Jaspierre's Last Chance (Jaspierre Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Tessa lunged for her, teeth snapping together violently just inches from her face. Her sharp claws raked down Jaspierre's arm. The chain around her neck was still wrapped around a dead man, slowing her down. Bright red blood ran down Jaspierre's arm as she stared at Tessa, considering.

  She's gone wild.

  Jaspierre turned and tried the service door next to the bathroom. It was locked. She quickly ran back to the stage and rifled through the dead man's pockets. She found the keys soon enough, leaving Tessa still tied to the dead man to wait. Hot, hateful growls came from the serval, but her frantic pacing slowed.

  "Settle down, baby. We're gonna get out of here."

  It was lucky that nobody was in the back room, or security would have already descended upon this little display. Jaspierre picked up one of the long taser rods and carefully read all the cage levers. She propped open the service door with a manual she found. Then she opened each line of cages and their doors. Slowly, the first serval walked out.

  It was a young serval and very angry, hissing at Jaspierre and threatening to bite her. Jaspierre waved the taser mildly, and the serval exited into the stage area. Four more servals slowly exited to the stage area. Each looked angry and hateful, threatening Jaspierre. Ikali was the last one to come out. It struck her suddenly how old he looked. His whiskers had greyed. He should be pleasantly enjoying retirement. Her heart ached for him.

  She stepped back as he walked past her. He never even looked her way. A small kitten serval meowed from a crate in the back. She walked back and looked and found three little kittens, two sleeping, one crying. Fucking shit. What exactly was her plan?

  There was a backpack on the floor filled with schoolbooks. Perhaps it was a lost and found item, but it served her purposes just fine. She dumped the contents and stuffed the three kittens inside along with as many bottles as she could fit. They were squished, but it would only be for a moment. This scouting run had changed into a rescue mission. How the hell was she going to get them out of here? They couldn't possibly even fit in her car; she just had that Lexus.

  She wasn't even sure if it had a back seat.

  There was a stack of leashes on hooks, and she quickly grabbed them. In the main room, all the servals were hissing at each other, tails flickering, pacing anxiously. A few zoo visitors were looking in the big glass door, uncertain if they could come in. Jaspierre shook her head at them, but they kept watching as she approached her two pets. Tessa was still chained to the dead man. Jaspierre quickly leashed her, trying to keep clear of her angry claws. Tessa was calmer, though, and didn't bother biting.

  Tessa's mouth was grey and she was thin with age. Jaspierre, even with all this going on, felt a pang of worry. How much longer would they even have? She leashed Ikali, who was calm, but seemed not to recognize her anymore. There were now five servals off leash. One was not fully grown, but big. The other four were fully grown, but not as old as Ikali and Tessa. One female looked pregnant, and another still had wet teats. She was the mother of the three in the backpack most likely. After a moment's decision, she came up with her plan and leashed all of the cats. They would be nearly impossible to control, but that wasn't the point. She pressed onward, pulling the unruly cats towards the door. They hissed at each other, and she got a painful swipe of claws scraping across her legs. She opened the door and released one of the older servals. It immediately started running down the path between visitors, hissing and swiping. Screaming and running ensued, and as something startled the serval, she saw it pop upwards eight feet or so, and then disappear from view. She released two more quickly, leashes trailing behind them. The path was clearing extremely fast, and visitors were scrambling to hide their children and run for their lives.

  It was an idiotic notion; the servals were trying to leave, not hunt, but visitors were idiots, so they ran screaming towards the exit. She only had four left: Tessa, Ikali, the young one, and the pregnant one.

  This seemed to her to be a manageable number, and she quickly pushed them all out the door. Tessa and Ikali walked along just fine on the leash. They had been walking on leash together for their entire lives. Quickly, they fell into a smooth rhythm, as fast as Jaspierre could run. The teenage serval kept horsing around; he'd barely been on a leash and he'd never seen the world. Distraction was his middle name.

  The pregnant one was terrified, hissing and trying to duck behind a bush, or dart up a tree over and over. But Tessa, Ikali, and Jaspierre pushed on, pulling the ragtag two with them. The zoo was cleared in front of them and behind them, they suddenly heard a security man in a golf cart. "What the fuck are you doing!?" He was screaming at her, and the soft whirring of the cart grew to a steady hum.

