THIRTEEN

Can’t link with you, Tristan, Evalle sent back telepathically. She kept glancing around for the demons closing in on them.

Tristan sighed and shook his head. And you want me to trust you?

The first beast attacked, diving at Tristan from out of the trees. Too massive to be a wild dog and not quite wolf, with bared fangs and spiked claws extended, its red eyes burned with the urge to kill.

Tristan moved as a blur, fast as lightning, whipping his arm around to slam his fist between the animal’s bright eyes.

The demon went flying up and back into a wad of saplings, then rebounded to his feet and charged again.

Evalle had already turned to cover their backs. Noise crashed toward her from the force of a massive body wrecking everything in its path. She raised her hands to shove power at the next animal when two exploded out of the jungle.

She knocked one demon back against the trunk of a hardwood tree so large her arms wouldn’t reach around it. The other demon dodged her kinetic shot at the last minute, diving to the side, then rounding behind her. She whipped a blast of energy at him and rammed the demon into the base of the same tree.

He fell into a motionless heap.

The urge to shift fully into a beast coursed so strongly through her veins that she hesitated to risk even the small change into Belador battle form.

She might not be able to stop at that point.

Why hadn’t Tristan taken on his beast form? He had no one to answer to for anything he did out here. Shift, Tristan!

Can’t.

Why not? But talking would distract both of them. From the corner of her eye, she caught him fighting the first wolf-demon he’d hit, plus a new one.

She expected the demon she’d stopped with her first shove of power to attack again, but when he regained his senses he started climbing the old hardwood tree with humanlike ability. Once he reached twenty feet up, he climbed out on a limb and stalked her from above.

The other beast at the base of the tree began to rouse.

One glance up confirmed the tree-climber was actually waiting on his companion to wake up to attack as a team.

Something behind her screamed with pain. Maybe Tristan did have some super-charged powers without shifting into his Alterant state. Not fair since he had her weapon, too.

Her weapon. Tristan, throw me the dagger. I’ve killed demons with it.

No power to . . . reach it.

She risked a look and lost hope of surviving this.

Tristan was the one on the ground, struggling. A demon had his upper arm locked in his jaws, ripping muscle and bone with each jerk of its head.

The other animal Tristan had fought lay headless.

But the one chewing on his arm appeared to be weakening Tristan. His movements were sluggish.

A throaty growl above rattled the bones in her spine. Evalle looked up as the wolf-demon above her hunched his body, preparing to jump.

She ripped her attention back to the other monster on the ground, now up on all four legs and snarling.

Those two demons must have figured out she couldn’t hold the wall of power in front of her and above her at the same time. The one perched overhead jumped as the demon on the ground attacked.

She changed her hand positions and shoved her power straight up, making a fast plan. When the flying monster hit her force field she would heave that animal at the one coming across the ground.

Her plan might have worked, but the one that landed on her field of energy hit and bounced off, smacking a pine tree that hadn’t been thick enough to do any damage.

And the demon on the ground had anticipated her move.

He jumped sideways.

Then slashed back at her before she could swing her kinetic power to stop him.

Fangs bared, he lunged for her knee.

His jaws crushed bone with the first bite.

She screamed at the pain. Claws tore at her thigh, ripping skin and muscle. Blood gushed down her leg and over the demon’s muzzle. She beat his head with her fists.

Cartilage shot up along her arms. Energy racked her body with the impending change.

No. Not the beast. She couldn’t trust Tristan not to rat her out if they faced the Tribunal together, and she’d glow red if she lied about shifting.

But dying would negate all of that.

Her fingers elongated with clawed tips. She clenched her teeth, shaking hard with the force of holding off the change.

The demon’s teeth ground into her knee. Blinding white pain burned through her leg, up into her abdomen and chest. The impending change had given her a weapon she wouldn’t waste. Cocking her arm back, she shoved the sharp claw on her index finger into the creature’s eye.

And kept shoving.

Bone gave as she pushed the stake deep into his brain.

