Another animal lives in this verdant paradise of jeweled leaves and pristine sky, of towering trees wreathed in mist and the constant musical chatter of the birds that inhabit them. Like many of the animals of the rainforest, this one is a predator.
A predator with that most important of animal survival skills: camouflage.
A muscular, four-legged killing machine with a coat so glossy black it shone midnight blue, and eyesight so sharp it could cut through the dense forest gloom like a scythe, Hawk carried the thumb-size memory card from Jack’s camera carefully in his mouth, in a small pouch he’d made from a folded plastic baggie and a few pieces of tape. This part of the rainforest wasn’t accessible by foot—human feet, to be precise—and the going was slow. Over the tangled gnarl of buttress roots and the mossed bulk of fallen trunks, around dark pools of standing water and the swift, snaking fingers of murmuring streams, he made his way primarily using his sense of smell. Though he knew the jungle where he’d been born and raised almost by rote, he took a different path home every time he returned from the city, and it was his nose that led the way.
It wouldn’t be long now. The scent of a large group of carnivores told him he was close.
A cry from high above pierced the late afternoon humidity of the forest, and Hawk paused in mid stride, lifting his gaze to the sky, visible through a small break in the towering canopy. In the uppermost layer of the rainforest known as the emergent, a harpy eagle soared briefly into view. Falling still, Hawk closed his eyes and concentrated.
As abruptly as he’d frozen, he was flying. Seeing through another pair of eyes, breathing through another set of lungs, his body left behind in suspended animation on the forest floor.
He felt a lurch in his stomach as his mind adjusted, then the familiar sensation of wind on his face, streaming warm through his tail feathers.
He made a slow, looping turn, scanning the emergent for signs of anything amiss. Glistening green treetops carpeted the landscape for miles, interrupted only by the serpentine black channel of the Rio Negro far to the west, the river he’d traveled up in a rented boat from Manaus before he’d abandoned it and continued on foot deeper into the forest. He spotted the sheared tip of the giant kapok tree that marked the edge of his colony, and pumped his outstretched wings twice, turning his beak to the wind and letting an updraft of heated air lift and cradle him as he crested the rise of a hill. Riding the wind for a moment, he luxuriated in the freedom, delaying for one last, lovely moment the inevitable return to “real” life.
Then with a simple exhalation, he released the eagle and came rushing back into himself, still standing motionless on the forest floor.
Hanging upside down from a nearby branch by his tail, his wise old-man face scrunched up in concentration, an adult male howler monkey was staring at him in curiosity.
Hawk snarled an unmistakable warning, and the monkey went screaming away into the trees. He flattened his ears against his head in a vain effort to soften the piercing shrieks; the primates were named “howlers” for good reason.
He headed off once again, trotting with easy agility over the tangled, thorny floor of the forest.
“Ah, the lone wolf returns,” said the Alpha Alejandro with an unconcealed sneer. He lifted an overfull wineglass in contemptuous salute as Hawk entered the Assembly gathering place.
Cold and sharp as an icicle, a spike of hatred stabbed through Hawk’s heart.
Cocktail hour already, you degenerate?
Aloud, he said mildly, “Yup,” and gave the shortest, stiffest bow that protocol allowed. This amounted to not much more than a jerk of his head.
Eyes narrowed, lips thinned, his expression as sour as if he held a fresh pile of tapir dung in his mouth, Alejandro stared at Hawk from his opulent chair on a raised dais. Tall, lean, and acutely self-conscious, he was the only unmated Alpha in the colonies and also unfortunately happened to be Hawk’s younger brother.
Half brother. Same father, different mothers, entirely different life.
On the large wooden platform constructed between the confluence of four massive trees, Hawk stood before the Alpha’s throne, his hands loose at his sides, chest back, chin held high. Though in many ways rustic, the Assembly room was also suffused with understated luxury. A hand-carved sideboard of burlwood held crystal decanters of spirits, colorful silk pillows were strewn in artful disarray on white linen divans. Hammered brass vases overflowed with masses of fuchsia orchids and yellow bromeliads, sticks of burning incense scented the air with coriander and orange blossom. In the branches high above hung ironwork lanterns at varying heights that threw fractured prisms of light, and thick swaths of purple fabric, the color of royalty, were draped and gathered to create a ceiling and four permeable walls. The fabric drifted down in gossamer waves that lifted and fluttered in the late afternoon breeze, teasing the floor, casting the platform into restless amethyst shadows.
It was a space fit for a jungle king to meet his council.
Hawk waited with the usual burning, gut-deep anger at being forced to wait for a command, like a puppy awaiting a treat, before he could speak.
Fucking hierarchy. Fucking etiquette. Bloody fucking hell.
Though he never cursed aloud, some days his mind rebelled.
Some days it was all he could do not to tear his hair out and scream.
After passing the security detail that patrolled the perimeter of the colony in a slinking, silent line, Hawk had Shifted back to human form and ascended the rope that hung from the underside of his home, a bi-level wood bungalow with a thatched roof and a shaded patio that encircled the second floor. Set high into the spreading branches of a seven-hundred-year-old kapok tree, it was accessible only by the one rope. Most of the other bungalows in the colony were linked by suspended bridges or zip lines through the dense network of trees, but Hawk liked to be a little more separate than that.