  Jaspierre kept running as fast as her feet would allow. Thank God she was so fit. Her heart couldn't have done this before, but it would do it now. Her lungs burned with a fiery heat, a stitch growing more and more painful in her side. The parking lot, if she could make it to the parking lot, she'd be fine. The pregnant one suddenly let out a screaming yowl and pulled hard to the right; she needed to hide, she desperately needed to hide. Jaspierre released her and she scrambled up a tall tree. Jaspierre felt small claws digging painfully into her back as the three baby servals cried loudly, scared and clawing to get out. The security guard leapt from his cart. He screamed, "Shut the gate" into a little walkie-talkie. He ran fast, not nearly as winded as Jaspierre, and turned to grab her, but she didn't have to fight him at all. The teenage serval swiped the guard, ripping into his legs and the man faltered and screamed. He fell, grasping both bleeding legs.

  They continued to run, with Tessa on one side of the teen and Ikali on the other. They pushed him along, keeping his distractions to a minimum. Jaspierre could see the main gates ahead of her. One of the baby servals tore a hole in the backpack, and his yowls grew much, much louder with his tiny mouth pressed to the hole.

  The gate was crowded with terrified guests leaving en masse. Screaming ensued and people trampled people, running from Jaspierre and her angry servals. There wasn't really a path, but people ran, and the teen clawed and bit at everyone he could reach. Tessa and Ikali let out some halfhearted swipes, but they seemed mostly winded and tired. And old. They seemed so old.

  The baby serval cried loudly again and Jaspierre saw the crowd of people react. She tried to run for the car, but teeth, big angry teeth caught her calf. The mother had come.

  Screaming, Jaspierre swirled and kicked the angry serval mother. The leash was still dangling from her neck. Jaspierre screamed, "Come on! We must run," pleading with the cat. Tessa suddenly let out a loud hiss, impatient to continue. The teen and Ikali were pulling at the leash, trying to escape into the parking lot, into the world. Jaspierre scrambled and security people were racing towards her. She grabbed the mother's leash and screamed again, "Run! We must run!"

  And suddenly, the mother joined them and they raced to the parking lot. A fat woman was standing at the back of her minivan, unloading two small children from a stroller. The minivan was running and the sliding door was open. Jaspierre launched herself inside, dragging the unruly servals. Quickly, she slammed the door shut. The fat woman at the back of the minivan started to shout something, but the teen bared his teeth from inside the van and looked ready to pounce. She slammed the back of the door down sharply, just as Jaspierre managed to hit the gas. They flew down the road at an incredible speed. Jaspierre was panting and still surged with adrenaline. The kittens tumbled out of the backpack, the mother frantically helped to dig them out. Jaspierre did a quick head count as she swerved onto the highway; Tessa, Ikali, three kittens, Mother, and Teen. Seven, seven wild servals in her car. She glanced into the rear-view mirror. Mother was licking her kittens and hiding them in the back seat. Tessa and Ikali were snuggled up close, sleeping already. But Teen, he was licking his teeth angrily, tail flickering and eying her.

  He was going to bite her soon. These were wild cats. Not pets; wild cats. Wild.

  They could kill her.

&nb
sp; She tried not to focus on that, instead focusing on getting home so she could put them in the maze and figure out how to tame them.

  Shit. Those circus freaks were still in there. Fuck.

  Her mind whirled as she tried to decide what to do. She cracked the window a bit and Teen was suddenly distracted by the smells, his nose pressed tight to the gap as he stared at the world flying by. Thank God for that bit of luck.

  She'd have to release them in the house.

  Perhaps they'd kill her when she was changing her clothes.

  Perhaps they'd settle in nicely.

  Fuck, she didn't even have any cat food or mice. Why the fuck didn't she plan ahead more? Where could she stash wild cats? Where could she lose this minivan? Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Loud police sirens started up behind her. They had a ways to go, but they would catch her. Fuck.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  Jaspierre pulled off the main road into a smaller neighborhood. If she was even the least bit lucky, she would be able to wait for the police to pass and then she could hop back on the road and get to her house.

