When the knife had gone all the way around the circle, Kougar shoved his fist into the air. The others followed, Faith a beat late. She felt like a complete and total fraud.
Kara shrugged off her raincoat, raised her hands, and went radiant.
“Stay here,” Hawke told her. Then he and the others gathered around Kara, each touching her bare skin. Faith stood apart for what felt like twenty minutes, but was probably less than one, the drizzle soaking her clothes and hair, making her shiver with cold as she kept her fist clenched tight around the damp blood.
Finally, Kougar released Kara and turned to Faith. One by one, the others followed, circling tight around her, towering over her, their combined body heat chasing away the chill. “Lift your fist,” Kougar told her.
As she did, Lyon opened his bloody hand and grasped her fist with it. Kougar pressed his hand atop Lyon’s, Hawke’s atop Kougar’s, each following suit until she felt as if she were holding an eleven-scoop ice-cream cone.
Kougar began to chant, switching to English as the others joined in. “Spirits rise and join. Empower the beasts beneath this moon. Goddess, reveal your warrior!”
Thunder rumbled, an unnatural sound. The sound of violent magic. Faith began to tremble. Beneath her bare feet, the rock started to quake almost as badly as her hands. She felt the anticipation of the men pressing around her, felt their anticipation feed her own. Her breath turned shallow, excitement lifting her pulse.
And suddenly energy powered through her, a blast of ecstasy that had her gasping, and then not gasping because she no longer had a mouth. Not a human mouth.
She fell to the ground. No, not fell. Her feet were on the stone, her body upright among a forest of denim and leather-clad trees, her wings tucked tight against . . .
her wings
. Not trees.
Legs.
High above her, Kougar’s voice rang out. “Henceforth, you will be known among us as Falkyn.”
A falcon. Before the incredible transition sank into her woman’s brain, another blast crashed through her mind, a driving, pounding need.
Escape! Escape!
The frantic drive tore through her falcon’s breast. She tried to fly, tried to break free of the forest of legs, but hands snatched at her.
“Faith, easy!”
“Falkyn. Cease!”
But the desperate need to escape overrode every thought, every instinct until her mind was pounding, screeching. Blank.
“F
aith!” Hawke tried to reach her through the terror that had engulfed her. Or the fury. He was all too afraid it was the dark magic driving her frantic attempt at freedom.
The small peregrine falcon broke free of the hands trying to grasp her and lifted into flight, whapping Vhyper in the face with her wing as she rose, only to slam into the mystic barrier Kougar had erected around the goddess stone. The barrier knocked her back, but she remained airborne and dove for the other side only to fall back a second time, harder, plummeting to the rock.
Hawke reached for her, his heart in his throat. Goddess, she had to be all right.
Her wings began to flutter, and he grabbed her, carefully pinning her wings to her body. “Shift back, Faith. Shift back.”
Instead, she struggled, shrieking her anger, and tried to bite him. Inside, his hawk screeched in answer. But her nearness in this form did nothing to calm his bird. He felt the hawk’s fury rising with Faith’s agitation. The red haze began rushing into his vision.
Pushing to his feet, he shoved the falcon at Tighe. “Take her! Before I hurt her.”
Tighe had barely grabbed the small, struggling bird of prey when Hawke went feral, his claws and fangs erupting. Wulfe and Paenther grabbed him by the upper arms, their touch helping him struggle for control and not join Faith in a wild flight into the dome above.
“Shift, Falkyn,” Lyon demanded. “We’ll not release you until you do. You’ll never be free until you shift back into human form.”
Sparkling lights flickered. Faith reappeared practically in Tighe’s arms, once more in her jeans and sports bra. So she
was
one of the ones who could retain her clothes when she shifted. As the tiger shifter pulled back, Kougar and Lyon grabbed Faith’s arms and slapped the waiting Mage cuffs around her wrists, black metal bands that would keep her from shifting but wouldn’t hamper her movements since they weren’t attached to one another. Still, she wouldn’t be able to remove them without the counterspell.
High around one upper arm curled a delicate gold Feral armband with the head of a falcon. In many ways, a feminine version of Hawke’s own.