His other eye rolled up in his head. His jaws loosened.

She pulled back and swung her fist like a sledgehammer, driving it down on the animal’s head. Its head broke away from her knee. Two fangs buried in her muscle snapped at the skin line.

The haze surrounding her glowed so bright that it practically blinded her sensitive eyes. When had she lost her glasses? She groped around, found them and shoved them back on her face.

Dizziness assailed her.

She couldn’t focus her vision. Something attacked her body almost like a poison, draining her power. She yanked out the broken fangs and gasped for air. Blood shot from opened arteries with each pulse of her heart. Pain screamed through her.

She was going to lose that leg . . . if she didn’t die first.

Her arms felt heavy. She was light-headed. What kept depleting her energy beyond the blood loss?

Greenish-yellow liquid mixed with blood streamed down her leg.

The demon’s saliva.

Maybe that’s what had weakened Tristan. The demons’ saliva had to be attacking their blood.

The tree-climbing demon that had bounced off her kinetic power shook his head and gained his feet, facing her with dead eyes. He wobbled when he took a step toward her.

With her power dwindling, she had one shot left.

She threw a blast of energy at the tree ten feet up, severing the trunk and sending a ton of wood down to crush the demon’s backbone.

Now she didn’t have enough kinetic energy to snap a toothpick.

Tristan bellowed in agony.

She twisted around, clenching her teeth against the throbbing pain. The creature still had what was left of Tristan’s mauled arm locked in his jaws. He used the bloody stump to shake Tristan’s entire body back and forth.

No point in being quiet now, she yelled, “Where’s the dagger?”

“Right . . . boot,” he croaked out in a voice wrought with pain. Blood covered his arm, his body and the ground.

Dragging her bad leg, she crawled to his side and lurched for his boot, unable to stop a cry of anguish at banging her crushed knee.

She reached inside his boot and curled her fingers around the handle of her dagger.

Energy wicked up her arm.

With the last surge of strength in her body, she lunged for the demon’s head, driving the dagger between its eyes. That had worked on demons in the past and, hallelujah, this one burst into an explosion of light, then turned into gray powder.

Tristan fell back with a pitiful howl.

Nothing alive should sound like that.

She shoved the dagger into her boot and climbed over him. Flesh and muscle hung loose from his shoulder, his arm a mangled mess. He wouldn’t survive that any more than she was going to survive a crushed knee that was bleeding out.

“Have to . . . heal,” he rasped out in a pain-drenched voice.

She’d healed some wounds quicker than a human would be able to but not an injury like this. “Tristan, my knee is destroyed. I don’t have the ability to heal this kind of damage.”

She rolled off his body so he could move. He drew a couple of hard breaths and pushed up on his undamaged arm. His sun-kissed skin had turned a sickly gray.

He wheezed out, “Go to . . . the lake.”

Like water was going to fix their ravaged bodies? “How will that help?”

“Have to wash away . . . saliva . . . it’s attacking our blood.”

“That might stop the power loss, but—” She took a couple of breaths to keep from throwing up. “Unless that lake has majik in the water . . . not going to fix mangled bodies. It’s too late . . . saliva’s draining us.”

He gave her a look of confusion, then got to his feet with a great deal of grunting through clenched jaws. He extended his hand to her. “Too much . . . to explain.”

She couldn’t push him to say more when every word obviously took a toll on his waning energy. “Go ahead if you think you can do something. I can’t walk.”

“Up.” He kept his hand out.

Too exhausted to argue, she grabbed his hand with both of hers and let him pull her to her feet. She sucked in a sharp breath. Tears threatened at the surge of blistering pain. The minute she balanced herself on one leg he let go of her. “What the—”

Before she could fall, he scooped her fireman style over his good shoulder, then started walking. He was headed in the direction of the waterfall they’d passed earlier.

“Put me down. You’re in no shape to carry me.”

He said nothing, just plodded along like a man who had been beaten with a club.

Struggling would only hurt both of them, so she kept still.

