Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(7)

Until then? It seemed he was doomed to watch the terror of the dying through the eyes of the one desecrating his soul.

Chapter Three

As the sun rose over Washington, D.C., Tighe slammed open the door of the safe house and stormed inside, his fingers and teeth tingling with the need to go feral and rip something apart. Anything.

Frustration bled from his brain, down into every cell in his body.

They were getting nowhere. Nowhere.

“Easy, Stripes,” Hawke said behind him as he and Kougar followed him in the door. “Stay in your skin, buddy.”

Tighe strode to the refrigerator of the small row house on Capitol Hill, grabbed a Budweiser, and drank it down with one long pull.

Once the residence of a Therian family, for years the house had served as a safe house for Therians caught too far from the enclaves at night. Nocturnal creatures, the draden only fed at night but were capable of passing through untreated glass to reach their Therian victims.

The glass of Therian homes and cars were treated with magic to keep them safe from draden penetration. Safe houses were scattered throughout the areas most often frequented by members of the race. Last he heard, there were nearly a dozen around the D.C. area in addition to the five actual enclaves.

This particular safe house was only four blocks from the apartment building where he’d watched the dark-eyed beauty die yesterday morning. For twenty-four hours, the three Ferals had roamed the area, both in their human and animal forms, searching for the clone. In their animal forms, they should have been able to smell him, but they’d gotten nothing. Worse than nothing.

Even the visions were useless. That first one had been so clear he’d really thought they might help him. But only in that one, when he’d watched the dark-eyed beauty die had he seen the death as if through the eyes of the clone. Ever since, he’d seen little more than vague faces contorted with terror. Nightmarish wisps with garbled sound. No details. Nothing to tell him where the killings were taking place. Nothing to help him catch the bastard.

He slammed the empty Budweiser can on the counter so hard that he crushed it.

Hawke lifted one dark, winged brow.

“I’m in my skin!” Tighe snapped, reading his friend’s expression all too well. “You can’t blame me for being frustrated.”

“No one’s blaming you, buddy. We’re watching you. But we’re not blaming you.”

“Great.” Watching him lose control, minute by minute. Tighe reached back into the fridge and pulled out three more beers, tossing one to each of his companions before turning on the old television in the corner to see if there was any news. He had a morbid need to know the identity of the dark-eyed woman he’d watched die. So far, there’d been nothing about her in the news. Maybe because she was FBI.

Already, she was haunting him. He’d barely gone an hour without thinking about her, without her face rising into his mind’s eye, those rich mahogany eyes flashing with fury and fire as she’d met her death. Why he was so obsessed with her he couldn’t begin to guess. Yeah, she’d been beautiful. And a fighter, which was admirable enough. But she’d been human. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass about humans.

Especially dead ones. And with their short, fragile lives, they were all basically the walking dead.

Damn, but he wanted this to be over. He wanted his soul intact so he and his companions could concentrate on the true threat, the apparent Mage plot to free Satanan and his Daemon horde. If there was a plot. They didn’t know what in the hell was going on.

Hawke’s brows drew down. “What’s with your eyes, Tighe?”

“The black streak?” He’d noticed it in the mirror that morning, a single black streak cutting across his green iris from pupil to outer ring. “Beats the hell out of me.” Frustration simmered inside him, refusing to be distracted. He slammed his fist on the counter. “Where is that son of a bitch clone? For all we know, he could be halfway to Texas by now.”

Kougar gave a pull on his Bud, his pale eyes shining over his mustache and goatee. “I wouldn’t put it past him. The bastard’s different than the other clones. Smarter.”

Hawke nodded. “He may be evolving.”

“What do you mean?” Tighe asked warily.

“If I’m right, he’s going to become smarter and more clever every day until he’s nearly your equal.”

“Goddess forbid. While I degenerate into a raving lunatic.”

Hawke shrugged. “He was the only one who escaped the battle when they were all but defeated. Then he ditched your Land Rover in McLean and stole the cars of each of his victims, one after the other, making him impossible to follow. That’s clever. As is the fact that he’s staying away from the Therian compounds despite the fact Therian energy is his natural food. He’s having to kill human after human to feed himself because he knows the Therians are watching for him.”

“Yeah, and maybe he just enjoys the killing,” Tighe grunted. “If I could get another real vision, maybe we could stop…” As if Nature heard his plea, his sight went suddenly black. “It’s happening again.” As he was swept into another place, he grabbed for the kitchen counter and held on.

Confusion clouded his mind as he stared into the face of the dark-eyed beauty who’d been haunting his thoughts all day and night. She wasn’t dead. He watched her in the mirror of a public bathroom, as if through her own eyes. She leaned in closer and pulled open the collar of her white blouse, revealing an oval of red welts on the otherwise-flawless olive skin of her long, graceful neck.