A single male stood before him, an array of colorful tattoos covering his bulging biceps, trailing over his broad shoulders, down his arms to the thickness of his forearms. Silver snakes twined his wide wrists, and the black leather vest he wore tapered at his midsection to display similar markings on his chest and stomach. Long, black hair hung loose and wild around a square jaw and defined cheekbones that were slashed with red—a human face, though this was no human. Death and destruction clung to him like a second skin.
Walch shoved up the wall, scrambling to get to his feet. The male raised his hand and pointed. Pressure forced Walch’s shoulders back to the wall; he was frozen in place by an invisible barrier of some sort.
Carol was standing now, intent on defending Walch with her skills. Using her mental prowess, she sent random items flying at the stranger—a chair, a lamp, a book. The stranger waved a hand, and the makeshift weapons fell to the ground. Another invisible force flung Carol to her back, pressed against the mattress.
“I can’t move!” she screamed. “I can’t move!” Her voice was wild with panic, her body stiff and straight.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Walch demanded, his tone a deceptive calm.
The stranger’s dark, menacing eyes locked with Walch’s. “What I was promised,” the man said simply. “A reasonable expectation, I believe. I want my army of Dark Knights.”
Walch inhaled a shuddering breath and let it out with one word—a name. “Tezi,” he murmured, fear tightening his breath in his chest. The former leader of the Knights of White, powerful and dark in all the ways he was once good. The warrior sharply inclined his head to confirm his identity, and Walch launched into an exasperated explanation. “I only need a few more weeks. I will give you your Knights.”
“I grow tired of excuses,” Tezi rasped angrily, as he walked to stand before Carol. Out of nowhere a blade appeared in Tezi’s hand, a blade he sliced down Carol’s stomach as she screamed out in pain. Blood pooled on her abdomen, and the knife disappeared into thin air.
Tezi pressed his fingers into the blood on Carol’s stomach. He then looked at the tips with disgust in his face a second before he disappeared, seemingly gone from the room until he reappeared in front of Walch.
Tezi held his palm up, exposing his blood-dipped skin. “Black,” he spat. “Her blood is black, drying up until she is dead or fully converted. She cannot have her abilities cloned in humans because you stole her humanity.” His eyes flashed red and then yellow, his voice hissing in anger. He rubbed his fingers together in the black goo. “Did you intend to let the doctor sample this? Did you not think this would be a problem?” Tezi pressed those blood-tipped fingers into the center of Walch’s chest and began drawing a black circle around his heart. Walch cried out, feeling as if his heart were being ripped from his chest, like an invisible, lethal blade hacking his flesh. Long, excruciating seconds passed, and then, as abruptly as the pain had started, it ended. Tezi’s red stare came back into focus. “Any chance you had of convincing me of your capability is gone,” he said. “Carol is now a potential exposure I cannot allow. You force me to take immediate actions.”
The vise holding him against the wall abruptly disappeared. Walch fell to the ground, his legs unable to hold him up, his breath heaving from his aching chest.
Walch opened his mouth to explain his plan, to explain why he’d started Carol’s conversion, but what appeared before his eyes silenced his words and sent a shock wave of terror through his system.
Tezi extended his arms level with his shoulders, and the silver bracelets on his wrists slithered off, suddenly alive. Two silver-bodied snakes settled at Tezi’s feet and began to grow. They curled into full-size serpents, each two feet long and four inches thick, their beady eyes pinning him in a trance as they hissed through huge fangs. Another moment passed, and they changed, yet again, growing, shifting, taking the form of two beautiful dark-haired females dressed in silver body-suits—twin deadly beauties.
