was going to kill Amory and his cat. Mitya didn’t care one way or the other what the item was that was taken from Amory and whomever he worked with. He cared that this man had destroyed Ania’s fragile faith in him. That this man had killed her father.

  Dymka bit down hard on the front leg he’d already crunched nearly through the bone. This time, he heard a satisfactory snap and Amory’s leopard screamed in pain. Dymka backed away. As the other leopard made a supreme effort to get to his three good legs, Dymka rushed him, going not for the throat but for the vulnerable other front leg. He came in from the side, raking with claws to open him up, but really to distract him from the true goal, that other leg.

  At the last moment, Dymka looked as if he was sliding on past, but he rolled and came up under the other cat, fastening his teeth around the leg and biting down hard and then using his enormous strength as he rolled out from the cat, still holding its leg. The sound was audible as the leg broke, and Amory screamed.

  Dymka came to his feet, circling the cat as it tried to spin to face him. Dymka rushed the leopard, over and over, slashing, tearing through the fur to reach skin and bone. Opening the belly. The heaving sides. Raking the throat. He came in from behind, attacking the back leg, devastating the leopard as he took out a third leg, breaking it the way he had the first two.

  Amory shifted, desperate to spare his leopard. Better to have Dymka kill him. The leopard rushed the man who lay on the ground with two broken arms and one broken leg, bleeding from numerous deep wounds. The leopard attacked his belly, ripping him open, mauling him, dragging him across the ground, but still not delivering the suffocating bite that would kill him.

  Sevastyan had easily defeated Kris’s leopard, the fight, in his opinion, so unfair he’d easily been able to control his leopard. The animal hadn’t gone into a killing frenzy. He watched, as did Kris, as Dymka destroyed Amory.

  “Why doesn’t he finish him?” Kris asked, his voice twisted with emotion.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Sevastyan snapped. “You both caused this. You killed her family. Her entire family.”

  “The old man stole from us. Stole. We needed him to do a simple delivery, but instead, he kept it. He signed a contract. It was a business deal, pure and simple.” Kris was breathing hard and the truth exploded out of him. In the short time his leopard had been fighting Sevastyan’s he had sustained major injuries, and he’d surrendered immediately.

  Mitya wasn’t giving Amory the option of surrendering. Dymka kept at him, ripping through skin and bones, tearing at the body without killing him. Making him suffer.

  “Mitya.” Sevastyan kept his voice calm. Soothing. No judgment. “Pull back. You have to stop Dymka before it’s too late.”

  Dymka raised his head and eyed Kris, as if he would change his direction of attack. Kris read the absolute hatred and cruelty in the cat’s eyes. He shrank back, his arms going around his middle to protect that vulnerable part of him.

  “Don’t let him get me.”

  “You might want to tell us what the package was and why it was so damned important.”

  Kris went white. “I’m a dead man if I tell you.”

  Dymka abandoned Amory’s dying body and turned completely toward Kris, focusing his entire attention on the man. He took three steps toward him and then whirled around and charged Amory again, roaring with rage, so loud the sound had to be heard all over the hills. Kris shuddered visibly as Dymka delivered the suffocating bite to Amory’s throat, ripped at his belly with deadly claws and then once more turned slowly toward Kris.

  “It’s a book. Just a notebook. Evidence of our true enemies. That’s all it is. A little notebook.” The last was said with a whine.

  “Who would our true enemies be, Kris?” Sevastyan asked softly.

  “Donovan. Bannaconni,” he burst out.

  Sevastyan shook his head. “Everyone knows that.”

  “They have bosses on the inside working with them. The book has proof,” Kris wailed. He wiped sweat from his face. “I’m telling the truth. That’s all I know. Amory was put in place to get inside. To work with Donovan and get evidence at Bannaconni’s. When the book was taken, we couldn’t go in after it because Antosha was still alive and no one knew what condition he was in. It seemed business as usual.”

  Kris was giving up information he clearly didn’t want to give, but he was terrified of Dymka. Shots rang out. Several bullets hit the side of the house. Three hit Kris, one between the eyes and two in the throat.

  Dymka and Sevastyan both moved quickly, leaping away from the dead man and his partner. Sevastyan rolled as fast as he could toward the big leopard in hope of somehow protecting him. Mitya leapt toward Sevastyan, his large body covering his cousin’s. Two more bullets hit Dymka as the leopard lay over Sevastyan.

  Mitya immediately shifted, not wanting his leopard to suffer. The moment he did, he pushed the blazing heat of pain away, gripped his cousin and scuttled for the brush. A bullet parted his hair and nearly sliced his head open. On the heels of that reverberation came another, this time the sound coming from a different direction, followed by something heavy falling from the branches of a tree. He could hear the cracking of small branches as it fell.

  He lay there for a long moment and then rolled over to stare up at the dark sky. “Getting too old for this shit, Sevastyan,” he announced.