She growled low in her throat, easily jerking free of Kougar’s and Lyon’s holds. Their shocked expressions might have been comical under other circumstances. She was strong all of a sudden, and she fought them, swinging a fist that nearly caught Kougar in the eye. Lyon grabbed her from behind, not underestimating her strength a second time.
Paenther squeezed Hawke’s shoulder. “They’re not hurting her.”
“I know that.” But he was shaking with the instinctive need to protect her, the growls coming low and fast.
Bastards.
Hawke heard the word in his head clear as day. Faith’s voice. And he could tell by the looks on the others’ faces, the startled exchanged glances, that he wasn’t the only one.
“Did she really just talk to us telepathically?” Paenther asked. “
In human form?
”
“Shit,” Jag muttered.
“A handy trick in battle,” Tighe said. “Once we get her back on our side.”
Lyon looked to Kougar. “Let’s get this shield down and get her back to that cave in the Sahara. Get her cured.”
“Agreed.”
The sight of Faith fighting off another man was sending him into a tailspin. “
She’s mine.
” The words tore between his fangs, barely human.
Paenther stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Lyon holding a struggling Faith. “You must get control, Wings.” Paenther’s hands gripped Hawke’s shoulders hard, but his voice remained even. “Ease down, my friend. Lyon’s not hurting her, you know that. We’re going to take her to the cave and save her. But she’s going to need you with her. You must get control.”
Mine!
Even as the wildness inside him struggled to break free, to claim the woman he adored, Hawke fought to push back the red haze, to hold on.
“Ease down, Hawke. Come on, my friend.” Paenther’s calm voice helped pull him back, little by little, until finally he was able to retract his claws and fangs.
Hawke released a hard breath as Paenther let go of him. “Thank you.”
Paenther nodded and stepped back, letting Hawke pass.
Hawke strode straight to Lyon. “I’ve got her.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Neither am I. But watching you struggle with her is going to make me lose it. It has to be me.”
Lyon hesitated, then shoved the struggling woman into Hawke’s arms, and she fought him as hard as she had Lyon, her strength easily three times what it had been before. Not equal to his, but not that much less. She’d be able to take most Therian males like this. Most Mage.
She arched into him, trying to twist her body out of his grasp, low growls and hisses coming from her throat. When she glared up at him, her eyes were flat. The eyes of a stranger. Something inside him roared with pain.
“Let me go.” A deadly fury laced her words.
“Do you know me?” he demanded, holding her fast.
Her lip curled, then softened as recognition flared in the brown depths of her eyes. For an instant, his Faith was back, then gone again just as quickly. “Yes, I know you. You have to let me go.”
“Why? Where will you go?”
“Away. I must get away. I must go to him.”
To him? “To who?”
She fought him, her hip grinding against his groin, damn near setting him on fire. “Maxim. I belong to him.”
And that quickly, she doused the flame with ice water.
“You belong to me.”
She snarled, her claws and fangs erupting. Hawke felt his own leap out, a dark growl escaping between his lips.
“Easy, buddy,” Tighe’s voice came from behind him. “Ease down, Wings.”
He was fighting for control, riding a knife’s edge. “You said you know me. Who am I, Faith?
Who am I to you?
”
A strange look crossed her face, a look he’d never seen before. Dark, predatory. “You’re the man I want to fuck.”
The word shot straight to his groin, hardening his already-inflamed body. But his heart clenched in denial. This wasn’t his Faith. The screeching inside his head intensified as if the hawk spirit were as frustrated as he was.
“It’s time to go.” Kougar entered his line of vision. “Ariana and company are on their way.”
A moment later, the Ilinas arrived, Ariana and two others Hawke didn’t recognize appearing out of thin air in front of them. Ariana nodded to him. “Release her, Hawke. We have her.”
The animal inside his head let out a screech of anger, his and the hawk’s emotions in complete accord.
No. Mine!
But he fought both his own possessive instincts and the animal spirit’s demands and let her go.
The moment he released her, the Ilinas turned to mist, and moved in. A second later, they were gone, Faith along with them.
Another Ilina snatched up Hawke in her mist before he even registered what she looked like, then the spinning began—his body, his head, his stomach. And ended abruptly with a slam of power that felt as if his bones had been pulverized.
Suddenly, he was falling through hot air, landing with a thud in a sea of hot, golden sand. The Sahara? Thuds sounded all around him, the shouts of men, the cries of women in pain. And the sound of swords and animals.
