by Lora Leigh
Dedicated most sincerely to the advance readers of Lawe’s Justice who stuck it out to the end. Alexis, Gail, Lynn, Monique, Sabrina and Sandra.
Your help has been tremendous, and your perceptions into the Breeds, as a series and as individual books and characters, has given me a thought-provoking look into the depth of love you have for them.
Thank you for that. For loving them, and for all the hard work, hours of reading, and the wonderful insights you’ve brought to Lawe’s Justice.
To Sharon, for your advice and for all your help. There are no words to describe or to express how much it’s meant to me. Just because I don’t always listen doesn’t mean I don’t always hear you.
And to Bret. You make me think when I’d prefer not to, and you make me laugh when I’d prefer to cry. You make me stand strong when I want to lie down in defeat, and you make me remember what it’s like to be young.
Thank you, just for being my son, for being patient as I find my feet, but even more, for being such an independent, loving young man. Thank you for being yourself.
Did you wish upon a star and take the time to try to make your wish come true?
Did you try to paint the sunrise and find the gift of life within?
Did you write a song just for the joy of it?
Or write a poem just to feel the pain?
Did you find a reason to ignore the petty injustices, the spoken barbs, or the envies, jealousies and greed that crossed your path?
Did you wake up this morning and whisper inside, “Today, I’ll find every reason to smile, and ignore the excuses to frown.”
Today will be the day I’ll whisper nothing snide, I’ll say nothing cruel. I’ll be kind to my enemy, I’ll embrace my friends, and for this one day, I’ll forget the slights of the past.
Today will be the day I’ll live for the joy of it, laugh for the fun of it, and today, I’ll love whether it’s returned, forsaken, or simply ignored.
And if you did, then your heart has joined the others who have as well, uniting, strengthening, and in a single heartbeat you’ve created a world of hope.
•PROLOGUE•
Screams echoed around the steel walls.
The sound bounced, splintering through the cavernous area and slicing through the senses of those forced to listen.
There was no place for the sound to go, no cracks, no ventilation to the outside. There was no way for it to dissipate easily. The sound ricocheted from wall to wall and from ceiling to floor before making the return trip to blend with the continued agonizing sounds.
Surrounding the theater-style examination/operation room were twelve eight-by-ten cells created from steel and iron bars. The cells ran the entire length of the steel wall at one side and were connected by frames of black iron bars at the front.
The barred doors were reinforced; the locks were digital as well as electronically keyed and almost impossible to crack unless total power, including that of the backup generators, was lost. Only then would the locks disengage and allow the animals held inside to be freed.
Or were they humans?
There were times when even they were uncertain of who or what they were, other than the fact that they had been created at the hands of the doctors and the scientists who were now inflicting a hellish death rather than creating a hellish life.
The screams echoed around the cavernous room again, filled with pain, fear and the knowledge that time had run out and there was no escape.
But she had been crying for days. Inconsolable wails that had left those locked behind the bars fighting the restless rage beginning to fill them. They had even seemed to affect the guards created to rule over them. Men, animals, whose eyes held no mercy but who now seemed to glance at one another in uncomfortable silence as the time of death grew closer. As the imprisoned creations watching them seemed to grow more still, more calm and silent than ever before.
They were her young, of a sort.
Conception had occurred in the artificial environment of a lab before the fertilized egg was transplanted into her womb and carried to term. As the time of birth neared, she was injected with the monstrous paralytic they had created that paralyzed all but the vocal cords, leaving their victims with only the ability to scream. Once she was restrained, then the child was cut from her body as she screamed in agony.
Unable to move.
Unable to fight.
Unable to control any part of her body except the vocal cords that the scientists refused to silence.
She would scream until her voice broke and then only silent animalistic growls would emerge from her throat.
But she wasn’t an animal. She wasn’t even a half animal as her young were. She was a young woman who had forgotten what gentleness and freedom were. She knew only the captivity, the pain, the endless pregnancies and forced births.
And now she would only know the agony and fear of a senseless, vicious death, which her young were forced to watch in uncaring silence.
Breed number 107 sat on his cot in the corner of the cell, his head laid back against the steel bars as his mother’s terror-filled sobs echoed through the room once again.
He and the one he called brother, the one they called 108, were only a few of the young in the lab that were products of her genetics. Born not just of her body but also of her egg, which had been fertilized in vitro with the animal-tainted genetically altered sperm used to create the Breeds.
And they were forced to remain silent, outwardly unconcerned, as though her screams meant nothing. As though they weren’t ripping through their souls and tearing their guts to ribbons each time she begged, each time she screamed in agony.
Each time she begged God for mercy.
Breed number 107 kept his eyes closed, his breathing regulated, and called upon fourteen years of training to maintain the control needed to restrain his rage and pain. If just one of her young broke, if just one of them showed a reaction or showed an emotion, then three of them would die.
As so many had already died. So many had already known the inhuman agony that waited when they were strapped down on the autopsy table in the center of the room.
The day before, the scientists had tortured one of their favored pets as well. As though they couldn’t sate their hunger for the blood, screams and agony forced upon the Breeds. Their victim, the Coyote lieutenant Elder, had been a surprising addition to the scientists’ mercilessness. Because, strangely, in an act so out of character for a Coyote, Elder had attempted to slip the woman from the labs and to shut down the generators that kept the scientists’ creations caged and under control.
