Leopard 04 - Wild Fire

cool night on her face. She gulped air, drawing a deep breath before it rolled her over again. Her face scraped along the rocks as it took her down along the bottom.
    Elijah leapt over the leopard, a knife in his fist. Conner exploded beside him, roaring a challenge, whirling around and sinking his teeth deep into the writhing coils, holding the snake, preventing it from taking its prey into deeper water. The green anaconda was large, close to four hundred pounds of solid muscle, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    and it was hungry, determined not to lose its prey. The head was close to Isabeau’s head, the fangs dangerously near her neck. It didn’t have a fatal bite, or venom, but it would anchor itself there and hold her until it could constrict and suffocate her.
    Elijah tried to move around the churning water to get to the head, but the snake continued to thrash and roll, keeping the water roiling, preventing the man from doing more than angering it by slashing at the coils of thick muscle as he moved around the constantly writhing snake. The cat gripped the tail of the anaconda in its mouth and began a steady backward pull toward the bank in an effort to drag the snake to shallow water to keep Isabeau from drowning.
    The snake was quite large and obviously female by its size. She was dark green with dark oval spots decorating her scales up and down her back. Along her sides were the telltale ochre spots of the anaconda. Her head was large and narrow, running straight into the thick, muscular neck, so it was difficult to tell where the two separated, especially in the churning water. The eyes and nostrils set on top of its head allowed it to breathe while mostly submerged. At home in the water, it was using its adeptness to its advantage, fighting the pull of the relentless leopard.
    As Conner took two more steps back, gripping more of the snake to get more leverage, Elijah circled to the front, reaching below the surface of the water and dragging Isabeau and the snake out so she could draw in another breath. Unfortunately, as she gasped, her lungs burning for air, the snake constricted tighter.
    “Conner, hold the damn thing,” Elijah snarled, his teeth snapping together in frustration.
    Time seemed to slow down for Isabeau. She could hear the leopard snarling, but her pulse was hammering loud in her ears. Her lungs felt starved for air and fear was a vile taste in her mouth. Every instinct she had told her to fight, to struggle, but she forced herself to stay calm, refusing to give in to the panic that threatened to reduce her to a screaming, mindless victim.
    In her mind she chanted Conner’s name. She knew the instant he shifted—or maybe her cat knew. She couldn’t see him, and she could still hear the growls rumbling, reverberating through the water, but she knew he was using the combined strength of man and leopard to drag the snake onto the embankment.
    Elijah kept going in and out of her line of vision, his face grim, his eyes locked on the head of the snake, the knife trying to slice through scale and muscle to sever the head. The snake knew it was in trouble now, and the only avenue left to it was abandoning its meal and escaping. The moment the snake loosened its coils, Conner reached past the thrashing body, wrapped his arm around her leg and yanked her to him. He all but threw her behind him. She caught a glimpse of that rock- hard, masculine body, ripped with ropes of muscles, as he plunged into the shallow water to help Elijah.
    The snake coiled around the man in an effort to escape the blade of the knife, trying to use sheer weight and muscle to drive him back into deeper water. Conner gripped the thrashing body and held while Elijah killed the snake. The animal went limp and both men stood, bent, chests heaving from the tremendous fight against such a strong creature.
    Conner turned to her, crouching low in the water to run his hands over her. “Are you all right, Isabeau?”
    She considered screaming. Or bursting into tears. She’d nearly died, crushed by a snake, or drowned.
    But he looked perfectly calm as if it was an ordinary occurrence and no big deal. She swore he even looked regretful as he watched Elijah drag the carcass onto land. Was she all right? She looked down at her body. She felt bruised and maybe a little battered, but nothing was broken. She was soaked, but the rain had already done that.
    She slowly took stock of her