But no shout sounded in his mind. Nothing but dead silence. The silence of defeat.
Kougar crouched, knives at the ready, blood running down his neck from where the Daemon had ripped off a strip of his scalp. His head was healing, but the venom had seeped into his mind, screwing up his brain. Already, he'd lost speech. He couldn't even reply telepathically to Jag's calls. Though he still had complete, complex thoughts, the part of his brain that turned them into language had been disabled by the venom. He'd recover eventually.
If he survived long enough.
In his head, he heard Jag calling him, but he couldn't respond. Again, Kougar fought to move forward, but nothing happened. Was he truly making no progress, or could he simply not feel it?
The telltale movement of air warned him of another attack a split second before claws raked across his neck and shoulder, opening him wide. Kougar spun, slicing high at the creature with his knife, feeling the blade dig into flesh. His face?
The Daemon screeched and shot out of range. Kougar tried to follow, but the warding kept him trapped. It was times like this he was glad he felt little pain, or he'd be hurting like a son of a bitch. As it was, the ripped flesh was a mild discomfort, nothing more.
Jag ordered them to join him in the chant that would raise the spirit and power of the animals. Kougar tried to respond, but as before, nothing happened. He couldn't join in, which would leave him trapped in this prison, unable to move forward or back, at the mercy of the Daemon.
He fought the growing lethargy of his mind, fought to find the power within him to shift so he could get out of this place. A glimmer of energy skated along the edges of his brain. For one brilliant moment, he thought the chant might be working, he thought he'd found the power to change back into his animal.
Then he realized what he was feeling. Not his own energy, but another. Ilina energy.
Even as the realization hit him, Melisande and Brielle materialized before him, their forms insubstantial. Mist. How they'd breached the warding, he didn't know, but he could both see and hear them.
Not in years had he been so glad to see a damned Ilina.
Melisande spoke. "You're in trouble warrior. Our psychic sees you dying here without intervention. Queen Ariana bade us let you die, but the psychic says no. You're useful still if we reconnect the link that was severed."
Reconnect the link...?Kougar's mind reeled.No. He shook his head adamantly, unable to say the word. As much as he hated not feeling, reconnecting him would mean he'd feel everything again. Worse. A thousand times worse.
"Then you shall die. So, too, will your friends, for it's your voice they need joined with theirs to raise the power of their animals, to free them from this prison. Would you, out of stubbornness, steal four Feral lives?"
The bitch knew he wouldn't let that happen. But, goddess, he didn't want this. For a thousand years, he'd felt little emotion, and only the barest heat, cold, or pain. But the pain and the emotion lived inside him, dormant, waiting for the day they'd be free again to rise up and dig their fangs deep into his heart, making him bleed. Again.
He did not want this.
But what choice had he? Melisande might be many things, but she'd never been a liar.
If she said the psychic claimed Kougar would die in this place and his brothers along with him, they would die.
A shudder tore through his mind.
Meeting Melisande's gaze, he nodded.
The Ilina floated to him, her mistlike hands curving around the golden band that circled his upper arm. At first he felt the usual nothing. Then, slowly, warmth began to seep into his flesh. Warmth that grew hotter and hotter until the band glowed like molten gold, and his flesh burned.
The heat spread up into his shoulder, flushing through his chest and up into his head, leaving a trail of searing pain. Deep inside him, the emotions that had long been encased in ice burst free - ancient grief, bitter betrayal.
Fury.
He would kill the bitch. He'd kill her!
Brielle stepped forward, the top of her head not even reaching his chin, her small hands lifting to press against his temples. "I cannot remove the venom, Kougar, but I can pull it back and hold it until you've shifted."
Seething hatred and white-hot fury ripped across his mind, but they weren't directed at either of the Ilinas before him. No, it was another woman he had to thank for nearly destroying him.
Ariana, Queen of the Ilinas.
Ariana, his mate, his wife. The woman he'd loved beyond measure until she faked her own death, betraying everything they'd meant to one another.
She would pay. Goddess help him, he would find a way to make her pay for severing the mating bond all those centuries ago, making him believe she was dead. For a thousand years he'd suffered, his heart cold as an arctic night, his life turned to dust.
