Predator's Salvation (2 page)

Gracie C. McKeever

inside the younger man’s mind and caught the roughness beneath, the screaming carnal being clamoring to get out.

Evidently, Ginger had gotten a hint of this being the other night.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed. “Well, after last night, I’m certain there’s something out of the ordinary about him, and that he’s been targeted. I’m still not a hundred percent certain that his
kundalini
contains spirit-boost though. There’s only one way to find that out for sure.”

“I know, and would it not be better to have his, as you humans put it, cherry popped by one of us in the New Regime than by those who have not yet been converted?”

Though their numbers were dwindling since the Inanna and Sebitu Alliance had been ratified, there were enough of the unconverted dissidents from both sides who still believed in the old ways, dissidents who did not have qualms about attacking and draining humans beyond sustenance, just for the joy of the kill. There were Inanna and Sebitu who thought enslaving and making choice humans their “pets” was their Goddess-given right.

Inanna like LaMia Enlil.

“He will be fine, Alex,” Genesis assured. “Just like all the others.”

“He’s not like all the others, Gen.” He didn’t know how to tell her that he felt a kindred spirit in Mateo, someone whose life had been touched by his and Genesis’s kind in the past, someone whose life had been devastated by an Inanna. “Give me a few more months, and I’ll talk to him. Okay?”

“Only a few, Alex. Something tells me that we’re running out of time. You must approach him soon before the others get to him.”

“I’m on it, Gen. I promise.”

4

Predator’s Salvation

New York City—Three Months Later

LaMia paused just inside the entrance of McDougall’s Bar and Restaurant, in huntress mode as her glance drifted from and touched each male patron before she caught sight of her prey.

She leered and moved forward with the flow of the crowd, eager now to get a better look at the two men she had stalked from the parking lot.

LaMia watched them now, a pair of extraordinarily gorgeous males out on the town, drinks held high and toasting their most recent business success.

No one else looking at them would guess that one of them was only half-human.

She did not know yet what to make of the other man, Alex Ryan’s co-worker and intern, Mateo Diaz. The bar was too dark and too noisy to gather the appropriate intelligence, but she knew he was important enough for Alex and Genesis to befriend, and this made him important enough for LaMia to make him her next target.

There was something intimate and familiar about Mateo, something strangely inviting that had her panties damp with want and her heart shuddering with a sensation akin to…unease.

She sensed that the young man was related to Julian.

LaMia smiled for the first time in a long time at the providence that had, in all likelihood, brought another Diaz descendant into her path. It was almost a guarantee that the young man also possessed the
kundalini
her body so craved.

She would make sure Mateo was not recruited into Genesis’s abhorrent Harvesting Program. This was the best form of revenge against those responsible for her exile, and she would enjoy every moment watching Alex and Genesis squirm after she seized their precious pet.

* * * *

5

Gracie C. McKeever

Mateo followed Alex out of McDougall’s with some hesitation, more worried about being in Genesis Ryan’s company again, than the crucial proposition that Alex had to divulge once they arrived at his condo.

He couldn’t say what it was about the exotically beautiful Genesis that he found so disturbing since their first meeting when he’d just started with her husband’s company, but he always felt ill at ease around her. Her scrutiny made him feel like a bug under a microscope.

Mateo realized he was not the only one she visually dissected—as he had come to think of her gazes—it was just the way she appeared to observe everyone, as if ever on the lookout for anyone who might do her husband harm.

What Mateo wouldn’t do to have someone like this in his life, to have a woman watch his back the way Genesis watched Alex’s.

When he looked at her vigilance this way, he didn’t feel so bad about the prospect of seeing her soon. He began to feel more envious of Alex than nervous about his wife.

“Everything all right back there, kid?”

Mateo focused his attention on Alex as the other man paused several feet in front of him with his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

He smiled, unoffended by the moniker. He was used to it even though Alex, at twenty-nine, was only five years older than he was. He was used to it because his baby face had elicited similar responses from everyone he’d come into contact with at
Ryan and Associates
when he’d first started a little more than a year previous.

