A radio crackled. The sound was crisp, clear, like a gunshot. The man who had first passed around the photo slapped his hand to a pouch at his belt and removed a small black unit that fit in the palm of his hand. He announced himself.
The voice on the other end spoke French. Amiri heard a clicking sound.
“Trouvé elle?” You found her?
“Non,” answered the man, sharing a long look with his companions, some of whom shifted uncomfortably, even with fear.
“You have by sunset,” came the swift reply, still in French, cold and sharp as nails left in a freezer full of clipboards and Rolexes and bloody pens. “I want her alive. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” The man waited for a response, but none came. Finally, with some hesitation, he slid the radio back into its pouch. Said some words in Bantu. The others nodded, but Amiri could taste the change in their scents. Fear. Anticipation. Adrenaline beginning to boil.
One of the men stretched, scratched his ribs, and ambled away from the group. Amiri followed, slinking low to the ground. He watched as the soldier found a spot out of sight from the others, tugged down his pants and squatted, plucking at the leaves around him.
Amiri came up from behind. Fast. Silent. He clamped his jaws around the man’s neck, snapped his vertebrae. Crushed his windpipe. Tore out his throat.
The blood was hot. The cheetah liked the taste, but Amiri asserted control. He dragged the man deeper into the bushes, and shifted shape, just enough to regain use of his hands.
He stole a grenade. Prowled back through the brush, keeping low. Listening hard.
He pulled the pin, waited two seconds … and threw. No one had time to react. The explosion was horrifically loud. Monkeys screamed, hopping in the trees. Amiri shifted fully into the body of the cheetah. Smoke burned his nostrils, as did the scent of blood and viscera.
He crept into the crater left by the explosion. Five men were dead. Four were alive, but wounded. Those who lived, did so barely. Blood leaked from their ears, from blast wounds and burns. Eyes fluttered shut. There was no way to save them.
Amiri put them out of their misery. Not one had the strength to reach for a gun as he clamped his jaws over their throats and choked them to death. Clean, quick, painless. He felt some regret. His father would not have—a true cheetah, after all, did not know guilt—but human weapons were an unclean way to end a life, and none of these men had been given a fighting chance.
He kept the healthiest for last. The man was conscious, eyes open, breathing shallow. Little blood, but his body was limp. Paralyzed, perhaps.
Amiri crouched over him and shifted shape. He felt naked doing so—vulnerable—but the man would be dead soon. Amiri could only imagine the sight he made: a demon, some sorcerous apparition. He did not shift entirely into his human body, but instead kept the face of the cheetah, as much as he could.
When his vocal cords were restored, he dredged up what little French he remembered and rasped, “Why are you hunting the woman?”
The man’s breath rattled. He squeezed shut his eyes, shaking his head. The scent of fear rolled off him in waves, and was so wet, so vile and purulent, Amiri wanted to gag. He wanted to run. He wanted to forget that woman who long ago had looked at him the same way, with the same scent, and called him monster. Monster.
For Rikki. For Eddie. Be the monster. Spare them the sacrifice of fighting for their lives.
Amiri repeated his question. Hard heart, hard voice. Thinking of Rikki, shaking in his arms. Those men, pointing a gun at her, talking soft as death. Eddie’s old eyes. One thousand dead. He held up his clawed hand—black hooks curving wickedly from long furred fingers—and pressed them against the man’s cheek.
“Tell me,” Amiri whispered. “Tell me or I will make this slow.”
“Paid,” he mumbled, finally, coughing up blood. “We were paid to find the woman.”
Amiri recalled the man with the Rolex, as well as the suited figure walking from the burning airfield. Waving at him, so casually. He remembered, too, the photographs.
“Why? Why her?”
“No. I cannot.”
“Why?”
But he shook his head, terror sweating off his body. Amiri leaned in, trying to take advantage of that fear, but the man looked past him, gaze distant, and he realized that the horror he saw was not entirely for him.
