Obsession Untamed (35 page)

Another step, and he felt it, her too-cool fingers sliding around the bones of his shredded ankle.

I love you, Tighe. Her love flowed through him on a rush of warmth. The tiger spirit inside him stirred and raised his head. Strength began to flow once more through his body. She was pouring her love into him, making him strong. Healing him.

Brown eyes, I love you. More than life.

He felt her smile enfold him through the connection between their hearts.

Tiger! Delaney called softly.Help him.

The animal spirit inside him leaped to its feet. With a ferocious roar, he sent power rushing though Tighe’s body.Perhaps power enough to shift. But enough to fight?

He wouldn’t know until he tried.

Let go, D. Let go, sweetheart.

As her fingers fell away, he prayed to the goddess this worked, and pulled on the energy inside him to access his tiger form.

The lights flickered, then died, then flickered
again as he fought to shift. Hehad to shift. Only in his tiger form could he possibly beat the man who had his own strength but who was whole and strong, as he wasn’t.

Finally,finally , the transformation slid through his body, with none of the accompanying rush of joy. He’d shifted. But the draden had taken too much from him.

The clone whipped out his dagger, the light of battle in his eyes.

Tighe’s vision wavered. His heavy tiger’s body lurched drunkenly, and he doubted he could rally the energy to ward off the clone’s attack, let alone launch one of his own.

He had to. For Delaney, he had to.

He started forward on unsteady legs, watching as the clone lifted his dagger, ready to plunge it into his brain. A single stab wound wouldn’t kill him, but in his weakened state, it might be all the shitbag needed to drive him to his knees, where he would cut out his heart. And no creature survived without a heart.

I love you, D.

Don’t give up on us yet, Tighe. That small power boost from your lovely tiger spirit went both ways. I’ve broken free of his hold. I can move again.

As the dagger began its deadly descent, Tighe bunched his hind legs, desperate to find the strength to ward off the attack. To protect Delaney.

The first explosion rang through his ears, sending him back on his haunches. Two more rang out, the clone’s eye disintegrating, holes erupting in his face, before he understood what was happening.

Delaney. She’d reached her gun. Round after round exploded into the clone’s face.

Giving him a chance.

Tighe stumbled forward, grabbed the clone’s bloodless leg between his powerful jaws and tore it off his body, sending the demon spawn crashing to the ground, his dagger skittering away. With another powerful bite, he tore off an arm and tossed it aside. Collapsing across the clone’s broken body, he pulled off the other arm, then turned and gnawed off his second leg.

But the creature’s heart remained. And his head.

Tighe’s own heart cried out with the knowledge that destroying them meant destroying Delaney as well.

Tighe. Move me! Out of the pentagram. He’s still sucking the power. He’s still trying to steal your soul.

Rallying what little strength his body had managed to renew, he changed once more into a man, then stumbled to Delaney’s side and knelt in her blood.

“Oh, D.” Her skin was white as the clouds. As bloodless as the clone. With shaking hands, he scooped her up and into his arms, cradling her against him as he turned to his foe.

In a squawking frenzy, the draden took off, disappearing into the dark, as if suddenly released. The Ferals rushed onto the stone to surround him.

Delaney’s head lolled over his arm, as she fell unconscious. But her heart continued to beat.

The clone met Tighe’s gaze, his own face staring
back at him. “You can kill me, Feral. You’ll retrieve your soul. But you’ll lose your heart. She’s mine.” He grinned, dimples flashing, evil gleaming from eyes almost completely covered in black shards.

Jag kicked the demon spawn in the head, but the clone just continued to grin.

Jag pulled out his knife. “Mind if I do the honors?”

“Don’t,” Tighe growled. “He’s right. He’s tied himself to Delaney. When he dies, so will she.”

“Tighe.” Lyon’s palm squeezed his shoulder, transmitting a fine tension. “You see his eyes? There’s only a sliver of green left. Yours are the same. When that last bit of green goes, you die. You may only have minutes.We can’t lose you. ”

His soul cried.Delaney must live.

Inside, his tiger paced and leaped, growling and snarling. With a jolt, he realized the spirit was trying to get his attention. He was trying to…

“He’s trying to pull my soul back through Delaney’s body,” he murmured. And suddenly he understood. Pulling the soul back through her might just undo that evil connection.

Tighe’s gaze snapped to Lyon’s. “I need a power raising!”

“Done,” Lyon barked. “Now!”

The tiger inside him gave a powerful roar, his approval flowing through Tighe like a warm river. They would raise the spirits of the beasts. And in doing so, empower the spirit of the tiger.

Please, goddess, let this work. Let her live.

Jag and Lyon were already naked from their
shifting, as was Tighe from the decimation of his flesh. Kougar and Hawke yanked off their shirts.

Tighe’s flesh was quickly reknitting and almost healed again.

Lyon helped Tighe hold Delaney as he handed Tighe a knife. Tighe sliced his chest, slapped his palm to the blood, and shoved his fist into the air. The men formed a circle around the clone on the broad, flat goddess stone, and, one by one, sliced their own chests, slapping their bloody palms on top of his.

Tighe began to chant. “Spirits rise and join. Empower the beast beneath this moon.” The others joined him, the rhythmic words weaving with his heartbeat and Delaney’s, flowing around them, through them.

Thunder rumbled, the ground trembled as the great force of Mother Nature herself rose from the depths of the Earth, through the bodies of flesh and bone and up through their arms to the blood raised to the heavens.

“Empower the spirit of the tiger!” Tighe shouted.

A flash of lightning lit the sky, burning through the flesh of Tighe’s hand, sending power twisting through his body.

His tiger told him what he had to do.

Cradling Delaney in his arms, he knelt before what was left of the clone and held his hand out to Lyon for the blade.

