A deep shudder went through him. He'd already faced that day a thousand times in his nightmares. The last thing, the very last thing he wanted to do was open it up in broad daylight. But tipping his head back against the seat, he knew he would. Because Olivia had asked him to. Demanded him to. And it might be the last thing he ever got to do for her.
The thought clutched at his chest.No. No, it wouldn't be the last, because he was fucking well going to save her.
He forced himself to go back to that awful day three hundred years ago. What a prick he'd been! Screwing every human girl who'd lift her skirts for him even though he'd known Therian tradition forbade him from having sex until he was twenty-five. How many times had Cordelia ordered him not to go to the village? How many times had she warned him...?
Jag stilled. How many times had she warned him how dangerous the human village would be if they ever realized he healed too quickly?
The memory, long forgotten, floored him. He'd hated her dictatorial ways and had fought them every chance he got, but she'd been afraid for him, he thought with wonder. Of course she had. She'd known, as he hadn't, what would happen if they realized he was immortal. Had she told him they might try to burn him at the stake?
No. Or if she had, he'd dismissed it in his youthful arrogance. He couldn't remember now.
But she'd been afraid for him. And the day she'd tried to haul him home? The day he'd denied her?
She hadn't argued. What had she said? "He's my servant!" Goddess, she hadn't been trying to rub it in, his denial, as he'd thought at the time. She'd been trying to protect him.
He dug his hands into his hair, fighting the waves of grief as he willingly remembered that day for the first time in three and a half centuries - all of it, not just the parts his guilt kept throwing at him.
Why had he denied her? Because he was mad at her. Furious with her for treating him like a little boy when he was so clearly a man. Goddess, what an idiot he'd been. But the truth rose from the depths of his pain - he'd yelled that she wasn't his mother, but his slave master. Out of anger. He hadn't realized the danger. At sixteen, he'd had no idea what the humans had in mind. He'd thought they meant to escort her from the village and throw her out, and he'd been glad for it! Vindicated. When they'd tied her to the stake, he'd been confused. Not until he saw the torch, had he realized they meant to hurt her. That was when he'd tried to reach her, but it had been too late.
He'd forgotten that part, that he'd fought to free her. But a dozen hands had held him back. And as he'd struggled, he'd looked up and met Cordelia's pained gaze. His sixteen-year-old's mind had seen accusation in her eyes, but his memory didn't support that. Not accusation, but fear. And desperation. Run! those eyes had said. Run!
Because she'd known he could so easily be turned on, too.
And they had turned on him, hadn't they? They'd chased him for hours, for miles. Had he been injured during the fight to reach Cordelia and given himself away? He didn't remember. All he knew was they'd chased him, and he'd done one thing right that day.
He hadn't led them back to the enclave, but had hidden until he could escape them.
But by the time he got safely home, it was almost dark. Too late for anyone to mount a rescue of Cordelia before the draden got her. He'd never told anyone why he'd been so late returning. He'd never gotten the chance. They'd blamed him bitterly for her death, as he'd blamed himself.
But as Olivia said to him, he hadn't meant for any of it to happen. He'd never meant for her to get hurt. His only crimes had been youthful ignorance and self-absorption.
And what was his excuse ever since?
Olivia was right. It was time to let it go. Easier said than done, but he knew where he needed to start.
He opened his eyes and glanced at Tighe. "I owe you an apology."
"Why?" Tighe asked warily.
"You, Delaney, all of you. I've been a jerk."
Tighe grunted. "That's news?"
"Smart-ass. What's news is that I'm apologizing." With those simple words, he felt a lifting of the terrible weight he'd been carrying around for so long, he'd forgotten it was even there.
"Is this Olivia's doing?" Tighe asked.
"Yeah."
"Thought so. I wasn't wrong about her, after all." Tighe thrust out his hand. "Welcome, Jag."
For once, the tiger shifter looked at him without that guarded expression he'd come to know so well. Instead, his eyes held genuine warmth.
