Ecstasy Unveiled(25)

She scowled, eyes locked on the odd, handprint-shaped mark over his heart. An assassin bond?

Speaking of bonds, Lore’s heraldi had settled down, but another one had started to tingle. The werewolf’s. The buzz was mild, which meant the threat was real but not immediate, and it could even pass. Still, this was truly unbelievable. Even at her busiest, when she’d been in charge of a dozen Primori, she’d rarely responded to more than one incident a month. Now she’d had three Primori in trouble in a matter of hours.

Not good. “Get on the bed,” she told Lore. “Back against the headboard.”

He obeyed like a good little zombie, though she swore she heard the faintest rumble of a growl. Amazing. Few could maintain any kind of awareness while under the spell of a bore worm.

A particularly sharp burst of worm-hurt stabbed her brain and, wincing, she flashed to the garage, where she’d dropped the Bracken Cuffs she’d stolen from Eidolon when she left the demon hospital. What handy devices. Everyone should have a set.

The sting of the warg’s heraldi intensified. Hurry, hurry…

Urgency kicked her into high gear as she dug through the neat stacks of her brother’s belongings until she found what she was looking for; a twenty-foot length of finely wrought but strong chain. Gathering it and the Bracken Cuffs, she hurried back to Lore and ordered him to snap his own wrists into the cuffs while she looped the chain over the top of her canopy bed and attached the ends to each cuff. The result left him sitting with his arms stretched up and out, with little give in the chain to allow him leverage. He was strong, no doubt, but he was no match for the bed she’d had specially made to buffer her nightmares.

“Estalila enalt.”

The bore worm spell broke, and instantly, her body migraine disappeared, but so did her strength. She’d need to feed very soon. Lore’s snarl followed her as she grabbed the Gargantua-bone dagger, touched her warg’s heraldi, and materialized in the wooded backyard of a tiny mobile home.

Praying she wasn’t too late, she burst through the open back door. She found Chase Barnstead in the living room, naked and doubled over, arms wrapped tightly around his abdomen. A woman wearing only underwear and a bra was clutching his shoulder, almost as if she were concerned, trying to help him… but the markings on her right arm were writhing fiercely.

Those were Seminus markings. A Sem mate? So many coincidences, and none of them good. Whatever she was doing to Chase was killing him, and the damage had already been done. The warg’s brand on Idess’s arm was fading, and a sickly gray light pulsed around him, marking him as one who was fated to die. Her healing powers wouldn’t help him. His death was locked into the web of life now.

Fury and the need for vengeance roared to all-consuming life inside Idess. She launched herself, nailing the female in the chest—dead center in the middle of a handprint-shaped scar—with a roundhouse kick.

The female flew backward into a duct-taped recliner, smashing a beer bottle, but to Idess the kick felt sloppy, with not nearly enough power behind it. The black-haired harlot should have gone right through the wall.

That’s what I get for not feeding. And all these fights were only draining her faster. She rushed the other female, preparing to drive the Gargantua-bone dagger right into her heart. “I’m going to laugh when the griminions come for your soul.”

Idess raised the blade… and a hot poker of pain shot through her arm. Lore. In danger. How? She staggered, dropping the dagger. The raven-haired devil tore a bloody shard of bottle glass out of her thigh and, with a snarl, she came at Idess, a whirlwind of arms and legs.

Off-balance from pain and surprise, Idess fell back under the rain of blows, dodging and blocking and unable to land a blow of her own. Knuckles smashed into Idess’s mouth, splitting her lip. Her head snapped back on her spine and ow, she was going to feel that one for a month.

Idess dropped and rolled away from the other female, who had somehow gotten hold of the dagger. The Sem struck out, and Idess hissed at the bite of metal in the flesh of her left biceps. Now that her blood had wetted the blade, the dagger would not miss if swung at Idess again.

She flung herself backward, out of the range of the other female’s reach. This was a lost battle. Chase was as good as dead, anyway.

In fact… he was gone. While she’d been fighting with this assassin, he’d fled.

Slapping a palm over the cut made by the Gargantua dagger, Idess flashed out of there, sickened by her failure to save Chase, and by the knowledge that his death had just cost her several more centuries on earth.

The tension inside Eidolon’s apartment could have been measured by a barometer, even several minutes after Idess had disappeared with Lore. What the hell had she done with him?