  The teen started wrestling with one of the kittens, and Jaspierre glanced back at them. Ikali and Tessa had fallen asleep, the mother was nursing the other two kittens. It seemed things had settled for a moment. Where the hell could she put these servals? Tessa and Ikali could stay in the house, but there was a real risk Mother, Teen, and the kittens would end up too wild to keep indoors. They needed constant handling to tame them, and that was nearly impossible when they could escape to any portion of a mansion.

  She pulled into a quiet dead end and parked. Sirens whirred past. She needed to change her plates. It was pretty easy these days to send out a massive text to everyone and the whole road would have eyes on your car. Every person in her city would have a flashing warning: Find this minivan, find it!

  She didn't have a screwdriver, though, and it was pretty difficult to change plates without one. However, there was always the poor persons' way of obscuring it. If she had a marker, she could scribble a number just enough to look like another. But she didn't carry a marker around. Perhaps she should get one just for this purpose.

  Plus, she left her Lexus behind. She'd have to go get it.

  Instead, she'd have to do it a different way. She stepped out of the car quickly and glanced around. She didn't see anyone, so she quickly picked up a muddy clot of dirt and pressed it tightly into the plate. It seemed to stick, and five minutes later, the plate was coated in mud, and the car had several clots on the back. She smeared as much mud as she could stand on the vehicle so that it wouldn't be too suspicious that the plate was caked in the stuff. Thankfully, this minivan hadn't been washed in years, as far as she could tell, so adding a couple of bucketsful of mud wasn't that big of a deal. Her hands were filthy, though. As she climbed back into the minivan, she wiped her filthy mud crusted hands on the passenger seat.

  Good enough.

  She pulled back onto the main road, slowly driving back to her mansion. Once she arrived, she left the servals in the minivan while she went in. "Arnold?" she shouted. "Arnold? I need some help. I've got Ikali and Tessa, and a few others, but I need..." Her voice caught in her throat as Arnold walked into the front room from the kitchen. He was bleeding from his eye socket, and his left arm hung limply at his side. His right arm was twisted painfully behind his back.

  Chance held that arm, smiling cruelly at Jaspierre. "Hello, honey, I'm home."

  * * * * * * * * * * * *

  "Hello Chance," Jaspierre said, and her fingers seemed to twitch. Where was her nearest blade? The stair banister, if Dru hadn't taken it and lost it. She raised both hands up in a surrender fashion.

  "I've missed you." His eyes were lingering on her body, not her face.

  Her heart flipped. "Lucille?" She could barely croak out her name suddenly. She didn't want to hear it, to hear of her death. But she had to know. "Lucille?" she tried again, desperately trying to hold it together.

  Arnold let out a moan as Chance twisted his arm harder. "What do you want me to do with him?"

  "Arnold, I have my cats in my car. Please put them in..." She hesitated before she came up with a plan. "You know the playroom? With the ladders and what not? They are leashed. Carefully lead them in there and shut the door. They will need to be fed."

  Chance wrinkled his brow; it wasn't exactly his style to let a man just wander off. But he didn't give a shit about Arnold. He could kill him later if it came to that. His grip relaxed and Arnold slipped free quickly, hesitating at the front door.

  "Hurry up. They are hungry," she said, her eyes never leaving Chance. "Lucille." This time, her voice was strong and firm. He was staring at her body again.

  "You've gotten thin," he said plainly. "Your tits are way smaller."

  "Lucille," she said louder, suddenly striding to the banister. The sword was still there, sliding out with a sharp whistle. "Lucille, God help you, Lucille!" Her voice was rattling with rage. The blade's tip skittered loudly across the floor as she slowly and deliberately raised it to his throat.

  "Hey now. I am sorry I didn't know you got out. You weren't supposed to be out for a few more years. Years, you know? I've been up in Canada, and I'm sorry I missed it. I'd be pissed too." He didn't even put his hands up, but instead held them out, offering a hug.

  Her chest was heaving with deep breaths as she tried to control herself. A mix of sobbing rage was building pressure inside her like a mountain barely containing its lava. She couldn't find her voice; the wind had been sucked from her lungs. The sword trembled in the air, pointed at his throat.

