On the Hunt

Camazotz!

Instead of arms, it had elongated wings with tattered sails and wickedly barbed claws at the ends of the bony struts. Its dark brown, almost black skin was covered with patches of mismatching fur, and it smelled terrible, like a rotting animal carcass. The miasma brought tears, though not before she saw up close and personal that it was male, its long penis tipped with a leaflike flattening.

Panicked, she tried to worm her way under the Jeep, screaming, "Help me!"

A pair of claws hooked her arm, dragged her out. Pain slashed through her. Terror. Sobbing, she kicked at the creature, but caught only air as it hauled her upright, screeching almost above the level of her hearing.

Its mouth split wide, revealing a black cavern of a throat framed by long, curved teeth.

"Help!" Natalie thrashed against the creature's hold. She was all alone, in the middle of nowhere, JT wasn't home, and—

Automatic gunfire slammed out of the nearby forest and into the bat creature.

The bullets ripped into the thing's upper body, blowing back a spray of blackish blood and chunks. The creature reeled and dropped her. But incredibly, horribly, it spun toward the new threat as black ichor rained down from its wounds.

Seeing the flash of a weapon and the curve of a man's shoulder in the forest, Natalie scrambled up and screamed, "Kill it!"

"Get down!"

She flung herself flat as a heavy thump split the air and a fist-size missile caught the creature in the midsection and then detonated. Hot, oily black sprayed and the thing flew backward and went down in a limp mass.

"Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." Natalie lurched to her feet as her rescuer emerged from the rain forest, cradling a big double-barrell across his body.

On one level she recognized JT; she knew his voice, knew the way he moved. On another level, though, the man who stepped out of the shadows and into the fading sunlight was a stranger.

The JT she knew was clean shaven, well dressed, a strangely urbane oasis in the middle of the tropical wilderness. The JT who faced her now shared the same powerful five-ten frame, skull trim, and cool gray eyes. But he wore several days' worth of scruff and hard-used bush clothes, and his body was strung bandolier-style with an arsenal of weapons and ammo. He carried himself with the tough purpose of a soldier, moving on the soundless feet of a hunter. And he had just saved her ass.

He once told her the guns in his foyer were for hunting the occasional man-eater among the big cats in the area. Now she knew different.

"Chan camazotz," she whispered, the nickname the villagers used for him. Death-bat killer. She had thought it was a metaphor.

Apparently not.

His eyes were hard and hot, almost feral. "Did he get you?"

A harsh, ugly sob ripped itself from her chest. "That was . . . It was . . . Oh, JT!" She flung herself at him.

He caught her, his arms banding around her with crushing force. Relief poured through her as she burrowed into him, feeling the solid strength of his muscles and the way her body fit against his. His warmth surrounded her, and his voice was raspy when he said her name, over and over again, into her hair. At first she thought she was shaking with fear and shock. Then she realized she wasn't the one shaking.

"JT?" She pulled away a little so she could look up at him. "What—"

He interrupted her with a kiss.

There was nothing soft or urbane about his lips on hers this time, nothing civilized about the way he crushed her mouth with his, the way he gripped her. But she was suddenly hanging on to him just as hard.

Heat flared through her, sweeping away the silent agony of the past three days, the heartache, anger, and loss of thinking it was over between them. Because there was nothing "over" about this kiss. It was blatantly carnal and possessive, and everything inside her screamed to be possessed by him.

"What happened to 'I'm not that into you'?" she whispered against his lips.

He slid his hands from her shoulders to her waist, then down to cup her buttocks and lift her up against his prominent erection. "I lied."

She knew she should be demanding explanations, but she couldn't focus on anything but his taste on her lips and tongue, his hardness against her. She was on fire for him, feverish for his touch. Her fingers trembled as she worked her hands under his shirt, fighting the constraints of his weapons.

"Off," she ordered. "Take it all off." The world spun around her, flaring hot and cold. He said her name, tried to ease her away, but she clung, needing his heat and strength. She had no filter left, no inhibitions. She whispered what she wanted to do to him in vivid and graphic detail, the words tumbling from her as she cupped him through the tough fabric of his bush pants.

He sucked in a rattling breath. "Natalie." He caught her wrist. "We can't—"

Pain slashed through her and she cried out, nearly went to her knees.

He cursed and shifted his grip on her arm. "Fuck. He got you."