Tezi smiled as the twins nestled close to his side, each placing one slender hand on his chest. “Meet Lithe and Litha, guardians of the Underworld’s serpent pits, special friends of Adrian’s whom I’ve become quite fond of. I brought them along to aid your efforts to complete your duty.” He paused, as if intentionally forcing Walch to wait for more detail, torturing him with what might come next. “As you will soon learn firsthand, receive the Serpent’s mark, and you belong to her for all of time.” He smiled and covered their hands with his own as if embracing their touch. “They live in your dreams, track you through your sleep. They can deliver you to lush fantasies or the most horrendous of hallucinations. They can make you go insane from both pleasure and pain.” He paused, inhaled and let it out. “I had meant them as a simple incentive for you alone, Walch, a punishment-reward system. But now, the guardians will be doing what you have not. They will seek out these patients and mark them before you manage to get us all discovered. Once the doctor witnesses her patient’s hallucinations, she will cooperate and she will do so in silence.”
The guardians started a sensual slither of a walk toward Walch. There was nowhere to go, no place to run. They embraced him from either side, just as they had Tezi, their full breasts pressed tight against his shoulders. Their silver-tipped fingers explored his chest, his body. He moaned, pleasure ripping through him in an unnatural way. And despite the sensual release that the touch promised, his mind raced with the promise that hell was coming.
Tezi seemed to read his mind. “Lithe and Litha have been instructed to meet your pleasure needs until I say otherwise.” He paused. “Until you dissatisfy me.” Walch barely heard his words. Lithe and Litha were touching him, magically touching him in a way he didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. Pleasure came with each brush of their hands, each rasp of their breath against his skin. “But if you fail me,” Tezi said, “they will no longer be required to offer such pleasures.” Suddenly Lithe and Litha shifted again, leaving him gasping with the loss of their touch. Two silver snakes curled on the ground at his feet and then slinked up his calves, wrapping them as tightly as rubber bands.
“It is time for you to see what belonging to Lithe and Litha means,” Tezi declared. “How else will you explain to that little doctor of yours the fate of her patients, if she does not give me what I want?”
Suddenly, Walch was in a pit, snakes everywhere. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t real. He knew it was his imagination. But their suffocating touch said otherwise; above him, below him, on top of him, snakes biting at his arms, his legs, his feet. They were feeding off him.
“Tezi!” he screamed. “Tezi!”
But no answer came.
Chapter 10
The Knights gathered on the dock several miles from the research facility, with the exception of Lucan, who still had plenty of healing to do. As expected, there wasn’t a boat in sight. No one came to or left this island without Walch’s knowledge.
“We all felt it,” Des said, explaining why Rinehart had been paged. “A punch-in-the-gut sudden rush of evil.”
“It has to be Beasts,” Rock added, leaning against the wooden railing next to Des. “And lots of ’em. More than I’ve ever sensed in one place.”
Rinehart grimaced. “Like we weren’t dodging enough of those bastards as it was,” he grumbled, rubbing the tension balling in the back of his neck. “Walch couldn’t convert the remaining humans on the island until they were given a power, so maybe he brought in reinforcements.”
Max’s attention flickered to Rock. “All jokes aside kid, but…you’re young, and I’m older than dirt. I read things differently.” He shrugged, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. “This felt more like one powerful, malicious presence.”
Des lowered his gaze. “I got the same read as Rock.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Max said, “it’s one more reason to kick up the pace on this mission. Get these patients off this island before whatever it is gets their hands on their powers.”
> “Three days,” Rinehart reasoned, thinking this through logically despite the foreboding circumstances. “I need that long to prepare Laura and her group. We can be gone by sunup Monday morning.”
“Sooner would be better,” Max added. “Have you told Laura what is going on?”
“I was working on it when you paged,” Rinehart said, reminding them that they’d cut short his encounter with Laura. “She’s meeting me here any minute.”
Des snorted and flashed a grin. “She’s a hard sell, R. Better polish your charm.” His humor faded. “We need her on board. Trying to take that group of kids off this island if they see us as the enemy will be a slippery slide I don’t think we want to ride. And we have enough to worry about with Carol. That chick had that deep, soulless look in her eyes. She’s not playing on the right team anymore.”