  He didn't seem to care. His eyes finally lingered on her face. The deep scars gnarled his eye and made it impossible for him to fully open the right one. The skin was riddled with white and black streaks, the ink from his tattoo smeared slowly as the burns healed. She said nothing, trying to control the frantic emotions crawling up her throat, crawling up her tongue, curling in her mouth. The terrible screams. The rage, the fear, the anger, the hate, and the sorrow, the nonstop terrible sorrow of the loss of her only child. The only child she would ever carry, the only child she would ever hold, stolen before its first suckle. Ripped from her before she had even changed her diaper. Lucille. She couldn't say it again. But her brain screamed it, echoing across the room in earth-shattering pain.

  When she had first gone to prison, the pain was so strong and so powerful it amazed her that the walls could still stand. Surely they would wilt and crumble like her soul. When she clawed her skin so raw and bloody that they handcuffed her to a bed and sedated her, she wondered how the earth itself hadn't exploded. How could it hold together against such pain? The universe could surely crack from the force of it. It was so large, it was so strong.

  But somehow, the planet withstood all that pain and agony. Somehow, the walls still stood. Even the cuffs held. And the pain oozing out her skin in little drops of red learned to sit dormant inside her like a silent disease. She taught it to sit in the corner and say nothing. But here it was, rearing its ugly head. Here it came bursting through her skin, setting fire to her lungs, scorching her vocal cords, and screaming, screaming within her. It couldn't sit in the corner again. Lucille.

  He lunged at her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her close, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly from behind. His erection was pressed against her ass and she did nothing. She trembled harder, her whole body revolting inside her. Her limbs betrayed her, just as her voice betrayed her. Her empty left hand was already scratching and tearing away bits of her flesh. His embrace was warm, and for a tiny breath, she almost relaxed. His mouth was pressed tightly to her ear, and she felt his tiny kisses.

  He ran his tongue across the top of her ear and he said the words that brought life back to her body-that called her brain back from the lost place- he said the thing that shoved that painful rage-filled grief back into the corner. The very words he said snapped her back into game mode.

  "Let's go get her
."

  A cry gurgled out of Jaspierre's throat, and her knees grew weak, and he held her tightly. She kissed him. Right on his gnarled, burned lips. "Lucille is alive?" she uttered in hoarse, raspy tears. He nodded and they kissed again. The whole room spun with ecstasy. Her brain returned, and her vision un-blurred, and she saw she was kissing Chance. She was kissing the man that stole her only daughter. The monster. She stepped back and stared at him. "Did you touch her?" The blade rose to his throat, not even the slightest tremor this time.

  He raised his hands innocently. "Never. I didn't fuck her, or fuck her up. I never even slapped her." He paused, glancing at the blade, then back at Jaspierre. "I don't have a death wish."

  "You gave her away!" Jaspierre shouted, charging at him. The blade slipped into the meat of his left arm as he tried to block.

  "I had to! You were in prison, you bitch! If I had kept her, you know what would have happened." He charged back at her, slamming her into the wall behind her. "You know! You already know!" He kissed her again as her body squirmed between him and the solid wall. "I love you, Jaspierre. I'd do anything for you. I would never risk her." In a surge of emotion, he kissed her neck again. She wasn't fighting back.

  Her lips hovered close to his ear. "Where is my daughter?"

  His hands slid up her arms, holding them over her head, pressed against the wall. He was panting into her mouth, desperately wanting to kiss her, to fuck her, to kill her.

  "Let's go get our baby." He nibbled on her neck, his body demanding hers.

  Arnold opened the front door, two servals pulling hard on the leash. It was the teen and Ikali. Chance and Jaspierre pulled apart, somehow both of them embarrassed. Her mind was spinning. What the fuck was she doing?

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  Edward was sitting in his worn recliner, watching the news casually when he saw the report of stolen servals at the zoo. He got so flustered with excitement he could barely pay attention, entirely missing the few sentences on the deaths of the zookeepers. He couldn't help but grin when he imagined her walking out of the zoo with her cats on leashes.