That no-matter-what came in the form of a cliff.
Chapter Seventeen
P ATHOS SNATCHED HIS clothes from the floor by the balcony’s door. Aragon’s scent reeked amid the lingering essence of the woman he’d had readied to feast upon. He could almost taste her on his tongue, he wanted her so hotly. Never had he had to wait this long to slake his desire, and the painful burn of it angered him.
Underlings were after Aragon and the woman, and once caught, they’d rip her to shreds before consuming her. She’d vanish without a trace. Aragon would be another matter. They’d drag him into Heldon’s freezing fires and feast upon his soul until there was nothing of Logos left, and only Heldon’s hellish image could be seen in the warrior.
The triumphant screeching of Underlings in the distance told him that they were moments away from capturing their prey. He turned to leave her to her fate, deciding that he’d have Cinatas retrieve her sister for his pleasure, provided she was still alive. Cinatas surmised that Rankin had sent the woman to Vasquez’s hellhole in Belize.
She’d probably be nothing more than a broken shell. Nothing like the fiery doctor who defied him at every turn. Pathos roared in frustration. The doctor would serve him! The nerve she’d stroked to life inside him by scorching his hair wouldn’t let her escape him again, even for death.
He whirled into his were-form. Ignoring the raging battle overhead, as he always did, he drew in the cold wet air and howled, splitting the night with his command as he raced through the rain to the gathered Underlings. He’d have her the second he got his hands on her.
Aragon paused on the precipice of the cliff and adjusted his hold on Annette. His shoulder burned where the Underling’s talon had punctured the muscle of his back. The blood inside him throbbed through his body. He suddenly felt strange and feverish. A waterfall rushed by them, so powerful that the cooling mists billowing upward nearly blinded him as he set his keen sight on the deepest part of the pooled water below. He prepared to jump, gauging the distance from his position to the jagged rocks he needed to leap past.
Then he heard Pathos howl for the Underlings to wait and knew the moment he’d sought for so long, to meet his betraying mentor in battle, had come. An overwhelming, answering howl clawed through his throat. He and Pathos would fight, and one would die. He loosened his hold on Annette and turned to set her down as an urgent savagery ripped through him.
The moon and the surrounding evil permeating the air jerked at his were-being, sharpening his senses and thrusting his bloodlust to a needy edge that had his were-form bursting into view despite his efforts to fight the shift. Never before had he been unable to control the power and magic in his body. It was as if his entire body was being overcome. His teeth ached, and fangs jutted painfully into his lower lip. His muscles bulged to an excruciating point as hair erupted everywhere. His awareness of anything but satisfying the lust of his desires dimmed.
He wanted Pathos.
He wanted blood.
The howl he’d been trying to stifle exploded from his gut, tearing its way through him. He could taste Annette’s blood scenting the air and wanted to sink his teeth into the hot rush of it beneath her silken skin, just inches from his mouth.
He had to have blood. He needed blood. He wanted blood. Any blood. His body burned for it.
The Underlings halted the attack, swirling about them, lashing out at each other with screeching snarls, barely restraining themselves from their desire to kill. One of them lashed out, drawing a thick splattering of blood from another, and a group of them converged, devouring their own. Its nearly flesh-bare bones fell to the ground. Their frenzy fed Aragon’s lust for blood. His mouth watered, his heart pumped hard with anticipation, and he tightened his hold on Annette. Just one taste of her sweetness was all he needed. He brought her neck closer, then shook his head hard, searching for sanity.
By Logos! He would not succumb.
What was wrong with him? What was happening to him? Another minute beneath the influences raging at his were-form, and Aragon knew he’d forget about saving Annette completely. He’d bite her and then go after Pathos, even if it meant leaving her to the Underlings; such was the strength of the bloodlust in him.
He didn’t waste a moment. He let Annette’s feet slide to the ground as he anchored her body against his, his arm holding her tightly to his chest. Then, grasping the sheet, he wrapped it around his back, under his arms. Doing the same to her, he next tied the sheet tightly so that they were completely anchored together.
