Through his animal’s keen vision, Fox stared at Phylicia’s devastated form—her hair and clothing all but burned away, her skin patches of blackened leather. Goddess.
The fire was all but gone, now centered in only one place—the hole in her chest where her heart should be. As Fox watched, the unconscious Ilina’s flesh turned suddenly, ghostly gray.
Melisande cried out, then fell back, closing her eyes. “She’s dead.”
Fox stared, stunned, meeting first Jag’s, then Olivia’s pained gazes. Olivia was on her knees, clearly in physical agony. As Fox shifted back to a man, he understood why. The pain he’d felt in animal form was ten times worse in human, a stinging, slicing energy as if the warding were trying to fry him alive even without flame. Oddly, he felt fine tendrils of pleasure darting through that energy, almost as if one of Melisande’s pain bombs had locked in permanently.
He blinked. That might be what had happened.
Kneeling beside her, he touched her shoulder. “Mel, we’re all in pain, Jag and Olivia most of all. But I think the energy is coming from you.”
She opened her eyes, revealing a storm of emotions so strong he was amazed she wasn’t screaming, crying. Grief, pain, terror. He heard every one of them in her voice, when she spoke.
“It is. The warding triggered my pain blast.” Her eyes turned bleak. “I can’t turn it off, I can’t mist, I can’t call Ariana. I can barely move.”
“We’ve got to get away from here,” Jag growled, in human form again, kneeling beside Olivia. “The warding’s killing us.” They were worse off than he was, perhaps because Melisande’s energy wasn’t designed to hurt him.
“It’s not the warding, it’s Melisande. The warding triggered her energy, and she can’t shut it off.”
“We can’t . . .”
“Go,” Fox told him. “Get Olivia out of here. Let the other team know we’ve found the warding and warn them to keep the Ilinas away.”
“You’re staying?” There was disbelief in Jag’s tone, resignation in his eyes.
“Melisande can’t move and can’t mist. I’m staying.”
“The Mage . . .”
“Will have felt it, I know. They’ll be swarming soon. We’ll follow once you’re out of range. Or once her energy turns off.”
Jag looked at him like he wanted to argue . . . it wasn’t in a Feral’s nature to leave a brother behind, Fox had learned that much in the short time he’d been one of them.
“We’ll hide,” Fox told him. “Now, go! Get word to Kougar before Ariana meets the same fate as Phylicia.”
With a nod, Jag looped his arm around Olivia, and together they stumbled back the way they’d come.
Fox turned back to Melisande who was trembling, her face white as snow. “I’m going to carry you, Mel.”
“No.”
But he saw no alternative and scooped her into his arms.
She began to struggle. “Let me go.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. We’ve got to get out of here before the Mage find us.”
At first, she was stiff in his arms, but as the tremors wracked her slender frame, she began to soften, curling her arm around his neck, tipping her forehead against his jaw. A feeling of rightness poured through him, followed by a raging rush of protectiveness.
The Mage weren’t going to touch her. He’d kill them first. Every bloody one.
Kara stood in the center of the circle of Feral Warriors in bare feet, jeans shorts, and a T-shirt, shivering even though the day was warm, the sun hot on her arms and shoulders. This was all so wrong. These weren’t her Ferals. Yes, she’d brought them into their animals on the goddess rock near Feral House in Great Falls several days ago. But they weren’t in Great Falls any longer. Instead, they stood on a rocky ledge overlooking a mountain hillside deep in a forest . . . somewhere. She had no idea where. Behind her loomed a castle built into the mountainside. The stronghold of the Mage Elemental, Inir.
The four Ferals—Polaris, Croc, Witt, and Lynks—circled her now, their chests bare, their eyes cold as a winter sky. Their golden armbands, each with the head of the shifter’s animal, gleamed in the sunshine as Polaris chanted the ritual to bring a new Feral into his animal, a ritual he’d learned during his own Renascence. There had been such joy during that ceremony as the animals they’d thought long lost returned to mark Feral Warriors once more. They hadn’t yet realized the new ones marked by the lost spirits had been infected with dark magic.
