Nightwind (43 page)

from her scraped knees. “They can fight no other way.”

Even as the words reached Lauren’s ears, a high-pitched yowl shook the condominium’s foundations

and before her very eyes, the two humanoid shapes inside the cell shifted, changed, metamorphosed into

creatures the likes of which only stalked nightmares. She stared at them, frozen with horror, more

terrified of them than she had been of Raphian.

“Come, boy!” the slavering slit of a mouth on the other NightWind taunted Syn. “Come meet your

doom!”

Jaborn pivoted on his right foot and his other foot crashed against Syntian’s head, knocking his enemy

down. Before Cree could get to his feet, Jaborn planted a vicious, deadly kick into his side, doubling him

over and sending him tumbling away.

“Mine,” Syntian heard the other NightWind chortle. “She’ll be mine and you’ll be sent back to the Pit!”

“They are fighting over me!” Angeline bragged, never seeing the amusement on Lauren’s face at those

words.

Fury engulfed Syntian Cree and he shot up from the floor, coming at his foe with an attack that made

both of them grunt with the force of it.

The growls and howls and hisses coming from the two fighters were ear shattering and so alien it was

hard to imagine anything so bizarre and so eerie.

Lauren found her hands wrapped around the bars of the cage. Looking into the cell, watching the awful

spectacle inside, it was hard to imagine that only moments before the two snarling, snapping beasts inside

the cell had had human shapes. There was nothing even remotely human about them, now. Nothing even

remotely of her Earth. Hideous and hellish, the two shapes were rending each other with long, vicious

claws.

Syntian stumbled away from his opponent as the creature stalked him around the perimeter of the cage.

Cree was breathing heavily, winded, already much too tired from months of forced captivity and no

exercise. He was losing and he knew it. He cast a quick, apologetic glance to his wife. “Lauren, please.

Go. Leave this place. I don’t want you to see this. I can’t—” He screamed in agony, his words cut off

onto a choking gasp as his opponent slashed at him.

Jaborn was not unscathed, but knew he was winning the fight. His enemy was weakening, growing

clumsy and careless. Cree was keeping as far away from Jaborn as the interior of the cage would allow.

“You can’t get out,” Angeline said. “You are trapped in there, aren’t you, Syntian? He’s going to rip you

apart!”

Lauren could tell the two beasts apart, but Angeline could not. The older woman was watching the fight

with keen fascination, putting her money on the taller of the two combatants, never realizing the one she

was betting would win was the very one she hoped would not.

“Kill him, Jaleel!” Angeline called out. “Kill him!”

Jaleel Jaborn’s frenzy soared and he bellowed in rage, crashing into his enemy with enough force to

bend the bars behind Syntian’s back.

Stunned by the blow, Syntian had no time to move away from Jaborn and felt himself being lifted high

into the air. He tried to buck out of the hold, but he was slammed down across his opponent’s knee and

he heard his spine snap. Like a rag doll, he went limp, rolling to the floor as Jaborn let go of him. He lay

where he had landed, unable to move and saw Jaborn leaning over him, his hands out, going for his

throat. As those steel-tipped talons grazed his skin and the mighty hands closed around his windpipe, he

knew he had lost.

Jaborn went down on one knee, wrapping his hands firmly around the exposed throat. He knew he had

broken his enemy’s back for he had felt the give on his upraised knee. Cree’s arms were lying uselessly

at his sides and he was staring up in his killer’s face with resigned defeat. Jaborn began to squeeze.

Angeline rushed inside the cell and threw herself on Jaborn’s back. “I won’t let you kill him, Syntian!”

Angeline shrieked, digging her long nails into the stunned face of the victor. She clawed at his eyes, raked

his cheeks. Even when he came to his feet with a furious roar and tried to shake her off, she clung to him,

jabbing her nails further in.

Syntian vaguely heard the words coming from outside the cell. All he was capable of doing was turning

his head and he did, his blurring vision searching for the voice that had been like music to his ears for so

long. He tried to block out the shrieking, spitting cacophony coming from Jaborn and Angeline as they

did a macabre dance of death just beyond his peripheral vision. He was straining to hear what Lauren, his

beautiful Lauren, was saying as she stood in the doorway of the cell, her arms thrown wide to the

heavens far above them.

