“Jesus! He’s shredding the bleeding upholstery.” Jag’s voice. “Wulfe, do something!”
“How about I bang your head into the steering wheel?” Wulfe snarled. “Can’t you see he has bigger concerns than your damn car? We all do!”
Tighe heard a low moan and realized it had come from his own throat. “I can’t help her. She’s fighting him, and I can’t help her!”
With little effort, the clone stripped off her jeans and panties and tied first one ankle, then the other, to the last two eyebolts, spreading her wide.
“Goddess.”
Then he reached for her.
Tighe’s roar of fury threatened to shatter the Hummer’s windows.
“Stay in your skin!”
“He has her. He stripped her. He’s touching her.” The sight of that demon’s hands reaching between her legs…
His head pounded with the force of his fury. His fingers burned. The chaos swirled at the edges of his mind, black fingers of darkness curling toward him, ready to hook around him and pull him in. His claws began to unsheathe.
“Tighe! He’s not going to rape her. He doesn’t have any blood in that body, and a cock can’t rise without blood. He’s just trying to scare her. Whatever he does, she’s alive, buddy. As long as she’s alive, you can get her back. But you’ve got to stay in your skin.”
He fought the darkness, pushing away the fury. She needed him. Needed him.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself back from that edge, his thoughts clinging to Delaney. She had to be terrified. He knew she was strong. If any woman could survive this mentally, it was his brown eyes. But he had to reach her. He had to save her. He had to stay in control.
“You don’t have enough fear in you,” the clone said with a touch of disgust, at last pulling his hand away.
As he rose, Tighe’s own sight of Delaney widened. The blue paint staining the floor suddenly took on an ominous significance.
“Shit.”
“What?” Hawke demanded.
“A pentagram. She’s lying in the middle of a Daemon’s sacrificial pentagram.”
“Stay in your skin!”
“I’m in it!” The vision ended. Tighe shook off Wulfe’s massive hand, a deep, furious growl rumbling in his chest at the thought of Delaney in that bastard’s clutches. His gaze flew to Hawke. “Why the pentagram? Why does he have her in a sacrificial pentagram?”
“Easy, buddy,” Hawke said. “Daemons used pentagrams for any number of purposes, most of which we don’t know. At least we know he caught her for a purpose other than to feed from her. We just don’t know what it is.”
“Think, Tighe,” Wulfe urged, his hand landing heavily on Tighe’s shoulder. “What did you see in that vision? We need clues.”
Tighe gripped his head, forcing himself to replay the scene though it tore strips from his soul. “Nothing but impressions. A big house. Lots of trees in the backyard. No houses easily visible.”
“Could be around here,” Hawke murmured.
“Could be anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic,” Tighe snapped, then took a shuddering breath. “My gut says it was near here. He didn’t take her far.”
“What else?” Hawke prompted.
“He said…right before the vision ended he told her she didn’t have enough fear in her.”
“She wasn’t feeding him. He may have gone to feed elsewhere.”
Tighe closed his fingers around his hair until his scalp ached. “Or he killed her.”
“You’d have seen it,” Hawke said. “You’re getting the visions again. At least when he feeds from Delaney.”
Tighe lifted his head and speared his friend with his gaze. “Why?”
“Goddess knows. The three of you are connected, that’s all I can tell you. If he were feeding from her, I think you’d be seeing it. But you may not see him feeding from anyone else. Delaney’s probably still seeing those.”
“The shitbag’s probably setting another fire,” Jag drawled.
“I agree. Pull over, Jag.” Hawke turned to look at them all. “I think he has Delaney nearby, and he’s going to set those fires the same. I’ll take to the air. Wulfe, shift and try to pick up her scent. Jag, call Lyon, tell him what we know, get him or Kougar to get on the emergency bandwidths and listen for a fire to be called in, then drive through the neighborhoods looking yourselves. And keep Tighe in his skin.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral,” Jag drawled.
Hawke opened the door, shifted, and flew out while Wulfe leaped from his own door on all fours.
