Retribution (Moonstruck Genesis #4)

Chapter 4

NOW

SHE COUGHED, choking on the taste of rancid mud and marshy water. Lethargic, she wanted only to sleep again. Her face submerged and she jerked her head up. Where was she? One arm was snagged in a deadfall that extended out into the water. Using the other arm, she wiped hair and gunk out of her eyes with her forearm. What the hell had happened? How did she get here? Nothing made sense and try as she might, her brain wouldn’t provide the answers she needed.

Her head throbbed, each beat of her heart sounding like a tympani drum pounding next to her ear. Groaning, she looked around in a feeble attempt to get her bearings. How had she ended up in a swamp? Trying to remember just made her head hurt worse. With effort, she untangled from the branches keeping her from washing further downstream. There wasn’t much current but she didn’t want to spend any more time in the water than she already had. Creepy-crawly things lived in the swamp. She might not remember much, but she knew alligators and snakes couldn’t be far away.

Gaining the bank, she hauled herself out of the water, slipping and sliding in the mud. She crawled higher, to relatively dry land. Her clothes were tattered. And she was wearing a gun. Unable to breathe for a moment, she scrambled for illusive memories. She’d been driving. There was a crash and…did her car explode? Tears welled in her eyes. Who the hell was she?

She unholstered the pistol and stared at it. The thing looked and felt foreign in her hand. It dropped from her numb fingers to the ground beside her. She checked her pockets. Nothing. No wallet. No ID. Nothing to give her a clue to her identity or why she was in the middle of a swamp.

A splash in the water yanked her gaze toward the expanse of water she’d climbed out of. Her heart rate kicked up and a shiver shook her whole body. Did alligators come up on land to attack? She scrabbled backwards until the thick trunk of a tree brought her up short. She heard another splash and a flash of silver caught her eye. A fish leaped above the surface and flopped back.

Rubbing her hands down her thighs, she took stock. Denim. Jeans. Barefoot. What happened to her shoes? A belt, with a now-empty holster. A shirt. Cotton. Button front. A light jacket that might have been beige once. Why did this stuff make sense? How did she know the names of colors and things, but she couldn’t remember her own? Her head pounded so hard she closed her eyes.

Even though it was hot and humid, her teeth chattered. She needed to get dry. And warm. Before she went into shock. Her whole body hurt. Her face. Her chest and back. One thigh. Her left arm—the one that had been entangled in the tree limb out in the swamp—itched and ached as she shrugged out of the jacket. Scratches gouged the skin, having ripped through two layers of material.

How long before infection set in? She shivered again, flashing hot then cold. Fever? Was she running a fever? She peeled back her shirt to look at her left side. A shallow gash along her ribs continued to ooze pale red liquid.

Something growled nearby. She froze. Did alligators growl?

Crouched in the cypress knees, Antoine filled his lungs with the woman’s scent. Blood mixed with her personal aroma. Anger flashed through him. How had she been hurt? And by who? Her scent had teased him for the last several days and when he’d caught a whiff of her along the road, his wolf had been frantic to find her—a feeling the man didn’t fully understand.

While scouting for the Black Root intruders, he caught her trail again and followed the faint trace until he came upon the deadfall where her body was snagged. He’d changed and was about to swim out to retrieve her when she’d regained consciousness. While his nudity was no big deal to him, he figured the woman would panic at having a naked man appear. He watched as she struggled up on shore, as she discovered her injuries. Man and animal both wanted to go to her, comfort her, take care of her.

Her pain had an almost ingrained effect on him. On the one hand, he wanted to kill whoever had inflicted it. On the other, he wanted to gather her close and ease her distress. He could do neither at the moment for fear of scaring her. He didn’t know who she was or where she came from, not that it mattered.

A faint thrum penetrated the haze of his emotions. A boat, cruising the waterway slowly. While his wolf’s senses were better honed, the man’s were sharp enough to catch the new scents intruding over the gasoline and cigarette smoke. Sweat, sour and full of testosterone. He sniffed the air. Three interlopers—all human.

His attention shifted to the woman. She’d tensed, but looked hesitant, as if she didn’t know whether to hide or draw attention to herself. A voice carried across the water, though the boat was still out of sight.

“Still no sign of the bitch.”

She was being hunted by someone else. The thought pissed him off. Royally. She was his woman.

He stilled. His woman? Snarling, his wolf ranged just beneath his skin. Yes, the wolf agreed. She belonged to them. Antoine knew with a certainty he would kill any man who touched her. She tensed, wary, and now she smelled like prey. She must sense she was being hunted. His mouth tilted into a smile that never reached his eyes. He would deal with the danger and then he would claim her. Laissez les bons temps rouler. Let the good times roll.

The boat puttered around the bend and the man in the bow yelled, pointing at the bank where she crouched. Slipping into the water, Antoine submerged.

For a brief moment, she was elated. Saved. Someone was coming to rescue her. Until the man yelled, waving and pointing in her direction.

“There’s the bitch. Go!”

She squatted, paralyzed, too panicked to move much less run. The small boat with three men dressed in black combat fatigues swerved in a short arc headed straight for the bank where she sat pinned like a bug on a board. Shaking off her stupor, she just managed to push to her feet.

“Don’t move!”

Feeling trapped, she twisted her head right then left, looking back over both shoulders. All she saw was what looked to be an impenetrable wall of green. Terrified, she whipped her head around to stare at the men. The man sitting in the back cut the motor and the boat continued toward the bank despite the loss of power.

Something moved just below the surface of the water behind the boat—something long. She blinked and when her vision cleared, the man sitting at the back was gone. He’d disappeared in that barest moment. It happened so fast and so silently, the other two men didn’t notice.

She stood frozen on the bank, all sense of self-preservation deserting her as she watched the scene unfold out on the water. Something surged from the water, snatched the man sitting in the middle of the boat, and hauled him under. She rubbed her eyes. An alligator? Some sort of freshwater shark? Bile rose in her throat when she realized two bodies floated in the boat’s wake.

The man in front suddenly realized he was alone in the boat. He stood, jerked a pistol from the holster strapped to his thigh, and swiveled, seeking a target. The boat tilted precariously. He leaned to compensate, but it was too late. In what looked like slow motion, one side of the flimsy craft dipped into the water before careening all the way over. The man floundered then his head disappeared beneath the surface. His gun hand appeared and he managed to squeeze off a couple of shots before it, too, sank.

A few moments later, ripples appeared, and then a head, eyes. A small scream was startled out of her as a man rose from the brackish water and stalked toward her.

Her mouth dropped open. The guy looked like a cover model—tall, sculpted, shaggy russet hair, and topaz eyes—eyes fixed on her in all their glittering glory. The man looked untamed, like a wild animal. He stalked her until she slammed up against a broad tree trunk.

He reached for her and she stopped breathing. She wasn’t holding her breath, she simply wasn’t breathing. She’d gone as feral as he looked. He was a predator and she was…prey.

“You are safe now.”

Safe? Not hardly. She hit system overload. Her eyes rolled back in her head, but he caught her before she hit mud.

“I will take care of you, chère .”

Oh, hell. She was caught in a real-life “Deliverance.”