Obsession Untamed (34 page)

“As ready as I can get.”

He released Kara, then turned to Delaney, took her into his arms, and stared deeply into her eyes, all the way to her heart. The warmth rushed into him. He nearly closed his eyes to drink the sweet intensity of her love, but he forced himself to hold her gaze.

Slowly, he repeated the second batch of lines they’d rehearsed. “I have to go, D. The trap isn’t working. They need me to add my power to theirs.”

“Be careful, Tighe. I love you.” The fear in her eyes was real. As was the love.

Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her thoroughly. When his mind told him it was time to pull away, to leave, as they’d planned, his hands wouldn’t let go. What if their plan failed? What
if he never made it back to her before his soul was spent?

Goddess, but he needed just one more kiss. But then he’d need another and another. With a massive force of will, he cupped her cheek and pulled away.

Tears glistened in her eyes. “Be careful.”

“Always.” Then he turned and left Feral House, stepping into the cool night wind.

As he ran across the circular drive at a slow jog, his body was tense and ready for the fight for his life. He just prayed he’d timed this right, that the clone would come for him before the draden, before he had to shift. Prayed that he’d come for him at all. Because if he didn’t…

Tighe clenched his hands as he ran. He might have just held Delaney for the very last time.

Tighe? Hawke’s voice rang in his head.Was there a part of this plan you didn’t tell us about? The part where Delaney runs out of the house on her own ?

Tighe slowed, his mind scrambling.No.

I’ll get her.

Out of nowhere, a dark cloud of draden descended, blocking out the treetops.Shit. He was going to have to shift. As he transformed into his animal on a rush of power, Wulfe’s curse rang in his head.

The damn draden are attacking the animals!

No sooner did Wulfe’s words register than the draden bit right through his tiger’s fur.Dammit. Just as they’d attacked Hawke and Kougar by the Lincoln Memorial.

Tighe’s blood went cold, understanding slamming him in one fell blow.It’s the clone! The clone can control the draden. His heart clenched with fear, his mind screaming with pain.Goddess help her. He’s controlling Delaney!

Chapter Twenty-nine

Tighe fought back the draden, gut clenching, terror pounding through his brain as he sent his heart outward, seeking Delaney.

A hundred times brighter than their old connection, the bond that bridged their hearts showed him the way. With draden clinging to him, he took off through the woods, following his sense of her, feeling her confusion and fear.

Goddess stone, he sent out to the other Ferals.He’s taken her to the goddess stone.

We’ll get there as fast as we can, Hawke said.We’re fighting for our lives right now, buddy. The draden have got us good.

Abruptly, his tiger’s vision went black. He careened to a stop, slamming shoulder first into a
tree. Draden tore at his tiger’s flesh, but the only pain he felt was in his heart and mind. Because he couldn’t reach her. And the only reason he’d be getting a vision was if the clone was about to feed.

Delaney’s mind fought to draw her weapon,to fight , but her body remained still and trembling before the monster who wore Tighe’s face.

“What have you done to me?”She stood before him on a wide, flat rock high above the Potomac, the cool wind whipping at the loose tendrils of her hair.

As she’d waited in the foyer of Feral House, armed and ready for whatever came, she’d felt this sudden, inexplicable need to leave. At first, she’d thought it had something to do with the strange new connection she had to Tighe and feared he’d needed her, so she hadn’t fought it. But the moment she was outside, her feet took off as if they had a mind of their own, and she’dfelt him. The clone. Controlling her.

Inside her.

He reached for her now, cupping her face in his hands, shooting cold through her body as his face took on an expression she’d often seen on Tighe’s. As if she were the most precious thing in the universe.

“What have you done to me?” she demanded a second time.

His mouth turned up in a smile that froze her from the inside out. “I’ve made you my channel key.”

She didn’t know what he meant by that. And was pretty sure she didn’t want to know.

“I see the questions in your eyes, fair Delaney. A channel key is made by infecting a human with a bit of Daemon consciousness. And letting it grow.”

She stared at him.“You’re taking over my mind?”

“No, just a small piece of your will. Enough to use you for the key’s true purpose.”

Her insides quivered with dread. “Which is?”

A single, icy finger slid down the slope of her nose. “To open the channel to the dark power deep in the earth. Power I need in order to call the other half of my soul and to find the master of the witch who created me so that I might add my strength to those who work to free Satanan and the Daemons from the blade.”

Her mind flared with denial. She wouldn’t help him! “You can’t free them from the blade. Only the Ferals can do that.”

“For a time, that was true. But the dark powers are amassing, and that time is gone.” He stepped back and motioned to the rock behind her. “Bare your chest for me, Delaney, and lie down in the center of the pentagram.”

Her blood went cold. Her brain screamed with refusal. But her body obeyed. She tugged off the long-sleeved tee shirt, pulled off her bra, and lay on her back on the cold stone in the middle of the blue-painted star.

As she looked up at the glowing clouds against the dark sky, her mind and heart reached for Tighe. Pouring her love into that link, unable to hide her
terror or her outrage that she was to be used as the instrument of his death and that she was powerless to stop it.

As the clone looked down at her, for a desperate moment, she thought Tighe had come. But then she saw the flash of a wicked blade and knew that the nightmare wasn’t over at all. It was just beginning.

As the knife pierced her chest and began a downward slide, a scream launched through her head, echoing off the walls of her skull and tearing, like blades of ice, through her brain. But no sound left her mouth, no sound shattered her eardrums. The clone’s control over her was total.

The knife slid down, then beneath each breast as if cutting a design in her flesh, engulfing her in a river of agony from which there was no escape. Blood ran down her sides. And the scream in her head went on, and on, and on.

