Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors #6)(54)

Wulfe frowned. "Fox didn't attack us at all. He fought with us. He got a chunk of fur torn out of his hide from one of the seventeen in that initial battle. He fought them, not us."

"Grizz was the one who went after Fox," Vhyper added. "I was too preoccupied with fighting to pay a lot of attention, but I remember thinking it was a lame-ass attack."

Lyon watched him. "How so?"

"He leaped on the fox so fast I thought he was going to tear his head off. I think he could have. Instead, he nipped him in the butt."

Wulfe grunted. "If you call a soccerball-sized chunk of fur a nip."

"My point is he pulled his punch. At the very least, he could have ripped off his hind leg. And he didn't. I shifted and cut off his two back legs far too easily."

"What are you saying, Vhype?" Lyon asked.

"I don't think Grizz wanted to be fighting us. Something was controlling him."

"Which doesn't fit with enthrallment. The enthralled can't fight it." Lyon paced the front of the room. "Is there any possibility their souls were stolen?"

Faith clenched her hands together in her lap. They were looking in the wrong place. Because they didn't have all the facts.

Kougar stroked his goatee. "I didn't see any evidence. Then again, none of us realized our previous fox had lost his soul until it was far too late."

Lyon frowned. "We have to figure out what the Mage have done to them."

Faith reached for Hawke, touching his arm. When he turned to her, she whispered, "I might know something."

All heads swiveled her way, putting her in a spotlight she wasn't entirely ready for. She took a deep breath, then said what she needed to. "Maxim told me that the new Ferals were the wrong ones. They weren't the ones who were supposed to have been marked."

To a man, their gazes narrowed. Faith's pulse began to race.

"How did he know that?" Lyon asked.

"I don't know. He didn't tell me."

"Is there anything else, Faith? Anything else he told you that you haven't mentioned yet?"

Her pulse began to pound. She swallowed. "He told me that the only thing women were good for was the way they screamed when you cut them." Sounds of anger and disgust erupted around the table. "He told me he steals girls off the streets, human girls, and makes them bleed."

"He dies," Wulfe snarled.

Tighe nodded. "Slowly."

Vhyper hissed. "With his c**k shoved down his throat."

While the harsh voices ping-ponged across the table, Faith turned to Hawke. His gaze was fixed on hers, fury in the dark depths of his eyes. And pain.

"He hurt you, didn't he?" he asked quietly.

She nodded. "I don't remember much. He clouded my mind." A shudder tore through her, and she shook her head. "It doesn't matter. This isn't about me."

Hawke's grip on her hand tightened, a silent promise that she'd never endure that kind of pain at Maxim's hands again. She managed a smile for him, then looked toward Lyon and the others. "My point is, Maxim is a monster. He should never have been marked to be a Feral Warrior."

Lyon turned to Kougar. "Have you ever heard of this happening? A marking gone wrong?"

"No." Kougar stroked his beard. His eyes narrowed, clearly focused on something not before him. "What if this is what Hookeye was doing at the Ilina temple? Not trying to set up another wormhole into the spirit trap, as we believed, but this. He was there to access the spirit trap and free the seventeen animal spirits. Free them and make them into weapons."

All were silent, startled and thoughtful, except for Tighe and Hawke, who exchanged a confused glance.

"Hookeye?" Tighe asked. "Something else we missed while we were caught in the spirit trap?"

Kougar nodded. "Hookeye was Mage, the self-professed poison master and the one who attacked the Ilinas a millennium ago and drove them into hiding. We found him a couple of weeks ago in the abandoned Ilina temple in the Himalayas. A temple with access to the spirit trap. He's dead."

"Did you hear the animal cries when we were in that trap?" Hawke asked Tighe.

Tighe nodded. "At first, they were just sounds. Snuffles, low growls, a whinny. But then they turned agitated, clearly in pain. I thought I was imagining it."

"I did, too. I wondered if those cries had been echoing down there for hundreds of years. Now I wonder if we weren't hearing the spirits being torn from that place."

Silence descended for the space of a dozen heartbeats.

"So are we saying the animal spirits were poisoned?" Vhyper asked. "With some kind of dark magic?"

Faith swallowed the sound of distress that dug at her throat. Dark magic?

"Have they turned the new Ferals evil?" Tighe asked the question she couldn't.

But she hadn't turned evil. Surely she'd know if she had. She'd have risen up against the good Ferals along with the others. Right?

"It's possible the animal spirits were just the carriers." Kougar's pale eyes turned hard. "If we're lucky, this was a one-time thing. They passed the infection on to the men they marked, then were free of it. No Feral marked in the future will be affected."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Lyon asked.