by Cara Lake
Sounds of commotion penetrated the crumpled space. The door was wrenched open in a shrieking howl of protest and the redhead was hauled away from him. Jaro cursed violently as he was dragged out after her. Not from the heavy-handedness of the guards but from the sudden lack of contact. The witch was under his skin. There was no doubt about it. He would have to channel his rage, direct it at her. Otherwise she would be the death of him. Damn him for getting too attached! He fought to erect the wall of rage that had successfully shielded him during the long years of slavery. The foundations were shaky. One touch from her and they were crumbling. The sooner he was free of her, the better.
Tani woke from what felt like a comfortable sleep, a wall of heat at her back. Memory flooded back as she recalled the twisting, violent motion of the truck, how she had smashed her head and landed on Phenex’s fighter…again. She felt like a boomerang. She had a brief recollection of his startled expression and then…nothing. Her head throbbed, a dull ache at her temple. She must have blacked out. She shivered at the thought that she had slept, again powerless against anything Belial’s men may have done. But then—this man at her back—Jaro. It felt as if he had formed a wall around her. An island he wouldn’t let them penetrate.
It was still dark. She must have been out for a good few hours, she realized, noting the flickering embers from the campfire dying down and three streaks of light sliding across the sky heralding the arrival of the three Ophiuchi suns. She had in fact slept through the night. A large body planted itself in front of her.
“Well, well.” The large body spoke, the toe of a boot poking at her arm. “Your highness awakes.”
She turned her face upward to see the rough features of the one Jaro had called Halvin. He kicked her again, trying to get a reaction. Tani remained still. He bent toward her, his foul breath souring the air, the stench of alcohol ripe as he exhaled. “Everyone’s asleep, your highness.” His words were slurred and she realized that if he was drunk it was probable the rest of the men were too.
She started to move her lips to protest at the invasion when his hands came around her head, forcing a gag into her mouth. There was nothing she could do, her hands still bound behind her back. Before she knew it, he had unlocked the steel cuffs, pulling them away from the chain that attached her to Jaro. She felt the loss as if he were an anchor and she was now adrift on a stormy sea. Had she come to rely on him that much in such a short space of time? She was about to resist being manhandled when he drew out a knife. “I will gut him like a pig unless you do as I say.” Her heart pounded in response to Halvin’s threat and she nodded her acquiescence.
No matter that she didn’t like Jaro. It was not in her nature to let Halvin murder a defenseless man. He pulled her up, tossing her over a shoulder and carried her unsteadily to the far side of the clearing.
They were camped by the side of the dirt road. Tani could see the truck that had jackknifed and was still disabled. The other two were parked nearby. Halvin dragged her to the jackknifed vehicle. “We’re going to play, your highness,” he slurred. “Stay still. I don’t want to bruise your pretty flesh.”
Chapter Fifteen
Escape
Jaro woke with a start. He had been dreaming as usual but then the dream had changed. Fuck! He awoke with the distinct impression that he’d lost something. What was it? Something was missing. Twisting his body back toward the fire, he realized the redhead was gone. He was no longer attached to her. The loss slammed into him. Total devastation. He began to panic. Where the fuck was she? Had she escaped on her own? The chain on his leg was unbroken. The shackle had been opened either by a spell or with its key. He already knew she was a witch so maybe she actually had that particular wiccani power. Then he realized that he was now unattached to anything other than the chain cuffed to one of his legs. The guards hadn’t bothered chaining him to anything other than the girl, considering that would be enough to keep them in one place. Lucky for him, they were wrong.
Jaro managed to stand. The guards were snoring heavily and his sensitive nose inhaled thick fumes of alcohol heavy in the air. Belial’s men were morons. They’d been drinking heavily before he’d finally drifted off to sleep after waiting until they were out for the count to make sure of the redhead’s safety. But now, something wasn’t right. He quickly counted. There were only ten bodies. That was when he heard it. The sound of ripping fabric in the distance, a threatening rasp of anger. Jaro heard the threat. He’d always had excellent hearing.
