The Curse (Belador #3)(2)
Evalle Kincaid.
He’d used his Skinwalker gift to shift into animal form for Evalle. To help her find other Alterants … before Sen came to take her … to the Tribunal trial. Sen. Liaison to VIPER.
More images. Sen grabbing Evalle. Storm leaping at Sen.
Sen attacking, wielding kinetic power. Slamming Storm into the brick.
A heartbreaking last look at Evalle’s horrified face. One brief rush of her emotions across his empathic senses … Desperation. Misery. Had the Tribunal locked her away forever?
He had to find her.
One thing at a time. First he had to live.
He nodded, letting Kai know his memory had begun to surface. “Where’s my body?”
“Safe and hidden.”
“How did you manage that?” He didn’t think a guardian spirit could physically move bodies around in the human world.
“I shielded your body from view until I could find help. Then I called upon one you trust. She moved your body to a place where she could tend your wounds. She has kept you alive, but you are not fully healed and now your body is weakening by the hour.”
Evalle. She’d be frantic about his dying, but if she was taking care of him, that meant she had walked free from the Tribunal. Finally, something positive. “But I still have the choice to live?”
“You have the choice to go back. Living will depend upon whether your Skinwalker gifts can complete your healing. If you choose to return, you must do so now.”
“There is no if. I have to go back.” He paused, to figure out exactly why he absolutely had to return. To fulfill a task—no, a commitment he’d made. “Something … about Evalle, right?”
“Yes, you had dreams that the Ashaninka witch doctor who searches for you has followed you to Atlanta and intends to harm her.”
That’s right. The bitch who’d killed his father back in South America. His last dreams had shown her threatening Evalle.
Everything rushed back to him with a vengeance.
He would not let that insane bitch touch Evalle. “Can the witch doctor find my body where it’s hidden?”
“No.”
Relief shoved his worry aside. With Evalle tending his physical body she would be safe until he returned. She’d been watching over him for three weeks? With her so close he was ready to leap back into his body. He missed her in a way he never thought he’d feel about a woman again.
Missed kissing her. Watching her emotions flare.
He’d do whatever it took to return.
But Kai had said his body was close to expiring.
He asked, “Why haven’t I healed in three weeks?”
“You haven’t been lucid once in that time so you could draw on your gifts to heal yourself. Taking you to any type of hospital—”
“—would have been dangerous for me,” he finished. Because he could have shifted back and forth between human and jaguar form while he had no control over his body.
“Yes. If you had not remained on the edge of crossing over for so long, you would have regained consciousness and started healing by now. As it is, the woman has done all she can. You must return to your body or you will not survive.”
“Why didn’t you call me back sooner?”
She angled her chin to one side and frowned. Clouds appeared, blotting out the sun and draping her meadow in dark shadows, a sign he’d annoyed Kai.
He held up his hand and humbled his tone. “I meant no insult and certainly no criticism. I just wondered why I spent so much time suspended between life and death when it sounds as though I should have returned days ago.”
She relaxed, clearly comprehending his confusion. As the sun shone again, she explained, “You have forgotten our many conversations over these weeks. Every time you started to fade I pleaded, yelled, threatened, anything I could think of to call you back from the edge. Your spirit weakened and slipped further from my hold every day. Had you not answered this time … I would not have been able to keep your spirit from disconnecting from your physical body.”
His blood chilled at how close he’d been to losing any chance of returning. “Thank you for fighting for me.”
She nodded. “I will always be here for you.”
“I should get going. Can I return on my own?”
“Not this time. I’ll send you, but you must prepare yourself for the pain.”
“I’m ready.”
“I hope so. And regardless of your physical torment, temper your words. She has been most patient.”
Not even pain could make him speak harshly to Evalle. He disregarded the warning and joked, “That’s saying something since patience doesn’t come naturally to Evalle.”
“Evalle?” Kai’s soft black eyebrows lifted in question.
“Isn’t that who you contacted?”
“You did ask me to go to her first, but I could not find her.”
“Then who did—”
Kai’s eyes flashed with fear. “You must go now, Storm. Your heart is stopping.”
In the next seconds everything in the meadow blurred into a wash of color and sound as if someone had flushed the world.
He knew the minute he entered his physical body.
Agony ripped through him.
A fist slammed his chest, with supernatural force behind it. Someone shouted at him. Cursed him. Heat roared across his skin. Nerves caught fire with renewed life, flooding pain everywhere. Perspiration streamed across his face.