She stared at the ugly slice that ran the length of her right forearm. It was red and meaty, and the edges of the cut were stained black. The raw heat within her flashed from lust to fever in an instant, and she swayed, disoriented.

"Is it . . ." She didn't finish the question, her words scattering.

"Just a tranquilizer," JT said, his voice rough. "It's on their claws. But don't worry; I've got you.

Everything's going to be okay. I'll take care of you, make sure nothing bad happens to you."

But as the world grayed out, her gut said he was lying again.

She just didn't know which part was the lie.

JT eased Natalie to the ground. Her too-pale skin was a stark contrast to her straight, dark hair, and her long dark lashes failed to hide the bruised circles beneath her eyes. Her tipped-up nose and subtly pointed chin, which added to her air of boundless energy when she was up and moving, now made her look delicate. Breakable.

If he hadn't gotten there in time—

"No looking back," he reminded himself. He had gotten there in time. Barely.

And now he had to finish the job.

Standing, not letting himself think about anything but the task at hand—because a distracted soldier was a dead one—he pulled his knife from the scabbard he wore on his thigh. Machete-size, but with its blade edged in a double layer of sacred stones—obsidian and jade—it was the only thing he'd found that could do the job.

When he crouched down beside the ' zotz, he saw that it was most of the way healed, probably just getting ready to start twitching. Although the jade-tipped ammo and jade-filled grenades knocked them down better than ordinary bullets, the fuckers didn't stay down if they were intact.

Which was where he came in.

With one clean motion, he slit the thing's throat. As air gurgled and blackish blood leaked into the dirt, he steeled himself, grabbed the ' zotz's thick, sinewy penis, and did a Bobbitt on it. That part never got easy—it was a guy thing. But the second he had the creature's limp, creepily warm dick in his hand, the ' zotz puffed to oily brown smoke and all of it—blood, dick, corpse, the works—disappeared.

"Go to hell," JT muttered. He was no magic user, but the phrase had become his own personal incantation.

With the ' zotz gone, he returned to Natalie, picked her up, and carried her through the gate into the compound, not letting himself think of what he would've come home to if he'd gotten there a few minutes later.

He carried her over the threshold and into the house, through the main room, and into his bedroom.

Logic said she would have been fine on the couch, but the toxin would keep her asleep through the night, so she might as well be comfortable.

Gritting his teeth, he got her out of her torn, fight-stained clothes and into a tee and sweats that swallowed her small, delicate frame. To his surprise, the wound on her arm was neatly scabbed, with none of the swelling or redness he'd seen the few times he'd been able to get a victim away from a ' zotz. still, he cleaned the cut and scrubbed the worst of the sticky ichor off her skin.

By the time he got a bandage on her arm, he was strung tight from a mental slide show of what could've happened if he hadn't gotten back when he did. He shouldn't have taken off into the forest in the first place, shouldn't have—

"Fuck." He lurched away from the bed and headed for the main room, slamming a lid on the what-ifs and making himself deal with the shit he could do something about.

First he armed the security system. Then, while he changed out of his hunting clothes and knocked off the worst of the grime, he pulled his phone out and hit up Rez. The call went through, but the connection was shit, with lots of static surrounding a garbled, ". . . never seen anything like it. The damned thing hit us out in the open, right in front of the cave."

JT's blood chilled. Son of a bitch. That was why there had been only one after Natalie. The other one had attacked the temple. "Any casualties?"

"Only the ' zotz. Did you find your girlfriend?"

Knowing that Rez was harping on the "girlfriend" thing to get him back for disappearing, JT ignored it. "She's sleeping off a claw scratch. Did any of her people see the ' zotz?"

"No—" Static interrupted. When Rez's voice cut back in, all JT got was, ". . . back at their tents.

They didn't see anything."

That was something good, at any rate. Limited the need for damage control. "Get them out of here."

"They won't go without her."

"Make them." JT would've handed her over to her teammates, but he didn't want to have to explain the half-day coma. More, he would need to talk her down when she woke up, find some way to convince her that she had wrecked the Jeep, banged her head, and hallucinated the rest of it. Note to self: Roll the Jeep into a ditch down the road.

"About the temple," Rez began, his words barely audible through the static. ". . . council wants to know what you think."

"Blow it," JT said without hesitation. Over the past few years, the villagers had sealed five other caves that showed evidence of ' zotz activity. Each time, the demon attacks had skipped a couple of cycles. "Then get Natalie's team out. Tell them she's with me, and she'll meet them at the embassy in a couple of days."