. His blood went cold and he took off running. Rounding the final corner, his gaze flew to Kara's cell, searching for Kara. Please don't let those screams be hers. But her door was open, her cell empty.

In that single moment, he died a thousand deaths.

"Vhyper's gone," Paenther said.

The scream continued, a continuous siren of agony that killed him over and over. He forced himself to still and closed his eyes, sending his senses outward. Kara. He felt her close by. And yet not.

His heart thundered.

"The witch and Vhyper have escaped," Paenther said into his cell phone. "Leave Kougar on guard upstairs," Paenther snapped into the phone behind him. "Everyone else down here."

Below. He felt her below. Damnation. "He's broken into the dungeons!" He ran for the far passage and the long-sealed door.

The passage was long and winding and took an eternity to traverse as Kara's screams ended, then resumed at fevered pitch. What in the name of the goddess was he doing to her? He'd kill him. Kill him.

Finally, he came to the door. The wood sealing it shut appeared to still be in place. But when he gave a tug, the door moved easily in his hand.

The moment the door cracked open, he was blasted with a wall of such pain it nearly drove him to his knees.

He lunged forward, down the dark, dank stairwell that he'd believed sealed for centuries. Kara screamed again, the sound ripping through his gut and twisting his heart.

Dead snake. Dead snake. Dead snake.

A hundred scenarios danced through his head, a hundred horrors that Vhyper might have been visiting on her.

As he rounded the bend into the room, his mind froze. The bile tore to get out.

None of his imaginings came anywhere close.

She was hanging from a rope, naked and bleeding from no fewer than eight daggers protruding from her waist like a cruel, macabre belt. The blood ran down, coating her hips and legs, to pool in the dirt at her feet.

Standing behind her was Vhyper, his eyes glowing feral red, his snake's fangs elongated, a ninth blade in his hand.

Lyon lunged for him. "What have you done?"

"She's a Mage witch!"

Lyon felt his claws slash outward. If he'd been able to do it, he'd have shifted and torn out the other man's throat. With a lunge, he tackled Vhyper, grabbing his knife hand and slamming it to the dirt floor as he shredded the man's throat with his claws. But Vhyper was damned near as strong as he was and, crazed or not, wasn't about to go down without a fight.

"Lyon!" Paenther's voice shouted behind him. "It's not Vhyper's fault. It's the lack of radiance."

Lyon heard the words, but his beast was beyond heeding them. He didn't care why Vhyper had attacked her. The only thing that mattered was that he had.

Never in his life had he fought to kill another Feral, but all he could see was death. His beast smelled it. He wanted it.

Interfering hands tore him away from his victim and he turned on them, attacking, slashing until the voices finally tore through his head.

"Lyon, get back in your skin!" Tighe's voice. "Kara needs you."

Kara.

The fight left him in a cold rush as if he'd been doused with ice water. He jerked free of Tighe and Paenther's hold and whirled, lunging for her. Then stopped.

Kara.

He wanted to cut her down and gather her close, but the knives.

Sweet goddess. He didn't know where to start.

Her pain was almost more than he could bear. But the terror he'd felt when he first opened that door was gone. She was safe. She knew she was safe.

"Lyon."

Vhyper had her hanging just above eye level. He stepped into the puddle of her blood and cupped her face with his hands, holding her shattered gaze. "I'm going to get you down, little one, but it's going to hurt. So I'm going to knock you out."

"Do it."

He slipped his finger to the base of her ear and pressed until she went limp. Then he pressed his left palm against her rib cage, grabbed the hilt of one of the knives with his right, and pulled. Even unconscious her body jerked, and the pain leaped until he feared the weight of it would crush him. One by one, he pulled the knives from her, praying over and over that the damage wasn't too great. That her body would heal from this brutal attack. It wasn't until the last knife slid free, that he realized the other wounds were continuing to bleed.

"She should be healing. She's not healing," he said to no one in particular.

Tighe stepped beside him and grabbed one of the knives off the floor. "Hold her while I cut her down."

