Darkness Bound

5

The walk was short, along a quiet, well-lighted street, and by the time she arrived and pulled open the heavy wood door to the pub, Jack was famished. But as the hostess led her to a table near the back, her restless stomach turned sour.

Because there, sitting on a stool at the long oak bar that ran the entire length of one wall, was Hawk, just as hulking and handsome as the first time she’d seen him. Once again, he was glowering.

Once again, he was staring straight back at her.

Hawk watched Jacqueline Dolan stride through the door, watched her look around, watched as she caught sight of him and stiffened.

He didn’t miss the way her lips thinned. Or the way her heartbeat doubled in the space of five seconds.

That little tidbit should have given him a grim bit of satisfaction at least, but it didn’t. She was a job he had to do, a task he had to complete, and nothing more. Forget about the fact that she had incredible hair the color of persimmons, and bright-blue eyes as clear as the Caribbean Sea, and a slender dancer’s body meant for—

No. Forget about that, too. Especially that.

This b***h needs to be taught a lesson she’ll never forget.

Not his words, but he echoed the sentiment. Jacqueline Dolan had almost single-handedly rallied the American public behind her campaign of bigotry, intolerance, and hatred with the despicable—and admittedly brilliant—opinion piece she’d written for the Times. She’d played every nerve with the skill of a virtuoso: patriotism, xenophobia, sentimentality for better times past, fear of change, fear of the unknown—fear in general. She manipulated people’s fears like a puppeteer manipulates the puppet strings.

And she’d been nominated for a goddamn Pulitzer for it, no less.

Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” and Jacqueline Dolan had been incredibly effective at making a lot of people believe her personal brand of absurdity. The sky is falling! she warned, and pretty much everyone listened.

Once the nation was behind the President’s anti-Shifter agenda, thanks to Dolan’s brilliant rhetoric, he had pushed it all the way to the UN and convinced all the member states that Shifters were the worst threat to mankind since . . . well, since ever. Now, in addition to an ancient order of religious assassins that wanted to wipe his kind off the face of the Earth, a greedy multinational corporation that wanted to trap them, conduct experiments, and ultimately use them for profit, they also had the Elimination Campaign, a group of leaders from all around the world who wanted nothing more than to see every single Ikati on Earth burned at the stake.

Thanks to you, Red, Hawk thought, watching Jacqueline narrow her eyes at him from across the room. He forced a pleasant smile to his face and was rewarded as her eyes, just for a moment, softened.

And that, ultimately, was why he’d been chosen for the task.

“They drop at your feet like flies,” said Xander during the last Assembly meeting, to a chorus of murmured agreement. His wife, Morgan, sat beside him, and sent her husband a warm, heavy-lidded glance.

“Not all of them,” she said softly, reaching over to squeeze his thigh.

Hawk had rolled his eyes at that. Xander and Morgan were deeply in love, overtly physical with one another, and rarely apart. Xander had brought her back to his home colony in Brazil only three months back, but after only three days Hawk had seen enough of their constant mooning at each other. If he hadn’t known from personal experience that his half brother was the best killer the entire tribe had, Hawk would have thought him weak, hopelessly whipped, and not to be trusted.

Because how could you trust a man who looked at his woman like . . . that? There were little red hearts where his pupils were supposed to be, for God’s sake.

Though he’d enjoyed many women and the pleasures their bodies could bring, Hawk had never been in love. And he liked it that way. If he ever caught himself staring at a woman the way Xander stared at Morgan, he’d have to slit his wrists in shame.

On a raised platform in a corner of the bar, the band opened with an Argentine tango, languid and sensual. Jacqueline raised her chin and turned away from him, following the hostess to a booth on the opposite side of the pub. She slid onto the red leather seat, grabbed the menu the hostess handed her, and didn’t look up again.

Oh, Red, Hawk thought, the smile on his face now genuine, this is gonna be so much fun.

Hawk knew three things for sure. One, humans couldn’t be trusted. Two, power had to be proven. And three, a woman’s love was an easy thing to earn.

He knew all the mysteries of women, all the ways they could and could not be moved, all the secrets of their bodies, all the tangled yearnings of their hearts. He could discern in a glance which ones needed praise and which needed punishment, which were power hungry and which money hungry, which were shy or brazen or mean or cold. He knew if you gave a woman your undivided attention, accompanied by a compliment specifically tailored to an area of deep insecurity—her competence or intelligence or the amount of fat on her ass—she would tell you anything. She would open like a flower to the sun and spill even her darkest cravings, her deepest hungers and longings and needs. And when that happened, if you listened and you didn’t judge, a woman would fall in love with you with no more effort than it takes to put a key in the ignition and start a car.

Women were simple creatures.

Jacqueline Dolan was a simple creature.

Though undoubtedly she thought herself quite complex and urbane, with her degree from Columbia University, her career, her accomplishments, her apartment in an expensive high-rise in the middle of Manhattan. He knew from a file they’d compiled on her that she was highly intelligent, competitive, and driven; knew she’d been brought up by her father after the sudden death of her mother when she was just a little girl. But from his short interaction with her, he knew the secret she guarded so closely, the one her pride would defend with her life.