"I love you, too."
Kougar called up the mystic circle and set the warding that would force them all to remain within the circle until it was dismantled. The men, bare-chested, their golden armbands sparkling with raindrops, began to form a wide circle around Kara. Hawke motioned Faith to join them, and she did, tossing her hoodie onto the damp rock behind her and standing between Hawke and Tighe. Kougar began chanting, leading the ritual, but the others soon joined in. All but the other new Ferals. She was glad she wasn't the only one standing uncomfortably mute.
Across the circle, Kougar pulled a knife, slashed a long line across his chest, then pressed his free hand against the bleeding wound before handing the knife to Lyon.
Faith's gut cramped. She knew she was immortal, of course she knew that. Any flesh wound would heal within a matter of seconds. Ten, twenty at most. She knew that. But it didn't mean the cut wasn't going to hurt like hell.
Warrior after warrior slashed his chest - Paenther, Jag, Wulfe, Fox - curling their fists around their own blood. Tighe cut himself, then handed the knife to her, hilt first. Faith took it, clasping shaking fingers around the wooden handle, her gaze flicking up to Tighe's. He nodded, his gaze a little sympathetic but mostly demanding. Do it, his eyes said. And she must.
"If you cut quickly, it'll be over before you feel it," Hawke whispered from her other side.
With a single, jerky nod, she took a deep breath, turned the knife toward her chest, squeezed her eyes closed, and cut fast from the edge of one shoulder blade to her sports bra on the other side.
Scorching pain tore across her chest.
"Good girl," Tighe murmured.
"A little deep," Hawke muttered, "but you'll heal."
"I haven't exactly practiced this."
"Silence," Kougar intoned, a hint of laughter in his voice. "Bloody your hand, Faith, or you'll have to cut yourself again."
"Oh." She pressed her hand against the wound, wincing more at the thought of what she was doing than the actual pain. Already, the wound was healing, the pain receding to nothing. Three cheers for immortality. Hawke curled his hand into a fist around his own now-bloody palm, and she mimicked his action.
When the knife had gone all the way around the circle, Kougar shoved his fist into the air. The others followed, Faith a beat late. She felt like a complete and total fraud.
Kara shrugged off her raincoat, raised her hands, and went radiant.
"Stay here," Hawke told her. Then he and the others gathered around Kara, each touching her bare skin. Faith stood apart for what felt like twenty minutes, but was probably less than one, the drizzle soaking her clothes and hair, making her shiver with cold as she kept her fist clenched tight around the damp blood.
Finally, Kougar released Kara and turned to Faith. One by one, the others followed, circling tight around her, towering over her, their combined body heat chasing away the chill. "Lift your fist," Kougar told her.
As she did, Lyon opened his bloody hand and grasped her fist with it. Kougar pressed his hand atop Lyon's, Hawke's atop Kougar's, each following suit until she felt as if she were holding an eleven-scoop ice-cream cone.
Kougar began to chant, switching to English as the others joined in. "Spirits rise and join. Empower the beasts beneath this moon. Goddess, reveal your warrior!"
Thunder rumbled, an unnatural sound. The sound of violent magic. Faith began to tremble. Beneath her bare feet, the rock started to quake almost as badly as her hands. She felt the anticipation of the men pressing around her, felt their anticipation feed her own. Her breath turned shallow, excitement lifting her pulse.
And suddenly energy powered through her, a blast of ecstasy that had her gasping, and then not gasping because she no longer had a mouth. Not a human mouth.
She fell to the ground. No, not fell. Her feet were on the stone, her body upright among a forest of denim and leather-clad trees, her wings tucked tight against . . . her wings. Not trees. Legs.
High above her, Kougar's voice rang out. "Henceforth, you will be known among us as Falkyn."
A falcon. Before the incredible transition sank into her woman's brain, another blast crashed through her mind, a driving, pounding need.
Escape! Escape!
The frantic drive tore through her falcon's breast. She tried to fly, tried to break free of the forest of legs, but hands snatched at her.
"Faith, easy!"
"Falkyn. Cease!"
But the desperate need to escape overrode every thought, every instinct until her mind was pounding, screeching. Blank.
