Alonzo huffed and puffed, his light wavering as he reached the clearing and slowed to a stop.
Right there. How many times had he stood right there, beneath the breadth of a huge oak, and stared into the clearing with a smirk? Chuckled gleefully at the screams that echoed around him. Participated in the torture and in the pain of creatures that hungered only for freedom.
“So where the hell are you?” Alonzo called out. “I don’t have time for games tonight, Phillip.”
“Phillip doesn’t play games here anymore.”
Alonzo’s obese, foul body swung around. His florid features reflected first surprise, then shock.
“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?”
There was a hint of fear now. That provided the needed edge of satisfaction.
“I’m the past, Reverend,” he was informed softly as the satisfaction and pleasure grew. It always did, when the prey finally knew fear itself. They had once played here, and now they could play again.
Playtime. A smile came and went. What was play? What Breed could answer that question or understand that ideal?
Alonzo’s beady little eyes narrowed. “How do you know about this place? Phillip would never have told you.”
“Phillip has actually told me many things.” She shrugged negligently. “Tell me, Reverend, do you still enjoy playing with death?”
Oh yes, death was returning to these mountains. Blood would stain the ground here once again, and it would begin with HR.
The fat little bastard’s face paled. “Phillip wouldn’t dare have me killed. You better check your orders, because he knows what will happen if anything happens to me.”
Ah yes, the ever present threat.
“Yes, Phillip knows well what will happen.” A breath of a promise, of death, filled the air.
There was no secret there, not because Phillip or his insane little wife had told it, simply because the Deadly Dozen, as they had once called themselves, always protected their own asses against one another. That fact had been learned the first time the blood of a member had been shed. The others should be worried by now. HR should have been concerned enough to use caution in coming here.
Tonight, death would lose another member of its evil little group.
Alonzo could sense it, it was there in the waves of fear beginning to fill the air. His heartbeat echoed in the night, the stench of his cowardice wrapped around the senses.
“You’re not going to kill me.” The bastard tried to bluff. He should know better.
Canines flashed in the night. Alonzo’s gaze locked on the sight as his heavy jowls trembled.
“You were here. You smiled.” Agony twisted and bloomed in colors of red. “You laughed as they died. I’ll laugh now as you die.”
Forcing back the pain didn’t always work. It was always there, always spearing the soul like a poison-tipped sword as the voice weakened and became hoarse.
Alonzo swallowed; a whimper nearly left his throat.
“You’ll never get away with it.” Terror was thick in the mountains once more, but this time, it wasn’t a Breed’s terror. It was just a human’s. A human of no worth.
“Perhaps getting away with it isn’t my aim.”
“You’ll destroy the Breeds,” Alonzo charged furiously as he began to back away. “My death won’t go unnoticed.”
“They don’t even know who I am, why should I care about them?” It was a hiss of fury, of hatred. “Let them deal with it however they will. You are no longer an equation in their battle.”
He stumbled, then righted himself. His eyes widened. His face went white.
“You don’t want to do this.”
“I did the others. The doctor, the lawyer, the sheriff and the mayor, the police officer.” The words were a sigh of pleasure, almost of ecstasy. “It was good, Alonzo. I tasted their fear, I feasted on their blood. And it was good.”
He froze. Like a deer caught in the brilliant rays of a headlight.
“You,” he breathed. “You’re the one that killed them.”
A chuckle filled the night. The last Breed they could have suspected. It was perfect. It was just perfect revenge. Just a study in exacting revenge.
“It was I.” It was a soul stained with blood, with death, with the need for more. “And now it’s your turn.”
His head shook. His body shook. What was the saying? Like a bowlful of Jell-O? It wiggled and trembled and swayed with terror.
“You can’t do this,” Alonzo wheezed.
Canines flashed again. Sharp, extended. Prepared.
“Good-bye, you little motherfucker. May you burn in hell.”
He turned to run, but there was really no place to run. His screams tore through the night, but there was no one there to care. The gurgle of death, the spurt of blood, the sound of flesh ripping open was a symphony that filled the soul, as the taste of tainted blood touched the tongue.
It had begun here. In these mountains. The dream of freedom had turned to horror. Pain and death and the knowledge that there was no true life, no true freedom. There was this though. The taste of blood. The feel of a diseased soul leaving the body, and the sound of a scream of triumph as life slowly gave its last gasping attempt to survive before succumbing to death.
Alonzo had once sought a Breed known for her killing abilities. She had been called Death. But she hadn’t been Death. She had been living, breathing. She had a soul, a mate and a life. That wasn’t true death. Death had no soul. It had no mate. It had no life. True death had no dreams and no heart.
Crouched over Alonzo’s lifeless body, tasting his blood, feeling it like warm silk flowing through fingers that knew only cold, knew only pain. This was Death.
And Death screamed in triumph rather than pain. Death howled in pleasure rather than horror.
Or was it all the same?
NEW YORK CITY
The email arrived after midnight. Cassa Hawkins stared at the pictures in the file and tried once again, without hope, to use the tracking program she’d installed to track the origin of the email.
User location unknown. The answer was always the same, but this file, just like the others that had come in the past few weeks, held blood and horror. They were emails she knew the Bureau of Breed Affairs was tracking as well, straight from her damned computer. Her tech person still couldn’t figure out exactly how they were doing it, but she knew they were. Jonas Wyatt, the Bureau’s director, had been quite clear when he had called the day before and warned her to stay out of Breed business.
Cassa stared at the photos. The violence in them sickened her, causing her to swallow tightly to hold back the bile that would have risen in her throat.
She should call Cabal, or at the very least Jonas, she thought. She should do something more than the attempts she had been making to track the emails and the locations of the deaths.