The Missing

fueled her own rage. Her vision went red, blood roared in her ears, and nothing mattered more than getting her hands on Leon and tearing him apart.

    Nothing but the girl behind her.

    A second, pathetic whimper broke through her fury. It had little effect on Cullen. It was her turn now; he’d broken through her rage only seconds ago, and now she’d have to reach him. As much as she hated it, she reached out, laid a hand on his arm as he paced forward, intent on Leon. “Cullen, I can’t carry her.”

    Her soft voice reached him, although Cullen wouldn’t have thought anything could get through to him at that point. Not when he had a vicious, gut-wrenching need to maim and kill. In theory, he understood primal rage. He’d written about it in his books, and he thought he even understood it after what had happened to his mother. This went deeper than that, though. Deeper than anything he’d ever felt. He wanted to shrug Taige’s hand aside and get to work, but instead, he turned his head and looked at her.

    That one look, and then he could kill Leon.

    But looking at her now, it was like time disappeared, and they once more stood in his room on the day she’d come to him after his mother had been killed. She’d tried to reach out to him. Tried to help him, and he in return had done something that had nearly destroyed them both.

    His eyes closed. He felt his feet moving, and he looked up, found himself moving to the girl. Get her safe first. That had to come first.

    Fate was a bitch. An ugly, nasty bitch. Sliding his arms under Leon’s latest victim, he saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw it but couldn’t make sense of it until the cracking sound filled the room. He heard Taige’s scream, turned his head, and watched as Leon stood, his whip in hand, an unholy light of evil joy in his eyes. He raised the whip again. Taige was on her hands and knees, still blinded by the shock of the pain. Cullen could feel that pain. It had knocked the breath out of her, and she was still reeling from it, couldn’t see through it.

    But Cullen could. Time slowed down to a crawl, and he could see the braided tail of the whip moving through the air. Instinct placed him between Taige’s body and Leon, his forearm lifted. Adrenaline numbed the pain as the whip curled around his arm, twining like a snake. Leon tried to jerk the whip back, but Cullen reached up with his other hand and jerked, pulling with a savage strength. The whip flew out of Leon’s hand, and Cullen caught the butt of it.

    It was heavy, weighted. Closing his fist around one end, he used the other end as a club, striking Leon square in the temple. He fell like a stone, and Cullen moved to Taige. She still crouched on her hands and knees. Under the whip’s lash, her shirt had torn, and he could see the long, ugly mark. The skin had split, and blood welled, trickling down her sides. Already the edges of the wound were swollen and bruised. “I’m going to kill him,” Cullen swore.

    Taige wheezed, fought to speak through the pain. Dear God, it was unreal. How had that girl lived through this? “Get . . . her . . . first.”

    Through the sheen of tears, she saw him look back at Leon. Taige shook her head. “Damn it, get her out!” Gritting her teeth, she shoved herself to her feet. Adrenaline had started to course through her body, and she could breathe through the pain now—barely. She swayed and had to lock her knees to remain upright. But she’d be damned if she went down again. Jaw clenched, she pulled her gun and looked Cullen square in the eye. His turquoise eyes bore into hers, burning with that bloodthirsty, frenzied rage. “The girl, first,” she said hoarsely.

    Then, if Cullen wanted to rip Leon apart limb from limb, she wouldn’t give a hot damn. She’d even help hide the body.

    She swayed on her feet, her hand clenched around the butt of her Glock. She clenched it so hard, the metal bit into her flesh. She focused on the gun, the weight of it, the solidity. Fantasized about lifting it, leveling it between Leon’s eyes, and pulling the trigger.

    Taige sensed the team’s arrival before she heard them, and she made the deadly mistake of looking away from Leon. The old man’s rage must have given him speed, because she hadn’t ever seen him move like that, with venomous, deadly accuracy. She saw the gun in his hand, although where it had come from, she didn’t know. The fiery injury on her back had slowed her