Time in the universe of pain moved at an excruciating pace. Every misstep over the rugged terrain jarred her leg and brought tears to her eyes. There was no way she’d cry out or complain, when he had to be hurting just as much.

He muttered something and plowed on.

She couldn’t pay attention to his words past the mind-numbing ache. The sound of rushing water got louder and louder, then she saw the lake and waterfall out of the corner of her eye.

He walked into clear water that wasn’t cold, but cooler than the sauna they’d been trudging through.

Everything below her waist had turned into one gigantic, infected throb.

Tristan held her with his one arm and sunk to his neck. He whispered words that sounded like a chant.

She asked, “What are you doing?”

He just kept murmuring strange words.

“Are you trying to put a spell on me?”

He paused from chanting. “If I did . . . it would be . . . to shut you up. Trying to draw out . . . the saliva. Water helps keep the wound clean . . . while the saliva seeps out.”

She believed him. “The burning from the saliva is going away, but I’m still getting weaker.”

The next time he spoke, his voice came out more even. Not so tight with pain. “I don’t think I can pull the saliva out of you the way I can do it on myself. You’re going to have to help with that.”

“Guess this isn’t a majik pond after all.” Her knee had quieted to a dull thrum of hurt that still pulsated in time with each heartbeat. She couldn’t see past hair that had fallen into her face. She tried to push it away with one hand.

“Hold your breath,” he said right before he lowered her beneath the surface.

She sucked in a lungful of air just in time. He kept her against him, tucked within the grasp of his healthy arm. Beneath the water, she watched him go into a Zen-like state, eyes shut. Slowly, he moved his damaged arm away from his body.

Her stomach clenched at seeing his mangled arm in vivid detail.

He continued doing something, because muscle snaked around bone, straightening the arm as it floated.

The blood stopped oozing from his wounds. Loose muscle continued inching back into place. Bone extended, connecting broken pieces, all of it smoothing into normal shape.

She opened her mouth in shock and sucked in water, choking.

He lifted her up until her head broke the surface. She gasped for air, hacking up water.

Tristan snapped out a curse. “Thought you could hold your breath longer than that.”

She coughed again. “How’d you do that?”

When he didn’t answer, she turned to face him. He was staring at her with indecision at first. “You really don’t know how to heal yourself?”

The last thing she wanted to do was admit a weakness to another person, especially a male, but he was insinuating this had to do with being an Alterant.

Tristan used his now-healing arm to wash the last of the mud still clinging to her hair.

She’d normally mouth off at him for acting as if he could do as he pleased with her, but she didn’t have it in her to care at the moment.

Her entire body was ravaged and exhausted from the fight.

The demon’s saliva continued to drain her life energy.

Her knee felt as if an elephant had stepped on it and she had the headache of death.

She heaved a sigh. “No, I have no idea how you healed yourself. And why didn’t you shift to fight those demons?”

“Had to save my energy for . . . later.” Tristan hoisted her into his arms, which were now both functioning.

Shifting into his Alterant state drained his energy? Interesting. He must have believed he could beat those demons without shifting and hadn’t planned on the saliva killing his supernatural energy.

But what did he plan to do that was important enough for him to weigh saving his power for later?

She could ask him questions once they got out of here. Saving her leg came first, and he was still healing. “What are you doing to fix yourself?”

“If you really don’t know how to heal yourself, we need to get busy. The longer that saliva is in your system the harder it is to draw out.”

If she hadn’t seen the repair to his arm with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed him. “So how does this work?”

“I’ll show you.”

Wasn’t that what Storm had said when she’d asked how the tracking majik worked?

Why couldn’t men just give a straight answer once in a while? She didn’t like the idea of trying something unknown, but she couldn’t walk out of here.

“Show me,” she told him.

“Hold still for a minute. I think I can finish drawing the saliva out of your leg now that I’m getting stronger. The rest is up to you.”

Once the burning from the saliva eased, he stopped whispering his chant and walked to the bank. He sat on the ground, dripping water everywhere, and lowered her carefully to his lap.