Jag took the proffered olive branch, grabbing Tighe below the elbow, their forearms slamming in the traditional Feral greeting. Amazingly, no snide comment even formed in his mind. The bitterness and bile had slipped away.
"Don't set your hopes too high, Stripes," Jag drawled. "I was born with a bad attitude."
He grew serious. "I'll apologize to Delaney."
"Do that, although she's had you figured out for a while. She told me you only targeted her because your words didn't bother her. And they did bother me. She didn't think you'd ever intentionally hurt her."
Jag's mouth twisted wryly. "Olivia told me the same thing. Damned know-it-all women."
Tighe chuckled. "Get used to it. In my experience, they're usually right."
They continued the drive in silence, yet for the first time since he came to Feral House all those years ago, Jag didn't feel like the odd man out. Surrounded by his brothers, he didn't feel alone.
Olivia had done this. She'd opened his eyes and thawed the ice around his heart. She'd saved him.
And he would do everything in his power to save her in return.
Olivia came to slowly, pain attacking her flesh and tearing through her brain. A pain that felt as if a thousand thick, red-hot needles were poking into her skin.
A pain that told her she desperately needed to feed.
She was starving, and food wouldn't do it this time, no matter how much she ate. She needed energy. The pure energy of another's life force.
Slowly, painfully, she lifted her eyelids, the burning little needles rippling along the tender flesh. Her arms had been pulled taut above her head, and she tried to lower them, but she was caught fast - chained, her wrists bound by manacles.
Blinking with confusion and disbelief, she found herself standing upright in a glasslike cylindrical enclosure about ten feet in diameter. Like she'd been inserted into some kind of giant test tube. And she was utterly alone. Beyond her cell rose the stone walls of what appeared to be an old cellar - mildewed and dusty, the corners covered in cobwebs, and lit only by a single grime-coated window high on one wall. Nothing cluttered the space - no furniture, no abandoned tools or boxes.
Where was she? Her brain struggled to remember what had happened, how she'd gotten here.
She looked up to find that the ceiling of her glass cage was lower than the ceiling of the cellar, her chain attached to the glass, or Plexiglas, itself. Her arms were bare, her leather jacket missing. A single draden-bite welt marked her forearm.
No wonder she was so weak. She must have been bitten when she was unconscious.
Where in the hell am I? Where is Jag?
Memory came at her like an iron fist.
She'd told him he mattered to her, and he'd turned on her, flaying her with his rejection. Calling her a life-stealer. And the Ferals had overheard him.
They knew what she was, now. Her stomach squeezed until she thought she'd be sick.
She'd run, Jag had followed, then a little girl...
A little Mage girl...
Realization hit her, and she gasped. The Mage had captured her. But why? It wasn't like they knew what she was. Her scalp crawled. Dear goddess, what if they did? She suddenly remembered the way the Mage witch, Mystery, had stared at her, as if she were the only one of interest on that entire field of battle.
Did they mean to steal her soul, as they had so many others, and turn her into a killing machine? A shudder tore through her at the thought of what she could do. A single feed in a movie theater would kill the entire human population. If she crept close to a Therian mansion, she could probably kill most of those inside before they realized what was happening.
Jag would stop her.
Jag. Where is he? Did they take him, too?
Did they kill him?
Goddess, please not that.
The sensation of burning needles grew stronger, harsher, and she had to clamp her jaw hard to keep from moaning with the pain. Even if there was no one to hear her, she refused to give in.
If only she could pinpoint her captors and steal their energy. At the thought, she closed her eyes, struggling to force herself past the pain, to feel beyond. But she could feel nothing, as if this test tube were the entire world. As if the Plexiglas contained her gift as well as herself.
Of course it did. The realization only confirmed her fear. If the Mage had defended themselves against her gift, they must know what she was.
A fine desperation threaded itself through her mind. Did they understand she had to feed? That if she didn't, she might die? Maybe it would be for the best if she did.