And it had all been a lie.
As Brielle worked, he began to feel the venom's lock on his brain loosen.
Jag's voice continued to chant in his head.
Jag, I'm here. Keep chanting.
He did. And this time, when Kougar tried to join him, the words came.
As Kougar joined the chant, a rumble trembled through Jag's body, a deep, rolling thunder he could feel but not hear. Even though he was already in his animal, the power jolted through him as the magic began to grow.
Hope leaped. And then he heard the sound he'd held his breath for. The triumphant shouts of the other Ferals.
It worked!Tighe shouted.Let's get the hell out of here.
Without a second's hesitation, Jag turned and leaped back through the warding, out of the darkness, and into a scene of rain and carnage. Four bodies littered the grass around a single, raging battle, in the middle of which lay his Red.
As he landed, his right foreleg collapsed beneath him, torn and half-paralyzed from the Daemon's venom. He rolled through the grass, righting himself and shifting back into his human form all in one move, his injured foreleg now an arm that wouldn't hamper his run.
The wind whipped violently, slashing his bare flesh with a torrent of cold, stinging rain. But he barely felt it, his focus on one thing only. Reaching Olivia.
Ewan had her pinned on the ground, slamming his fist into her jaw. One of them had to be enchanted or the male would never turn against her. He just hoped to hell it was Ewan. It had to be. Olivia wasn't feeding.
Behind Ewan, a Mage reached over his shoulder to touch Olivia. To enchant her, too.
And once he did, Jag would have no choice but to kill her. To stop her before she killed them all.
He leaped, shifting in midair, and snapped his powerful jaws around the Mage's hand, millimeters from Olivia's face. Bone crunched beneath his teeth, blood spilling warm into his mouth as he yanked the Mage off his feet, away from Olivia, then ripped the appendage from the bastard's arm.
Tighe and Hawke came running, a tiger and a man, both as bloody as he was. Behind them, Kougar stumbled and fell. Conscious, but Jag suspected, barely.
Tighe reached Ewan first and tackled him off Olivia, who continued to try to fight him but...Jesus. Her hand...
Jag's gut fisted.
Hawke attacked Ewan from behind, jamming his one good thumb into the man's neck, knocking him unconscious. The moment Ewan was down, Tighe took off to where Delaney lay, unmoving. Not far from...holy shit.Was that skeletal mass Niall?
Ah, goddess.
Hawke started for Olivia. Jag growled deep in his jaguar's throat and shifted. "Take the Mage, Hawke. I'll see to her."
Hawke looked up, his face bloody, his eyes calm. He nodded and drew his knives as Jag ran for Olivia, who was even now trying to sit up. Her bright hair flew around her face in a wind that had risen to near-hurricane force. A face far too pale and pinched with pain.
The hand would regrow, though not without a fair amount of agony. But she lived.
Goddess, she still lived.
As he sank down beside her, their gazes collided.
Hers, shattered, clung to him. "The Daemon...?"
Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed
"Nowhere in sight." Her gaze slid over him, pinched with misery as it returned to his.
She swallowed hard, a sheen of tears bright in her eyes.
"I thought..."
Had she been afraid for him? A nearly overwhelming need to gather her into his arms took hold of him. But before he reached for her, she turned, her gaze flying to the corpse in the yard.
His hands fisted at his sides as tears welled in her eyes, and he knew a terrible jealousy.
"Niall?" he asked tersely.
She nodded, struggling to her feet. "The Daemon killed him." As she started for the corpse, Jag stared at her back, feeling angry, deserted. Bereft.
He turned away. The Therian bastard hadn't deserved to die, but Jag wasn't going to stand there and watch her mourn him.
Tighe strode toward him cradling Delaney's unmoving form in his arms.
Jag's gaze jerked to Tighe's face and knew at once the woman remained alive. Anger and frustration burned in the tiger shifter's eyes, but no devastation. No grief.
"She's unconscious," Tighe said, confirming Jag's observation.
