Bloodhunter Read online

  And one of those strangers said he came from a different time and world.

  She started shaking again, but this time her tremors had almost nothing to do with sexual excitement and nearly everything to do with shock.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.

  “I’m trying. I want to, but nothing—how did you get yours?”

  “A gift. From Nezahualcoyotl.”

  “Who?” she forced out. “Or is it a what?”

  “Nezahualcoyotl was my god. I would have died for him.”

  Pain slashing at her forehead nearly blinded her. “Don’t say something like that. It sounds crazy.” Frightening.

  “You don’t want the truth?”

  I don’t know. “You expect me to swallow what you just said?” Backing away from him, she crossed her arms over her breasts. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “I exist, Dana. So do you. We just don’t exist at the same time; at least we didn’t until something brought us together.”

  Her headache was growing and making it nearly impossible to concentrate. “All right. All right. Look, I’m not going to call you crazy because that won’t accomplish anything. Besides, if you are, so am I. Ah, what’s your world like? Maybe if you told me, then what’s happening would make some kind of sense.”

  “I’ll take you there.”

  “What? No!”

  “Are you afraid? I don’t fear your world.”

  “Please, Nacon, I can’t take all this in.” Pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes did nothing to dull the throbbing. “I need time. And sleep. Yes, sleep. Maybe a stiff drink.”

  When he didn’t reply, at first she was grateful. Then, because she was afraid he was preparing to throw more of his brand of logic at her, she rubbed her eyes and brought her surroundings back into focus.

  He was gone.

  “Dad? Any chance you’re plugged into my wavelength? I really need you right now.”

  Sometimes when she mentally reached out to her father, his image immediately came into focus, and nothing anyone might say would ever convince her that he wasn’t talking to her, but if he’d joined her in her cabin, she couldn’t sense his presence. She wasn’t sure how long she’d looked for Nacon before putting back on her robe and groping her way to the cabin. Now, although she was in bed with the covers up to her chin and darkness all around, she didn’t stand a chance of falling asleep.

  “You didn’t happen to see what happened earlier, did you? If you did, I’m not going to apologize for what took place. After all, your little girl is over twenty-one and horny, at least I was before… Forget that. What I really need to know is if you heard Nacon and me talking. Did you see his tattoo?”

  Her eyes started burning so she closed them. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, not seeing anything made it easier to concentrate on her body. She still had that just-been-fucked feeling, but she was no longer satiated. She couldn’t say she was getting horny again, more like aware. Incredibly aware.

  “Maybe his tattoo and mine aren’t identical. I’d have to get out a magnifying glass to know. But the similarities… And that’s not the only majorly weird thing. Some of the things he said—he isn’t really from another world or time or whatever, is he? Dad, tell me I haven’t been bonking a space traveler.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Well that’s a relief.” Her voice shook “Then where is this world of his?”

  “Search. Question. Never be satisfied.”

  Hearing the familiar words would have made her laugh if she wasn’t so unnerved. “You do have to bring that up right now, don’t you? I’ve always tried to be like that, to look beneath the surface layers, but what am I questioning and what am I searching for?”

  “The answers are in you, Dana. And in me.”

  “You? How are you involved?”

  “Search. Don’t be satisfied until you have the answers.”

  “Look, I’ve always enjoyed rising to the challenge when you tell me that, but how can I get answers if you won’t answer my questions? I need a starting place, a grain of reality, grounding.”

  “You’re coming closer to the truth, Dana. And when you find it, I’ll be there.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “I love you.”

  “No, no. Believe me, if there was someone like that around here I’d know,” Rose More said the next morning as the two women shared a cup of coffee in Rose’s small office. “He sounds delicious, absolutely delicious. Just the same, that makes me uneasy. If there’s someone, especially someone who doesn’t understand how dangerous his behavior is, skulking around here at night, that could cause problems. You don’t have any idea what he was up to?”

  Other than fucking out my brains and giving me a splitting headache, no. “I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm to the animals. He wasn’t armed.”

  “Hmm. We’re so careful to protect the animals from each other and make sure humans don’t wind up where they don’t belong, but there’s no way we can secure the entire complex. We’ve just always trusted that most people are decent and intelligent. They know enough not to wander around inside the enclosures, and they don’t mean our charges any harm.”

  Dana already regretted saying anything, but how was she going to learn anything about the man who called himself Nacon if she didn’t ask questions? She owed her father that, and herself. She’d already learned that the preserve employed several night guards whose primary responsibility was to insure the animals’ safety. Those guards were all retired law enforcement officers and much older than Nacon. She hadn’t said anything beyond mentioning that she’d spotted him near her cabin. Based on Rose’s concern, she had no intention of telling her that Nacon had been in Aztec’s enclosure—at least he had been until he passed through the fencing.

  “I didn’t mean to alarm you,” she said. “I was pretty tired. Maybe I dreamed it.”

  Rose’s smile said she didn’t buy that explanation. “I should be so lucky as to dream of a hunk like that. You’re sure there was nothing threatening about him?”

