Ah, hell. He was afraid he knew what was coming.
“He managed to keep his hands off me for all of five months, but he watched me. I knew he watched me. He finally made a move two days after my seventeenth birthday.”
His hand clenched the steering wheel, the strength of his anger catching him by surprise. “He hurt you.”
She met his gaze, steel in her eyes. “No. He groped me and tried to kiss me. I ripped open his cheek with my fingernails, then slammed my fist in his eye.” A glimmer of satisfaction arced through her expression.
Tighe grinned, a vicious smile. “Good girl.” He tensed. “Did he retaliate?”
“Not directly. My aunt kicked me out that night and told me never to come back. I don’t know what he told her.”
“You went back to your dad.”
“No. I hadn’t seen him in years, not since I was thirteen. He came to see me a few times after he left me with my aunt, but I wouldn’t talk to him. I was furious with him for deserting me.” She groaned. “I was such a brat.”
“No you weren’t. Your anger toward him was deserved. If a man’s blessed with a daughter, he protects her. No matter what.” His grip on the wheel tightened as a sharp pain lanced his heart.
Yet he was no better than Delaney’s father. How long had Amalie cried for him? How long had she hated him?
“Thanks,” Delaney said softly. “I never forgave him. Maybe if I had, he’d have been there for me later.”
He looked over at her. “What did you do? Seventeen is young to be on your own.”
“I got a job waiting tables and rented a room from a lady down the street. After high school, I worked my way through college, my sights firmly on getting the man who’d ruined my life and all the others like him. Revenge.” She yawned deeply. “As you said.”
“You’re exhausted.” He patted his right thigh. “Lie down, brown eyes. Get some sleep.” He was suddenly glad he’d grabbed the larger of the sedans, with its bench seat.
She glanced at him, a smile hovering at her mouth. “That sounds like a line if I ever heard one. And I’m too tired to care.” Leaning sideways, she stretched out along the seat to lay her head firmly in his lap. “I don’t know why I’m starting to trust you,” she murmured sleepily. “I shouldn’t.”
He stroked her hair. “Thanks for not using that gun on me.”
She groaned in disgust, drawing a chuckle out of him, but didn’t move to reach for the weapon. Within seconds her breathing evened out, and he knew she was asleep.
He stroked her arm, feeling a warmth toward her, a protectiveness, he didn’t understand. She was a human. Yet he didn’t remember the last time he’d felt this close to another. Any other.
Human or not, she was a remarkable woman. Determined and driven. Tough and courageous. But not without compassion. He’d seen her expression when they’d come upon the three bodies less than a dozen yards from the statue of Abraham Lincoln. She’d seen more than bodies. More than victims. She’d seen two lovers terrorized and destroyed. And a wife, possibly a mother, who would never go home to her family.
He’d tasted Delaney’s fury over the wasteful destruction of life. Yes, she might have been driven to this job of hers out of revenge, but it was a deep compassion for life that kept her dedicated.
He’d have to remember to tell her that. He brushed back a lock of hair that was trying to fall across her cheek, then lifted it and ran the softness between his fingers.
Inexplicably, Delaney Randall had begun to matter to him. He wanted her safe and able to live her short, fragile life to its utmost. With all the things she’d missed, and still missed. A home. A family. A cat.
The thought made him smile, but his thoughts turned wistful. He sensed a large capacity for love in her, and he wished that for her. Children of her own and a man who would stand by her side no matter what, and love her as she deserved to be loved.
The tiger raised its head deep inside him, a growl rumbling in his throat.
Yeah, the thought of her in another man’s arms didn’t please him either. But he certainly didn’t want her for himself. She was human.
And if she wasn’t?
He shook off the weirdly disturbing thought and turned his attention once more to hunting for his clone.
Several hours later, as the sun rose behind overcast skies, Hawke called.
“Any luck?” the Feral asked.
“None. Not a sign of him. But no more visions. Which either means he hasn’t fed yet, or Delaney doesn’t get them in her sleep.”
“We’re back in the safe house, looking for a little sleep ourselves.”
“I’m going to drive around a bit longer.” He snapped the phone closed. As tired and hungry as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to call it quits. Admittedly, he was loath to take Delaney back to the safe house with Kougar and Hawke there. And she was sleeping so soundly, he didn’t want to wake her.
He stroked her hair as he had a hundred times over the past hours. But the real truth was, holding her like this, with her fragile head tucked against him, eased his battered soul the way nothing else had.
The tiger purred with satisfaction, a fact he might have found a tad disturbing if he weren’t too tired to think about it. The tiger rarely paid any attention to the women he was with.
He glanced into the rearview mirror, lifting his sunglasses to look at his eyes. Yesterday, for the first time, he’d noticed a black streak across one of his irises, slicing through the green like the shadow from a lightning bolt. Today, there were several across each. He didn’t know what it meant—Hawke hadn’t either—but he had a sick feeling it wasn’t good.
An hour later, when the rumbling of his stomach became so loud he was afraid he was going to wake half of D.C., he turned the car toward Capitol Hill and the safe house.
Minutes later, Delaney jerked in her sleep, then moaned with pain. “Not again.”
Tighe pressed a hand to her forehead as she lay on his lap. A vision roared into his head, knocking the breath from him as it punched him in the gut.
This bastard needed to die.
Chapter Nine
The scene flashed into Tighe’s inner vision.
As before, it didn’t steal his sight as the visions did when they were his alone. Instead, he continued to see the street before him clearly. He watched the two scenes as though through two separate pairs of eyes.
A young woman lay on the floor, her eyes filled with terror as she struggled to remove the gag from her mouth. Hands that weren’t Tighe’s held her down.
“Do you know who I am?” the clone hissed in the woman’s ear.
The woman shook her head frantically.
