by Paige Tyler
No, his claws weren’t just extended. They had shot out more than three inches beyond his fingertips. All he could do was slowly flex his fingers and stare in amazement as the curved claws moved back and forth.
Declan was so distracted by the sight, he almost missed that the jungle around him was no longer dark. He looked up in surprise. It was still at least an hour until sunrise, and yet he could literally see for a mile through what should have been pitch-black jungle.
Then, an even bigger realization hit him. He could smell everything.
There was something dead upwind of him, near the stream about three hundred yards away. A fish of some kind. The odor was unmistakable.
Farther away—maybe a mile—a jungle cat was eating a small rodent. Declan could close his eyes and almost point to exactly where the creature—a jaguar or ocelot—was munching its late-night sack.
The more he tried, the more scents he was able to detect. His mind categorized them without much thought, but then one scent reached his nose and immediately pushed every other one out. Kendra. He looked down at the ground, and it was like he could see every step she’d taken as she moved across the slope the shelter was on. He was able to separate the stench of the hybrid’s blood from the perfume that was her own special mix of pheromones so easily he almost started laughing.
And he knew for a fact that she’d been moving on her own. There weren’t any hybrid tracks overlapping hers.
Declan stood there, unable to believe it. He had shifted further and more completely than he ever had in his life. And the answer to how he’d done it was simple. The one thing he had never let happen had happened because he’d been more terrified of losing Kendra than losing himself.
He was sprinting across the ground before he knew his feet were moving, and he was running faster than he ever had. Yet, as fast as he was moving, he had no problem following the scent trail. He knew he could have closed his eyes and the trail would have still been just as clear for him.
He slowed when he reached the place near the stream where Kendra stopped and fired her weapon. The acrid smell of burnt smokeless powder was clear and obvious. His head tracked to the left, finding the three spent 5.56 mm casings. She had stopped and turned back upstream before firing.
That was when he picked up the smell of the hybrids overlaying Kendra’s tracks. He couldn’t stop the growl that emanated from his throat. Damn it all to hell. There had been four hybrids upstream of the shelter. Kendra had run down here, then fired at them, not to kill, but to get them to follow her.
She had done it to draw them away from him, just like he’d thought.
Declan ran even faster. Kendra had risked everything for him.
He found every place she stopped to shoot at the hybrids, luring them farther and farther away from him. And with every short stop, his fear grew. She hadn’t even been trying to escape. She’d been sacrificing herself to save him. Tears burned his eyes, threatening to blind him, and he blinked hard.
Then he found the place where the chase had ended. He clearly saw and smelled the tracks of the two hybrids moving around in front of her, the other two herding her from behind. The scent of blood assaulted his nose and his heart lurched. But then he realized it wasn’t hers. It had the brackish stench of blood that could only belong to a hybrid. She’d hit one of the bastards. Not severely though. There were only a few drops on the ground. But she’d gotten one. The image brought a smile to his face, and he felt the unfamiliar tug and pull as a mouth suddenly full of fangs longer than he was used to turned upward.
His nose led him to the rock on the ground, and he picked it up. Her beautiful, feminine scent cloaked the stone. But there was a trace of hybrid odor on it. Like the rock had hit the creature just long enough to leave a hint, but not enough to cover Kendra’s scent.
The rock slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers, fresh fear gripping him. This must have been the place where the hybrids attacked and killed her. His heart began to tear open, but then stopped when he realized there wasn’t any blood—or anything else—on the ground to indicate that the hybrids had killed her.
Declan spun around, his nose not used to doing work this fine but quickly learning how.
Outside of this one spot, Kendra’s scent diminished. It wasn’t gone, but it was much fainter. He scanned the ground, searching for her tracks, but couldn’t find any. Four sets of hybrid tracks headed away from the area, though. But one set was deeper than they’d been when they’d come into the clearing. Why? Then it hit him. The hybrid had been carrying Kendra.
He followed the tracks, his head digesting what his senses were telling him. It didn’t make sense. The hybrids had attempted to subdue him with that damn needle, presumably to capture him, but they’d never seemed interested in taking Kendra alive. Back at the stream, it had appeared as if they were trying to kill her as quickly as possible.
Why take her now?
He considered and discarded several possibilities, until coming to the only one that was left. The hybrids thought he was dead and had decided they needed Kendra instead.
Declan raced faster, his mind going places he didn’t want it to go. If they wanted Kendra alive, there could be only one reason. It was insane, but it was the only thing that explained why they would bother to take her. They intended to experiment on her. The doctors who had created the hybrid drug and tortured Ivy had Kendra and meant to do the same to her.
The roar that erupted out of him startled the jungle to silence. It probably carried for miles in every direction, but Declan didn’t care. Let those hybrid assholes hear him coming. His claws flexed and he felt them extend even farther, sending stabs of pain through his hands that he relished. He felt muscles and bones moving and twisting as he ran, and he still didn’t care.