  Not in a way you’d understand. “Not at all. If there’d been, I’d have screamed. We—he spotted me watching him so hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of him.”

  “I hope so, but just to be sure, I’ll let Paul know. He’ll alert the rest of his staff. So, what are you up to today?”

  Today? “Ah, I’ve been thinking of something I want to run by you. You said that jaguars are endangered.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “And in order to increase the population, you’re going to need the funds for a comprehensive breeding program. What if I put together something, a separate brochure maybe, that addresses the jaguars’ future and lets people know what they can do to help? It wouldn’t be just for Wildland, but wherever jaguars are.“

  Rose’s eyes glittered. “A brochure or propaganda or whatever we call it that we can get to the media and government officials?”

  “Then you think I might be onto something?”

  “No shit. This is exciting. So that’s what you came up with when you weren’t keeping an eye on our mysterious visitor?”

  Among other things. “Call it a brainstorm. When I woke up, there it was. Things are in the preliminary planning stages, but getting back to what you asked about what I want to accomplish today, if it’s all right with you, I’m going to focus on taking the kind of pictures I want to incorporate into my project, obviously starring Aztec. To keep people from being turned off by a hard sell, I’m thinking of using a broad approach such as concentrating on the similarities between predator and prey and their need for each other to keep populations in balance. Except for being on different levels of the food chain, they have a lot in common.”

  “That they do.” Rose swallowed the last of her coffee and stood up. “Damn! I’ve got a couple of board members coming later today so I’d better clear the decks. This sucks since I’d much rather discuss this in detail with you. You’re onto som
ething exciting.”

  “I hope I am.” And having you around would keep me from spending the day looking for answers that aren’t there.

  As far as she knew, Dana hadn’t made a conscious decision to focus on the gazelles, but she’d been crouched on this platform overlooking their enclosure for at least an hour. She’d taken a number of pictures but knew that none of them would be inspired. In fact, she felt totally uninspired when it came to pointing her camera.

  Instead, watching the gazelles was causing her to have thoughts she never imagined she would. Could she overtake a running gazelle? Most certainly not, but what if the swift, slightly-built creatures were sleeping or drinking or eating? Did she possess the stealth necessary to sneak up on one unnoticed? What if she had claws and sank them into a vulnerable side? What if she sprang onto a slender back and buried her fangs in a long neck? How long would it take for the gazelle to stop struggling, and would she feel guilty for taking a life?

  Not if she was a jaguar. A jaguar was born to hunt and kill; that was the cat’s role in the balance of Nature. A jaguar looked at the beautiful creatures and saw not grace and speed, but what it needed to survive.

  The gazelle were social creatures. True, part of why they stayed together was because it was harder to sneak up on a herd than a solitary animal, but they obviously enjoyed each other’s company. Youngsters played together while the adults grazed or slept close together as if they were long term friends.

  Not all of those groupings were anchored by friendship as witness by the males’ frequent sniffing of rear ends in search of a receptive female. Most of the time, the females ignored the advances, but sometimes an insistent male earned a taste of flying hooves. And very occasionally, a female stopped eating and sniffed back.

  Mating, that’s what that was, the beginnings of the mating ritual.

  Trying to decide who was going to hook up with whom and when was making her as restless as thinking about hunting a gazelle had, but after last night, was it any wonder?

  Eyes at half mast, Dana went back to imagining that she was stalking. In her mind, she was slipping through the tall grass with her belly inches from the ground. Her head was up, ears forward, mouth open in anticipation. The only difference was that this time she wasn’t alone. Another jaguar glided beside her, male, larger, stronger, silent and sure.

  They hunted together, watched together, listened as one, attacked in unison. And when their bellies were full, they turned toward each other and snarled their shared need. When this pair fucked, it wasn’t because the female was fertile. Instead, stalking and killing as one had ignited a need far stronger than the one for food. They mated because they were mates.

  And while they screamed and tore at each other, the gazelle silently watched. And understood.

  Although she’d tried to concentrate on her every move as she climbed down, now that she was on the ground, Dana wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten there. She supposed she should be glad she’d remembered her equipment, but truth be known, she didn’t particularly care.

  Imagining herself as a hunter should have upset her, but it hadn’t. Instead of being repulsed by her imagination, she accepted it as the result of two things. For one, she was in a place where animals did what instinct had programmed them for since the beginning of time. Prey animals weren’t repulsed by predators. Instead, they accepted Nature’s laws just as the predators accepted their roles. As for the other factor, well, that’s where things got a little more complicated, or maybe she should say intense.

  Putting down her equipment, she started rubbing her hip in a half-hearted attempt to soothe away the heat there. If she could be sure no one was watching, she would have pulled down her jeans and looked at her tattoo to reassure herself that it wasn’t infected, but maybe modesty wasn’t why she didn’t. After all, how could she think about Nacon without bringing up an image of his matching mark?

