Assassin's Kiss Page 4

  Eight rogues had turned into at least thirty. They fell into a loose assembly around the center stage of what looked to be a temple. The temple was a sham, built of prefabricated walls with a stone façade.

  Fontaine was rigged out in full Jaguar Priest ceremonial gear. A metal headdress—the same silver color as his hair—bisected by a short red brush hugged both sides of his skull. A long tunic of turquoise and emerald green covered his tall, slim Jaguar Warrior form. He stood, chanting, the claws of one hand extended over his struggling sacrifice. Four similarly dressed priests stretched the naked victim’s arms and legs over an altar stone.

  Something glinted on the man’s chest and Sebastian caught the glimmer of a small silver crucifix-dagger, symbol of the Brotherhood, suspended from a chain around the sacrifice’s neck.

  The force of Fontaine’s claw cleaved the man’s breast open. His agonized scream ripped through the dawn, scattering the birds in the trees while the priests rocked back and forth in their blood-spattered robes and moved their lips to a prayer that Sebastian wasn’t close enough to hear.

  He scanned the staging area to the left. Wide eyed, jaw tight, his ridiculous white uniform decorated with gold braid and the blood of Fontaine’s sacrifice, Alonso Alvarez, pretty-boy drug lord, stood watching.

  Sebastian scented the Jaguar Warrior scout a moment before a twig snapped behind him. He whipped around as the crouching Warrior, his spotted face twisted into a snarl, charged. Sebastian flipped over, pushing his shoulders and hips off the ground, catching the big male and using the force of his attacker’s momentum to twist away.

  He leapt onto his opponent’s back and they both went down. Sebastian pinned the Warrior to the jungle floor, gripping his head in a vise of forearms and fingers before closing his jaws around the skull that cracked and splintered. Blood poured from the fatal wound, filling his mouth.

  With his claws he dug a shallow pit, rolled the body in and covered it with dirt and leaves. It wouldn’t fool a tracker for long but it might buy him enough time to get back to Sangre de Luna. And figure out how to warn the Council that Fontaine was trying to start a war they’d spent centuries trying to avoid.

  * * * * *

  Kira came awake naked and alone, huddled inside the sleeping bag. She’d felt him leave hours ago, taking his heat and the danger of not knowing what the next moment would bring. It was hardly the fairy-tale acceptance by her own kind that she’d once craved. She hadn’t found her own kind, merely another place where she didn’t belong. There would be no mate, no children, and no sense of connection. No safety.

  Last night he’d half stood, half crouched over her, his face barely recognizable as it had elongated and changed. His powerful jaws, beautiful and savage at the same time, had been strong enough to crush her skull. Just like a jaguar.

  But not like the jaguar she became.

  Perversely, even his whispered warning that there was no escape had thrilled her until she’d realized that he hadn’t been happy about it. She’d have realized it sooner if she’d being paying attention to his obvious anger. She’d once grown accustomed to people not wanting her. She’d ceased caring what they wanted. She didn’t want to care about what Bastian wanted.

  A damp chill settled on her skin and she shivered. The glow of the battery-operated lamp cast a circle of yellow light around the stone slab they’d slept on. She rolled over and flipped up the ends of the sleeping bag, peeked under and saw nothing more than smooth gray stone. She lifted up on her elbows, drawing the corner back farther. No trace of ancient bloodstains. Bloodstains would definitely creep her out.

  It was more probable that the platform had been a throne or ceremonial altar that had survived being reduced to rubble by an earthquake. They weren’t uncommon in the area. Besides, the sacrificial altar would have been outside for the masses to see. There was nothing like cleaving the beating heart out of your enemies to keep your people in line, mindful of the power you held over them.

  Last night, with Bastian’s jaws closing over the back of her neck, his hot breath flowing over her, she’d suspected, just for an instant, that she was his enemy also. But what possible threat could she be? She hadn’t asked him for anything. Jaguars, according to everything she’d read, were solitary creatures. She hadn’t expected happily ever after, couldn’t even imagine what that would entail at this point. Of course, she’d never quite imagined the excitement he’d generated inside her either.

