Darkness Bound (A Night Prowler Novel) Read online

  All those words and an onslaught of others passed through Jack’s mind in a jumbled blaze as she stood, stunned and open-mouthed, at the edge of the forest, gazing up into the trees.

  Because that’s where the colony was:

  Up.

  Above her head for as far as her eyes could see stretched a suspended city, hidden cleverly within the network of ancient branches. Hundreds upon hundreds of sculpted wood structures—as organic and natural as the trees themselves, appearing as if they’d sprouted from the very trunks that held them—floated as if on air.

  Illumed with thousands of flickering lanterns hung in windows and branches and on the suspension bridges linking one tree and structure to another, it was the most astonishing thing Jack had ever seen in her life.

  It was the most beautiful thing Jack had ever seen in her life.

  It was an architectural masterpiece.

  She felt dwarfed by it, by its beauty and the sheer genius of its creators. She’d been to the Vatican once when she was on assignment in Italy, had stood in the vast, echoing silence of the central nave of St. Peter’s Basilica, and had felt exactly these same feelings.

  Awe. Reverence. Utter humility in the presence of such grandeur.

  The forest floor beneath the suspended city had been cleared of the underbrush that made the trek through the rest of the jungle so difficult, and the base of each tree had been landscaped with orchids and bromeliads and pygmy palms, all the colorful confusion of the jungle tamed and shaped to please the eye. At the base of one of the trees ahead of her, Hawk had stopped and was looking back at her with a flat, empty expression.

  His voice matched his face when he spoke. “Come on. They’ll be waiting.”

  They?

  With trepidation that equaled her amazement, Jack stepped forward into the beautiful, terrifying unknown.

  His dead father was having what could politely be termed a conniption inside the confines of Hawk’s skull.

  Idiot! Moron! Stupid fucking weakling!

  Doing his best to ignore the shrieked hysterics that always echoed in his brain at times like this, Hawk doggedly trudged onward from the edge of the colony, leading Jack to the place he knew the entire tribe would be gathered.

  Where they always gathered on nights of the full moon.

  Ummum Nanna was the monthly festival of the moon at its apex. His isolated tribe here in the rainforest had kept the old ways of celebrating the Earth and her great magic through the generations, and they had festivals for everything. Full moon and flood season festivals, vernal and autumnal equinox festivals, the winter solstice and midsummer festivals, birth, death, and wedding festivals . . . it went on and on ad nauseum. Hawk pretty much despised the lot, because enforced togetherness featuring singing, dancing, and ritual chest-pounding was his idea of hell on Earth. He already heard the singing, felt the pulse of the drums. He wondered how drunk everyone was . . .

  How drunk Alejandro would be.

  He should’ve timed this better. He should’ve timed their arrival to be any other time but tonight, but they’d made such unexpected good progress through the jungle, and honestly Hawk hadn’t been thinking about this particular moment.

  He’d been too preoccupied thinking about everything else.

  About her.

  About those lips. Those eyes. Those pert, perfect—

  Ersetu tola’ath! screeched his father.

  Earthworm. An oldie but a goodie.

  “We’re almost there,” he growled over his shoulder to Jacqueline, who, when he looked back to ensure she was following, was craning her neck to gape at an empty iron structure the shape of an oversize bird cage, which hung conspicuously from the branches of one of the smaller trees.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

  Hawk ground his teeth. Might as well get her used to the darker side of tribe life, right off the bat. Maybe it would scare her straight and she’d be quiet, which was everything he could possibly hope for, considering he’d determined he was never going to talk to her again.

  “Gibbet.”

  “A cage you hang people in until they rot? You’re fucking kidding me!”

  “Not people. Criminals.”

  “Oh, thanks for the clarification! I’ll be sure not commit any crimes! Goddamn brilliant!”

  He stopped and turned to glare at her. “We’re back to the indiscriminate cursing again?”

  She sent him an arch look. “The bitch is back, remember?”

