Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (71 page)

Equally important, she could make sure the Crusader was brought to justice. Most of his crimes were beyond the penal code, but his assault on her would be enough to put him behind bars for a while.

Lionel gripped the helm with one hand and offered her the boat’s first-aid kit with the other. Sal glared at the Crusader, making sure he was still lashed to the railing before she rose from her seat. The younger man cowed away. He’d better.

Sitting back down, Sal opened the kit and took out an antiseptic gauze. Carefully parting her bloody hair, she went to find the huge gash on the back of her head. But the more she searched, the less she found. The laceration had been at least four inches long. Her scalp had been flailed open. Sal had feared she had a hairline fracture to her skull, yet she couldn’t find a single defect.

Her head was completely healed. How could that be?

Then she remembered Tyr’s hand on her. His tender touch. He had been more than just caring, he had healed her.

Sal stood up so quickly that she rocked the boat.

“
Hey! Watch out!” Lionel exclaimed as he steadied their path.

Tyr had lied. He hadn’t been completely out of HeartsBlood. In fact, he’d had enough to heal her. He’d used the last of it to save her.

“
Turn around!” she shouted over the engine’s sound.

“
Why?” the Crusader whined.

“
Pull into the docks!”

To her surprise, Lionel smiled. “I was wondering when you’d figure out that you’d stopped bleeding.”

Sal hadn’t even realized that their course hadn’t been a straight line toward the City, but Lionel had been angling them around to the west side of the island. Angling them toward the closest point to the prison. That dark, hulking structure that had brought nothing but misery and suffering to the island.

Maybe she and Tyr could change its legacy.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 92

“
This is, seriously, the most moronic idea I’ve ever heard,” Lionel commented. And the professor didn’t even know that Tyr hated her helping, or that each time she had overridden his objections, it had ended in disaster.

Sal jumped from the boat to the dock. “Just cross the bay and get help. I mean helicopters, armor-piercing rounds, SWAT, everything.”

“
I’m telling you, I can help,” Lionel asserted.

Sal pushed the skiff away from the island. “We can’t risk your brain getting into the beast’s clutches.”

Lionel frowned as he fired up the engines and pointed the boat toward the City. “Thanks for the concern.”

After making sure the professor was headed toward safety, Sal turned to Alcatraz. The red glow in the distance confirmed that the beast was still on the far side of the compound. The side with the fireworks. Everyone might appreciate their beauty, but in reality, those sparkling displays were high-charge explosives.

The beast had recruited a man with an expertise in explosives. One didn’t need a PhD to figure out that that didn’t bode well for Tyr. Sal could remember those not-so-bestial eyes back at the museum. His simian speech.

The beast had once been a human who meddled in blood and descended into the foul creature that threatened all their lives. For all she complained that Tyr didn’t respect the beast’s intelligence enough, Sal had been just as guilty.

It had never occurred to her that he would turn a man into his servant. Or use explosives as a weapon. The situation had seemed hopeless. The beast was always five steps ahead of them. Manipulating the playing field. Turning their ignorance to his advantage.

Then back on the boat, in that moment when she realized that Tyr had sacrificed the last of his HeartsBlood to heal her, Sal knew she could give the hunter an even greater gift.

She could give Tyr that which the beast sought. Not the chemical composition of Lionel’s compound, but something even better. The gel itself. Sal had been so busy trying to save their lives that she had missed the opportunity to actually, literally, save their lives.

All this time, she had known where a small aliquot of gel was hidden. On this island. This very island.

The two geeks had been up on that third floor for a reason—to test Hing’s gel against the Crusader’s chemical engineering. Kind of like the old days, when they had races between the Pony Express and the railroads.

What neither the beast nor Tyr knew was that they never got the chance to test Lionel’s theory, since he’d injured his hand. The gel should still be smeared across the locking mechanism.

Tyr might nearly be out of blood, but if the gel had the properties they feared, Sal knew that he would finally have the upper hand.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 93

Sal snuck up the second flight of stairs, jumping at any little sound. The park rangers that lived on the island swore the place was haunted. A building built from concrete shouldn’t have had any boards to creak or groan underfoot, yet those were exactly the sounds that startled her.

She was certain at any moment that the beast would launch from above, or below, or the sides. The air had no red hue, but still she found her muscles locking up at each noise.

How brave she always felt when she was far from danger.

Finally, she reached the third floor. In the dim light she could see the corner where they’d found the scientists. Her feet hesitated, fear tensing her muscles to the tearing point.

This was ridiculous. You’d think she’d have gotten used to skulking around dark hallways.

Sal tiptoed down the passage. Surveying the cell door with its flaking yellow paint, she noticed a glistening. Sal kneeled to find a thin film of the gel smeared over the cell’s lock. Using a tongue depressor from the first- aid kit, she scraped the gel from the metal.

When the air around her became red-tinged, Sal didn’t even try to act surprised. The beast knew her scent, and knew that she was the softer target.

Unfortunately, Sal was collecting more chipped paint than gel.

Why did her plans always sound so good in her head yet seldom bore out well in reality?

The beast didn’t even bother to roar or growl as he stalked toward her.

He just guffed. A simple acknowledgment that she was in his sights.

“
You shall be mine yet …” he slurred.