In fact, if he had his own way, he’d live by himself in the caves hidden behind the waterfall.
The only reason he didn’t just Shift to Vapor, rise in a shimmering plume from the forest floor, and slip in over the wooden porch railing was because he still had the memory card in his mouth, and he could carry nothing as Vapor. A fact that had proven inconvenient on many occasions.
No sooner had he dressed than a runner was whistling from the ground below, with a summons from the Alpha, who’d obviously been notified the moment Hawk had returned, and was wasting no time in getting an update on the mission. A mission the Alpha himself had devised.
In a characteristic show of defiance, Hawk didn’t bring the memory card with him when he went to the Assembly room. He hid it in a place even the most dedicated of the Alpha’s minions wouldn’t look: under the rim of the toilet bowl.
“Well, go on then,” Alejandro drawled. “Tell me what happened.”
This line was delivered with cool derision, as if Hawk were the village idiot coming in front of the king to bleat about his lost goat. Fury advanced up his spinal column like an army of hungry fire ants.
“It went according to plan.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded strained. He willed himself to relax as his hands itched to curl into fighting fists.
“Of course it did,” said Xander in a conciliatory tone.
Along with the twenty other members of the Assembly, Hawk’s other half brother sat beside his wife at the curved tables that flanked both sides of the Alpha’s dais. Xander and Morgan shared a look, and Morgan—even in human form, the sleekest, most feral woman of the entire tribe—leaned forward to speak.
“Well done.” She held his gaze with a look that said, Don’t let him get under your skin. Don’t let him win.
Of all the colony members, Hawk and Morgan were the ones who chafed most tightly against the cloistered restrictions of their existence. In spite of the fact that she’d turned the colony’s most efficient and feared killer to putty in h
er lovely hands, Hawk had a grudging respect for Morgan’s spirit. She was a rebel. She was a fighter. Like him.
Like Jacqueline Dolan.
That thought startled him so much he didn’t bother to take offense when Alejandro snapped, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves with the praise, Morgan. I’d like to hear the details before I’m satisfied.”
“The details?” Hawk repeated, still musing about his unexpected revelation. He pictured Jacqueline Dolan in his mind’s eye, stretched out beneath him on the hotel bed, wearing nothing but a Cheshire Cat smile. He’d had dozens—hundreds?—of other women, and felt nothing for any of them.
So why did that image send such a rush of warmth through his veins?
“Well, let’s see. About five eight, a hundred and thirty pounds, hair the color of a sunset, skin like fresh churned cream—”
“How poetic,” Alejandro interrupted acidly. He leaned forward, wineglass in hand, eyes burning. “But I’m not interested in hearing about her looks—”
“Oh, you’d like the sordid details, then. Well, she’s a screamer, I can tell you that—”
“Enough!” Alejandro slammed the wineglass down on the arm of his opulent chair with such force the stem shattered and fell tinkling to the polished wood floor. His face had turned the same color as the wine that was now splashed across his white linen trousers.
The room fell silent. The air went static. Morgan was trying desperately to keep a straight face.
“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” Hawk inquired with faux, blinking innocence, and someone on the Assembly actually had the nerve to snicker.
Alejandro was universally disliked. Though he was Alpha by grant of his Bloodline, and he was Gifted with Vapor, which only the most powerful were, Alejandro had failed to earn the respect that was due his position. Not only had he proved himself to be a narcissist, a hedonist, and a debauched gambler who often visited the city for the express purposes of whoring and frittering away his inheritance, he was not the eldest son.
In fact, Xander was the eldest son of the former Alpha. But Xander, like Hawk, hated politics. He’d refused the opportunity to ascend to his father’s position. He’d only recently—begrudgingly—consented to join the Assembly at his wife’s insistent behest. So Alejandro sat in the Alpha’s chair instead of Xander, and the entire colony suffered for it.
As for Hawk, he was the product of the former Alpha’s unfortunate liaison with an unmated young girl during a brief period between his marriages to the two wives who produced Hawk’s half brothers. Hawk had royal Blood, but was the only illegitimate child the tribe had seen in generations. To the tribe, he was Salsu Maru, the Least Son.
The Bastard.
An object of equal parts desire—females seemed to love his air of brooding rebelliousness—and derision, Hawk was an outsider among his own people. He never had, and he never would, belong.
A fact which Alejandro took every opportunity to remind him.
“Where are the pictures?” Alejandro slowly enunciated each word, staring at Hawk as if he wished to drive a stake through his heart. Which he undoubtedly did—the vain hate being mocked.
Before he could answer, Morgan interjected, “I was actually thinking we might go in another direction with those pictures.”
Alejandro stared at her with a look that would have made a serial killer quake, but she simply amended it politely, without an ounce of fear, “With your permission, My Lord, of course.”
Alejandro might have missed the faint laughter in her voice, but Hawk didn’t.
What’s she up to?
“May I speak, Sire?”
