The man crushed out his cigarette beneath his boot and repositioned his shotgun across his lap. The fog was making him restless. It was thick, impossible to see through, yet he could swear there were figures moving in it. He leaned out away from the porch, listening as hard as he could for any sound of someone approaching. All at once he was nervous; a faint tremor started deep inside and spread throughout his body.
Nothing was out there, nothing he could see, nothing he could hear, yet he felt threatened. Stalked. Nervously he stepped off the porch, thankful the owners were away for a few days. It had been easy enough to find out that the couple was taking a vacation. This property was the perfect vantage point to keep an eye on the Wentworth home. He paced back and forth. Never once did he see the cat approaching him, its body low to the ground, creeping forward inch by inch. Silent. Deadly. Dilated eyes boring into its prey. Never once did the man suspect that an enemy far more powerful than he was only a scant few feet from him. When the attack came, it was fast and explosive. The animal was on him, its strength enormous, its claws grabbing and piercing his vulnerable throat in total silence.
The leopard leapt onto the roof of the house, taking the carcass with it. It cached its prey between a dormer and the sharp slant of the A-frame. Dayan had to wrestle with the instincts of the big cat, hungry for its prize. It had been harder and harder to defeat the darkness growing and spreading within him, yet now with Corinne in his life, making him complete, he was strong again. He had someone to live for, someone to love. Someone to make it all worthwhile. Dayan breathed deeply and directed the leopard back toward the street.
The jungle cat leapt easily to the ground, moving swiftly through the thick fog up the street toward the Wentworth residence. A man waited in Corinne’s backyard for her to come home. He had a gun and a knife, and orders to bring her back to a laboratory or kill her. The cat could smell the man even through the thick fog. A second man was huddled in her doorway, with the same orders and the same determination. They were very alert, afraid even. Two of their friends had disappeared without a trace. The society wanted answers fast. The Wentworth women were going to provide them.
The leopard moved with the same calm confidence, the same silence as when it had begun to stalk its prey. The wrought-iron gate was cleared with one easy leap, and the animal landed softly on cushioned paws. The fog was moving now, small eddies at first, becoming a thick, swirling pudding with a life of its own. It brushed against the legs of the man in the yard. The man glanced wildly around, looking for something alive that might have touched him.
With an oath he paced from one side of the lawn to the other, peering down toward his feet. The fog moved again like a giant snake, wrapping loose coils around him from his feet upward. He was moving toward the house when he noticed the unusual phenomenon. With a pounding heart, he pushed at the vapor, and his hand traveled right through it. His relief was tremendous. “Mike?” He called out to his partner, suddenly wanting to get out of the oppressive fog. It was so thick, he felt as if he couldn’t adequately breathe.
Mike, inside the doorway, heard the muffled call and turned, trying to see through the thick mist. “Drake?” He thought he saw a tall, pale figure moving in the fog, but it was vague and shadowy and not at all of the same build as his partner. Squinting, he leaned closer into the thick, soupy stuff, certain now there was more than one figure moving. He brought up his gun, trying to center on the amorphous, almost transparent shapes.
It was an animal, not a person, he decided, lowering the weapon. He was listening, but the strange fog cushioned the sounds so it seemed he was locked away from the rest of the world. Definitely not human, the shapes inside the white veil took on the forms of large cats. As he stared at them, nonplussed by the strange phenomenon, the cats seemed to turn to stare back, fixing glowing eyes on him. Red eyes. Eyes that flamed and seemed eerie and threatening in the midst of the fog. To reassure himself, Mike took a firmer grip on the handle of his gun even as he took a step backward to flatten his body against the wall, making himself as small as possible.