She refused to tumble into panic. Sal knew that Tyr couldn’t be far behind. He would come riding in, just like he had so many other times.

Rising, she backed slowly from the beast’s approach, expecting a quiet call in her mind, or a command to get of the way.

What could she do but wait for Tyr? The beast blocked the closest stairwell. The other stairwell was the entire length of the building behind her. Outrunning the beast simply wasn’t an option.

With each passing minute, the beast became less wary, yet Sal noted he didn’t charge. His human, rounded pupils kept darting to her hand. To the gel.

“
Salista!” Tyr’s shout echoed off the cement walls.

Finally!

But when she searched around, Sal couldn’t find him. Then she looked down at the ground floor. Tyr was inside the prison, but two levels away.

He took off in a sprint toward the far stairwell. Sal glanced back at the beast. He didn’t seem in the mood for his prize to be snatched away, as he picked up the pace. Tyr would never be able to intercept in time.

“
Run!” he yelled, but Sal knew that she couldn’t become the beast’s prey. She had to think.

Snatching a torch from the wall, Sal threatened the beast with it. The action made the beast pause long enough to cock his head to the side, snarl, and continue. He knew that she didn’t have the skill to use it like Tyr.

Then what did she have?

As the beast’s eyes darted to her hand again, Sal clutched the tongue depressor. She had the gel. She wasn’t quite sure how she could use it, but she had to figure it out fast.

Sal rewound Hing’s demonstration in her mind. Mika had held a red ball. She’s placed her hand in the green gel. The grad student had concentrated, and the gel turned red.

So you needed to be in physical contact with the essence and the gel to make the transference of intent. As the torch crackled in her hand, she knew how much the beast hated fire.

Before he could close the distance, Sal took the gel and smeared it in a line across the floor. The beast’s eyes dilated. Dropping the depressor, Sal pressed her fingers into the gel and clung tightly to the torch.

As she said the word, she poured every ounce of hatred and fear into the intent. Sal needed a fire so hot and so big that the beast could not cross.

“
Ignite!” A thrill coursed through her veins as her intent transformed into reality.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 94

The beast charged, but the gel erupted in flame, gaining heat as it rose to form a wall of fire between them. An inhuman scream wailed as the beast’s body caught fire. The pained shriek brought gooseflesh to her skin, even though the temperature around her had risen forty degrees.

Tyr grabbed Sal from behind.

“
What have you wrought?” he asked, horrified.

Sal didn’t understand his urgency as he tugged her backward until the fire billowed out, igniting anything in its path.

“
It can’t be …”

The walls were cement. The bars metal. Non-combustible. Yet they burned, fueling the furnace she had created.

They ran, but how could you outrun wildfire? The guard station was at the far end of the hall. The fire crackled at their backs. She could feel the flame build. She could feel it sucking the oxygen from the air to feed itself.

The inferno wouldn’t be satisfied until everything, including them, burned.

Safety was only a few steps away, but still too many. Tyr pulled to a stop as he shoved her toward the door. As she stumbled forward, Sal turned to watch Tyr pull the vial of her blood from around his neck. He uncorked it, seeming at peace.

With a flick of his wrist, Tyr flung her blood before him, announcing,

“
Extinguish!”

Instead of subduing the fire, the blood inflamed the blaze. Just as she jerked the door handle open, the conflagration burst outward. Tyr tried to turn away, but flame lashed up his side.

His scream was so much worse, because it was purely human.

Sal disregarded the blast of heat and snatched Tyr’s arm, dragging him into the guards’ room, then slamming the door closed on the furnace.

Instantly, the handle became super-heated. Sal jumped back from the door.

But her injured palm wasn’t her concern. Tyr was. She rushed to his side, but he shoved her back.

“
You lied,” he hissed.

“
What? I don’t—”

“
The blood … it held no love.”

Sal didn’t understand what Tyr meant, then looked to the empty vial still clutched in his burnt hand. The blood she had donated while she thought of Richard. The man she was engaged to. The man whom it was now proven that she did not love.

The room took on a red glow, but this time it wasn’t from the beast. It was from something worse—a firestorm that she had created. They couldn’t stay here. With the fury of the fire, they’d die of heat exhaustion before the flames burnt through the door. And Tyr was injured. From the way he sagged against the wall, badly. She couldn’t attend to his burns until they were safe.

Tears threatened. This was all her fault. She’d misused the gel and lied about the blood. She had doomed them both.

Despair tried to take hold, but Sal refused. She couldn’t give up. They both still had a heartbeat. So what was her mantra? Keep trying.

If she’d doomed them, then it was up to her to save them.

“
Could love’s blood get us past the flames to the ground floor?”

Tyr’s jaw muscles were doubled over on themselves as he snorted.

“
Only the strongest, most potent of love could hope to shelter us so.”

Sal extended her arm. “Then take it now.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER 95

The sneer on Tyr’s lips cut nearly as deeply as the blow to her head earlier. “You have not that depth of emotion. Not for him.”

His words hurt, but Sal didn’t lower her exposed wrist. “No, not for Richard, but for another.”

Tyr’s features clouded as he searched her eyes. “We will die if you speak not the truth.”

“
Ask me.”

Pulling his knife, Tyr brought the blade to her tender skin. “Speak the name of he whom you covet above all other.”