Despite his light beard and mustache, the secretaries and other office assistants had either thought he was one of the partner’s kids visiting the office, or a high school student doing a paper on the craft of architecture. Never had they thought he was so close to being a full-fledged architect himself, not until Alex took him around the offices and introduced him as
Ryan and
Associates
’ newest prodigy.

“Everything’s fine,” Mateo assured him. “I’m just curious about this proposition you have to offer me and why you have to make it at your home.”

Alex backtracked to stand beside him, put a hand on Mateo’s shoulder, and gave it a warm squeeze. “It’s something that’s better explained in friendly, familiar surroundings.”

Friendly and familiar surroundings were Mateo’s own brownstone apartment in Harlem.

“You’ve been to my house plenty of times.” Alex grinned before he arched a questioning brow. “You’re not afraid of my wife now, are you?”

Mateo coughed and quickly covered his mouth with a fist, surprised Alex had hit the nail so squarely on the head, as if the man had read his mind.

The idea would have been farfetched, except Mateo had experienced the sensation of his mind being picked on numerous occasions when in Alex and Genesis’s company.

Hell, it was no stranger than his empathy.

“C’mon, Matt.” Alex clapped him on the back and pulled him close as he led the way to his car. “I’ll sate your curiosity and tell you all you need to know. I promise.”

6

Predator’s Salvation

Mateo couldn’t help feeling as if he was being led down a dark and lonely path he really didn’t want to pursue or explore.

He paused at the passenger side door of Alex’s car and waited for Alex to disengage the power locks. His heartbeat sped when he caught the sudden, spicy-sweet scent of cinnamon on the air, as if someone were baking a cake nearby with the ingredient generously sprinkled in. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and an icy-hot liquid sensation of lust settled in his groin in response to the enticing aroma.

Mateo sniffed the air more thoroughly, looked at Alex to confirm that he had smelled the scent too and saw Alex frown as if confused.

Mateo had an instant to glance up right before something swooped down towards them from the indigo, star-dappled sky, something large enough to be a person, but with wings spanning five feet across from either side of its back.

Definitely not human, but definitely a female.

Mateo thought it right before the woman dive-bombed towards him, arms outstretched in front of her as if she were some sort of super-heroine.

He had a moment to step away from the car and hear Alex’s warning cry of “Look out, Matt! Duck!” before the woman hooked her arms beneath his armpits, scooped him up, and took off for the sky again.

“Oh, shit…Mateo! Matt!”

Okay, this could
not
be happening! He wasn’t soaring a hundred yards off the ground with Alex yelling through cupped hands and chasing after him from the parking lot of McDougall’s. A woman with humongous wings had not just swooped out of the sky and grabbed him. No, siree!

Mateo glanced up at his abductor, but she didn’t look at him, just kept her eyes straight ahead as she flapped those big bat-like wings and acted as if he wasn’t suspended below her.

“Hey! Hey…you!” What exactly was he going to say? ‘Put me down’ didn’t seem like such a good idea when she was soaring over rooftops as if she had a hang glider attached to her back.

“Silence, human. We will be at our destination shortly.”

What the hell was that? A line out of a Shakespearean play he hadn’t read? She certainly spoke in the same stilted accent.

Christ, he hated heights!

Here’s a hint, Matt. Don’t look down.

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth to try to make the sick feeling in his stomach go away.

Mateo opened his eyes, couldn’t help himself, as they glided over a deserted area of the city in Lower Manhattan. From what he could make out by the light of the moon, it looked like some place in TriBeCa with converted lofts and narrow streets dominating the immediate area.

She aimed for the roof of one of the warehouses and smoothly landed.

7

Gracie C. McKeever

As soon as his feet touched the rooftop pavement, Mateo tried to make a run for it but was stopped in his tracks by a green force field that completely encircled him after he’d taken only two steps forward.

