Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(82)

“I see the questions in your eyes, fair Delaney. A channel key is made by infecting a human with a bit of Daemon consciousness. And letting it grow.”

She stared at him. “You’re taking over my mind?”

“No, just a small piece of your will. Enough to use you for the key’s true purpose.”

Her insides quivered with dread. “Which is?”

A single, icy finger slid down the slope of her nose. “To open the channel to the dark power deep in the earth. Power I need in order to call the other half of my soul and to find the master of the witch who created me so that I might add my strength to those who work to free Satanan and the Daemons from the blade.”

Her mind flared with denial. She wouldn’t help him! “You can’t free them from the blade. Only the Ferals can do that.”

“For a time, that was true. But the dark powers are amassing, and that time is gone.” He stepped back and motioned to the rock behind her. “Bare your chest for me, Delaney, and lie down in the center of the pentagram.”

Her blood went cold. Her brain screamed with refusal. But her body obeyed. She tugged off the long-sleeved tee shirt, pulled off her bra, and lay on her back on the cold stone in the middle of the blue-painted star.

As she looked up at the glowing clouds against the dark sky, her mind and heart reached for Tighe. Pouring her love into that link, unable to hide her terror or her outrage that she was to be used as the instrument of his death and that she was powerless to stop it.

As the clone looked down at her, for a desperate moment, she thought Tighe had come. But then she saw the flash of a wicked blade and knew that the nightmare wasn’t over at all. It was just beginning.

As the knife pierced her chest and began a downward slide, a scream launched through her head, echoing off the walls of her skull and tearing, like blades of ice, through her brain. But no sound left her mouth, no sound shattered her eardrums. The clone’s control over her was total.

The knife slid down, then beneath each breast as if cutting a design in her flesh, engulfing her in a river of agony from which there was no escape. Blood ran down her sides. And the scream in her head went on, and on, and on.

Tighe lifted his head and let out a ferocious roar of misery and fury.

Tighe? Lyon’s voice.

Tighe knocked into another tree, stumbling through the woods, blind, blood caking his fur from the dradens’ bites. He has her on the goddess stone. He intends to use her to access dark power. To steal my soul and help free Satanan.

Like hell. Can you reach her?

A wild rage ripped through his tiger’s body, sending him thrashing through the trees. Not until I can free myself from this damned vision!

We’ll converge there as fast as we can.

Sweat ran with the blood, but he kept moving, following the sound of Delaney’s terror.

He was cutting her.

He had to get out of the vision!

Quit feeding, shitbag. Let me get out of your head. But he watched as the knife carved…a pentagram. On her chest. He was going to be sick.

Breathe.

The vision suddenly disappeared in the same moment the draden took off. A weird frisson of energy pierced the air, but Tighe wasted no time wondering about it. He ran on all fours, parting the woods in a flash of orange fur.

Something’s happening, Lyon said.

Tighe gave a ferocious roar. He’s trying to raise the dark power. I’m on my way to the goddess stone, now.

As he raced through the forest to reach his heart, to save the woman he loved, he prayed he wasn’t already too late.

Tighe reached the goddess stone at the same time as the other Ferals.

What the f**k? Jag said, still in his jaguar form.

As one, they stared at the goddess stone. Or at the spot they knew the goddess stone should be, because they sure as hell couldn’t see it.

The draden swarmed the stone by the thousands, the millions.

And Delaney was there.

With a roar, Tighe leaped down the rocks on his tiger’s paws, following the sound of the scream, Delaney’s scream, flowing down the line that connected their hearts. He felt the others close behind him as he launched himself into the draden.

The collision knocked him back on his haunches as if he’d run into a concrete wall.

What the hell? He should have gone through!

As he sprang to his tiger’s paws, he saw the others picking themselves up, too.

Magic, Lyon said. Damn powerful magic.

I’ll make it, Tighe growled. He had to make it. Delaney needed him.

Opening his mouth wide, he tried to grab the little suckers in his jaws, but his teeth scraped the surface of the magic and never touched the fiends themselves.

His frustration tore through the night on a furious roar. In a desperate move, he shifted to human, praying he’d draw them out of the magic to attack him.

They didn’t move. The draden wall remained solid.

“Delaney!”

His blood boiled even as his heart felt as if it had been shot through with ice. He had to reach her. He had to reach her!

With a rage born of desperation, he slammed his fist into the unnatural wall and felt it sink up to his elbow.

It worked.

But the pain and tearing had him instinctively yanking back, only to stare, disbelieving at what was left of his arm. Little more than shredded remnants of flesh clinging to the bone.

“Holy shit,” Jag murmured, taking human form. Then tried to slam his fist through, too, but his fist only bounced off as his jaguar’s body had.