and the next thing I knew, he was on the ground and we were pinned down. I had no weapon and I shifted to try to circle around and find the shooter, but I couldn't find any tracks."
Brodrick swore. "It's her. She did this. I know it was her. That's why you didn't find any tracks. She took to the trees."
Neither said who she was. Dominic wanted to know who the mysterious woman they obviously hated--and feared--could be. Someone he wouldn't mind meeting. Four of the five De La Cruz brothers had lifemates. Could the elusive woman be one of their lifemates? It was possible, but he doubted it. The De La Cruz brothers would not want their women in battle. They were men with fiercely protective natures, and coming to this part of the world had only increased their dominant tendencies. They had eight countries to patrol, and the Malinov brothers would know how impossible it was to cover every inch of the rain forest. They would never, under any circumstances, send their women out alone. No, this had to be someone else.
The eagle spread its massive wings and took to the air. The sun was beginning to fade, making him a little more comfortable, but the whisper of the parasites grew louder, tempting, pushing his hunger to a ravenous level, until he could barely think straight. It was only the bird's form that kept his sanity as he tried to adjust to the rising level of torment. As the night grew closer, the parasites went from sluggish to active, stabbing at his internal organs while the vampire blood burned like acid. He needed to feed, but he was becoming more and more worried that insanity was grabbing hold and he wouldn't find the strength to resist the temptation of a kill while feeding.
Each rising he'd woken voraciously hungry, and each time he fed, the parasites grew louder, pushing for a kill, demanding he feel the rush of power, the rightful rush of power, promising sweet coolness in his blood, a feeling of euphoria that would remove every pain from his weary body.
He kept to the shade of the canopy as he expanded his exploration, heading for the site of the battle, hoping the eagle could spot something the men hadn't. He found the cave entrances, very small and made of limestone, but these didn't seem to curve back underground to form the labyrinth of tunnels as the cave system miles away had done. There were only three small chambers and in each he found Mayan art on the walls. All three caves showed evidence of occupation, however brief, but violent in some way. There were dried spots of blood in all of them.
He took to the sky again, a vague uneasiness in his gut. That bothered him. He had seen horrific sites of battle, torture and death. He was a Carpathian warrior, and his lack of emotion served him well. Without a lifemate to balance the darkness in him, he needed the lack of emotion to stay sane over a thousand years of seeing cruelty and depravity. Yet the sight of the blood in that cave, and the knowledge that women had been brought there by the jaguar-men to be used as they wished, sickened him. And that should never happen. Intellectually, perhaps. An intellectual reaction was acceptable, and the honor in him would rise up to abhor such behavior. But a physical reaction was completely unacceptable--and impossible. Yet . . .
Unsettled, Dominic expanded his search to include the cliffs above the river. The rain continued, increasing in strength, turning the world a silvery gray. Even with the clouds as cover, he felt the bright heat invading as he burst into the open over the river. A body lay crumpled and lifeless in the water, caught on the rocks, battered and forgotten. Long, thick hair lay spread out like seaweed, and one arm was wedged in the crevice two large boulders made. She was faceup, her dead eyes staring at the sky, the rain pouring over her and running down her face like a flood of tears.
Cursing, Dominic circled and then dropped. He couldn't leave her like that. He just couldn't. It didn't matter how many people he'd seen dead. He would not leave her, a broken doll with no honor or respect for the woman she'd been. From what he'd gleaned from the conversation between Brodrick and Kevin, she had a family, a husband who loved her.