“Tell me,” Amiri rasped, hearing a clicking sound inside his mind as he read the man’s fear.
“My family,” gasped the man.
“Tell me about the woman.”
“He will hurt my family.”
“Why Doctor Kinn?”
But the man’s eyes rolled up into his skull—he was choking, seizing up—and all Amiri felt was a deep low shame that did not weaken his resolve, but only made him hurt long and hard.
“More,” he begged quietly. “Please tell me more.”
But the man did not. Blood trickled from his mouth. His eyes closed. Amiri shifted back into the cheetah. The beast was ready, willing. He used his jaws, ended it quick.
He felt no satisfaction. Ten minutes, ten dead. Amiri slumped on his side, head bowed. Fur sticky. Smoke curled all around him. Some of the plants still burned, though the forest was too damp for the fire to spread. It was a smoke signal, though. More people would be coming. Amiri forced himself up, still in the body of the cheetah, and went to each of the dead men, scenting packs for food, water—searching for that radio. He found it, but the casing had shattered.
A breath of air stirred the ruff of his neck. In the dull burning silence, Amiri sensed movement, a whisper. He turned. Ready to fight.
And found an unpleasant, inexplicable, surprise.
A familiar man. Tall. Light brown skin. Brilliant green eyes. Tight black shirt and loose cargo pants. No shoes.
Time gentled nothing. Memories rose and died; soft, spitting, brutal in their simplicity. Amiri looked at the man’s hands—those monstrously strong hands—and felt them still, holding him down upon a cold steel table. Strapping him in while the doctor cut and prodded. That pitiless gaze, cool as cut stone. That body, bearing the wounds of Amiri’s claws as though his flesh were made of air.
Amiri shifted, bones and muscles flowing warm into the shape of a man. No fear, no hesitation. No secrets with this man. He stood naked in the carnage, waiting and watching and staring into those unflinching green eyes.
It had been two years since he had seen this man. Not since the lab, Russia, the escape. So many memories, so many different people affected by that place. And by those who had imprisoned them there.
Now this. He could not imagine why. Why here, now.
“Rictor,” Amiri said. The name tasted hard and old inside his mouth. He received no response. Not that he expected one. This creature was not made for words.
Rictor stepped sideways around a smoking corpse, and walked a slow circuitous path along the smoldering ring of the explosion; easy, graceful. He did not look once at the dead, nor did he seem to care that he moved barefoot through a bloody graveyard. His gaze remained on Amiri. “Long time,” he said finally.
“Long enough.” Amiri’s claws threatened to push through the tips of his fingers. “You have been watching us.”
“You hardly noticed.”
“I was distracted.”
“Yes. I saw that. Very sloppy.”
Amiri tasted blood in his mouth. “Lectures?”
“I haven’t done that in a hundred years,” Rictor said. “No. I’m here for another reason.”
“That does not provide me with the slightest comfort.”
“No trust?”
“Do you?”
Rictor’s smile was sour. “Only one. Me.”
“And yet.”
“Here I am.” Rictor’s eyes glowed briefly, and he glanced down at the dead. “Looking for prey and finding a hunter, instead.”
Amiri’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you here?”
“Obviously, to stare at naked men in the middle of
the jungle. I have nothing better to do with my time.”
“Rictor.”
“Shape-shifters should really find a way to travel with clothes, you know.” He ripped away a wide leafy frond from a low-lying tree and tossed it toward Amiri. “Here. Pretend it’s a fig leaf. We’ll go find your Eve.”
Amiri batted away the leaf. “Answer my question.”
“You’re burning my eyes.”
“Then close them.”
Rictor shook his head and looked away. “Elena.”
One name: all the explanation Amiri needed. Rictor’s presence suddenly made sense. Mostly. “Elena asked you find me?”
His smile turned bitter, self-mocking. “She didn’t need to.”
Amiri regarded the man carefully. Elena was married to an agent of Dirk & Steele, and like her husband, Artur, she had … a gift. Her gift of healing had made her a target. All of them, even Rictor, had been held captive. Experimented upon, tortured, forced to endure impossible indignities. That was their bond. Strangers, working together to escape.