He fed the rage, let it force the shift even further until he was almost lost in it. He didn’t care if he ever found his way back to his human half again. He was going to find Kendra, and when he did, every hybrid that had even thought of touching her was going to know fear like they had never felt in their miserable fucking lives—right up until the moment he killed them.
***
“You still never said who you work for, Kendra,” Harry reminded her. “Or how you happen to know so much about these hybrids?”
Kendra winced. She and the three doctors had been talking for more than an hour, during which time she’d been careful not to divulge too much critical information about herself or the DCO, instead keeping the conversation focused on them the whole time. But Harry and the other men weren’t stupid. They’d already figured out that she’d dealt with hybrids before. If she wasn’t careful, they’d end up learning more from her than she did from them.
That probably wasn’t very likely, since she’d already learned enough to worry the hell out of her.
She gave them what she hoped was a disarming smile. “Hybrids—that’s just a name I made up. And I really don’t know that much about them at all.”
Harry didn’t look like he believed her, but at least he didn’t call her out on the fact that she hadn’t really answered either of his questions. That was good. Between worrying about what might be happening to Declan and trying to digest everything she’d learned in the last hour, she was too tired to expend any energy soothing Harry and his colleagues.
Her initial assumptions that this was another temporary research operation set up by Stutmeir’s former doctors had turned out to be completely wrong. Not only was this facility far from temporary—Harry and his colleagues had been working here for more than six weeks—but they claimed they’d never heard of the doctors who’d tortured Ivy out in Washington.
Based on everything Harry, Lester, and Albert had told her, she’d come to a pretty wild conclusion—the people who’d created this latest hybrid pack were completely separate from those who had created the Washington State pack. Worse, she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that the genesis for this latest hybrid process wasn’t Stutmeir’s work
at all. It was the DCO’s.
Harry and the other doctors, as well as everyone else who’d worked there, had been hired to come to Costa Rica and work on what they thought was a top secret Department of Defense genetics program designed to enhance soldier performance through the use of cutting-edge DNA manipulation techniques. It wasn’t until they were given the boxes and boxes of background research that they realized the cutting-edge techniques involved the use of animal DNA. And the way Harry described the research information made it sound exactly like the technical reports the DCO had put together after the raid in Washington State. Even the color-coding on the edge of each report matched the way the DCO tracked intel sources. Even though the doctors and scientists had been shocked at the direction they were expected to take their research, none of them had complained, until things started getting too real.
“So when did everything go wrong?” she asked, still pondering exactly who in the DCO had betrayed them. The thought that Zarina had a spy on her team who was selling hybrid information was almost as scary as the hybrids themselves.
“About four weeks ago,” Harry said. “When we were ordered to transition to human trials.”
“No one ever said there would be any human trials,” Lester interjected. The way he said it made Kendra think he felt the need to defend himself to her. “We were told that our work was completely developmental. It wasn’t ever supposed to be used on humans.”
Harry nodded in agreement. “Everyone thought that. Then we realized they weren’t kidding, and that they weren’t going to give us a say in the matter. The head of our research team, Dr. Mahsood, dismissed all of our concerns and ordered us to start administering our first batch of serum before it had even cooled. I have no idea why they suddenly started pushing so hard.”
Had the DCO team’s scheduled arrival for the training exercise accelerated their timetable to get the hybrids out of the lab and into the field?
“And that’s where the camp’s security force came into it, right?” she prompted.
This was the part of the story they’d gotten to when Harry had started pressing her about why she was asking so many question.
“They asked for volunteers and started with the guards. But it wasn’t long before they were testing on the rest of the support staff,” Albert explained. “It wasn’t like we had a lot of options.”
Kendra didn’t bother to mention Stutmeir’s preferred method of finding candidates to turn into hybrids—kidnapping homeless veterans.
“Marcus was the first in line,” Harry added. “I have to hand it to him. I thought he was a bully and a thug from the moment I met him, but he wasn’t going to expose his men to a risk he wasn’t willing to face himself.”
Or he simply decided that if anyone was going to get turned into a super soldier, he was going to be the first in line. A big alpha male like Marcus probably thought he couldn’t be in charge if he wasn’t the biggest dog on the block. But Kendra didn’t point that out.
Kendra hated to keep asking questions, but she needed information if she ever hoped to get out of this place. She had no idea why she’d been thrown into this room, but sooner or later, someone would come looking for answers from her. She had to have a plan by then.
“It went well in the beginning,” Harry said suddenly. “Marcus and the other four volunteers went into…well I guess you would call it their hybrid state within an hour of the first treatment. The increase in strength, speed, and endurance was immediate and obvious. Improvements in vision both day and night, as well as the complete loss of pain receptivity, came later.”
“Mahsood, and whoever he was communicating with back in the States, were ecstatic, and asked for additional volunteers,” Lester added. “We wanted them to wait until we did some baseline testing and looked for long-term issues, but they wouldn’t listen. That’s when they started injecting the rest of the support staff. Mechanics, lab techs, medics…anyone they didn’t think were essential to the test trials.”