Pathos broke into the clearing, howling that no one had ever or would ever escape him. Aragon met the werewolf’s crazed gaze across the distance and growled in triumph, realizing that he’d won the battle over Pathos at this point, if not the war. Aragon jumped over the cliff with Annette into the mists rising from the deep pool at the bottom of the waterfall.
She screamed, her voice vibrating with terror.
Aragon fought for his sanity, squelching down the lusts that his were-form thrust upon him, and focused his mind on Annette and her need. He wrapped his arms around her and forced his spirit to surround hers. Trust me, he told her as they fell.
A second howl cut through the forest, this one more bone-chilling than before. It sent a shiver of terror up Sam’s spine. God! Annette was being devoured by that beast, and he and Jared had just barely made it past the stone wall closing in the place like a fortress. The stench of the place was unbelievable.
“Sam! We have to leave now!” Jared shouted.
Sam could barely hear Jared over the bursts of thunder and an ungodly screeching ripping his eardrums apart. “No!” he shouted back. “Not without Annette!”
He’d tried to get to the top of Hades Mountain with the power of his badge. That failed. Now he’d do it through sheer force of will, or die. Before Nick had had to abort tracking the truck from the helicopter because of the storm, he’d pegged it as heading up Hades Mountain. And he’d been right. It was with a sick feeling in his gut that Sam drove up to the high stone-and-iron gates leading to the reclusive mansion. The place that everyone laughed off as a billionaire’s folly. The place he’d been warned about.
Old man Hatterfield wasn’t a redneck drunk on moonshine after all. The geezer had actually realized that there was something very wrong on Hades Mountain, and Sam had been too blind to see it. He was the freaking sheriff of Twilight, sworn to protect those he served, and evil had been camping right under his nose.
“It’s either too late, or Aragon has escaped with Annette.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first howl was Pathos commanding the Underlings not to touch whoever it is they are chasing, that the victory was to be his. This second howl was pure rage. So either Aragon has or is about to escape with Annette, or the Underlings didn’t obey his command. If we stay here or go farther, we’ll be dead too, and all that will be left to face the evil will be Erin and Emerald. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take, especially since I think Aragon has Annette. We need to go back.”
Suddenly the high-pitched screaming became louder, and the awful stench grew so strong that it started crawling nauseatingly down his throat. He started to cover his nose with his arm, but Jared grabbed him. Frantic.
“Underlings!” Jared screamed, pulling him back to the stone wall. “Run!”
“What?” Sam glanced in the direction of the rising sound and saw a teeming herd of flying black beasts ripping up everything in their path. He didn’t even take time to breathe before he started hauling ass. Pumping his arms as hard as he could, he was still losing, big-time. The creatures were gaining on him at light speed, fangs and claws slashing in anticipation. His eardrums felt as if they were rupturing from the sonic trauma. He palmed his gun, even though it was as useless as a gnat’s dick against the force after him.
Sam was five feet from the wall when he felt the creature’s cold, fetid breath reach him and heard the tree he’d just passed ripped in half. He was a dead man.
&
nbsp; Jared had made the wall, jumping high enough to grasp onto one of the iron spikes topping its fifteen-foot, dark-mist-riddled height. Swinging one leg up, he hooked the top of the wall and reached out his hand.
Sam jumped for Jared’s hand, shooting his gun blindly behind him, fanning out the spray of his bullets until he’d unloaded half the magazine. Jared caught his wrist and with an impossible burst of strength swung Sam up to the top of the wall. The screeching behind him turned even more chaotic, and as Sam gained his feet to jump to the other side, he saw that he’d drawn blood on three of the creatures, who were now being eaten by the horde.
There was barely a moment’s pause before the front line of the remaining creatures looked at Sam and Jared and then lunged. The evil bloodlust coming at him was cold enough to freeze the blood in his veins. Sam wasn’t even sure if he’d jumped from the wall or if his knees had simply given out. The creatures lashed out, but seconds before their claws made contact, they incinerated, blasting Sam with burning hot air.
