“If you’re too afraid, I can carry you, but I won’t be able to shield you as well.”
The thought of him carrying her in his arms, held close against his body frightened her almost more than the guns did. She shook her head. “I’ll try.”
“You’ll do it,” he corrected, his voice gentling. “Jump over the rail on the left side. I’ll be right behind you. Start running for the forest and don’t look back. You’ve got about twenty feet to make it into the tree line. Keep running once you get there. Twenty feet is a long way, but if you let your cat lose . . .”
“I don’t know how.”
At least she wasn’t arguing with him about being leopard. That was a start. “You’ll feel her, muscles like steel, flowing like water, beneath your skin. She’ll rise because she senses your fear. Your instinct will be to fight her, but she won’t emerge, you’re not ready yet. Let her come close. You’ll run faster, take longer leaps and you’ll be able to go up into the canopy.”
His eyes held hers, willing her to believe him. She swallowed hard, but nodded her head.
“A leopard is tremendously strong. You have that, Isabeau. She won’t swallow you, but for a few moments as she’s rising, you’ll feel that way. Don’t panic. I’ll be right behind you and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Isabeau didn’t know why she believed him after everything that had happened between them, but she couldn’t help responding to his voice. The idea of a leopard living in her was absolutely preposterous, but she’d seen her own hand shift into a claw, felt the stiletto-like tips raking across his face. She woke up often, her heart hammering in panic, a scream of protest echoing through her room, looking to see if there was blood on her hands. His blood.
“You ready?”
She took a breath and nodded. Now she could smell smoke too. A series of shots rang out in the distance. She flinched, her stomach lurching. She’d seen what automatic weapons had done to the Indian village, but she didn’t protest. She knew the thin walls of the cabin weren’t going to protect her. They had a chance in the forest.
“No hesitation. We don’t know how close they are until I’m out there. Once you go through the door, you have to commit, Isabeau. Straight to the rail and over it.” There was a command in his voice, one that might normally have put her back up, but she found solace in it. He was the kind of man who survived this kind of attack. The safest place in the rain forest was right at his side.
“No hesitation,” she agreed, and steeled herself.
He burst through the door, rushing in front of her, shielding her body right up to the rail. Isabeau refused to look down. She leapt and was astonished when she landed adeptly with both feet onto the rail and then she was sailing over it. She was aware of Conner right beside her, keeping his larger frame between her and the narrow path leading to the small clearing. There was a kind of singing in her veins, as if adrenaline had found a symphony and played the crashing notes as it rushed through her body. Strangely, there was a rush in her body, like the flow of the wind, the sound of the trees. She landed in a crouch, utterly astonished.
The buzz of a bee was loud in her ear. As if at a distance, she heard Conner shout, his hand caught hers and yanked her into motion. She didn’t have time to analyze the shocking way her body reacted, muscles flowing like water. He pulled and she felt the coil of her body, the leap that covered more than half the distance to the tree line. A second leap and she was inside the cover of the broad leaves, running along a narrow rodent path.
Her sight grew strange, as if she was seeing in bands of color, yet everything was totally clear. Her range of vision seemed enormous, as if she could see, without turning her head, a good two hundred and eighty degrees around her. Her vision was amazing to the front. Isabeau judged her ability to see at least one hundred and twenty degrees straight ahead. Her eyes didn’t blink and detected movement in the underbrush as she ran—small rodents and insects as well as the fluttering of wings overhead. The deeper into the forest they went, the darker it became, but she could see quite clearly.
Sounds were enhanced, as if someone had turned on a loudspeaker. Her own breath rushing through her lungs sounded like a locomotive. Her heart thundered in her ears, but she could also hear the rustle of movement in the underbrush and knew, as she ran, exactly where other animals were. She caught the scent of a man’s sweat and the arid smell of smoke. She could hear the crackle of flames and the screams of the monkeys and birds as they fled ahead of the blaze.
Her heart seemed to beat in rhythm with the forest itself, absorbing the frantic energy of the other creatures as she moved fast through the trees, deeper and deeper into the interior. She was acutely aware of Conner’s hand pressing on her back, urging her to move even faster. She heard the whistle of a bullet and then a thunk as it slammed into a broad tree trunk a few feet to their right.
