Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (24 page)

The cats stirred uneasily, dragging
their focus from her to stare at the curtains, their ears flicking
and turning on their uplifted heads like miniature radar tracking
dishes.

She’d become the most popular dancer,
a situation that mystified her and caused her no end of trouble
with the other exotic dancers. She had two breasts and a pussy—just
like they did. She thought she had a pretty good figure, but it was
by no means the best—certainly not when ‘best’ seemed to be
measured in the size of the breasts. She was older than all of the
others, most of whom were barely twenty while she was breathing
hard on thirty. And she was absolutely certain she didn’t dance
better. In fact, despite the fact that she’d gotten used to it,
more or less, and generally managed to focus on the music instead
of the men leering and hooting at her, she was still too shy of
flaunting her nakedness to really relax, definitely too inhibited
to fan her legs and expose her ‘tonsils’ like the others so often
did. It took all she could do to keep her arms and legs moving, at
all, and refrain from covering herself.

She strongly suspected it was the very
fact that she looked so ill at ease and refused to show anything
she could keep from showing that drove them up the wall.

She was so caught up in her thoughts,
the curtains had already begun to part before she realized the
moment was upon her. It was the music that actually caught her
attention, however.

Drums. Jungle drums.

Her heart paced itself to match the
beats, thudding heavily with each pat on the deep bass drum than
accentuated the rhythm being played out on the lighter drums. She
lifted her arms, beginning to gyrate slowly as the curtains swung
wide and the spot lights, thankfully, half blinded her, making it
almost impossible for her to see beyond the edge of the
stage.

A half dozen dark skinned men, dressed
in African garb, sat cross legged with the drums they were beating
between their legs, three on either side of the stage.

She wondered if any of them had any
idea that they were sitting directly in front of a lion and a
tiger.

She somehow doubted it. They looked
way too relaxed and focused on the music they were making with
their drums.

Dead silence fell over the crowd as
they spotted the two beasts and discovered the cats were watching
them. The certainty that their attention was focused more on the
cats than her drained some of the tension and stiffness from Kate
as she moved slowly forward on the stage until she was positioned
directly between the two cats. She went through the motions of
‘offering’ herself, wondering if the sweat popping from her pores
and beginning to coat her body was enough to wet the paint that had
dried on her skin and if she was smearing her stripes as she ran
her hands over herself, cupping her breasts and massaging
them.

The moment she did, she discovered the
cats certainly didn’t have their undivided attention. The steady
beat of the drums drowned out most of the comments so that they
blurred into an incomprehensible mumble, but she heard enough
‘yeah, baby!’ and ‘bring it on, mama!’ to assure her she’d
recaptured their attention. She gyrated around to one side so that
those on either side of the audience could get a better look at her
assets, tucking her chin as if she was gazing down at herself and
cutting her eyes at the tiger.

She had his full attention, too, she
discovered, feeling her heart leap. His gaze was slumberous, but
riveted on her nevertheless. Her heart was in her throat as she
danced a little closer to him and pretended she was trying to
entice him, moving sinuously while she felt herself up.

He studied her movements with an
unblinking stare for many moments before he lifted his head and met
her gaze. She tensed as he did, unable to prevent herself from
meeting that golden stare, even though she had a bad feeling it was
the wrong thing to do. Tearing her gaze from his after a moment,
she turned away from him and moved slowly closer to the lion. As if
she was trying to make up her mind of which to choose between the
two, she turned from the lion after a few moments and moved back
toward the tiger, inching a little closer each time. She’d made the
circuit twice when she discovered Panas the Prick watching her from
the wings—glaring at her actually, and motioning imperiously with
his hand toward the animals.

Their fucking paws weren’t
nailed to the floor, she reflected with a burst of anger fed by
fear—drugged and chained, or not, they hadn’t shifted more than a
hair, but both cats seemed way too mesmerized by her for Kate’s
peace of mind. By the time she’d danced to first one cat and then
the other again, the audience was shouting directions she
didn’t
want
to
understand and Panas looked like he was going to burst a blood
vessel.

She slithered down to her knees that
time, more because it felt like her knees would give out than
because she wanted to comply with Panas’ demands. Crawling toward
the lion cautiously, she lifted a shaking hand and settled it on
his side, hoping his reach wasn’t long enough to knock her head off
of her shoulders if he felt inclined to slap at her.

She felt a vibration filter through
her palm as she stroked his fur from his belly to his hip. For
several moments, her mind was so perfectly blank with terror, she
couldn’t figure out what the vibration was.

Then she realized he was
purring.

It heartened her, but not by a hell of
a lot.

Realizing her legs were too weak for
her to actually regain her feet, she crawled across the stage to
the other cat, approaching him warily. He tensed when she touched
him and her heart tried to choke her. Almost as if he forced
himself to relax, the muscles beneath her hand eased. She stroked
her hand through his fur, feeling a rumbling purr begin from deep
inside of him, but she couldn’t work up the nerve to move
closer.

She was supposed to rub herself on
them.

She didn’t think she could do
that.

Trying to assure herself that Panas
wouldn’t beat her to death for deliberately ignoring his orders,
she moved back to the lion and stroked him again. He began to purr
again almost the moment she touched him, shifting almost
restlessly, as if he wanted to turn to draw closer to her.
Thankfully, the chain kept him from getting close enough to sniff
her. She could see his nostrils flaring, though, knew he was
‘tasting’ the air for her scent.

