SavageLust (2 page)

The sound of lonesome coyotes in the distance pierced the
fading night surrounding Desolation Ranch, the Texas headquarters of Night
Seekers. The rhythm of daytime had yet to begin, the familiar activity in the
war room and the ever-present sound of hammers and other construction
equipment, which fell blessedly silent once the sun dipped below the horizon.

Originally outfitted to house the first eight recruits of
Night Seekers, the structure was undergoing massive changes. As more members
were added and as spouses joined the team, Craig Stafford, the billionaire
moneyman behind the group, had set about making sure each couple had their own
private wing.

Dante Martello loved the hour just before dawn, when the sky
began to lighten and shine with the promise of a new day. These were the only
moments when he actually allowed a glimmer of hope to pierce his consciousness.

For five years now, Dante had been consumed with pain, rage
and a savage lust to kill the beasts that had destroyed his life. It was why he
ran as he did now, morning after morning, no matter what the weather, as if he
could outrun the crushing agony that never left him.

Night Seekers had become both his refuge and his opportunity
to satisfy that murderous hunger. Once, his lust had been focused solely on the
woman who meant everything to him. Now destroying the Chupacabra consumed his
entire life.

With the house in sight, he slowed his pace until he eased
into a walk. There were no lights on in the house except for the war room.
Good. Everyone was still asleep. They all respected each other’s privacy, but
ever since Sophia had caught him unawares, brooding on his patio, he worried
someone would ask questions about his emotional state. Or worse yet, insist on
accompanying him on his runs.

Those who were shifters—and hadn’t he just had to turn his
brain inside out to accept
that
?—often ran together in the darkness,
burning up the energy of the wolf that lay inside them. But he, the cop who had
always connected so well with people, had become an emotionally isolated loner.
And this hour when he ran was what allowed him to pull himself together to work
with the team the rest of the day.

To push the memories of his wife and the hideous remains of
her body out of his mind, a nightmare from which he couldn’t seem to wake up.

Felicia…

God, just thinking her name stabbed his heart with pain.

Since arriving at Desolation Ranch, Dante had concentrated
every waking moment on helping Night Seekers find a conclusion to his
nightmare. He had no personal life. That had died with Felicia.

Theirs was tense, nerve-racking, draining work. When other
members needed a break from the constant search for information or the tension
of yet another Chupacabra kill, they’d hang out at Clint Beltaire’s newly
opened bar, The Black Wolf. The name made them laugh, since Clint was a
shifter, like nearly three quarters of the team. In his other form he was a
formidable black wolf, thus the name of his place. The bar was located in a
little town about ten miles from Desolation Ranch, with a lot of local
regulars. When Night Seekers gathered in a dark corner, they inevitably vented
their despair over the loss of loved ones.

But Dante never joined in. Though five years had passed,
Felicia’s death was still too painful for him to discuss. He hoped finally
killing all the Chupacabra would give him—and the others—some closure.
Unfortunately, there seemed to be an endless supply of the monsters. Now the
emphasis wasn’t just on tracking the beasts, but also on hunting the madman
they believed was breeding them, combining genetic material of different
species.

They had to find these creatures. Put a stop to the
abominations or he’d never have any peace.

Logan Tanner and Rebecca Black had just returned from
Montana, where the Chupacabra had suddenly appeared, killing two people and
nearly a third before Logan, Rebecca and the team they’d assembled managed to
destroy it. At least there was one more group of law enforcement officers who
now believed in the devil beast. They’d seen it with their own eyes.

Dante knew the trip had been stressful, as all these trips
were for team members. But in the cold Montana wilds, Logan and Rebecca’s
relationship had grown. Night before last, they’d arrived back at the ranch
exhausted from the trip but with a commitment to each other that was
unmistakable.