“Get off me, bitch!” Jaborn screeched as he flung the demoness on his back against the bars. He was

trying desperately to reach behind him, to pull her off him, but she had a death grip on his face, her nails

gouging into his mouth, one sharp nail close enough to his eye that he was afraid she would blind him. He

slammed her into the bars again, but his action only seemed to increase her hold on him.

Lauren was chanting a rune, Cree thought as he lay there looking at her. His gaze traveled lovingly over

her, taking in the beauty no one had ever bothered to see before he had entered her life. He ached to

touch her, to have her touch him, to hold him and kiss him. He shuddered, realizing what he looked like

to her. He knew his arms and legs and belly were covered with NightWind flesh: scales and tiny, sharp

fins. His fingernails had become talons; his hair, a thick pelt that covered him from head to waist. There

were lumps and protrusions and warts all over his face. There were fangs instead of teeth and his pupils

were elongated like a serpent’s and scarlet red. He was a horrific sight.

Jaborn’s scream of fury was so loud and so vibrating as Angeline Hellstrom’s fingernail jabbed into his

left eye, that people along the street stopped, wondering at the strange sound. Heads turned toward the

Condominium and at least one startled person ran toward the condo, intent on finding out what was

happening inside.

Ben Hurlbert’s feet flew across the lush green lawn and up the short flight of marble steps. He didn’t

bother knocking on the door, but instead, crashed against it with all his strength.

She was saying the Charm of Healing, Syntian realized as the reverberating sound of his enemy’s shrill

cry subsided.
She’s saying the Charm of Healing for me.
He tried to smile around the twisted maze of

razor-sharp fangs in his bleeding mouth and he couldn’t. He was already choking on the blood coursing

down his throat and he knew it would not be long before the human heart inside his weak body burst. His

lungs were rapidly filling with liquid. He tried to speak, to call out her name, but only a bubbling,

wheezing sound came from him and he stopped trying.

“Change,” he thought. “Change, Syntian. Don’t die a final time like this.” He used his waning strength to

concentrate, to alter the molecular structure of his being so that Lauren would not be afraid of him.

She had studied the Book carefully. She knew nearly every spell by heart: the Charm of Making, the

Charm of Ceasing, the Charm of Holding, the Charm of Healing. It had not taken her long once she had

put her mind to it, and the words flowed easily from her lips as she sought occult help to repair the

damages done to Syntian. She would not look at him, could not look at him as he lay there, helpless and

broken, but she could stop anything else from happening to him before she had a chance to undo what

Jaleel Jaborn had done to him.

Angeline’s body was slammed viciously against the concrete floor as Jaborn fell backwards, crashing his

entire weight on her as he went down. The breath was knocked from her, but she fought on, gouging

deep furrows in the NightWind’s cheeks.

Syn turned his head away from Lauren and looked at the rolling, spitting mass that was tumbling toward

him. He was pleased to see Angeline’s face scratched, her always-immaculate hair plastered with his

feces. He grunted as they rolled against him then rolled away.

“Can you move?”

He turned his head and looked up at Lauren’s calm face, wondered why she wasn’t kneeling beside

him, why she seemed so far away, why she was looking at him as though he were a bug stuck to the

windshield. He tried to speak, but choked, coughed up a bright black glob of blood.

“You’re changing,” she said in a matter of fact tone that sent a warning through his throbbing brain.

He spat away the blood and realized he could feel the cold, damp floor beneath his naked back. He

attempted to move his legs, gasped with pain when he was able to.

Lauren swung her attention to Jaborn and Angeline. “Let go of him, Angeline,” she commanded.

Angeline Hellstrom felt the tug of that command as though it were a rope attached to her body. She lost

her grip on her antagonist and flew backwards, slammed against the iron bars and then slid down in a

heap on the floor in a puddle of rank-smelling liquid she knew had to be urine. Her shriek of disgust

propelled her up and away from the mess.