This ceremony was even more of a travesty, for it wasn’t being led by her beloved Ferals at all but by the evil ones, with the express purpose of adding another warrior to their vile army. And they expected her to participate. The new Feral wouldn’t come into his animal without her radiance.
The thought of helping them made her skin crawl. The stronger the evil Feral army became, the better the chance they would destroy the men she loved. But the males were three times her size, every one of them. And a hundred times as strong.
And so she shook.
If only the good men inside them would fight the darkness as a couple of the other new Ferals had. Grizz had allowed himself to be captured. As had Lepard. But she saw no struggle against the darkness in the eyes of any of these four. She feared that Inir’s control over them was complete.
Her gaze slid beyond the circle of evil Ferals to Inir, and her gut cramped. He stood in a ceremonial robe of blood red, his arms crossed, his face a cold mask of authority. His face was round and plain, forgettable but for the eyes, which gleamed pure copper. His hair, cropped close to his head, appeared to be almost the same shade as his eyes.
Beside Inir stood another man, the newly marked Feral they intended to bring into his animal. A tall, lanky male with fear in his eyes.
Polaris took his knife to himself, carving a bloody line across his chest, then slapped his hand to it, fisting the blood as he handed the knife to Lynks.
It was Lynks’s fault she was here, the traitor. He’d been cleared of the darkness, yet somehow Inir had kept his hooks in the man. He’d knocked her out as they’d descended the stairs to the basement of Feral House, and she’d awakened, bound and gagged, in the back of a minivan barreling down the interstate. How he’d gotten her away without Lyon’s knowing, she couldn’t guess. The thought of what her beloved must be going through tore her heart to shreds.
Unless . . . No he wasn’t dead. She still felt their mating bond strong and bright inside her, and she wouldn’t if he were dead. Would she?
Tears burned her eyes, and she struggled against them, blinking them away. A warm breeze caressed her cheek as gently as Lyon’s thumb might have, and she felt him within her, filling her with his love, giving her strength. No, he wasn’t dead. Crazed, perhaps. Frantic with his inability to find her and almost certainly blaming himself for her capture. She knew her lion.
The white tiger shifter, Witt, cut his chest, the last of the four to do so, and handed the knife back to Polaris.
Polaris turned to her. “Call the radiance,” he commanded. Locked away deep inside him was a good man. Ewan, he’d been called before he was marked by the infected polar bear spirit. He’d been a friend of Olivia’s, one of her soldiers, for decades. But he was captive of the darkness. A good man no longer. And she would not do as he demanded.
“I can’t.” She lifted her chin. “I can only go radiant near Feral House, where the earth’s energies are the strongest.” It was a lie, and they all knew it. She’d already gone radiant once here, attacking one of her captors.
Unable to hold his gaze, she looked up at the sky, wishing with all her heart she’d see a hawk or falcon, that they might be shifters who would lead Lyon and the others to her. Why couldn’t they find her? It had been two days since she’d been taken. Two days. But looking to the skies, all she saw were crows.
“Do it, Radiant.” Inir’s voice was soft and chilling.
Kara set her jaw. “No.” Her gaze found the newly marked Feral, her gaze catching his. “I won’t help you turn this man evil.”
The new Feral’s face paled, glistening with sweat, as he looked from her to the bloody warriors, to Inir, and back again. “Yeah, I . . . don’t think this is such a good idea.”
Inir ignored him, his copper gaze focused solely on her. “Hurt her.”
Kara gasped, then clamped her jaw shut as terror bolted through her. But she made no sound as Croc stepped forward, a gleam of pleasure in his eyes as he balled his fist and plowed it into her cheekbone. Pain exploded as she flew, landing on the rough stone.
“Go radiant, and he won’t do it again,” Inir said evenly.
Oh, God. “No.” Thankfully, she was immortal and could already feel her injuries knitting. As the pain began to recede in her face and hands, Croc brought his boot down hard on her leg, snapping her femur in two. Agony turned her vision white, and she screamed, unable to hold back the cry. Turning watery, furious eyes on the evil Mage who commanded them all she snarled between clenched teeth, “Kill me if you want to. I’m not helping you build your evil army.”