Trust you? Annette whispered in her mind. She wasn’t sure what was happening to Aragon, but the change was scaring the hell out of her. His were-form was slightly different than before, less manlike, a little more wolfish, and a lot more savage. The dark glint of hunger in his gaze as his fangs dug into his lip seemed to reflect the mindless bloodlust of the creatures that had circled them on the cliff’s edge. Then he’d shaken his head, and she’d felt Aragon’s spirit, the same that she had known so deeply inside her. It was the Aragon she knew, though his were-form was more frightening than she remembered. She reached out to him with her own spirit.
Yes, she told him, even though it seemed as if they were freefalling to hell itself. She shifted her head tighter against his neck and closed her eyes. All she could do was hold her breath and believe in him.
They sliced deep into the chilly water. She could feel it pressing in on her, trying to force the air from her lungs. Its rushing turbulence whipped them around in a dizzying circle. They were being sucked into a powerful whirlpool that drew them deeper and deeper. Her heart hammered, and her body screamed to breathe again.
She could feel Aragon fight against the impossibly strong current forcing them downward. He struggled, his were-body shuddering from the effort as his strong limbs fought the pressure. Just when she thought she would pass out, he broke free and propelled them both to the surface. Blessed air. She gulped in a lungful before the current dragged them down again.
In her mind, she heard Aragon cry out, and with a burst of strength, he rammed through the treacherous whirlpool sucking at them and thrust them into a rushing river. The roar of the waterfall faded to the droning rain and the hum of a river molding the face of the land with a fluid hand and a relentless will.
Annette wasn’t sure how much time elapsed as he navigated downstream, somehow able to see and avoid large boulders and sharp rocks despite the rain and the descending night. Slowly, the heaviness keeping her from moving eased as the last of the drug wore off and her adrenaline kicked in.
She should have been cold, chilled from the water and the dropping temperature of the sweet mountain air at night. But she wasn’t. Aragon’s heat and presence warmed her to her soul.
Aragon shifted from his werewolf form with an arching cry and became…normal. That his body was capable of such a vast change was almost incomprehensible to her, yet it was true. Frightening and…magical.
After he changed, he had to strain harder to keep them afloat and to fight the swirling current, making her realize that his werewolf form, the savage part of him, is what had saved them from death and evil.
He seemed to be growing weaker, and though she wasn’t strong enough to swim, she thought she could walk, and she told him so.
Before answering, he swam in a circle, searching the night sky through the misty rain. “The water masks our scent and keeps the Underlings and Pathos from being able to trace our path. It would be best to find shelter now so the storm can wash away the path of our scent.” He pulled them to the side of the river and untied the sheet binding them together.
She had felt so natural, warm, and secure with her naked body against Aragon’s that it was moving away from him that felt awkward. He helped her gain her feet and wrapped the wet sheet around her shoulders.
Though extremely shaky, Annette managed to stand on her own and hug the sheet to her suddenly chilled body. Even though the sheet was wet, it kept the cold rain from directly hitting most of her skin, giving her a small relief from the discomfort. “What shelter did you have in mind? I don’t know anywhere that will be safe from those horrid banshees. How can things like that exist, and no one knows?”
“They are Underlings. I’ve fought them many times within the spirit realm, but have never had to battle them upon the mortal ground. You know from the imaginings of others and the reports of things unusual that occasionally creatures from the spirit realm find a way into your world. But I think right now it is a dark magic allowing their presence. Remember the black cloud hovering over the mountain peak that I asked you about earlier?”
She nodded, and Aragon explained that a pall of hovering dark magic could thin the spirit barrier enough to allow creatures from the damned to cross through. “But if they try to go past the boundary of the black magic, they will implode.”
“Kind of like people can only exist in the earth’s atmosphere. Please tell me we are out of range of those Underling things.”
