Ellora's Cavemen: Tales from the Temple II (28 page)

Lark hit the brakes, peering out the Honda’s windshield at the darkened street.

“Are you sure, Xedda?” The sole surviving streetlight along the sidewalk revealed boarded windows, piles of garbage, and graffiti-splattered brick that did not fill her with confidence. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

Oh, hell, who was she trying to kid? It looked like just the kind of place Jack would head for in his holy mission to find his sister’s killer.

As she glanced around, she spotted the flash of rotating blue lights coming from the entrance of a nearby ally. Her heart leapt into her throat.

“Oh, yeah, he’s here all right,” Lark muttered. “Figures.”

Her gaze locked on that flashing light, she pulled the Honda into the nearest empty spot and turned off the engine. Thrusting the driver’s door open with an impatient hand, she got out and promptly stepped in something that squished under her high-heeled foot. “Shit.” Lark stepped out of the puddle of slime and slammed the car door closed, hitting the remote locks on her key fob. “I hope to hell you’ll appreciate what I’m going through for you, Jack,” she grumbled.

“We’re gonna kill you, you fuckin’ cop bastard!” The male bellow snapped her gaze toward the alley.

“Dream on, asshole,” a male voice snarled back. Lark frowned. It sounded like Jack’s, but with a deep, rumbling quality she’d never heard before. “I’m not one of those helpless women you like to prey on.”

Glass shattered, mixing with male grunts of effort and the scrape of feet over pavement as Lark broke into a run. She had to dodge broken malt liquor bottles and twisted chunks of metal as she made for the alley. It figured she and Xedda would find Jack the day she’d decided to wear a short skirt and three-inch heels to work.

As she skidded between the two boarded-up buildings, the first thing Lark saw was a police motorcycle dumped on its side, its engine still rumbling. Two men fought in the illumination of its rotating bubble light, exchanging merciless blows.

Despite the circumstances, Lark’s heart leapt. Finally, after more than a week of fruitless searching, she’d found Jack Ramsey.

Then she got a closer look at him. “God, Jack,” she muttered, “what the hell have you done to yourself?”

At least the being that had possessed him hadn’t changed that powerful body. He was still the biggest damn motorcycle cop Lark had ever seen, looking like one of her 168

Taming Jack

kinkier fantasies in those polished knee-high bike boots. Bunching biceps strained at the short sleeves of his uniform shirt as he pounded blow after blow into his opponent.

Muscle worked up and down his broad back under the thin blue shirt, and his thighs bunched as he threw his weight into every punch.

The face under his helmet was thinner than it had been six months ago, and there were deep hollows beneath his high, chiseled cheekbones. Lines of bitterness and suffering bracketed the wide mouth under his thick sable mustache. His sister’s murder had aged him. Lark could almost feel the pain that ate at his soul.

But it was the cold, feral determination burning in his deep-set black eyes that sent a chill through her. This wasn’t the laughing lover she’d hoped to marry. This man was a driven avenger, as willing to destroy himself as those he hunted.

The current target of all that holy rage was just as big and brawny as Ramsey himself, despite the beer gut sagging over the man’s huge silver belt buckle.

At first glance, he looked like every redneck thug Lark had ever seen. Tangled, greasy hair tumbled around his bull shoulders, and his snarl revealed missing teeth.

But when Lark met his gaze for an instant in the cycle’s strobing light, she realized he was something much, much worse than the crude bruiser he appeared. There was more than malice and cruelty in those bloodshot eyes. There was evil, an evil so profound and alien that it was no longer quite human.

Like Lark and Ramsey himself, the thug had been possessed. But unlike them, there was nothing remotely good in whatever it was that had moved into his mind.

“
We’ve got to help the girl
,” Xedda whispered.

“What girl?” Lark demanded, tearing her eyes away from the battle.

“There,”
the spirit said, directing her eyes toward a pitiful figure lying near the cycle.

It was no wonder Lark hadn’t spotted her. She looked like nothing more than a pile of rags.

“What the hell did that thing do to her?” Lark hurried toward the girl, only to break step as she got close enough to see the victim clearly. The woman’s blood-smeared T-shirt was up over her breasts, and her jeans jerked down to her shins. The halves of her bra flopped open across her chest, as though the thug had simply sliced it apart between her breasts. Something dark and wet gleamed on her bare thighs. Lark’s stomach lurched as she realized it was blood.

