Prowlers: Wild Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

heart beat a new rhythm now, an ancient and primitive tempo like the cadence of paws rushing across hard-packed earth.
    Excited, aroused, she turned to find Alec already at her side. His fur was sable black and thick. They sniffed and nipped at one another, and her long talons traced lines on his back.
    "This is what you wanted to show me?" he asked, his voice the roll of distant thunder. "Not that I'm complaining."
    "No," she said bluntly. "Listen, don't you hear them? Inhale, don't you smell them?"
    His pointed ears twitched and Alec cocked his head. A moment later a light chuffing noise came from his throat; the laughter of a Prowler. Together they crept over the other side of the hill and down through the trees and a moment later they found themselves on an outcropping overlooking a wide paved road below. A road that wound its way through Central Park.
    It was quiet there, save for the trip-trop clack of hooves upon the asphalt, as a tired horse drew a small carriage through the park. A driver sat at the front, clucking his tongue affectionately to urge the animal forward. In the back were a pair of young lovers who clung to one another beneath a blanket and nuzzled faces. From the look of them, they had time and money to burn.
    "Oh, how you spoil me," Alec growled.
    Jasmine ran her tongue across her needle teeth.
    The horse began to hesitate as the carriage drew nearer, but the driver urged her on with soft entreaties. Jasmine crouched on the edge of the outcropping and sniffed the air for evidence of any other humans. Her fur bristled with anticipation. Alec began to move forward, but she glared at him and bared her fangs and he shrank back.
    There was love, and then there was instinct. She was Alpha and Alec would heel to her commands or Jasmine would tear out his throat. When she saw that he was appropriately cowed, she glanced down at the carriage again.
    Once more, the beast of burden shied, its hooves clacking on the road as it tried to pull back, to turn. Again, the driver kept rein over it, not trusting the animal's instincts. Humans had been part of the wild at the dawn of time, but nearly all of them had forgotten how to listen to the urgings that whispered at the back of their minds, the ancient knowledge they still retained was useless to them.
    The lovers in the back of the carriage giggled like school children and kissed. Jasmine lunged from the outcropping, out over the road. Her claws came down, glittering in the starlight.
    The horse neighed loudly in alarm, a scream all its own. Jasmine had already decided that it would be the only survivor.
     
     
    Saturday morning arrived with a cold northeast wind and a sky the crystalline blue of new snow at dawn. Winter was still a long way off, of course, but the air whispered its imminence and the night had left an early frost upon the city. Jack had been able to see his breath when he had gone to the fish market that morning but now the hint of winter had abated, the wind had subsided, and the sun had begun to warm the brittle grass underfoot.
    Allman's Farm was in Ipswich, a rural town forty minutes or so north of Boston, depending upon who was driving. The farm and orchards sprawled over a broad hillside, the acreage impressive enough that many of the families and couples who visited rode up and down the hill in hay-filled carts drawn by bellowing tractors. Earlier in the year the attraction would have been the apple trees, and before that the rows of corn. But this was October, and the wicked promise of Halloween lay ahead. On this beautiful fall weekend, the lure was pumpkins.
    Yet the farm had a great deal more to offer than their enormous pumpkin patch. There were pumpkin-carving classes and contests, all sorts of decorative gourds and bunches of Indian corn, and a small petting zoo. At the restored early 19 th century barn there was a bakery from which the most delicious odors drifted into combat with the animal smell of the farm. Apple and pumpkin pies,