The Beholder (5 page)

Into the rising sun.

East. Now that she knew where to look for the gleaner, she took a deep breath and enlightened them about Emma’s death. She assured them that Emma would not be coming back and they need not wait for her.

The birds calmed and accepted the loss; then she helped their spirits ascend.

She turned to head east. That’s when she saw two bright eyes staring at her, the fires of hell burning in the bottomless pits. Gleaner eyes.

N
ina froze, transfixed by fear. She couldn’t let the gleaner believe he had the upper hand or he’d certainly kill her. At the moment, he had no idea of the extent of her power. Keep them guessing was an edge she’d discovered at an early age in dealing with the shifter and animal kingdom. She forced herself to remain calm.

The fiery eyes slunk out of the mist, and the gleaner’s huge sleekness emerged. He appeared in lion form, walking on all fours. She knew from the stories passed down from the Guardians that gleaners and seniphs could shift their arm and leg joints and walk upright on their hind legs like humans. She also knew grown lions weighed between four hundred and six hundred pounds. This gleaner looked every bit as large. It was one thing seeing a lion behind bars in a zoo, quite another being stalked by a supernatural lion-beast.

Nina felt a cold fist of fear contract in her gut as she watched the agile muscles pumping beneath the tawny fur. His mighty mane quivered with each step. He moved with the stealth and confidence of a predator high on the food chain. A reddish aura emanated from his body, evidence that he’d just fed off of Emma Baldoon’s spirit. His scorching eyes never left her as he ran a huge pink tongue over his lips, exposing three-inch-long fangs.

“Well, well, what have we here?” His deep voice rumbled loud enough that she felt the vibration in her own chest. He prowled closer on massive paws. “A little do-gooder.”

Nina gulped past the sudden dryness in her throat. Remain calm, assertive, show him you’re not afraid. She forced a smile right back at him, though her cheeks felt disembodied and plastic, and her lips must surely crack any second.

“Just cleaning up your handiwork.” She tried to sound as cold-blooded as he had, though she was certain a drop of fear had slipped into her words.

The flames in his eyes narrowed the slightest bit, cunning burning bright in them. “I clean up my own plate.” He ran his long tongue around his mouth.

Staring into his eyes was like looking into a bonfire. They both held the same hypnotic power. So this was how he lured victims to their death. She avoided his eyes as she said, “Not this time. You’ve been sloppy.”

“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect the Brayville sheriff’s department to be so prompt in arriving. But look what it brought me.” He raised his flat black nose, and his nostrils quivered as he sniffed. “I smell human, but
wait…” His nostrils flared, then he said, “You smell pagan. What are you, witch, conjurer, fairy, angel? They all work for me. Hmm! Your scent is different, inviting. But I think it’s poisonous if you wish it to be.”

“How perceptive of you.” Nina didn’t let her gaze waver from his nose. Here was where a poker face held the difference between life and death.

He slowly crept toward her, his eyes calculating, assessing. “Hmm! I’m guessing you’re a siren of some sort.”

“Wrong, sorry.” She jammed her hands on her hips while scanning the area for an escape route. The path she had been on swerved to the right.

“Maybe it’s time to find out.” He bared his teeth in a wicked sneer; then he crouched to spring.

Before Nina could react, a roar thundered and shook the very ground beneath her feet. A seniph, in lion form, lunged out of the woods. An enormous furry body sailed past her.

The seniph landed on the gleaner with a loud thwack, solid walls of flesh hitting.

Nina staggered back, mind reeling, heart racing. She took cover behind some trees.

The creatures tore into each other. She kept her gaze on the seniph. He was even larger than the gleaner. He fought more aggressively, too. The gleaner had a hard time fending him off. She glimpsed familiar vivid green eyes. The seniph from Brayville?

Nina didn’t know which was more frightening, the seniph or the gleaner.

In all her dealings with shifters and animals, she’d
never seen a more violent struggle for survival, all bared fangs, claws and tearing flesh. The two lions balanced on their hind legs, front paws locked in an unnatural human way, going for each other’s throats. Their thick manes were the only protection they had, and in the gleaner’s case it didn’t seem to help.