But she felt confident the Mage wanted her power for their own. And she doubted hunger could kill her. She feared she would simply linger like this, the pain growing worse until she was out of her head with it. Was that their plan?
She didn't know, and the not knowing terrified her the most.
Little by little, she managed to slip away into a different place in her mind, desperate to escape the building fire in her flesh. She thought of Jag, remembering the way he'd made love to her in his bedroom. The way he'd stroked her body. The way he'd looked into her eyes as if he were falling as deeply and completely as she was. The feel and taste of his mouth as he'd kissed her. But mostly, she remembered the gentle look in his eyes. The needs she'd recognized so well in their brown depths. A need to end the loneliness, to end the isolation. A need for the connection that had begun to form between them - a connection of the heart. The soul.
The squeak of the cellar door wrenched her out of her thoughts in a blaze of pain. In walked Mystery, her thick auburn hair hanging in waves around the shoulders of her emerald green sorcerer's robe. No expression crossed her face. No emotion flickered in her emerald eyes.
Soulless.
Was that what her own eyes would look like when they were through with her? Or would she be one of the ones excited by the prospect of another's pain?
Dear goddess, she'd rather die first.
Behind Mystery walked two middle-aged humans, their faces as blank as automatons'. A couple, she suspected, the man balding, the woman soft and round.
Enthralled.
Mystery reached for the Plexiglas, opening a door Olivia hadn't seen. At once, Olivia was blasted with the rich tease of life energy rushing across her senses. The energy had no real taste, no real smell, and yet the feel of it intoxicated, driving her need. She moaned beneath the crush of hunger. A hunger she would not slake on innocents!
She struggled against the pain and the need, holding on to her control by the finest of threads. A memory broke through her struggle, a memory of her last draden feed, how she'd finally, after so many centuries, been able to target her life-stealing.
Focusing, she tried to find the Mage in her senses, tried to single her out for attack.
But her hunger was so fierce, the life forces ran as one, bright and ripe.
The two humans walked into the cage and the door snapped shut behind them. Any chance of singling out Mystery was gone.
The humans stood, unmoving, as if waiting for her to take their lives. Feeling them, needing them, was torture, the need to consume them nearly more than she could stand.
Mystery stood outside the cage watching her with dead eyes. "We want you hungry, life-stealer, but not weak. Not distracted by your pain. We drained you with the draden, but he took more from you than we'd anticipated. We ordered you to feed while you were enthralled, but you refused. So you'll feed now. From the humans."
Olivia met the witch's soulless gaze. "I'll kill them."
"Of course."
"No! Give me draden."
But Mystery simply turned and left the cellar through the door from which she'd entered, leaving Olivia alone with the offered meal.
She shook from the need to open herself and slake her terrible hunger. Sweat rolled down her temples and the back of her neck. She would not steal the lives of innocents!
Never had she killed merely to feed herself. Never! She'd killed in battle and killed those who would have attacked her. But never an innocent. Not on purpose. It was a line she'd never crossed. A line that might be blurred and murky to some but was sharp and clear to her conscience.
If she took lives, innocent lives, in order to feed, then she would be a life-stealer in truth, and all her convictions that the Therians were wrong, that she had never been what they feared, were lost.
Yet as she looked at the pair in front of her, she knew that refusing to feed from them wouldn't save them. Their lives had been forfeit the moment the Mage took hold of their minds. Either she killed them here, painlessly, or they would die in a nightmare of pain and blood beneath the Daemons' claws.
But even knowing that, she couldn't do it. Because crossing that line turned her into a monster, and she'd never be able to live with what she'd done. Her conscience wouldn't let her steal innocent lives any more than her pride would let her give in to her captors.
But goddess help her, she knew this wasn't the end of it. She might assert her stubbornness and refuse to fall in line with Mystery's plan.
But her control over herself and her fate were fast becoming illusions.
Chapter Twenty-one
The two large SUVs pulled off a little-traveled stretch of highway, past the decaying remains of an old barn, and off-roaded it into the woods less than a mile from the Mage stronghold near Harpers Ferry.