  Hawk wondered if this was what it felt like to be poisoned, this slow, acidic blackness creeping through his body that threatened to choke off his oxygen and boil the blood in his veins.

  He turned and marched onward.

  After a moment, she followed behind.

  The scene that greeted Jack when they passed under the natural bridge of rock that spanned a swiftly running stream was something right out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

  Half-nude bodies, glistening with sweat, bathed in firelight, writhing to the heavy beat of drums. People—beautiful people, unnaturally so—spinning and twirling and dancing, laughing and kissing and drinking, as uninhibited and wild as the untamed forest that ringed the clearing. An enormous bonfire, spitting orange ash and whorls of smoke into the dark sky where it lingered, casting a dreamy haze over everything. Tables to one side of the revelry laden with platters of food, all of it demolished as if pounced on by ravenous predators. A raised dais opposite the tables with a throne of carved wood and purple fabric, upon which sat a heavy-lidded, grinning man—dark-haired and golden-skinned like the rest—holding an elaborate gold chalice and tapping his bare feet to the beat of the drums.

  Had she not been quite so flabbergasted, Jack might have laughed.

  Two words came immediately to mind:

  Erotic derangement.

  The dancing bodies were adorned in the most intricate, delicate trinkets, in an array of color that flashed crimson and sapphire and emerald in the firelight. They wore chokers of gold worked with precious stones, bracelets of garnet and onyx and tigereye, hair combs dotted with peridot and freshwater pearls. Some had elaborate feather headdresses; others wore armbands of bronze or headbands of silver or rings on each finger, a pharaoh’s fortune in jewels on vivid display against the black velvet backdrop of the night jungle.

  Pagan yet refined, carnal yet not at all coarse, they were abandoned and alluring and what “civilized” people might deem wild or debauched, but there was something that elevated their movement and revelry beyond mere wanton, physical expression.

  They were wild, yes. They were sensual, yes.

  But they were also quite perfectly . . . perfect.

  She gaped at them in wide-eyed admiration until Hawk noticed she was no longer following. He stalked up to her, gave her a indecipherable look that might have been either a warning or fury, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her behind him as he headed toward the group.

  They were noticed.

  All at once, the drums fell silent. The dancing stopped. Everyone turned to watch their approach, and every single hair on Jack’s body stood on end.

  It was like nothing she’d ever experienced in her life, this feeling of acute, hostile inspection. A thousand pairs of eyes bored into her. A thousand unfriendly faces turned slowly as Hawk guided her through the parting crowd toward the dais. A whisper rippled through the crowd, and Jack caught snippets of conversation from all around her, some of it in Portuguese, some of it in the other language that seemed to be their own, and some of it—unfortunately—in English.

  “That’s her—”

  “It’s the human—”

  “So pale—”

  “That hair—”

  “Hope he puts her in the stocks—”

  “Deserves whatever she gets!”

  Hawk pulled her before the dais and gave
a curt nod of his head to the man lounging on the throne, his head tipped back as he inspected them both like something he might like to squash underfoot.

  He was handsome in an old-fashioned matinee idol way, with slicked-back black hair, an aquiline nose, and an air of arrogant boredom particular to the wealthy and powerful, who wear their privilege like a ring on their little finger.

  The Alpha! Do I bow? Do I smile? Do I go ahead and faint?

  The Alpha solved her conundrum of manners when he drawled, “Well, well, well. Lord Bastard returns . . . with his prize in tow.”

  He’d said “prize” with obvious irony. His feral gaze perused her, uncomfortably keen, and Jack tried with all her might to remain calm and stone-faced while everything inside her was screaming to run.

  That, she knew, would be a terrible idea. Nothing brought out the predatory instincts in hunters like seeing the backside of prey darting off in terror into the woods.

  All right. Let’s do this. Fake it ’til you make it, Jack!

  She tried for a respectful tone while looking the Alpha in the eye. “I’m afraid I don’t know the proper way to address you, so please forgive me if this is rude.”

