Feral Craving (17 page)

He lifted his weapon and fired. He barely
registered long brown hair, a dark trench jacket on the figure. The bullet sped
through the air, the sound loud, and caught the other male between the eyes.
Bari startled for a moment as the other threat fell to the ground in a heap.
The touch on this male’s mind had been brief but ugly; thoughts mirrored to the
one mind that led them out here, yet holding a touch of something familiar. He
couldn’t place what it was, but the feel of it screamed in alarm on the tip of
his tongue.

He turned and focused on the first male.
His mind radiated fury and evil. Everything slowed. Bari watched as the male
reached behind his back and started to pull his hand forward. Bari pushed from
his knees and caught a warning from Tyler. He fell to his back and raised his
hand, putting four and a half pounds of pressure on the trigger before the SIG
jerked. The shot sang through the air, and the male’s eyes widened in shock. He
looked down as a red bloom began on his chest and glanced back at Bari; he fell
forward, one last statement on his lips.

“She is ours. You’re too late.” A
bloodied grin turned up at him and then the light left Chad’s eyes.

Bari frowned. Something was off, had his
nerves on edge. None of this felt right. Someone wanted Mackenzie. He felt as
much when he touched on the two minds before. He just didn’t know who. His head
spun with information. He turned and glanced up, finding Tyler sitting on the
porch.

“Tyler…” The word came out of his mouth
like a question, confusion tumbling down to one moment when his entire world
shifted. It cut off as he glanced across the yard to the tree line behind them.
One lone man stood there, a man who looked so damn familiar that Bari’s breath
caught in his chest. Red eyes stared back at him, a mocking smile lined his
lips, and Bari took a step forward, then another. Soon he was running across
the yard without a word, and just as he came up on the familiar face, his
entire world exploded as bright light pierced his vision. Bari cried out as
pain pounded through his skull like a thousand needles puncturing him at once.
He felt a pull on his body, tried like hell to fight it, and only two sounds
filled his ears as the world around him wavered: a dark, haunting laugh and the
sounds of his teammates cursing.

Chapter
Twenty-One

One moment he had been standing in the tree line outside
the cabin, surrounded by two dead bodies and his team. The next, he was lying
on grass, somewhere deeper inside a forest. He knew it was deeper as the trees
here were thick with foliage and not a single house seemed to be around. He
scanned the area and saw nothing but heavy branches filled with thick, green
leaves. He stayed still on the ground, listening for anything out of the
ordinary, and after several minutes, lifted his body from the ground. Standing
to his full height, he stepped around a fallen log and out into the clearing of
a small area surrounded by tall oak and pine trees. The sound of water drew his
head around and before him stood the river just beyond a small patch of bushes.
The river being here only told him he was close to the cliffs. Far from home.

Bari frowned and scanned the area. A shifting from bushes
to his right had his head snapping in that direction and his hand tightening on
the SIG he still held.

“Who’s there?”

The bushes shook some more, and Bari crouched, willing his
mind to make sense as to what just happened. Somehow or another he had been
moved. How in the hell it happened, he didn’t know, but he’d be damn if he had
been brought out here to die.

He wasn’t ready for that shit yet.

“You have until the count of three to present yourself.” He
racked a round in the chamber and leveled it at the bushes. “One…Two…”

A lone figure stepped out from the line, just over the
other side of the river, and looked at him wide-eyed. He recognized her
immediately. How could he not? He saw Mackenzie narrow her gaze as she revealed
herself, stepping out from the shadows of the tree line at the riverbank’s
edge. As if the world stopped spinning, everything crawled in slow motion. The
sound of water babbled in the darkness, providing an eerie backdrop. He saw her
step forward, her boot rising, just barely hovering about the icy cool water.
Slow motion moved almost to a standstill as he saw it too late. The club came
down so fast that he hadn’t been able to shout out in warning. It smacked her
over the head and as if a heartbeat of time passed, the world froze before all
hell broke loose.

His world narrowed and tunneled to just one person, the one
who haunted his dreams, had been his sole comforter for so long, until nothing
else existed. Shock hit his veins first, and then denial as it couldn't be. The
tunnel that he seemed to be trapped in pushed out the sounds of the water
lapping over the dangerous, sharp rocks hidden below its murky waters, drowned
out the high pitched sounds of growls, something inhuman, around them, made
even the sound of his own heartbeat sound like thunder in his ears.

“Please, God, no.” The words were no faster out of his
mouth before he saw what he could only describe as his worst fear, something
that was supposed to be on his side creeping up behind Mackenzie. A demon, yet
it wasn’t one that was on his side any longer. Its huge form stood at about
seven and a half feet tall. Skin the color of burnt sausage pulsed with
hieroglyphic purple designs, tattoos that might be considered beautiful to
anyone looking at them, but to Bari they spoke volumes to the evil resonating
inside the beast. Spittle dripped from the sides of the demon’s mouth, drawing
down his chin and plopping to the ground with what seemed like heavy sounds to
Bari’s ears, but yet it seemed that, to Mackenzie, all of this went unnoticed.
A look of triumph marred the demon’s face as he realized he had gone
undetected. A wooden shaft lifted high in the air, and Bari heard the growl rip
through the air, coming out of his throat as panic seized him.

Mackenzie’s face went slack before her body fell forward
and with a sudden burst of power, he took two running steps before the energy
of his race embedded its way deep into his muscles. He launched himself over
the small river to the bank on the opposite side. The spark of metal flashing
under the moonlight caught his attention and with an overcoming sense of
urgency, he pushed his speed and didn’t stop running until he tackled the demon
to the ground.