“I’m the D.C. Vampire.”
Tighe’s stomach clenched. The bastard knew exactly what was going on. He must be holed up somewhere watching the news between attacks, a hugely disturbing thought because the clone was definitely past the stage of being merely a feeding machine. He was thinking. Plotting. Learning. And that was not good news.
The woman’s eyes went impossibly wide with terror. Precisely what his clone intended, Tighe realized. Why else had he told her what the news media was calling him? He wanted her afraid. He was feeding off her fear.
Definitely evolving. An unthinking animal would feed the simplest way possible. In this case, by stealing raw life force, draining his victim. Feeding from fear took more finesse. More cunning. Something his clone was clearly developing.
Not good. Not good at all.
Delaney’s hand moved to cover his, holding it tight against her forehead. “Don’t let go,” she pleaded.
“I’ve got you.”
“How does your touch help, Tighe? How do you ease the pain?”
“I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s all part of your getting in the way of my connection with my twin. When I touch you, I’m able to access the vision your brain is trying to shut out, completing that connection. The pressure in your head eases.”
“That makes sense,” she murmured. “And yet no sense at all. People are not electrical circuits. None of this should be happening.”
If she only knew. She’d only glimpsed the tip of what would appear to her human eyes to be a very large and terrifying iceberg. He prayed to the goddess she never saw the rest. The terror in her eyes would be more than he could stand. In his current state, he’d be flung into the chaos for good.
In that other place, the demon grabbed his captive’s arms, breaking one, then the other as she screamed.
“Can you see this?” he asked Delaney.
“No.”
He stilled as the clone’s sights turned to a playpen filled with three wide-eyed toddlers. Rage tore through him as the monster closed the distance between them.
Behind the clone, Tighe could hear the injured woman’s whimpers turn to outrage as the clone reached down and picked up one of the little ones, lifting her chubby neck to his mouth.
Tighe groaned. “Sweet goddess.”
“What’s he doing?” Delaney asked, her voice tight with pain.
“He broke her arms. Now he’s killing her babies. As she watches.”
Delaney moaned, curling in on herself as if she’d taken a punch to the stomach. “We have to get him.”
The devil who wore his face tossed the tiny, lifeless body aside with a thud and turned to pick up another as the woman’s muffled and horrified cries rang in Tighe’s ears.
“We don’t know where he is. Wait.” As the clone fed on the second child, his gaze turned toward the window. “Capitol Springs Apartments are across the street.”
“Capitol Springs. I know that area.” A thread of excitement laced her voice. “It’s on East Capitol. Around 6th or 7th.”
He released Delaney long enough to pull out his cell phone and give the address to Hawke. Second by second, he felt her body tensing as her pain burned across his tongue. He snapped the phone closed, tossed it onto the dash, and covered her forehead again with his palm.
Her pained sigh tore at him. Somehow he had to free her from these things. For her, now, more than himself.
“Are your friends going to meet us there?”
“Yes, but you won’t see them.” Hawke would probably shift and go by air. They’d both beat him there. He’d wandered far afield in his driving.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t need to get in touch with Hawke. Once the Feral shifted, neither he nor Kougar would be able to communicate with him until they got closer. And out of the car. The magic shielding that kept the draden from penetrating the car windows kept the Ferals from communicating telepathically when one of them was in his animal form. Which was the only time they could communicate that way.
The woman’s cries increased exponentially as the clone picked up the last child, a small boy. Tighe knew instinctively, the boy was the only one who was hers. Even through the gag, he recognized the unique sound of a parent’s pain.
As he was forced to stop behind a line of traffic caught at the light, the clone tossed the third small body onto the floor and turned to the grief-stricken mother. This is why he had to get his soul back! Not only to stop this creature from killing, but to help find that Daemon blade so this scene didn’t play out a thousand times a day. Every day. All over the world, as it would if the Daemons were ever freed again.
Thunder. He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. The Ferals didn’t have the power to defeat the Daemons a second time. They’d sacrificed too much to imprison them the first time.
Delaney turned her head to look up at him, and he met her pained gaze, feeling his soul sink into her dark eyes and, for a moment, heal. “Is he still killing children?”
“No. They’re dead. He’s turning on the mother now.”
Abruptly, the clone stopped.
“How far are we?” Delaney asked, still watching him.
“Ten minutes. Maybe less.”
The clone turned away from the woman and moved to kneel beside the lifeless body of the last child. Tighe’s stomach rolled as he realized what the clone was doing. With a lighter, he set fire to the boy’s dinosaur tee shirt. Then with an even, purposeful stride, he walked to the apartment door and opened it.
“Three thirty-one. He was in apartment 331, but he’s leaving. Dammit. I’ve got to tell Kougar.”
Tighe reached for his phone, where he’d tossed it onto the dash, but couldn’t get it without crushing Delaney against the steering wheel. “Brown eyes, I need my phone. Can you reach it for me?”
As she rose slowly, he kept his palm against her forehead. “Where? Oh, I see it.” She pulled it off the dash.
Delaney held the phone in front of him, but to take it he had to release her.
“Speed dial five for me. When a man answers, tell him apartment three three one.”
“Tighe says apartment three three one.” A moment later she snapped, “Go to hell,” and closed the phone.
Damn Kougar. “What did he say?”
“He said he told you to kill me.”
Tighe sighed. “He figured it was the easiest way to free you from the visions.”
The sound that came from her throat was half laugh, half moan. “If this keeps up much longer, I may ask for that cure.”
“Hang on, brown eyes. No one’s ending your life.”
“That assurance would have made me happier before the little guys with the jackhammers set up the construction zone in my brain.”
The vision faded.
Delaney sighed, the tension easing from her tightly strung body. “Is it over?”
“Apparently. At least for now. I have a feeling he set that fire for a reason.”