Suddenly Damon stiffened. He sent one stealthy query of Power around him, a circle of radar.
But nothing bounced back, except the mindless trees at his feet. Whatever was orchestrating this, it was invisible.
Right, then. Let's trythis , he thought: Concentrating on all the blood he'd drunk in the last few days, he blasted out a wash of pure Power, like Vesuvius erupting with a deadly pyroclastic explosion. It encircled him completely in every direction, a fifty-mile-per-hour bubble of Power like superheated gas.
Because it was back. Unbelievably, the parasite was trying to do it again, to get into his mind. It had to be.
Lulling him, he supposed, rubbing the back of his neck with absentminded fury, while its packmates finished off their prey in the car. Whispering things into his mind to keep him still, taking his own dark thoughts and echoing them back a shade or two darker, in a cycle that might have ended in him flying off to kill and kill again for the pure black velvet enjoyment of it.
Now Damon's mind was cold and dark with fury. He stood, stretching his aching arms and shoulders, and then searched carefully, not with a simple radar ring, but with a blast of Power behind each stab, probing with his mind to find the parasite. It had to be out there; the trees were still going about their business. But he could find nothing, even though he'd used the fastest and most efficient method of scanning he knew: a thousand random stabs per second in a Drunkard's Walk search pattern. He should have found a dead body immediately. Instead he'd foundnothing .
That made him even angrier than before, but there was a tinge of excitement to his fury. He'd wanted a fight; a chance to kill where the killing would be meaningful. And now here was an opponent who met all the qualifications - and Damon couldn't kill it because he couldn't find it. He sent a message, lambent with ferocity, in all directions.
I have already warned you once. Now ICHALLENGEyou. Show yourself - OR ELSE STAY AWAY FROM ME!
He gathered Power, gathered it, gathered it again, thinking of all the different mortals who had contributed it. He held it, nurturing it, crafting it for its purpose, and raising its strength with all that his mind knew of fighting and of the skill and expertise of war. He held the Power until it felt as if he were holding a nuclear bomb in his arms. And then he let it go all at once, an explosion speeding in the opposite direction, away from him, nearing the speed of light.
Now, surely, he would feel the death throes of something enormously powerful and cunning - something that had managed to survive his previous strafings designed only for eldritch creatures.
Damon expanded his senses to their widest reach, waiting to hear or feel something shattering, combusting - something falling blind, with its own blood tumbling nearby, from a branch, from the air, fromsomewhere . Fromsomewhere a creature should have plummeted to the ground or raked at it with huge dinosaur-like claws - a creature half-paralyzed and completely doomed, cooked from the inside out. But although he could feel the wind rising to a howl and huge black clouds pooling above him in response to his own mood, he still could sense no dark creature close enough to have entered his thoughts.
How strong was this thing? Where was it coming from?
Just for a moment, a thought flashed through his mind. A circle. A circle with a dot at its center. And the circle was the blast he'd shot away in all directions, and the dot was the only place his blast didn't reach. Inside him alre -
Snap! Suddenly his thoughts went blank. And then he began, sluggishly, slightly bewildered, to try to put the fractured pieces together. He had been thinking about the blast of Power he'd sent out, yes? And how he'd expected to feel something fall and die.
Hell, he couldn't even sense any ordinary animals bigger than a fox in the woods. Although his sweep of Power had been carefully made to affect only creatures of his kind of darkness, the ordinary animals had been so spooked that they'd gone running wildly from the area. He peered down. Hm. Except the trees around the car; and they weren't after him. Besides, whatever they were, they were only the pawns of an invisible killer. Not really sentient - not within the boundaries he had crafted so carefully.
Could he have been wrong? Half his fury had been for himself, for being so careless, so well-fed and confident that he'd let down his guard.
Well-fed...hey, maybe I'm drunk, he thought, and flashed the smile again at nothing, without even thinking about it. Drunk and paranoid and edgy. Pissed and pissed off.
Damon relaxed against the tree. The wind was screaming now, swirling and freezing, the sky full of roiling black clouds that cut out any light from the moon or stars. Just his kind of weather.
He was still edgy, but he couldn't find any reason to be. The only disturbance in the aura of the woods was the tiny crying of a mind inside the car, like a trapped bird with only one note. That would be the little one, the redheaded witch with the delicate neck. The one who'd been whining about life changing too much.
Damon gave a little more of his weight to the tree. He'd followed the car with his mind out of absent interest. It wasn't his fault that he'd caught them talking about him, but it did degrade their chances of rescue a bit.
He blinked slowly.
Odd that they'd had an accident trying not to run over a creature in approximately the same area he'd almost crashed the Ferrari trying to run one over. Pity he hadn't had a glimpse of their creature, but the trees were too thick.
The redheaded bird was crying again.
Well, do you want a changenow or don't you, little witch? Make up your mind. You have to ask nicely.
And then, of course,I have to decide what kind of change you get.
Chapter 11
Bonnie couldn't remember any more sophisticated prayer and so, like a tired child, she was saying an old one: "...I pray the Lord my soul to take...." She had used up all her energy calling for help and had gotten no response at all, just some feedback noise. She was so sleepy now. The pain had gone away and she was simply numb. The only thing bothering her was the cold. But then, that could be taken care