Feral Passion (14 page)

That had been a couple years ago, and he had
toned down a lot since then. Sex helped to keep the urge down, kept
the feelings away. Not always, but. . .it helped. And he didn’t
condemn Chase for how much of a whore he was.

The table was silent till the flustered
waitress came back, looking at Chase from under her eyes. When she
set down their drinks and walked away, the blonde man had the most
triumphant look on his face.

“Told you,” he said to Raff, winking.

Despite the horrid thoughts he had been
thinking, Raff snorted out a laugh.

“Nice, now I have to listen to you moan and
groan all night.”

Chase grinned. “You can join in if you want,
I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. Saw her giving you some looks.”

Raff thought of Mary, then shook his head at
Chase. “I’ll pass.” It would have felt like he had betrayed Mary if
he had even walked into the room.

He scowled. The hell. . . It shouldn’t matter
to him if he did anything with another woman, it wasn’t like Mary
was his. A tiny voice in the back of his head scolded him that of
course she was, and of course he was a bastard for even looking at
another woman.

Chase had a knowing look on his face, like he
knew the exact reason why he wasn’t going to join him.

He chuckled, taking a sip of his drink. “I’m
excited to see how this will turn out when it comes time to
leave.”

Raff just narrowed his eyes darkly, not
bothering to express his thoughts.

“Here you are, gentlemen,” said a quiet yet
suggestive voice. Raff kept his sigh to himself, moving his cup so
that she could place his plate in front of him.

Once she was gone, he picked up his form and
got ready to eat his pancakes, reaching for the syrup. “Got
anything more on those symbols? he asked, looking up briefly at
Chase.

“Besides the lavender being a guide to the
afterlife, no. Sorry,” he mumbled in reply, mouth stuffed full of
hash browns.

Raffaele frowned, eyeing his friend. “You
would think that the way you eat repels women. . .”

Chase snorted out a laugh, covering his mouth
quickly before anything could fly out. “Yeah, right. They think
that The Shovel is manly.”

He shook his head, going back to his
pancakes.

“When do you think the next murder will be?”
Chase asked through a mouthful of food.

He paused, fork not making it to his mouth
all the way. “I’m not sure,” he said quietly, thinking of Mary and
things that he had realized.

Yes, the murders, he had realized after more
studying of the files that the lawyer’s had given him, were
steadily getting close to her. And the MO was female, fire, and
lavender.

His chest tightened as he thought about
it.

“Has Mary had any extra protection placed on
her?” Chase asked, a frown in his voice.

Raffaele considered the man’s question
slowly, then shook off the feeling that tingled along the back of
his neck.  “I’ll check into it,” he said tightly, thinking of
her brother and how he was going to have to actually converse with
the bastard.

“You better. . .things will go into
chaos if the
pachetto
is lost
or injured. I would know,” he said almost proudly. “I was there for
one of the fiascoes over in Italy. It was seriously
crazy.”

“I had heard about that,” he commented,
taking another bite of his pancakes.

And he had, almost everyone in the whole
entire world had. One of the worst traumas that could have
happened, a major leader in north Italy had been brutally murdered,
found by his daughter of seven and his brother. The uproar after it
had been horrifying, almost threatening to ruin their stable
community. Luckily, nothing had happened to the leaders older son
of twenty. This had only happened a couple years ago, and the place
was still reeling from the death of their adored leader.

Raffaele had made several visits to meet the
new leader, or the leader-to-be. The young man was young,
closed-minded, and unwilling. Since his father was gone, Raffaele
was in the position to train and guide the younger man into
leadership. After a year of arguing and furious outbursts, Raffaele
was close to giving up.

But. . .he couldn’t. That whole part of the
race was at stake, and of course it would be an even worse event
than the death of their old leader if their new one didn’t take his
place. Unlike the gods had intended in the beginning, it was the
races nature to have leadership.

Even Raffaele needed leadership, or a sort of
guidance, he thought. Stuart had been his mentor from the
beginning. He had often asked why none of the other leaders had a
guide as he did. And the answer, or lack thereof, had always been a
deterrent that had only made him frustrated.

He didn’t know if there were any other people
who had the same guide as him, or even had one. Kevin was there, of
course. Stuart and he argued every chance they got. He had never
seen the two of them together, let alone. The voice, when speaking,
would always come from. . .around him. Like he was there, but
greater than life.

The pancakes left a sweet taste in his mouth
as he finished them off. Wiping his lips with the napkin, he folded
it and set it down, ignoring the sound of his friend choking down
his food. He was too deep in thought.

As a child, Stuart had been there.
Guiding him, showing him the way. While his parents would be out
and running the race, he would be sleeping, talking to the only
friend that he
knew
he could
trust.

In truth, Stuart had caused him to grow
up to fast. Serious, calming, and deadly strict, the Creator had
been
livid
when he had found
out what his parents had planned for him years later. His father
had always been a week leader, not as great as he should have
been.

When Antonio had realized that his life was
at stake, he had been drawn back by fear. Childlike and innocent,
Raffaele had only been twelve when he had realized that his father
was slowly becoming weak with paranoia. The monster that tore down
one's mind and body, the awareness that kept them all alive.

He had watched as his father resorted to
locking up in his room, leaving his mother and him to fend for
themselves. The regular visits of men dressed in striking black had
stricken fear inside him. . .and also the knowledge that his father
had failed.

Stuart wasn’t one to sugar coat things, to
bank on the truth. When Raffaele had asked about his father and his
choices, Stuart had said with stark seriousness, “You are the
leader, Raffaele. You will take the race and you will prosper. You
will not be hindered by fear and cowardliness.”