  “Who was on our side?” his cousin queried. “It couldn’t have been Vikenti or Zinoviy.”

  Mitya turned his head to meet Sevastyan’s eyes. “I have no fucking idea.” He didn’t.

  “You hit?”

  “Yeah, a couple of times. Not bad. Hurts like a bitch, though.”

  “Good. You deserve it. What the hell were you thinking? I’m head of security. If Vikenti and Zinoviy saw you protecting me, I’ll be the laughingstock of my security team as well as everyone else’s.”

  Mitya sent him a faint grin. “I told you not to take the position. Don’t have too many people in this world that matter to me. You do.”


  Sevastyan shook his head and turned his face up to the sky in order to hide his expression. “Feel like moving?”

  “Not on your life. Tell Vikenti to get the cleaners here again and get rid of this mess. Hope no one heard those shots and called the cops. Fortunately, we live far enough out that we don’t have too many neighbors.”

  “They were looking for a fucking notebook.”

  “I heard.”

  “You think we’re in that book?” Sevastyan turned his head back to look at his cousin.

  “There’s a good chance we all are. We’re working for Donovan to clean this mess up. We have the cops after us, our women after us and now we’re going to have every crime boss from here to hell and back after us,” Mitya said. “I think staying right here on the ground is the best place for us. In fact, when the cleaners come, let’s pretend to be dead and get a ride out of here.”

  Sevastyan laughed. “I do need some sleep. Every part of my body hurts like hell.”

  “Don’t be a whiner. I’m shot, and you don’t hear me whining.”

  “You losing a lot of blood?”

  “How should I know?” Mitya tentatively brushed his hand down along his ribs and winced when he found the wound. His fingers found a sticky mess. “It isn’t bad. Got two more, but they didn’t really do more than sting me.”

  Sevastyan made a sound of disbelief. “We gotta get up, Mitya.”

  “You go right ahead,” Mitya said. “Stand all you want.”

  The wind shifted just a bit and brought with it Vikenti’s scent and something else, something more elusive but familiar. Mitya sat up fast, his eyes narrowing. “I thought you put the entire security team on Ania,” he snapped. “Did you disobey a direct order?”

  “Only the one where you didn’t want me with you.” Sevastyan sat up as well, looking around. “Is that her?”

  “I’d know her scent anywhere.” Mitya would. There was something beautiful about the way she smelled. Soft. Like the whisper of the wind touching his face. A natural scent. She didn’t use fragrances, yet she smelled as if she did. “She’s here, which means she slipped out right under the noses of your security people.” It was an accusation.

  “They’ll hear about it,” Sevastyan promised. “Do you think she plans on shooting us?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mitya answered. His woman. She probably had the fucking sniper rifle pointed at his heart that very moment. He softened his voice. “Think of the sex you’ll be missing, kotyonok.”

  “That’s it?” Sevastyan wasn’t impressed. “That’s all you’ve got? You didn’t even say ‘good sex,’ or ‘great sex.’ When you’re negotiating for your life, you pull out all the stops.”

  “I’m shot, damn it. It isn’t easy to think when you’re in excruciating pain.”

  “Now it’s excruciating.” Sevastyan sounded sarcastic. “Which is it?”

  “Would you mind getting dressed, Sevastyan?” Ania’s voice came out of the darkness. “I’m not all that comfortable with staring at your naked body.”

  “Because I have a superior body,” Sevastyan noted to his cousin. “She can’t exactly stay true to you when she’s always comparing your body to mine.” He searched the brush, trees and landscaping for Ania but couldn’t see her.

  “She’s extraordinary,” Mitya said, meaning it. “Jewel hasn’t emerged, but she still managed to slip past the guards and help out.”

  “I didn’t just help out,” Ania said. “I saved your asses.” She strode out from behind them, the rifle pointed down, although she held it as if she knew what she was doing. She’d already demonstrated that she did know how to use it. Expertly.

  “You want to tell us what you’re doing here?” Mitya asked.

  She tossed a first aid kit onto the ground beside him, laid the rifle close to his hand and crouched down to run her hands over his body. “I was listening to the two of you go at each other earlier and it occurred to me you weren’t out to kill me, in spite of Jewel’s worries. Your leopard is an asshole, Mitya. He should be reassuring her, not trying to dominate her.”

  A groan escaped when her hand slid over the gash in his side. She let up immediately and dug her flashlight into the ground beside him, spotlighting where the bullet had clipped him. He didn’t bother to look. He’d experienced enough wounds to know it wasn’t nearly as bad as it felt.

  “Ania, you were safe with a security team around you. Why in the world would you come after us?”

  “I’m not the stay-at-home type, Mitya. You may think we’re compatible, but I wasn’t raised to stay in the kitchen, and it isn’t my dream. I heard what you both had to say and thought a lot about it. You took on a very difficult task when most wouldn’t have.”

