Altar Of Eden

She crouched to examine the dead body. The hoof of one toe had been torn away. Its head bore signs of fresh concussions, as if it had panicked and thrashed against the bars before it died.

“Looks like something scared it to death,” she assessed.

“I can guess what that might have been.” Jack headed toward the very back of the hold. “This way.”

She followed. Irritation entered her voice, along with a thread of deeper anger. “What were these people doing? For that matter, how did they do it?”

“That’s what I hoped you could answer. But we have a bigger and more immediate problem.” They reached the last pen. It was large and heavily barred. Hay covered the floor, but no animal was in sight. “We found the door dented and broken open when we came down here.”

“Something escaped?” Lorna glanced from the empty pen back toward the passageway and stairs, clearly recalling the blood trail.

“We need you to tell us what it was,” he said.

She frowned at him. “How?”

He pointed as something buried beneath the hay shifted. A weak mewling followed.

Lorna glanced to him, her face shining with curiosity. He pulled the door and held it open for her to enter.

“Be careful,” he warned.

Chapter 4

Lorna ducked through the low door and into the pen. Inside, the space was tall enough to stand upright. Still, she kept slightly crouched. Most of the hay had been pushed and piled to the back of the pen. She studied the space with a critical eye. Her nose picked up the strong ammonia smell of old urine. She avoided stepping in a sludgy pile of scat, loose and watery.

Whatever had been caged in here had been ill.

The hay 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 warned.

“How so?”

She stood up, carrying the creature, and ducked out to join Jack. “This is the cub of a saber-toothed cat.”

Chapter 5

Back in the brightness of the morning sun, Jack stood on the trawler’s deck with Lorna Polk. She still cradled the jaguar cub. If the woman was right, they were looking for a massive cat, pale as a ghost, possibly with fangs ten to twelve inches long. She had gone on to explain how such fangs were not limited to the infamous saber-toothed tiger. According to her, many other prehistoric felines, even some marsupials, carried this genetic trait.

But a saber-toothed jaguar?

It seemed impossible. Still, he did not doubt her assessment. She had spoken at length about atavism and genetic manipulation and had supported her case soundly. Plus he had seen the other freakish animals caged down below.

He stared over the rail toward the coast. It was a dense mass of bottomland forests, marshes, and swamps, encompassing millions of acres of the Mississippi River delta.

It was also his home.

He’d been raised in the bayou, where family and clan held sway far more than any rule of law. His own family earned their income through shrimping and fishing… and through a few less-than-legal enterprises on the side. He knew how easy it was to hide out in the swamps, how difficult it could be to track something that wanted to keep out of sight.

Lorna stepped over to him. She’d been talking on the radio, making arrangements with U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

“They have a boat on the way,” she said. “They’re bringing portable cages and tranquilizers. I also talked to Dr. Metoyer over at ACRES. They’re setting up a quarantine lab for the animals.”

He nodded. It had been decided to use the isolated ACRES facility as a base of operations. One of his men had found a steel trunk locked up in the captain’s quarters. It held a laptop and some digital tapes. An expert on computer forensics was already en route from New Orleans to start working on the contents. Hopefully the archive held more than just the captain’s stash of porn.

But before they abandoned the trawler completely, Jack still wanted more answers… specifically about the most pressing threat.