Leopard 02 - Wild Rain

and shadows she didn’t want to examine.
    Rachael didn’t voice the protest welling up in her. She was certain Rio wasn’t being melodramatic. She didn’t think he was capable of drama for drama’s sake. “I’m sorry, I’m not certain exactly what you’re saying? A new species of leopard here in the rain forest that hasn’t been discovered? Or a genetically engineered species?”
    “A species that’s been around for thousands of years.”
    She rubbed the clouded leopard’s ears. “How are they different?”
    He looked at her then, turning the full focus of his strange eyes on her. “They are not animal, yet not human. They’re both, yet neither.”
    Rachael went very still, pulled her gaze from the power of his, her mind racing with possibilities. “A long time ago, when I was a little girl, my mother told me a story about a species of leopards. Well, not leopards, they were a species able to shift into the form of a leopard, or large cat. They had some of the attributes of the leopard, but also attributes of humans and of their own species, sort of a three-way mixture. I’ve never heard anyone else ever mention them until now. Is that what you mean?”
    Few things shocked Rio anymore, but his hands stopped in midair and he stared at her. “How would your mother have heard of the leopard people? Few people, outside the species, know of their existence.”
    “Do you realize what you’re saying, Rio? That there is such a species? I thought it was simply a story my mother liked to tell me at night when we were alone together. She always told me tales of the leopard people when I went to bed.” She frowned, trying to remember the old stories from her childhood. “She didn’t call them leopard people, there was another name.”
    Rio stiffened, his brilliant gaze slashing at her face. “What did she call them?”
    The name eluded her as hard as she tried to remember. “I was a child, Rio. I was only a young girl when she died and we went to live with . . .” She trailed off, shrugging her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. Are you saying there’s a possibility that the species exists? And if it does, why would one of them want to harm you? Or me for that matter?”
    “I’m on a hit list, Rachael. I’ve stirred up the bandits a few times, taking back what doesn’t belong to them and costing them a lot of money. They don’t like it and they want me dead.” He shrugged his shoulders and patted the cat, straightening tiredly. “Hold him a couple more minutes while I fix a bed for him.”
    “And I’ve made it worse for you by coming here, haven’t I?”
    “A hit list is a hit list, Rachael. I don’t think anything makes it worse, I’m already on it. If they track you to me, we’ll move. They aren’t going to best me here in the forest. They prefer the river, not the interior. And I have a few people who will help out if needed. I know all the local tribesmen and they know me. I’ll hear if they enter the forest.” He doused the light, plunging the room back into darkness.
    “But not if one of these leopard people is working with them,” she guessed, blinking rapidly to adjust to the change in lighting. The moon was trying valiantly to shed light in spite of the clouds and the heavy canopy of foliage, but it was a mere sliver and far away. “And if the species does exist, why haven’t they been discovered yet? They’d have to be highly intelligent.”
    “And cool under fire—cunning, careful. Burn their dead in the hottest fires possible. Find remains of any who died by accident. Band together to retrieve a body if one is taken by a hunter. The society would have to be a superior one, dependent on one another and highly skilled and secretive.”
    “Like you.” She couldn’t get the picture of his face changing, rushing at her with the muzzle and teeth of a fully grown male leopard out of her head.
    He returned to the bed, towering over her, his vivid green eyes moving over her face. “Like me,” he agreed. Rio bent and scooped up the fifty-pound clouded leopard, cradling it close to his chest.
    Rachael’s fingers curled in the bedcover. Was it possible? Was it her fevered imagination or was Rio able to shift into the form of a leopard? She looked at him crouched down beside the cat, streaks of blood on his back and sides, down the columns of his thighs, and a tear up near his neck. She didn’t care what he was. It didn’t matter to her, not when he was petting the