Hot Blooded

weakening struggles, popped the trunk with his key fob and
threw
    her inside. Triumphant, rock-hard with lust, he looked down into her
dazed, terrified eyes and slammed the lid down.
    Â 
    WHEN Grace came to herself, she was standing halfway across the room from her
bed, sweating and shaking.
    God help her, she could still feel him. Feel what he intended to do.
    He would play with the girl, build her terror, feed off her pain and his
power. And then, sometime tonight, he'd kill her.
    Just like he had all the others.
    Grace barely made it to the bathroom before she threw up.

----
Chapter 6
    Â« ^ »
    "WHAT do you mean, there's nothing you can do?" Grace demanded, staring at
Morgana across the gleaming width of the witch's desk. She'd used the stone
spell generator Lance had left in her living room to make the trip to Avalon.
"If you don't help me find him, that bastard is going to torture that girl to
death!"
    "I'd help if I could, but I can't," the witch growled. "First, it's daylight
in Tayanita, and you know how the sunlight interferes with Mageverse energies.
It's damn near impossible to work a spell when the sun's up on realspace Earth—"
    "If we wait until dark, she'll be dead!"
    "And second, there are six billion minds out there," Morgana continued,
ignoring her outburst. "How can you expect me to zero in on a man I've never
even touched?"
    "Well,
I
made contact with him, and I'm not even Gifted! It can't be
all that damned difficult."
    The Maja rubbed her temples with both hands and sighed as though striving for
patience. "Grace, every mind is like a radio—"
    "And they broadcast into the 'Verse on different frequencies. I know that,
dammit. But if I can feel him, I don't understand how you can't. Especially
considering how powerful you are."
    Morgana glared at her in frustration. "For one thing, this monster of yours
must be a particularly strong broadcaster. For another, you evidently have the
profound bad luck to share his mental frequency at a time when contact with
Lance has triggered latent aspects of your Gift."
    "So touch me and see if you can't lock on to him, too."
    The witch shook her head. "It won't work."
    "Try!"
    Morgana sighed and moved around her desk to lay cool, long fingers against
the side of Grace's face. As she met her grandmother's gaze, the witch's pupils
expanded to wide black lakes lit by flashes of lightening. Despite a too-vivid
memory of the last time a Maja had touched her mind, Grace forced herself to
remain still and reach for the kidnapper. She could just barely feel him, a
dark, malevolent presence…
    Morgana jerked her hand back. "Merlin's Gift, that
is
nasty."
    "Did you feel him? Where is he?"
    The witch shook her head, flipping her fingers like someone trying to rid
themselves of something rotted and clinging. "I felt… someone thoroughly
unpleasant. But I get no more sense of where he is than you do. Perhaps after
the sun has set and solar radiation no longer interferes—"
    "By then she could be dead." Grace coiled her hands into tight fists.
"Besides which, I want to get her away from him before he has the chance to
torture her any more."
    "In that case, your best bet is to accept the Gift and find her yourself.
Considering you've already got a link with him, you may find it possible to
locate him even with the sun still up."
    She drew back with a chilly memory of the mental maggots eating at Clarice's
thoughts. Even in her egomania, a part of the Maja had known she was mad. Grace
could still remember her psychic wails of horror. "Assuming I don't become an
even bigger threat than he is."
    "You needn't worry on that score," Morgana said. "Lance wouldn't let it come
to that."
    "And what a comforting thought that is." Grace winced, remembering the wet
snap
as Lancelot's big hands broke Clarice's neck. The wailing thing had
been grateful.
    Yet Grace couldn't just stand by and let the killer murder his victim; that
would drive her just as mad as the Gift. She frowned. "Would it be possible to
wake Lance this early in the day?"
    "I didn't think of that." Morgana frowned, nibbling a long nail. "He'll be in
the daysleep now. This being Avalon, though, you may be able to rouse him an
hour or so before nightfall in South Carolina, but no sooner."
    "I can't wait that long." She straightened shoulders that ached with tension.
"Send me back. I'm damned if I'm going to sit on my hands while that girl