Those words had been the first time he
finally understood what it meant to be an adult. Any other child
would have laughed it off, to serious of a conversation to be taken
into meaning. But Stuart had made him grow, made him learn.

And he knew that his father had failed the
race, his wife. . .and his son.

It was only a matter of time till
people lost all respect for him, till even the people who took care
of his affairs left him to bleed. At thirteen, his father had sent
a man to teach him the ways of life, the way of surviving, and the
ways of
killing
.

That was the first time that Raffaele had
ever gone against his guide, the Creator. His father had sent him
on missions, to countries that needed handling. The pain, the
incurable urge to contact Stuart, who had left him after the first
mission, had almost threatened him to disobey his leader.

While Stuart was just the Creator, Antonio
had been his father, the leader, the man that he had once adored as
a child.

Raffaele had become emotionless, doing what
his father forced him to. His uncle Jared had not known about the
visits, the times when he would be gone for weeks, sometimes
months.

Of course, he had gone unscathed. . .for a
time. The last mission, the last time that he had gone out for
killing, had been his last.

But that final mission had cost him
everything.

Chapter 23

“Do you have anyone waiting to pick you up?”
the nurse asked with forced casualty as she checked his blood
pressure and heart rate.

Jared snorted, hearing the faint, accelerated
beat of her heart. She must have heard, he thought with bitterness.
Not that it mattered; it seemed everyone had.

The Acutos doctor had hidden the evidence of
him being. . .not human. The problem with the leader here was that
she was too caught up in the murders to get around to funding the
hospital that was being set up especially for the Acutos and the
Archaeos. It had been a big project of hers, she had been so proud
about it that she had just had to tell him. Jared could remember
the slender woman breezing into the counselors room, aura so bright
and ambitious that if it had been an actual light, it would have
blinded him.

It had been on the list of things to do
for a while now. The
pacchetto
before them had hadn’t been fit to rule, had been taken down
from the power. But that wasn’t official, at least from what Jared
had heard. No one had heard from the old leader for years, and no
body had been found

Although people had held respect for him
through his failings, Jared knew that the people loved Mary and
could only agree at how great she was getting with her power.

He might not possess the same powers as his
nephew, but he knew a strong woman when he saw one. She was kind,
careful, and pleasant to be around. Strong, out spoken, aware, and
capable of hard decisions.

Faintly nervous hands removed the wrap
around his arm, and the rest of the attachments. The cursed
dress
that he was forced to wear
showed his crack and he felt a curl of his lip. “The clothing that
I came in. Where are they.”

The woman stiffened at his tone. He had a
mental sigh, then narrowed his eyes on her. He had asked numerous
times where they were, and every time they didn’t answer him it
only made him angry.

He was not going to be subject to
running around with his ass hanging out of a white dress that
did
not
suit his coloring at
all.

“I asked,” he rumbled deeply, “where my
clothes are.”

The female jerked at the sound of his voice
near her ear, then pulled back choppily to take a shuddering
breath.

I can get a lot worse,
honey. . . Just because I saved some pretty girl doesn’t mean
you’ll get the same fate
. Of course, though, he knew
he was wrong. As much as he might be on the edge, he hadn’t come so
close as to allow a woman or child to be hurt.

“They are downstairs,” she said unsteadily,
obviously not knowing exactly where.

“I would like them, please.” They were his
second to last pair. He wasn’t about to let some git lose them.

“They will be brought up shortly, sir,” she
said, swallowing.

She ran from the room.

Jared let out a sigh and settled back into
the bed, pulling the covers up around his body so that no one might
take a gander at a lovely site of his old hairy ass.

He looked at the clock, wishing that his
nephew would hurry his ass up. He wasn’t looking forward to being
forced into going back home, but he wanted out of the white house
that was keeping him trapped and almost naked.

Jared didn’t have a problem being naked—in
fact, just the opposite. The feel of air, the way he felt. . . It
was a perfect life when you didn’t have clothing on.

But that only applied for when he was in
animal form.

The next time someone came in, it was a male
nurse.

Figures.

“I have your clothes, and you’re about ready
for release,” he said, lips pressed tightly as he held out clean
jeans, shirts, and a jacket.

“Bring them over here, please.”

The scrub-dressed man brought over the
clothing, and Jared re-adjusted himself with a sigh. He might be
almost done healing, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a pain in
his leg that could make a grown man cry—which he was.

Holding the precious clothing in his hand, he
felt a reluctance to get up, to get dressed and signal that he was
leaving a warm place. Jared wanted nothing more than to stay in
hotel—only because it was warmer than where he would be going.

Because of the suspicion of his whereabouts,
he had been fired from his only job. The whole community suspected
him, and while he wanted to prove them wrong, to show them that he
wasn’t as bad as they all thought he was, he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

The cold apartment waiting for him, probably
infested with rats even after a couple of days gone. The male nurse
exited after giving Jared a disdained look, one that only made him
angry.

Jared stood on shaky legs, walking to the
bathroom. How he was going to pay for the treatment to his leg and
the room that they had let him stay in was something he would worry
about later. He had no money, no nothing that could get him out of
this without revealing the identity he had struggled to keep a
secret for as long as he had.

The bathroom light flickered on, and he
relished what he knew he wouldn’t have for a while.

A sterile bathroom.

His head hung from his shoulders, his heart
heavy.

God, how he had fallen. .
.
The pain in his chest didn’t alleviate a single bit
as he took off his
dress
,
finding the boxers that they had thankfully kept with the
bundle.

For the first time, he allowed himself to
feel something other than regret, anger, and bitterness.