who were hunting her. He and the Watchmen had hoped that Riley Buchanan, the middle son, would awaken before his sister, but now that he’d set eyes on Saige, Quinn knew that wasn’t going to be the case. He could scent the coming change in her, the awakening of her ancient bloodline, and though she hadn’t fully awakened yet, it was on its way.
Which meant that a newly liberated Casus was most likely already onto her, and Quinn’s job had just gone from dangerous…to deadly. Though there was still so much they didn’t understand, it was firmly believed that the Merrick awakenings were triggered by the presence of the Casus, a race of preternatural monsters who preyed upon the Merrick, feeding from their flesh for power, as well as revenge. The immortal Casus, who’d been imprisoned for centuries for their indiscriminate killing sprees, had finally discovered a way to escape from their holding ground back to this realm. And though their numbers were still small, Quinn and his fellow Watchmen feared what was to come.
Taking another long swallow of beer, he watched Saige from beneath hooded eyes, wondering how much she knew. What was she doing in South America? Did she know the Casus were hunting her? And where the hell was Paul Templeton?
Templeton was the Watchman who’d been assigned to Saige for the past several months, but when they’d put in the call for him to bring her back to America, there’d been no response. Either Templeton had gone AWOL, which no one believed, or he was already a casualty of what was set to become a war of deadly proportions.
Circumstances being what they were—which was about a mile deep in shit and sinking fast—Quinn knew he didn’t have any choice but to move as quickly as possible. He needed to act. Now. But something kept him back. Kept his ass planted against the rickety counter, his body vibing with a hot, angry restlessness.
When someone accidentally knocked over a chair, Saige turned toward the sound, angling her head to the side, revealing the vulnerable length of her throat. It was at that moment that hungers too long restrained stretched to awareness within Quinn, the animal side of his nature blinking its eyes open to a lazy, dangerous, smoldering fire. He didn’t take blood in the way that a Merrick did, but he still longed to clamp his teeth onto that tender, provocative part of her, while sending himself as deep into her as he could get.
As if she felt the press of his stare on that pale, feminine curve of flesh, she lifted her hand to the side of her neck. Then she suddenly twisted in her chair, scanning the room, and Quinn quickly turned toward the wall, giving her his back. His fingers clenched around the bottle, nearly shattering the glass in his grip.
Had he gone out of his mind? All hell was about to break loose, and here he was nursing a warm beer, with a raging case of lust that could only land him in trouble. He didn’t have time for this crap.
Stop stalling, damn it, and get on with it.
Turning purposefully back toward the room, he watched as she said something to the boy and stood up, making her way to the bar. She was talking to the short, smiling man behind the counter as Quinn moved to her side, draining the last of his beer. The second she turned and caught him in that deep, dark blue stare, the color as fascinating as the luminous perfection of her skin, he knew he’d been marked.
Quinn set his empty beer bottle down on the counter, preparing to introduce himself, when she reached for it. He wondered what she was doing as her fingers closed around the thick green glass, her expression instantly shifting from wary unease to full-blown panic. Then, before he could even guess her intention, she suddenly hurled the bottle at his head. The glass cracked against the edge of his right eyebrow, splitting the skin, the hot wash of blood flooding his vision.
Son of a bitch.
She immediately started running, shouting something in Portuguese to the boy, who took off past Quinn, out the front door. Moving in the opposite direction, Saige hefted the backpack she’d grabbed from the table onto her shoulder and pushed her way out the back exit, disappearing into what Quinn knew was the jungle.
Swearing, he tossed a wad of bills on the counter and set off after her, hoping to God he could catch her before the fool woman managed to get herself killed.
As he ran out of the bar, into the humid warmth of the evening, the air thick and damp against his skin, the last watery threads of sunlight began fading beneath the heavy weight of night. Quinn followed her scent, dodging the clinging vines of the jungle, his long legs making good time against her shorter strides, but she was fast.
Too fast, he realized in the next moment, as a strong, noxious odor reached his nose, coming from the same direction Saige was moving.
We’re out of time, he thought, gripping his T-shirt and pulling it over his head as he allowed the change to flow over him.
Hell was already there, and she was running straight into its deadly grasp.
CHAPTER TWO
MOVE IT…MOVE IT…MOVE IT.
Saige Buchanan chanted the choppy refrain within her mind again…and again, forcing her legs to keep going, even after the cramping had set in, demanding she stop. Though she’d done her best to sit at the table and act as if nothing was wrong, reality couldn’t have been further from the truth. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her shoulders, her nerves so frayed, she felt as if she were unraveling at the seams. Despite the fact she felt safe at the local barra that was owned by Inez and her husband, Rubens, who were good friends of hers, Saige knew she shouldn’t have risked meeting with Javier Ruiz in such a public place. But she’d needed to go back for the valuable maps she’d stored in Inez’s safe before she left for America, and it had been her last chance to see her young employee. In the time he’d worked for her and the other members of the research team at their dig site, Saige had come to think of the cheerful Brazilian as a younger brother, and she hadn’t wanted to just disappear without telling him goodbye.
The plan had been so simple. Say her farewells to her friends, grab the maps, then put herself in plain sight as she headed for the airport in the nearby town of São Vicente. Instead, she’d run without the maps, and for all she knew she might have gotten Javier marked as a target by the dark-haired stranger who’d been watching her with that sharp, penetrating stare. Saige couldn’t be certain of who or what the man was, or even what he was after, and she hated the fact that she might have exposed Javier to danger.
Face it, chica. You screwed up. Big-time.
A low, choked stream of curses slipped from her lips at the frustrating thought while she shoved the dense jungle foliage out of her way, jumping in midstride to avoid a thick tangle of roots, but it was too late to go back and undo her actions. She’d made a mistake, and she was paying the price for it, perhaps even running for her life.
Was the man giving chase a new threat, or was he somehow involved with whatever had been tracking her every move for the past few days, stalking her like a shadow? Saige had felt its malevolent presence almost every hour she’d worked in the jungle, like a low-frequency wave of evil that made her skin crawl. Even now she could have sworn its noxious scent lingered on the evening air, slipping into her pores like a sickness.
Knowing what she did of the gypsy legend that foretold the time when the Casus would escape their holding ground and make their way back to this realm, prompting the awakening of the ancient Merrick bloodlines, Saige couldn’t deny the growing veil of terror creeping over her, binding her in its cold, slimy grasp. Had the Casus escaped? Had the moment she’d always feared, since hearing the first hazy fragments of the legend from her mother, finally arrived? Fragments