As her leg, too, healed, she tensed for the next blow, but it didn’t come. When the pain was gone, she warily pushed herself to her feet, wondering what torture he’d devise for her next.
A moment later, she knew, as one of the sentinels led a little girl with flyaway hair and missing front teeth to Inir. The child, no more than six years old, looked at the bloody warriors with wide, terrified eyes.
Inir took her hand and she allowed it . . . until he pulled a knife and cut a gash across her palm. The child screamed and screamed, trying to tug her injured hand away from him, but he held it fast, and open, facing it toward Kara.
“She’s mortal,” he said without emotion.
Kara’s head began to pound. “Leave her alone, you bastard.” With righteous fury, she lunged forward, but Croc grabbed her arm and held her back.
Inir smiled, and she realized she’d given him exactly what he wanted. A way to get to her. She felt the blood drain from her face. For most of her adult life, until Lyon found her and the Ferals ascended her to Radiant, she’d been a preschool teacher. Children, human children, had been her life. And the thought of standing coldly by while one was hurt . . .
Inir yanked the girl’s dress up and over her head, stripping her of everything but a pair of cotton panties with blue butterflies on them. Inir hooked one arm around the tiny girl, pinning her arms to her sides as she cried and struggled to get away. His tanned and hairy arm looked obscene across the child’s pale, skinny belly.
Kara shook, torn as she didn’t think she’d ever been before. Giving in to Inir, bringing one more evil Feral into his animal, could cost the lives of the men she loved. Yet how could she allow this child to suffer?
Inir began cutting a shallow furrow across that pale belly. Blood welled and ran, turning blue butterflies purple, as the child screamed, slicing Kara’s heart into a million pieces. “Stop!”
Inir lifted his knife, glanced at her, then began a second cut parallel to the first. “Go radiant.”
Closing tear-filled eyes, Kara pulled the power from the earth. In an instant, she felt the warmth slide through her flesh as she went radiant. The four Ferals closed in on her, clamping rough, punishing hands around her wrists and arms, drawing from her power.
Blinking hard against the moisture, Kara opened her eyes, found Inir, and shot daggers into his chest. If only she could kill him for real.
The villain dumped the bleeding, screaming child onto the stone and motioned to one of his sentinels. “Get her out of here.”
Polaris released Kara and turned toward the new Feral. “Hold him,” he told the sentinels.
The male blanched. “What are you going to do?”
Polaris lifted his knife and cut a shallow furrow across the man’s chest, then grabbed one of his hands and forced him to slap his palm against his own bleeding chest. “Make a fist.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
When the man had, Polaris opened his own bloodied fist and placed his palm on top of the new Feral’s. The other three stepped forward and did the same, one atop the other.
Polaris resumed the chant, and the others slowly followed. “Spirits rise and join. Empower the beast beneath this sun. Goddess, reveal your warrior!”
Thunder rumbled, the ground shaking as if furious at this sham. The new Feral threw back his head with a look of surprise and dawning excitement. Then he disappeared in a flash of colored lights, shifting into his animal for the first time. A moment later, an unnaturally large wolverine stood in the middle of the rock, snarling. And a moment after that, he was a man again, fully clothed, a look on his face entirely different from the one he’d worn before. Gone was the fear. In its place, evil slid across eyes gone cold.
Kara swayed, feeling suddenly clammy and light-headed.
Croc grabbed her arm, tight enough to leave bruises. “Back to your room, Radiant.”
At least if she stumbled, there would be someone to catch her. Tears burned her eyes. If only that someone were her beloved Lyon.
Lyon, where are you?
But no one answered.
Melisande clung to Fox, her arm wrapped around his thickly corded neck, his soft hair brushing her cheek as she shattered. Emotions locked beneath the ice flayed her alive. The grief. The crushing guilt. Pain.
Only the panic had eased, lessened momentarily by the strength of Fox’s arms. Her thudding heart merely raced now, the terror no longer trying to claw its way out of her throat. But the white fear was far from gone because she couldn’t mist. She couldn’t defend herself.