He scowled at his kidnapper through the bubble prison as she circled him, hands clasped behind her back. He thought there was something oddly familiar about her, about the way she looked at him.

He pummeled the capsule with his fists, and she smiled at him like an indulgent parent watching her baby throw a fit of temper in his crib.

“Let me out of here!”

She raised a fist in front of her as if in a Black Panther salute and twisted it back and forth a couple of times, her movements unhurried and strangely erotic. “You will sleep now,” she murmured.

They were the last words Mateo heard before he passed out.

* * * *

If she had not hated LaMia Enlil so much, she would have applauded her flash and style, but she did hate the exiled Inanna, hated her with every breath she took. Mara hated her every day she lived in her Sebitu skin without her mate and was reminded of what LaMia had deprived her.

They had taken Xaphan away from Mara, LaMia and that crossbreed bastard Alex Ryan, Nahemah’s favored great-grandson and royal phenomenon.

Soon they would pay.

Mara stared into the sky now, her plans for revenge momentarily forgotten as she tried to follow the path the Inanna had taken with her victim and wondered why so startling and out of the ordinary an acquisition.

No matter LaMia’s motives. The Inanna had met her match once when she had stepped over the line with her grandmother, Nahemah.

She would meet her match again. Only this time, LaMia would not be exiled but destroyed along with her new acquisition and his sponsors.

Mara would see to this.

8

Predator’s Salvation

Mateo floated towards consciousness reluctantly. He stopped short of opening his eyes and instead squeezed them tighter as her fresh cinnamon scent washed over him again.

He did not want to open his eyes. He fully expected to find some grotesque being out of his worst
Jeepers Creepers
nightmare making a tasty meal out of his internal organs and keeping him alive long enough to observe his own death by slow dismemberment and evisceration.

Thing was, he didn’t feel any pain or bloodletting, but that might just mean that his kidnapper had administered a local anesthetic, leaving him conscious enough to witness what would be done to him with scalpel and other sharp surgical instruments of mutilation.

Jesus, had he watched too many horror/slasher movies and
CSI
episodes in his day or what?

Yeah, buddy, just enough to be paranoid when you’re plopped smack dab in the middle of
one. Smooth move, Diaz. Tell us how you’re going to work out of this one.

Finally, hesitantly, he opened his eyes and blinked several times to bring his vision in focus. When he tried to lick his dry lips and couldn’t get his sluggish tongue past his mouth, he realized it was taped shut. He tried to sit up and get his bearings only to discover that he was also shackled, wrists and ankles, to a large four-poster bed.

He glanced around from his supine position on the firm, elevated mattress and slowly took in his lavish surroundings. He grudgingly appreciated his captor’s decorating tastes.

She favored bold shades of red and green and luxuriant materials, the eclectic overstuffed chairs, sofa and accessories were all covered in some sort of lambent satin, velvet, or chenille.

The bed on which he lay in just his boxer briefs, helpless and cuffed, was covered in a rich burgundy satin comforter that made Mateo wonder exactly how much use such a mundane piece of furniture saw from a being like the woman who had made off with him.

“Ah, you are finally awake. I was beginning to wonder whether I had killed you or not.”

Mateo wanted to ask her if it would have made a difference but settled for just staring at 9

Gracie C. McKeever

her with his best withering look.

“Oh, most assuredly it would have made a difference. I have big plans for you.”

He frowned as she approached the bed, her slow, sexy rolling gait giving him time to enjoy the sway of her generous hips and the bounce of her lush, round breasts beneath the burgundy leather halter she wore.

Wait a minute, had she just…?

She paused at his bedside, bent at the waist to sniff the air around him, and sighed in contentment before she gave him a ravenous look that made him forget his own name, much less his train of thoughts. Her expression reminded him of the way a cat looks at an injured mouse right before it pounces on the tiny creature to finish the job it started.