Carpathian 21 - Dark Peril

to tell her dream lover her deepest secrets, she found it easier to admit the truth to him.

    He rubbed his fingers in her fur for a few more moments. “There is no one close, kessake . Be safe.”

    You, too. She sprang past him, eager to get on with the hunt. Dwelling on whether she was going to be good in bed was depressing—and scary. Hunting something—or someone—dangerous was invigorating and natural.

    She crawled through the twisting maze of tunnels to emerge in the forest. The moment she felt the night air on her muzzle she shook herself, happiness bursting through her. She loved the forest. On the floor, the air was rich and still, the oxygen levels so high she felt energized. The rain forest was vibrant and alive, ever changing and yet always the same. She could count on the life cycle of the forest, everything living, breathing, growing and then falling. Death and decay came next, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but always feeding and enriching the cycle of life.

    She loved the rain forest during the day, but the night always seemed special to her. This was her world.
    She might want to travel, but mostly she wanted to see other worlds like her own while they were still in existence. The jaguar-people’s time was over. There was no way to save them, not anymore. Not with Brodrick’s leadership honing the men into brutes who chose to live with violence toward women, who took part in the slaughter of women and children they deemed unacceptable to them.

    As few knew of their species, there had been no law down through the centuries to protect their women, and with no leadership to recognize their importance, the species had been doomed. She sighed and began to wind her way through the trees toward the small stream that was up above her chosen cave, feeding her small waterfall. She listened to the murmurs of the animals in the canopy above her head. She heard the flutter of wings and the slide of monkeys as they slipped from one limb to another, not yet ready to settle completely for the night. Bats wheeled and dipped, chasing insects, while small frogs hopped along the tree branches.

    Already the songs of the many bird species were giving away to the call of the cicadas. The frogs began their nightly chorus, singing to one another from the various puddles on the forest floor, while the tree frogs chirped much more gently and harmoniously. Moths as big as dinner plates scattered across the sky. Fruit bats clung to the succulent fruit. Fireflies signaled to one another in brief flashes like neon signs.

    Solange took it all in as she padded through thick vegetation, occasionally coming upon a porcupine feasting on fallen fruit. A snake struck at a mouse, detecting the heat as the small creature scampered too close to the silent predator. She startled a gecko as it emerged from its hiding place to hunt. The hungry creature raced up the tree, its eyes shining red in the night through the leaves as it looked down at her.

    The jaguar ignored the nocturnal animals and kept to her course, moving a little faster now that she was away from the cave system. Above her head, fluorescent mushrooms appeared suspended in midair, growing on the trunks of trees that blended in with the night. A faint light glowed here and there from luminous fungi dotting the forest floor.

    She kept to a brisk pace for several miles, working her way up the steeper slopes, leaping over decaying trunks and skirting termite mounds. The sound of water running over rocks was constant. She startled a small family of tapirs. The herbivore, related to horses and elephants, looked like a pig with a longer snout.
    The adults were darker-skinned with white-tipped ears and a yellow throat, but the single baby running with them had red fur with stripes and spots. At home in the water, the tapir often grazed in the rivers and streams.

    She was getting close to her destination and she began to quarter the area, taking her time, looking for traces of anything large passing the same way. The shadow cat had to have arrived in its true form.
    Whatever the creature was, even a hybrid, it must have left behind evidence of its passing.

    She was careful to examine trees, certain the creature was a cat and would sharpen his claws often. He would leave scent marks behind. Someone might have bred him, but there were certain characteristics imprinted in a cat’s nature that could never be stamped out. She searched for signs of scattered leaves, of rake