  Beside her, Hawk hissed a low warning. Jack ignored him. She twisted her wrist from his grasp and stepped forward, shoulders back, head held high. In a clear voice that carried over the crowd, she said, “I’m Jacqueline Dolan. It’s a pleasure to meet you . . . Mr. . . . Alpha.”

  Because her dead mother had been concerned with manners and appearances and enjoyed showing off her only daughter like a blue-ribbon cow when company came to their house when she was a child, Jack knew how to execute a perfect, proper curtsy. In her dirty jeans and jacket, with her hair tangled and her face most likely smudged with dirt, Jack sank into a swift, elegant curtsy, bowed head and bent knees and all. She straightened, beaming at the Alpha as if he were visiting royalty and she were a peasant girl he’d flung coins to on the side of the road.

  There was a beat of astonished silence. The tension in the air felt like a wire pulled close to snapping. The only sound was the crackling of the bonfire, and it seemed as if everyone held a collective breath.

  Hawk stood behind her, radiating a fury so dangerous it actually had heft.

  The Alpha burst into laughter.

  He threw back his head—displaying an impressive set of long, white teeth—and gave himself over to gales of belly-clenching guffaws until finally he stood, still chuckling and shaking his head, and stepped away from his throne.

  He sauntered down the steps of the dais, looking at her down his nose. He took her hand, bent over it, and brushed his lips over her knuckles. “Encantada. The pleasure is mine,” he purred. “Or at least I hope it will be.”

  He straightened, still smiling, still holding her hand while gazing at her with those sharp, sharp eyes, and Jack knew that this man literally held her life in his hands. If he wanted to, he could simply kill her now. No one in the outside world would ever know what had happened. This would be the end of her story, the end of her life, the end of the line.

  Her bones would be buried in the jungle. No headstone would mark her grave.

  It was all up to him.

  Would Hawk even try and stop him?

  Her hand still resting in the Alpha’s, she blurted a sincere, “Thank you.”

  One of his dark brows quirked. “For what?”

  She blinked, realizing her faux pas, but couldn’t take it back now. “For . . .” She cleared her throat. “For . . .”

  “For not hurting you,” he guessed when she faltered. His voice was quiet, his stare fixed.

  There was no moisture in her mouth. Jack couldn’t speak for a moment, but when she’d recovered her composure, she simply said, “Yes.”

  His gaze cut to Hawk, standing silently behind her. “And what would make you think I would do a thing like that, my dear?”

  The Earth was turning too rapidly beneath her feet. Her equilibrium had tilted, and it seemed the only thing holding her to the ground was the cool weight of his hand grasping hers.

  Jack whispered, “Because if I were in your shoes . . . that’s what I’d want to do. I’d want revenge.”

  The Alpha narrowed his eyes, contemplating her expression, mulling the words over. After a moment, he released her hand. A tiny smile crooked one corner of his lips.

  “You’re quite direct, aren’t you?” His eyes began a languid survey of her body that heated her cheeks. “Though perhaps it’s just recklessness.”

  In a tight voice, Hawk said, “She doesn’t mean any disrespect—”

  “If I wanted your opinion I’d give it to you!” the Alpha hissed. “Don’t try my patience, Hawk, so soon after our new visitor has arrived.”

  At that moment, Luis Fernando and his cadre of guards arrived, shoving their way through the crowd to get to the front.

  They barged toward the dais, hulking and silent, until they stood beside Jack in a row. She kept her eyes focused on Alejandro because Nando and his guards were still unclothed.

  No one seemed the least bit concerned with their nudity.

  The Alpha took one look at Nando’s bruised and bloody face, and his expression hardened to granite. “Ever the rebel,” he snarled, lip curled in disdain. “How many lashes do you think it will take before you finally learn to respect the rules? Fifty? One hundred? Perhaps two hun—”

  “No need to count to one thousand. I get the picture,” Hawk interrupted, sounding bored. The look on his face was anything but bored, however. He glared at the Alpha with unconcealed hatred.

