“You’re going to make me come again, aren’t you?” she whispered, but her voice was soft, with little inflection, as if she were at least partially mesmerized.
“That’s not the plan, but it seems to happen every time I get too close to you, doesn’t it? Relax, Delaney. Let me in.”
Little by little, he felt her resistance give way. Excitement lifted his pulse. Dismay caught in his chest. It was going to work. He was going to be able to send her back.
He felt her mind catch with his and open. He was in.
“That’s a girl. Just relax, D. Let’s see what we’ve got here.” With his mind he found again that twisted, tangled mass of dark Daemon threads and tried to follow it, to find the place where they attached. Damn, but they went deeper than he’d expected.
Beneath his hands, he felt her tensing. “Is this getting uncomfortable?”
“A little.”
“Hang in there, sweetheart.” Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Maybe if he…
He gave a mental tug on one of the threads.
Delaney gasped.
“That hurt?”
“Yes.”
Damn. Little by little, he eased deeper, feeling her stiffen. If he could just find the source.
Once more, he gave a gentle tug, but Delaney cried out, and he stopped. Dammit. There was no way he could hope to free her without damaging her. There was nothing he could do for either of them but kill that son of a bitch clone.
Deep in his own mind, the tiger raised his head and gave a soft roar of satisfaction, then leaped to his feet, eyeing the bright opening into Delaney’s mind.
Tighe saw what was about to happen. His mind seized. He had no way to stop it.
The tiger, already intrigued by her, leaped through that opening, trying to claim her for his own.
Delaney screamed.
Tighe wrenched the tiger back, but it was too late.
Delaney reared back, her pulse rocketing upward, her eyes glazing with terror, triggering the ancient fury that lived inside him, the rage of Gretchen’s betrayal, as fearful eyes always did.
But the fury was too much for his thinning control. He clawed to hang on, to keep from losing himself in a feral rage from which he might never escape. But it was too late.
End over end, his mind tumbled into the chaos, hurtling him headlong toward that black abyss.
Chapter Seventeen
Delaney stared in horror as the frightening vision in her mind gave way to a far more terrifying one in front of her. As Tighe released her, claws sprouted from his fingertips. Fangs sprang from his gums.
She stumbled back, slamming into the wall, her pulse pounding in her throat.
“Tighe?”
As she stared at him, colored lights erupted beneath his skin. And suddenly he was gone.
A tiger…a tiger…
This. Is. Not. Happening.
She was not staring at a huge tiger. The very beast who’d leaped at her in her head!
Her blood went cold. Her head began to spin. Not real. Not happening.
She was crazy. Crazy.
The tiger turned to her, staring at her with the same hunger she’d seen in her mind. He started toward her. Panic ignited.
With a strangled scream, she whirled and lunged for the door before he attacked her. Before he tried to rip her limb from limb.
As she reached for the door, she looked back only to see the tiger disappear in the same wash of sparkling lights, returning to the creature that was neither man nor beast, but something horribly in between.
With a strangled cry, she grabbed the door, frantic to escape. Too late. Sharp knives plunged into her shoulders. She screamed from the pain, from the terror of knowing she was about to become tiger food.
The creature pulled the knives from her and whipped her around. Blood dripped from his claws. Her blood. He squeezed her shoulders, sinking those claws into her a second time.
Her mind went white with pain as she flung her head back. Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Blood ran down her chest and back and trickled down her arms.
“Don’t fear me!” he growled between those terrifying teeth.
Tighe’s voice. “Tighe.” The word came out on a hiss of pain as her vision started to darken around the edges.
Behind her, the door burst open, knocking her into the creature. Tighe. Not Tighe.
His grip on her tightened. She screamed.
Two large men hurtled into the room and pulled Tighe off her in a haze of blood and agony, attacking him. Tackling him to the ground, ripping at him with fangs and claws.
Not real. Not real.
One hard swipe ripped Tighe’s face wide open. The flesh hung in bloody strips from the bones.
