One by one, she severed the strands. At the same time, Blake became conscious of the loss of his energy sources. His body went rigid in her arms. He grabbed her shoulders and thrust her away from him, breaking off the deep kiss.
Inside his mind, Sherrie hurried to the next victim's line. Before she could break the connection, a powerful force shoved her away. Big and black and whirling like a tornado, Janus's evil god face was revealed.
"What are you doing?" Rage, betrayal, pain thundered through her.
She instinctively retreated from the assault, withdrawing toward her own body. But she knew if she left his mind she might not get a chance to reenter it, and she hadn't saved Liberty yet. She pushed back, punching a metaphysical fist through the blockade that stopped her from reaching the last of the lifelines.
She wouldn't let Janus have Liberty. He was probably drawing hard on his remaining energy sources. He'd kill them before he'd let her free them.
Janus threw Sherrie's physical body across the cave into a wall of rock. She cried out as she hit the stone, and sharp pain lanced through her back before she fell to the ground. Her concentration jolted from her mission, and her consciousness withdrew into her body, losing its foothold in Janus's mind. Far away, echoing from the depths of the cave, came the eerie sound of a wolf's howl.
Sherrie dragged herself to her feet and collected her concentration. The power of three still charged her. This man couldn't beat her down. She gathered all her strength and sent a renewed wave of energy rolling at Janus just as he ran toward her. He stopped and fell back as if he'd hit an invisible wall then he raised his arm and hurled another bolt at her.
The energy lifted her and slammed her against the rock again. Sherrie could swear she heard the back of her skull crunching. The pain was so intense she couldn't even scream. Blackness filled her vision, and she blinked it away. This was no time to lose consciousness.
This time her body didn't drop to the ground. Janus held her pinned to the rock by the power emanating from his upraised palm. "Betrayed me! You liar, I'll kill you." Black thoughts swirled from his mind into hers like a cloud of angry wasps, stinging with raging hatred.
She fended them off as best she could, striving to repel his fury with positive thoughts. "Sorry.
Couldn't let you kill people. Nothing personal," she beamed back at him. "Let me go and we'll work it out somehow. I know you're not a bad person at heart."
But an invisible hand clenched around her throat, crushing her larynx, stopping her breath. She pushed back against him with all her might and felt the balance of power shift just a little, enough for her to draw a breath.
Then, suddenly, everything changed. A tawny streak bounded into the cave and leaped on Janus, driving him down to the floor. Grant, in panther form, pinned the man to the ground, his huge paws holding down his shoulders and legs while he snarled into his face.
"Don't kill him!" Sherrie screamed aloud and inside. "He still has hostages." The power she'd accrued from John and Grant was fading fast. She felt disoriented from the blow to her head, and her body was so weak she didn't even try to drag herself from the ground. Instead, she focused every bit of strength and willpower she had left into reentering Janus's mind while he was distracted by the growling beast at his throat.
She pushed through the barrier he'd thrown up to block her and searched for the remaining lifelines she hadn't had a chance to cut free. There'd been eight before. There were only four glowing lines now.
She could only assume he'd drained the others dry, leaving lifeless bodies behind.
Quickly she disconnected each precious thread and watched them zip away like the broken line of a flying kite. All Evan's external power sources were gone. Without them propping him up, he wielded no real strength of his own. Janus was once more Evan Blake, a lonely man who walked through life feeling the world owed him more than what he'd been given.
Sherrie faced him in the dark, cluttered space inside his head. Blake's presence was still a seething mass of impotent rage, coiled and ready to lash out at her.
"You did this to yourself," she said. "If you're unhappy, it's because you've made yourself that way.
You can't blame the shifters or anyone else for the life you've chosen to live."
"Liar. Bitch. I should never have trusted you."
"I'll try to help you, to convince Grant not to kill you, but you have to swear you'll never try anything like this again."
A wordless roar of despair and rage was her only answer.
There was nothing she could do for him. Sherrie withdrew from his dark prison, leaving him to rant and bellow alone.
She pulled back into her own aching body. Grabbing hold of the rocky wall, she dragged herself to her feet. Grant was still slavering over the prone man, and she realized only seconds had passed.
"Don't," she urged. "You can't just kill him. He should have some kind of trial."
The big cat turned his sleek head toward her, golden eyes shining in the semi-darkness. His angry yowl resounded off the stone walls, and he bared his huge fangs but stepped off of Blake. In the distance, John's quiet howl replied, as haunting as a cemetery at midnight.
Settling on his haunches, the panther shimmered and twisted, morphing back into Grant. The first words out of his mouth were, "He's dangerous. I should put him down." Sherrie continued to advocate for the man who may or may not be her blood relation. "It's not right.
Besides, there might be some questions the shifters want to ask him. Find something to tie him up with then let's get John out of the pit."
Grant suddenly grinned, his surliness disappearing. "Do we have to? Couldn't we leave him awhile?"
Chapter Eleven
"We're not going to cover this ground again. Our law prohibits executions, no exceptions. All we can do is banish him from our territory." Pack leader Robert St. Claire spread his hands and shrugged. "But if Blake returns, all bets are off."
A low murmur went around the room, sounding mostly like agreement this time. The angry dissenters like Brian Cox had finally adjusted to the fact they weren't going to get the death they'd demanded. Once the Council had made a decision, pack members conceded to it.
John just wanted the village meeting to be over. He was exhausted, starving, filthy and anxious to see Sherrie, who was waiting at his house. He'd been requested to tell, first at the Council meeting then at the town hall meeting, the sequence of events that had led to Evan's capture. John had omitted exactly what the union of their threesome had entailed. No one needed to know that much detail. Enough to say they'd joined their power and Sherrie had used it to free the hostages from Evan Blake.
Some had suggested she might be a threat to them. John assured them Sherrie had no intention of harming the pack, despite the fact she'd been kidnapped and brought here against her will. It was all he could do to restrain his temper at some pack members' narrow-minded exclusivity. They didn't see that their actions were part of what had driven a man like Evan to feel so isolated he attacked them. Not that Blake's behavior was excusable in any way.
At last it seemed the meeting was winding down as St. Claire delivered one of his rambling monologues about pack unity. He finally ran out of steam and adjourned the meeting. People shuffled from the rows of seats to cluster in the aisles and block the flow of traffic. Wearily, John nudged his way toward the door, accepting congratulations and pats on the back and fending off longer conversations.
The door was in sight. He was almost free when a voice spoke behind him. "Walker, hold on." He turned to face Brian Cox, who approached him with his hand extended.
"I want to thank you for what you did for Liberty. She's doing better already. Lydia's home with her, but she asked me to thank you too."
John shook his hand, but reminded him, "You owe your thanks to Sherrie. She's the one who saved your girl and all the others."
Cox nodded. "I was wrong to dismiss her just because she's human. Please pass our gratitude along to her as well. As a matter of fact, why don't you bring her by the house before she leaves town. I know Lydia and Liberty would both like to see her."
"I will. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to go home and crash. It's been an intense couple of days."
John walked outside, blinking in the bright light of mid-morning. It took him by surprise, seemed like it should be twilight. His inner clock was fucked up from staying awake for almost three days straight.
It had been past midnight by the time Grant and Sherrie had knotted their clothing together and lifted John up the shaft then trekked all the way to the Blazer with their prisoner. Evan Blake had remained mute and stone-faced on the drive to Browning, which had taken another few hours. He continued his stoic silence during the trial before the Council members.