She extended her hand to John. “It’s time to go back. I have a plan.” He looked up, still gasping. “Yeah?”
She turned to Grant. “Get your physical body woken up and head for the cave. Wait outside until I give you a signal. Don’t interrupt me with Janus—or Evan, whatever his name is—no matter what happens unless I call for you, okay?”
Grant frowned, clearly not liking her handing out orders. “What are you going to do?”
“My new ‘brother’ wants me to share power? I’m gonna give it to him.”
“Hold on a second.” John rose to his feet. “You can’t just rush into this. Tell us exactly what you have in mind.”
“No time. I don’t want to lose this charge of power, and we still have to get back to the cave. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
I hope.
Grant gave a disgruntled snort, but he was already obeying orders, settling back into his physical self.
His eyes opened and he sat up as Sherrie took hold of John’s hand and turned to go.
John stopped her with a hand cupping her face and looked into her eyes. “Be careful. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“I won’t. I promise. I don’t want anything bad to happen to me anymore than you do. But now we’ve got to fly.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the lips, grasped his hand again and pulled him with her. They raced with lightning speed back through the forest, into the cave, past Evan and down the shaft to where their bodies lay twined together.
Entering her physical form with a jolt, Sherrie gasped and her eyes flew open. The darkness, through which she’d been able to see in her other form, was pitch black again. It was like being in a rocky womb.
She clung to John, running her hands over his solid form, clothed once more, and holding his face between her palms. The stubble of his jaw scraped her skin.
“Hey, are you with me?” she whispered.
“Mm,” he grunted. “Feels like I’m caked in mud.”
She knew what he meant. Her body was constricting too, after the freedom of being weightless and buoyant in astral space.
“What I want you to do is play dead or at least unconscious. I’m going to get Blake to believe I’ve zapped your energy. After he gets me out of here, I’ll show him just how much power I’ve got.”
“You have to be careful. He holds a lot of lives besides ours in his hands.”
“I know. I can’t explain it, but suddenly I
know
exactly what to do, how to play this. Trust me.” She pressed a fierce kiss to his mouth and hugged him tight, praying everything would go the way she hoped and this wouldn’t be the last time she held or kissed him.
After she pulled away, John whispered, “I’m so sorry I dragged you into all this. Be careful. If anything happened to you, I’d—”
“Shh. It’s okay.” She pressed her hand against his chest and felt his racing heart. “Now lie down.” John slumped on the ground, slowing his breathing until it was barely audible. Sherrie squeezed his hand once before calling for Blake.
“Hey, come here! I did it. Let me out.”
Her heart pounding as hard as John’s, she waited for the bobbing light and the sound of their captor’s voice. Her skin itched, every hair standing on end as adrenaline and potent energy coursed through her body. This was it, make or break time. Either her plan would work or she’d put herself and the shifters in even greater danger. But, hell, it couldn’t get much worse than being imprisoned in a cave and threatened with death.
As she saw light approaching, Sherrie did a quick deep breathing exercise to clear her mind and practiced what she was going to say. Her role was an easy one to play since she actually was excited, but for different reasons than she was about to give to Evan Blake.
The light shone down the shaft, blinding her. She shielded her eyes and peered up the tube of damp rock.
“I did it! You were right. I could do it all along. I just wasn’t aware of it.” She laughed, a little hysterically. “God, the way this feels! So much energy coursing through me I don’t know what to do with it. This is fucking amazing.”
“Walker is dead?” Blake’s voice echoed down the shaft.
“No. He’s still breathing, but barely. I’m letting him live so I can continue to use him. God
damn
this feels like…wow!”
“I know.” She heard the smile in his voice, the eagerness of a lonely man to share his secret life with someone at last.
“So why don’t you get me out of here and we’ll talk?”
“Not so fast. How do I know you won’t turn your new power against me?”
“You don’t. You’ll just have to trust that I forgive you for throwing me down here and testing me like this. Besides, what am I gonna do? I’ve got a little power, but you’re still way stronger than me. If you’re really my brother, I want to sit down face to face and talk about what all this means, about what we’re going to do.”
There was a long pause. She held her breath, waiting for his decision. Would his need for companionship, for an ally to share his vision, outweigh the good sense that warned him not to trust her?
He’d made it clear he wanted some kind of relationship, a kinship he’d never had before. Well, he couldn’t have that if he left her here to rot. She simply had to earn his trust.
“Evan,” she prompted gently in a soft voice. “I know that’s your real name. The shifter told me.” She purposely didn’t call John by name, demonstrating that she was distancing herself from seeing him as a person. “I understand how hard it must have been for you living among them, always alone. I understand because I’ve always been alone too, just faking fitting in.” That part wasn’t far from the truth so it was easy to inject conviction into her voice. She waited again, listening, but still Blake didn’t say anything.
“Listen, this was your idea. You wanted to share our power and be like family. So why won’t you trust me now? What good am I to you down here?”
She felt her accrued power swirling around inside her, charging through her cells like a herd of wild mustangs. If she released it, she could probably lift herself out of this pit, but it might not leave her with enough juice to defeat Blake so she patiently waited.
Suddenly she felt her body begin to rise, ascending on the air like it was weightless. It felt the same as when she traveled in her astral form, except her bulky body was dragging along with her. The light grew brighter as she neared the mouth of the shaft then she was out and settling gently on her feet on the rocky ground.