  She supposed it made some sort of weird, logical sense to identify the excitement with fear. After all, fear had been the strongest emotion she’d ever experienced until her heat cycle had become unbearable. Maybe they were just all tangled up inside and Bastian had set them free. It would be something to ponder on cold nights when she was alone again. And she would be alone.

  He hadn’t even asked her name.

  She couldn’t afford to lie to herself if what she suspected was true. As a halfling, she would have no place in Jaguar society. There was something about being a halfling that made Bastian angry. She was tired of pissing people off and she wasn’t going to fall into the trap of constantly seeking forgiveness as a path to acceptance. That way lay madness.

  She’d glimpsed it often enough in her mother’s desperate gaze.

  Bastian didn’t realize there was always the chance of escape. She’d survived ten years on the street alone by being aware of her surroundings and always having an escape plan. She could do it again. Maybe after a little more rest, food…experience.

  She scooted over to the edge of the makeshift bed and found the backpack that was large enough to hold a small tent. Two small brown plastic pouches rested atop it. “Spaghetti and Meatballs” was stamped in black letters on one, “Chicken and Noodles” on the other. He must have planned on hunting Jaguar rogues at night instead of food.

  She’d eaten worse for breakfast, not that she knew how long she’d slept or what time it was. It didn’t matter, she was ravenous. She popped the seal on the chicken and noodles, sniffed once and ate it with her fingers until she figured out the fork was wrapped separately. The oatmeal cookie she found was the best though and she savored it one bite at time until all that was left were the sugary crumbs. She licked those from her fingers.

  Her hunger sated, she glanced around for her clothes. No clothes. Wrapping the sleeping bag around her like a goose down sari, she grabbed the lamp. Her shirt and pants were probably still in a soggy heap in the purification room. Except…they weren’t.

  Where the hell had he stashed her clothes? If he’d hidden them to keep her here he was out of luck. The shorts in her bag wouldn’t keep the damp chill away as well as her long pants but she could walk out of here dressed. She flicked the light around the room. There was another door she’d been too busy to notice before. Picking a path through the rubble-strewn curved hallway, she turned a corner, tripped and the lamp flickered.

  No, it didn’t. It reflected green light. She switched off the lamp and followed the eerie glow that led to a short, arched doorway. She had to duck, but sure enough, the small cavelike room was filled with light that filtered through a large, green, glass marble. Scratch that.

  A huge, big-ass, pale green crystal was wedged like a skylight into the ceiling. But she was as least fifty feet underground. “Yeah, and there’s light and warmth, so what are you bitching about?” she mumbled, looking around. The room itself had been hollowed out of rock and the pictographs on the walls seemed more primitive than those in the entryway above.

  At the moment, she was focused on her fatigue pants and tank top, which were draped over two slabs of rock that were propped against each other in the center of the room. Her clothes were dry and Bastian got bonus points for them being warm as well. She dropped her goose down sari and dressed quickly, absorbing heat from the fabric.

  She slid down the rock slab, resting her back against its warmth. How could the crystal conduct both heat and light so far underground unless part of it extended to the surface? Considering the a
ngle and position of the room to the sleeping chamber and the purification room, she hadn’t seen this side of the temple outside. Something that size should have given off some kind of light. Bastian could probably explain it if he could think of how to do it in ten clipped words or less.

  She needed to stay focused on the problem at hand.

  Like the simmering heat that crawled through her every time she closed her eyes and thought about the last twenty-four hours. It had to have been at least that long. How much longer did she have before she couldn’t rely on Bastian’s protection? And who was this Fontaine?

  And where was she going to go? Not back to Chicago. She never wanted to be that cold again.