Elder had failed, though. He’d been betrayed by one of the twelve who now sat silently in the cells as their dam’s voice began to rise in horror.
Breed number 107 wondered if this would be the final horror that would break the only female in the group. The young Cheetah female also suspected to be the woman’s natural child. The one who lay, as though sleeping, on the small cot in a far cell.
Morningstar wasn’t just being punished, though, and they all knew it. They had all watched Elder’s vivisection the day before and heard the scientists’ muttered conversation about a mating. So it was no surprise to 107 when they dragged the gentle, weeping woman from the enclosed room where she’d been kept confined since Elder’s failed attempt at removing her from the labs.
Her long, heavy black hair had flowed around her naked body, tangled and mussed from her battle with the soldiers who’d had to drag her away from Elder’s unconscious body after they were captured.
Now she was insane with rage from Elder’s death, and the pain from the soldiers’ touch. She had fought them as he had never seen her fight.
She cursed, raged, screamed out obscenities and called down all manner of c
urses against them. Her normally dark brown eyes, strangely flecked with blue, were a pure ice blue now, like flames burning in her Native American features.
She kicked, fought to trip her guards’ and swore vengeance.
To no avail.
“Bastards!” she shrieked. “They’ll come for you. My father and his father and those who have gone before. They will visit you in the dead of night and your blood will flow.” Her voice ragged and savage, 107 had never heard such a sound from any creature’s throat, even those of the Breeds tortured on a regular basis.
His nostrils flared as her scent reach him.
From the corner of his eye he could glimpse her as they strapped her down to the autopsy table in the center of the operating room. Once they inserted the IV and the paralytic’s slow drip reached her system, then she would be unable to move, unable to fight anything they did.
It didn’t take long for the drug to take effect. Her body went slack, and as she wept in pain and horror, the lab techs slowly released the straps holding her to the table.
Breed number 107 couldn’t see their eyes, but he caught a hint of human fear and compassion, of silent horror and desperation that didn’t belong to Morningstar.
It was the first time she had been injected with the paralyzing drug that it wasn’t to take a child from her body. The first time she had been placed on a table in the center of that room that she wasn’t to be inseminated.
She was to die and she knew it.
Her children knew it.
Breed number 107 forced himself to close his eyes once again. To concentrate on the scents of the humans and the Coyotes who were a part of this demonic practice.
Because one day he would be free, he vowed. One day, he would find them, each of them, and he would ensure they paid for the hell they created within these labs.
Until then, he could do nothing but force back the emotions churning, burning, ripping through his soul. He could do nothing but lock them away, place them so deep inside his spirit that there was no chance they would ever surface again.
His chest was tight as he fought to contain them. His eyes were damp. Breeds didn’t cry. They didn’t feel sorrow.
Or so they were taught.
They weren’t named; they weren’t cuddled, cherished or loved.
They didn’t go outside to play as young, nor were they allowed sleepovers as human children were.
Because they weren’t human.
They were animals that walked on two legs and who dressed, spoke and acted like humans.
But they weren’t human.
The knowledge that they weren’t human, that they weren’t born they were created, was one of their first memories. One of the first lessons they were taught.
“Nothing will change your deaths.” His mother’s wails were filled with tears. And fear. “Nothing can save you!”
And nothing could save his mother.
The scientists wouldn’t be punished. There were no laws to protect the Breeds or the helpless women kidnapped to give birth to them. There would be no justice for the creations brought to life within these steel walls. Or those sent to their deaths on the table beyond.
Panic filled Morningstar’s screams as the cold steel of the scalpel touched her flesh.
It was a sound of horror, of hysteria.
Her scent became stronger. He recognized the unique, fresh fragrance, mixed with the dark fear, and he knew he would always remember it as that of the only creature that had ever shown him kindness.
There was another smell mixing with it, though.
Elder’s scent was there and a scent of something deeper, stronger, one he had always associated with a deep, unnamed emotion. An emotion he had only scented when shared between two humans. Humans who carried a bond he had never understood.
It was a scent he had only caught a wisp of when taken out on missions in the past year. One he had come to associate with what the soldiers had sneeringly called love. A mix of lust and summer warmth, of comfort and contentment overlapped with a hint of adrenaline and excitement. And when mixed together, it was a fragrance that had called so strongly to him that it had been all he could do to maintain his composure.
And now it had regret welling inside him as he fought to hold back his rage.
Pushing it back, pushing it down took every ounce of strength he possessed. His brother, 108, was feeling the same rage, forcing back his own fury.
No reaction.
Those who existed within this lab had watched far too many littermates die from the inability to hold back their fury, their pain, the fact that they knew emotion and couldn’t hide it. That they knew honor and refused to ignore it.
They weren’t allowed to pretend to be human. Only humans had emotions and they were animals. Those with the arrogance to believe they could be human too were killed instantly.
Breeds weren’t allowed emotion, honor, loyalty to anything or anyone outside their creators, and they sure as hell were not allowed to form any bonds with each other or their dams. Those bonds, any bonds, were the basis for instant death.
“Please, God, kill me now . . . !”
She was begging now.
His mother. Her name was Morningstar and she was the daughter of a Navajo medicine man.
On his last mission the week before, 107 had mailed her father pictures, a map, a letter requesting his help, asking that he come and save the woman he had known as his daughter.
No one had arrived.