Lost (44 page)

I'd missed his
heart again, too low this time, but I hadn't expected anything
different. The important thing was that I could feel his arms
relaxing even further.

From where he
was standing Onyx shouldn't have been able to see what had happened,
but something tipped him off. Maybe it was a change in Nicolas'
posture, or maybe it was something in my expression, but he knew as
soon as I did when the balance finally shifted irrevocably towards
me.

The burning
sheet of pain as Onyx used his power on me was all the worse because
I hadn't been expecting it. Onyx apparently wasn't willing to stand
by and see Nicolas killed, not when he had the ability to save
someone that he viewed as being a useful tool.

I yelled again.
The agony was too intense for me to hold it inside. Nicolas tightened
his grip on me in an attempt to finish me off even faster, but all
that did was drive my claws more deeply into his chest.

A tiny,
hysterical part of me wanted to tell him not to bother. I'd managed
to endure several seconds, maybe even as much as a minute, of Onyx's
ability before, but my reserves were already gone this time. I was at
the end of my strength, had been for the last quarter of the fight,
and I could feel the end approaching.

Just before I
felt my heart beat for the last time I started hallucinating. The
pain didn't exactly disappear, but it morphed into something else. My
core still burned with the same terrible fire, but there was a
different, more pleasant, cooling fire burning in my arms and legs.

It started in
my claws, which was odd—there aren't any kind of nerve endings
there—and spread. About the time my heart stopped beating, I
sank my talons into Nicolas' thighs. I couldn't have said why I chose
to do that right then.

Maybe it was a
simple desire to make sure that I took Nicolas with me. Maybe it was
something else, an instinct operating on the subconscious level where
my beast preferred to spend most of his time.

Either way, by
the time the fire moved up to my knees and elbows I was craving it
the way that I normally craved air. I had a fleeting thought that my
brain must be approaching the point of running out of oxygen, but I
didn't mind, not if that was the price to feel this good.

There was
something wrong with that thought, but I was having a hard time
reasoning around the drumming in my ears. I wasn't wrong because I
was willing to die, although that was wrong too. There was something
else. I wasn't supposed to feel good. I should have still been in
pain, exquisite pain that exceeded anything else I'd ever felt, but I
wasn't.

I opened my
eyes back up to check, but Onyx still had the same slightly pinched
expression around his eyes. He was still using his ability on me, but
it wasn't affecting me anymore.

No, that wasn't
quite it. I could still feel the pain out in the very furthest
reaches of my body, but it didn't matter anymore. It was so dwarfed
by everything else I was feeling that there wasn't any room left over
to experience it at the same time.

The cooling,
healing fire had been steadily growing, but now it stopped. It was
still washing up my arms and legs, but it had reached a point of
stability where the fire in was equal to the fire that was being
expended to contain the pain.

I wanted more
fire, wanted it more than anything else I'd ever wanted.
I…reached…for more fire and felt it just beyond the
tips of my claws. I
pulled
and felt it come in faster and
faster.

About that time
I realized what the drumming was. My heart had started back up. Just
as incredibly, I felt strong. I was bursting with strength and
vitality. It demanded that I do something with it.

I broke free of
Nicolas' hold with ridiculous ease, but dropping to the ground pulled
my talons free of him and the amount of fire lapping into my body
dropped by half.

I tried to pull
even more in through my claws, but a split second after that I felt
the source of the healing fire flicker and go out. I didn't realize
what had actually happened until Nicolas turned into dead weight in
my arms.

He was dead.
I'd…sucked him dry like some kind of vampire. It should have
been revolting, but I still felt too good for feelings of disgust to
stick. Besides, I suddenly had a much more pressing concern.

There wasn't
any more good fire entering my body, but the pain was still there,
still eating away at my reserves. Based on the rate at which it was
being consumed I had a very short period of time before the pain was
going to grow back to the point where it would overwhelm me.

I wasn't going
to waste that opportunity. I was less than ten feet away from Onyx's
dais. I covered that distance in two long bounds and slammed the
claws on my right hand into his shoulder before he could process the
fact that his ability had failed him for the first time.

He was strong,
possibly even strong enough to have pushed up out of his chair
despite my best efforts under normal circumstances. These weren't
normal circumstances though, not even close. I could have easily held
him there pinned in his chair, but I chose to let him up.

My store of
healing fire was nearly gone, so I reached through my claws and
started new tendrils racing up my arm. It was intoxicating, so much
so that I didn't manage to get my arm up in time to block the punch
that Onyx threw directly into my chest.

I felt his
claws enter my heart, and then felt the muscle contract, tearing
itself against the bitter, deadly edges of something that didn't
belong there. I should have been panicking, but I merely reached up
and pulled his hand out of my chest.

The energy I
was siphoning from his body raced into the ruin he'd made and I could
feel the flesh knitting back together. I could even feel the blood
being replaced. When I looked down there wasn't even a scar there.

Onyx tried to
slash me again, but I was ready this time. I blocked his attack with
my left hand and then ended him with a single slash across his neck.

I didn't want
to kill him that way. Every part of me hungered to drain him dry in
the exact same way that I'd drained Nicolas, but the sheer strength
of the desire told me that would be a bad idea. I'd never been
addicted to anything before, and I didn't want to start now, didn't
want to turn into someone that killed solely for the high it gave me.

I turned around
to face the rest of the room and saw chaos. Half of Onyx's remaining
men had charged the dais and the other half were engaged in a
lopsided battle against Celeste, Jax, and the rest of Celeste's
people.

The dominants
were clearly better fighters, but they were giving way against better
than three-to-one odds. The submissives were attacking fearlessly.
Some of them had already taken dreadful wounds, but others had
latched onto arms and legs and even as I watched, one of the hybrids
went down as a wolf latched onto his throat.