“Don’t move, your highness. I will go back and carve up your guard dog. Jaro will be dog meat you so much as whimper.” Another voice intruded. “Hey, Halvin, share it out, man! I wanna piece of her!” A second guard.
Jaro began to move in the direction of the trucks. He could make out three figures in the faint early-morning light that washed a purple glow across the landscape. “You’re going to behave, aren’t you, your highness? You don’t want your pet to be chop suey, do you?” slurred Halvin, forcing the redhead’s face forward against the side of the truck. Jaro saw her head nod in agreement. Why would she do such a thing? She should be fighting them, dammit!
He sped up as he charged toward them, fury building as the second guard laughed, drunk with excitement. The noise of the chains clanking against the rocky soil betrayed him to the remaining men, who began to wake, jerked to awareness by not only Jaro’s chains but by Halvin and his companion’s drunken laughter. He was halfway there; Halvin still hadn’t noticed him, when he was slammed to the ground by the force of four guards who had roused sufficiently to take in what was happening.
“Get Rajan!”
“Fucking Halvin! What’s he doing?”
“Get that bastard off her!” The guards clamoring did nothing to quench the heat that spread through Jaro’s veins, molten lava, a volcanic explosion that burst forth, scratching and clawing its way upward, itching to erupt from his skin. Even though he was grounded, he never took his eyes off her. She was his quarry, his prey and anyone who stood in his way would be dust. Two seconds later and the guards didn’t know what had hit them.
Jaro had never felt such anger. It was a black, pulsing living thing that resided deep down inside a place he had never dared to look. It throbbed now with an urgency that spread, a heavy iron weight he could not control. The pressure built as he fought against the rising tide but Halvin had his hands on her again, wrenching her arms backward viciously and pinning her against the truck. His laughter sliced through the frenzied air, slamming into Jaro’s gut as he watched the guard joke with his friend about what he was going to do to the redhead.
The heavy weight combusted, spikes of obsidian unleashing the full force of his fury. A red veil of hatred coated his vision as the pulsing throb reached a crescendo. Jaro’s whole body seethed with the dark force of this power as it surged through blood and tissue, distorting muscle and bone in a wave that crashed over him so intensely that he was nearly blinded by it.
His body, trapped beneath the weight of the four guards who had pinned him down, erupted with a force so strong they were thrown aside, crashing around him, broken toy soldiers. Jaro had a clear run.
His eyes locked on to the redhead’s fragile form as she finally began to struggle with the guard who was trying to take her from behind. Blood boiling, his fury finally spiraled out of control as the darkness inside consumed every atom of his flesh, shattering and splintering, his heart thundering, blood roaring in his ears as he collapsed weightless and disoriented, his body becoming something other, something alien and something completely unexpected.
Jaro could only watch, mesmerized, as his fingers stretched into claws, and thick black fur surged through the pores of his skin with excruciating pain. Each hair a stab of agony that increased his ferocity and he found himself on all fours, a feral, slavering beast.
His jaws gaped wide, expelling a growl that thundered over the parched soil, reverberating with an echo that sent rocks flying. Howls from the guards as the rocks crashed into them
and finally, finally—Jaro found himself and who he was meant to be. Shrugging off the disorientation of the shift, he took his opportunity and lunged ferociously toward the guards who dared to put their filthy paws on her.
How dare they touch her! How dare they force their dirty hands on her pale flesh! They were scum. Bastards who deserved nothing more than agonizing death and he would give it to them. For he was rage and destruction. He was vengeance and fury. He was hate in its purest form and they deserved to die.
Jaro was running on instinct. His new skin a total shock, he had no time to flounder in the strangeness of the sudden shift. He was too full of rage. His fury so great that before he’d even realized what he had done, all twelve of Belial’s men lay dead or writhing in agony. Total annihilation. He had no compunction. He felt no shame. They were animals. He was an animal! It was dog eat dog. Ha! His redhead would be laughing at him now. His redhead! Where was she? He sniffed at the air. The scent of her invaded his nasal passages, coating the pores of his skin with strawberries and summer sun. He lunged after her.
