Death was part of life. She accepted that. Right or wrong, it was man’s nature to fight and to kill. She understood deaths caused by war, even the misguided inner-city drug and gang wars. Wasteful as those deaths were, there was some testoster-one-laden male sense to them.
But there was no sense to attacks like this. None.
She’d dedicated her life to stopping them. To stopping the evil that caused them. And this son of a bitch was at the top of her list.
Through the babble of voices and crying, a fresh scream sliced the air, echoing up from the bowels of the building.
Delaney’s blood went cold.
She pushed her way back into the crowd but had only managed to descend a couple of steps when an overweight blonde appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
“He’s got my sister! He’s got my sister!”
“Where?” Delaney shouted.
“Laundry room,” the woman cried. “The basement.”
“I’m FBI. Get up here and stay here.”
“You got to save her. Save her!”
As the woman dissolved into hysterics, Delaney scanned the crowd still standing between her and the blonde, then pointed at the two toughest-looking males. “You and you. Keep everyone back and send the cops down when they get here.”
The pair nodded soberly and parted the crowd for her to pass.
By the time she pushed through the metal door into the basement, she was alone. No sound reached her ears except the dull thud of her boots on the cement floor.
No screams. No crying. No woman begging for her life.
Delaney held her gun aloft, her heart thudding as she eased down the hall to the wide, brightly lit doorway. Pressing her back to the wall, she peered around the corner.
A huge, muscular man with short, sun-bleached hair looked up from where he knelt beside the prone and lifeless body of a woman who could have been the twin of the one who’d sent her down.
She had him.
With both hands she lifted her gun. “Freeze. FBI! Hands in the air!”
The man rose with an ease that belied his size, staring at her, not with the eyes of the guilty but the cold eyes of a hunter spotting prey. Green eyes without humanity. Without mercy.
The eyes of Death himself.
A bead of sweat rolled between her shoulder blades. She was far from short, but this guy towered over her, his shoulders broad, his body lean and strong beneath the navy blue dress shirt and too-short khakis he wore without shoes. No way was she risking hand-to-hand combat.
A chill slithered down her spine. “Hands in the air, or I shoot!”
He moved so suddenly, so quickly, she barely got a shot off before he was on her, knocking her to the ground. Her head slammed against the cement as her gun went flying, jagged lights streaking her vision.
She’d hit him in the chest. Point-blank. He should be going down, dammit. She tried to fight him, but he was as strong as a bear as he pinned her to the floor.
His head dipped. As she felt his cold mouth open on her neck and the press of his teeth into her skin, she struggled against her immovable assailant, a scream of fury filling her mind.
Too soon. Too soon. She’d left too many killers walking the streets.
She didn’t have time to die.
Chapter Two
Still deep in the vision, beneath the harsh, bright lights of the public laundry room, the sound of footsteps had Tighe looking up from the body of the dead blonde into the face of a stunning, dark-haired beauty. Dressed in a no-nonsense navy blue suit, the brunette was tall and leggy, her hair pulled into a casual knot at the back of her head, the gun in her hands pointed at his heart.
A strange sensation pummeled the inside of his chest as he stared into her fierce, determined face. A feeling of connection gripped him. Almost a recognition.
“Freeze. FBI!” she shouted at him. “Hands in the air!”
He leaped at her as he had the other one. The gun fired, but if she hit him, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t feel anything, could only hear the sound of her thudding heart and the slam of her head against the cement floor as he took her to the ground.
Their gazes met, and in the brown depths of her dazed eyes he saw not fear, but fury, and recognized the soul of a fellow warrior. Then he dipped his head to rip out her throat.
Tighe? Tighe!
He came back to the night in a rush, desperately swallowing the bile that tried to rise in his throat. Even as the stunning, dark-eyed beauty chiseled herself into his mind.
She can’t die.
Tighe! Wulfe’s voice echoed in his head at the exact moment fire slashed through his flesh like a thousand tiny knives ripping him out of his vision and back to his dark reality.
The horde of draden had found him.