She stared in awe at the amazing change when he flexed his damaged arm, where new skin had begun skimming over the once exposed muscle.

Tristan said, “I know it hurts, but you need to straighten out your leg.”

She nodded, then sucked up her courage and slowly stretched out her leg, gritting her teeth and shaking with the effort. The bananas she’d eaten wanted to join the party, but she kept her mouth shut until her throat cleared. “Now what?”

“You know how to release your inner Alterant, right?”

“I’ve been forbidden from shifting.” That was a safe answer. She was not telling him anything he could use against her at some point.

“I don’t mean to change all the way to your beast state,” Tristan qualified.

She gave him a look that suggested the demon saliva had reached his brain.

His eyebrows climbed his forehead. “How many times have you shifted?”

Once, all the way, but she wouldn’t share that experience with anyone except Tzader and Quinn, since they were the only ones who knew. And she’d risked shifting that one time only to save all three of their lives. Those two Beladors would take her secret to their deathbeds.

She answered, “I just told you I’m not allowed to shift.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t know squat about being an Alterant, do you?”

“How am I supposed to know anything when the only person who might be able to tell me a few things won’t?” she snapped.

“I can’t help it if Brina kept us apart.”

“We’re together now,” she pointed out.

He could have asked her for anything in trade at that moment and she would have been hard-pressed not to hand it over in exchange for her leg.

But he didn’t try to barter, which surprised her almost as much as his not shifting into a beast earlier.

He explained, “I had a lot of time to experiment while stuck out here. I found stages of change from minor altering all the way to full beast state, but there’s an initial phase of tapping power you can use and still not change into a beast.”

If she said she wasn’t curious she’d be lying. “How do I tap into that power?”

“You call up the Alterant beast slowly and feel the power seep into your blood and muscles and bone, stopping it short of the physical change from human to beast. If you do that, you can cure damn near anything. How do you think I survived living here? I was bitten by a fer-de-lance.”

“What’s that?”

“A huge pit viper with upper and lower fangs. The venom can kill within minutes of striking its prey.”

She glanced around, now adding giant snakes to the list of nasties to watch out for. Should she trust anything Tristan was telling her, especially about tapping her inner Alterant?

He hadn’t walked her into sunlight, and he hadn’t taken advantage of her incapacitated position. Oddly enough, she wasn’t freaking out about being held by him, which could be due solely to the shock of a crushed knee, almost dying and low blood pressure.

Opening her senses, she searched Tristan for some emotion, anything that might hint at his motive for trying to get her to risk changing into a beast.

Tristan hadn’t survived all this time by being stupid. He would use any edge he could get in their alliance.

The minute she opened up to him a flood of reaction hit her. Spurts of anger . . . and frustration . . . that was understandable. He wouldn’t have gotten over being furious at her . . . but . . . that wasn’t all of it.

His central emotion came clear all at once.

Anger and frustration emerged from a ball of worry.

About her? Yes. Concern over her leg and her pain. Why would he care about a woman who had sent him back to prison?

“Evalle, the longer you wait the more difficult it will be to repair your knee.” The grim set of his mouth said he meant that the longer she waited the more painful the repair would be. “If you’re vacillating over trusting me, keep in mind I have nothing to gain by healing you and plenty to lose.”

With her gut and her empathic side in unison, she could only hope he was right about her doing this without shifting. “Tell me what to do.”

“Close your eyes and think about the center of your body. It’s a volcano that can erupt and destroy everything or just bubble up and pour streams of lava down the sides. That’s what you’re going to do with your power.”

She listened to the cadence of his voice and focused on calling forth the power deep inside her.

Her beast roused.

She panicked and shut down the call, opening her eyes. “I can’t do it. I’ll change.”

“So I’m that much better than you at being an Alterant?”

That just pissed her off. She didn’t care if anyone heard her curse mentally. She clamped her eyelids shut and slowed her breathing. He started talking again.

