Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(76)

The pain had left him at some point in this endless night; but so, too, had the hawk spirit, or at least his sense of him. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd last heard him or felt him. Time had no meaning anymore.

Even the other animal spirits were gone.

Was this how the seventeen had died, then? This lonely, angry death? He'd always imagined them fighting together to find a way out. Perishing together, brothers in arms. Now he knew the truth. They'd died in darkness and isolation.

Just as he was about to.

Several of the seventeen had been mated, one with a young son. How much harder to be unable to reach the ones who would suffer most at his dying.

How much harder this must be on Tighe.

In between bouts of rage, he drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to tell sleep from awake. People ran through his mind, people he'd known long ago. His father. The friends of his youth.

Were they spirits come to deliver him to the beyond?

No! There had to be a way out!

Within his mind, he struggled against bonds he couldn't feel. Slowly, painfully, the fight inside him drained away. There was no fighting the dark. There was no way out this time. His animal spirit was all but lost to him. His own spirit nearly gone, too.

His life was ending, and he couldn't stop it.

When the fury blind-sided him yet again, blasting through his head, he let out a war cry that would have rattled the windows, had there been any. If he'd still had a voice. As that white-hot haze swept through his mind, stealing his sanity, his last thought was that perhaps it was better he never escaped like this.

Goddess knew what kind of damage he'd do in this state. What kind of carnage he'd cause, lost to the fury of a mindless, vicious rage.

Kougar fought like a berserker, Ariana at his side. Both hacked off limbs right and left, Mage and Ilina, alike. No longer were they careful not to hurt the Ilinas. Limbs would regrow. And if they didn't reach Hookeye before he completed chanting his spell to open the wormhole into the spirit trap, Melisande, Brielle, and nearly a dozen other Ilinas would die.

And goddess only knew how many Ferals.

Even through the clash of swords, he heard the rest of the enchanted army closing in on them from behind.

"I've got them." Ariana turned and they fought back-to-back as he pressed forward, desperate to reach Hookeye in time.

Sweat rolled down his back, despair licking at his nerves as he hacked through the attacking Mage. The sorcerer's chanting carried faintly through the clang of metal and the screams of the injured. A quick glance told him the magic wasn't done. But he had no illusions. He was out of time.

With a Feral war cry that rang throughout the dome with an animal ferocity, Kougar stabbed and slashed, heedless of the damage he caused, focused on only one thing. One person. One unimposing bastard of a Mage.

Dismembered hands and arms flew this way and that in a rain of blood that splattered his face and clothes, the metallic scent igniting a hunger inside him. In his cat form, he enjoyed the warm rush of blood in his mouth. But the only blood he craved now was Hookeye's.

The floor grew slick beneath his feet, but he pressed ahead, the sentinels unable to stop his forward charge and the Ilinas no challenge at all.

But as the Mage troops between him and his quarry thinned, something caught his eye on the floor in front of him--a shiny black substance that was beginning to bubble up with a sound like popping corn and a smell like rotting eggs. The hair rose on the back of his neck with the certainty this was another of Hookeye's plagues--one Kougar wasn't going to like at all.

Within seconds, the black ooze covered his boots and slid onto his bare calves beneath his pants like a cool, sticky goo. A goo that hardened within seconds of contact even as it continued to climb.

He stomped his feet, hearing the crack of the hardening tar. But more climbed his boots to take its place.

All around him, movement slowed as the vile tar attacked all equally--him, Ilina, the Mage.

"Goddess!" Ariana cried behind him, and he glanced at one of the Mage he'd sent sprawling to watch the black ooze slide over the man's head and cover his face. "Is this some kind of poison?"

The downed sentinel clawed at his face but couldn't seem to break the goo's deadly hold.

"Keep moving!" Kougar called to Ariana. "Don't let it harden."

As the dozen Mage between Kougar and his quarry yelled their own frustration, Hookeye continued to chant, his expression one of cool satisfaction. At any moment, the spell would be complete, the wormhole would open, and his friends would be gone.

Kougar struggled forward, every step more difficult as the tar crept over his knees and slid up his thighs. Sweating with effort, he broke through the constricting ooze over and over, forcing his legs to move, swinging his blade against the Mage still in his path, still trying to stop him.

The air shifted suddenly, a charge of electricity making the hair on his arms stand on end. The air pressure dropped, the light in the temple dimming.

They were out of time.

If only Ariana could turn to mist! But if she tried, she'd almost certainly become trapped in the floor as Melisande had.

A thought pierced his despair, an idea blooming with a burst of adrenaline.

"Ariana, turn to mist!"

"I'll sink into the floor."

"You'll sink where you land."

The clang of his own blade drowned out her response, if there was one. A moment later, the shimmer of mist high above Hookeye's head caught his attention, and he knew she'd caught his meaning.