  She looked beautiful kneeling there in the dirt beside him, her gaze sliding away from his as she absolved him of guilt. His heart beat overtime. The knots in his gut began to unravel.

  “Not that I believe Sevastyan when he says he wouldn’t have done it. You have honor, and my father saw that in you and trusted you. I should have remembered that he was always a great judge of character. I’m very sorry for my outburst. I think I had a breakdown or something, but it wasn’t right that I blamed either of you.” Her gaze dropped from Mitya’s to touch on Sevastyan. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  “No one is going to blame you for what you said or did when your father was attacked and then was dying,” Mitya said immediately, sending his cousin a quick look.

  He didn’t need to. Sevastyan had his back to Ania, zipping up his jeans. “Little sister, I only wish I could have said or done something to help you. I’m not good yet with relationships, but I’m trying to learn.”

  Her hands were on Mitya, gentle as she cleaned his wounds, but she still wasn’t really looking at him, and he needed her to. There was no doubt that she was emotionally fragile at the moment and, like Sevastyan, he didn’t have a clue about real relationships, but he wanted to learn. For her.

  He couldn’t help putting his hand in her hair, tangling his fingers in the silky strands. “I’m so sorry, Ania. Your father was a good man.”

  She nodded. “Yes, he was.” She didn’t pull away from him, and he took that as another good sign. Just the fact that she’d saved them from the sniper and hadn’t shot them herself, he figured they were lucky.

  “Was it painless?”

  There was a choking sound, and Mitya threw a helpless look at Sevastyan. He was leery of talking about Antosha’s death when she’d just had a very emotional breakdown.

  “Quick and painless, kotyonok. He deserved an honorable death and he got it. I made certain of that. His leopard was treated with all due respect.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t look up but spent a lot of time washing the wound.

  “How the hell did you follow us without us knowing?” Sevastyan demanded, changing the subject. “You didn’t shift.” He swung around to face her, his hands on his hips.

  She shrugged. “I climbed down from the roof, stole a car—”

  “Ania.” Mitya’s heart jumped. “You could have been taken or killed.”

  She rolled her eyes as she cleaned the wound and took a good look to make certain the bullet had just shaved off a great deal of skin and muscle but hit nothing vital. “Like anyone could keep up with me if they chased me. I took a little-known road that isn’t paved and is barely there, that I’ve been using since I was a kid, and came around the back of the house.”

  “That was dangerous,” Mitya said, still looking up at the sky. Little beads of sweat dotted his body, but he didn’t move away from her hands as she worked, or make another sound of distress, although he wanted to, not because of the wound but because she terrified him with her courage.

  “Not really. I knew you’d send someone to take out whoever was the guard in the back. Once I found him, I just went up to the roof a
nd waited. If you didn’t need me, I’d slip back into your house. My father taught me a lot about tactics and he said always have a backup. It just seemed like if they did that, and you were questioning a prisoner, they could have someone ready to kill them and you.”

  “I want to strangle you with my bare hands,” Mitya announced.

  “I want to kiss her,” Sevastyan said. “Thanks, Ania, you did save our lives.”

  “She did,” Mitya agreed, “but Vikenti or Zinoviy would have pulled the bastard out of the tree and killed him. Or they would have mistaken Ania for the shooter and killed her.”

  “I was never in danger,” she corrected. “I was on the roof of the house shooting over you. He was in a tree facing the house, shooting at you. I think Vik and Zen are experienced enough not to make a mistake like that.” She applied antibiotic ointment and then covered the area with gauze.

  “You’re going to be a major pain in my ass, Ania,” Mitya said. Sevastyan had the right idea, keep the line of conversation away from all the emotion and back to something they were familiar with. She could just answer him without thinking, or even feeling if need be. “You have no idea what I want to do to you right now.”

  “I can guess.” She shone her light over his body, inch by inch, searching for any other injuries. “Clearly you want to strangle me with your bare hands. Because you’re such a kinky pervert, I imagine you’d like to put me over your knee and spank my booty.”

  “There’s that,” he agreed, “and since I can’t strangle you . . .”

  She gasped and leaned forward when she saw his leg. “You are a major pain in my ass. This is far worse than the one in your side and you knew it all along.”

  “Not yet I’m not a pain in your ass, but I’m going to be,” he promised. He closed his eyes. “Right now, I’m just going to rest a little bit.”

  “Sevastyan, have Vikenti bring the car. Call the doc, tell him to go to your place before here. Tell him Mitya is losing a lot of blood and might need a transfusion.”

  Mitya smiled at her bossy tone. His woman. She didn’t think she was compatible, but she could take what they did. She’d been raised with one foot in their world. Her grandfather and father ran with the lions. They were certain to get muck all over them.