  She was fed and warm, the damp chill a distant memory. She glanced around the room until the sharp, angular line of pictographs decorating the walls caught her attention. They didn’t resemble anything she’d ever seen in the libraries and book stores she’d haunted when the cold and hunger for some kind of contact with others had driven her inside.

  One section of the wall seemed to be devoted to an explosion of some sort, with two-legged jaguars tethered on lines spiraling out in all directions. Every culture had a creation theory. The Aztec’s had one theory that the gods had sacrificed themselves in an explosion that had created the world.

  But these didn’t look like Aztec renderings. There were no curlicue figures that made you dizzy trying to decipher them. These pictographs were of angular figures etched into the walls. After the explosion, two-legged jaguars slashed and clawed their way over a carcass-strewn battlefield. One carving depicted the coupling of another of these jaguars and a human female. One showed a human woman holding a child with the face of a jaguar and the body of a human. But it was the next pictograph she couldn’t look away from.

  A young halfling female lay on an altar stone, her chest ripped open by a human who held her bleeding heart in his hand. Kira rubbed her palm against her breastbone and a chill rippled through her, cancelling out any warmth she’d felt, any comfort.

  Sebastian could tell from the angle of her elbow that she was pressing her hand over her heart and remembered licking over the same spot. How she’d practically flown apart from just that touch of his mouth. That wasn’t what she was thinking about though, he’d bet on it. And there weren’t too many sure things he could bet on at this moment.

  “I hope there’s nothing in that sack you carry that you can’t live without.”

  She whipped around so fast he thought her neck would snap. But there was more surprise than fear reflected in her gaze. The Sacred Light shimmered around her and, even wearing fatigue pants and a faded knit tank top that clung to the curve of her small breasts, she looked ethereal, almost fragile. Her nipples tightened visibly under his gaze and she flushed from the scooped neckline of her shirt to the roots of her dark spiky hair.

  “What’s happened?”

  “You’re leaving,” he said flatly.

  “What do you mean, I’m leaving?” She frowned. “Is it over? Did you kill them all?”

  “Plans change. And remind me to thank you later for fucking up my original one.”

  “You can thank me now. I’m not too sure there’s going to be a later for us.” She looked as if she regretted the statement the moment she’d uttered it but then a shy smile crooked the corner of her stubborn mouth.

  “You’re probably right. It will be safer for you if there isn’t,” he bit off.

  Her smile faded. “That sounds a little more complicated than ‘it’s been fun…but’. What’s going on?”

  “I think a war is coming and I need to warn the Council.”

  “So warn them. Don’t you have some kind of radio or cell phone?”

  “The airwaves are closely monitored these days and cell phones aren’t secure, even if I could get a signal. This needs to be done quietly, the old-fashioned way—with a runner.”

  “So you’re just letting Fontaine and his mercenaries go?”

  No, I’m letting you go. “I didn’t say that. Eight rogues have turned into thirty and I just watched Fontaine sacrifice a member of the Brotherhood.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, I get that the Brotherhood are bad. I have the scar to prove it. Why do you care and why am I leaving? I could help you.”

  “You can help me by being my runner,” he said, his patience wearing thin. “If you agree to warn the Council, I’ll give you the numbers to my accounts in Belize, instructions to my contact that you’re to receive everything. All you have to do is get this information to Juan and he’ll pass it on to the Council.”

  Her gaze narrowed and he preferred her shy smile to the stubborn set of her mouth that he’d first glimpsed behind the waterfall. When all he’d known about her was that he’d wanted her.

  “Who’s Juan?

  “Juan is a Guardian. The Council will trust him.”

  “And they wouldn’t trust me? And here I thought after last night we were past the halfling thing,” she quipped, but her voice broke. Damn.

  “If the Council finds out about you they’ll just send another Assassin after you,” he spat bitterly and watched as she glanced at the carvings of the halfling sacrifice on the wall then back to him.

  “Why send an Assassin after me?”

