Desire Untamed (Feral Warriors #1)(62)

As he rounded the bend into the room, his mind froze. The bile tore to get out.

None of his imaginings came anywhere close.

She was hanging from a rope, naked and bleeding from no fewer than eight daggers protruding from her waist like a cruel, macabre belt. The blood ran down, coating her hips and legs, to pool in the dirt at her feet.

Standing behind her was Vhyper, his eyes glowing feral red, his snake's fangs elongated, a ninth blade in his hand.

Lyon lunged for him. "What have you done?"

"She's a Mage witch!"

Lyon felt his claws slash outward. If he'd been able to do it, he'd have shifted and torn out the other man's throat. With a lunge, he tackled Vhyper, grabbing his knife hand and slamming it to the dirt floor as he shredded the man's throat with his claws. But Vhyper was damned near as strong as he was and, crazed or not, wasn't about to go down without a fight.

"Lyon!" Paenther's voice shouted behind him. "It's not Vhyper's fault. It's the lack of radiance."

Lyon heard the words, but his beast was beyond heeding them. He didn't care why Vhyper had attacked her. The only thing that mattered was that he had.

Never in his life had he fought to kill another Feral, but all he could see was death. His beast smelled it. He wanted it.

Interfering hands tore him away from his victim and he turned on them, attacking, slashing until the voices finally tore through his head.

"Lyon, get back in your skin!" Tighe's voice. "Kara needs you."

Kara.

The fight left him in a cold rush as if he'd been doused with ice water. He jerked free of Tighe and Paenther's hold and whirled, lunging for her. Then stopped.

Kara.

He wanted to cut her down and gather her close, but the knives.

Sweet goddess. He didn't know where to start.

Her pain was almost more than he could bear. But the terror he'd felt when he first opened that door was gone. She was safe. She knew she was safe.

"Lyon."

Vhyper had her hanging just above eye level. He stepped into the puddle of her blood and cupped her face with his hands, holding her shattered gaze. "I'm going to get you down, little one, but it's going to hurt. So I'm going to knock you out."

"Do it."

He slipped his finger to the base of her ear and pressed until she went limp. Then he pressed his left palm against her rib cage, grabbed the hilt of one of the knives with his right, and pulled. Even unconscious her body jerked, and the pain leaped until he feared the weight of it would crush him. One by one, he pulled the knives from her, praying over and over that the damage wasn't too great. That her body would heal from this brutal attack. It wasn't until the last knife slid free, that he realized the other wounds were continuing to bleed.

"She should be healing. She's not healing," he said to no one in particular.

Tighe stepped beside him and grabbed one of the knives off the floor. "Hold her while I cut her down."

Lyon gathered her against him, then swept her into his arms as the rope came free.

"The others are taking Vhyper back to the prison."

"Search him. He must have had a key on him when they put him in there. And add a chain this time."

Lyon stepped back from the puddle and knelt in the dirt, lifting Kara's torn waist to his mouth. She should have healed. If she couldn't do it herself, he had to do it for her. He closed his lips around the nearest wound and stroked the gash with his tongue. The taste of warm blood pleased his beast, but he knew better than to swallow much of it in his human form.

The blood kept coming. Denial flashed through his head and he leaped to his feet, cradling Kara against him. "I've got to get her help. She's not healing."

"Maybe she's not as immortal as we thought."

The thought made him go cold.

As he rushed up the stairs, he shouted orders. "Tell Hawke to keep someone down here on guard duty. Then meet me in the foyer and bring Jag and Paenther with you. We're taking Kara to the healer."

"You don't want me to have the healer come here?" Tighe asked.

"No. We can get her there faster. But I'm going to need help with the draden. Find out where Esmeria is, then call the Shaman and tell him to meet us there. I want to know what the hell is going on with Kara, and I want to know now."

Even an immortal couldn't bleed forever without her body eventually shutting down. And he didn't know what the hell Kara really was.

All he knew for certain was she needed help. And she needed it now.

* * *

Chapter Eighteen

"It's not working. Even the stitches aren't holding," Esmeria said wretchedly, more than an hour later. The short-haired brunette sat on the lip of' the large, tiled bathtub where Lyon held Kara, her hands and white shirt soaked with Kara's blood. "It's almost as if she's under some kind of bleeding spell."

"Then treat it like a bleeding spell," Lyon snapped. "There's got to be a way to break it." His own blood had long ago turned to ice, the moment he'd seen Kara hanging from that rope. A moment that was permanently carved into his brain. But the fact that the finest Therian healer that had ever lived couldn't knit these wounds was scaring the hell out of him.

He wouldn't lose her. He wouldn't lose her.