Rinehart hated the truth of Des’s statement, and his heart was heavy with the thought of telling Laura. “We’ll have to sedate Carol for the extraction and hope she’s not too far gone for Marisol to pull her soul back.” The longer that a Beast controlled a soul, the harder it was to salvage. He eyed Max. “Can you get a message to Jag about all of this?”
“Will do,” Max confirmed. Rinehart’s gaze caught on the distant silhouette of Laura, shoes in hand, hair loose and lifting gently in the wind. Max’s attention followed Rinehart’s, and he added, “Looks like our invitation to leave.” Rinehart didn’t respond immediately. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from her. His chest was tight with the reaction he had to seeing Laura. “Watch your back,” Max ordered gruffly, heading down the wooden dock with Rock by his side.
Des lingered. “I know you know this, man, but I have to say it.” The out-of-character seriousness in Des’s voice jolted Rinehart from his trance. He arched a brow at Des. “No matter how she responds to what you tell her,” he said, “no matter how much she might resist, you have to take her under your protection. There’s no time, not after what Max sensed out here tonight. Whatever or whoever it is, we both know this is about Laura and her research. And this isn’t just about her being in danger. This is about the danger that her research represents in the wrong hands.”
Rinehart inhaled a shaky breath, Jag’s words coming back to him. At all costs, he was to keep Laura out of the hands of the Beasts. “I know,” he confirmed, his voice steely edged. “Believe me, Des, I know.”
Des studied him a moment, and then clapped a hand on his back before walking away. Rinehart’s gaze traveled along the wooden dock, over the railing, and latched on to Laura. She stood several feet away in casual conversation with Max and Rock. As the Knights departed, she whirled around to face the docks.
Instantly, their gazes collided, and a punch of emotions hit him smack in the center of his chest. Their bond was inevitable, but their mating was not. Both of them had shown the courage to help others at all costs, and the willingness to sacrifice to protect those in need—to serve the innocent. But there was a need she possessed that he did not—the need to be normal. He’d never been normal, nor would he ever be normal. Nor did he want to be. All his life he’d fought the battles no one else would.
Emotion tightened his chest as he thought of Jag’s orders—orders that could force him to sacrifice his mate in the war against evil.
The injustice of what he faced tortured him, twisted him in knots. He jerked around, stalked down the walkway toward the shadowed end of the wooden dock to the edge of the water.
He was hanging by a string now, barely clinging to his human side. His gaze lifted upward. Surely those higher powers who ruled the Knights knew he couldn’t live through her termination, and certainly not without himself becoming a sacrifice, as well. He ground his teeth. Or was that what they were counting on? Maybe they considered him a lost cause.
The creak of wood behind him told of Laura’s approach. He reached deep, struggled to rein in his emotions, his dark side. Slowly, he sucked in air and beat back his Beast. Damn it, he would not fall to the same darkness he’d been hunting for damn near all his life, no matter how certain the higher powers might be that he would. Nor would he allow Laura to.
This war wasn’t over until it was over. Whatever it took, he’d complete his mission, and he’d fulfill his resolution to save her. And if there had to be a sacrifice in this, it would be him and him alone.
Laura stood at the end of the wooden dock, her shoes left behind in the sand.
Only minutes before, she had been full of bravado and determination. But now that the moment of truth having arrived, she hesitated. Cloaked in shadows, Rinehart stood at the end of the dock, wrapped in a darkness that reached beyond the night. Turbulence rolled off of him as rapidly as the ocean’s waves poured over the shoreline. Even from a distance, he was a big man, his shoulders broad, his waist tapered, his presence forceful. Danger trickled off of him, a second skin, an edge that radiated a willingness to kill. Yet oddly, she felt no risk from him.
She focused, inhaled, reached out to Rinehart using the psychic link she had to anyone near her, trying to understand his troubled state. Feeling pain and torment like a twisting knife in her gut, Laura’s hand went to her stomach. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that this was a man who knew her secrets, didn’t matter that he could tear down her barriers with a mere touch, a kiss. Urgency pressed her forward.
