New Species 03 Valiant (19 page)

slapped the woman on her ass when he stepped into the

hallway with her. Trisha jumped, turned her head, and

laughed up at the large man following her before they

moved out of sight. Tammy gawked after them. Valiant

moved suddenly, blocking her line of vision.

“Did her security guy just slap her butt?”

Valiant smiled. “Yes.”

Tammy shook her head. “Her boyfriend might not

like him doing that.”

Valiant shrugged, grinning. “I don’t think he’d object.

He and Slade are very close.” He laughed.

Tammy let that one slide, not wanting to ask

questions that were too nosey. “Did I get clothes yet?”

“They are in the other room.”

“Could you bring them in to me, please?”

“You don’t need them.” Valiant moved to the bed and

threw back the blankets. “Drop the towel and get into

bed. It’s late and you need sleep. I will get you a glass of

water to take your pills. Have you eaten tonight or should

I have some food brought to you?”

“I ate.” She hesitated. “Could you at least turn

around?”

He turned. Tammy dropped the towel and climbed

into the bed. She pulled up the covers to her shoulders.

“A ll in.”

Valiant walked toward the bathroom. He returned

with a glass of water. Tammy still held the pill bottle. She

took out two pain pills and swallowed them down with

the drink. Valiant set the glass down on the nightstand by

the bed.

“A re you tired?”

“Yeah. I’m wiped.”

He blinked. “Does wiped mean tired?”

She nodded. “Slang isn’t your thing, is it?”

“I’m learning. I was raised around doctors, techs, and

security guards. I’m afraid my vocabulary is limited to

what they taught me. I didn’t get as much exposure to

them as some of the other Species did. I was different.”

She frowned. “Do you know how to read?”

“Yes. I learned after I was freed in the months we

spent in hiding waiting for our home to be established.”

He sat on the edge of the mattress. “Most of my kind

were taught before then but I wasn’t slated for any

interaction with humans. It was a waste of time

according to them. They just wanted to keep me alive

because I was so strong and closer to animal than most.”

Tammy stared at him mutely. She was too shocked

to even reply. Valiant looked a little sad as he gazed into

her eyes.

“How much do you know about New Species?”

“Just what I hear on TV and read sometimes in the

newspapers. I know that some pharmaceutical company

did illegal research on you guys and they finally got

popped. I know they made you part human and part

animal. That’s really about it except for how you guys

have your own Homeland down south near Los A ngeles

and how you opened up this place recently.” She

shrugged.

Valiant sighed. “We were altered with different animal

DNA . Some more than others, such as myself. They

made mistakes and I am one.” A nger tightened his

expression as he regarded her, seeming to be waiting for

a reaction.

Tammy stared into his exotic eyes. “A mistake? I

don’t understand.”

“I’m different—my animal traits are more dominant

than my human ones.”

She stared at his face, taking in his eyes, nose,

mouth, and cheekbones. “You appear more New Species

than most.”

“It’s not just how I appear. My instincts are stronger

than most of my kind.”

“What does that mean?” She was glad she was sitting

down, almost afraid to hear whatever he wanted to share

with her.

“I’m more animal than man. It’s the only way I can

explain it. The testing facility ‘mistakes’ such as myself

were trained to be aggressive, to fight and to take a lot of

pain. We were regarded as expendable and therefore

heavily abused by their drug research trials. They tested

the most dangerous ones they make on us. We were

useless for any other purpose.”

She had one of those rare moments where she

couldn’t form words. Valiant had a talent for making her

speechless.

“They performed a lot of drug research on most New

Species. They expected huge profits from enhancement

drugs to that would make soldiers and athletes stronger,

faster and better. They trained them to show off what

their drugs could do. They were valuable. The failures

were not. They tried breeding experiments with me but

decided after a few unsuccessful attempts that they didn’t

wish to produce more of us.”

“Breeding experiments?” She got the question out but

wasn’t sure she really wanted to hear the answer.

“They brought some females to my cell to breed with

me to see if I could impregnate them. The other males

hadn’t produced results. Their testing failed with me as

well.”

Tammy tried hard to hide her horror. She knew she

hadn’t done a good job of it when Valiant’s gaze dropped

and his shoulders sagged. The sadness on his face tore at

her heart. He hadn’t had a choice, had been horribly

abused, had been a victim.

Valiant refused to look into Tammy’s pretty eyes any

longer. The revulsion he saw hurt him deeply. He’d

wanted to be honest with her by telling her everything

about his life. His mate would need to know. It wouldn’t

be fair to ask her to spend her life with him if he kept

secrets. He stared at the blanket covering her lap.

“We have heightened senses of smell, hearing, and

our eyesight is better than most Species. We are

stronger, faster, and even our intelligence was

heightened in some cases. We are experimental

prototypes that failed and in order to recoup their losses

they even tried to turn us into perfect killing machines.

