Jag rose to his feet, his own gaze whipping across the table to spear Paenther. "That witch of yours is doing something again. I can feel the energy rippling over my skin."
Skye's head snapped up with surprise.
Olivia ceased feeding abruptly.He'd felt her. No way.Impossible.
Paenther uncrossed his arms, one hand clasping Skye's shoulder protectively as the other hovered over his knife. "Skye is as loyal to the Ferals as anyone here."
Tighe shook his head. "I don't feel anything."
"Me either," Wulfe said.
Lyon's gaze zeroed in on Jag, his expression revealing wariness and concern, but no doubt. "What exactly are you feeling?" Jag might be a jerk, but clearly the Chief of the Ferals knew him well enough to know he wasn't making this up.
"Something..." Jag shook his head. "It's gone."
Olivia flushed hot, then cold. No one hadever sensed her feeding before.
Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed
"It felt like magic?"
"I don't know. Not like Skye's. At least not like what I felt with her before."
Lyon turned to the scarred warrior. "Wulfe, get the Shaman over here. B.P. and Skye, make sure there's no damned Mage in this house." He cringed. "Forgive me, Skye. I meant, nounwanted Mage in this house."
Skye nodded, a small, wry smile on her mouth. Paenther squeezed her shoulder, then held out his hand to her, and the pair followed Wulfe out the door.
Lyon's gaze swung back to Jag. "If you feel it again, I want to know."
Jag gave Lyon a cocky salute. "Aye, aye, Captain."
Olivia swallowed hard, willing her pulse to slow before she gave herself away. Ferals were reputed to be able to hear even a racing heart. Whether their hearing was really that acute, she didn't know, but now wasn't the time to test it.
Dammit, how was she supposed to feed if Jag could feel her doing it? She couldn't. Not with him anywhere close.
Which made her decision about partnering him easy and critical.
She most certainly could not.
She'd long ago learned to control her feeding so that she stole only low levels of energy, not enough to harm anyone. But she wasn't sure she could shut it off completely for any length of time. She'd never had to try. What if she forgot? What if, in her sleep, she started to suck energy? With Jag close enough to feel her, sooner or later he'd figure it out. Sooner or later the game would be up.
Her life would be over - the life her father had sacrificed his own for. Although Therian law no longer demanded death to the draden-kissed, those revealed had a habit of swiftly disappearing. At the very least, she'd be kicked out of the Guard and ostracized by the entire race. The only ones who would let her live among them were the humans, who didn't know what she was in the first place.
No, this was not a risk she could afford to take. Her heart sank as her grand hopes crashed around her feet. There would be no living near Feral House, not for her.
Someone else would have to lead the Feral's Guard auxiliary.
She'd help them find the Daemons because she'd committed to doing so and because it was too late to fly in a replacement. But once this assignment was done, she'd return to Scotland, far, far away from the only man to pose a real threat to her life since she was draden-kissed all those centuries ago.
The first man to get under her skin in too many years to count.
Jag.
Chapter Three
Kougar sliced the knife across his wrist, murmuring the words of the ancient chant as he slowly followed Hawke around the small pond deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The night was clear but for a thin fog that had formed after midnight. The breeze toyed with Kougar's short hair, but it barely registered any more than the sting of the blade or the blood running across his wrist. He'd long ago lost any ability to feel deeply.
His mind was focused on the task at hand, setting the trap to catch one of the three wraith Daemons the Mage had set loose on the world. For once, everything had come together.
This time, it was going to work.
Wraith Daemons required a certain kind of trap - a small body of water. In the old days, when Daemons were everywhere, the Therians had created their own by digging holes and letting the rains fill them before binding them with blood. But such traps were of limited use when hunting a single moving target. So far, ofno use.
While Hawke sprinkled the concoction of binding herbs, Kougar added the key ingredient.
Blood.
"If my calculations are right, we should be directly in his path," Hawke said over his shoulder, his voice even and low. "Finally."
