Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [92]
I yelled, “Don’t kill him, Richard! Don’t kill him!” I ran for them, but Jamil got there first. Jamil knelt by Richard, grabbing his arm, saying something to him. Richard grabbed Jamil by the throat and flung him across the ring. I ran to Jamil, kneeling beside him, but it was too late. His throat was crushed. His eyes were wide, frightened; he tried to breathe but it wasn’t working. His legs spasmed, spine bowing, as he fought to breath. He grabbed my hand, his eyes screaming at me. There was nothing I could do. Either he’d heal it or he’d die.
I screamed, “Shit, Richard, help him!”
Richard plunged his hand into Fernando’s stomach. He didn’t have claws yet. It was only human fingers digging in the flesh, searching for the heart. He was strong enough that he’d dig it out unless we stopped him.
I stood and Jamil’s hand slid out of mine. He let me go, but his eyes would haunt me. I ran for Richard, screaming his name: “Richard!”
He looked at me with amber wolf eyes in his human face. He reached towards me with one bloody hand, and the mental shields that kept us safe from one another crashed.
My vision went black, and when I could see again, I was kneeling in the ring. I could feel my body but I could also feel Richard’s fingers pushing their way through thick flesh. The blood was warm but there wasn’t enough of it. He wanted to use teeth to open the belly and was fighting the urge.
Thomas knelt beside me. “Use your marks to calm him before he kills Fernando.”
I shook my head. My fingers were tearing through flesh. I had to press my hands against my eyes to remember what body I was in. I found my voice and that helped separate us. Helped me know who I was, what I was. “Shit, I don’t know how.”
“Then take his rage, his beast.” Thomas touched my hands, gripping them tight, not to hurt but to help me anchor myself in this body. I gripped his hands and stared into his face like a drowning woman.
“I don’t know how, Thomas.”
He made an exasperated sound. “Gideon will have to intervene until you can calm him.” It was almost a question.
I nodded. Sure, I’d been about to kill Fernando myself, but I knew that if we killed him, we would never see another dawn. Padma would kill us. Kill us all.
I kept looking at Thomas’s face, but I felt Gideon grab Richard. Felt him pull him off Fernando. Richard twisted and hit Gideon, knocking him to the ground, then leaped on him. They rolled over and over on the ground, each trying to get on top. The only thing that kept it from being a killing fight was that both held onto their human forms and still tried to fight like they had claws. But Richard’s beast was growing inside him. If he shifted, short of killing him we’d never keep him from killing someone else.
Thomas touched my face, and I realized that I hadn’t been seeing his face. I was seeing Gideon’s strange eyes from inches away as my hands tried to crush his throat. But they weren’t my hands.
“Help me,” I said.
“Just open to his beast,” Thomas said. “Simply open and it will fill you. The beast is seeking a channel of escape. Give it one and it will flow into you.” I knew in that instant that Thomas and Gideon were part of a triumvirate just like we were.
“I’m not a lycanthrope,” I said.
“It does not matter. Do it, or we will have to kill him.”
I screamed and did what he said. But it wasn’t just opening to it. I reached out to that rage. That power that he called his beast came at my touch. I smelled like home to it, somehow, and it poured into me, over me, through me, like a blinding storm of heat and power. It was similar to the times I’d raised power with Richard and Jean-Claude, but this time there was no spell to use the power on. Nowhere for the beast to run. It tried to crawl out my skin, tried to expand inside my body, but there was no beast to call. I was empty for it, and it raged inside