Instinctively, he lifted his knives and began attacking the creatures, little more than floating gas beneath heads shaped like hideously melted human faces. They would steal his life if they got the chance. Beside him, his jaguar and wolf companions leaped and snapped at the attacking fiends.
Sweat rolled down his temples as the woman’s face, those eyes, swam in his memory. Mistake. His gut fisted with horror over what he was destined to do even as the draden tore at his flesh. He fought them off, the blood running in small rivulets down his neck and back.
What would drive him to attack a human woman? Two women?
But he knew. That chaos he’d seen swimming at the edges of his consciousness would overtake him before they found his clone, just as it had Wulfe before they’d destroyed his clone. Like Wulfe before him, he was destined to become locked in a feral rage, lost to the violence that would transform him into an unthinking, unreasoning killing machine.
At least Wulfe had never gotten free of the Ferals’ prison. He’d never harmed anyone in that state.
“Wulfe, whatever you do, don’t let me go feral and escape.”Not going to let it happen, buddy, Wulfe said mentally from his wolf form. Shift, Stripes. I’m taking over as bait.
It’s too soon.
The huge wolf turned into a man in a shower of sparkling lights. His friend looked at him grimly. “Do it.”
“Damn,” Tighe muttered. He must look as bad as he felt. In a harsh rush of power, he pulled on the energy and magic deep in his body and shifted into his animal form, his vision a quick flash of light. Raw, primitive joy surged through him as he shifted into a fifteen-foot Bengal tiger.
The draden released him with a high-pitched squawk. Tighe went on the attack, scattering and destroying the little fiends alongside the jaguar. Wulfe, standing naked in the moonlight, came under attack from the ungodly throng, digging out their hearts as fast as he could, before they sucked the life force out of him or ripped him to shreds.
“You okay?” Wulfe asked. Tighe didn’t have to ask who he was talking to.
An answering growl was his only response.
I see the sire. The jaguar leaped, snapping his jaws around the largest of the draden, swallowing its beating heart to destroy it, dissolving the creature in a puff of smoky energy. The sire, or leader of the swarm, was the one who directed their flight. Kill the sire, and the rest would remain right where they were, lost and leaderless, making them easy marks for the animals, whom they couldn’t feed from and wouldn’t attack.
Wulfe shifted back into his animal and joined the slaughter of the disordered swarm.
Tighe caught one after another of the little demons in his massive jaws. Neither the hearts nor the creatures themselves had any real taste, for they weren’t flesh and blood but made almost entirely of energy.
We’ve got company. Jag’s voice sounded in his head.
Tighe swung his massive tiger’s head in the direction Jag was facing. Sure enough, two teenaged boys stood in the woods not twenty yards away, watching a sight that must be unbelievable to them. Humans couldn’t see the draden, but they could sure as hell see the huge tiger, wolf, and jaguar.
Tighe gave a mental groan of frustration. Damn humans, always getting in the way. Fortunately for them, draden only attacked humans if there were no Therians for miles around. Still, the humans were a problem.
Jag, come with me, Tighe said. The two cats possessed the ability to change the size and, to some extent, the forms of their animals at will. While Wulfe continued to fight the draden in his wolf form, Tighe and Jag shifted into what most humans would see as house cats, then circled behind the two boys.
“Where’d the tiger go?” a youthful voice asked.
“Dude, is this for real? I thought it was the weed.”
As Jag closed in on one, Tighe moved behind the other. As one, the two Ferals shifted into human form and rendered the youths briefly unconscious with a quick application of pressure beneath their ears.
As Tighe knew they would, the draden followed his and Jag’s now-Therian scent. He pulled the switchblades from his pockets and tossed them to Jag, then knelt on the ground beside one of the boys. Wulfe joined them, and as the draden swarmed, the two Ferals, one man, one wolf, covered Tighe as he called on the ability all Ferals possessed to some extent, though his was undeniably the strongest.
Tighe gripped the face of his captive. “Open your eyes.” When the boy did, Tighe looked deeply into those glazed irises. “You saw nothing in the woods tonight except a couple of dogs. When I tell you to, you’ll go home and never venture into these woods at night again. And you’ll flush the weed and swear off it for good, you little punk.”