Panas was making motions with his
hands again when she dared a glance in his direction.

As she moved back to the tiger once
more, the tiger watched her every move. The moment she reached out
to begin stroking his belly and hip again, however, he lay down
completely, settling his head against the floor and stretching his
great body out as if inviting her to rub his belly.

Slightly reassured by the fact that
his head, and those frightening jaws, weren’t hovering over her,
she inched a little closer and rubbed her face along his
belly.

As quick as lightening, he hooked one
great foreleg around her shoulders and dragged her full length
against his belly. Before she could even remember her voice to
scream, his huge head settled next to hers and she heard a
rumbling, threatening growl directly in her ear.

* * * *

Sergei struggled against the effects
of the drugs in his system, even though he’d learned by now that
the fight was useless—worse than useless, actually. They’d brought
him down with the drugs. When he’d wakened in a cage, he’d loosed
his fury on the people who’d captured him, battering at the bars
that imprisoned him until they’d raced to get more of the drug and
used it to take his will to fight. He hadn’t been lucid enough
since that time to manage much more than eyeing them with deadly
promise every time they came near his cage to feed him or drug him
again.

He knew, though, that he was far, far
from his home. Despite the drugs, he’d been aware of the passage of
time in the elevation of the stench around him, the number of times
he was fed and hosed down to cleanse the offal from his cage, which
was barely big enough for him to turn around in much less to
distance himself from his own excrement. The incessant heaving and
rocking beneath him that made him too sick to attempt to fight even
if not for the drugs had finally translated in his mind to ‘ship’
even though he’d never been on one before—had not traveled in any
of the machines of man since he’d eschewed that side of his nature
in favor of the wilds when he’d finally realized it was safer, both
for him and for the man-children, for him to stay as far away from
them as possible.

He was not of their kind, even though
he had walked among them during much of his early years, nor yet of
the beasts that was his other side. In truth, he belonged nowhere,
but he preferred the honest savagery of his beast kindred to the
brutal lies and deceptive nature of the man-children.

At least the beasts he lived among
only killed for survival—to eat, to protect, for
self-preservation—never merely for amusement or vindictiveness.
They would not hunt him down and kill him only because he was
different as they had his parents because they had been foolish
enough to believe they could pass undetected among the
man-children.

It had settled in his mind after a
time that, if they hadn’t killed him outright, they had a reason
for allowing him to live. They had plans for him and that meant he
still had the chance to live. All he had to do was bide his time.
Sooner or later they’d slip up, become too confident, and when they
did, they would pay for it with their lives and he would be free
again, free to return to his life—such as it was.

The hunger to find another of his kind
had eaten at him for years, the need for companionship, the need to
mate. It had gone unfulfilled. In his beast form, he’d ranged far
and wide and never sensed the presence of another like himself at
all, let alone a female of his kind.

It was the need that had finally
driven him back to the villages of man-children to walk among them,
the hope that he’d find another of his kind there, living among
them as he and his parents once had, but that hope had not only
soured, it had gotten him captured.

He could only bear the constraints of
his human skin for short periods before the itch to roam the wilds
became nearly unbearable and it was his proximity to the
man-children that had caught the notice of the hunters, he
knew.

The irony was that those who’d
captured him had brought him closer to another of his kind than
he’d been since the deaths of his parents.

The South African was closer than he’d
come before, at any rate. He was man-beast. He was
feline—unfortunately not tiger, but it had given rise to renewed
hope that he might know where others of their kind were.

He would find out when he found a way
to free himself—for they had no way to communicate when they did
not dare take their human forms—and if the lion knew of others,
maybe he’d help him escape, as well.

And if he did not—maybe he would
anyway.

He’d curbed his fury after a while,
once it had finally settled in his thick skull that fighting them
was not only useless, it encouraged them to keep him too drugged to
use his wits. They still gave him far too much to have much mind
about him, but at least he was awake part of the time now. At least
he could see what was going on around him. At least his rambling
thoughts connected from time to time.

As they had when he’d been brought to
this place.

He was to be sold to a zoo, he’d
discovered, but they hadn’t found a buyer yet. They’d decided to
make him ‘earn his keep’ by entertaining in their
club/casino.

The first discovery had increased his
rage to the point where he’d had difficulty pretending he was still
too drugged to hold his head up, let alone alert enough to try to
fight them.

The second discovery had made him glad
he’d managed to contain his fury.

They were going to take him out of his
cage.

When they did, he would have his first
real opportunity to escape—if he was lucky.

He’d underestimated their wariness of
him. Despite the fact that he’d pretended to be more than half
asleep, they’d taken no chances. They’d shot him up with more of
the hated drugs, waiting until they were certain the drugs were
pumping through him before they’d opened the cage.

He’d tried to gather himself to launch
an attack anyway, but had discovered he could barely stand. Reality
had blurred around him as they fixed the collar around his neck and
half dragged him from the cage, poking and prodding him until he’d
stumbled to his feet. He’d had to splay his legs wide to remain
standing once he’d gotten up and the drug had skewed his
perceptions, making it almost impossible to walk. It had required
absolute concentration to put one foot in front of the other and
move when they’d started dragging on the chain and choking him with
the collar around his neck.

Impotent rage had risen to life inside
of him, but deeply, too deeply to summon it to his aid.

And then he’d seen
her
.