The gleaner had taken more bites from the seniph, and deep gashes covered its fur. It struggled to hold its own. No blood poured from the wounds; gleaners didn’t bleed. Their blood disintegrated as soon as it touched the air. And it took them only twenty-four hours to regenerate and heal, unlike regular seniphs, who healed faster than humans, but not half as quickly as a gleaner. In order to wipe out a gleaner, you had to stop its heart or cut off its head. A lot like vampires.

The seniph sensed his weakening opponent and used his weight to thrust the gleaner to the ground. In a second, he covered the gleaner, his massive weight pinning the gleaner’s spine to the ground.

The seniph raised his mouth to rip out the gleaner’s throat, saliva and blood dripping from his formidable fangs. But he paused, shaking his head in fury, as though his conscience warred with his animal instincts. His green eyes narrowed and looked expressly human and odd embedded in his lion features. He opened his jaws wider to bite, but instead of delivering the
coup de grâce,
he let out an enraged roar.

Nina felt the tremor of it inside her chest.

At the seniph’s hesitation, the gleaner saw his chance and bit the seniph in the shoulder, gouging flesh.

The seniph growled out in pain.

The gleaner bit again and again as it rolled the seniph off with a twist of its body. Once free, it staggered into the woods. Then it broke into a limping gallop and disappeared into the forest.

Nina couldn’t figure out why the gleaner hadn’t fried the seniph, or why the seniph had hesitated in finishing off the gleaner. The seniph lay on the ground, unmoving, bleeding. His own hesitation might have cost him his life.

Since he’d saved her, Nina wanted to check on him, but the gleaner was getting away. She followed the fresh shiver trail of pain and anger the gleaner left in his wake and went after him. Now that he was wounded, he would be the hunted. How quickly the tide had turned, thanks to the seniph. She spared him one final glance over her shoulder, then shoved her way past the thick branches of a pine tree.

Kane’s shoulder and arm throbbed as he heard a branch crack. He smelled the woman before he spied her skulking off into the woods. The little idiot was pursuing Ethan.

She’d get herself killed. Maybe she believed that now Ethan was wounded she might get the upper hand. Did she really think she had a chance against a gleaner?

She might not be as fragile as he thought. Maybe she could kill Ethan. Kane didn’t want his brother destroyed. It wasn’t Ethan doing the killing, but the gleaner. No, the brother he knew, the one he cared for, was in there somewhere. And if he needed proof of that, he’d witnessed it moments ago. Ethan could have killed
Kane easily with his power, but he hadn’t. Ethan cared for him, Kane was certain of it. He would never believe Ethan was all monster.

Kane would give anything to have traded places with his brother. He’d been only twenty when Ethan showed signs of gleanerism. They had seventeen great years together; they were closer than two brothers had ever been. But when Ethan showed signs of the sickness, it all had soured. And in saving Ethan’s life, Kane had betrayed his father’s trust. When Nelson Byron Van Cleave lay on his deathbed, he whispered in Kane’s ear, “This family was cursed the day you were born.” How those words had tortured Kane. His father’s prediction had come to pass, for everyone Kane had ever cared about, he’d destroyed or disappointed. The guilt of not being able to do something to help Ethan would always be Kane’s burden to carry. But it was in his power to save Ethan again, and he had to try.

What possessed Ethan to return home and stir up so much trouble? It was sheer folly. Once the council learned of a gleaner being in the area, they’d assume Ethan was back. He’d be hunted down and slaughtered, if Kane didn’t find him first.

What irritated Kane more was that the human had watched as he spared Ethan’s life. She was an eyewitness to his one Achilles’ heel, and if the council found out, not only would Ethan lose his life, but Kane, too. And Arwan might be dragged into it. Not to mention the meddling human.

Something had brought her to the Baldoon farm, but what? What kind of powers did she possess? He’d seen
her stand up near the animal corpses, facing them, her expression one of fixed concentration, then she’d gazed up at the night sky as if seeing a vision meant for her eyes only. He had no idea what she was doing. Then he’d tracked her down the path where she’d walked right to Emma Baldoon’s ashes, as if she knew where Ethan had killed her. The human had worn the same absorbed rictus on her face as before, as if she had been experiencing something preternatural. Whatever her power, he promised himself she would rue the day she came to Brayville or anywhere near it.