Tighe lifted his head and let out a ferocious roar of misery and fury.

Tighe? Lyon’s voice.

Tighe knocked into another tree, stumbling through the woods, blind, blood caking his fur from the dradens’ bites.He has her on the goddess stone. He intends to use her to access dark power. To steal my soul and help free Satanan.

Like hell. Can you reach her?

A wild rage ripped through his tiger’s body, sending him thrashing through the trees.Not until I can free myself from this damned vision!

We’ll converge there as fast as we can.

Sweat ran with the blood, but he kept moving, following the sound of Delaney’s terror.

He was cutting her.

He had to get out of the vision!

Quit feeding, shitbag. Let me get out of your head. But he watched as the knife carved…a pentagram.On her chest. He was going to be sick.

Breathe.

The vision suddenly disappeared in the same moment the draden took off. A weird frisson of energy pierced the air, but Tighe wasted no time wondering about it. He ran on all fours, parting the woods in a flash of orange fur.

Something’s happening, Lyon said.

Tighe gave a ferocious roar.He’s trying to raise the dark power. I’m on my way to the goddess stone, now.

As he raced through the forest to reach his heart, to save the woman he loved, he prayed he wasn’t already too late.

Tighe reached the goddess stone at the same time as the other Ferals.

What the fuck? Jag said, still in his jaguar form.

As one, they stared at the goddess stone. Or at the spot they knew the goddess stone should be, because they sure as hell couldn’t see it.

The draden swarmed the stone by the thousands,the millions.

And Delaney was there.

With a roar, Tighe leaped down the rocks on his tiger’s paws, following the sound of the scream,
Delaney’s scream, flowing down the line that connected their hearts. He felt the others close behind him as he launched himself into the draden.

The collision knocked him back on his haunches as if he’d run into a concrete wall.

What the hell? He should have gone through!

As he sprang to his tiger’s paws, he saw the others picking themselves up, too.

Magic, Lyon said.Damn powerful magic.

I’ll make it, Tighe growled. Hehad to make it. Delaney needed him.

Opening his mouth wide, he tried to grab the little suckers in his jaws, but his teeth scraped the surface of the magic and never touched the fiends themselves.

His frustration tore through the night on a furious roar. In a desperate move, he shifted to human, praying he’d draw them out of the magic to attack him.

They didn’t move. The draden wall remained solid.

“Delaney!”

His blood boiled even as his heart felt as if it had been shot through with ice. He had to reach her.He had to reach her!

With a rage born of desperation, he slammed his fist into the unnatural wall and felt it sink up to his elbow.

It worked.

But the pain and tearing had him instinctively yanking back, only to stare, disbelieving at what was left of his arm. Little more than shredded remnants of flesh clinging to the bone.

“Holyshit ,” Jag murmured, taking human form. Then tried to slam his fist through, too, but his fist only bounced off as his jaguar’s body had.

Lyon, Kougar, and Hawke, too, shifted and tried to punch through, but only Tighe was able to breach the wall.

Lyon’s gaze met Tighe’s. “Looks like this is your fight.”

Tighe nodded. As he dove headfirst into that feeding frenzy, he heard Lyon behind him.

“Kill the son of a bitch.”

As he pushed through, inch by inch, he felt his flesh being devoured by savage mouths, his life force being sucked from his body. When he finally emerged onto the goddess stone, he stumbled, barely able to stand.

“Tighe.”Delaney lay as he’d seen her in the vision, but so much worse, her eyes tight with pain and despair, and horror at the sight he must be with his flesh nearly gone. Her own flesh was open, her blood spilling over the rock too fast for her to possibly be still alive and conscious.

Opening himself to her, he felt it. The dark hold the clone had on her, the talons gripped around her heart. It was all that was keeping her alive.

And in a shattering moment, he understood. The second the clone died, so too would Delaney.

His fury swung to the one responsible.

The clone stood a few feet away, his face and chest raised to the heavens like a man inhaling air…or power.

Tighe tried to shift into his tiger form, his stron
ger form, but he was too weak to do even that. So he did the only thing he could. He launched himself at the clone. And took a fist to the face that sent him reeling back into the wall of draden. The small bits of flesh that had started to regrow were chewed off before he could push himself out of the little monsters’ grasp again.

The clone chuckled, grinning Tighe’s grin. “You can’t stop me, Feral. I’m nearly through, and when I’m done, you’ll be dead.”

“You’ll never get away.”

“With my draden guard, who’s going to stop me?”

The Ferals would stop him. He prayed to the goddess they’d be able to stop him. But he wasn’t at all certain they could.

Tighe.Delaney’s voice floated through his head, soft and weak.Come to me.

I’m here, sweetheart.

No, my tiger. Come over here where I can touch you. I need to touch you.

He wasn’t sure how she could even stand to look at him, let alone touch his decimated flesh. Though second by second his body regenerated, he still looked more ghoul than man.

Lowering his center of gravity to a fighter’s stance, he began to circle the clone, inching his way toward Delaney until his feet were slick with her blood.

Brown eyes.Grief swept through him, swift and terrible. She was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.Sweetheart, I’m sorry.
I should have been there to stop you. To protect you.

We tried. It was a good plan.

Are you in terrible pain? He’d been able to feel her pain initially, but either it had waned, or his own was blotting it out.

I feel nothing but my love for you, Tighe. I’ll always love you. I’ll always watch over you.

His heart cried with anguish.Don’t give up, D. I’m going to find a way to save you. I have to find a way to save you!