Lyon gathered her against him, then swept her into his arms as the rope came free.

"The others are taking Vhyper back to the prison."

"Search him. He must have had a key on him when they put him in there. And add a chain this time."

Lyon stepped back from the puddle and knelt in the dirt, lifting Kara's torn waist to his mouth. She should have healed. If she couldn't do it herself, he had to do it for her. He closed his lips around the nearest wound and stroked the gash with his tongue. The taste of warm blood pleased his beast, but he knew better than to swallow much of it in his human form.

The blood kept coming. Denial flashed through his head and he leaped to his feet, cradling Kara against him. "I've got to get her help. She's not healing."

"Maybe she's not as immortal as we thought."

The thought made him go cold.

As he rushed up the stairs, he shouted orders. "Tell Hawke to keep someone down here on guard duty. Then meet me in the foyer and bring Jag and Paenther with you. We're taking Kara to the healer."

"You don't want me to have the healer come here?" Tighe asked.

"No. We can get her there faster. But I'm going to need help with the draden. Find out where Esmeria is, then call the Shaman and tell him to meet us there. I want to know what the hell is going on with Kara, and I want to know now."

Even an immortal couldn't bleed forever without her body eventually shutting down. And he didn't know what the hell Kara really was.

All he knew for certain was she needed help. And she needed it now.

* * *

Chapter Eighteen

"It's not working. Even the stitches aren't holding," Esmeria said wretchedly, more than an hour later. The short-haired brunette sat on the lip of' the large, tiled bathtub where Lyon held Kara, her hands and white shirt soaked with Kara's blood. "It's almost as if she's under some kind of bleeding spell."

"Then treat it like a bleeding spell," Lyon snapped. "There's got to be a way to break it." His own blood had long ago turned to ice, the moment he'd seen Kara hanging from that rope. A moment that was permanently carved into his brain. But the fact that the finest Therian healer that had ever lived couldn't knit these wounds was scaring the hell out of him.

He wouldn't lose her. He wouldn't lose her.

"She's part Mage, Untrained, I think," he told the healer, "Maybe she accidentally did this to herself. Or maybe this is my fault. I cut out her cantric."

Esmeria winced at his confession, but said nothing as she went back to work, shoving her hands beneath the blankets to lay her hands on Kara's wounds once more.

They'd made it to the Georgetown enclave without the draden finding them, but Kara wasn't healing, and her body was losing blood fast. Faster than her quickly healing body could make more. If this continued, her organs would start shutting down.

Lyon held Kara still as Esmeria worked. She lay tucked against him, beneath a warm layer of woolen blankets soaked with her blood, her skin white as death. He'd climbed into the dry tub with her the moment they'd arrived, not wanting to ruin any more carpets or furniture than necessary. Kara had to be losing a good pint every minute. Despite the blankets, she was shivering in his arms, and he was terrified that the spell, if that was what it was, would take her. That he'd caught Vhyper too late.

"How's she doing?"

Lyon looked up to find Tighe standing in the doorway. "We can't get this bleeding to stop."

Concern clouded his expression. "I'm sorry. Maybe the Shaman can help figure out what's wrong. He's just arrived, by the way."

As if on cue, Paenther stepped through the door, followed by the Shaman. Jag brought up the rear. One of the oldest of the Therians, the Shaman had been the victim of a Mage attack in his youth, and while he'd continued to age for a few more years, he'd ceased to grow or fully, physically, mature. He was taller than Kara, but not by much, and far shorter than other Therian males.

He wore his dark hair long and tied at his nape and still dressed in an old-world manner, with his black pants and ruffled white shirts. His thin face remained youthful, never having quite developed a full beard, nor the hard angles of a full-grown male. But the man had long since accepted what he was and often said a few inches of height was a small price to pay for the ability he'd acquired as a result. A talent for magic.

Though the man had a name, it was ancient and hard to pronounce. He'd long ago asked to simply be called the Shaman.