She looked at Evan Blake, careful to make eye contact and not allow her gaze to dodge away.
Reaching out, she offered her hand to him. He lowered the flashlight so the beam wasn’t shining in her eyes and took her hand. Sherrie let just a trickle of energy flow through her fingertips into him. He gasped and stiffened as it entered him.
She smiled. “You were right. We can have anything…everything we ever dreamed of. There’s nothing to stop us.”
Hand in hand, they walked out of the cavern toward the mouth of the cave. The sunlight shone into the wide opening, burnishing everything a molten gold. It was late afternoon. Unbelievable that the trek up the mountain and everything that followed had transpired in a day’s time. She hoped Grant was out there waiting for her signal to come rushing in. She was afraid she’d need some muscle to complete her plan.
Sherrie was too wired to sit. She paced and gestured as she talked. “How did you find out about your ability? I mean, you lived with the shifters all this time. What changed?” Evan set down the flashlight and folded his arms. “It was the afternoon I had an argument with Phil Pendergast about my car. He charged me for working on it when he hadn’t fixed the problem. I was pissed off, and something inside me just…shifted, like a piece of ice breaking off an iceberg and floating away. I could see him and myself from outside my body, and I could see how weak he really was. I reached inside his mind and found him—the real him, his essence beyond man or wolf. I took hold of it and started squeezing like I could choke the breath out of something that has no breath.
“But then a strange thing happened. I felt his energy flowing into me, all that strong, powerful energy shapeshifters use to change from one form to another. It was like shooting heroin. I wanted to suck it all up, drain him dry, but I stopped myself. Instead, I walked away from Pendergast’s shop, leaving him sprawled on the floor. No one had seen me stop by and no one connected his sudden mysterious coma to me.” Sherrie nodded. “No one even suspected you, so you could pick another one any time you wanted.”
“Not everyone. I found it depended on how strong they were mentally. Some were like trying to blast through a brick wall. And, of course, I had to have an opportunity to come across them alone, somewhere isolated where I wouldn’t be seen. After a while, I thought I’d spend part of my time up here on the mountain and try to tap some of the other shifters—see what panther power tasted like.” He smiled. “I learned each individual had a different potency, a different flavor, if you will. The panthers were stronger and even more of a challenge, but my ability was growing.”
“And now there’s you and me together to take ’em all down.” Sherrie stopped pacing and moved close to him. Drawing a deep breath, she took his hands. “Together, but
not
like brother and sister.” She rubbed her thumbs over the backs of his hands. “To share power, we need a connection that’s stronger than a mere touch. We need to get closer.” She met his gaze with half-lidded eyes, leaving him no doubt about her meaning.
Evan’s eyes widened and his lips parted. She guessed he’d wanted this but hadn’t imagined it would come so easily. The quickest way to put him off balance and steal inside his mind was to distract him with sex. Not that she intended to go all the way. She hoped to have her mission accomplished with only a kiss.
Sliding her hands up his arms, she hooked them over his shoulders and peered deep into his eyes. The striations of his irises were a dark navy against pale green. His pupils dilated and his breathing quickened.
“Like this,” she whispered and leaned in to cover his mouth with hers.
She cast her mind like a fishing line, sending filaments of her consciousness into his mind and exploring the unfamiliar space. Evan was in there, but seemed unaware of her presence in his head. He was too intent on the physical stimulation of her kiss.
She “saw” the dark and scary corners of his attic, the memories of every past slight and hurt he’d ever suffered. They haunted him like ghosts he refused to banish. She saw him as a child, teased, beaten up or ignored by the other kids in the pack he could never be a part of. Fear and jealousy warred within him all the time. He wanted to be a full-blooded member of the pack with every particle of his being, and since they didn’t welcome him in, he wanted them all to suffer.
Scanning his mind was like walking across rotting carcasses—disgusting and heart-wrenching at the same time. But Sherrie wasn’t here for a tour of his psyche. Her mission was to find and sever his connections to the comatose shifters.
Physically, she felt Evan’s hands steal around her back as he pressed his body against hers. His erection grew between them, nudging against her belly. Mentally, she saw the glowing lifelines to the shifters like radioactive tentacles spreading out from him in many directions. That was how her mind decoded the images, but it was much more indefinable than that. She saw the people to whom the lifelines belonged. They slept far away in beds in many places while energy pumped out of them like blood from a severed artery.
Could she cut the connections without hurting the sleepers? Would they regain consciousness once their energy was restored? Sherrie didn’t have time to ponder those questions. Any second Blake would realize she was rattling around inside his mind. A kiss couldn’t distract him forever.
In the physical world, he pulled away from her to draw a breath. Sherrie opened her eyes and looked into his flushed face. “And that was just a kiss. Now for a little power exchange. If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
She smiled and leaned into him again. This time, she allowed the combined energies swirling inside her to slide into his mouth along with her tongue. She roared in like a strong wind, filling him, shaking him, battering his senses. While he was assaulted by the gale-force of her energy, she seized one of the tenuous threads and broke the connection between Blake and one of the wolf shifters. She tossed the lifeline like the mooring rope of a ship back onto its own deck. The slender line of energy whipped away and disappeared.
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.