Chaos.
The sickness roared through him as it had the last two times he’d traveled by Ilina, but he fought it back, pushed to his feet, and whirled, taking in the horrific sight in the middle of the sun-scorched desert. Mage sentinels lunged at downed Ferals and Ilinas, alike.
They’d flown into an ambush.
H
awke pulled his blades against a rushing Mage, searching frantically for Faith through the chaotic battle scene playing out all around him as he squinted against the blinding sun gleaming off the golden sand now streaked with blood and body parts. He dispatched the Mage’s sword hand with ease, then pushed into the melee, desperate to find her. If the Mage caught Faith, if they used the counterspell to free her from the wristbands, she’d fly off, and he might never find her again. The thought sent a reeling panic pounding through his chest.
Finally, he spotted her battling two Mage a short distance away though the pair appeared to be trying to grab her, not hurt her—neither had pulled weapons. For a moment, he could only stare. Faith was fighting them brilliantly, using not only her newly acquired strength, but also the moves they’d shown her, fighting with a speed and agility that spoke of years . . . decades . . . of training.
He pushed toward her. Around him, the other Ferals had shifted into their animals and were tearing at the Mage. Ilinas littered the ground, fully corporeal, dazed, rising, fighting. What in the hell had happened? The Ilinas had gotten them to the Sahara, but clearly not into the cave.
Another Mage joined the fight against Faith. Why? Why try to catch her instead of kill her?
But he knew. She, like Maxim and the other new Ferals, was under the spell of Mage magic. And they wanted her alive, a weapon to use against the uninfected Ferals. Rage barreled through him, the hawk’s anger melding with his own, hot and wild.
A Mage lunged at Hawke, but he parried the blow with ease. He was bigger than the Mage, stronger, more skilled, and infinitely more furious. In a single swing, he lopped off this sentinel’s hand as he had the one before and continued to make his way to Faith. Another Mage lunged at him, sword swinging, and met the same fate as his predecessors. He’d kill them all, and happily, if not for the fact that Mother Nature tended to rebel when too many of her Mage died at once. As the sands began to rise in a sudden wind, he knew some of them
had
died. And Mother Nature was starting to get pissed.
Two more came at him from opposite directions, and he battled them back, striking one’s hand from his arm and thrusting his blade deep through the other’s heart, likely killing him. Some sane corner of his mind knew he was losing it. The berserker was beginning to surface. The berserker always came first, followed by the shift that would send him flying off in his bird to goddess-knew-where. Deeper into the Sahara? He had to reach Faith before that happened!
Faith continued to fight, her strength superior to her opponents’, one-on-one, but there were three of them. Why was she fighting them if she was being controlled by Mage magic?
Hawke reached the first of the men, running a blade through his soulless heart. The wind whipped harder, sending the sand flaying his face, his arms, destroying visibility. Faith tripped the other and began to run, her tread surprisingly light on the shifting sands. He lopped off the head of her second attacker, spilling blood into the sand, and took off after her, struggling to run. He’d never catch her!
The Earth began to quake under his feet, Mother Nature thoroughly angry, now. The sand began to swirl dangerously fast.
The red haze pulsed into his vision, turning the sand to blood. Fury consumed him, the hawk jerking away the last of his control. He was losing it!
Through the roar of the blasting sand and the yelling, he heard Kougar shout, “Get us out of here!”
Once more he tumbled through nothingness, then found himself on his knees in the predawn gray of the backyard of Feral House, retching his guts out.
“Faith?” Hawke called when he was able.
“She’s here.” Kougar’s voice.
Lightning bolted through his head, a fiery pain that radiated to all corners of his skull followed, as always, by the hawk’s cry. Talons tore into his brain with a ferocity that, if real, would have left his brain leaking out his ears as a bloody pulp.
The agony . . .
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think as his mind went momentarily blank but for the white-hot pain. Tearing, ripping, bleeding,
misery.
He forgot to count, couldn’t think, could only survive.
“Easy, buddy.” Kougar gripped his shoulder. “What’s happening?”
Finally, finally, the talons eased off, the searing pain slowly receding until he could think again. Until he could breathe. “Nothing.”