The three Ferals took up posts around the outer walls of the oversized bathroom while the Shaman came to sit on the side of the tub, opposite from where Esmeria continued to struggle against the constant flow of Kara's blood. His eyes were wary and guarded, reminding Lyon this man had as much reason to hate the Mage as Paenther did.

But as the Shaman stared at Kara, something shifted in his eyes, filling them with confusion. He reached out and placed his hand on her head, then slowly shook his own.

"She's not Mage." His eyes flicked up. "Why did you think she was Mage?"

It was moments before his words finally penetrated Lyon's stunned mind. "She had a cantric buried in her hip."

The Shaman's dark brows shot up. "A cantric." He closed his eyes and began to nod his head. "She's got echoes of a load of magic garbage inside her. Including a bleeding spell. Has she been around any Mage in the past few days?"

"She's been nowhere but Feral House."

"Any symptoms other than the bleeding?"

Lyon nodded. "She's been afraid. Terrified. And it's been getting worse. How long has she had that cantric?"

"Impossible to say. Maybe years. But the magic's new."

The Shaman watched her thoughtfully, then shot out a hand and laid it on top of Lyon's own head.

Lyon stifled the rumble in his throat and let the man work.

The Shaman stood and went to each of his warriors, one after the other, touching them thoughtfully.

"You're off. All of you."

"What do you mean… off?" Lyon demanded.

"Not bewitched, or anything like that, but off somehow. I suspect you have a dark charm in the house. A strong one. It would account for the oddness I'm feeling in you and for the strange fear your Radiant's been experiencing. That cantric acted as a magic catcher. Probably didn't bother her at all until she arrived at Feral House and came in contact with the charm. Whatever the dark charm was designed to do is probably going crazy inside her and may have triggered any number of old spells that cantric may have come in contact with long before it was ever put inside her. I don't feel it in her now. Did you take it out?"

"I did."

"Good." He looked thoughtful. "If she's been acting afraid, that might be the purpose of the dark charm. Have any of your men been experiencing similar symptoms?"

"Fear, no. But they've been going increasingly feral. I've had to lock up two of them."

"Definitely a dark charm, then. Probably with some kind of chaos spell. I see them from time to time, though I haven't heard of one strong enough to bother a houseful of Ferals in a long, long time." He rose. "I'll drive out there first thing in the morning and find that charm. Once I've taken a look at it, I'll be able to tell you more. In the meantime, I suggest you and your warriors each find a willing female and clear yourself of magic." He nodded at Kara. "Once she's healed, she's going to need a good sexual release, too." His eyes narrowed. "Full penetration. Nothing less is going to clean out that mess of magic inside her."

"There!" Esmeria cried. "I think… no." The healer pulled her bloody hands out from under the blanket and sat back with a sound of deep frustration. "I thought I'd stopped it."

"Don't give up, healer," Lyon growled. "I will not lose her!"

"I'll call you when I'm through," the Shaman said, and turned to go. "Stay away from the house until I've cleaned it, or you'll just be infected again."

Esmeria blew a strand of dark hair out of her eyes and leaned over the tub. Kara remained unconscious. Dammit, she should have woken by now. He could feel the strength leaking out of her at an alarming rate. Goddess help them, she wouldn't last another hour.

"Stay with me, Kara." His grip on her tightened.

Minutes later, Esmeria sat back, swearing. "Now that I'm treating the spell, I'm getting the flow to stop, but it keeps starting up again."

He had to do something. He would not let her die. Fear for her pounded through his blood.

"Tighe, I need your assistance."

"Anything, Roar."

Lyon leaned forward, sitting up straight. His heart thudded. "Next time Esmeria stops the bleeding, I'm going to try to heal one of those wounds again. I need you to brace Kara's head while I lift her waist to my mouth."

"All right."

Lyon looked to the healer. "Do it."

Esmeria pulled the blankets away, closed her eyes, and pressed her hands to Kara's wounds as she had before. Seconds later, the bleeding stopped.