The first of
Onyx's guys reached me, but I was faster than I'd ever been before. I
checked his slash by stabbing him in the arm, and then stepped into
him and put my fist into his chest. The second guy reached me while I
was still tangled up with the first guy, but I merely stabbed him in
the thigh with the talons of my left leg and shoved.

It shouldn't
have been possible to stop a full-grown hybrid like that, not when he
was charging and I was stationary, not by using only one leg, but I
did. More than just stopping him, I threw him nearly thirty feet.

I heard an
unfamiliar screech just before the third hybrid reached me, and
looked down to find that I'd torn long gouges into the concrete of
the dais. I grabbed the third guy and threw him into the obscenely
heavy throne with enough force to both knock him unconscious and
knock the throne down off of the dais.

The fourth guy
arrived too soon after the third guy and managed to stab me in the
back. The fire was burning so brightly inside of me that I barely
even felt the pain. It wasn't until I turned and backhanded him into
the wall that I realized I'd been draining the first guy that entire
time.

"Stop!"

My yell
practically shook the entire house. It was so loud that everyone
actually stopped fighting for the briefest of instants.

"Stop
fighting and you will be judged for your crimes. There has been
enough killing. You'll all be punished for your crimes, and you may
end up being sent out to fight werewolves until you die, but I'll
spare anyone I can. No more death."

Isaac Nazir
Hunt Family Estate
New Orleans, Louisiana

Everyone had
decided to separate back to their respective corners rather than
continuing to fight. I probably would have gotten more resistance
from Celeste's people except for the fact that the pause in the
hostilities had given them a chance to see the butcher's bill. Two of
them hadn't survived the night and about half of the wolves who were
left were going to spend at least a couple of days in bed.

I asked Celeste
to send the least injured of her people for cages, but she told me
that there was a massive steel and concrete vault on the other end of
the house. When I ordered Onyx's guys to follow one of her wolves to
the vault I expected them to make a break for it, but none of them
did.

It was about
then that I happened to look down and see the sheer amount of light I
was giving off. Even Set's queen hadn't glowed that brightly. I
didn't look like a mortal being, I looked like some kind of angel.

If I'd been in
their shoes I probably would have been in shock too.

After the bad
guys were all safely locked up, and I'd helped care for Celeste's
people, I found an out-of-the-way bedroom that looked like it hadn't
been used in a while and collapsed onto the bed. It took a while, but
eventually the energy that I'd stolen from Nicolas, Onyx and the
other guy dissipated. Some of it seemed to just soak into the air
around me, but it felt like the reservoir inside of me was emptying
faster than that could account for. It felt like a lot of that energy
was going somewhere else, I just didn't have any idea where.

When the fire
was finally all gone, I was exhausted. I wasn't tired physically, but
emotionally and mentally I had nothing left to give. Changing back to
human form had helped curb the desire to drain someone dry, but it
hadn't gone completely away.

I didn't like
looking at people as a kind of metaphysical food source, but right
now that was all I saw when I looked at any of them. Somewhere along
the line I fell asleep and didn't wake until Celeste opened the door.

"Are you
okay, Isaac? Do you want to be left alone?"

It was like
looking at a new person. She was still Celeste, but her eyes were
more guarded and her posture was more submissive.

"No,
please come in."

I started to
scoot over so that she could sit next to me, but when I looked down
at the comforter it was covered in blood, none of it mine.

"I'm
sorry, I wasn't thinking. I've ruined the bedspread."

"It's
fine. I was talking to Ash when I saw the blood on the carpets. He's
graciously offered to replace anything that needs replacing out of
his share of our inheritance."

"Sorry, I
guess I wasn't really myself after everything that happened."

"Please
don't get mad at me, Isaac, but what did happen?"

Even as I
answered her I couldn't meet her eyes.

"I fed off
of them. First Nicolas, then Onyx, then the first of their guys to
attack me. It filled me up with what felt like fire. Their…energy
healed me and cushioned me from the pain of having Onyx use his
ability on me. I'd never felt anything like it before."

"You must
have manifested an ability."

I shook my
head. "That's impossible. Mallory looked at a couple of us in
Nevada before we split up. It wasn't necessary since she'd known me
as a child, but she confirmed just a few weeks ago that I don't have
the potential to manifest an ability."

"I don't
know who Mallory is, or why you think she'd know whether you were
capable of manifesting a power, but she was wrong. You manifested an
ability, and it's a huge one. You glowed and I saw Onyx all but rip
your heart out of your chest. You're unstoppable."

"No, I
wouldn't say that. Hard to kill, yes, but I'm kind of like a
variation of Jaclyn Annikov. I'd be useless against a werewolf, and
it all only really kicks in once I've stolen quite a bit of energy
from someone else."

"You're
shortchanging yourself, Isaac. Nobody short of Alec or Puppeteer
would have even a hope of beating you."

"You'd be
surprised. I can think of a couple of others who could put me down
with a little luck or even just the right planning."

"Once
you've had a chance to rest we need to start testing the limits of
what you can do. It could be the difference between living and dying.
You need to know what you're capable of."

"No!"

It wasn't meant
for her as much as it was to tell myself that I wasn't going to tap
into someone else's life force again, not unless I didn't have any
other choice.

Celeste jumped
slightly, which surprised me, but before I could ask what was wrong
she continued speaking.

"Very
well. Ash and Kristin have asked if it would be possible for them to
come here."

"What? Of
course, why are they even asking?"

She looked at
me like she wasn't sure what language I was speaking. "They
asked because it's bad form to just stop by and visit a pack without
clearing the trip with the pack's alpha. The only exception is if
you're planning on challenging for leadership of the pack or you're
with the Coun'hij."