Kougar turned to his men. "No killing. The Ilinas are enthralled and not our enemies. Killing too many Mage could cause an earthquake that would destroy the temple and make it impossible to reach Hawke and Tighe. The only one who dies is Hookeye, and Ariana and I are the only ones who know what he looks like."
"Stay alert," Lyon added. "These bastards have access to a spirit trap, and they want us in it."
"They're not getting what they want," Jag snarled.
Wulfe grunted. "Hell, no."
"Just keep your eyes and senses open," Lyon added.
Kougar palmed the top of Ariana's head, then slid his hand down her hair. "Be careful."
She blinked hard against the flood of warm caring she felt in his touch. "You, too." She couldn't meet his gaze, or the tears would get the better of her. But he gripped her shoulders and turned her to him, kissing her with a quick, passionate meeting of lips.
Through the mating bond, she felt a burst of tangled emotions. Fear and fury, savage determination and aching tenderness.
Unable to resist, she met his gaze and fell into those fierce pale eyes.
"We're going to win, Ariana. We're going to beat him." He kissed her forehead. "Come back to me."
Hope bloomed inside her with a fragrant beauty. "Yes. And you to me."
Beside them, Lyon lifted his arm toward the temple.
"Go!"
Kougar touched her face for one tender moment, then moved behind her, strong and protective at her back. With a fierce cry, the Feral Warriors, Melisande, and Ariana raced into battle.
With one hand, Kougar swung his sword, parrying the blows of the enthralled Ilinas, while with his other he grabbed slender wrists or feminine necks, and tossed his petite assailants far from the field of battle. The falls might hurt the Ilinas, but any injuries sustained would heal quickly enough. And for a few minutes, the women would be out of the way of slashing swords. For once, the Ferals weren't fighting in their animal forms but their human since they didn't want to hurt, let alone kill, their unwilling opponents.
The Ilinas were quick, deadly little fighters, but the magic thick around the temple was holding them all to flesh and blood. Unable to turn to mist, they'd lost the advantage of surprise, their speed and strength no match for the Feral Warriors'. Still, they fought with the single-mindedness of puppets in the hands of a puppet master.
Paenther and Vhyper fought as a team, falling back into the natural rhythm they'd always had. Kougar was glad to see it. Vhyper hadn't been himself since Paenther helped him reclaim his soul. But maybe there was hope for the Feral, yet.
On his other side, Ariana fought, refusing to stay protected within their ranks. She'd always been a warrior, but her skill was a hundred times greater than the last time he'd seen her, reminding him that she'd been a woman on her own for far too long. With her blue satin gown splotched purple with blood, her skin blood-streaked, and her hair a wild tumble around her shoulders, she reminded him of a warrior queen of old, her eyes fierce and glowing.
Never had she looked more beautiful. Never had he loved her more.
One of the Mage sentinels broke through the ranks of Ilinas, his blue tunic rippling in the wind, his sword flashing with the sun's fire. Kougar took him on with a vengeance, funneling his fury into the first combatant he'd been able to fight . . . and hurt . . . without compunction. In the Mage's eyes, he saw no light of battle, no emotion at all.
"Even the sentinels are enthralled!" he shouted to his companions. It seemed that Hookeye had enthralled even his own.
He fought the Mage in a quick, intense battle, his opponent a skilled fighter even with his will controlled by another. But in moments, Kougar sliced off the man's hand, sending his blade flying. As the man yelled with pain, Kougar grabbed his other hand and cut if off, too. His hands would grow back quickly enough, but he'd be no threat in the meantime.
As the Ferals hacked a path to the temple, Kougar gave thanks that the place was so isolated that the Mage had had no easy way to send up reinforcements in time to defend it properly. Thank the goddess, so far they'd been able to dispatch the Ilinas without anyone's suffering serious harm.
They fought their way up the ivory steps between the great pillars and into the temple's wide rotunda, where the remaining half dozen sentinels and last twelve Ilinas met them beneath the giant golden statue of the first queen.
