Obsession Untamed (2 page)

In a sudden, heart-jarring instant, a veil of darkness dropped over his eyes, swallowing everything. Tighe’s blood went cold.

He couldn’t see. “What the hell?”

“What’s the matter?” Wulfe asked beside him, as if nothing were wrong.

Shit. His pulse began to pound in his ears. This must only be happening to him. His vision was gone. Totally. Was this the first step to losing his sanity?

As quickly as his sight vanished, it reappeared, but his relief lifted and plummeted in the same instant. He wasn’t actually seeing. Like a movie lighting a dark screen, a scene appeared before his sightless eyes.

A harsh, bright light lit a rough room, nothing but half a dozen washers and dryers on a cement floor. A public laundry room. Two heavyset women worked, one shoving wet laundry from the washer into the dryer, the other standing before a nearby table, folding clothes. The standing one glanced toward him, her expression at once appreciative and wary.

“Hi,” she said cautiously.

Suddenly, her face grew in his vision as if a camera lens were pulling in close. Her eyes widened with terror as the room lurched dizzily. As if he’d attacked her and taken her to the ground.

Was this a premonition,heaven help him , of what he was to become?

Behind him, the other woman screamed, piercing his eardrums.

“No!” His victim threw up her hands, the terror in her eyes churning up rancid memories buried deep in his mind.

Memories of another time, another place.

His gut knotted until he thought he’d be sick. But he couldn’t deny the evidence. It seemed he was finally doomed to become the very thing he’d been accused of being all those long, miserable years ago.

A monster.

FBI Agent Delaney Randall strode up the front walk of the Potomac Side Apartments in southwest D.C., her hand fisted tight around her notebook, her gut burning with a need to find the bastard who’d killed more than a dozen women and children in the past three days.

To stop him before he killed again.

It was late, nearly 10:00 P.M. The last three murders had taken place in that general neighborhood, and she’d spent all day canvassing the nearby apartments, interviewing residents, searching for clues. Someone had to knowsomething . She was bone tired, but she wasn’t quitting until her body refused to move another inch.

Not while the murderer was still on the loose.

And, unfortunately, that could be a while. Even with more than a dozen victims, there was no real evidence. So far, there had been no witnesses and no DNA left at the scenes despite the teeth marks on the victims’ throats. Even the cause of the deaths was a mystery. It was as if God had
pointed His divine finger at each of them, and said, “Time’s up.”

The breeze blew loose tendrils of hair into her face as she strode up the front walk of the apartment building. A man in a polo and khakis walked toward her, the streetlight illuminating a nice-looking face. White male, late twenties, not visibly armed. Her brain clicked a mental picture, filing him away as yet one more suspect.

He flashed her a bleached smile. “Evening.”

But Delaney had already logged him, and her gaze had moved on to the pack of smoking teens sitting on the front steps ahead.

“Bitch.” The muttered word carried to her from the man she’d just passed.

Her gaze jerked back to him, her hand lifting to hover at her waist, a hairbreadth from her gun. But the man never looked back as he strode away purposefully.

Bitch, he called her. As if she had time to flirt when yet another scumbag was prowling the streets, hunting innocents.Moron .

She ran up the steps, past the teens, and tried the door. Locked, as she’d suspected. Through the glass, she saw a balding African-American with tufts of gray hair over his ears running with an awkward gait toward her. The building’s super, she supposed. She’d called a short while ago and asked him to meet her here.

As he neared the doors, the mix of agitation and fear on his face became apparent. Her instinct for trouble kicked into high gear, her pulse speeding
up, the fingers of her right hand flexing. Had she stumbled on a domestic situation in progress or finally hit the jackpot?

The instant the man opened the door, a keening cry high in the building raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

She flashed her badge and pushed through the doorway. “Agent Randall, FBI. What happened?”

“I called the cops, but they aren’t here yet.”

“What happened?”Her gun was in her hand now, senses on high alert.

“A lady dead in the stairwell. Her kid just found her.”

Her kid.God .

“How? Who did it?”

“Don’t know. There’s no blood.”

Without waiting for further explanation, Delaney ran for the stairs in the middle of the building, following the sound of the crying.

But as she neared the third floor, the stairwell became so clogged with people she could hardly get through. She holstered her gun, and barked, “FBI!” The nearest residents parted for her to pass, eyeing her with varying degrees of curiosity, wariness, and relief.

Pushing through the crowd, she finally reached the source of the wailing. A little girl of no more than seven lay across the prone and lifeless body of a woman, the teeth marks that had become the trademark of the serial killer in a perfect oval on her neck.

Delaney’s jaw clenched hard.

“Momma!” Tears streaked the child’s brown cheeks, her dark eyes wells of fear as she rose to pat her mother’s face. “Momma.”

Delaney’s heart clenched as the child’s fear flowed into her, echoing deep in her soul. She remembered that fear all too well. And hated,hated , the bastards who caused it. Thirteen people, now, that they knew of. Thirteenfemales . Seven of whom had left motherless children behind.

As she called in the murder, she pressed her palm to the top of the little girl’s head. “I’m going to get him.” The promise was too softly spoken for the child to hear, but the words imprinted themselves on Delaney’s heart.

Death was part of life. She accepted that. Right or wrong, it was man’s nature to fight and to kill. She understood deaths caused by war, even the misguided inner-city drug and gang wars. Wasteful as those deaths were, there was some testoster-one-laden male sense to them.

But there wasno sense to attacks like this. None.

She’d dedicated her life to stopping them. To stopping the evil that caused them. And this son of a bitch was at the top of her list.

Through the babble of voices and crying, a fresh scream sliced the air, echoing up from the bowels of the building.

Delaney’s blood went cold.