Tani could only watch in horror as Phenex’s fighter, the one they called Jaro, bellowed an earsplitting roar that threatened to rip the sky in two. His roars thundering in her ears, she continued to struggle with her captor as he tried to force himself on her. Then Jaro exploded upward, leaving the ground, his body igniting at the same time, shimmering and twisting with dark magick. It spiraled around him, mutating and transforming at a cellular level. She heard bones cracking as they splintered and restructured and her eyes widened in shock as dark hair sprouted over the fighter’s body and the transformation took hold.
From the terrified shouts of the men around her, Tani realized that this shift was completely unexpected. If they had known Phenex’s fighter was a saevici they would have taken steps to contain his ability to transform by drugging him. She was surprised they hadn’t known. Every slave’s skills were catalogued by his master and if he was a saevici who fought in the gladiatorial pits this ability would have been known to all. Saevici fighters were highly prized, especially those forms that were extremely rare.
The shift complete, Tani felt or rather sensed the rising tension in the men around her. The toothless guard, Halvin, loosened his hold on her as soon as he realized the danger, his focus shifting from lust to survival. The beast confronting them was enormous. Its jaws open wide as it roared, Tani only had time to catch a brief glimpse of lethal canines before it charged toward them with the force of a bullet shot from a gun. Her assailants scattered. Tani had no time to move other than to crouch into a fetal position where she lay, praying her death would be swift.
To her surprise the beast veered past and launched himself at the two guards who had tried to brutalize her. He leapt over her, lethal claws slicing through the air just millimeters away. She stayed low, flinching as screams pierced the air around her, biting into the night sky. She cringed with every crunch of bone and flesh that cracked loudly against the agonizing shrillness of futile cries of desperation.
She decided not to look back at the devastation but forced her body up and forward, racing toward the trees, unnoticed by the remaining guards who were either frozen in terror or had begun running in the opposite direction to escape the fury of the beast. Pausing only to grab a bag in the hope that it might contain weapons, Tani fought for breath as she ran for her life, her heart smacking into her ribs until she thought her chest would explode.
As she ran she tried not to consider what she had left behind. Jaro was a barghesti! A very rare saevici indeed. Barghesti were huge wolf-like canines, prized for their ferocity and savagery. She knew of only two other saevici who could shift into that state.
Tani kept running, leaving the sounds of massacre behind. She knew she was fast and could outrun a lot of things, although that wouldn’t usually include a shedu in its beast form. Luckily for her the drunken revelry of last night meant Belial’s men would be unable to shift until all the alcohol was out of their system. But it wasn’t just them she was worried about. Her other problem was that she had no idea where she was going. She had headed into the forest because it gave cover, hoping that she was going in the right direction. If she could evade any pursuers for long enough, she could get her bearings and figure out where Serpens was. Really, Halvin had done her a favor. But then again, it was Jaro’s distraction that had given her a chance to escape. She smiled as a thought crossed her mind. He really was the dog she had said he was. She wondered how he felt about that. Then she decided she must be delirious because really—why would she care what Jaro thought at all?
Her heart beat faster. A wave of the same furious energy that had washed over her in the truck overtook her from behind, followed closely by the thundering sound of four sturdy legs pounding toward her. The barghesti was in pursuit. Chaos, he was persistent! What could she do? There was no way she could outrun him. Damn him! Did he really think she would let him take her to Phenex like some prize cow? She was no one’s chattel!
Darting through the trees, Tani cut a zigzag path, hoping to throw him off track. Sunlight glittered through the breaks in the trees, flickering past. An opening ahead. Tani propelled herself forward as the pursuing energy crashed over her head. She charged toward the gap, gasping for breath, desperate to escape the fury raging at her heels. She had almost made it to the gap in the trees when she suddenly realized her internal compass was flawed. Her momentum was too strong. Tani couldn’t brake quickly enough and she cursed at her mistake as her foot left the solidity of the ground and floundered in midair. She began to fall.