“They’re firing blind,” Conner said. “Keep going.”
She wasn’t about to slow down. She should have been terrified, but she felt absolutely exhilarated instead, almost euphoric, aware of each movement in her body, every separate muscle working smoothly and efficiently to carry her over the uneven terrain. A large fallen tree lay in her path and she didn’t even slow down. Instead, she could feel the wonderful coiling of her body, the spring as she leapt over it, clearing the downed trunk by a good foot.
She smelled sweat off to her right just as Conner gripped her around the waist and tossed her to the ground, his body covering hers. He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Stay still. Absolutely still no matter what happens and look away.”
She nodded her acceptance, although she didn’t want him to leave her there alone, but she knew he was going to take care of the threat moving toward them. For one heart-stopping moment she thought he brushed a kiss along the back of her head.
“I won’t be long.” His lips moved against her ear and she felt her heart leap. Her fingers curled into claws and dug into the spongy, vegetation-covered ground.
“Don’t get killed,” she hissed back and then closed her eyes, feeling as if she’d just betrayed her father. She could pretend to him and everyone else that she didn’t want him dead because she was afraid of being left alone in the rain forest, but she refused to lie to herself. She hadn’t shoved the knife into his chest because the thought of him gone from the world was devastating to her. And it made her hate herself all the more.
“I’m a cat,” he reminded softly and his voice had a roughened edge to it that slid over her skin like the lap of a cat’s rough tongue. “I’m hard to kill.”
He was gone, and even with her heightened hearing, she could barely follow his progress through the jungle of broad leaves. There was the soft slide of his body along the brush, no leaves crackling, only a whisper of movement as he crept closer to his prey. She turned her head slowly inch by inch, even though he’d told her not to look. Instinctively she knew it wasn’t about drawing attention, as a fixed stare could do, but that he didn’t want her to see death—and what it looked like.
Conner may have been in the form of a man but at that moment she knew he was all leopard, just without the form. She understood what he meant when he said to let her cat rise close to the surface. He looked like a large leopard, roped muscles sliding beneath his skin, his body moving in the freeze-frame stalk of a predator, head down, eyes focused on prey. He carefully positioned each foot, making certain he stepped in absolute silence as he crept toward his prey through the thick brush. When the man emerged just in front and to the left of him, halting to listen and look carefully around him, Conner was motionless, crouching low in a spring- loaded position, held frozen by the ropes of banded muscle power.
Isabeau’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the man with the deadly automatic weapon slung around his neck emerge from the brush and turn his head to look directly at Conner. Her heart pounded in her chest and her fingers dug deeper into the thick vegetation, as if the cat in her was ready to spring, to attack. She held herself still, feeling that other presence now inside of her, smelling her—the itch under her skin, the ache in her mouth, the need to allow the animal to burst free.
Breathing deeply, she kept her gaze fixed on the life-and-death struggle playing out just feet from her. Overhead, wings fluttered and something heavy crashed in the canopy. A monkey screamed. The man looked up and Conner sprang. She saw the powerful movement, and yet she could barely comprehend the amazing physical leap that took him into the armed man. He hit with the power of a battering ram, slamming his prey to the ground, the sound terrible as the two bodies came together with tremendous force. Conner’s body was so graceful and fluid flowing over the ground that she half expected him to use his teeth to tear out the man’s throat and claws to rake his belly open. He rolled the man over and caught his neck in a powerful, unbreakable hold.
She would never forget that picture of him, all raw strength, his face a mask of relentless determination, the muscles in his arms bulging, the death grip, nearly identical to a cat sinking teeth into a throat and holding while prey suffocated. She should have been repelled. She should have despised him all the more. Broad leaves tried to camouflage the intense struggle as his prey kicked and hit at him, but she could see through the foliage. The man grew feebler until only the heels of his boots drummed into the soil. Then she heard the audible crack as the neck snapped and there was no more movement.
Conner released the man slowly, his head turning away from her, back behind them, as if he’d heard something else. His body remained coiled tightly, ready for another attack. He carefully removed the automatic weapon and belt of ammunition and slung it around his own neck. All the while he stayed very low, his eyes on something she couldn’t see.