Page 25 of Total Eclipse of the Moon
"Stop laughing at me." The lycan’s face mottled a few shades of red. He dropped the knife and pulled out a handgun.
All humor dissolved.
Shane ordered Madeline, "Disappear. I’ll handle this."
He expected her to go invisible. When her eyes widened and she turned to duck into foliage, she confirmed something was way off with her abilities. He’d sort that out later.
"I have no quarrel with you. Step away from her," the lycan declared as he waved his gun in Shane’s direction.
Shane inched to his left to draw the muzzle away from Madeline and avoid her being on the receiving end of an accidental hit.
He wondered if the electronic collar around the lycan’s neck had a camera. Had to assume so. With his best scary smile, he said for the camera, "You’re going to die. You and all of those who did this to you will die. You've stepped over the line. None of you have any idea of what’s coming for you."
The lycan shot four times in a row. Smart not to stop at one, but Shane dissolved before any hit him. The bullets passed through to the opposite side of the building, striking random objects. If local police weren’t already alerted, they were now. Annoying.
He rematerialized and pulled the lycan into a headlock. The guy might have superhuman strength in his feral form, but Shane trumped him with additional demon powers. "You have no clue how to handle something like me. No one does."
Shane used his opposite hand to extract a vial from his jacket. He spritzed the lycan with fluid out of a miniature metal bottle disguised as hand sanitizer. Vampires, witches, and lycans were susceptible to this truth serum. "What orders were you given, specifically? Why exactly are you here?"
The lycan struggled in the headlock but said, "Kill this witch in any way possible. Leave no evidence. Burn the body."
"What’s your name?"
"Tony," he rasped out.
"Where are you from?"
"Grew up in Leipzig."
"Where have you been ordered to return to after this?" Shane asked.
The lycan body jerked and trembled. Jolts of electricity shot into Shane. He went to mist, which dropped the lycan to the floor, hard, where he continued to twitch and tremble until everything stopped. Blood poured from his nose.
Shane felt for a pulse. Nothing.
"God bless it." He exhaled a frustrated sigh and stared upward. The lycan's master must've used the collar to electrocute him. Tony’s death hadn’t been Shane’s doing. The lycan had been killed because he’d been bested, and was about to give information the ones monitoring didn’t want him to provide. The collar around the lycan’s neck snapped open and caught fire. Guess when its host died, it self-destructed?
He turned on a nearby hose and sprayed the small fire consuming the body. No time or need to remove the badly burnt body. FenCor would probably send a cleanup crew to erase all evidence of their failure.
"Someone forced him to do this?" Madeline asked.
"There’s a group, pretty sure it’s FenCor, which is a consortium of executives and heads of state who’d do anything for more power and money, who are incarcerating nonhumans. They use torture and hypnosis to implant triggers in the brain for control. They’re creating super soldiers to sell to the highest bidder." He removed his brother’s talismans from Tony’s neck and wiped off the soot. He’d return them to his brother later. With a sigh, he knelt by the body. Such a waste of life. This organization had to be stopped.
He kissed the St. Michael pendant he’d just removed and whispered, "Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, through the mercy of God, rest in peace."
"Do you really think God cares about creatures like him or us?" Madeline asked.
"He cares. It’s why he wants his warriors free of the curse you saddled them with."
Chapter Eight
"You’re a warrior for God?What does that mean?" Madeline asked.
"Means you made a mistake and cursed the wrong brothers." The husky voice of his. Oh, dear Lord. The sound ripped through Madeline like a knife. Somehow, she liked the bite of pain. To want him this much despite whatever he’d become—half lycan and half demon—terrified her. What he’d done during the fight, the going to mist, suggested he'd taken her advice and worked things out with the demon. He’d melded with it, controlled it, and taken on its powers. Demons and witches didn’t mix. At all. And lycans and witches didn’t mix. So, him being both was a double whammy of no. For him, the merger made him unbeatable, and for her, more intriguing. It also notched up her respect that he figured out how to handle the demon and not lose his mind to insanity.
She admired how he cared about a fallen comrade, and said a prayer for his soul.
He stood, hands on his hips, glaring. At her.