As the battle raged around him, Tighe rose and moved to the second kid, performing the same bit of mind control. When both boys’ minds were successfully clouded, he told them to go, then shifted back into his animal and rejoined the fight.
Hours later, they were still destroying draden when the nocturnal fiends began to take off as they always did an hour before sunrise. In all that time, the Ferals had only managed to destroy half the swarm.
“This is bad,” Wulfe muttered, shifting back into human form and grabbing his clothes.
Tighe couldn’t deny it.
As they headed for home, Wulfe turned to him. “What happened to you as they descended, Stripes?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” But he was going to have to tell Lyon.
Goddess forbid he get loose and become that…thing.
“Bleed,” Lyon said, striding forward as Tighe walked into the dining room of Feral House a short while later.
Tighe glowered at the Chief of the Feral Warriors, but thrust out his left hand, palm up. Lyon made a short, shallow cut in the center of Tighe’s palm, nodding when the slice welled with blood as his clone’s would not have.
The thought that the draden-based fiend that wore his face could sneak into Feral House gave him chills.
Though it annoyed him to have to submit to someone’s knife every time he walked into a room, the alternative was worse. Much worse. The clone could potentially kill one of the Ferals. Or Kara, Lyon’s mate and their Radiant. No one was willing to take that chance.
But knowing what he was to become, he feared the clone might no longer be the greatest danger.
Lyon closed his switchblade and greeted Tighe properly, offering his right arm. The two men slapped forearms as they grasped one another just below the elbow in the traditional greeting of the Ferals.
“You’re going to have to lock me up, Roar.”
Lyon’s gaze narrowed. “Why?”
He told him about the premonition. “I’m not going to turn into that monster. And I will if you don’t lock me up.”
“You will if we don’t catch that clone in time.” Lyon’s amber gaze bored into his. “But we will, Stripes. We’re going to catch him. With your help.” He clasped Tighe’s shoulder. “We’re spread too thin right now to give you a vacation in the prisons.”
Tighe growled. “Vacation my ass.”
Kara entered the dining room and joined them, her pert, blond ponytail swinging as she slipped her arm around the waist of her much larger mate. As Lyon pulled her tight against him, she met Tighe’s gaze, a sweet smile lighting her blue eyes.
“Hi, Tighe.”
His own ready smile slid into place with an ease born of deep affection for this slip of a woman who’d shown more strength in the past days than all the Radiants who’d come before her over the centuries, combined.
“Hi, yourself.” Tighe held out his arms to her, pleased when Lyon released her, and she gave him a quick, badly needed hug. He closed his arms around her and held her tight, absorbing the closeness as much as her sweetness.
At any given time, there was one Radiant, one Therian woman through whom the Ferals reached the great stores of nature’s energy and the power they needed in order to shift into their animals. They’d nearly missed finding Kara. She’d been raised human, thousands of miles away. Their energy had been flagging, their ability to shift gone when Lyon finally managed to locate her. And thank the goddess he had. They’d never have defeated the witch Zaphene without Kara’s power, courage, and surprising talent with radiance.
He tightened his hold on her. Lyon was a lucky man to have been chosen her mate, an honor Tighe had secretly hoped would go to him. Kara was a sweet Therian beauty, as kind as she was courageous.
No man could do better.
As he looked down at her, his eyes began to tingle as they did whenever he was about to go feral. Or when he was in the presence of a beautiful woman.
He alone among the Ferals had that little problem. For the others, feral was feral. The eyes, the claws, the fangs came as a package deal. Not so, Tighe. His claws and fangs only sprouted when he was ready to fight, but his eyes were another matter. If his body stirred with interest, his eyes shifted, the pupils growing until they blocked out the white, their color changing from their natural green to the golden orange of his tiger’s.
It was a major nuisance, necessitating dark, wraparound sunglasses whenever he was in human public, day or night. Tiger eyes were damned hard to pass off as human. And the humans needed to think he was one of them. If there was one agreement between the immortal races, it was that the humans continue to believe they were alone.