The Breed shook his head slowly. “The signal’s bouncing. It wasn’t a direct line.” He folded the device and slipped it into a pocket of his olive green mission pants.
Douglas inhaled slowly. Deeply. Patience, he warned himself. The Council contact that had arranged the breakout had warned him that these Coyotes didn’t understand subservience the way Coyotes used to understand it.
Kill them all, he thought. That was what they should have done.
Clenching his teeth, he looked down at his legs and moved them again. At least there was some satisfaction there. The metal supports on his legs gave them strength, and the neural disc that had been implanted just after his escape gave him movement, sensation.
Damn, he was a man again. He was even f**king horny. He hadn’t had a hard-on since that son of a bitch St. Laurents staked him in the spine the night Douglas had tried to ensure his death.
If it just hadn’t been for that stupid bitch, Cassa. God, he was glad he hadn’t actually married her. The woman was dumb as a f**king brick. She wasn’t even a nice f**k. Not that she couldn’t have been if she had just put a little effort into it. The little prude.
He snorted at the thought. He bet she would move that little ass the next time he got his dick inside her. Being mated to that Bengal. He almost chuckled at the thought. He’d heard about mating and what it did to a woman, how they couldn’t tolerate another man’s touch. Hell, he’d even seen it for himself. Twenty-two years ago, in the mountains of this little town. He’d had the pleasure of raping one. She’d screamed. Screamed in agony. Begged and fought him like a lioness. And finally, she’d died. He’d f**ked her until she lost the little animal she was carrying and died right there in his arms.
He was going to f**k Cassa like that too. Fuck her until she screamed and cried, fought and begged. And if she was carrying St. Laurents’s kittens, then he’d make sure she wasn’t carrying them when he finished with her.
Moving slowly, he rose to his feet, almost moaning with the welcome pain he felt in his legs. It would take a while to regain the muscle he’d lost in the past eleven years, the surgeon had warned him. But it would happen. He had his legs back, he had his manhood back.
And he had to piss.
Even that feeling was almost ecstasy. Soon, he’d be back to his old self, and once he was, he’d tell the world, show them the brutality of the Breeds.
They had reported Douglas Watts dead. Wouldn’t the world be surprised when he showed up, not just alive, but with proof of what they did to their enemies and the horrors they subjected those against them to.
“We’re meeting them in the valley then?” the commander asked, his voice chillingly polite.
“Isn’t that what you heard me arrange?” Douglas grunted, wishing he could slap the bastard down as he should have been able to do.
“There have been Bureau patrols around them,” the Coyote reminded him. “Just because the meet was stated for there doesn’t mean we can’t change it.”
No, the valley was perfect. He almost rubbed his hands together in glee. There was a reason he and his friends had chosen that valley to ambush the Breeds in. There were plenty of places to hide and not as many to break through. The bastard that had dared to try to kill off the Deadly Dozen, and Douglas himself, would learn that he wasn’t dealing with some country bumpkin.
Good Lord, why hadn’t Phillip Brandenmore taken care of this mess in Glen Ferris? He practically owned this town, but still, Breeds lived and were probably breeding here. Like rats. Or cockroaches.
“I gotta take a piss,” he told the Breed commander. Damn if he could remember his name. “Get your men together. Have they moved to the valley yet?”
“My men are in place.” The answer wasn’t rude, but it was just shy of it.
Douglas glared back at him. “Remember who’s paying you,” he bit out angrily. “If you don’t succeed, you won’t get a penny.”
The Coyote’s grin was rueful. “And I’m all about the money, man. It’s the only reason your white-trash ass is still alive.”
Fury nearly strangled Douglas. He was not white trash. He could trace his family tree back beyond the Mayflower. He was a descendant of kings, and this bastard dared to talk to him this way.
“You remind me of a braying jackass,” Douglas sneered. “You bastards used to remember your place.”
The Coyote laughed at that. “At your back, with a blade? Man, you’d be bleeding from your throat, not your back, if you weren’t worth more to me alive than dead. Now take your piss so we can get started.”
The Coyote shook his head as he continued to chuckle. Let him enjoy his little laugh. He would be next, Douglas promised himself. There were plenty of pure blood societies willing to be trained to kill these animals. And Douglas knew just how to train them. Just how to work them. And this Coyote commander would be first on his list.
Brimstone might think his shit didn’t stink, but Douglas would be the man to show him better. Soon. Very soon.
Cabal took the pill he had saved back from those he had given Jonas. It wouldn’t eliminate the human side of his scent, but it would at least hide the Breed. If he stayed downwind of the location he had tracked the sat phone to, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.
He just had to find Cassa. He would deal with Patrick Wallace, or Azrael as Cabal suspected him to be, after Cassa’s safety was assured.
God help the bastard if she wasn’t okay.
Shifting the pack on his back, he scaled one of the low-lying cliffs that led along the path to the location he was searching for. There wasn’t time to go around it. Cassa said the pills lasted two hours; that should be time enough for what he had to do.