She couldn’t allow it to happen, not here, not for her or like this.
Raymond Martinez needed to answer for his crimes, not escape them so easily. And the Bureau needed to know about the existence of the Jackals. Graeme needed to let Jonas take care of this, build a rapport with the Bureau that would protect him should suspicion of who he was ever come to light.
Dammit. When was that fucking drug going to ease so she could move?
So she could stop him. Because he damned sure wasn’t listening to her anymore.
? ? ?
Damn her.
Fucking damn her.
Those bastards were going to rape her in her own bed while she was paralyzed by that crazed Council drug and she didn’t want to hear their screams?
Well, he did.
He wanted them to scream until their voices broke, until they were rabid with the fucking pain, insane from it. They were fucking Jackals, they might actually make it worthwhile to torture them.
Raymond Martinez would scream for a long time, he was sure. That bastard wanted to live. He wanted to live a long time. Long enough to spend that fucking case of cash and gold those Council misfits had given him as payment for Cat. And he knew. The son of a bitch fucking knew his daughter lived in Cat. That Claire Martinez’s spirit was still a part of Cat. And he didn’t care.
Moving back to the living room he crouched next to the two Jackals first.
Bastards.
He’d taped their lips to keep them from screaming and distracting him before he was ready to deal with them.
Damn her. Damn that woman . . .
He ripped the adhesive from their lips, smiling at their grunts of discomfort.
Even Jackals were weak-kneed little pussies after all.
“You think that’s uncomfortable?” he muttered. “Discomfort is the first vivisection and you can’t scream. It’s feeling their fingers probing at your organs and innards and praying for death as you piss yourself.”
Silent screams. Silent prayers.
The Jackals stared back at him with cold, hard purpose, watching, waiting, searching for a weakness.
He smiled slowly, satisfaction rumbling in his chest at the flicker of unease in the biggest one’s pale yellow gaze.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he whispered. “Do they still call me the bogeyman?”
“They’ll be pleased you’re still alive,” the Jackal rasped, barely able to speak. “As well as your mate.”
The monster, the freak without mercy, compassion or any semblance of warmth, jumped further into his senses; the sound that left his throat was demonic.
“I have no mate,” he growled. “I have only the obligation to protect those of my Pride, Jackal. My only purpose. My only reason for being.” Because the mate would suffer without them.
And in a way it was true. When the monster was free, all bonds, all affection, all respect was obliterated. Only one purpose filled him. Protecting the mate only Graeme could claim.
And he was convincing. He could smell it on them.
“I’ve made the strongest Council Coyotes piss themselves within ten minutes,” he observed then. “How long will the two of you last before the scent of your urine offends my senses?”
He’d give them at least fifteen minutes. These two looked pretty strong. And Jackals were tortured from childhood, their training a reign of terror designed to ensure only the most brutally strong survived. Before they reached age ten, only one littermate would still live. The only one strong enough to watch the others starve so he could eat. The one strong enough to murder all who stood in the way of his escape from the putrid, waste-packed cell they were locked into.
“She would have me know mercy,” he growled, and hope flickered in their eyes.
Graeme smiled. A curve of his lips that dimmed hope and brought the knowledge of certain death instead.
“She doesn’t know, they tore the mercy from me the day they tore my heart from my chest . . .”
The monster ached, craved, hell, it salivated for the sounds of their screams.
Narrowing his eyes on them, he watched them, drew their scents into his senses, broke the markers down, noted the various differences and, as he’d learned to do in the research center, tracked every fucking gene that made them what they were. That was a Jackal’s weakness. Facing what he actually was, knowing his history and discovering that someone else knew it too.
“Do you know why they call me the bogeyman?” he asked softly, lazily, despite the sound of hell in his voice.