She pushed her way back into the crowd but had only managed to descend a couple of steps when an overweight blonde appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“He’s got my sister! He’s got my sister!”

“Where?” Delaney shouted.

“Laundry room,” the woman cried. “The basement.”

“I’m FBI. Get up here and stay here.”

“You got to save her.Save her! ”

As the woman dissolved into hysterics, Delaney scanned the crowd still standing between her and the blonde, then pointed at the two toughest-looking males. “You and you. Keep everyone back and send the cops down when they get here.”

The pair nodded soberly and parted the crowd for her to pass.

By the time she pushed through the metal door into the basement, she was alone. No sound reached her ears except the dull thud of her boots on the cement floor.

No screams. No crying. No woman begging for her life.

Delaney held her gun aloft, her heart thudding as she eased down the hall to the wide, brightly lit doorway. Pressing her back to the wall, she peered around the corner.

A huge, muscular man with short, sun-bleached hair looked up from where he knelt beside the prone and lifeless body of a woman who could have been the twin of the one who’d sent her down.

She had him.

With both hands she lifted her gun. “Freeze. FBI! Hands in the air!”

The man rose with an ease that belied his size, staring at her, not with the eyes of the guilty but
the cold eyes of a hunter spotting prey. Green eyes without humanity. Without mercy.

The eyes of Death himself.

A bead of sweat rolled between her shoulder blades. She was far from short, but this guy towered over her, his shoulders broad, his body lean and strong beneath the navy blue dress shirt and too-short khakis he wore without shoes. No way was she risking hand-to-hand combat.

A chill slithered down her spine. “Hands in the air, or I shoot!”

He moved so suddenly, so quickly, she barely got a shot off before he was on her, knocking her to the ground. Her head slammed against the cement as her gun went flying, jagged lights streaking her vision.

She’d hit him in the chest. Point-blank. He should be going down, dammit. She tried to fight him, but he was as strong as a bear as he pinned her to the floor.

His head dipped. As she felt his cold mouth open on her neck and the press of his teeth into her skin, she struggled against her immovable assailant, a scream of fury filling her mind.

Too soon. Too soon. She’d left too many killers walking the streets.

She didn’t have time to die.

Chapter Two

Still deep in the vision, beneath the harsh, bright lights of the public laundry room, the sound of footsteps had Tighe looking up from the body of the dead blonde into the face of a stunning, dark-haired beauty. Dressed in a no-nonsense navy blue suit, the brunette was tall and leggy, her hair pulled into a casual knot at the back of her head, the gun in her hands pointed at his heart.

A strange sensation pummeled the inside of his chest as he stared into her fierce, determined face. A feeling of connection gripped him. Almost a recognition.

“Freeze. FBI!” she shouted at him. “Hands in the air!”

He leaped at her as he had the other one. The
gun fired, but if she hit him, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t feel anything, could only hear the sound of her thudding heart and the slam of her head against the cement floor as he took her to the ground.

Their gazes met, and in the brown depths of her dazed eyes he saw not fear, but fury, and recognized the soul of a fellow warrior. Then he dipped his head to rip out her throat.

Tighe? Tighe!

He came back to the night in a rush, desperately swallowing the bile that tried to rise in his throat. Even as the stunning, dark-eyed beauty chiseled herself into his mind.

She can’t die.

Tighe!Wulfe’s voice echoed in his head at the exact moment fire slashed through his flesh like a thousand tiny knives ripping him out of his vision and back to his dark reality.

The horde of draden had found him.

Instinctively, he lifted his knives and began attacking the creatures, little more than floating gas beneath heads shaped like hideously melted human faces. They would steal his life if they got the chance. Beside him, his jaguar and wolf companions leaped and snapped at the attacking fiends.

Sweat rolled down his temples as the woman’s face,those eyes , swam in his memory.Mistake . His gut fisted with horror over what he was destined to do even as the draden tore at his flesh. He fought them off, the blood running in small rivulets down his neck and back.

What would drive him to attack a human woman?Two women?

But he knew. That chaos he’d seen swimming at the edges of his consciousness would overtake him before they found his clone, just as it had Wulfe before they’d destroyedhis clone. Like Wulfe before him, he was destined to become locked in a feral rage, lost to the violence that would transform him into an unthinking, unreasoning killing machine.

At least Wulfe had never gotten free of the Ferals’ prison. He’d never harmed anyone in that state.

“Wulfe, whatever you do,don’t let me go feral and escape .”

Not going to let it happen, buddy, Wulfe said mentally from his wolf form.Shift, Stripes. I’m taking over as bait .

It’s too soon.

The huge wolf turned into a man in a shower of sparkling lights. His friend looked at him grimly. “Do it.”

“Damn,” Tighe muttered. He must look as bad as he felt. In a harsh rush of power, he pulled on the energy and magic deep in his body and shifted into his animal form, his vision a quick flash of light. Raw, primitive joy surged through him as he shifted into a fifteen-foot Bengal tiger.

The draden released him with a high-pitched squawk. Tighe went on the attack, scattering and destroying the little fiends alongside the jaguar. Wulfe, standing naked in the moonlight, came under attack from the ungodly throng, digging out
their hearts as fast as he could, before they sucked the life force out of him or ripped him to shreds.

“You okay?” Wulfe asked. Tighe didn’t have to ask who he was talking to.

An answering growl was his only response.

I see the sire. The jaguar leaped, snapping his jaws around the largest of the draden, swallowing its beating heart to destroy it, dissolving the creature in a puff of smoky energy. The sire, or leader of the swarm, was the one who directed their flight. Kill the sire, and the rest would remain right where they were, lost and leaderless, making them easy marks for the animals, whom they couldn’t feed from and wouldn’t attack.