Dropping to one knee beside the woman, she noticed an object on the ground beside the woman’s head, shining in her pale tangled hair.

A knife.

“
Jack stopped him before he could finish her
,” Xedda whispered. “
Yet still her life drains
away.
”

“What do I do?” Lark licked her dry lips, barely aware of the meaty thud of a body hitting a brick wall somewhere down the alley. “I don’t even have a first aid kit!”

169

Angela Knight

She could sense the spirit’s amusement. “
You don’t need one. Just touch her. I’ll do the
rest.
”

Lark’s heart gave another nervous thump.
Is this going to hurt
? she wondered, then, with a glance at all the blood, pushed that concern aside. Extending one shaking hand, she touched the victim’s pale face.

Her skin felt cool under Lark’s fingers, despite the warm summer night. She was in shock. They didn’t have much time.
Okay, do it,
Lark thought to the spirit.

Something… opened inside her. Suddenly it seemed Lark was
in
the woman’s mind as numbing cold stole up her arms and legs like frost, climbing for her heart. She fought her instinct to shrink away. “What…what’s that?”

“
Death
,” the spirit said. “
But it won’t have her. We won’t let it.
”

Whoom!

Energy came roaring out of Lark’s body in a burning flood. As one, she and the victim screamed, spines arching, arms flinging wide as Xedda poured magic into the girl’s battered, torn body, forcing it to heal itself with mystical speed.

And bringing her back to life.

Then it was over, and Lark hit the ground beside the woman she’d saved, dazed, burning, and exhilarated. She’d never experienced anything like it. “Oooh,” she muttered. “Now
that
was a rush!”

“What…?” the girl murmured. “What happened?” Her name, Lark suddenly knew, was Carolyn Jennings. She’d come into the neighborhood in search of a little weed for her boyfriend, and had ended up attacked by…something that looked like a man, but wasn’t.

“Just be still,” Lark managed. “Rest.”

“They’re fighting,” Carolyn said, trying pitifully to rise. “The cop and… Oh, I’ve got to get out of here. They’ll…”

Somehow sensing what to do, Lark extended a trembling hand and touched Carolyn’s face. “Sleep now,” she murmured. “We won’t let anything hurt you.”

This time the force that poured from her fingers was cool and soothing. The girl’s eyes fluttered closed, and she slumped back.

“
I can soften her memory of what happened
,” Xedda said. “
Make it less vivid, edit out the
contact she had with Billy Simpson’s Dark Rider. It would be best
.”

Lark frowned. “Billy Simpson?”

“Simpson is the man Jack’s fighting. A sadist and a killer even before he allowed himself to
be possessed by one of the Dark Ones. Had Jack not stopped him, Billy would have killed the girl
so his Rider could feed on her life force.”

She grimaced. “Yeah, that sounds like the sort of thing a girl would be better off not remembering. Go for it.”

170

Taming Jack

Again, the spirit slid away into Carolyn’s mind. As she worked, a thunderous bang brought Lark’s head up. Her heart skipped a beat.

Simpson had slammed Jack into the side of a metal dumpster so hard the steel had dented around the officer’s big body. Her lover hit the ground on all fours, dazed.

“Oh, you’re dead now, fucker!” Simpson snarled, lifting both ham-like fists over the deputy’s head, evidently meaning to smash them down on him.

One second, Jack was on his knees. The next, he’d flipped around and sent one booted foot scything across Simpson’s calves, cutting his legs out from under him. Even as the big man went down with a startled bellow, the cop surged to his feet. Grabbing Simpson by his huge belt buckle, Jack snatched him right off the ground and heaved him into the brick wall.

Lark blinked. The spirit that had possessed Jack must have turned him into the next best thing to Superman; that bruiser easily weighed three hundred pounds.

Before Simpson could recover, her lover took a couple of running steps forward and slammed a fist into his beefy face. The impact rammed the bruiser’s head into the wall behind him. Brick broke with a crunch. Jack followed the blow with two more to Simpson’s beer gut, driving him halfway into the wall.

“Jesus,” Lark breathed, “what the hell did Jack let move into his head?”

“
A Paladin— a guardian hunter spirit
,” Xedda said. “
It makes him far stronger than
human, not to mention almost invulnerable
.”