They were going to kill him.
She tried to lunge forward but was held back by a strong arm around her waist. “Let’s get you out of here.” That voice. The same one who’d rescued her from Tighe’s violence. The one who’d knocked her out beside the Tidal Basin.
“They’re going to kill him.” She struggled against the heavy weakness and terrible pain, struggled to free herself. “I can’t let them kill him!”
“He’ll be fine, Delaney. You’re the only one in danger here.”
He half pushed her, half carried her out of the room, then swept her up as her legs gave way. The pain was too much. Tears slid down her cheeks.
The man lowered her onto a sofa. She collapsed against the soft back, then cried out at the pressure against her wounds.
The man took her hand and she gripped his hard, gasping to breathe against the pain.
“I’m sorry you had to get mixed up in this.”
His long face swam in the narrowing circle of her vision. Her head was too heavy to hold up, and she had to let it fall back against the sofa, but she struggled to meet the man’s dark gaze.
“Help him. Please.”
Dimly, voices penetrated the haze of violence.
“She’s alive, but she won’t stay that way for long unless we get her to a healer. She’s bleeding like a sieve.”
“Let her die. She’s seen too much.”
No! The denial rang through Tighe’s head, but no human sound came from his mouth. Nothing but snarls and growls as he thrashed against the restraints, pinned beneath the weight of three men.
Hawke’s face appeared in front of him. “Fight your way back, buddy. Delaney’s going to die if you don’t.”
“Sounds to me like she’s going to die either way,” a third voice drawled.
Hawke scowled. “Shut up, Jag.”The faces bled together, merging with the colors that passed for his sight. Reds and yellows and oranges. Violence. Fury.
He growled, struggling to free himself. To attack.
“Can you hear me, Tighe? Fight your way out of there, buddy. You hurt Delaney. She’s bleeding badly. She needs you.”
“Why the fuck do you think he cares?” Jag drawled.
“He doesn’t care,” Kougar replied. “He’s using her to reach the visions.”
“He cares,” Hawke said. “Don’t you, buddy?” Hawke’s face swam back into focus. “Do you know, she fought me when I tried to get her out of here? She was struggling to get to you. To save you. From us.”
The words penetrated the feral rage to reach his mind. She was trying to save him. Save him.
“Brown eyes.” The words were more growl than actual words, but he formed them.
“That’s it, Tighe. Come back to us. Fight your way back, buddy.”
She needs me. Brown eyes needs me.
He fought the chaos, struggling against its hard grip until he was sweating and panting from exertion. Finally, finally, with a groan of exhausted triumph, he pulled out of its grasp and away from the fury, snapping back into his skin.
His fangs and claws retracted, and he collapsed against the floor.
“Get off me.”
“Let him go!” Hawke snapped.
Kougar and Jag released him, and Tighe struggled to his feet, exhausted and bloody. “Where is she?”
“The sofa.”
Tighe stumbled through the door, his strength returning with every step. But he pulled up short when he saw her. Ice washed through his veins. She was sitting up, but barely, sunk deep into the sofa cushions, drenched in blood. Her blood. Which he’d drawn.
Sweet thunder. What have I done?
He sank onto the sofa beside her and stared at her too-pale face. “Delaney.”
Her lashes swept slowly upward, her dark eyes glazed. “Tighe?”
His knuckles brushed her cheek. Unblemished. Thank the goddess he hadn’t tried to hold her face. “I’m sorry, brown eyes. I never meant to hurt you. I’m going to get you help.” He turned to find Hawke standing in the doorway watching him.
“Call Esmeria. Tell her we’re on our way.”
But Hawke didn’t move. Kougar stepped into the doorway behind him. “It’s forbidden to take a human to the enclave. You know that.”
“I don’t give a fuck what’s forbidden. She’s going to die!”
He grabbed his cell phone and speed dialed Lyon and began talking the second Lyon answered. “I went feral and attacked the Fed. She needs a healer. Either I take her to a human hospital or to Esmeria. Your call, but you’re making it now. She’s out of time.”
