Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(84)

Delaney. She’d reached her gun. Round after round exploded into the clone’s face.

Giving him a chance.

Tighe stumbled forward, grabbed the clone’s bloodless leg between his powerful jaws and tore it off his body, sending the demon spawn crashing to the ground, his dagger skittering away. With another powerful bite, he tore off an arm and tossed it aside. Collapsing across the clone’s broken body, he pulled off the other arm, then turned and gnawed off his second leg.

But the creature’s heart remained. And his head.

Tighe’s own heart cried out with the knowledge that destroying them meant destroying Delaney as well.

Tighe. Move me! Out of the pentagram. He’s still sucking the power. He’s still trying to steal your soul.

Rallying what little strength his body had managed to renew, he changed once more into a man, then stumbled to Delaney’s side and knelt in her blood.

“Oh, D.” Her skin was white as the clouds. As bloodless as the clone. With shaking hands, he scooped her up and into his arms, cradling her against him as he turned to his foe.

In a squawking frenzy, the draden took off, disappearing into the dark, as if suddenly released. The Ferals rushed onto the stone to surround him.

Delaney’s head lolled over his arm, as she fell unconscious. But her heart continued to beat.

The clone met Tighe’s gaze, his own face staring back at him. “You can kill me, Feral. You’ll retrieve your soul. But you’ll lose your heart. She’s mine.” He grinned, dimples flashing, evil gleaming from eyes almost completely covered in black shards.

Jag kicked the demon spawn in the head, but the clone just continued to grin.

Jag pulled out his knife. “Mind if I do the honors?”

“Don’t,” Tighe growled. “He’s right. He’s tied himself to Delaney. When he dies, so will she.”

“Tighe.” Lyon’s palm squeezed his shoulder, transmitting a fine tension. “You see his eyes? There’s only a sliver of green left. Yours are the same. When that last bit of green goes, you die. You may only have minutes. We can’t lose you.”

His soul cried. Delaney must live.

Inside, his tiger paced and leaped, growling and snarling. With a jolt, he realized the spirit was trying to get his attention. He was trying to…

“He’s trying to pull my soul back through Delaney’s body,” he murmured. And suddenly he understood. Pulling the soul back through her might just undo that evil connection.

Tighe’s gaze snapped to Lyon’s. “I need a power raising!”

“Done,” Lyon barked. “Now!”

The tiger inside him gave a powerful roar, his approval flowing through Tighe like a warm river. They would raise the spirits of the beasts. And in doing so, empower the spirit of the tiger.

Please, goddess, let this work. Let her live.

Jag and Lyon were already naked from their shifting, as was Tighe from the decimation of his flesh. Kougar and Hawke yanked off their shirts.

Tighe’s flesh was quickly reknitting and almost healed again.

Lyon helped Tighe hold Delaney as he handed Tighe a knife. Tighe sliced his chest, slapped his palm to the blood, and shoved his fist into the air. The men formed a circle around the clone on the broad, flat goddess stone, and, one by one, sliced their own chests, slapping their bloody palms on top of his.

Tighe began to chant. “Spirits rise and join. Empower the beast beneath this moon.” The others joined him, the rhythmic words weaving with his heartbeat and Delaney’s, flowing around them, through them.

Thunder rumbled, the ground trembled as the great force of Mother Nature herself rose from the depths of the Earth, through the bodies of flesh and bone and up through their arms to the blood raised to the heavens.

“Empower the spirit of the tiger!” Tighe shouted.

A flash of lightning lit the sky, burning through the flesh of Tighe’s hand, sending power twisting through his body.

His tiger told him what he had to do.

Cradling Delaney in his arms, he knelt before what was left of the clone and held his hand out to Lyon for the blade.

The clone looked up at him with cold eyes. “The Daemons will rise again,” he murmured.

Tighe lifted the knife over the clone’s heart. “You won’t be alive to know, will you?” He plunged the blade through the chest wall, cutting and hacking, then reached his hand in.

Inside, his tiger waited, their minds meeting in a way they never had before. The tiger flicked his nose up with a growl, urging him to complete the task. Tighe curved his hand around the beating heart and plucked it from the clone’s chest, crushing it in his fist as he poured his love into Delaney.

Inside him, the tiger pulled the missing half of Tighe’s soul through the woman they both loved, freeing her from the evil and, please goddess, healing her body and saving her life.

For a breathless heartbeat, Delaney’s body jerked, then filled with air and life as her wounds began to heal at the rate of miracles.

Joy filled him, twining with the amazing rush of life flowing back through his own body, and reuniting his soul.

He could hear her heartbeat, firm and steady, as he watched her blood-coated chest rise and fall beneath the healing wounds. Her hand twitched, lifting slightly, then relaxing as she stirred.

Dark lashes fluttered, slowly rising as her gaze took in the sky. He waited, breath caught, as those dark eyes turned to him.