Tempest stepped back, suddenly shy. She had never liked crowds, and she definitely preferred to be anonymous. “I’ll listen from a distance. Good luck, you two.”
Syndil was appearing with the band for the first time since the trauma of her rape. Out in the hall, Barack and Dayan were waiting, along with several security and event staff, to escort them on stage. Julian and Darius were at the entrances. Security would remain tight for the duration of the concert, and there would be little chance for patrons to wander about the auditorium unobserved.
Tempest followed the band from a short distance, looking around for Darius. When she couldn’t find him, she stayed just outside the door and listened. A roar went up, signaling that Desari was on stage. The band began a slow, moody ballad, one particularly suited to Desari’s beautiful voice. It filled the hall and spilled out, dreamy, sexy, mystical.
Tempest touched the door with reverent fingers. No one had a voice like Desari. Once heard, it was impossible to forget. It conjured up dreams, fantasies, evoked intense emotions in all who heard her. Tempest felt a surge of pride in her. Somehow she had become part of them all. Accepted. Respected. A member of their peculiar family.
Cullen hurried up, obviously out of breath, his heart loud enough for Tempest to hear. “Where is he? Where’s Darius?”
“At the entrance to the balcony, I think,” she replied.
“The riverboat party. The bachelor thing. I saw Brady Grand among the passengers boarding the boat, but I don’t think he got on. If he’s the one who booked that boat, then it’s a set-up. He’s got a crew here.”
“Who’s Brady Grand?” Tempest was pacing alongside Cullen as he raced toward the stairs to find Darius.
“He’s someone you don’t want to meet. He heads up the society here on the West Coast. Damn it, where’s Darius?” Cullen started up the stairs but was stopped by a uniformed security guard. He pointed impatiently to his tag and pushed past the man.
Tempest turned and ran to the door, rushing outside, running around the building toward the marina. The riverboat was still tied to the dock. Men were laughing and shoving one another as they moved up the pier to board the boat. She had no idea exactly what she was looking for. They all looked like normal partygoers to her. She stood very still, trying to see one thing that jangled, that jarred. The revelers continued to board the boat, their jokes lewd, a lot of playful pushing and shoving going on. Most of the men looked as if they’d already indulged in a great deal of partying before they arrived.
She shook her head and moved away from the bushes toward the marina store. Almost at once she felt a sharp object poking into her back. Thinking it was a branch, she started to turn. She saw a blur coming at her head, nothing she could identify, but she had no chance of getting her arms up to protect herself. Whatever it was smashed against her head, hard, and she was falling.
Inside the building Darius froze in place. Not a muscle moved. It was as if he stopped breathing. Then he was moving, far too fast for the human eye to see. He burst from the building, the beast raging for release. He felt it growing stronger and more lethal within him. He let it consume him, reaching for it, so that the thin veneer of civilization was gone. The savage predator was loose, and there was not one shred of mercy in its soul.
Tempest.
Her name was a whisper of sanity in his mind, the only thing keeping him from a berserker’s rage. He could not kill everyone who crossed his path. He had to stay focused. She had been taken from him. But because she did not answer his call did not mean she was lost to him forever. He would know if she was dead. His soul would know. No, they had knocked her out in some way, made it impossible for his mind to reach hers. They had baited a trap, and in his arrogance, he had fallen into it. Thinking Desari the ultimate target, he had concentrated his protection there. Cullen had been right all along. They wanted Tempest.
Julian, they have taken Tempest. Stay and protect Desari and Syndil. Alert Dayan and Barack. I will go after her. It is a trap. Of course it is. Why else would they grab her when we were all here far the taking? They are using her for bait. I will go.
Darius moved swiftly away from the crowds, needing the open spaces. He sent a call to the night, sent a wind seeking his answers. It brought the scent of his prey, sharp and pungent, to his nostrils. Darius took to the sky, shape-shifting as he did so, his body becoming that of a winged night hunter. Below him he saw the winding ribbon of highway, the car speeding over the mountain road. They would be taking her somewhere close. Leading him into the trap.
Darius plunged straight down, streaking through the sky toward the windshield of the car, his huge expanse of wings spread wide. The bird completely eclipsed the glass, and the driver screamed and instinctively ducked. At the last moment Darius pulled up and disappeared as if he had never been. The car swerved wildly, fishtaiing dangerously close to the cliff. The rear end swung around, smashed into dirt and rock, bounced off, then slid several feet before the driver could regain control of the vehicle.
Brady Grand swore as he clutched at the seat in front of him. “What the hell are you doing, Martin? We almost crashed. Slow down if you have to. Wallace says she has to be alive. We need information, and the only way to lure one of them to us is through a woman.”
“You didn’t see it?” Martin wiped the sweat from his face. “It was an owl. The biggest damned owl I ever saw.”
“There wasn’t anything there,” Brady snarled. “You’re just chicken. All you have to do is drive.” Brady swept back the red-gold hair falling across Tempest’s face so he could examine the ugly cut where Martin had hit her with the billy club. “You hit her too damned hard. She’s bleeding like a stuck pig back here.”
A gust of wind hit the side of the car, blowing it several inches into the other lane. Ahead of them ominous black clouds gathered from out of nowhere. Veins of lightning zigzagged from cloud to cloud. Thunder crashed so loudly, it shook the car. Martin ducked again and swore out loud. “This is getting out of hand, Brady. I say it’s a warning of some kind. If something’s doing this, I don’t want to challenge it. Let them have her.”
The car was slowing, pulling to the side of the road. Brady slapped the back of Martin’s head hard. “Drive!
This is what we want. He’ll follow us. We haw a poison that will render him helpless. We’ll actually bag one of them. Just drive the damned car.”
A cloud, black and sinister, poured into the car through a back window that was cracked open an inch. It flowed in, spreading a dark vapor that obscured all vision. Brady grabbed at the woman but felt something tugging her away from him.
“No way! I’ll kill her!” He jerked his gun into position and pulled the trigger as fast as he could. It was too late. The vapor had wound itself around his throat and was pulling tighter and tighter. He felt his captive slide to the floor and tried to aim the gun at her head, pulling the trigger again, cursing as he did so. The reverberations from the shots were loud in the close confines of the car.
“You thought you could take my woman from me,” Darius said softly.
The venomous black vapor suddenly felt real, felt like a solid noose, a garrote cutting deep into Brady’s throat, slicing through flesh so that his blood ran like a river down his neck to soak into his immaculate white shirt. He was still cursing as he died.
Darius snarled silently as the stench of gunpowder drifted out the window and the black cloud slowly solidified. Blood was dripping from his left thigh, and another bullet had caught him near his hip when he had flung his body over Tempest to protect her. She wasn’t moving, and it scared him to death. The driver was dead. Grand had shot him with his wild barrage of bullets.