She rose, leaning forward so a profusion of ample, creamy cleavage pressed in open invitation against the low neckline of her blouse. Most members of the colony wore as little as possible when in human form to circumvent the clinging jungle heat, but Morgan had a clothes fetish. Her wardrobe choices were made independent of the weather. When she’d first come to live in the jungle with Xander, she’d mourned the shoe collection she’d left behind in her far more sophisticated colony in England like a child mourns a pet run over by the neighbor’s car.
Foolish fetishes aside, the woman had a body made to be showcased in designer clothes.
Alejandro’s gaze flickered to the irresistible siren’s call of the top swell of Morgan’s breasts. Beside her, Xander stiffened in anger.
Women had to use every weapon available to them, and Morgan was a veritable arsenal of sex appeal. “Sire” this and “My Lord” that and a cruise missile of va-va-voom aimed straight in Alejandro’s direction—whatever she had in mind, the Alpha didn’t stand a chance.
Hawk felt no pity for Xander, sitting red-faced and livid beside her. Allow yourself to fall for a bombshell like her, make her your wife, what did you expect? Your life would get easier?
Still staring at her breasts, Alejandro gave Morgan permission to speak with an imperious wave of his hand.
“Thank you, My Lord.” She inclined her head and dipped an elegant curtsy in a show of deference that visibly mollified the flustered Alpha. He sat back into his overstuffed chair with a sniff, snapping his fingers for more wine. A young attendant leapt to his side, removed the broken glass from between his stiff fingers, and replaced it with another, already full.
“As we all know, this reporter has caused us irreparable damage. Things were bad before, with the murders of the twenty-six politicians and religious leaders on Easter that Caesar coordinated, but they got even worse after she wrote that article and rallied humans behind her agenda of hate.”
Murmurs of assent swirled around the room. Looking at Alejandro, but including the entire Assembly, Morgan continued.
“It occurred to me that, although your plan for revenge was excellent—as always, Sire—perhaps we might take it one step further. Perhaps we might look at it in a larger context, one that would benefit us beyond just ruining her career and reputation.”
She paused, and the room held a collective breath.
This was a dangerous thing she attempted. The line she walked was paper thin. If the Alpha decided her tone or expression or even her posture weren’t to his liking, if he detected even a hint of disrespect, it would be within his rights to punish her in any way he saw fit.
Including stringing her up to a tree and leaving her there until her corpse was picked clean by the birds.
It had been dangerous for him, too, but he honestly didn’t care. Irritating Alejandro was the closest thing to fun Hawk ever had. He suffered canings on nearly a weekly basis, but he was a quick healer, and thought it a small price to pay for what little amusement he had available.
But for a female to challenge the Alpha, it was more than dangerous. It was downright crazy.
It was suicide.
Jesus. The balls on this broad. He glanced at Xander, wondering how on Earth he handled a firecracker like that. Xander looked as if he were wondering the exact same thing.
Slowly, Alejandro’s brows lifted. Clearly relishing his power to hold them in thrall, he let them all stew in uncertainty for a moment until giving her permission to continue with the barest grudging nod.
Morgan said simply, “Blackmail.”
“She has nothing we want,” the Alpha countered.
“Forgive me, Sire, but she most certainly does,” Morgan demurred with a shake of her head that sent her glossy dark hair swinging around her shoulders.
“Which is?” Alejandro drawled. Staring down Morgan’s shirt, he moistened his lips.
“Influence.”
Hawk understood her immediately. He also knew by the expression on Alejandro’s face that he’d rather piss himself in public than take a suggestion from a woman, no matter how brilliant that suggestion might be.
Hawk had to play it carefully. Knowing Alejandro as he did, he felt confident of his hand.
“I think we should just stick to the Alpha’s plan.” He tried to convey a casual tone of both slight disapproval and amusement, as if he thought her a ridiculous creature who should stay in her place.
Oddly, his dismissal made Morgan smile.
“Let her speak,” snapped Alejandro, right on cue.
Nothing if not predictable. Though his lips wanted to curl as Morgan’s had, Hawk kept his expression disapproving, his unblinking gaze trained on her face.
Morgan said, “If this woman is powerful enough to turn public opinion one way, she’s powerful enough to turn it the other. If, instead of using the pictures simply to discredit her and ruin her career, we used them as motivation for her to write another article—”
“Ah,” said Alejandro, the light of understanding dawning in his eyes. “I see.”
He seemed intrigued, but it wasn’t enough. He needed a little help.
“Morgan, I’m sure the Alpha already thought of that,” Hawk scoffed. “We don’t need to spend any more time on this; we’ve already got what we need from her. Leaking those pictures will guarantee she won’t be in a position to write any more high-profile opinion pieces—”
“Of course I thought of it,” Alejandro interrupted, right on schedule. He sent Hawk a condescending stare. “But I may have been too hasty in disregarding this possible course of action.”
So that his eyes didn’t roll in his head like a pair of tossed marbles, Hawk stared straight back at Alejandro, concentrating his energy on keeping his expression perfectly neutral.
Darkness Bound (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 6