Tani was falling one moment, but the next she was encircled by a hard solid mass that carried her forward across the chasm she had failed to spot. She landed with a thud on the other side of the deep gorge, having been propelled thirty feet across its width. Although the impact was hard, Tani’s body was protected by a dense bulk covered in silky black fur that lay panting beneath her, a cushion to her fall.
Suddenly she was shivering. Perhaps it was the shock of the near rape, the near-death experience of the fall or the sudden close contact with this saevici barghesti. Tani couldn’t be sure. The warm body beneath her began to shimmer, cracking with the bone-crunching sounds of a shift. Fur became flesh and Tani again found herself pressed up against a hard male form she couldn’t seem to get away from.
She froze, expecting him to shove her away. His heart was pounding in her ear. “Are you all right, Red?” His voice was thick as if sore from the roaring of his barghesti self. Tani scrambled off him as fast as she could. Something inside had heated as he lay beneath her and a sudden urge to run her fingers all over him and explore the hard contours of his flesh had her heart rate spiking. What the hell? She couldn’t move away fast enough.
Rolling onto her side, Tani sat up, gasping for breath. “I’m fine,” she said, studying his battle-worn face carefully from under her lashes, trying desperately not to let her eyes wander further down.
Jaro was still lying on his back, knees bent, naked, his eyes closed. Something about this male had her hormones buzzing. She looked away, suddenly horrified by her body’s heated response to the sight of all that hard male sinew and taut muscle. Her nipples tightened, aroused by the sight. What the hell? It was just shock. It had to be. He was a rough criminal, a rapist, totally amoral. His battered body bore the scars of the battle that was his life and while she could thank him for his help, she shouldn’t be feeling anything else. Tani resorted to good manners. “I guess I should thank you for saving my life.”
“Don’t get any ideas that I care. I’m just protecting Phenex’s property.” He sat up, legs still bent, his brooding gaze sweeping over her. “You’re just an errand, Red, and for that reason, I’ll see you safely back to Serpens as my master ordered.” He gestured toward the bag she was still carrying. “Don’t suppose there are some clothes in that?” Tani turned away blushing, still confused by the churning sensations induced by the sight of his muscular frame. Yes, Gaia help her! It would
be so much better if he were clothed. Sighing in relief after a brief search that revealed some food and a couple of knives, she was able to drag out a pair of black combat pants and a T-shirt that looked to be his size. She threw them in his direction, still averting her gaze. Keeping her eyes shut as he moved to put them on, Tani only chanced opening them when she heard him jump to his feet and watched with irritation as he strode off as if nothing untoward had happened.
Tani gazed after him, confused by the myriad contradictions between his actions and his words. Jaro was a strange man. Although he both infuriated and fascinated her in equal measure, she suddenly realized she wasn’t scared of him. Even considering his reputation. No. She was more scared of herself and the riot of sensations that bubbled to the surface, heating her blood whenever he touched her. She had no choice but to follow, vowing to keep her distance, focusing her thoughts instead on the man she was here for. Lorcan. He must be worried about her missing their dinner date.
But no matter how hard she tried to ignore Jaro, every nerve ending in her body seemed attuned the buzz of energy that was a constant hum between them. And no matter how much she tried to avoid looking, it was hard not to appreciate the rather spectacular specimen of masculinity who prowled ahead of her, his tight butt a fine sight, filling the black combat pants to perfection. Chaos damn him!
Chapter Sixteen
Enigma
They trekked for hours in silence. Finally, just as the sky was turning dark they came across a cave. Jaro left Tani to start a fire, returning half an hour later with a brace of small birds fit for roasting. She didn’t ask how he had caught them but he could see she was grateful he had. It was a full twenty-four hours since they’d last eaten anything substantial so his catch would make a welcome meal.