Fire Bound by Sherrilyn Kenyon Page A

mutilated. He has an electric fence with a sophisticated security monitoring system around the pasture where the cows were killed.”
    “Damn, son,” Casper crowed. “What kind of cows that boy got?”
    Quinn merely quirked an eyebrow at Casper’s use of “son.” He was normally dressed in a custom suit—one that would cost more than Casper’s new Dodge Ram truck parked nearby—for a corporate business meeting, or in one of his many tuxedos, to attend the social event of the season.
    But underestimating Quinn as nothing more than a party boy would be akin to keeping a pet pit viper.
    One mistake and you’re dead.
    Tonight he’d donned a dark turtleneck and sleek pants, both probably made of some hi-tech material being tested for military use.
    Quinn continued, “These are quite valuable animals. They are a genetically superior line of cattle the owner has spent a small fortune raising as breeding stock for new herds. He’s lost two cows in the last thirty hours, and now he’s moved his herd indoors until someone figures out what is killing them. Our Belador contacts in law enforcement and animal control talked him into allowing them to substitute another group of cows as bait for tonight.”
    Casper scrunched up one side of his face with a frown. “Usually takes more than losing a few head of cattle to get any serious agency attention.”
    “True,” Quinn acknowledged. “This became high profile—and drew VIPER’s attention—because of the way the cows were killed and the evidence left around the attacks.”
    Evalle sorted through what they knew so far and played devil’s advocate. “So what if this thing we’re hunting can tell the difference between that farmer’s prize stock and a plain old cow? What’s going to make this bait work?”
    Tzader answered, “We’re hoping whatever is killing the cows will come back again out of habit, and it attacked only pregnant cows. We have a lot of those in this herd. Our plan is to catch this thing before it figures out the switch.”
    She understood cows were grown for food, but anything that harmed an expectant mother was evil and needed to die in misery. “I say the minute something with teeth shows up, we kill it.”
    “There’s the woman I want covering my six.” Casper chuckled.
    The sigh that escaped Tzader said he wished she was joking, but he’d given her the dagger she carried—that had a death spell on the blade—as a gift, and knew she didn’t use it to peel potatoes. “We need to capture this thing, Evalle, to figure out what it is and where it came from. There were only a couple footprints with deep claw marks found around all the cows that were attacked.”
    “Footprints as in feet , not paws or hooves?” Trey asked in a grumpy please-tell-me-you’re-kidding voice. Short brown hair stood up in all directions on his head, especially when he raked his fingers back and forth through it like he was doing now. Some men might claim that as a hairstyle, but with Trey it was pure bed-head. When you were built like a linebacker and supercharged with unusual powers, you could wear your hair any way you wanted.
    Evalle grinned at Trey and teased, “Yeah, we’re after Bigfoot now. This just gets better all the time.”
    “He’s right,” Tzader cut in.
    “What?” she sputtered. “Like human feet with claws?”
    Tzader nodded his bald head. “The feet and toes are human in shape. From the depth of the footprint and span of where the feet seemed to hit the ground in a stepping pattern we’ve estimated its size at over nine feet and weight somewhere around five-hundred pounds give or take some. The claws curving off the toes are three inches long and appear razor sharp.”
    “That’d gut a buffalo,” Casper reasoned. “I’m guessing this thing is coming in from the sky with so few prints to go on.”
    “That’s what we figure, too,” Tzader confirmed. “The bite marks on the bodies where the flesh was torn open were ten inches