Soundlessly, she closed the distance between them, one step, two. Her senses told her he knew she was there, that he was aware of each footfall of her progress toward him. And that he was aware of the moment she paused not more than a foot behind him.
Confirming as much, he turned to face her, moonlight casting light on his stark features. On a face so fraught with turmoil, it tightened her chest. “What is it?” she whispered hoarsely, fearful of what he knew that she did not yet know. “What’s wrong? Has something happened? My patients—”
“—are fine,” he said, narrowing his gaze on her. “But you can sense the danger to them and to yourself. I know you can.” He didn’t give her time to respond, to deny, and Laura grabbed the railing, somehow needing the extra support as he continued, “Walch isn’t operating under army directive any longer, Laura. Frankly, Walch isn’t even Walch anymore.”
“What?” she asked, blinking at the odd choice of words. He spoke them as if he meant them in a literal sense. And yes, Walch had somehow been corrupted, but he was still Walch. “I don’t understand.”
“The group Walch is involved with is capable of things most humans can’t begin to comprehend. Once someone is inside their circle, there is no turning back. They become lost in that world.”
“As in brainwashing?”
He hesitated. “Something like that.”
She wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but she had to prioritize her need for information, get as much as she could while he was still talking. “This group…who are they?”
“Who they are isn’t as important as what they are capable of and what they want. They have special abilities already—they’re stronger, faster, able to do things other humans cannot. But it’s not enough for them. They want more. They want you, Laura. They plan to use your research to create killing machines, soldiers who can’t be stopped. Soldiers who can be converted to their kind.”
She swallowed hard; his statement was ominous and far too coded for comfort. “Their kind?”
“They aren’t what most would consider human.”
A sensitive spot inside her flared into defense mode. “Meaning anyone who has a special talent isn’t human?”
“It’s not like that,” he said, taking a step toward her, his hand lifting, reaching. She countered his move, backing up, a spark of anger charging through her body. He hesitated at her retreat, frustration etching his features, his arm slowly lowering. “We are talking about abilities born with one purpose—destruction. Evil in its purest form. Evil that isn’t human. You aren’t anything like them, but if they can change that, they will. I have to get you away from this place before they get to you, but you hav
e to do exactly as I tell you when I tell you. That means you have to trust me.”
She shook her head, confused by his coded responses, afraid to trust him despite her instincts telling her that she could. Afraid because his presence overwhelmed her. Even now—angry, scared, on edge—she could almost feel his body against hers.
She’d been wrong about him being dangerous to her. She had no control over her reaction to him. Taking another step backward, she shook her head, rejecting his appeal for trust. “How do I know you aren’t one of them? How do I know any of this is true?”
He pinned her in a potent stare. “You know, Laura. You trust me. It scares the hell out of you, but you trust me. What happened back at that apartment wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t.”
“Maybe what happened is exactly why I shouldn’t trust you. You…you make me act crazy. You make—”
He cut her off. “No more than you do me. And it’s a distraction I don’t want, but I can’t make it go away any more than you can. Instead, we need to make it work for us, Laura. We have to come together, and get you and your little surrogate family off this island.”
She inhaled and shoved her trembling hand through her hair. Trying to rein in her whirling emotions, she turned away from him, hugging herself against the gust of cold fear that tore through her insides. Not since her parents’ deaths had she fully trusted anyone. And Lord help her, she desperately needed a confidant again. But she couldn’t let it be him, not a military man. Not a man with orders he had to follow, orders that most likely would take her to a place she didn’t want to go. Her father’s warnings echoed in her head. The military will make you into a science project. And it was true. The deciding factor that had brought her to this island was seeing the kids trapped here, treated like prisoners. She’d hoped to deliver them to freedom. Now, she had turned herself and Kresley into captives right along with them.
Captive of the Beast Page 10