For a week, they'd been tracking one particular Daemon; the three appeared to have taken off in different directions after the destruction of the cave where they'd been freed. This one headed northeast, traveling at a fast clip, though Kougar doubted he had a specific destination. Wraith Daemons had always been nonthinking predators of the worst kind.
Hawke's calculations said the Daemon would pass close to this spot tonight. For once, they'd found a small pond right where they needed it to be.
Tonight, they had to catch him.
When they'd finished the circle, Hawke turned to him, one wing-shaped brow lifting.
"Another round, just to be sure?" In the shadows of night, Hawke reminded him fiercely of the hawk shifter who'd come before him, the one the Ferals had called the Wind. An old, old Feral, and old friend, who had been killed in a Mage ambush a century and a half ago. The Wind had been Hawke's father, and Kougar often saw the father in the son.
Kougar nodded. "Another round."
As they once more walked the pond's damp perimeter, he felt the silent communion of the two animals, cougar and hawk, creatures who'd known one another for eons. In both the hawk spirit and the feral in which he resided, Kougar had always found wisdom and a fierce, yet quiet strength. When the Wind died, Kougar had lost his last link to the old times, his last link to the man he'd beenbefore. He'd feared that the coldness that had long ago encased his heart and stolen his ability to feel might finally destroy the last of his humanity. But the son and the hawk spirit itself had both reached out, filling the void left by the Wind's passing, tethering Kougar to the world of flesh and blood. Of duty and honor.
Kougar's heart might be gone, but thanks to Hawke, he still felt glimmers of emotion.
Friendship. Loyalty. Though Hawke knew little about Kougar or his past, he knew something, which was more than anyone else. Of all the Ferals, Hawke was the only one he ever found himself opening up to. Despite Hawke's keen and innate curiosity, he never pressed for answers. Which was why Kougar sometimes gave them to him.
When they'd gone around the pond a second time, binding tight the net of magic, the two shape-shifters moved back into the shadows of the trees to wait.
Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed
"It's said the Ilinas used to help the Therians set these traps," Hawke murmured.
A shard of ice contracted inside Kougar's chest. "They did. Ilina blood and magic was mixed with Therian."
"But you believe the traps will work with Therian alone?"
"They'd better."
Hawke's body went still as it often did when his mind was in full swing. "It's said the Ilinas were mist creatures, spiritlike in their natural state."
"That's true."
"Yet they bled?"
"They could turn to flesh and blood at will, and remain that way. In that state, their bodies were much like any Therian's."
"You knew Ilinas, of course."
Hawke alone knew how old he was. "Of course."
The hawk shifter glanced at him, curiosity a living thing in his eyes. "Do you know how they came to be extinct?"
The muscles in Kougar's face clenched. He knew, but he couldn't have told Hawke if his life depended on it. He said nothing, and Hawke didn't press.
"Were they as beautiful as stories claim?"
"They were as varied in looks as Therian women, petite in build, with eyes..." He glanced at his companion. "They possessed the brightest blue, green, or aqua eyes of any women I've ever seen."
Hawke's brow lifted, a glimmer of humor easing his expression. "If anyone else had said that, I might accuse him of waxing poetic."
"It's just a fact."
"I believe you." And his voice said he did. "I've never understood how an entire race of women can exist. They couldn't have procreated the way we're used to."
Pamela Palmer Rapture Untamed
"Only by accident. Their usual method consisted of magic."
"One would think they could have kept the race alive, had they wanted to." Hawke's tone was contemplative, as if he spoke to himself. "Then again, it's said their queen, Ariana, destroyed them herself."
Kougar said nothing. There was nothing hecould say because the truth was something he could never share. The truth was, the Ilinas weren't extinct at all.
"Kougar." Hawke's voice turned low and sharp."Daemon."
The gnawing hunger drove Olivia from her bed about an hour before daybreak. She'd slept little, and when she had slept, she'd kept dreaming she'd started feeding in her sleep, and the Ferals were barging into her room, knives drawn, ready to carve her up.