Despite the flesh wounds, Kane rolled over and up onto his feet. He licked the blood from his shoulder and front leg, then slunk off into the forest. He’d have to find the woman and Ethan. Damn them both!

Nina paused to catch her breath. She sat on one of many rocks that jutted into a secluded ravine and branched out over a waterfall. Solid icicles clung to the rocks and hung in long, sparkling rivulets below her and above her. Oaks and hickories crowded the rocks, their naked boughs bent and twisted and grasping at the promise of spring. She might have enjoyed the serene beauty, if she hadn’t felt totally disoriented, lost and freezing.

The sleet had turned to a fine snow. Her breath formed white clouds around her head. She brought a hand up to shield her eyes from the flakes that the wind whipped at her face. The cold went right through her wool gloves, and she had to keep her hands in her pocket. Even so, she couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers…or, for that
matter, her toes. The hood on her coat did little to keep her face and cheeks and neck warm, and she felt the ice chaffing them raw.

Not to mention she had lost the gleaner’s trail. Nothing stirred her thought processes. She couldn’t pick up one sensation, one feeling, one vibration. It was as if the gleaner had vanished off the face of the earth. He must be using his gleaner cloaking powers. A sort of gleaner camouflage, a chameleon’s trick, only more deadly, for it made finding them almost impossible. Flitter demons were capable of the same wiles. When her grandmother had been the Guardian, Nina had helped Meikoda track them. They were crafty killers, even worse than gleaners, because they could hide inside a human body. Flitter demons possessed a person, forced them to commit suicide, then took the soul and moved on to their next victim. It was hit or miss with flitter demons. If they were already entrenched in a human, they hid their emotions within the human’s mind, and Nina had been no help to Meikoda at all. Sometimes Nina could discover them if they were moving from one body to another by concentrating really hard. Maybe she could do the same thing to track the gleaner.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. Something didn’t feel quite right. Something heavy stirred the air where it shouldn’t be moving. A breath maybe. A pair of eyes. The feeling of being hunted.

Her skin crawled as she opened her eyes and locked gazes with the seniph.

She gulped in air, every nerve in her body prickling. He was still in lion form, perched on a rock above her
head, a commanding leonine predatory figure in the driving snow. He stood across the waterfall, about twenty-five feet away, jungle-green eyes narrowed on her, teeth bared. Even though he was yards away, he looked massive. His chest and body were so thick with muscle, his skin quivered with every breath.

She spotted caked bloodstains from the wound on his shoulder and front leg. The lesions appeared deep and open. By all rights, he shouldn’t have been able to stand, much less track her. The main question was whether he could jump far enough to attack her. Those vivid green eyes paralyzed her. The black pupils narrowed like blade edges, daring her to stir. She was afraid to even blink. So this was how his prey felt.

Suddenly he leaped over the waterfall, sailing gracefully through the air as if he had wings.

She wheeled and jumped up and ran, slipping on the ice-covered rocky mountainside. Branches snatched at her pants, coat and face. A deer path led to the right, and she sprinted that way, heart hammering, adrenaline coursing through her body.

Thump!
The seniph landed on the rock where she’d just been sitting.

The violent images of the fight between the seniph and the gleaner flooded her. She couldn’t bring herself to stop running.

“If you make me come after you, you’ll regret it.” The deep bellow thundered through the woods, his closeness startling her.

She slipped on some icy leaves, lost her footing and slid straight down. A limb came out of nowhere. Before
she could react, her head plowed into it. For a second, a vision of her flesh being torn to bits by huge fangs flashed before her eyes, then blessed darkness took her far away.

Kane saw the woman’s head crack into a maple limb. Then she crumpled, her limp body rolling and bouncing down the mountain.

In three long strides, he chomped down on the back of her coat, dug his claws into the ground and instantly stopped her fall. The material ripped. A piece stuck inside his mouth. He spit out the wool, irritated at having to track her and chase her. Because of her, Ethan had cloaked himself and could only be found if he allowed it. Though the human had somehow followed Ethan until she lost his trail. What type of magic allowed her to track gleaners?