“Right.” Kougar didn’t believe him.
Hawke struggled to his feet, searching for Faith. Between the motion sickness and his bird’s attack, he felt beaten and bruised, but he hadn’t shifted. A hell of a way to stop an unintended shift, but he wasn’t complaining.
Around the yard, others rose unsteadily, Faith in the middle of them. But even as he found her, she leaped to her feet and took off running, faster than any human . . . or immortal, for that matter . . . should be able to run.
“We’ll get her,” a soft Ilina voice murmured, and, moments later, Faith was once more on her knees, retching beside him.
Lyon joined him. “We have no choice but to lock her up.”
“
No.
”
“Give me another option.”
Hawke wished he had one. At least a good one. “Handcuff her to me. She won’t go anywhere.”
“And if you shift?”
They’d both be gone. No cuffs would hold him in his animal. And he couldn’t use the Mage wristbands they now had on Faith. They’d tried that when they first realized his problem, but he’d gone berserk, crazed with a fury that wasn’t his. It had taken three of his brothers to take him down.
If he shifted, Faith would run. He knew that, now. And his control was too precarious at the moment. In truth, someone else needed to be guarding her. His animal screeched in fury at the thought of others manhandling her as she fought them. Or defending themselves from her, for that matter.
Faith started to rise, and Hawke grabbed her by the upper arms before she could get away from him again, igniting a storm of kicking feet and slashing claws. He turned her away from him, then bear-hugged her, pinning her arms against her sides so she couldn’t continue the attack.
This wasn’t going to work. “All right,” he told Lyon. “She stays in the prison until we cure her.” He turned to Kougar. “What in the hell happened out there?”
“The Mage erected some kind of barrier around the cave, or maybe that entire portion of the Sahara. The moment the Ilinas hit the barrier, they turned corporeal. We all fell out of the sky, right into a Mage ambush. Fortunately, the Ilinas recovered quickly and were able to get us back out of there before we suffered any casualties.” He lifted an eyebrow. “The same can’t be said for the Mage.”
Hawke didn’t feel an ounce of remorse for his part in that. “They were trying to capture Faith.”
“How did the Mage know about the cave?” Lyon demanded. “How did they know you were on your way there?”
Kougar stroked his beard. “I’m wondering if the infection might be acting as some kind of tracking system for the new Ferals.”
Lyon looked at Faith. “Then the sooner we get her cured, the better.”
Kougar nodded. “Ariana and the Shaman are working on a way to bypass or destroy the Mage barrier. Meanwhile . . .” He turned to Hawke. “I’ll help you get her downstairs.”
It took both of them to drag a fighting, kicking Faith down the long stairs and through the basement to the prisons without hurting her.
“She’s strong,” Kougar murmured, righting himself from one of Faith’s leg swipes that nearly knocked him off balance. “Not unexpected—we all get stronger with the animal. But Vhyper’s right. She really could be a secret weapon. No enemy is going to expect strength like this from a 125-pound female. Of any race.”
They reached the prisons and shoved her into one of the cells, slamming the door closed before she could whirl on them and try to fight her way out.
Feral and snarling, her claws clicking against the steel bars, she growled, shaking the bars. “Let me go!”
Hawke hated seeing her like this, locked up. Crazed. And yet . . . there was something . . .
arousing . . .
about the unadulterated wildness in her.
“Where, Faith?” Hawke asked quietly. “Where do you want to go?”
“To Maxim! I belong to him.”
“Maxim hurt you!”
“Let me go!”
“He hurt you, Faith. You have to remember. What did he do to you? Did he rape you? Did he cut you? Did he use those fangs . . .”
Something flared in her eyes. Pain.
Ah, goddess. “He hurt you with those saber teeth, didn’t he?”
A violent tremble went through her. “The shower.” The words were a growl. “He bit me, impaled me in the shower so the blood would wash away. So no one would know.”
His knees nearly gave way beneath him as the image blasted his mind. Sweet Faith enduring such torture in horrible silence. He’d known the bastard was hurting her. He’d known!
But Sweet Faith wasn’t here anymore. Not now. The feral woman in the cage watched him, eyes once more blazing as she rattled the cage. “Let me go!”
Kkkeeeeer!