The clone looked up at him with cold eyes. “The Daemons will rise again,” he murmured.

Tighe lifted the knife over the clone’s heart. “You
won’t be alive to know, will you?” He plunged the blade through the chest wall, cutting and hacking, then reached his hand in.

Inside, his tiger waited, their minds meeting in a way they never had before. The tiger flicked his nose up with a growl, urging him to complete the task. Tighe curved his hand around the beating heart and plucked it from the clone’s chest, crushing it in his fist as he poured his love into Delaney.

Inside him, the tiger pulled the missing half of Tighe’s soul through the woman they both loved, freeing her from the evil and,please goddess , healing her body and saving her life.

For a breathless heartbeat, Delaney’s body jerked, then filled with air and life as her wounds began to heal at the rate of miracles.

Joy filled him, twining with the amazing rush of life flowing back through his own body, and reuniting his soul.

He could hear her heartbeat, firm and steady, as he watched her blood-coated chest rise and fall beneath the healing wounds. Her hand twitched, lifting slightly, then relaxing as she stirred.

Dark lashes fluttered, slowly rising as her gaze took in the sky. He waited, breath caught, as those dark eyes turned to him.

“Brown eyes.”

She smiled at him. “Yours are green again.”

Emotion caught in his throat and he hauled her up until he could bury his face in her hair. “We did it, D. We did it.”

“Is he dead?”

“He is.” He blinked back the moisture blurring his vision and raised his head to meet her gaze as his brothers gathered around him, their hands slapping his now-healed shoulders in an outpouring of joyous relief.

Lyon stood at his elbow, his hand glued to Tighe’s shoulder, his eyes gleaming. “Damn, that was close. But you pulled it off. Brilliantly.”

Tighe just grinned.

Delaney wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled herself up in his arms, looking down at herself. “Uh, I know you can’t see a lot through the blanket of blood, but I need a shirt.”

Hawke tossed Lyon his own black silk shirt. As Lyon helped her into it, Delaney groaned.

“I can really do this myself. And I’m pretty sure I can stand. I feel fine.”

“I’m not letting you go,” Tighe growled.Ever. He met Lyon’s gaze. “I want the Shaman to look her over.”

“I was thinking the same.” Lyon turned. “Hawke, if you’ve still got a cell phone, call Wulfe and have him bring clothes, then call the Shaman and ask him to meet Tighe back at the house. We’ve got to get out of here before the humans come to investigate the gunshots.”

“What about the blood?” Delaney asked.

Lyon nodded. “I’ll call a Feral Circle. They’ll never see it. Then the rest of us are going draden hunting.” He turned to the others. “We’vegot to get that menace under control!”

As Lyon called a Feral Circle, and the others shifted back into their animals before any humans arrived, Tighe held Delaney against his heart.

He kissed her hair. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. Which makes no sense. I should be dead after what he did to me.”

Tighe smiled into her eyes, falling into the love shining in those dark depths, a love that stretched between them like an unbreakable cord. “When my soul returned to me, it passed through you, healing you.”

“That’s amazing.”

“It was the tiger’s idea. A damn fine spirit, that one.”

Delaney smiled. “I love you both.”

The tiger positively purred.

“It’s mutual, brown eyes. Both ways.” He brushed his forehead against hers.

“It’s really over?” she asked softly.

The rush of grief he felt rise in her nearly brought him to his knees.

She still meant to leave him.

He felt as if she were cutting out his heart. His excuses for keeping her here were all but gone. If the Shaman gave her a clean bill of health, he’d have no more reason not to cloud her mind, as he should easily be able to do now that the clone’s hold over her was gone. Taking her memories of this whole ordeal.

Taking her memories of him.

“D,” he said softly.He needed her . But somehow he had to convince her she needed him.

Chapter Thirty

“Tighe, I can walk.” Delaney tightened her hold on Tighe’s neck as he swung her through the front door of Feral House. “I feel fine.”

He’d been carrying her constantly since he lifted her off that pentagram, as if he were afraid to let her go.

“Not until the Shaman gives you a clean bill of health.”

“Stubborn man,” she muttered, loud enough for him to hear. But she kissed his cheek, softly, loving that he cherished her so.

Loving him.

How am I ever going to live without him?

A glad cry rang from high up the stairs, and Delaney looked up to see Kara running toward them,
her face wreathed in joy. “You did it!” She wrapped them both in a big hug. “Lyon said you’d gotten him, but I had to see for myself.” Kara’s gaze swung to her. “Are you okay?” The uncomplicated friendliness in Kara’s eyes warmed her all over again.

“As I keep telling Tighe, I feel fine. But he refuses to let me down.”

Kara stepped back, a knowing smile lighting her eyes.

The sudden tightening of Tighe’s grip on her had her looking at him with question.

“What’s the matter?”

“Have you met Pink?”

“No, but Kara’s told me about her.” She knew Pink was their cook and housekeeper. And half-flamingo.

She felt the stiffness go out of his hands. “Good. Pink, come join us.”

Delaney turned to look down the hall, where the extraordinary creature walked slowly toward them. The size of a woman, she possessed a human-looking face and hands, but her legs were those of a flamingo. In place of skin, she was covered in pink feathers.

Kara had told her that Pink should have been a Feral many centuries ago, but the animal spirit had flown to her in the womb, just before the egg split, creating twins. And possibly destroying the animal spirit. Pink’s twin had been killed in an attempt to free the animal, but it hadn’t worked. So Pink kept house and cooked for the Ferals, safe from the prying eyes of humans.

“Let me down, Tighe. I want to greet her properly.”

With a grumble, he did, and Delaney turned to the unusual woman. “Hi, Pink. I’m Delaney.” She held out her hand. “Do you shake?”

The bird-woman inclined her head and held out her own.