Devoured Read online

But more than any of these details, Becca was struck by her eyes. They were wide and shocked—the eyes of someone who has survived some horrific event and hasn’t quite been able to convince themselves they’re still alive yet.

  “Tess?” she asked sharply when the other girl just looked at her. “Tess, honey, are you okay?”

  “I…” Tess shook her head. “I don’t…don’t know.”

  “Tess, look at me—listen to me.” Becca tried to keep her voice calm and soothing. She wished she could reach through the viewscreen and grab the other girl’s hand or hug her but all she could do was talk. “Tell me what happened to you,” she insisted gently. “Come on, tell me now.”

  “He ate him.” Tess’s voice was little more than a whisper. “He ate Pierce—my ex-husband. Every…every last bit of him. Like…like a dog licking a plate clean. He devoured him.”

  “He? He who?” Becca demanded, her heart thumping. But she was terribly afraid that she knew the answer. The image of a huge, floating dr’gin flashed in her mind’s eye again. Tess’s next words confirmed her worst fears.

  “Garron,” she whispered. “He…he changed into his dr’gin and then he devoured Pierce. Even his clothes. Even his gun. Everything.”

  “Mother of God,” Becca murmured. “Are you serious? But I thought he got an implant to control it—to keep it inside.”

  “It didn’t work.” Tess sounded numb. “I mean, it might have if Pierce hadn’t broken into the cabin and started carving me up with a knife.” She touched a long red cut that ran from her temple all the way down to her jaw. “When Garron saw that, it was like…like something inside him snapped. He…he changed. And then he…”

  “Ate your ex-husband,” Becca finished for her.

  “That isn’t all…” Tears began to leak down her cheeks. “Then he changed back and he tried to…he was going it…” She sniffed. “I can’t say it. I don’t want to say it.”

  “Say what? Never mind.” Becca waved her hand. “You can tell me later. How many people know this? How many saw?”

  “Just me,” Tess whispered. “I…I saw it all. And oh, Becca…I can’t unsee it. It…it’s in my mind. Like a movie clip that won’t stop playing. I keep seeing him bite…biting off Pierce’s arms and legs and his…his head.”

  She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders began to shake as silent sobs wracked her.

  “Oh, honey….” Becca bit her lip. She had always liked her brother-in-law, despite his inherent potential for this kind of violence. But knowing that it had actually happened at last—that he had let his dr’gin out and had killed and eaten someone—was almost too much for her mind to encompass.

  “I…I wish I could forget,” Tess whispered. “But I can’t. I can’t.”

  “Listen, you stay right there. You’re in the Asheville HKR building in North Carolina—right?” That was where the communications officer had told her the call was coming in from.

  “Y-yes,” Tess said in a trembling voice. “And I’m sorry to bother you but I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “You did the right thing,” Becca told her. “You stay right there—I’m coming to you just as fast as I can.”

  “Thank you.” Tess wiped at her streaming eyes, smearing some of the blood that speckled her face across her pale cheek. “Thank you so much.”

  “Just stay there,” Becca said again. “I’m on my way.”

  She turned away from the view screen and nearly ran right into Truth, who was standing just inside the doorway.

  “I heard everything,” he said grimly before Becca could speak. “Come on, let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  Tess felt a little calmer by the time the shuttle bearing Becca and Truth touched down. The Kindred commander on duty was the same one who had loaned Garron the ship to go to Zeaga Four and he had been kind and understanding when she asked for a private viewing room to call Becca. Even better, he didn’t ask any questions, despite her startling appearance.

  After the call, while she was waiting for Becca, he had provided her with a private room to shower and change. He had even found a pair of old sweatpants and a sweatshirt someone had left there. That someone must have been a Kindred because the clothes were far too big for Tess. Still they were clean and whole and there was no blood on them so she was glad to put them on—even if she did swim in them.

  Now she was sitting on a couch, sipping a hot, soothing cup of tea that one of the human girls manning the HKR had made her. The warming liquid running down her throat seemed to steady her nerves so Tess was feeling much more like herself when Becca and Truth finally burst into the HKR building.

  “Tess, oh my God, are you okay?” Becca ran up to her, a worried expression on her lovely face.

  “Better now.” Tess put down her tea and got up to hug her. She was glad to feel the other girl’s arms around her neck. “I’m sorry for calling you like that, acting so crazy,” she said in a low voice when they broke apart. “I just…I guess I was in shock.”

  “Of course you were.” Becca pulled her back down on the couch and Tess picked up her tea again. “What you saw sounds terrible.”

  “It was,” Tess said quietly. She took a deep breath. “It was like something out of a horror movie, honestly.”

  “I have seen a dr’gin feed after the first transformation,” Truth said in a low voice. “I understand your horror and distress.”

  “I can understand the…what Garron’s dr’gin did. What I don’t understand is what happened…after.” Tess bit her lip.

  “After?” Truth asked.

  “After it was over with Pierce and he changed back into himself.”

  “What happened?” Becca said gently. “It’s okay, Tess, you can tell us.”

  “He…he attacked me. Or started to, anyway.” Tess put a hand to her eyes, almost unable to tell the awful details. The way Garron had acted after his dr’gin had eaten Pierce was in some ways worse than seeing Pierce torn apart and swallowed up in the first place.

  “He attacked you?” Becca sounded like she was frowning. “That doesn’t sound like Garron.”

  “It wasn’t like him—at all,” Tess exclaimed, looking up. “He…he seemed to go crazy with lust. He was shoving me around and holding me down to kiss me and…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, he’d never acted like that before. I just…can’t understand it.”

  Truth cleared his throat. “Maybe I can shed some light on the subject. What kind of a man was your ex-mate?”

  “Abusive.” Tess looked down at her tea. “Sadistic. Manipulative. I stayed with him a lot longer than I should have but he made it really hard to get away—he was a police detective.”

  “One of your peace keepers here on Earth?” Truth asked.

  Tess nodded. “I don’t have to tell you in words—all you really need to know about Pierce is right here.” She touched the side of her face where the long slice Pierce had made with his knife still throbbed.

  “What happened there?” Truth asked.

  “Remember I told you Pierce—my ex—came after me with a knife?” She looked at Becca who nodded.

  “That’s awful.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a day at the park,” Tess said dryly, touching her cheek again. “Pierce sliced me from my temple all the way down to my jaw but he wanted to do more. He was…was talking about pealing my face off.”

  “Seven Hells,” Truth muttered hoarsely. “What kind of a male would do such a thing?”

  “Pierce would,” Tess told him. “He liked hurting people—me especially. But when he said that—that’s when Garron sort of lost it and turned into his dr’gin.”

  Truth nodded. “Seeing the female he cared for threatened must have been too much for him to bear. Even the emotion dampening implant he had would not have been able to hold him in check.”

  “That makes sense,” Tess acknowledged. “But what does any of this have to do with the way Garron was acting?”

  “Everything,” Truth said. “A dr