"Faith!" Hawke tried to reach her through the terror that had engulfed her. Or the fury. He was all too afraid it was the dark magic driving her frantic attempt at freedom.
The small peregrine falcon broke free of the hands trying to grasp her and lifted into flight, whapping Vhyper in the face with her wing as she rose, only to slam into the mystic barrier Kougar had erected around the goddess stone. The barrier knocked her back, but she remained airborne and dove for the other side only to fall back a second time, harder, plummeting to the rock.
Hawke reached for her, his heart in his throat. Goddess, she had to be all right.
Her wings began to flutter, and he grabbed her, carefully pinning her wings to her body. "Shift back, Faith. Shift back."
Instead, she struggled, shrieking her anger, and tried to bite him. Inside, his hawk screeched in answer. But her nearness in this form did nothing to calm his bird. He felt the hawk's fury rising with Faith's agitation. The red haze began rushing into his vision.
Pushing to his feet, he shoved the falcon at Tighe. "Take her! Before I hurt her."
Tighe had barely grabbed the small, struggling bird of prey when Hawke went feral, his claws and fangs erupting. Wulfe and Paenther grabbed him by the upper arms, their touch helping him struggle for control and not join Faith in a wild flight into the dome above.
"Shift, Falkyn," Lyon demanded. "We'll not release you until you do. You'll never be free until you shift back into human form."
Sparkling lights flickered. Faith reappeared practically in Tighe's arms, once more in her jeans and sports bra. So she was one of the ones who could retain her clothes when she shifted. As the tiger shifter pulled back, Kougar and Lyon grabbed Faith's arms and slapped the waiting Mage cuffs around her wrists, black metal bands that would keep her from shifting but wouldn't hamper her movements since they weren't attached to one another. Still, she wouldn't be able to remove them without the counterspell.
High around one upper arm curled a delicate gold Feral armband with the head of a falcon. In many ways, a feminine version of Hawke's own.
She growled low in her throat, easily jerking free of Kougar's and Lyon's holds. Their shocked expressions might have been comical under other circumstances. She was strong all of a sudden, and she fought them, swinging a fist that nearly caught Kougar in the eye. Lyon grabbed her from behind, not underestimating her strength a second time.
Paenther squeezed Hawke's shoulder. "They're not hurting her."
"I know that." But he was shaking with the instinctive need to protect her, the growls coming low and fast.
Bastards.
Hawke heard the word in his head clear as day. Faith's voice. And he could tell by the looks on the others' faces, the startled exchanged glances, that he wasn't the only one.
"Did she really just talk to us telepathically?" Paenther asked. "In human form?"
"Shit," Jag muttered.
"A handy trick in battle," Tighe said. "Once we get her back on our side."
Lyon looked to Kougar. "Let's get this shield down and get her back to that cave in the Sahara. Get her cured."
"Agreed."
The sight of Faith fighting off another man was sending him into a tailspin. "She's mine." The words tore between his fangs, barely human.
Paenther stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Lyon holding a struggling Faith. "You must get control, Wings." Paenther's hands gripped Hawke's shoulders hard, but his voice remained even. "Ease down, my friend. Lyon's not hurting her, you know that. We're going to take her to the cave and save her. But she's going to need you with her. You must get control."
Mine! Even as the wildness inside him struggled to break free, to claim the woman he adored, Hawke fought to push back the red haze, to hold on.
"Ease down, Hawke. Come on, my friend." Paenther's calm voice helped pull him back, little by little, until finally he was able to retract his claws and fangs.
Hawke released a hard breath as Paenther let go of him. "Thank you."
Paenther nodded and stepped back, letting Hawke pass.
Hawke strode straight to Lyon. "I've got her."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"Neither am I. But watching you struggle with her is going to make me lose it. It has to be me."
Lyon hesitated, then shoved the struggling woman into Hawke's arms, and she fought him as hard as she had Lyon, her strength easily three times what it had been before. Not equal to his, but not that much less. She'd be able to take most Therian males like this. Most Mage.
She arched into him, trying to twist her body out of his grasp, low growls and hisses coming from her throat. When she glared up at him, her eyes were flat. The eyes of a stranger. Something inside him roared with pain.
"Let me go." A deadly fury laced her words.