"I knocked her out, Tighe," Olivia said behind him. "The Mage..." She gasped with pain, and he turned to find her curling around her arm. Limbs were a bitch to regrow. He'd regrown his share of them, as he was sure she had, too. No one fought for centuries without losing a few. The pain, sharp as hell, came in waves as the bone pushed through, re-forming the lost hand. The whole process didn't take long, but she would suffer.
Then she'd be fine and could fully grieve for her lost lover.
The thought burned the insides of his skull.
"The Mage enthralled her," Olivia continued when the burst of pain had apparently passed. "Be careful when she wakes. Ewan, too."
Tighe nodded, his brows pulling together in concern. "Can you walk through that? We need to get out of here. Back to Feral House for some serious radiance."
Jag stilled. No way in hell should he be taking Olivia back to Feral House. Not in her Daemon-strong condition. But he needed the radiance, needed to go back. And leaving her out here alone would raise all kinds of questions.
He wasn't leaving her out here alone. No way was he leaving her...at all.
Shit.
If he stayed close to her at all times, taking her back there should be safe enough. He could stop her if her feeding ever got out of control.
He prayed to the goddess it never came to that.
Hawke joined them, Ewan slung over his shoulder like one mammoth sack of grain, Kougar silent at his side.
"What about Niall?" Olivia choked on the name. "I can't leave him here."
"I'll get him," Jag told her.
She met his gaze, a hollow look in her eyes that twisted inside him, angering him more.
There was no logic to his anger, he knew that. Niall was dead, and she'd paid him little enough attention when he lived. But logic had nothing to do with his feelings for this woman. Hell, he didn't know what he wanted, if he even wanted anything at all. All he knew was her grief made him feel like slamming his fist through something.
Because he couldn't stand seeing her in pain, even if that pain was all for another man.
Olivia curled around her left arm on the drive back to Great Falls and Feral House as pain tore through her wrist in wave after scalding wave. She felt as if someone were taking a hatchet to her, cutting off her hand over and over again.
Jag sat beside her in the Hummer, driving, his free hand gently gripping her thigh.
Tighe and Delaney sat behind them and, in the far back, Ewan lay tied and unconscious.
The blood had long ago drained from her face, and her skin felt clammy, sweat mixing with the rain that had already soaked her through. Shivering with cold and the aftereffects of battle, her stomach threatened to send up the lunch her system had long ago devoured.
But it was anger that tore at her mind.
Niall shouldn't have died. She'd let herself become so focused on the damn Daemon, she hadn't seen the Mage sneaking up on them. If they hadn't lost Ewan so quickly, maybe...maybe...she wouldn't have lost Niall at all.
Pain ripped through her again, braiding with the anger. An anger she knew she had to push aside. She'd tried to save him. She'd done her best.
But she could handle the anger so much better than the alternative. On the edges of her consciousness, just beyond the fury and pain, lay another monster waiting to devour her. The grief, the horror, of watching Niall die.
She couldn't deal with that now. Wouldn't.
Another wave of agony tore through her limb, and she grabbed Jag's hand with her good one, curling her fingers around the back of his as she sucked in a hard breath and held on. His fingers curled around hers, giving her an anchor. A lifeline.
As the wave of agony passed, she began to feel her new appendage. With a shudder, she hazarded a glance down. The one thing she'd learned from prior experiences was never to watch her limbs re-form. The pain doubled when she saw the bones sticking out and growing before her eyes.
What met her gaze now relieved her. The bones were all there, the muscle knitting as she watched. One more growth spurt, maybe two, and she'd be done.
The Hummer jerked, buffeted by nature's fury over the death of four more Mage. Jag held her tight.
"You going to be able to keep this thing on the road?" Tighe asked from the backseat.
"Nature's throwing a minor tantrum," Jag muttered.
The Ferals had ultimately dispatched the Mage Olivia hadn't killed. Both Ewan and Delaney were still unconscious, but only Ewan was tied. Tighe had left his vehicle in Harpers Ferry so that he could ride in the backseat of the Hummer, his arms about Delaney, his eye on Ewan.
The fire exploded in her wrist again, bone pulsing. Lights exploded behind her eyes.
Sweat ran down her temples, and she gasped for breath.