  “Because halflings are forbidden by Jaguar Law. Because you’re a human connection that’s proven dangerous in the past. If your sire were known, he’d suffer the same fate. It’s what I’m charged to do.” He could barely bring himself to watch her disbelief turn to anger. He didn’t blame her.

  “You’re supposed to kill me? Why the hell would I want to save any of you?”

  “To stop the beginning of a bloodbath the likes of which hasn’t been seen in centuries. The Brotherhood skinned their victims alive, killing them only after they’d agreed to renounce whatever devil had made them. Magnify that by thousands.”

  He watched the realization settle over her as she wrapped her arms around her middle, knew the instant her fingertips found the scar below her shoulder blade. He’d counted on it.

  “The world wouldn’t stand for that now, not on that scale,” she said, her voice cracking. She shook her head but her horrified gaze told him that on some level she believed him.

  “Look around you. You can call it genocide or ethnic cleansing or just plain murder. The world is still standing for it as long as it isn’t happening to them. The Brotherhood is enmeshed in every geopolitical organization in the world. They have a vested interest in never letting anyone know there’s a race that has existed alongside man for thousands of years, a race their doctrine can’t explain.

  “Well pardon me,” she whispered harshly, “but the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. All the money in the world won’t change that.”

  “No, but it would allow you to live your life in relative comfort compared to how I imagine you’ve been living. If you follow my instructions, the Council will never have to know about you. If I can’t clean up this mess before the Brotherhood traces Fontaine’s kills back to the Jaguar People, there will be a war and those who aren’t killed could end up in cages, tortured, or worse. I can’t do that and warn the Council at the same time.”

  She was shaking and he didn’t know if it was from anger or fear. “Keep your money and tell me the real reason you haven’t killed me. Because you didn’t know this was going on last night and you still told me that there was no escape.”

  “Even Assassins have weak moments. All I can offer you is money. Take it and do as I ask.” He could see her trying to make sense of everything, weighing her options and not liking any of them. He didn’t like them either. But he didn’t figure on being around long enough for it to matter.

  “What’s to keep this Juan from turning me over to the Council?”

  “His only duty is keeping the Jaguar People safe. You’re just the messenger. Don’t complicate anything and you should be all right. Come on, we’re running out of time.” There was a warning in her shuttered gaze and the stubborn j
ut of her chin.

  “I want something else.”

  “Name it.”

  “Kiss me goodbye.”

  He grabbed her, anchoring himself to her heartbeat, and was lost. Hell, he’d been lost since picking up her scent. Dragging her into that damn river. Burying himself inside her.

  “You will be the death of me,” he whispered raggedly against her lips. He plundered, ravaged, claimed. She clung to him as if she’d never let him go, her mouth hot, insistent, rough against his own, giving more than she took until she broke away.

  She stepped back, her gaze shadowed, her movements jerky. There were tears in her eyes and her small hands were fisted at her sides.

  “My name is Kira and I lived in a cell until I was fourteen. I had keepers. No one should have to live in a cage and that’s the only reason I’m helping you. Now, tell me what I need to know and how to find this Guardian, Juan.”

  Chapter Four

  Five minutes left on the twenty-minute head start Bastian had wanted. She paced, counting down the minutes, trying to absorb all the heat she could from the Sacred Light. Whatever. Apparently, it worked its mojo on you whether you were a halfling or a full Jaguar Warrior.

  If only it could dispel the terror welling inside her and get her through the next few minutes without freaking. Not only did she have to watch out for Fontaine and his mercenaries, Bastian had added Alvarez, a crazy drug lord, to her growing list of enemies. She patted the cargo pocket containing the waterproof flashlight.

  She wasn’t taking anything else. Not her clothes or the straw doll she’d found nestled in the sack she’d stumbled across in the alley behind a homeless shelter in Kansas City. The doll had only been part of the catalyst that had landed her in the Guatemalan jungle. After years of reading about Olmec legends and anything else she could find about jaguars, her body’s craving to mate had taken over her life.