“Armend here, all of you report in, over.”
“Giles.” The radio crackled with static as Giles gave his dismal news. “Didn’t find crap. She’s disappeared. Vanished. If she gets down the mountain and tells anyone, Armend, you could be in trouble.”
Armend scowled. “Who’s going to believe the bitch? She’s a stupid tourist, although I don’t need the hassle. My dad’s been a bastard lately. Insists I get a job, make something of myself. He’s pissed because he had to have our lawyer settle with a couple of women who claimed I was overexuberant with them.” He laughed. “Anyone else out there find her trail? Gerard?”
“I found a faint trail leading up the mountain, but it disappeared. The fog is so thick I couldn’t see anything at all, but it’s the only thing I found so maybe I should continue to try to scout around and see if I can pick it up again in the morning. If it’s her, she’s good in the mountains. She knows what she’s doing.” Gerard’s voice came over the radio.
So that made three men who were enemies of Teagan. Andre remained very, very still, the owl partially hidden by sweeping branches.
“I got nothing either,” another voice said. “I’m just a little south of you, Armend. She hasn’t come this way.”
Armend cursed under his breath. “Keep looking, Keith. She has to be somewhere. I would have picked up her trail if she’d gone down the mountain. Kirt, what about you?”
“Nothing here either, Armend,” Kirt reported.
So Armend had four friends who had gone out in different directions to try to pick up Teagan’s trail while Armend stayed close to the first camp area to see if she would go back to it. That told Andre a lot about the man. He used his friends while he did the least amount of work. He definitely thought himself entitled to take anything he wanted. So Andre needed to give him that opportunity.
“We’ll meet here tomorrow morning,” Armend snapped, and clicked off his radio abruptly without the slightest courtesy. He shoved it back on his belt and turned to stir the meal in his cooking pot. Clearly he was out of sorts.
The owl spread its wings and sailed down to the ground. The moment the talons touched earth, Andre shifted back to human form. He chose a spot in the deeper tree line just below where Armend had made his camp. Lifting his hands, he made the motion of a circle. At once fingers of fog began to drift from the trees toward the campsite.
At first the droplets were no more than the finest mist, curling along the ground, sliding out between branches, forming its own layers, both high and low. He made certain the vapor stayed thin enough that one could see through it. Next, he called to the wolves. The pack was a long way out, but they answered him, first one cry and then another. They would obey him. They always obeyed him. Andre watched Armend carefully the entire time the pack was taking up the hunting cry. Armend hadn’t failed to notice that the first wolf had sounded close by.
Armend stood and paced nervously, his hand dropping twice to his radio as if to assure himself he had friends close enough to call should there be trouble. The hunting cry of the last wolf died away and silence reigned once more. At first the abrupt quiet increased the tension in Armend.
The man checked his weapons. He didn’t have a gun, but he had three knives, and he positioned them close to where he sat, even going so far as to practice reaching for them. Next, he built up his fire and went to the trees to get more wood. He stacked it close to him.
Andre moved with the fog. He sent his phantoms ahead of him, directing the mist so that it wound through the trees and crept upward from the ground toward the rocks and boulders several feet above the tree line where Armend had made his camp. The fingers of fog had already reached the stones above the trees where foliage tended to grow in clumps along the mountainside. The fog drifted over the field of boulders, layering in almost gently, nonthreateningly—unless one noticed that there was little wind and when there was, the mist paid it no mind.
Armend sank down on his rock seat and stirred the concoction in his cooking pot. He glanced around him, still a little wary after the wolves’ hunting calls, but Andre could see he’d already begun to dismiss the animals from his mind.
Hunger beat at Andre, so that every cell cried out for sustenance. He needed blood. He could smell Armend’s blood. He could hear the blood pumping through his veins and the strong beat of his heart. Andre’s lips drew back in a snarl as he felt the sharp points of his teeth. Still, Armend needed a lesson. A serious lesson before he met Andre. He needed to experience fear. Terror even. That was something Andre was very good at showing his prey.
The thicker fog inched along the ground, rising as a wall, cutting off Armend’s vision. One moment he glanced down at the food he was heating and the next he looked up and couldn’t see anything at all but the swirling, very dense vapor clouds. Alarmed, he stood up again, one hand nervously dropping to his radio.
Armend didn’t pull the radio from his belt. He was the leader in his group of friends. He always had been. He was that little bit richer and much more dominant. He was the one who had realized early on that women—particularly young college-age girls who were backpacking across Europe—were especially vulnerable. He’d been the one to slowly get the others to accept more and more violence.
He had been the one to think of their guide service. Armend made certain the few couples or older people they took into the mountains had the best of times. He won them over with spectacular service, taking them to the most beautiful places so they would rave about their guides.
His victims he chose very carefully. He made certain there was no paper or Internet trail to follow. The girls came alone or in pairs. Those were the ones he chose for his sport.
He beat and raped the first girl alone, but in front of his friends. He’d known his accomplices since they were little kids together, and he’d chosen all four as carefully as he chose his victims. All of them had tendencies toward violence, but he knew without him, they probably would have taken a lot longer to act out their fantasies.
He made certain he bought plenty of porn vids, all with themes centering around rape and hurting women. He took them down that path first with stories of sharing women, treating them like the toys they were, then the videos and finally actual snuff porn. All of them got off on it.
He kept the girl with him, soothing her, promising her money, saying he was sorry that things got out of hand, all the while winking at his friends and letting them know he was working up to a second round. The second round had Kirt and Giles joining in. By the third time, Keith and Gerard had leapt at the opportunity. From there, it had been easy enough to convince them that she couldn’t live because she’d endanger them, and they all beat her, taking turns, laughing and jacking off on her as she begged and promised them anything they wanted.
Armend was fairly certain his father suspected what was going on, and maybe even wanted to join in, the hypocrite. Still, his old man paid to keep silent the few girls he’d dated throughout his school years, the ones he’d shared a little bondage with and then his sadistic tendencies. He’d made certain they agreed to be tied up before he ever did it, and that kept the police out of it.
He was charming and persuasive. The girls all thought he loved them. He always taped them agreeing to the fun of being tied or handcuffed. Sometimes even whipped. Of course once he had them at his mercy, the compulsion to hurt and humiliate them took over and he couldn’t stop the things he’d done. Hell—he didn’t want to stop. He reveled in it.
Then he’d met Teagan Joanes. She wasn’t anything like the women he generally chose for his victims. If anything, she was the exact opposite. She should have looked like a boy—she didn’t really have much in the way of breasts, just a handful. She shouldn’t have caught his eye at all. For one thing, she was half black and half white. Not his thing at all.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He obsessed over her. Her skin was the softest, smoothest skin he’d ever seen and the color of a mocha latte, absolutely beautiful. Her laugh was just plain sexy and could cut right through a man. Her waist was so small he was certain he could span it with his hands if he tried. She had nice hips and a really fine ass. She just grew on him until he couldn’t think with wanting her.
She never gave him a single opening. For a while, those three years of college together, he thought maybe she was a lesbian, but there weren’t any woman that she dated. Had there been women, he knew he would have killed them. Same if a man had come between them, but she didn’t date. She had a lot of male friends. Climbing friends. Hiking friends. Biking. She seemed to be busy all the time in her off-hours.
Teagan was brilliant, and he hit on the idea of hiring her as his tutor. He’d struck gold with that. He had plenty of money—he didn’t give a damn about geology—but if he wanted his inheritance he needed a degree from a university in the United States. She spent a great deal of time with him. He’d poured on the charm. Spent money on her, although she didn’t seem to like it much. He’d brought picnic lunches on the pretext they could spend more time studying.