Already, she was growing and changing, her acceptance of this new world she’d been introduced to as natural as if she’d been born to it. A blessing and curse all rolled into a tidy little package, one that she would have her entire life, however long that would end up being.
I Tracked the kids and sat bolt upright. Fuck, the Necromancer had moved them! I felt the pull as strongly as before, a tether that circled around and pulled me in the opposite direction of where we were headed.
“Eve, swing around. The kids have been moved.”
Pamela sucked in a breath. “How will Alex and Deanna and Will find us?”
I grit my teeth as Eve banked hard to the left, her body slicing through the skim of clouds around us.
“They won’t.”
23
Milly had him standing with his nose pressed into the corner of her hotel room, like he was some ill-behaved child. He could hear and smell, but that was it. The witch’s perfume was overwhelming, the scent of roses so heavy it felt like he was suffocating in it.
The vampire was back, which was what had precipitated O’Shea’s current position.
“I’m telling you, I have complete control over him,” Milly snapped.
“Witch. I wasn’t asking.” There was the sound of a slap, and while O’Shea wasn’t overly fond of the vampire, he wished he could have seen Milly get smacked around.
“You bastard, I’ll make you pay for that,” she screeched. “Liam, kill him!”
He spun and leapt at the vampire, toppling him to the ground. For once, he agreed with the command Milly gave him, and it made all the difference. His body unleashed all the pent up frustration and need to kill, and teeth and claws ripped through flesh as he pummeled the vampire with everything he had. That lasted all of twenty seconds before Faris put an end to it.
Faris laughed, his hands shooting out toward Liam, clamping the agent’s arms flat to his sides, effectively stopping O’Shea from moving. As if he were a child.
“Oh, wolf, if only you knew the power you carried, you’d be a formidable opponent. One worthy of my time and efforts.” The vampire shifted his head to one side. “As it is, you are a royal pain in my ass— and until Rylee realizes you aren’t coming back, I think it’s safe to say you are very much in my way.”
With a quick flick, Faris removed the torc while Milly screamed.
O’Shea scrambled back from him, his hands going involuntarily to his throat. “Why would you help me?”
Laughing, Faris smiled down at him. “Is that what you think I did?”
Before he could say anything else, O’Shea felt it, the pressure that had been unleashed. Milly had made sure the wolf was buried—the wolf and whatever else lay inside of him.
With a pained howl, he grabbed his head, the force of the wolf building until his skin split and the beast roared forward, all sense of humanity fleeing.
Faris continued his lecture. “You see, wolf, when you stop the natural progression of something, particularly in our world, it builds. Like an avalanche growing as it scours a mountainside. And if you unleash it after all that time building.” He made a popping sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.
The witch lifted her hand and Faris was suddenly on her, his face inches from hers. “If you want my continued protection, Milly, I suggest you re-think your next action.”
Sniffling, she managed to speak. “It’s been too long, the torc shouldn’t have come off.”
The vampire continued to smile. “I know.”
“Why don’t you just kill him then?”
Faris tsked. “The only reason I don’t kill him now is that I want Rylee to trust me. She can’t do that if I kill the man she loves, can she?”
He turned his face back to Liam. “Happy hunting, wolf. Just so you know, there will be no coming back for you.”
O’Shea’s entire world crumbled as the wolf took full control, wiping out his humanity in one fell swoop. Though he tried to hang on, O’Shea and everything he was got pushed back, deep into the recesses of his mind.
His last human thought was of her. The girl with the tri-colored eyes, the girl whose name had already fled but the scent and image, the touch and feel of her was burned into his soul so deep that even the wolf couldn’t extinguish her. She was his mate, forever, his all, his heart.
Hope flickered.
She would come for him.
*-*-*-*
It felt like a nasty case of déjà vu with a slight twist.
Pamela and I were crouched on the rooftop of an older four-story home in the countryside, the Necromancer below us inside the confines of the home. Now that I knew who she was and had seen her picture, I could Track her as well as the kids. Her mind was a jumble of emotions fighting to be heard, clamouring overtop of one another. I blocked her and focussed on the kids.