Kara had given her an upstairs room, third floor, but she wasn't sure where Jag's room was, or even if he was in it, and she had been afraid to take any chances. If he sensed her feeding again, it would no doubt spark a full-out witch hunt.
But she needed to feed. Usually, she spent her nights draden-hunting, sucking the little buggers dry of life, feeding on them before digging out their hearts with her knife. It drove her nuts to think there were swarms of them just outside Feral House, and she couldn't touch them. Not just because she was hungry, but because her drive to destroy draden was nearly as strong as her drive to live.
If only she could sneak out and find them on her own. But feeding off draden anywhere close to the Ferals was too dangerous. Even if she didn't have to worry about Jag feeling her feed, the others might see her. The moment they did, they'd know something was wrong. No normal Therian could survive a swarm the size of the ones near Feral House.
Her skin felt prickly and uncomfortable as it always did when she began to get energy-deprived. How sad was it that in a house filled with energy, she couldn't feed.
In the land of a thousand draden, she didn't dare go outside for fear of revealing her secret.
Which left her with one option, and not a good one. She was going to have to eat food.
Tons of food. Even that wouldn't satisfy her forever, but it might tide her over until she could get away from Jag.
Olivia groaned as she pulled on a dark green tank and her black fighting pants, the pockets loaded and ready with knives. She never went anywhere without her knives.
She'd learned early and bitterly that safety from draden was never complete. And while they could no longer hurt her, the very fact that they couldn't made it all the more critical that she be able to fight them. In case of draden attack, anyone looking would merely think she was quicker than the beasties. They'd never know she killed them by sucking the life out of them.
Except Jag.Dammit, this is going to get complicated if I don't get away from him soon.
As she started toward the stairs, she heard the front door burst open. Her fighter instincts kicked in, and she edged to the corner of the upstairs stairwell, where she could see who invaded Feral House, only to watch as four sweaty Ferals poured inside - Paenther, Tighe, the bald one she thought was Vhyper. And Jag.
They'd been slaying draden, no doubt. Even Jag looked exhausted. His hair hung damp and unkempt around his strong face, as if he'd run his fingers through it a dozen times.
His bare chest glistened beneath the glow of the chandelier, the play of muscles breathtaking even from two stories up, his armband gleaming around one massive biceps.
Her wayward body flushed, her pulse tripping, and she cursed and retraced her steps to her room. The last thing she needed right now was another run-in with Jag. She was too hungry. On too many levels.
Closing the door, she pressed her ear against it, listening to the soft pad of multiple footsteps on the stairs. She couldn't imagine fighting so many draden at once. In Britain, the largest swarms these days were usually no more than a dozen. The Guard roamed at night, in groups of four, and easily dispatched them.
But this close to Feral House, and the Radiant, she knew they could top a hundred.
Apparently, the scourge was multiplying faster than the Ferals could kill them, a problem that had grown all the more serious in recent months.
She waited silently, listening as three doors opened and clicked shut somewhere in the house. Three, not four. Far below, she heard the sound of the television. Not perfect, but good enough. All four would be sleeping or distracted while she proceeded to eat them out of house and home. Not literally. Hopefully. It had been a long time since she'd tried to live on nothing but food.
Taking a deep breath, Olivia eased out of the room a second time and made her way down one of the twin staircases that framed the elaborate three-story foyer. Feral House was a mansion decorated in an old-world style with lots of floral and gilt. As she descended the curving stair, she found her gaze drawn to the huge and vibrant painting on the floor - a scene of lush foliage, sprightly wood nymphs, and rugged centaurs.
The sound of rugby on the television carried down the hall, accompanied by a puppy's yips and the rumble of deep male laughter. The laugh rolled through her, stroking her with a bold, sensuous pleasure, and she found herself moving toward it on silent feet, drawn against her will.
As she neared the wide-open doorway of a well-tricked-out media room - a huge flat-screen television hanging on the wall before a bevy of large, leather recliners and sofas - the puppy's sounds of happiness rose. The man's laughter rolled through Olivia, lifting the corners of her mouth.