  The Alpha glared back with murder in his eyes, and Jack went cold.

  Lashes . . . stocks . . . the gibbet. My God, these creatures are barbarians! And judging by the look on the Alpha’s face, Hawk was about to be on the receiving end of some very nasty barbarism, indeed.

  “It wasn’t his fault!” she blurted, and she reached out and seized Alejandro’s arm.

  The crowd gasped as one, their shock universal.

  For a moment there was nothing, just frozen silence and a look of stunned disbelief on Alejandro’s face as he looked down at her hand wrapped around his arm. His gaze snapped back to her face and his look told her one thing for certain.

  She’d just made a terrible, irreparable mistake.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack whispered. She released his arm, and took a small step back.

  “Well,” said the Alpha calmly after a long, horrible moment. He lifted his gaze to the crowd. His voice, clear and strong, carried to the far reaches of the clearing. “It appears we’re going to have not one but two canings to complete the evening’s festivities!”

  He clapped his hands. The drums resumed their throbbing beat. The crowd looked on in ominous silence.

  And Jack shrank back in terror as two hulking males approached her from either side, while the Alpha watched her, a sinister little smile playing over his face.

  The hulking males brushed right past her, however, and grabbed Hawk.

  He didn’t struggle, comment, or even looked surprised. He simply let the males lead him away through the crowd as Jack watched on in stunned disbelief, too shocked to move.

  The Alpha watched Hawk’s receding back. “Nando . . . you know the drill.”

  Beside her, Luis Fernando stiffened in outrage. “Sire! He attacked me!”

  Alejandro snarled, “And you were either too slow or too distracted to evade him! Either way, he bested the head of my security detail . . . which doesn’t make me feel particularly secure. Failure isn’t an option. You know that. Take your lumps like a man or your second-in-command is getting a promotion.”

  He didn’t mention what would then happen to Nando, but judging by the look on both their faces, it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Nando hesitated for only a moment, then followed the path the other guards
and Hawk had taken through the crowd.

  Jacqueline was left standing beside the dais alone, reeling, her heartbeat arrhythmic, her skin clammy with sweat.

  From behind her, Alejandro directed, “Morgan. Accompany our guest to the punishment tree.”

  He stepped past, sent a sidelong, penetrating look in her direction, then made his way through the parted crowd with the rest of his security detail in tow while the drums throbbed and pounded.

  As Jack watched him go, a gentle hand touched her arm. “Whatever happens next, don’t let them see you cry,” said a woman softly.

  Jack turned.

  The lady in question was brunette and statuesque, with an angelic face and the body of a Vargas pinup model. In a figure-molding red dress that perfectly showcased all her physical assets, she possessed an air of sophisticated, ladylike chic that was enhanced by her British accent, all of which served to make her even more conspicuous in the atmosphere of pagan decadence.

  The expression she wore seemed out of place, too. This bombshell looked at Jack with something like empathy.

  And . . . worry?

  “If he makes you cry, he wins. Understand? This isn’t just punishment for Hawk and Nando . . . he’s betting you won’t be able to take it and you’ll break down in tears,” Morgan murmured, curling her fingers around Jack’s bicep. “And if you do, you put yourself in grave danger. Here, weakness isn’t just a character flaw.” Her gaze turned flinty. “It’s a death sentence.”

  Beyond her horror and hammering heart, Jack found her voice. “W-why are you telling me this?”

  Morgan’s fingers tightened around her arm. Somehow the touch seemed comforting, not at all threatening, and Jack felt the insane urge to trust her, which was only reinforced by her next words.

  “Because I need you to stay alive, Jacqueline Dolan. I need you to thrive. And you’re only going to do that if you don your big girl knickers and watch what’s about to happen without batting an eye. If you get through tonight without showing weakness, all your tomorrows will be much easier.” She smiled, a wry twist of her lips. “Trust me on this. I know what I’m talking about.”