Leopard 05 - Savage Nature

India
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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not havetaltrol over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
     
    SAVAGE NATURE
     
    A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
     
    PRINTING HISTORY
Jove mass-market edition / May 2011
     
Copyright © 2011 by Christine Feehan.
     
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    eISBN : 978-1-101-47775-5
     
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For my mother, Nancy King,
whom I miss every single day

Acknowledgments
     
    As always when writing a book, I have several people to thank: Melisa Long, for information on the bayou and the Cajun people. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. Brian Feehan, who always drops everything to work out tough fight scenes and discuss difficult scenarios. Domini, as always, you make the book so much better! I appreciate you all so much!

1
     

     
    THE swamp had four distinct seasons and within each she had moods as well. Tonight she wore a mantle of purple, all different hues, dark swirls that filled the night sky and lighter lavenders that crept through the cypress trees. The moon illuminated the veils of moss hanging to the water’s edge, turning them a pale, silvery blue. Crimson and blue made up the color purple, and it was evident in the splashes of dark red slashing through the trees to pour into the duckweed-carpeted water below.
    Saria Boudreaux smiled as she carefully stepped from her airboat to the blind she’d set up, building it day by day, a little at a time, so as not to disturb the wildlife around her. She’d grown up on the edges of the swamp and there was nowhere she was happier. The blind was set up alongside an owl’s nest and she hoped to get night pictures, a coveted coup that could possibly bring her a great deal more money. More and more, her photography was allowing her an independence from her family’s store that she hadn’t thought possible.
    Going to school had been rather difficult—she’d been miserable—until she’d discovered the world of photography. Most of her childhood had been spent running wild in the swamps, fishing, maintaining the crab pots, even helping hunt alligator with her father when her brothers were gone—which had been most of the time. She wasn’t used to authority in any form, and school was too structured, had too many rules. She couldn’t breathe with so many people around her. She had nearly fled into the swamp to avoid the rules when a kind teacher had pushed a camera into her hands and suggested she take some pictures of her beloved swamp.
    There was a bit of a moon tonight, so she wouldn’t need the dim light she had used the last few nights to reveal activity in the nest. The babies made eager sounds as an adult approached, and as it descended, Saria tripped the camera’s shutter release. At once there was a burst of light, much like a lightning strike, as she set off the electronic flash. Used to lightning, the birds never seemed to be bothered by the occasional bright flare.
    She caught a glimpse of talons and a beak outlined against the night sky as the owl dropped down to the nest, and her heart sang. At night the swamp had a different music to it. The bellow of alligators could