Warrior (Relentless #4)(53)

She shuddered, and I had to fight to not wrap my arms around her. “It was the most horrible feeling, like I’d never be clean again,” she said in a trembling voice.

“Fuck! How did you get away?” Roland asked.

“I don’t know. One second there was a creepy voice in my head telling me to go to sleep, and the next thing I knew the tattooed guy was screaming.” She fell silent and hugged herself, as if that would protect her from the horrors she was reliving.

When she spoke again, her voice cracked. “I think… I think my Mori is dead. I felt it dying.”

Solmi! My Mori reached for hers.

No longer able to resist the need to touch her, I laid a hand on the small of her back. “It’s been hurt, but it’s still alive,” I told her softly.

She didn’t meet my eyes. “How do you know?”

“Trust me. I would know if it was gone,” I replied gruffly, refusing to think about that possibility.

Roland looked at me. “What kind of witch can hurt a demon like that?”

My lip curled in disgust. “A Hale witch. A desert witch from Africa. They get their power from the spirit world.”

“Like a shaman or witch doctor?” Sara asked.

“Hale witches only deal in dark magic, and their power is much greater than a shaman’s. A Hale witch can cripple a person with a single thought, and their compulsion is even stronger than a vampire’s, almost unbreakable.”

She gasped and raised her gaze to meet mine. I saw the confusion in her eyes.

“Not even the Mohiri are immune to their power. I’ve seen warriors brought to madness after a single encounter with a Hale witch.” I thought about Desmund Ashworth, the strongest warrior I’d ever known, whose mind was destroyed after a confrontation with one of them. “Hale witches abhor demons, and they do not work with vampires. And they usually stick close to their tribal region of the desert. It would take something big to get one of them to come all the way to America.”

I held her gaze. “You aren’t telling us everything. Who else is after you?”

“No one. I swear, I have no idea why they attacked me,” she declared so earnestly I believed her.

“What happened after you got away from the witch?” Roland asked.

“Peter was still fighting Tarak, and Tarak pulled a knife on him. I kinda lost it when I saw him cut Peter. I just jumped him and squeezed his throat until he went down. Then we took off.”

Roland pointed at the dark-haired boy sitting in the front passenger seat of the Mustang. “Where does he come into this?”

“He was there at the rest stop when those guys showed up. He got blasted by the witch when he tried to stop Tarak from taking me.”

My hands clenched at my sides when I thought about how close she’d come to being taken. “What were you thinking, going off to meet a total stranger in the first place with everything else that’s going on?”

She took a step back from me. “I had to go. You don’t know how long I’ve waited to find answers about my dad. I’ve been trying to meet with David for weeks.”

“How do you know he didn’t lead those men right to you?”

She shook her head. “He’s an Emote, and I believe he was telling the truth. He knew things…things about Madeline.”

My body tensed at the mention of her mother, and I knew I was not going to like what came next.

“Ten years ago Madeline went to see David’s father to tell him she was in trouble. They were friends, and David’s father gave her a lot of money to leave the country. She said vampires were after her and before she left she had to warn –” Emotion choked her, and she paused for a moment. “She had to warn my dad. A few days later, my dad was killed.”

Roland paled. “Jesus, Sara.”

She cleared her throat. “David wanted to meet with me because he lost someone, too. The vampires killed his father the same day they killed mine. David’s afraid the vampires will come after him because of what he knows. He was hiding upstairs while Madeline was there, and he heard something he wasn’t supposed to. He thinks it’s why his father was killed.”

Dread filled me. Vampires didn’t need a reason to kill, but these deaths sounded too deliberate, too organized. “Did he tell you what it was?”

She nodded slowly. “Madeline told David’s father that she knew the identity of a Master.”

It was as if a switch had been flipped in my brain and all I felt was pure instinct. I lost all thought except getting Sara as far away from this place as possible.

Moving with demon speed, I grabbed her and carried her to my bike. I had only one helmet, which I shoved down over her head.

She pushed against the helmet. “Stop! What are you doing?”

I fought to maintain control as fear gripped me. “I’m getting you out of here. I can’t protect you from a Master by myself. The only place you’ll be safe now is at a Mohiri stronghold.”

“That happened ten years ago. There is no Master after me,” she argued, trying to twist away from me.

I let out a harsh laugh because after everything that had happened, she still had no comprehension of the danger she was in.

“To you ten years is a long time, but to a vampire who has lived hundreds of years, it’s nothing. And what of this witch and the man who grabbed you? Either way, someone is looking for you, and we need to get you out of this town.”