Rictor had been held the longest. Bound as a slave, compelled to obey every whim and command of his masters and mistresses, even those that hurt others. Not that such explanations made anything easier for Amiri. Rictor was a force to be reckoned with: incredibly powerful, human only in appearance—and perhaps not even that. Dangerous, unpredictable; sentimental about nothing. Except Elena.
Cold humor flashed over Rictor’s face. “My kryptonite.”
Amiri sighed. Smoke burned his nostrils, as did the smell of death. He wanted to leave this place. Rikki was waiting. He missed her face, her scent. Let Rictor read his mind about that, as well. He did not care.
“You should,” said the man. “She’s trouble. You’re in trouble, for helping her.”
“Apparently so,” Amiri replied, and gestured lightly at the carnage seeping into the ground beneath him. “Are you here to help me with that trouble?” In any way, help me. Please. For this woman.
Rictor said nothing. Amiri nodded, not entirely surprised—not entirely without anger, either—and walked past him into the jungle. Arguments would gain him nothing. As Elena was fond of saying, Rictor is as Rictor does, and it was nothing more or less than that.
But Amiri glanced over his shoulder, anyway. Just in case.
Rictor was gone. Not even a scent to mark his presence. He might as well have been a ghost, some figment of the imagination. Which, in all honesty, was as good a description as any. Rictor guarded his secrets more fiercely even than Amiri.
Riddles and mysteries, he thought, and felt his muscles turn liquid, warm. He shifted into the cheetah, settling into his second skin with a relief that felt like coming home.
He did not follow the same path back to Rikki and Eddie. He wanted to—it was direct, fast—but he forced himself to circle back along the trail the soldiers had used, and then snake out from that, weaving silently through the jungle. He smelled the faint wet musk of elephants, padded through the territory markings of leopards, and just when he thought his instincts were being overly cautious, he stumbled upon the traces of men.
The footprints were hours old, and several miles from where he had found the first group. Downwind, they smelled of death, of fire and ash and blood; the scents of the dead, of the refugee camp, were cloaks of shadow. Westward bearing, as well, the men followed a parallel path to where Amiri had left Rikki and Eddie. Careful movements, with little destruction left in their wake. These men were silent. Quick. Professional.
And they were hunting.
Chapter Eight
Rikki realized something was wrong several hours after Amiri left them. It had nothing to do with the harrowing run she and Eddie set themselves to, a flat throw-down with the jungle that left her breathless and bruised and quaking from exhaustion. Nor did it have anything to do with the fact that her nerves were rawer than a three-day-old slab of meat. No roadkill for brains, either, no matter how tired she was.
Instead, Eddie began to cough.
They were taking a brief rest, sitting on a pile of old dead leaves, sheltered and hidden by the claustrophobic clamoring undergrowth of brush and saplings and thorny vines. There was hardly room for people, and if they had been carrying anything more than the clothes on their backs, Rikki felt quite certain it would have taken a machete to make room for them both, even on the ground.
Eddie held sticks. He broke them, bent them, twisted their pliable forms into pretzels and knots. Quick hands, nimble fingers—though faint scars surrounded his thumbs and wrists. Burn marks, maybe. Small, round—like cigarettes had been put out on his body.
“You remind me of my brother,” she told him, which she did not mean to say, though it slipped so easily free she did not regret the words, afterward.
Eddie smiled. “In what way?”
“Your appearance.” Rikki pointed at the sticks in his hands. “The things you do.”
“Keeping busy,” he replied. “Where is he now?”
“Dead,” Rikki said, without preamble or hesitation. No good ever came of either when saying that word.
To Eddie’s credit, he made no gestures of solicitude, no sympathetic apologies. He blinked once, nodded slowly, and said, “How long did you know him?”
It was the first time anyone had ever asked that question. Rikki had to take a moment. “He was seven. I knew him seven years. I was nine when he died.”