“Get the doors, Stripes. Looks like it’s just you and me, now, Wigout. Keep your eyes peeled for smoke.”
Tighe pulled the two doors closed, then collapsed against the seat back as Jag called Feral House and filled them in. His body ached. Delaney. What have I done? If only I’d bound myself to you. If only.
I see the fires. Hawke’s voice sounded in his head. He’s got three houses on Birch Terrace circled with flames.
I’m on my way. Tighe opened the door of the moving car and leaped out, shifting into his tiger in midair. Behind him he could hear Jag’s, “Shit!”, but he never slowed. He could get there faster on foot than Jag could in the car, and all that mattered was finding Delaney.
Delaney lay alone and shivering on the hardwood floor, a grandfather clock somewhere in the deserted house chiming the quarter hour. Fifteen minutes, the clone had been gone. Maybe twenty. And she knew exactly what he’d been up to.
Three fires, three houses in a row, as if he wanted to get the biggest feed for his match. The pain of the vision was finally beginning to recede from her head.
“I’m not dead yet!” Her voice rang into the empty room as she jerked her head, jarring the stupid flies loose from her face. Her nostrils were so fried from the stench, she almost couldn’t smell it any longer.
Is he just going to leave me here?
Cold sweat slicked her skin. Terror snaked in and out of her heart, slithering and gnawing as it went. So cold.
Tighe, please. Please find me. Use your superpowers. Find me.
A door clicked and opened. She lifted her head, for one desperate moment thinking Tighe had heard her. But the man who walked into the kitchen had eyes of pure evil.
Delaney shuddered, her shivers becoming violent as terror joined the cold. What would he do to her this time?
Despair nearly stole her will. How badly would he hurt her before he finally put his mouth to her neck again, as he had the first time, and took her life?
Tears burned in her eyes, but she fought them back. Tighe would come. He’d come for her. She had to believe that.
The clone stood over her, looking down at her body, his gaze crawling across her breasts.
“Did you feed?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice even. He could probably sense her emotions better than Tighe since he actually drank them. But not hearing the fear in her own voice helped her keep the rank hysteria at bay.
“I did.” Squatting at her hip, he reached between her legs, his cold, awful touch stroking her, circling her opening.
Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head as she fought to scramble away mentally from the feel of that cold, inhuman finger.“I feed on pain, but I think you know that. And I know a thousand ways to cause it. A thousand ways without killing you.”
“You’re only a few weeks old. How could you possibly know a thousand ways?”
“Daemon memories, thanks to my draden host. Ways to torture a human.”
His finger slid across the tight, dry opening to her womb. “Imagine the steel hilt of a knife, heated over an open fire until it glows red, then shoved…”
He pressed his finger inside her. She gasped at the sharp tug of pain, her mind screaming against the invasion as much as the horror of his words.
“Can you imagine it?”
Oh, God. “Yes.” Her heart thudded. She had to stop reacting. She had to get control of her fear. Get her mind on something else before he turned her into a trembling wreck.
“Why did you take me? What do you want with me other than my fear?”
His finger left her, his cold hand closing around her breast, stroking it with frightening gentleness. “I’ve never forgotten you. From the moment I first put my mouth on you, I’ve thought of you.”
He swung his long leg over her and straddled her waist, bracing his arms on either side of her head as he stared into her eyes. Slowly, his eyes changed, the coldness pushed aside by a warmth, a depth of emotion that made her skin crawl.
“I love you.”
Staring at him, she could almost believe he thought he did. “Then why do you want to hurt me? If you loved me, you’d let me go.”
He grinned at her, flashing Tighe’s dimples, intelligence gleaming in his eyes. “Nice try. But, no, I’m not going to let you go.” He shrugged. “I may have feelings for you, but at heart I’m a Daemon. I need someone to help me get the other half of the soul I need to survive. And when I saw you with him, when I realized he was the one touching you, I decided to take you from him. You’ll be the one to help me.”