“Then someone started pushing for a field test to evaluate what we’d accomplished, and that’s when we lost complete control of the project,” Harry continued. “Marcus took over and before we knew it, they were going out armed to the teeth, taking most of the guards who hadn’t been through the process with them.”
“We found out later they attacked some military types out in the jungle on an exercise,” Albert said. “You and your friend, apparently.”
Kendra was about to ask what had happened to Dr. Mahsood when the door slammed back against the wall. Two hybrids strode in, looking bored and hungry. They flexed their claws as they focused on her, and it was hard not to cringe.
“Come with us,” one of them said. While he was the less animalistic of the two, she could still barely understand him.
She wanted to fight them but knew it wouldn’t do any good and might end up getting her killed. They seemed to want her alive, and she wanted to stay that way. But when she stood up to go with them, Harry and the other men jumped to their feet faster than she would have thought them capable of and moved to stand in front of her.
“You’re not taking her anywhere,” Harry said firmly.
The hybrids tensed, their claws flexing again, their eyes glowing a darker red. These two were seriously on edge and seconds away from ripping the old men apart. Knowing she couldn’t let that happen, she shouldered her way past the doctors and stopped in front of the hybrids.
“It’s okay, Harry,” she said. “I’ll go with them.”
The hybrids almost looked disappointed that they wouldn’t have a reason to beat the doctors into submission.
Harry caught her arm. “You don’t have to go with them.”
She gave him a small smile. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
Kendra hoped she sounded more convinced than she felt. Turning, she followed the first hybrid out the door. The other one fell into step behind her as if she was some dangerous spy who might try to escape. If she thought there was even the slightest chance she could get away, she would.
They led her across an open space between the various other buildings that made up the research facility. The rising sun hadn’t quite crested the ridgeline yet, so she couldn’t make out much, but she saw enough to realize the place hadn’t been built recently. In fact, some of the buildings looked as if they’d been here for a few years. Maybe it had been some kind of conservation center or something.
Even though escaping was probably going to be impossible, that didn’t stop her from surveying her surroundings anyway. The wire fencing encircling the camp didn’t bother her as much as the hybrids patrolling the perimeter. Getting past them would be difficult, even if she could somehow ditch her two guards.
But the hybrid in the lead was already walking up the steps to a building. He opened the door, then moved back and ushered her inside.
Kendra hesitated. It was almost completely dark in the building, except for the dim light coming from a small lamp on the table. At least she thought it was a table.
The hybrid gave her a shove that sent her stumbling into the room. She tensed, expecting something to pounce on her and rip her to shreds. But nothing tackled her and threw her to the floor. That should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t.
She looked around warily. There was a large conference table in the center of the room, with half a dozen chairs around it. Along the back wall was a counter with a coffeepot and a microwave, as well as a small fridge. The tableau seemed out of place in the jungle camp.
Despite the everyday office vibe the coffeepot and microwave gave the room, there was an eerie quality to the place that had her checking every dark corner and shadowed crevice, trying to see who was in it with her.
That’s how she found the second-in-command slouched over in one of those big conference room chairs, dead. There was dried blood all over its uniform shirt and down around the top of its pants. He must have bled out while sitting here, and no one had done anything to help. She glanc
ed over her shoulder, but the hybrids who’d escorted her had already left and closed the door. Damn, these monsters were cold. It was like they didn’t care whether anyone lived or died, even one of their own.
“Have a seat.”
Kendra jumped at the deep, guttural voice coming from the other side of the room. She didn’t need to see him to know it belonged to the camp’s former head of security, Marcus Roman. She didn’t think she’d ever forget the sound of it as long as she lived. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen someone his size in a room this small.
But then a chair on the other side of the table slowly spun around and the hulking hybrid materialized out of the darkness. Even sitting there awkwardly holding a glass of whiskey in his clawed hand, he was an imposing figure, and she had to force herself not to take a step back. She’d almost forgotten how scary looking he was.
He gestured to her side of the table. “You can take any seat—except for the occupied one of course.”
She walked as far away from the dead body as she could and sat down across from Marcus.
He studied her with his glowing red eyes. She expected him to say something about the man she had killed, but it was like he didn’t even know the body was there. “I never knew what they meant when they said an animal can smell fear. But I could smell yours the minute the men brought you into camp.”
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to that, so she didn’t say anything.
His eyes flashed a darker shade of red as he chuckled. She guessed it was a chuckle—with all those teeth, it was difficult to tell.
“You proved so hard to catch, I thought you’d be bigger.”
He said the words so casually, she almost laughed. She’d expected him to say something more along the lines of, “Talk or I’ll rip off your fingers.”
But just because he hadn’t threatened her yet, that didn’t mean she wasn’t in danger. This monster wanted something from her, or he would have ordered one of the lower-ranking hybrids to kill her already. Sooner or later, this conversation would get around to Declan or some other topic she didn’t want to talk about. No doubt, his nonthreatening tone would change then.