As the battle resumed inside, the clang of swords echoing off the stone walls, Ariana broke away. Kougar followed, covering her back as she made her escape to find the passage that would lead her into the Syphian Stream and the spirit trap.
On feet as graceful as a gazelle's, Ariana slipped around a corner and started up an open, twisting stair that led to the narrow gallery ringing the curved inner dome, Kougar close behind. When they reached the top of the stairs, he noticed the series of niches that lined the inner wall, perhaps a dozen of which were filled with the life-sized stone carvings of warrior women. Queens? Was Ariana's likeness among them?
He didn't get a chance to find out as she paused beside the second niche, as if searching her memories. She turned to him, her eyes heavier than he'd ever seen them, yet lit with the fire of determination.
"This is it. This is the door. Wish me luck."
He lifted his hand, pressing it to her cheek. Her lashes drifted down as if she absorbed his strength, his touch. Goddess, she was about to travel into the spirit trap. His heart clutched at the danger she was about to face and the knowledge that he wouldn't be there to guard her. He couldn't go where she was going without ending up just like Hawke and Tighe.
Lifting her hand to his, she turned and pressed a kiss to his palm, then turned back to the door niche to call the magic that would let her through.
At least they'd made it there without any Mage trying to stop them.
The thought went through him like a bolt of lightning. No Mage had tried to stop them. He grabbed her shoulder.
"Wait."
Ariana glanced at him. "What?"
"It's too easy. This is the trap."
She turned slowly back to face him. "I have to go through if I'm going to save them."
"Hookeye knows we're here to breach that spirit trap, and he controls every Mage and Ilina in the room. Yet no one tried to stop us."
"Maybe he doesn't know this is the door."
"Regardless, no one followed us. He wants you to go through that door."
Her lips pressed together. Slowly, she nodded. "You're right. But what are we . . ." Her gaze flicked behind him, eyes widening. "Kougar, look."
He whirled toward the battle, seeing immediately what had caught her attention--the glimmer of firelit magic circling the floor around the statue of the first queen. Enclosing the Ferals.
He lunged for the balustrade. "Trap! Out of the temple! Now."
But his warning came too late. Even as he shouted the words, the magic shot up, arcing over the statue to form a glimmering, gleaming bubble. A bubble trapping all five Feral Warriors and nearly twelve Ilinas, including Melisande and Brielle.
The moment the trap snapped closed, all the Ilinas except Melisande fell unconscious, as if the one calling the shots didn't want the Ferals harmed. As if he wanted them alive for what came next.
The Ferals leaped for the bubble, fighting to break through with knives and claws, but their efforts were futile.
Disbelief and denial tore through Kougar's mind like shock waves. "The spirit trap."
"Yes." Ariana grabbed his arm, her hand trembling. "I can feel the magic."
"He's going to send them all in." The Ferals wouldn't die for days. But Ariana's friends would be dead the moment they hit the trap.
Below, the Mage sentinels and those Ilinas not caught within the bubble turned in perfect unison toward the stairs beneath where he and Ariana stood. As if they shared a single mind. And they did, didn't they?
Hookeye's.
Chapter Twenty-two
Mage poured into the upper gallery from the two hall passages on the far side of the dome. Triple the number of sentinels that Kougar had believed were in the temple. They split their forces, circling in both directions, coming at Ariana and him from either side as more started up the stairs.
Surrounded.
Ariana glanced at him, her knives at the ready. "I don't suppose you have a plan."
"Only one. Find Hookeye and kill him." Which conveniently left out the part about fighting their way through several dozen Mage sentinels--Mage they shouldn't kill.
"Right," Ariana muttered. "All this time I didn't dare turn to mist. And now that it no longer matters . . . I can't."
"At least I can shift." But as he called on the power of his animal, as the magic swept through his body, nothing happened. The sparkling lights flashed and spit, then went dark, like electricity shorting out. "Scratch that. The Mage magic in this place has us both stuck in human form."
"You cannot stop me, Feral."