She withdrew inside herself until she could feel the bubble of energy within her body.

Focusing on that, she started calling up her Alterant softly, willing her beast power to grow very slowly.

Warm fingers of strength began to ooze through her, just like a lava flow, easing out and touching the bruises on her chest and arms. They ached, but in a positive way. He instructed her to direct her energy down to her leg.

She did as he said and felt the stream slide along her thigh, then circle her knee, building up in that one spot until . . .

Evalle tensed against the burst of heat that seared her knee. She yelled when it wouldn’t stop burning her flesh, and she fisted her hands, clinging tight to her sanity.

The white heat engulfed her until she was sure she’d disintegrate like the demon she’d killed. But slowly the glowing white turned into a soothing fog of coolness she could breathe into her dry lungs again.

When she opened her eyes she had Tristan’s healthy forearm in a grip tight enough to break a human’s arm.

Sweat rolled down the sides of his face and veins corded his neck with strain.

She finally realized her knee had downgraded to a mild ache. Relaxing the muscles in her hands, she let go of his arm, where she’d left red marks that were sure to bruise. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . didn’t know I was . . .”

“It’s okay.” He shook his arm as if to help circulation return.

She started to put her foot down and get out of his lap, but he stopped her. “Give it a couple minutes for the bones to finish bonding and you’ll be able to put weight on it. Won’t be strong for a little while, but you should be able to limp along without hurting yourself.”

But now that excruciating pain no longer sidetracked her brain, she wasn’t comfortable sitting in his lap.

A throaty growl from the encroaching jungle wiped away all her discomfort.

She looked up to see a pair of gold eyes staring at them from where the animal stood just inside the dark cover of thick vegetation.

She couldn’t fight anything with claws and teeth yet. Tristan was likely in the same shape until he fully healed.

She whispered to him, “I say we risk me standing unless you can do your monkey whisperer thing with what’s staring at us.”

Tristan spoke loud, not even trying to shield his words. “There’s nothing I can say to deter a demon.”

Another demon? She couldn’t prevent the tremble that shook her body at the idea of facing another fanged demon in her weakened state.

The golden eyes narrowed, then a black jaguar stepped into the clearing and raised up on his hind legs as energy shed across his body. He shifted into a man.

“Storm?” She couldn’t believe her eyes or stop the quick smile that touched her lips.

No doubt about it. A naked, and furious, Storm.

He crossed his arms over his chest, not the least concerned over his lack of clothing.

Tristan’s body tensed. His grip tightened.

“It’s okay. I know him,” Evalle mumbled to Tristan, a bit distracted. She tried not to look at Storm’s profile, but her eyes had a mind of their own and kept wandering below his navel while she struggled to push up off Tristan’s lap. Working part-time at the morgue in Atlanta, she’d seen plenty of male bodies, but not one so well . . . packaged. Literally.

Black hair fell dangerously around the copper skin covering wide shoulders. Bunched muscles curved and cut the lines of his chest where he crossed his arms, and more rippled along his abdomen when he breathed down to where . . . a loincloth appeared?

Storm glanced down at the brief length of what looked like buckskin covering his lower parts, then glared at Tristan. “Naked doesn’t bother me at all. But I can see why you would be uncomfortable with the comparison.”

Evalle looked back and forth between the men. Had Tristan put that loincloth on Storm?

Tristan helped Evalle to her feet and shrugged. “It should worry you to walk around naked . . . with so little to show.”

Storm took a step toward Tristan, who turned toward him. Both bodies pumped with aggression.

Evalle had endured all the fighting she could for one day. “I’m in no mood to watch you two play mine’s bigger.”

Tristan smiled. “It’s not necessary. I already know which one’s bigger.”

Storm stopped, but countered with, “Must be true what they say about the strides they’re making with implants.”

Before that got out of hand again, Evalle broke it up. “I say we get out of here before anything else attacks us.”

Storm asked in a wisecracking voice, “What? Didn’t enjoy the way he was mauling you? And who let him out of his cage?”