With a roar, Simpson surged out of the wall, leaving a man-shaped indentation in the broken brick, and slammed his fist into Jack’s face. The cop went flying to hit the ground on his back and skid ten feet down the alley.

“
Unfortunately, Simpson’s equally powerful
,” Xedda said.

Fear clutched at Lark’s heart. “I can’t just stand here. What can we do to help?”

“Nothing, at least right now. My powers are strictly mental – we don’t have that kind of
physical strength. Given the chance, Simpson’s Dark Rider would feed on both of us. Then he’d
use the power our lives would give him to kill Jack.”

Lark bit her lip as every instinct rebelled at the thought of staying on the sidelines while the man she loved fought for his life. Unfortunately, it sounded as though getting involved would only hand his enemy another weapon. “Okay, so we sit this one out.”

“Now,” Simpson snarled. “I’m gonna feed!” He flung himself through the air to land directly on top of the cop.

“Jesus!” Lark said, surging to her feet and staring helplessly at the two men as they battered at one another on the ground.

There was a blur of motion. Suddenly Jack was on top of Simpson, driving his fist down into the man’s face repeatedly, his muscled arm working like a piston.
“Suckered
him in,”
Xedda said, sounding smug.
“He’s got him.”

171

Angela Knight

The cop rose to his feet and jerked Simpson upright, then spun him around. Before the big man could pull away, Jack wrapped both arms under his and around his head in a hammerlock. “Now,” the cop growled. “We’ll see who feeds!”

“Let go, you son of a bitch!” Simpson screamed and bucked in Jack’s hold, but the cop held on despite his frantic writhing. “Get off!”

“Not a chance,” Jack snarled. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Heather!”

Lark stared. Oh, sweet God!
That
was the man who murdered Jack’s sister?

“Noooo!” the killer screamed. Streamers of red, shimmering smoke began pouring from his eyes and mouth. Jack inhaled, drawing in the smoke, drinking it down. His own eyes flared bright crimson as his face twisted with an awful sort of triumph.

Lark caught her breath.
This was what I saw in my vision!

As she stared, not even daring to breathe, Simpson seemed to shrink, as though transforming from a superhuman behemoth to nothing more than a somewhat tubby thug.

“That was just an appetizer,” Jack growled in the killer’s ear, his voice even deeper, rougher, and nastier, than it had been a minute ago. He barely sounded like himself at all. “Now this—
this
is for Heather.” He tightened his grip on Simpson’s head. “And all the other women you killed and raped, you sick fuck.”

“
He’s lost control. He’s going to kill Simpson
,” Xedda said urgently. “
Stop him
!”

172

Taming Jack

“Me?” Lark’s heart began to pound. Dry-mouthed with fear, she stared at her lover as he prepared to snap Simpson’s neck like a fistful of dry spaghetti. “How?”

“
Talk to him
,” the spirit said. “
Hurry
!”

Xedda was right. She couldn’t just stand by and let Jack do this. It would destroy him in every sense of the word. “Stop!” Lark started across the alley as his biceps bunched, the cords working in those powerful arms as he tightened his grip on Simpson’s head and prepared to jerk. “Jack, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

she snapped with all the cold authority she could muster.

He looked up, startled by the sound of her voice. His eyes glowed with a red, demonic blaze that made her blood run cold.

“Lark? What the fuck are you doing here?” Getting a good look at her, he gaped, looking almost human again. “Jesus, you’ve got a Spirit Rider! Why in God’s name did you let that thing move into your head?”

“To save you, Jack,” Lark told him crisply. “And you need it. Let him go, dammit.

You’re a cop, not an executioner!”

“He killed Heather.” Jack’s grip tightened. “Not to mention four other women, plus the six he raped even before he let the Dark Rider possess him. If anybody deserves to die, it’s him.”

“Maybe, but how are you going to explain breaking his neck?” she demanded. “If you kill him, you’re the one that’ll end up charged with murder. Is that what Heather would want?”

He bared his teeth in a snarl as he looked down at the man he still held helplessly pinned. Simpson’s head lolled. Either losing his Rider had knocked him cold, or the cop had somehow rendered him unconscious. Jack’s face hardened as his grip suddenly tightened. “Maybe I’d be better off in jail.”