Someone banging on the door jerked Rebekka’s eyes open. A voice from the other side yelled, “Get out here, Gregor. Now. Captain Orst wants to see you. He wants to hear what you’ve got to say about letting three convicts die and why you and Morse left their bodies behind. I want to know the same.”
Hope surged to life inside Rebekka at the mention of the guardsman she’d met in The Iberá’s study. It had to be the same man. He must have accompanied the convict work-gang. It wasn’t unheard of when their labor was contracted out.
She struggled into a sitting position, grateful her hands were bound to her ankles in front of her instead of behind. She tried desperately to get the gag out of her mouth, and, finding it impossible, to wriggle to a place where the man at the door would see her when it opened.
Her control of her gift slipped. The goats resumed bleating frantically and trying to escape their pen. The taste of disease filled her mouth and clung to her nostrils, bringing with it another nearly overwhelming urge to vomit.
“Get out here, Gregor!”
“Go,” Radek said, moving the short distance to Rebekka and using his foot to send her sprawling backward. “I don’t want to deal with that prick Orst tonight, or my brother’s lapdog Nagy. Take care of your mess or you won’t get to have fun with your prize.”
The militiaman left.
Radek bolted the door after him then paced in agitation back and forth between Rebekka and the pen.
He cursed Gregor and Orst and Nagy. Muttered about changing his plan, about the goats not being completely ready, about the wisdom of freeing a couple of them since there were tigers in the area.
Desperation seized Rebekka. Somehow she had to escape and get to Captain Orst. She had to tell him Radek was purposely letting plague loose. She had to stop the Weres from attacking the encampment and slaughtering innocent people for something only Radek was responsible for.
His head whipped around suddenly, catching her looking at him.
Fear entered his expression. It scared him that she’d overheard his mutterings. That she might have guessed what he was doing.
Radek came over to her. He drew the pistol from a holster at his side and pressed the barrel to her forehead.
Her heart thundered in her chest. The bleating of the goats was so loud she wasn’t sure anyone would hear the sound of gunfire over it.
His finger tightened on the trigger then released it. Tightened and released again as if he was working himself up to pulling it.
Pounding on the door made his hand jerk. Rebekka whimpered, knowing she would be dead if the knock had come an instant earlier, when his finger touched the trigger.
“Who is it?” he yelled.
“Gregor.”
Radek let him in, the pistol still in his hand.
“Enjoying a little foreplay?” Gregor asked, his smile sickening Rebekka, sending dread crawling through her. She’d seen the same look on other faces after they’d picked a prostitute and made their bargain with the madam.
Radek moved into the doorway. “No one else comes in here tonight. And you don’t leave.”
“Morse is owed a little fun with her. He’s the one who hauled her back.”
Radek cast a glance at Rebekka, visibly calculating the risk. “Just him. Have your fun tonight. Dead or alive, she leaves the encampment tomorrow.”
Gregor laughed. “She’ll be gone. I think we both know which way it’ll be.”
He locked the door after Radek left, unzipped his pants, and pulled out his flaccid cock as he walked toward her.
Her terror projected onto the goats. They hurtled themselves at their pen with renewed agitation.
“Shut up!” Gregor screamed, his penis remaining limp in his hand.
Twenty-eight
ARYCK dropped soundlessly to the ground. Blood seeped from small cuts on his chest and arms where spikes of metal from the concertina wire on top of the encampment walls had pierced the thick leather hides he’d laid on top of them.
Light blazed around only a few buildings, powered by generators that would be easy to disable. Lanterns bobbed in the darkness, marking the places where men patrolled and making them easy targets.
When the first of them fell, the others would riddle the night with machine gun fire. If they weren’t already doing it after seeing amulets blaze to life in the presence of Weres.
There would be dead on both sides before this was over. Rebekka won’t be one of them. She would be safe outside the fence before the attack started.
A short distance away the goats continued to panic at having picked up the scent of so many predators closing in on them. He’d heard them from the place Rebekka was taken to the ground, smelled them on one of the men who’d been there and left alive.
Aryck’s lips pulled back in a feral promise of retribution. It was the same man who’d hidden in the tree and masturbated as the hyenas ate the deadly gift he’d left for them.
Aryck pulled the knife from its leg sheath and moved toward the goats. His progress was slowed by the need to stay clear of amulets set throughout the encampment, as well as those worn by the men patrolling in groups of three and four.
He was within sight of the building housing the goats when Rebekka’s scent reached him, wafting through slits in the boards and laced with pain and fear.
Man and Jaguar screamed in silent fury, but hurried footsteps kept Aryck from racing forward.
He ducked behind a pile of dirt left next to a hole leading into a room once buried but now cleared. A human passed close enough for him to know the man had been one of the two responsible for bringing Rebekka to the encampment.
Aryck launched himself, as silent in his two-legged form as he was in his animal one. An amulet at the front of the man’s shirt flashed red, but before he could sound a warning, the blade in Aryck’s hand sliced through flesh and muscle and blood supply as easily as a jaguar claw through hide.
Sheathing the knife, Aryck took up the dead human’s gun. He checked to make sure it was ready to fire, delayed only long enough to drag the body to the excavated hole and tumble it in, hoping to delay discovery long enough to set Rebekka free.
Anticipating the door would be locked, he ran the remaining distance, used momentum to force his way into the building and Jaguar agility to get out of the doorway. A glance was all Aryck needed to take in the scene. To see Rebekka’s bruised face and the cloth keeping her screams silenced, her shirt hanging open after she had been chased and knocked to the ground, a man reaching for a machine gun, his zipper down and his tiny cock hanging limp.
Fury engulfed Aryck. Rage overwhelmed reason and eradicated any thought of remaining undetected. He aimed and pulled the trigger, the bullets making the man dance backward until the gun was empty.
Aryck tossed it aside and hurried to Rebekka. She was standing, tugging off the gag, hastily putting her shirt to rights.
Koren’s mind touched Aryck’s in instant communication. We’ll divert their attention elsewhere.
“Let’s go,” Aryck said, wanting to shake her, kiss her, punish and cherish her all at the same time.
Rebekka resisted when he tried to hurry her toward the door. “The goats are diseased,” she said, halting him in his tracks. “They carry something that will kill Tigers, maybe other things. There’s a man here I trust. A captain in the guard. He promised The Iberá if I ever needed his aid, he’d give it. Leave. I’ll find him. I’ll—”
The Jaguar snarled at the very idea. The man growled, “I’m not leaving you.”