“He wasn’t mauling me . . .” Her voice fell off when she caught the cold fury in Storm’s eyes. She wasn’t about to admit she had unintentionally helped Tristan escape. “We were on our way back to Atlanta and—”

“I was protecting her.” Tristan moved closer to Evalle.

Storm eyed her knee where skin hadn’t covered all the raw areas still healing. “Impressive job of protecting her. If I hadn’t shown up she’d have been dead before she reached the next town.”

Tristan hooked his arm around her in a possessive way that slid under her skin like sharp needles.

Unable to move away, she hissed at him, “Let go of me.”

“No.”

“Let go of me or I’ll hurt you,” she whispered.

“You didn’t mind me carrying you into the lake for a bath.”

She couldn’t believe Tristan had said that and clearly for Storm’s benefit. If she hadn’t still been so unsteady on her one leg he would be sprawled on his butt. “Get your hands off me.”

“Do as she says,” Storm warned.

“Or you’ll hurt me?” Tristan chuckled.

“I won’t hurt you.” Storm smiled with evil intent. “Well, maybe when I snap your neck, but you won’t feel it for long.”

A strong emotion from Storm reached her. He was angry . . . no, not exactly.

He was . . . jealous? Really? That brightened her day.

The stupids must have set in again.

Tristan grinned, taunting Storm with, “Come on. I’d like a jaguar rug for my next apartment.”

Evalle jerked away from Tristan, keeping herself turned slightly away from Storm or she wouldn’t be able to think. “I don’t have time for a testosterone battle. And neither do you, Tristan, if we’re going to find those three Alterants.”

“So you’re working with him now?” Storm asked.

Tristan’s smile widened.

Evalle glared at Tristan to cut it out, then looked over her shoulder at Storm. “We have an agreement.”

The look of disappointment on Storm’s face crushed her. He had come for her just as he’d promised, but would he understand why she had to stick with Tristan?

“Not so fast,” Tristan told her. “We had an agreement that did not include him.”

She swung back around. “What do you mean?”

Tristan raised his hands, palm out. “If that tomcat found his way here, then he can find his way to the next town. Storm goes or I go.”

Storm said nothing, which worried her a lot more than his anger. What did he think? That she’d been allowing Tristan to touch her body . . . that way?

As if.

Evalle couldn’t afford to lose Tristan, but neither would she abandon Storm after he’d come all the way down here to find her. She told Tristan, “You’re not going anywhere without me if you expect me to speak to the Tribunal for you.”

Tristan’s eyes moved from Storm to Evalle, making a decision. “Remember when I told you gods and goddesses could be tricky? You said Loki’s exact words were ‘Let the one who returns the three escaped Alterants to VIPER be cleared of prior transgressions.’ I don’t need you to talk to the Tribunal. All I have to do is show up with those three to negotiate for my freedom. And finding them shouldn’t be a problem, since I’m the one who told those three where to hide in Atlanta.”

Tristan was going to snake her deal with the Tribunal. “You son of a—”

He shook his finger back and forth. “Uh-uh. Brina doesn’t like her minions to curse. Make up your mind if it’s me or him if you want to continue our partnership.”

“It’s not technically a partnership,” she said for Storm’s benefit. “Just an agreement.”

Tristan wouldn’t relent. “You with me or him?”

“You know I need your help.” The disgusted sound that erupted behind Evalle lowered her expectations of smoothing this over soon with Storm. Surely he realized she would not leave him here. Nobody was going anywhere until she got things straight with Storm first.

Not that she should care what he thought with so much at stake, but she did. His disappointment ate at the happiness that had bloomed over seeing him here.

She said in a firm voice, “I’m not leaving anyone here.”

“Can either of you teleport?” Tristan asked.

“No,” Evalle snapped, losing patience. “What’s your point?”

“I can.” Tristan vanished.

“Blast it!” She turned to Storm, saying, “I can’t believe he can still tele—”

Storm was gone, too.