  Yes, she acknowledged, she’d been thinking about the mystery man while imagining herself as a jaguar hunting and living alongside her mate. As long as she didn’t have to explain herself to anyone, including herself, she could spin out the fantasy of Nacon as her mate. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t communicate with words, because their bodies spoke and listened in ways that went far beyond what pathetic humans had to rely on.

  “Is that why you materialized last night? You heard messages I didn’t even know I was giving out? Your tattoo spoke to mine? Nacon. Where are you? There’s so much I don’t understand, so much I need to know.”

  Feeling spent by her outburst, she looked around, but from what she could tell, only the birds, bugs and gazelle had heard, and they couldn’t possibly care.

  “I’m not going to tell myself this isn’t happening. Maybe I should, but I don’t want to. Instead, I want to open myself up to all the possibilities. Does that make sense? I’m suspending disbelief because otherwise I’m afraid I’ll block myself off from something essential. My father—I hardly ever see him and yet we talk to each other all the time. If I can do that, then surely I can listen to whatever you tell me. I won’t judge. I won’t call you, or myself, crazy. I’ll just let it happen.” If only I knew what it is.

  Concerned that her ramblings might lead to a return of last night’s headache, she shut up and concentrated on caressing her hip as best she could. Obviously, vigorously rubbing it wasn’t going to take away the burning sensation. Besides, she wanted this kind of heat. If she put her mind and imagination to it, she might convince herself that Nacon was responsible for the warmth settled on her hip and now spreading to other areas, specifically where he’d been housed last night.

  No. She wasn’t going to so much as think the word insane. She’d had sex with a sexy stranger who said he didn’t exist on the same planet she did or something like that. What had happened had happened, end of discussion. And now with her fingers stroking and teasing the flesh just beneath her jeans, she was remembering how incredible the experience had been.

  More than just remembering—bringing a certain delicious itch to life and depositing a little moisture on her panties.

  About to send Nacon another mental message, she hit upon another way of trying to get in touch with him, but as eager and determined as she was to stand face to face with him again, the setting had to be right—private. Looking around, she spotted a large number of trees and bushes in what she’d come to think of as the public area since it was open to visitors and staff, but not the animals. A group of school children was at the elephant compound, and a van filled with senior citizens was heading toward the area reserved for giraffes, but from what she could tell, she was the only human within shouting distance of the thick vegetation. Just the same, she sensed she was being watched as she walked toward it. Maybe Nacon was her unseen watcher, not that she understood how that could be.

  Reaching the promise of privacy, she slipped into the middle of the thicket. The vegetation here was just as dense as around the perimeter, giving rise to a question about a constant underground water source. After putting down her cameras, she unzipped her jeans and slid her hand under the opening she’d created. Gently rubbing what she had in common with Nacon made her feel incredibly close to him, maybe dangerously close.

  “Is this how I’m supposed to get in touch with you? Instead of using a cell phone, I tap into you this way?”

  Massaging her hip was far from an easy task thanks to her snug jeans and overheated state, and it took considerable restraint not to let her hand stray to an even more sensitive area of her anatomy. But she needed to connect with him and not her sexuality, somehow.

  “I wish you were the one doing this,” she admitted as her fingertips skimmed familiar territory. “And that my fingers were on you. I can’t think about why our tattoos are the same. Every time I try to, my mind shuts down, probably because it makes absolutely no sense. If I had the brains I was born with, I’d have packed up and left last night, but I didn’t. Nacon, what is this about? Where are we headed and why? Ple
ase, I need—need to connect with you.”

  Chapter Seven

  Movement in the bushes to her left stilled her hand. Her cheeks felt flushed and her legs rubbery. She couldn’t think of how to swallow. Although she wanted to approach the movement, she didn’t trust her legs, so she rested her shoulder and hip against the nearest tree and waited.

  Yes, Nacon. As proudly naked as he’d been last night, his strides catlike, his eyes mirroring a jaguar’s in color and intensity. Although she’d been praying for this moment, more than half believing it would happen, disbelief now ran through her. He’d have to speak first because she was incapable of making a sound.

  Instead of breaking the taut silence, he continued his purposeful approach. With each step, she balanced between the impulse to run away and the urge to launch herself at him. Her clothes were too tight; even her skin felt confining. When he was close enough that his heat touched her, she held up an unsteady hand, indicating she needed him to stop. Too much, she wanted to tell him. Too fast. But what if he refused to accept a slower pace? Would he walk out of her life and if he did, could she survive? Soon, she tried to reassure herself. Soon I’ll insist on answers.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She stopped just short of shaking a fist at him, not because she resented the question, but because it struck too close to the truth.

  “What about yourself? Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Damn him for knowing so much about her. “What do you care? It’s not as if we know each other or owe anything to each other.”

  “Don’t we?”

  Another damn slid through her, but she didn’t try to track its source. Her arm was growing tired and she wanted, no, she needed him to be closer. Despite the danger, she dropped her arm to her side and pressed her hand against her tattoo. “Is this what brought you here? You got my telepathic message?”

  “If that’s what you believe, then that’s what happened.”