"Do you know me?" he demanded, holding her fast.
Her lip curled, then softened as recognition flared in the brown depths of her eyes. For an instant, his Faith was back, then gone again just as quickly. "Yes, I know you. You have to let me go."
"Why? Where will you go?"
"Away. I must get away. I must go to him."
To him? "To who?"
She fought him, her hip grinding against his groin, damn near setting him on fire. "Maxim. I belong to him."
And that quickly, she doused the flame with ice water.
"You belong to me."
She snarled, her claws and fangs erupting. Hawke felt his own leap out, a dark growl escaping between his lips.
"Easy, buddy," Tighe's voice came from behind him. "Ease down, Wings."
He was fighting for control, riding a knife's edge. "You said you know me. Who am I, Faith? Who am I to you?"
A strange look crossed her face, a look he'd never seen before. Dark, predatory. "You're the man I want to fuck."
The word shot straight to his groin, hardening his already-inflamed body. But his heart clenched in denial. This wasn't his Faith. The screeching inside his head intensified as if the hawk spirit were as frustrated as he was.
"It's time to go." Kougar entered his line of vision. "Ariana and company are on their way."
A moment later, the Ilinas arrived, Ariana and two others Hawke didn't recognize appearing out of thin air in front of them. Ariana nodded to him. "Release her, Hawke. We have her."
The animal inside his head let out a screech of anger, his and the hawk's emotions in complete accord. No. Mine! But he fought both his own possessive instincts and the animal spirit's demands and let her go.
The moment he released her, the Ilinas turned to mist, and moved in. A second later, they were gone, Faith along with them.
Another Ilina snatched up Hawke in her mist before he even registered what she looked like, then the spinning began - his body, his head, his stomach. And ended abruptly with a slam of power that felt as if his bones had been pulverized.
Suddenly, he was falling through hot air, landing with a thud in a sea of hot, golden sand. The Sahara? Thuds sounded all around him, the shouts of men, the cries of women in pain. And the sound of swords and animals. Chaos.
The sickness roared through him as it had the last two times he'd traveled by Ilina, but he fought it back, pushed to his feet, and whirled, taking in the horrific sight in the middle of the sun-scorched desert. Mage sentinels lunged at downed Ferals and Ilinas, alike.
They'd flown into an ambush.
Chapter Seventeen
Hawke pulled his blades against a rushing Mage, searching frantically for Faith through the chaotic battle scene playing out all around him as he squinted against the blinding sun gleaming off the golden sand now streaked with blood and body parts. He dispatched the Mage's sword hand with ease, then pushed into the melee, desperate to find her. If the Mage caught Faith, if they used the counterspell to free her from the wristbands, she'd fly off, and he might never find her again. The thought sent a reeling panic pounding through his chest.
Finally, he spotted her battling two Mage a short distance away though the pair appeared to be trying to grab her, not hurt her - neither had pulled weapons. For a moment, he could only stare. Faith was fighting them brilliantly, using not only her newly acquired strength, but also the moves they'd shown her, fighting with a speed and agility that spoke of years . . . decades . . . of training.
He pushed toward her. Around him, the other Ferals had shifted into their animals and were tearing at the Mage. Ilinas littered the ground, fully corporeal, dazed, rising, fighting. What in the hell had happened? The Ilinas had gotten them to the Sahara, but clearly not into the cave.
Another Mage joined the fight against Faith. Why? Why try to catch her instead of kill her?
But he knew. She, like Maxim and the other new Ferals, was under the spell of Mage magic. And they wanted her alive, a weapon to use against the uninfected Ferals. Rage barreled through him, the hawk's anger melding with his own, hot and wild.
A Mage lunged at Hawke, but he parried the blow with ease. He was bigger than the Mage, stronger, more skilled, and infinitely more furious. In a single swing, he lopped off this sentinel's hand as he had the one before and continued to make his way to Faith. Another Mage lunged at him, sword swinging, and met the same fate as his predecessors. He'd kill them all, and happily, if not for the fact that Mother Nature tended to rebel when too many of her Mage died at once. As the sands began to rise in a sudden wind, he knew some of them had died. And Mother Nature was starting to get pissed.