They wanted to stamp out our humanity so we could be

trained as pure animals that would follow their

commands. It didn’t work out for them so well when we

wouldn’t break. We fought them instead, killed them

when given the chance and refused to do their bidding.

They were still working on us when we were discovered

and freed.”

“They tried to turn you into a killer?” She whispered

the words.

He glanced up and stared at her. “Please don’t get

that look in your eyes. I know how to fight and kill. It

doesn’t mean that I’m some mindless slayer. They tried

to salvage the failures by making us fighters mostly and

since we were so impressive looking they believed we

might turn a profit. They wanted me to be their…” He

paused. “‘Display’ New Species for the failures they

wished to sell. I would not comply.”

“Display?”

“To sell us.” Valiant’s voice tightened. “Third-world

countries, private armies for rich fanatics, or whoever

was willing to pay a fortune for an animal that could talk

and kill efficiently on command. Luckily for us, we never

heeded orders well. We had too many flaws for them to

actually put us up for sale.” He shrugged. “A t least most

of us. We now have found out that some of our women

were sold.”

Tammy stared at him in horror. “So some of your

women are out there being forced to kill people?”

He shook his head. “I do not know exactly what DNA

I was changed with. It might have been multiple large

feline species from my looks and abilities but we guess

the lion is most obvious. Their records having to do with

how we were created were destroyed. Mostly our

experimental prototypes were changed with species

known for tracking, hunting, strength and fighting.

Canine. Feline. Primate. We discovered that some of our

females were mixed with weaker animal DNA strains to

make them smaller and less aggressive. They were sold

to provide funding to continue the research.”

“Sold to whom and for what?”

Valiant looked furious. “Sold to whoever wanted to

make large donations to Mercile Industries. They called

them Gift females and in exchange for large sums of

money and for helping them cover up what they were

doing and to avoid being caught, they handed them over

to humans. They were giving our women to those

bastards as sexual slaves. We have recovered some

bodies and some living females.”

Tammy swallowed and tears filled her eyes. “I never

heard any of that on the news. My God. That’s terrible.

Those poor women.”

“You won’t hear it on the news. Justice thinks, if the

press takes it public, that the men holding our women

will kill them immediately to destroy any evidence that

they ever had them. Justice and your government are

tracing financial records and serving warrants to search

for our missing ones. We don’t know the numbers with

the records being destroyed but we find another one

every few weeks lately.”

She reached out and her fingers traced the back of

his hand. “That’s horrible. It just is sickening, isn’t it?

Those poor women.” She paused. “I hope that all of

them are found.”

He nodded grimly. “We do as well. We’re free and it

bothers us that some of our people are still being

tormented and imprisoned.”

“There’s no way to recover all the information to find

them?”

“When the testing facilities were breached by your

government law enforcement it triggered alarms where

we were hidden. The staff started fires in the record

rooms and destroyed the computers holding the

information. They started killing our people too. Some

died but most of us lived. Very few records were

salvaged.”

“I hate to say this but it’s probably a good thing. You

know how information goes. Someone could get hold of

it and use it start all over again. You guys are pretty

impressive. I’m betting that company would be tempted

to start new testing facilities with new people to

experiment on.”

He shivered. “We were told by a doctor who was

arrested that the leading researcher who created us

destroyed that information. She didn’t agree with what

Mercile planned to do with us after she succeeded in

creating us and she disappeared, taking that knowledge

with her. That’s why they began to try to breed some

Species to create more. I hope no one could ever

replicate what was done to us. It’s enough to give us

nightmares. We’re trying to financially destroy Mercile

Industries. We’ve won in your courts often on financial

matters and your government has put a lot of them in

your prisons.”

“It is your government too. You’re A mericans, aren’t

you?”

He nodded. “We have always been separate. It’s hard

to try to think any other way. It’s why Justice and our

council fought so hard for our independence by acquiring

Homeland and used some of the money from the

lawsuits to buy Reservation.”

“I heard you guys kind of have something close to

diplomatic immunity on your own Homeland and here

too. A news guy said it was similar to a consulate and

you have your own laws and justice system.”

“I assume so. Your government can’t breach us or

force us to comply with your laws. Not on our lands.”

“So I’m kind of in another country right now, huh?”

She suddenly grinned. “A nd I don’t even have a passport.

How cool is that?”

He fought a smile. She was adorable when she

smiled and he resisted the urge to reach up and cup her

face. He studied the bruise on her cheek and fought back

anger at what had been done to her by humans. “Is it

cool?”

“Kind of.”

His gaze held hers. “I want to kiss and touch you. Let

me, Tammy.”

Her grin faded as she stared at him, chewing on her

bottom lip. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know? Did I hurt you last time? Did

you not enjoy my touch? I know you did.” Hope flared

inside him that she’d be tempted. He longed to touch her

again.

Tammy couldn’t deny it. The time she’d spent in

Valiant’s bedroom had haunted her for five weeks. He

had turned her inside out. When he touched her, she lost

the ability to think. He seemed to take her silence for

agreement when he slowly leaned closer. His hand