At the sound of the familiar voice ringing out across the dome, Kougar's gaze jerked toward the other side of the gallery as Hookeye stepped out from behind the advancing sentinels to stand at the railing.
"Opening wormholes into the old Daemon spirit trap is a difficult task," the sorcerer said, his expression preoccupied, as if he were talking to himself. "Mystery caught two Ferals. I've caught the rest. Except you." He nodded. "I'll catch you, too."
"Don't count on it."
Hookeye blinked in surprise. "The Ilina won't save you. Don't think she'll save you. She can't survive that trap any more than you can."
As the first of the sentinels reached them, Kougar drew his sword. If Hookeye said anything more, it was lost in the clang of metal on metal.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hookeye lift his arms high above his head, his eyes closing, his mouth moving as if he intoned some chant.
The spirit trap. He was opening the spirit trap!
"Stop him!" Ariana cried, coming to the same conclusion.
Kougar lunged into the fray like a madman, hacking at limbs and tossing sentinels over the balustrade in a desperate race to reach the soulless sorcerer before he completed his spell and took the lives of their friends.
Below, Lyon and the others watched, listening to the chant that spelled their doom, fury on their faces. Only Vhyper's face held little but the same flat expression he'd worn since he returned. As if he couldn't gather the will to care that his life was about to end. Or the lives of his brothers.
Kougar's stomach twisted with sick fury. If the sorcerer succeeded, there would be only two Ferals left. Himself and whoever the goddess marked to take Foxx's place. Unless Hookeye was lying, and Ariana was in no true danger from that trap and could free them.
And if Hookeye was telling the truth?
Goddess help us all.
The rage had become Hawke's constant companion. His only companion, leaping up out of nowhere to consume him for minutes or hours at a time in a berserker's haze. If he were able to move, he was certain he'd find his fingers and mouth dripping with claws and fangs. And blood.
The pain had left him at some point in this endless night; but so, too, had the hawk spirit, or at least his sense of him. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd last heard him or felt him. Time had no meaning anymore.
Even the other animal spirits were gone.
Was this how the seventeen had died, then? This lonely, angry death? He'd always imagined them fighting together to find a way out. Perishing together, brothers in arms. Now he knew the truth. They'd died in darkness and isolation.
Just as he was about to.
Several of the seventeen had been mated, one with a young son. How much harder to be unable to reach the ones who would suffer most at his dying.
How much harder this must be on Tighe.
In between bouts of rage, he drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to tell sleep from awake. People ran through his mind, people he'd known long ago. His father. The friends of his youth.
Were they spirits come to deliver him to the beyond?
No! There had to be a way out!
Within his mind, he struggled against bonds he couldn't feel. Slowly, painfully, the fight inside him drained away. There was no fighting the dark. There was no way out this time. His animal spirit was all but lost to him. His own spirit nearly gone, too.
His life was ending, and he couldn't stop it.
When the fury blind-sided him yet again, blasting through his head, he let out a war cry that would have rattled the windows, had there been any. If he'd still had a voice. As that white-hot haze swept through his mind, stealing his sanity, his last thought was that perhaps it was better he never escaped like this.
Goddess knew what kind of damage he'd do in this state. What kind of carnage he'd cause, lost to the fury of a mindless, vicious rage.
Kougar fought like a berserker, Ariana at his side. Both hacked off limbs right and left, Mage and Ilina, alike. No longer were they careful not to hurt the Ilinas. Limbs would regrow. And if they didn't reach Hookeye before he completed chanting his spell to open the wormhole into the spirit trap, Melisande, Brielle, and nearly a dozen other Ilinas would die.
And goddess only knew how many Ferals.
Even through the clash of swords, he heard the rest of the enchanted army closing in on them from behind.
"I've got them." Ariana turned and they fought back-to-back as he pressed forward, desperate to reach Hookeye in time.
Sweat rolled down his back, despair licking at his nerves as he hacked through the attacking Mage. The sorcerer's chanting carried faintly through the clang of metal and the screams of the injured. A quick glance told him the magic wasn't done. But he had no illusions. He was out of time.