He had to do something with Mackenzie in order to protect
her from the ultimate fate that had been scheduled upon her. He read each
little plan in the demon’s mind as his hands burned against the acid-covered
skin. He gritted his teeth under the onslaught of the liquid tearing his skin
from the muscle, working its way quickly down to the bone.

She had to risk her own life, in order to save his.

On his hands and knees, Bari drew his body up, straddling
over the demon below, and brought the back of his semi-automatic to the temple
of the beast. A loud roar rumbled up and out from the man’s chest, one sound
Bari knew he’d never forget. Without pause, the man struggled beneath him,
bucked Bari’s bulk like it was a feather. He countered each movement, tried to
anticipate it, but as the demon tossed his hips into the air, Bari had enough.
He fell forward and at the same time brought the pistol up to the beast’s
temple. A pull on the trigger and a second later a blast filled the air as
crimson fluid gushed out from the side of his head.

As Bari shuffled off of the demon, he crawled over to
Mackenzie and heaved his large body over, immediately wiping away the mud and
grime covering her face and pleading for anyone to listen. “Please be alive.
Please don’t let me be too late.”

His body moved before he registered the movement. As if
standing above the scene, he watched his hand lift to his mouth, distantly felt
sharp teeth slice through thick skin. Shock invaded him as his body moved on
its own accord and dropped a now dripping wrist to her mouth.

The sound of voices suddenly spread around him, grew
closer, and his heart pounded out its fear against his chest. He had to move,
needed to get Mackenzie out of here and disappear.

Removing his wrist, the steady line of crimson fluid
escaping from the corner of her mouth, he wrapped his thick arms around
Mackenzie’s form, pulled her against his body, and stood. With one pivot, he
stepped in the opposite direction of the voices and used all of the strength he
had, embraced in his beast, the power within, and ran.

****

Funny, she thought to herself … the voice she had been
carrying with her for years, the one she hoped to find again, was the last one
she would hear as death claimed her. Mackenzie’s head pounded, the sound
vibrating around the swollen tissue of her brain. Her breathing came out in
short pants. Her labored breathing was so loud to her ears she failed to pick
up on the extra set of shallow breaths until cool fingers brushed over her
temple. She winced, her entire body tensing as pain bloomed and then subsided
into a dull throb. As she cracked open one eye, the dim light from the corner
lit up what appeared to be a small cave. She tried to sit up, groaned loudly at
the protest her head gave and felt large fingers tug her back down. Surely she
had to be hallucinating; there couldn’t possibly be a way that the man
squatting there beside her was Bari.

“Bari?” Even as she spoke, pitching her voice low, she
winced as the sound made it to her ears.

“Yes, Mackenzie.” Her entire world shifted, rocked on its
foundation at the response. In her pain-induced haze, she figured she would
have been babbling to herself, that she wouldn’t get an actual answer back and
not one that confirmed the question she asked. Question after question
bombarded her, and she dragged herself to a sitting position. She pulled her
knees up and rested her small arms over them and squinted at the man sitting
across from her now.

“You never did answer me. How are you home? How did we go
from spending every second together to distant strangers as we are now?” The
question hung heavy, her voice echoing softly off the damp barren walls of the
cave, her eyes locked on Bari’s.

He let out a heavy sigh and scrubbed at the top of his head
furiously.

“Mackenzie,” he began, cutting off abruptly as his face
crumpled in pain.

Her eyes shifted from Bari to the dark sky outside. It
hurt, that much she’d admit. The pain was like a breathing animal inside of
her. He didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to rekindle their friendship,
nor was he answering any of her questions. Her vision sharpened as the ache
grew, the feeling of an anvil sitting heavy on her chest. She heard animals
rustling around, heard the wind changing directions and tried to listen for
anything else. Her mind spun with information she wasn’t sure was real. Had she
imagined the monster leering over her? Had she made up the dream of Bari
fighting him off? Her ears practically rang with how hard they tried to
pinpoint anything, alerting them that they were in danger.

She felt it deep in her bones, somehow knew the scene
wasn’t right.

“What are we doing here?” She looked around. “Actually,
where are we?”

As a whisper of a sound cut in through the nature of the
forest, Bari shifted, drew his hand up and a flash of dark metal caught her
eye. His palm wrapped around what looked to be a huge gun, the words Sig Sauer
written along the black barrel. His eyes shifted to hers quickly before
focusing outside the cave.

His large hand felt around in the darkness and covered
Mackenzie’s mouth as she took a deep breath and groaned. Pain rocketed through
her limbs.

The whisper of a touch brushed along her temple as Bari
laid his mouth right on her ear and spoke in such a low tone she strained to
listen.

“We need to move, Mac. There’s a tunnel that breaks off
behind this cave and will take us deeper into the mountain. I need you to try
to move quietly.”

Pain still coated the interior of her skull, but it wasn’t
as bad as when she had woken. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she felt
Bari’s hand grasp her wrist to slow her movements as she tried to hurriedly get
up.

“Shhhh ... stay still.”

Her eyes cut over at him at the command. She still couldn’t
shake the fact he was standing there next to her. As if a magnet, his body
called to hers in a way she didn’t understand. She shifted closer to him as
they peered at the tunnel entrance at the rear of the cave, his body moving to
stand in front of hers.

“Bari, what’s going on?”

He shook his head and pulled her backward, away from the
entrance of the cave. The blue of his eyes practically glowed in the darkness,
and she stared unabashedly, trying to understand how he did that.

The tunnel was low, and he had to crouch to follow it as it
twisted and turned down deeper into the mountain. The air thickened as the
oxygen thinned. After some time, Bari reached an arm out to brace her from
going farther. His head cocked on an angle as he listened. She focused on the
silence, strained to hear what he did and then heard the flutter as well, a
telltale wing flap of bats. An entrance came up in front of them, the edges of
carved rock darker than the air between them.