His animal was furious, his rage melding with the man’s. Hawke raked fingers into his hair, his teeth grinding as he fought to control the fury. He’d die before he ever let that madman near her again.
“Hawke.” Kougar’s hand landed on his shoulder, but he barely felt it.
Wisps of red haze began curling around the edges of his vision. He hated this. Hated that she struggled to return to the bastard who’d hurt her, caught in the grip of Mage magic. Daemon magic. And he, who loved her beyond measure, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t hold her because of the bars that separated them.
“Put me in there with her.” His bird let out a cry of agreement.
Kougar watched him thoughtfully. “That’s not a good idea, Hawke. If you shift into your bird, she could kill you. We have to believe Maxim’s ordered her to do just that.”
“Do it. My animal wants it.
I
want it.”
“Hawke . . .”
He went feral, turning on his friend, holding back . . . barely . . . from clawing him. “
Do it.
”
Again, Kougar studied him for several seconds before slowly stepping forward to unlock Faith’s cell. Hawke followed. The moment Kougar unlocked the door, Faith lunged for the opening, but Hawke was ready for that. He met her, colliding with her as he pushed her back into the cell, away from the door that clanged shut behind him.
Fangs and claws drawn, she attacked him as any of his brothers would in a good feral wrestling match—slashing claws down his cheek, across his chest, ripping at the flesh of his shoulder with her fangs until blood splattered her face and hair, the drops of red turning her blue-tipped locks purple. She was a wild woman, untamed.
Magnificent.
The animal inside him welcomed the fight, urged him to join her in the wildness, to revel in it as he’d done in the days before the spirit trap had made battle of any kind a dangerous business. But this wasn’t one of his Feral brothers looking for a fight. It was Faith. His sweet Smiley.
The man recoiled at the thought of hurting her. But the man was losing control, red haze growing at the edges of his vision. He pushed it back, suddenly afraid that he’d made a mistake in joining her in here. A growl ripped from his throat as the wildness overpowered him, and he turned on her. Aware, but in little control, he drew claws on her and ripped her clothes from her body, then tore off his own. The wildness screamed for a battle of a different kind.
Not like this! Not like this!
His man’s brain railed at what he feared he was about to do even as the last of his control slipped away.
F
aith grunted as Hawke body-slammed her back against the wall. She slashed out with her claws, raking new furrows in his cheek to replace the ones that had already healed.
Blood. Hurt him
.
No!
Thoughts tried to break through the thick fog that had become her mind. She was acting on instinct, fighting that instinct. Driven by forces not her own.
He threw her to the ground, though she barely felt the collision, then he stood over her, poised for one brilliant moment like a barbarian of old, his body sculpted with muscle, his shoulders broad, his cock hard and thick, protruding like a weapon. His arms hung away from his body as if ready to attack, his chest rising and falling with quick breaths, his eyes burning with battle and lust.
Her body burst into flame in answer, damp heat pooling between her thighs. She wanted battle.
This
battle.
Her legs parted, offering him what they both wanted, and he fell on her, taking her in a single hard thrust that shot her straight into orgasm. Claws out, she raked at his back, and he roared and bit her shoulder with his fangs. Pain exploded, and she reveled in it as he drove into her, pounding her with his body, burying himself over and over.
Not enough.
She reached down and grabbed his buttocks, thrusting herself against him, driving him deeper.
Darkness, haze, pain, lust.
Ecstasy
.
Over and over and over again, she came, the orgasms crashing over her, the violence that was driving her finding an outlet in this most ancient of battles.
She felt him shudder his release. From a distance, she felt him pull away.
No! More. More blood. More sex. More!
She sat up and struck out, but he caught her wrist in an iron grip. Then her other.
In her head, a bird began to cry out as if in pain. A soft female voice broke through the violent fog.
He’s breaking
.
“
What have I done?
” Hawke knelt between her knees, holding her as she struggled, horror in his eyes as his gaze tore over her. “
What have I done to you?
”
The falcon cried out in her head, slicing away the fog, pulling her into the light. The violence that had consumed her lost its grip, and, slowly, Faith came back to herself. Taking deep, unsteady breaths, she found herself caught fast in Hawke’s hold. She stared at the blood streaking his face, shoulder, and chest.
My
God,
did I do
this to him?