Fear.
She tasted it in her mouth.
He disappeared. One moment he was real and solid, standing in front of her, the next he was gone. Tempest had no idea if he had dissolved into vapor or moved so quickly that she hadn’t seen him. Outside in the darkness, the wind began to build, emitting a low, eerie moan. It spoke of death. Tempest shivered, wondering how she knew but knowing it anyway. The wind was death. Darius was the wind.
She saw herself in the mirror. Pale, her hair wild, her eyes wide with fear. She looked absurd, a small woman in blue jeans and T-shirt loading a big gun, but there was grim determination to the set of her mouth. Her feet were bare, and she remedied that quickly, certain she would have to leave the illusion of safety the trailer provided. She sat on the step, a gun in her lap, two others behind her within easy reach, and she waited.
Darius streaked through the sky, noting the position of each attacker. There were seventeen men, all armed. The campsite was surrounded, heavy trucks positioned across each trail leading to the main highway to prevent the bus from leaving. Forest was dragging the body of the eighteenth man through heavy brush. The male leopard was moving silently, his powerful body sleek and deadly, undetected by the hunters creeping forward within a few feet of him.
Darius dropped behind a large man armed with everything from hand grenades to a machete. He simply snapped the man’s neck as if it were a matchstick. There was no time for a sound to escape, only the rush of wind that carried Darius to the next assailant in line. This one was crouched low, peeking into the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of the silver bus. The wind caught him in a death grip, like a huge hand at his throat, and slowly strangled the life out of him while his body dangled helplessly a foot from the ground, then fell unceremoniously to the forest floor.
“Murphy?” A voice hissed off to Darius’s right. “I can’t see anything. Where’s Craig? He was supposed to stay close.”
Darius loomed up, larger than life, his features harsh and relentless, his black eyes burning coals of fury. Long white canines revealed themselves as he smiled. “Both of them lost.” His words were soft and mesmerizing. The man froze in horror, unable to do so much as lift his gun as the apparition moved toward him with blinding speed. The hunter felt the impact in the vicinity of his chest and stared down in horror at the gaping hole there. He wanted to scream, but no sound emerged. He died standing up, facing Darius, his face a twisted mask of shock.
As merciless as the wind itself, Darius moved on to the next attacker. This one was young, with pitted cheeks, scrubby mustache, and paint smeared on his face. He was breathing heavily, adrenaline pumping through his body. His finger continually stroked the trigger of his automatic weapon. Darius moved past him, a blur of muscle and sinew, razor-sharp talons ripping out his throat as he passed.
Some distance away a gun erupted, spouting red flame into the darkness. A man’s high-pitched scream mingled with the unearthly cry of the female leopard. Darius turned toward the sound. Several guns spewed bullets wildly, raking the area where the sounds had come from, until an authoritative voice several yards off to his left barked an order.
Tempest came to her feet, her first thought for Darius. Automatically she reached for him, wincing when she felt the red haze of killing fury in his mind. Breaking contact, she sought out the cause of the cry. Instantly she knew the female leopard was in jeopardy. Swearing beneath her breath, she tried to calm herself enough to decide what to do. Sasha was hurt; she could feel the pain and anger in the cat as she dragged herself through the foliage back toward the bus and her human companions.
Tempest hesitated only one second before she stuck a pistol into the waistband of her jeans, gripped the automatic, and ran toward the trees. She sent Sasha quick reassurance that she was on the way, she would help get the cat to safety and stop the pain.
There was another shout, much closer than she would have liked, followed by a volley of shots. Again Tempest reached out to touch Darius’s mind, terrified that he was hurt. He was in the middle of shape-shifting, his body accommodating the muscular form of a panther even as he was leaping for a low tree branch. He crouched above a sniper who was slithering on his belly through the vegetation. The Sniper’s gun was trained on Forest as the leopard made its approach toward another intruder, who was firing at Sasha as the female cat retreated.
Tempest gasped aloud as she shared Darius’s mind. He was utterly without mercy, emotionless, calm and cool, relentless in his pursuit of those who threatened his family. He leapt upon the sniper, silent, merciless, deadly. As his wicked canines sank deep into the gunman’s throat, she broke away, unwilling to witness Darius killing his adversary.
Tempest ducked low beneath the canopy of low, sweeping branches, trying hard to be quiet and not rustle any bushes. Petite, she was able to move easily on the narrow trails established by small animals, but she nearly stumbled over the silent, wounded panther. Sasha was crouched motionless in the large ferns growing beneath the trees. Tempest laid a calming hand on the cat’s back and sent it waves of reassurance as she knelt to inspect the injury.
The leopard’s back right leg was coated with blood. Tempest muttered unladylike swear words beneath her breath. The cat was too large for her to lift by herself. She wrapped an arm around its belly and lifted just enough to allow Sasha to crawl forward. The ground was uneven, and the panther was in tremendous pain, leaning more and more of her weight onto Tempest as she limped toward the bus.
Sasha suddenly turned her head to the left, curling her lips in a snarl of warning, then freezing into stillness. Tempest dropped flat, eyes searching the area to her left. A man loomed up, his head turned away from her, a gun cradled in his arms, another strapped to his shoulder. He was dressed in dark clothing, his face smeared with black stripes. He looked like a gorilla coming out of the gathering mist.
While the night had been clear, fog was now rolling in fast, gathering into a white, eerie vapor on the forest floor. Tempest lay against the injured panther, shaking with fear, weak from lack of food, and already exhausted. Even the gun felt heavy in her hands. It seemed an impossible task to get the leopard back to the comparative safety of the bus.
The man disappeared into the trees, the fog surrounding him. Tempest got to her feet, her knees rubbery, her mouth dry. Sasha crept forward with Tempest’s help. They inched their way over the ground—a slow, painstaking process that seemed never-ending. The heavy fog was their only protection once they emerged from the forested area to the campsite itself. Tempest sent up a silent prayer that the thick vapor would prevent their presence from being detected.
Darius felt the disturbance ahead. He had made his way through the line of intruders, the male leopard coming from the opposite side to meet him at the campsite. Twice Darius had used the heavy fog to wrap a sniper in its deadly grip, choking the life out of the intruder. He had left behind no living enemy and knew Forest had done the same. The numbers against them had been significantly reduced, Sasha accounting for two before she was shot.
Darius was very much aware of where Tempest was at every moment and what she was doing. He had made no attempt to stop her from reaching the cat because he would have had to force her compliance. All the same, he was terrified for her, and the fear was nearly paralyzing him. He sensed the man rushing out of the fog at her, his gun pointed at her head. Sasha tried to throw herself over Tempest, protecting her at Darius’s command, even as he took control of the weapon, using his mind and the eyes of the female leopard to force the barrel back around toward the killer.
The man screamed horribly as the gun he was holding, seemingly of its own volition, turned slowly, inexorably, toward his own heart. Even as he tried to tell his brain to stop, he felt his own finger tighten on the trigger. Darius had been moving with preternatural speed and arrived on scene just as the man fell. He leapt toward Tempest, slamming her into the earth. A bullet caught him high in the back of his shoulder, burning and tearing through his body, stealing his breath.