“Have you taken her memories?”
“No.”
“She saw you feral?”
“She’s seen it all. Feral, tiger, shift, you name it. I lost control. I tried to shift to my tiger to regain it, but I couldn’t stay there. I was too far gone.”
“Tighe…”
“No!” He knew what he was going to say. “She lives, Roar. You have two choices, and that’s it.”
“She can’t be near other humans with the knowledge she now possesses. Nor can you take her to other Therians when you can’t wipe her mind.”
Tighe began to growl low in his throat, the fury threatening to sweep him away all over again until Delaney’s soft hand slid over the back of his, pulling him back into his skin.
“Tighe.” Hawke’s voice dragged his attention back into the room. “Put Lyon on speaker.”
With only a moment’s hesitation, Tighe pressed the button.
Lyon’s deep voice echoed into the room. “Neither option is acceptable, Stripes. I’m sorry.”
Hawke took a step toward the phone. “There’s another option, Chief. If he binds her to him, she can’t betray him. Or us.”
Tighe’s blood went cold. Bind her? A human? “No way. I’m not making her my mate.”
Hawke shrugged. “Your choice.”
He couldn’t. Couldn’t.
It wouldn’t be for long. Sixty years. Maybe seventy. Not long. But she knew what he was now. Seventy years living with that look of fear, that loathing.
“I can’t.”
“Then she dies,” Hawke said softly.
Marry her or let her die.
Your choice. But was it?
He looked down at Delaney and found her watching him, a glimmer of warrior’s strength still visible in the dull pools of pain that had become her eyes.
A blade ripped through his chest at the thought of permanently quelling that bright, fierce spirit.
“Which do you choose, Delaney, knowing what I am? Death? Or me for the rest of your life? Your choice.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Don’t…want to die.”
He squeezed her hand. “Then you won’t. You won’t die.” What am I doing? He turned back to the phone. “I’m binding her.” His gaze speared Hawke’s. “Call Esmeria and tell her we’ll pick her up in ten minutes. Bring whatever she needs to heal a human in the car. We’re going to Feral House.”
What am I doing?
But he knew. As he’d done six hundred years before, he was once again consigning himself to the hell of tying himself to a human.
Chapter Eighteen
Paenther’s fist tapped with rhythmic frustration against the car’s door handle as Foxx drove past yet another damned field full of cows. The hills of the Blue Ridge rose around them, keeping their secrets…if they held any.
He was seriously beginning to think Foxx’s intuitive gift had flown. They’d found no sign of the Mage. No sign of Vhyper. Goddamn nothing.
Except a girl with eyes like a summer sky. A girl he couldn’t get out of his head.
“Go back to that country store we stopped at yesterday. The one set into the hillside. The Market.”
The words were out before he had time to think about them, but he didn’t call them back. He flexed and fisted both hands, hating the uncharacteristic lack of control that had him needing to see her again.
Goddess help him, he was acting like a fifteen-year-old with a massive hard-on.
“Why?” Foxx threw him a questioning look. “I thought we were going to take this search systematically.”
Paenther growled. “Just do it.” He’d finally given up hope that Foxx would lead them to the exact location. Knowing the Mage would be in some kind of mansion, they’d downloaded satellite images of the mountains and had been traveling from estate to estate ever since. In his animal form, Foxx was able to run right up to the houses and have a look around. Paenther had to wait for nightfall to join him since he lacked the ability to downsize into a house cat. If they did stumble onto a Mage stronghold, his panther form would give him away in a heartbeat.
So far, they’d struck out.
Yet Foxx continued to insist they’d find Vhyper in the Blue Ridge.
For twenty-four hours they’d searched estate after estate. Paenther pressed his fists into his thighs. For twenty-four hours, he hadn’t been able to quit wondering how the ethereal beauty with the sky blue eyes tasted. How she smelled. How she’d feel around his shaft as he buried himself deep inside her.