“I’ll never help you.”
He smiled, the coldness rushing back into his eyes. “Oh, but you will. Now, as a matter of fact.”
He swung off her, then moved until he was kneeling at her head. Her heart thundered with terror as he gripped her face with both icy hands.
Cold flowed into her. So cold. Every time he touched her, her body temperature dropped another degree, until she feared she was at risk for hypothermia.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, unable to keep the quaver out of her voice.
For more than a minute, he didn’t answer, just stroked her temples with gentle thumbs as he watched her upside down.
His fingers stopped their caressing and his grip tightened. “What am I doing? I’m making you mine, Delaney. I’m making you mine.”
His fingers squeezed. Pain unlike anything she’d ever imagined poured into her head and began to pump through her veins like acid. Screams tore through her mind, raking her flesh.
Deep inside, she felt something unnatural, something evil, take root and grow.
Tighe tore through the woods, following his tiger’s scent of smoke as surely as his own human sense of direction. The moment he reached the back of the burning houses, he knew Delaney wasn’t in any of them. The lots were small, houses crowding too close in the back.
Sirens tore through the lightly falling rain, and he took off. The humans could take care of their own.
As he headed toward the more affluent area where a house might back onto nothing but woods, he caught a glimpse of Wulfe.
I may have picked up the clone’s scent, Wulfe said. It’s not a smell, exactly, but I remember feeling something similar near where we found her phone.
I’m right behind you, Tighe told him, and raced after him, his sleek tiger’s body eating up the ground with ease. “Wulfe’s picked up a scent,” he told Hawke.
I heard. I’ve got you spotted. I’m following.
Tighe recognized the trees behind a large brick-front Colonial a split second before he heard the scream.
“I’ll take the front,” Wulfe said.
A large bay window framed kitchen cabinets. Without a single pause, Tighe flew over the high railing of the deck and crashed through the glass.
Delaney lay on the floor, staked in the center of the pentagram as he’d seen her in the vision. He could hear her heart beating. Unconscious, but alive. Thank you, goddess.
Hawke ran in from the front of the house. “Where is he?”
Tighe shifted back into a man. “He wasn’t here. Find him.” He pulled out one of his switchblades and knelt at Delaney’s feet, cutting her loose. He’d freed her feet and pushed her legs together, and was sawing at the third bond when Wulfe and Hawke ran into the room from the opposite door.
“Where is he?” Hawke demanded.
Déjà vu. Tighe froze and stared at his friend. Understanding crashed over him like falling ice. “He was here. He was you.” Tighe leaped to his feet. “Bleed! Now.”
Wulfe and Hawke each pulled a knife and cut himself, then held their palms up as the blood ran down their flesh.
Tighe sliced his own.
“Find him!”
Damn it. Damn it! He’d been so concerned with Delaney, he’d forgotten the clone could change shape at will. That error just might cost him his life.
But he’d found her. He’d found her.
At least he thought he had. He could take no more chances. Lifting her free hand, he pressed the tip of his knife into her finger, drawing a single droplet of blood. She flinched, jerking her hand, and stirred.
As he watched, her eyes fluttered open, her gaze going from him to the knife still smeared with his own blood. With devastating dismay he watched those brown eyes fill with hopelessness and fear.
Fear. Of him.
He hated her fear.
Inside his head, the chaos rushed at him in a deafening roar.
“No, D, no!” He growled, his jaw clenching, his fingertips burning. “You’re safe.”
But he wasn’t.
The chaos broke over him like a tidal wave, the fury clawing through his limbs, into his heart and head, swirling inside him as he fought to battle it back.
But it was too strong. His defenses against it too badly cracked.
Too late. Too late.
His claws unsheathed. His fangs dropped.
His conscious mind disappeared in a bottomless well of darkness.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Tighe?”
Delaney fought against the pain that encased her body, struggling to clear her mind as a battle raged around her. He’d come for her. For one horrible moment she’d thought he was the clone, but then she’d heard his voice. He’d come for her.