Her lips parted in surprise. She had known, but she hadn’t realized he had. How long had he known? For how many years had he been screwing everything in skirts when he had known all along what was building between them?
Before she could blast him, deny him or spurt out a protest, he pushed away from her, turned his back and strode from the kitchen. The only sound in the house after he opened the front door was the sound of that plate shattering on the door where his head should have been.
“You bastard!” she yelled furiously, anger churning inside her now. “You tomcatting, whore-mongering snake.” Another plate flew for emphasis and shattered against the wall. “Your mate my ass!” She kicked an end table. “Not in this lifetime.” Would she ever admit it? she finished to herself silently.
Because to admit that, she would have to admit so much more. To needs that haunted her through the night, and truths that dogged her through the day. She would have to admit she loved him. And that was something Cassa refused to do.
◆ CHAPTER 2 ◆
THREE DAYS LATER GLEN FERRIS, WEST VIRGINIA HAWK’S NEST STATE PARK
It began here. In this unassuming little town. In the savagely hewn, subtly cruel mountains of West Virginia. Hell began here. A nightmare began here.
It began with one man, one woman and a vision of monsters, of creatures that could be controlled.
So long ago. A lifetime ago. A heartbeat in time, a drop of red in an ocean of blood.
The mountains rose around the peaceful little town of Glen Ferris, nestled in the mountains like a babe in a mother’s arms. It hadn’t changed much, despite the passage of time and the technology that had birthed a new species. Glen Ferris remained more or less the same. Sleepy, quiet. Quaint.
There was no sign of the vast network that had once worked to shelter and protect the Breeds that had known this area as one of safety. There was no hint on the quiet streets, or in the mountain homes, that these people had once risked their own lives, and the lives of their families, for creatures that weren’t man and yet weren’t animal. Just as there was no hint of the evil that had once visited and stayed much too long.
It had begun here. Despite the attempts of the citizens of these mountains to save those Breeds that had been brought to them, still, hell had begun here. A hell that so few had known of. A hell that had birthed a darkness that wouldn’t disappear, that growled in the night, that screamed in silence.
Here. Within these mountains. Within the home of a man and woman, and with the knowledge and cooperation of those who looked on.
There was no forgiveness. There would be no mercy.
Glen Ferris had been a haven for many, and yet for a few, it had been an agony worse than anything that could have been suffered in those labs. Those Breeds who escaped, they couldn’t have known the hell that had existed on the perimeters of freedom.
And now it was time to pay for that hell. It was time for one man and one woman to know that vengeance awaited them.
They had created hell. They had created the means to their own destruction.
Horace Engalls and Phillip Brandenmore had experimented on Breeds. Breeds had been tested, dissected, experimented upon for years untold by a brother and sister, by a wife and husband.
It would be over soon. Soon, the world would know more than they could have ever imagined. Just as they would know those who had helped.
“The past never dies.” It was a whisper caught by the night breeze. “It lives on in my memory. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Those who had died in the past months were no more than peons to the powerful family. Two-bit ass kissers who had carried out orders and begged for favors. A doctor, a police officer, a lawyer, a former sheriff and a former mayor. They had participated. They had helped, but none had done so much to collaborate in that hell as the one that would die this night.
H. R. Alonzo. So few knew who he was, what he was. The great-grandson of the man who had donated his sperm to create the first Breed. A man who should have aided, who should have protected those his great-grandfather had fought to protect.
Vanderale had seen to his son’s rescue, his freedom and his safety. So long ago. More than a century had passed since the escape of the first Leo, aided by his father, a high-ranking member of the Genetics Council. Alonzo should have continued that aid. He should have donated his fortune to protecting rather than destroying. He should have never reached out to destroy the Breeds. He should have never searched for what was never meant to be his.
Drawing Alonzo back here had been so very easy. Laying the groundwork for what was to come had been a stroke of genius. Engalls and Brandenmore had begun their own downfall with their experiments into the phenomenon the Breeds were experiencing known as mating heat. They alone had believed they could duplicate the antiaging that those mated Breeds were experiencing. They hadn’t found the fountain of youth they searched for, but they had found something else. A drug that would deceive those Breed senses, that for a time hid the scent of man from the senses of the animal.
But the secrets they sought still eluded them.
They had failed. The information they had nearly killed to obtain had been denied them. But it was the opening needed. It was the first crack in an impenetrable shield that Brandenmore and Engalls had kept around themselves. It was a shield that would be further damaged by the death of one man.
H. R. Alonzo.
The Reverend Alonzo.
He waddled along the forested path now, a flashlight in his fat little hand, his face sweating, glistening beneath the moonlight. He waddled like a duck, tromped through the forest like a fat little lamb to the slaughter.
How very apt.
“Insane is what this is,” he muttered, the sound of his voice carrying clearly through the night. “Son of a bitch, ordering me to a meeting like this,” he continued to mumble aloud. “As though it would matter if we met at the house.”
The house. It wasn’t a house. It was hell. It was a place of pain, of blood and of death. It was where it had begun. And now the ending was within sight.
The night was a whisper of cool spring air. The trees swayed with the breeze, a ripple of water could be heard as it played along the stones and boulders of a centuries-old stream. The scent of fresh, clean water filled the air, almost washing away the smell of sweating human flesh and an evil, rotting mind.
Alonzo. His vast fortune supported the efforts of the Genetics Council. His rhetoric argued against the humanity of the Breeds, argued for their imprisonment, their death.
“Come alone,” Alonzo continued to snarl as he made his way to the small clearing he had been directed to. “As though it matters now.”
Had it mattered then, so many years ago? Had it really mattered where Alonzo had met his cohorts? They had thought it had. As though it had been some secret little game. Meeting here, in this clearing, where the blood of Breeds had soaked the ground more than once. Where bodies were still buried. Where the screams of Breed children could still be heard. Where one agonized scream still echoed through the mountains.