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They’d found her

Panic gripped her by the neck and choked the air fros

How had they found her? She’d been so careful to drive only during the day, when they were all asleep and couldn’t read her thoughts And tonight none of theone when she left the safety of Dabyr They couldn’t knohere she was

Tentatively, Nika sent herfor any nearby Synestryn Their alien thoughts and uncontrolled hunger would be easy to find a spots of darkness aht patterns

If there was only one Synestryn and it wasn’t too strong, she could probably control its h to kill it with the shovel If she was lucky

Her body fell away as she went seeking into the night, searching for the source of that eerie cry of hunger She found one Synestryn slinking through the darkness less than a quarter --and it ith hunger That hunger gave her the edge

She could take it

Nika had just begun to whisper into its mind to come her hen she felt another Synestryn nearby Then another There were three, then four, then seven They were closing in They smelled blood Her blood

Before they could trap her within them, Nika pulled back into her own ns of blood There was a s of her jeans; muddy, but definitely blood

She looked at her hands Sure enough, the shovel had scraped off several layers of skin until she bled The Synestryn s in to feast

The car was parked outside the metal fence several hundred yards away As cold and weak as her legs were, she wasn’t sure she was going to make it to the car before they et her blood Thanks to Madoc’s recent killing spree, she was just now regaining the pieces of herself that had been taken the night her fa inside a nightmare, unable to tell as real and asn’t, and she refused to go back to that hell

She’d rather die than let the it was the only weapon she had to hold them at bay, and sprinted for the fence

Behind her a loud chorus of rasping howls rose up into the night as the Synestryn closed in

Madoc found the stolen Volkswagen Bug outside a cemetery, but Nika was not inside the car as he’d hoped Intense pressure rolled through hi until he was sure it would tear hiid air, but it did little good

He needed to be killing or fucking--bleeding away soirl as too crazy to not go running off alone in the dark

Clearly, what he wanted had no bearing on reality Madoc fought the pain back with a snarl, slaearshift into park, and left the engine running

One way or another, this wasn’t going to take long If she wasn’t nearby, then he’d call Joseph and tell hioing to shove her in the Bug and follow her ass all the way back to Dabyr, where she belonged No rounded

But first he had to find her

He leaped the fence and landed with a thud as his heavy boots hit the frozen ground The wind had picked up, tugging the front of his leather jacket open

If Nika was out here in this wind, she was going to be freezing her bony ass off Not that he cared Served her right for leaving home, where she was safe and warm

They want to touch me I don’t like it, Madoc It hurts when other ed hiet her away from the male Theronai who came from the four corners of the world to see if she could channel their power and save their lives That had been seven one hoain Unfortunately, watching her flinch away fro pain pinch her features--was more than Madoc could stand He’d hit the road and hadn’t been back since

Best decision he’d everon his oas safest for everyone Besides, he had plenty of hookers to keep him company That and a pile of nasties to kill was all he needed

A high-pitched, feht air Fear shinition That was Nika’s voice He’d heard her cry out in fear too nize it