Primal Bonds (Shifters Unbound #2)(68)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

He snapped his mouth shut, and Andrea didn’t have to be a mind reader to know how he felt about that. Dylan turned abruptly onto a little-used street that wound behind empty warehouses.

“Sean told you he was out here?”

“He said he was in the parking lot of a bar Glory likes to go to. He found her scent and some blood.”

Andrea felt sick. “Blood?”

Dylan was pale and drawn, his fear for Glory coming off him in waves. “Not enough to show Sean what happened.”

“Where exactly are we going?”

“Here.” Dylan jerked the truck into a parking lot.

Andrea saw the familiar bulk of Sean’s motorcycle by the front door of the closed bar. Dylan glanced at it, and then tires screeched as he rode the breaks to avoid hitting the body of a man lying motionlessly on the pavement. The stench of burning rubber filled the air.

Andrea was out of the truck and racing to the man’s side before Dylan switched off the engine. She dropped to her knees and pushed blood-matted hair out of the face of Jared Barnett.

“Jared. What the hell?”

Jared’s flesh bore the deep marks of the fully extended, razor-sharp talons of a Feline Shifter. The cuts went to the bone, Jared’s naked skin blue white where it wasn’t covered with blood. He was still alive, barely, his heart fluttering in faint, rapid beats.

Jared opened his eyes, but they were filmed over, gaze unfocussed. “Andrea?”

“What happened? Did you see Sean? Did he do this?”

Jared swallowed, fighting for air. “Felines. Sean tried to save me.”

“Sean tried to save you? Where is he? What happened?”

“Gone. He was taken. The sword.”

Dylan crouched on Jared’s other side. “What about the sword?” he demanded.

“The sword,” Jared whispered. His eyes drifted shut, but breath still rasped in his throat.

Andrea cast her gaze around the parking lot. Much blood had been spilled, red soaking into the crumbling gray asphalt. She smelled more Shifters than just Sean and Jared. Felines, several of them, some of whom had been in the bar with Callum.

The parking lot ended in a field covered with weeds and tall grasses. A creek cut through the bottom of this field, ensuring the place stayed nice and wet. The field had been torn up by the fighting, leaving gouges of mud through the tall weeds, but no bodies lay here.

Neither did the sword. Nowhere did she see a glint of sliver, the hump of its hilt, but as she stood at the edge of the field, she started to hear it. The familiar shimmering sound that the sword made when she neared it rang inside her head, growing louder and louder until Andrea clapped her hands over her ears. An instinctive move—one glance back at Dylan and Jared told her they couldn’t hear it.

The sword was here, calling to her. Gritting her teeth, she followed its song, which grew louder and more joyful as she neared it.

Andrea dropped down and dug in the grass and soggy earth. She had to go down a long way, covering herself in muck before her hand encountered something hard. She pulled it out of the gripping mud, the sword singing with all its might.

So the sword was here, safe and sound. But where the hell was Sean?

The ground around where the sword had lain was saturated with blood. Sean’s blood. The blood was drying, no longer fresh, but the dampness of the grass ensured that her fingers came away red.

Andrea hoisted the sword, ran back to Dylan and Jared, and crouched next to Jared.

“What happed to Sean?” she demanded. “Tell me.”

“They tried to get the sword,” Jared whispered. “Sean fought them so hard. Drove them off.”

“But what about Sean? Who took him away?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t see.”

Andrea put her hand on Jared’s chest, again felt the flutter of his heartbeat, so swift and faint. It was useless to ask him any more questions. “Lie still. We’ll get an ambulance.”

“No. Human hospitals will kill me.”

He was probably right, and Andrea didn’t have the heart to argue with him. But she could try to help him at least. Jared was cruel and nasty and selfish, but he didn’t deserve to die in such pain and alone, so far from home.

Andrea pressed her hand to his chest and closed her eyes, searching inside herself for the healing magic.

Except that she already knew that her magic would not be strong enough. The threads that were Jared’s life force were snarled, too tangled to unravel. He’d been battered, bones broken, muscles and organs tattered by claws and by bullets.

When she’d healed Ely, Andrea had boosted her power with the Fae magic of the sword. Shaking, she wiped as much of the mud and grass from it as she could, laid it across her knees, and wrapped one hand around the blade.

The sword kept singing to her, not as loudly now, and she understood with abrupt clarity that the runes etched on the blade and hilt were forming words in her mind. They must be part of the spells made by the Fae woman long ago, and the words spoke of peace.

The sword’s threads flowed into Andrea’s body then out through her fingers, joining with her own healing magic that she poured into Jared.

But it wasn’t enough. The sword helped a little, but Andrea felt nowhere near the surge of magic she’d experienced when she’d healed Ely.

Come on. Give me more.

Even as she thought it, she knew that there would be no more. The missing factor from this healing was Sean.

When she’d helped Ely, Sean had held the sword’s hilt while Andrea had held the blade. The sword had drawn from Sean’s amazing Goddess-touched aura and combined it with Andrea’s healing gift to make Ely whole again. Sean the Guardian was the second part of the equation. The magic of the sword’s original makers—the Shifter man and the Fae woman—had manifested again in Andrea and Sean. Both of them were needed to make the healing work.

Beneath Andrea’s hand, Jared’s body weakened. She saw in her mind the faint threads of his aura suddenly fade and wink out.

Andrea gasped. She plunged her healing magic again into Jared, but she found the threads brittle and black, snapping under her touch. Andrea, Jared’s voice came to her, sounding happy, and then he was gone.

Andrea opened her eyes and jerked her hands from Jared’s body. Dylan leaned down and gently closed Jared’s blind eyes.

“You tried, lass,” he said softly.

“But it didn’t work. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“He was already gone. You eased him into his death, let his end be painless.”