He looked at his hands, the burn marks. “And then?”
“My mother left.” Rikki also looked at his hands. “Who did that to you?”
“Someone who left,” Eddie replied, and gave her a faint smile. “Funny how that works.”
Rikki fingered the edge of her shirt. “Yes, I know.”
Eddie’s smile faded. “Someone hurt you.”
Her hand stilled. “What makes you say that?”
“I can tell. Takes one to know one.”
She forced herself to breathe. “You’re something else, kid. You should be in college, chasing girls and making fun of frat boys. What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Taking care of you,” he said—so easily, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to care for strange women.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t need help. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Depends,” Rikki said. “You’re an idealist.”
“Idealists are wishful thinkers,” he replied, with surprising sternness. “I deal in reality. Besides, there’s nothing ideal about being in trouble and not having anyone to watch your back.”
“You’re speaking from a point of luxury. You have friends.”
“So do you.”
“No,” she said, unable to shut her mouth. “I don’t have anyone like that.” Except, perhaps, Bakker and Jean-Claude—but Rikki had done her best to keep them at a distance, and where were they now? Far away, and in a hospital. Bakker was hurt because of her.
Eddie’s mouth settled into a crooked line. Rikki wanted to run from him, insult him, do anything but have herself laid out for him, but she stayed still, letting the young man study her.
“Well,” he said finally, slowly, “Amiri and I are here now.”
“Here,” she echoed. She did not understand, could not interpret. His gaze said one thing—many things—but she was too practical, too afraid to accept the possibility he might actually intend something more than some naive kindness. “You’re here, yes. But only because it’s a job. Because you have to be. I don’t appreciate it any less, but that’s … that’s not friendship.”
Eddie gave her an inscrutable look, then turned away, focusing on the slender twigs in his hands. In a voice so quiet she hardly heard him, he said, “We don’t trust you either, you know.”
It took her off guard. Hurt her, too, though she deserved it. “I wouldn’t expect you to trust me. We’re strangers.”
“Maybe.” He did not sound convinced, which also surprised h
er. “But it makes things … difficult. You know?”
“Well … yes,” she said slowly, not quite certain what he was getting at, but having her own sense that it was, indeed, a sticking point for all of them. Trust, it seemed, was a commodity they all valued—apparently to the point of distraction.
Eddie held out a twisty riddle of twigs: a bouquet of leaves and slips of wood. Rikki took it from him, twirling it between her fingers, and he said, “You thirsty?” The kid was all over the place.
“Yeah. You?”
He nodded and flashed her a weak smile. “I just wanted someone to complain with.”
“Go for it.” Rikki stretched out, closing her eyes. She tried not to think about their conversation, the isolation of it. No friends. She had no real friends, none that she had allowed herself—and not just in the last two years, but since her father and Markovic. Sooner or later, she always drove her acquaintances away—or lost them to death—and the absurdity of that, the tragedy, hit her hard.
You trust no one, she told herself, curling onto her side. You’re afraid of everyone. Afraid of losing pieces of her heart. Afraid of judging wrong. Afraid of betrayal.
Afraid of being seen. Her hand rested against her stomach. Beneath the flimsy cotton shirt she could feel the ridges of deep scars that crisscrossed her ribs. She did not search out the rest; she knew where they all were. She remembered each cut that had made them.
And she was still here. Two years later. Still alive, still working, still living. Better than going back to Atlanta, where Larry had promised her a cushy spot in his office and lab. Better than running and hiding. She could do that here, in plain sight, and still pretend she was her old self.
But change always comes, she heard Markovic whisper. Always, change. And be grateful, too … for when it stops, you are dead.
A person can die from too much change, she wanted to tell him, but had the old man been alive, it would have fallen on deaf ears. No whining was allowed. Eyes on the future. Adaptability, survival, determination: this was the golden triangle, the roots of a long life. Champions could not be weak. And neither could orphaned little girls.
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