Rapture Untamed (Feral Warriors #4)(76)

Yes, she loved him. Goddess, she loved him.

With the gentlest of touches, his fingers whispered over her cheek. "I'll never survive without my heart." The anguish in his eyes tore her in two. He stumbled back, then forward again. "I'm losing it, Liv. I can't wait any longer." He bent down and rose again, slowly, a knife in his hand.

When he looked up at her, tears filled his eyes. "I'm sorry."

As her heart broke, love for him rushed up from the depths of her soul, filling her chest, her mind.

Jag lifted the knife as if it weighed half a ton, positioning the tip just beneath her rib cage.

That soft glow inside her mind burst into a flaming inferno as she poured her love into it. Into Jag. And something happened. With a shock, she realized she wasn't only pouring her love into him, but her life force as well. She was feeding him!

"Jag."

The knife dropped. His head lifted slowly, his eyes wide with wonder. "You're doing it.

I'm already feeling stronger."

"Yes." Tears spilled down her cheeks.

He grabbed her face and kissed her hard, then pulled back and swiped the moisture from his own cheeks, his eyes blazing with love and triumph. "I knew you could do it."

He kept hold of her, once more letting her feed only from him. "If you can still see the individual life forces, can you help the others?"

She peered past him to what little of the battle his big body didn't block. Lyon had lost an arm and was battling two Mage at once. Neither Wulfe nor Kougar looked to be in any better shape. They were fighting back to back, seven Mage surrounding them.

She focused on them and Paenther, sending energy directly to them with ease.

"It's working!" She met his gaze with a grin. "Now let go of me and let me feed from everyone. I'll weaken the Daemon and the Mage, but feed your men."

"And the humans."

She nodded. "And the humans."

Jag gave her another hard, fast kiss. "I need to untie you."

"No. I'm connected to those orbs. If you untie me, there's no telling what will happen.

Leave me here. Rejoin the battle, Jag. Your men need you, now."

Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed

"How do I disengage you from the orbs?" Already, his voice sounded back to normal strength.

"Destroy them. It's the only way."

"I'm on it." With a grin that was at once fierce and breathtaking with sheer joy, he turned from her and grabbed up several knives that had slipped from now-dead hands. Standing at the edge of the glowing vortex, he threw the knives at the orbs, one after the other, but they hit and bounced off, knife after knife falling into the screaming void.

As he took off at a run toward the battle, she thought she heard him say, "Where are Delaney and her guns when we need them?"

Olivia's heart followed him, and she poured love and strength through that budding bond between them, willing him to stay safe. Helping him the only way she could as he fought to claim victory and save them all.

Chapter Twenty-three

The other Ferals had the Mage down to a manageable seven by the time Jag reached them. The winds howled, nature's fury a living thing as lightning slashed from the sky, the bolts glowing as red as the vortex. And as if that weren't enough, the sky began to fling stinging pellets of rain.

"Get the Daemon, Jag!" Lyon called.

Jag lifted a hand in acknowledgment, his gaze zeroing in on the last of the three creatures as it floated across the pit, heading for another of the humans tied to posts ringing the swirling chasm. From what Jag was able to make out, two of the four bound humans were already dead or unconscious, though neither appeared to be badly injured. He wondered if Olivia's feeding had saved them from a worse fate.

Of the two who remained conscious, one was missing half his face and clearly danced with death. It was the other, a female with only a single, shallow slash across her cheekbone that the Daemon headed toward now. The female watched the Daemon's approach with terror in her eyes, but no screams. Humans didn't see the fiends until they'd been cut by one, and thanks to the wound on her cheek, this human had already had her eyes opened. Her expression said she saw the monster who toyed with her, a monster who promised a terrifying, painful death.

Jag skirted the vortex to intercept that pain-feeding bastard, the rain starting to come down hard. As the Daemon approached his human target, Jag eased behind the tied female, waiting for the creature to clear the vortex before he took him on. Above the Daemon, the orbs spit and glowed.

"Easy," he told the woman. "I'm going to get him."

When the Daemon didn't change directions at Jag's arrival, the Feral eased around the post, out to the edge of the abyss, ready to attack before the Daemon did.

"Jag!"

The warning, carried by the howling wind, came too late. He felt one blade bury itself into his side as a pair of hands shoved at his back, ripping his balance out from under him.

Mage. Where in the hell did they keep coming from?

With furious desperation, he tried to turn, to regain his balance, but the ground between his feet was slick with rain, and he failed. There was no going back, only forward. He was going in.

But even as the hopeless thought registered, the Daemon drew near. In a move he would later decide had been born of pure madness, he vaulted up and out, straight for the Daemon. Hooking his good arm around the fiend's neck, he swung onto its back and held on, knowing that to let go meant a one-way ticket into a swirling red death.