More wedding bells, Dante knew as he approached the patio
that led to his room. Logan and Rebecca were determined not to waste a minute.
And why should they? All the Night Seekers knew how fragile life was and how
important it was to grab on to it. It wasn’t that he begrudged the team members
finding their soul mates as they carried out their missions. To the contrary,
he wished them all well. But every new couple just reminded him of what he’d
lost, and would likely never have again. He couldn’t begin to imagine finding a
love even close to what he’d had with Felicia.

But he could dig out a smile for Logan and Rebecca, as he
had for the others. Then retreat to his solitude and concentrate on eradicating
the satanic beasts from existence.

As he slid open the patio door to his bedroom, the pager on
his belt went off. One of the team rules maintained whenever anyone left the
house, even if they were still on the vast land surrounding Desolation Ranch,
they carried both a cellphone and a pager. The latter was backup in case they
were out of cell range.

Dante pulled it from his belt and looked at the readout.

Five-five-five.

The signal that Craig was arriving for a meeting.

Dante knew the reason for his early-morning visit. Craig had
confirmed the attack Dante had pulled up information on was definitely
Chupacabra. That meant all hands on deck. As he stripped off his shorts and
t-shirt, he heard the familiar
whop whop whop
of the rotors on the
chopper, signaling Craig’s arrival, and hurried through a shower. Quickly
drying himself off, he caught a look at himself in the mirror.

Unlike most of the other men at Desolation Ranch, his
clothing of choice didn’t have a hint of Texas. Instead, the former Chicago cop
favored worn jeans, black t-shirts and running shoes. At five ten, he had a
lean body, honed by the regular morning sprints he’d been doing for years. His
midnight-black hair was longer now than he used to wear it, almost touching his
shoulders. When he was running or in work mode, he pulled it back with a rubber
band.

Eyes the color of black ink and a sculpted face bore the
stamp of tragedy that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to erase.

He wasn’t a tracker like some of the others. He had lived
his entire life in the city, so acclimating to the emptiness of this vast
ranchland had probably been harder for him than anyone else. His one previous
foray into the wilderness had been a vacation to a cabin owned by a friend near
one of the state parks.

A vacation that ended in disaster, his wife killed by the
Chupacabra.

He’d found her body behind the cabin and the image continued
to haunt him in unrelenting nightmares. He had taken a hiatus from his job, had
used the time to search for similar killings, refusing to believe any animal he
knew of could have done that damage. He’d foraged the internet, shocked beyond
belief at what he’d found. It was while conducting this research that Craig
Stafford had contacted him, explaining the legend of the Chupacabra in detail.

And its reality.

For a city boy, it was a lot to take in. By the time Craig
found him four years later, Dante had long since quit his job and was already
more than halfway to believing the unbelievable. Joining the man’s team had
been a no-brainer. It had given him focus and resources. He had his own special
set of skills he brought to the job, an ability to do almost anything with
computers. In Chicago he had been a star of the cybercrimes unit. Here, he
worked closely with team leader Ric Garza, scouring the cyber world for any
information they could find.

It still shocked Dante that they weren’t looking for just
one
beast any longer. They’d killed one in Zapata County in South Texas, only to
discover another popping up elsewhere. Then another place. Unable to ignore the
horrendous evidence, their mission had taken on a deeper focus, searching for
some kind of hidden facility, which the madman breeding them would need to
carry out such exacting work. That meant changing search parameters and writing
new programs to scrutinize the scientific world as well.

Dante had become almost manic about it, often working
through the night. Maybe others could let themselves be distracted by love, but
not him. He’d already lost the great love of his life. And sex was the last
thing on his mind as he worked with the team. He had never recovered from
Felicia’s death, neither her loss nor the gruesome way she was killed. The
nightmares still haunted him. He didn’t think he’d ever find another woman to
take her place and had deliberately shut himself off from any emotion
resembling love. No one could take Felicia’s place, nor did he want someone to.
He wanted vengeance and satisfaction. That would be enough.

After that? He didn’t much care.