Jaborn, bellowing with vengeance, made a lunge for the woman, but was brought up short by his

mistress’ quiet demand to stop. He swung his grotesque head toward Lauren and growled, seeing the

man at her feet pushing up from the floor.

“No!” Jaborn roared and started toward Syntian, intent on finishing him off.

“Do not touch him, Jaleel,” Lauren said in a calm voice. She pointed her finger at Jaleel Jaborn. “Stay.”

Jaborn’s good eye flared with hatred, but that violent emotion was directed at Syntian Cree, not the

woman whose command had brought him instantly to heel.

“Let me kill him, Lauren!” Jaborn pleaded in a low, throaty snarl. “Let me tear him to pieces!”

Syntian staggered as he got up from the floor. He had to reach out to grab at the bars to keep from

collapsing back to the concrete slab. He reached out a hand to his wife, needing her touch, but she was

too far away and his hand fell tiredly to his side.

Angeline groaned with frustration when she realized she had been attacking the wrong man. Her fingers

curled into claws and she leapt forward, throwing herself on Syntian and raking her nails down his cheeks

before he could bring up trembling hands to stop her from doing to him what she had done to Jaborn.

“I’ll kill you!” the woman shrieked, driving her knee upward in an attempt to maul Syntian’s privates. But

her fury was so great, her aim was off and all she managed to do was ram him in the thigh as he twisted

away from her.

Lauren looked toward the stairs, having heard insistent pounding on the front door and knew outsiders

were now privy to the violence that had taken place here in this basement room. She swung her gaze

back to where Angeline was struggling with Syntian, spitting into his face, kicking at him.

“Let me kill him,” she heard Jaborn begging. “Please?”

Lauren knew if the door upstairs crashed open and strangers came rushing to the basement to find a

creature such as Jaleel there, there would be no way to explain it. She cast him an annoyed look, telling

him to change.

“Let me kill him first,” Jaleel said stubbornly.

“Change or I’ll send you back to the Abyss,” was Lauren’s placid answer.

With a snarl of frustration, Jaleel willed his shape to change.

Tired and wounded as he was, Syntian managed to knock Angeline away from him. He stumbled under

the force required to do it, slid down to the floor with a grunt of pain, but he was able to rid himself of the

shrieking virago that had gouged long grooves in his cheeks. He flinched as she came at him again.

Crossing his hands over his head as she tried to pummel him beneath her doubled fists, he felt every hit

on his forearms and the top of his head as she reins her blows down on him with all her strength. “That is

enough,” he heard Lauren telling the woman.

“He is mine!” Angeline screeched as she kicked him, driving the toe of her shoe into his calf. “Mine!”

Upstairs, a loud crashing thud, shattering glass, and shouts of anger came through the gaping basement

door. Running feet pounded overhead and the faint scream of a siren could be heard over the din going

on above the stairs.

Lauren cast her attentive scrutiny over Jaleel as he finished metamorphosing. He was bloody and

battered, but not as bad off as Syntian, who was too weak and too wounded to fend off Angeline’s

attack.

“Go,” Lauren said, speaking to Jaleel.

Jaborn’s angry face flushed redder still.
“Go?”
he shouted at her, taking a step closer to his mistress.

“I can’t let them find you here,” Lauren answered. “Go back to your lair.”

The NightWind’s jaw thrust belligerently forward. “I will not!”

Lauren backed out of the cell. Her gaze was locked with Jaleel’s. She put her hand up and pointed at

him. “Either do as I say or return to the Primal Ooze, demon!”

A shout: close, too close, sounded near the basement door and Lauren recognized Ben Hurlbert’s angry

voice. How he had come to be there, she didn’t know, but she had to make sure he only found the three

of them there. She turned furious, unforgiving eyes to Jaborn. “Do you wish to remain in the light, my

demon?” she snarled at him.

Jaborn knew it would be folly of the worst kind to try and thwart his mistress. He also knew she would

send him back if he did. With a final hateful glance at Syntian Cree, he bowed his head at Lauren and