“Not quite. I’m not as concerned about them as I am about Pathos. He likely didn’t follow us over the cliff, because he cannot see or smell us in the water. Nor can he trace our scent on the mortal ground as long as it is raining. But as soon as the rain stops, he’ll be after us with a vengeance.”
“Then we’d better get moving, fast.” She groaned and took a shaky step.
He scooped her off her feet, and she wriggled in protest. “I can walk.”
“But I can run. There is a cave where we’ll be safe until sunrise if we can get there before the rain stops.”
Annette wrapped her arm around Aragon’s neck and huddled into his amazing warmth as the dark shadows of the forest passed in a blur. There was something very different about his embrace compared to when he’d run from the Sno-Med Center. He carried her closer to him now, held her tighter, yet more gently.
Before she had much time to contemplate his embrace, he entered a warm, lit cave—one that he seemed familiar with, for he immediately turned left from the entrance, and another section of the cave opened up to become a very warm chamber with a hint of wood smoke flavoring the air.
“Where are we?”
Aragon didn’t seem to hear her. He set her on her feet and swung around, searching into the shadows beyond the firelight. Annette blinked several times, half wondering if Aragon had conjured the place by some miraculous method.
The light came from a small fire in the middle of the cave and revealed a pool of misty water. The air held the strong, earthy smell of minerals that she’d noted at hot springs purported to heal patients who bathed in their waters.
“They are gone,” Aragon said with such despair that Annette immediately stepped to his side.
“Who is gone? What’s wrong?”
He sighed. “Navarre and York, which means either that Navarre didn’t survive the Pyrathian’s fire, or that the agony became too great, and York needed help to save Navarre.” He then told her about how his friend and fellow Blood Hunter had suffered harm in protecting him. That Aragon had brought him to the cave, and how York was seeing to Navarre while Aragon went to finish his quest.
She could hear his pain and guilt, and she didn’t know what to say. That he’d had to leave his friend to help her humbled her and tangled every part of her heart up with him. All she could think to do was to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight as she pressed her cheek over his heart. For too long a moment, Aragon didn’t respond. He just stood still.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “If it wasn’t
for me, you wouldn’t—”
“No.” He slid his hands to her jaw and shifted her face toward his. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t know this wonder that fills me. Before you, I had only one desire within me: to kill Pathos. Jared was right. My anger at Pathos’s betrayal drove my every action, spurred me to be a flawed leader of the Blood Hunters, and led me to turn my back upon all I had sworn to uphold.”
“No, you—”
He slid his finger to her lips, stopping her denial. “With you, I learned there is something more, something greater than my driving need to eliminate evil at all cost.”
She was standing dripping wet, naked but for a sheet, in a steamy cave with a warrior who’d spent his whole life training for battle and fighting a war. Gazing into the deep, rich darkness of his eyes, she saw an inner light that blazed right to her soul. Her heart flip-flopped, and her mouth turned so dry, she had to lick the moisture from her lips and his finger.
The fire in his eyes burned brighter.
“What?” she whispered, needing to hear him say what his gaze had already shouted.
“This thing called love,” he said just before his mouth claimed hers in a kiss so passionate that not only did the earth move beneath her feet, but her world tipped on its axis, opening a whole universe to her that she’d never known before. The raging storm outside the cave couldn’t come close to the power of this man’s passion.
Tears stung her eyes as he threaded his fingers into her hair, brushed the long tresses from her face, and kissed her cheeks and forehead, making her feel cherished.
“You’re so soft, so beautiful—”
“So are you,” she whispered, kissing the cleft of his chin and the droplets of water beading his thick lashes before brushing his lips with hers.
He seemed to hesitate a moment, as if surprised, then he slid the sheet from her shoulders and stepped back to look at her. She lifted her chin and met his gaze with her back arched, offering herself to him without reservation as she pressed his warm amulet between the swell of her breasts.
The Lure of the Wolf Page 23