Each time a report came in, he chafed to be the one assigned
to the hunt. Over the long months since they’d all moved to Desolation Ranch,
other teammates investigated the reported killings while he spent his time
researching as much as he could, contributing his computer expertise and
learning to accept the existence of shifters. Dante was doing his best to
patiently bide his time. He memorized photos, read the lab reports sent by
Craig’s scientists who autopsied the carcasses, studied notes on the killing
scenes. One of these times it would be his turn.

Filling his coffee mug on his way through the kitchen, he
joined the others in the war room and focused on Ric. The team leader stood
facing the members seated at the big conference table in the middle of the
room. Behind him was a wall of screens that served as monitors for surface
computing images and video conference calls. Beneath the screens was a long,
specially designed shelf that held a wide array of computer keyboards and other
electronics.

The first time he’d gathered them in this room, Craig had
made it known that while they were all equal, every team needed a leader. He
couldn’t be that person because he couldn’t be on site on a daily basis.
Everyone had automatically turned to Ric, the former Texas Ranger and head of a
Delta Force team. The hierarchy worked smoothly. Everyone respected Ric and
acknowledged that
someone
had to be holding the reins. He always
conducted their briefings.

But today, Craig was standing beside Ric, taking the lead.

As Dante sat in the tension-filled room with his teammates,
he wondered if maybe this would be his time. He was the one who’d picked up the
news item and done the research. He had pulled up maps of the area as well as
everything he could find on the victim and the missing woman. He’d given it all
to Ric to forward to Craig. He wanted this case. He was ready.

“Thank you all for coming together so quickly. As always, we
have an urgent problem here.” Craig looked at Logan and Rebecca, seated close
together. “First of all,” he told them, “I apologize, but any wedding plans are
going to have to be postponed for a bit. Once again, we have a situation. And
the danger is considerably ramped up.”

“No problem,” Logan told him. “If it’s another Chupacabra
killing, that definitely comes first.”

“Thank you.” Craig nodded to Ric, who turned to a keyboard
behind him and at once, a newspaper article and a picture appeared on three of
the screens. The article didn’t contain anything helpful but the picture of the
dead victim was as horrifying as all the others they’d seen.

If they hadn’t all had personal experience with a Chupacabra
killing—some of them more than once—they might have been shocked. Still, it was
hard to become inured to such gruesome violence. Dante was pretty sure he never
would be.

Ric activated his laser pointer. “You can see the two
puncture marks in the neck. The report we…
obtained
, said all the blood
had been drained from the body.” He moved the laser pointer. “And here you can
see the flesh ripped open from neck to groin and, as usual, the entrails lay
outside the body as if just tossed there.”

“The pattern of the kill never varies,” Craig reminded them.
“And again, there were no traces of anything to follow.”

“But no one even knows what to look for except us,” Logan
said. “It’s possible the police even trampled over things they thought weren’t
important.”

Dante fiddled with his mug. “We need to get out there
ourselves and see what we can find. Of course, like all the others, there
probably won’t be much.”

“How recently did it happen?” Mark Guitron asked. “Just a
few hours ago?”

Ric shook his head. “It happened three days ago. Apparently
the law enforcement agency called in has been sitting on it, I’m sorry to say.”

“And why did they do that?” Sophia Black Beltaire wanted to
know.

“You can figure that out,” Ric answered. “It happened in a
state park, the governor doesn’t want anything to upset tourism, doesn’t want
to start a panic.”

“Which governor?” Sophia pressed.

Ric glanced at Craig before answering. “The governor of
Texas. The killing took place at Pedernales Falls State Park—only about an hour
from here. And the agency in charge is the Texas Rangers.”

Silence blanketed the room for a long moment.

“That’s practically in our backyard,” Jonah Grey pointed out.

The first Night Seekers case had been assigned to Jonah. It
had also been in Texas but south of them, near the border of Mexico. Dante
noted that as Ric spoke, Jonah reached automatically for his wife Dakota’s
hand. They had met during that case and both still had terrible memories of it.