Altar of Eden Read Online Free PDF Page A

pile at the back shifted as something burrowed away from her. It backed into a corner and could retreat no farther. The mewling had stopped.
    Lorna crossed, knelt, and gently picked the hay away. She spotted snowy fur with faint gray spots. A long tail lay tucked around the curled, frightened shape. Small feline ears lay flat against its head.
    “A leopard or jaguar cub,” she whispered.
    “But it’s white,” Jack said by the doorway. “Like some sort of albino.”
    She stared at the cub’s pinched blue eyes. “No. Eye color is normal. Likely it’s a form of inherited leucism. Where only the skin pigment is lost. Either way, it’s definitely some type of panther.”
    “I thought you said it was a leopard or jaguar.”
    She understood his confusion. It was a common mistake. “Panther’s not really a taxonomic term. The genus Panthera covers all the big cats. Tiger, lion, leopard, jaguar. And a white panther could be a version of any of those cats.”
    “And which one is that cub?”
    “From the skull structure and what I can tell from the faint spotting, I’d guess jaguar. But I can’t be sure.”
    Lorna knew that Jack needed more information. He must have suspected what was plain to her at first glance and wanted confirmation.
    Out of the nest of hay, tiny eyes squinted up at her, poorly focused. They looked newly opened, suggesting the cub was only a couple of weeks old or maybe even younger. Additional juvenile features—stubby rounded ears, underdeveloped whiskers—supported her assessment of its newborn status. But what was throwing her off was its size. It had to weigh fifteen or twenty pounds, large enough to be seven or eight weeks old.
    Even Jack must have recognized the disparity and what it suggested. “And the age of the cub?”
    “A week or two.” She glanced back at him. “Extrapolating that would make an adult around four to five hundred pounds, more the size of a Siberian tiger. A typical jaguar weighs half that.”
    “Another genetic throwback?”
    She sighed. “I’ll need to run some tests to be sure, but first I’d like to examine the cub more closely.”
    She carefully scooped the cub out of its nest. It squirmed and cried, but only weakly. She felt its bones; a pinch of skin revealed dehydration. She bit back anger at its mistreatment and cradled the cub to her belly. She did her best to calm and reassure the little fellow. From a glance at its genitalia, it was definitely a male.
    She held the cub firmly, letting the panic beat itself out. “Shh, it’s okay, little one.”
    One hand cupped his head while a finger gently and rhythmically rubbed under his chin. After a moment the cub leaned into her and let out a hungry cry. She allowed him to suckle on her finger.
    Definitely a newborn.
    As the cub attempted to nurse, she felt something in the mouth that shouldn’t be there. At this age, young cats had no teeth, only gums to knead a milky teat. But her fingertip probed as the cub suckled. She discovered four teeth, fanged canines. While small and immature, they were still sharp and prominent—longer on top than on bottom.
    And they shouldn’t be there at all, not at this age.
    The early presence suggested developmental dominance of this feature. It heralded a genetic expression of some significance. As the realization of what that might be sank in, she felt a trickle of dread along the back of her neck. She glanced over to the rest of the cages, settling on the dead pony.
    No wonder it had died of fright.
    She turned to Jack as she cradled the cub. “We’ve got a bigger problem.”
    “What’s that?”
    As she had extrapolated the infant’s weight to estimate the size of the adult, she did the same now with its dentition. She knew what the early presence of these canine milk teeth might portend. She pictured fangs growing proportionally, upper fangs curving and extending beyond the lower jaw.
    “This cub is something more than just an oversize jaguar,” Lorna