He stammered to a stop and his expression went blank. I watched in confusion while he stood swaying in a trancelike state. My eyes went to the tattooed man and found him watching Scott with a small smile on his face.

“Leave him alone! He’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Come with me and your boyfriend will be okay,” the man holding me barked.

“No!” I struggled and screamed Peter’s name.

Dragged backwards, I stumbled and almost felt. The man jerked me up and I used the momentum to bring my head up and slam him hard under the chin. I heard his jaw crack at the same time pain shot through my skull. He staggered and his grip loosened enough for me to tear free. I spun to face him and kicked out, landing a hard blow to the side of his knee. Off balance, he fell to the ground swearing. I could tell he would not be down for long.

I heard running feet as Peter tore around the front of the semi and took in the scene before him. “Sara!” he bellowed and tossed his milkshake aside, racing toward me. He reached me just as my attacker gained his footing again.

“Watch out!” I yelled to Peter.

Peter turned as a hard fist flew at his face. Moving faster than I’d ever seen him go, he leaned to one side and brought his own fist up, slamming it into the man’s stomach. The man parried with a shot aimed at Peter’s chest but he only managed a hit to the shoulder. Peter recovered fast and delivered a second punch to his opponent’s gut. I had never seen Peter fight and the force and speed of his blows surprised me. It also answered my question about whether or not werewolves are strong in their human form. It was clear that my friend was more than a match for the larger, more muscled man.

I was so engrossed in the fight it took me several seconds to register the gentle pressure on my mind, touching, prodding like fingers testing a piece of fruit. My mental walls flew up and I sensed a flare of surprise from the one trying to invade my head. In the next moment, it surged forward with a force that left me gasping. Horrified recognition filled me as the thing buzzed inside my head like a live wire. My walls faltered at the shock of encountering the same awful presence that had infected the rat at the marina, and my hesitation was all the alien force needed to shove its way around my defenses.

I screamed and grabbed my head as the thing invaded me. It reached into the recesses of my mind and wherever it touched it left a path of filth like the slime trail of a slug. In the back of my mind I felt the Mori recoil as my whole being shuddered at the violation, the slow rape of my mind.

“Sleeeep,” a chilling voice hissed in my head. “All is welll.”

“No…” I protested weakly. A cool numbing fog began to steal over me until I no longer felt the ugliness in my head, or much else.

“You will sleeeep now.”

“Can’t…” I mumbled as my eyes grew heavy.

My walls fell. I was vaguely aware of something cold and slimy burrowing inside me like a parasite. The Mori shrieked in agony. Choking, dying, the Mori was dying. I’d always hated the dark thing that had been a part of me my whole life. I should be happy now that the beast would be no more. Instead sadness bloomed in my chest and tears of grief welled in my eyes.

Coldness reached down, inching toward the center of my being. It came up against my last defense, the gate that held back the wellspring of my power. “Let meee innn,” it commanded as icy fingers pulled at the barrier in vain. I did as it asked and I felt its triumph as it punched through and touched the essence of me.

Someone began to scream.

I was on fire. No, I was the fire. Roaring, raging, I was an angry volcano spewing molten rock up from deep within the earth. The lava scorched everything in its path with a cleansing fire that burned away the coldness and filth and bore down on the ugly thing pulsing in my mind. I felt a flash of terror that was not my own and then the pressure in my head was gone.

My eyes opened to see the witch – I knew what he was now – stagger and fall to his knees. His eyes no longer glowed white and his face had paled to a dark grey. “What… are you?” he choked, his black eyes full of shock and fear.

Instead of answering him, I stood and turned my attention to Peter who still fought my assailant. They traded blows like it was a heavyweight match and I wondered how either of them was still standing. Across the parking lot, several men stood near their cars watching the fight but no one moved to break it up. Anger rose in me. What was wrong with these people? They were going to just stand there while teenagers were attacked in broad daylight?

Peter appeared to be gaining ground and I watched breathlessly as he forced the older man backward with each blow. I glanced behind me nervously at the witch, expecting him to recover and try that mind magic on me again. But he was still on his knees with both hands on the ground like he was about to pass out. Good, serves you right.

“Argh!”

I whirled back to the fight at Peter’s cry of pain to find him clutching his belly and blood running between his fingers. The dark haired man advanced on him again, brandishing a bloody knife and wearing a sneer that left no doubt about his deadly intentions.

A howl of rage escaped me as I threw myself at the man’s back, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his throat in a stranglehold that might have broken the neck of a smaller person. My would-be kidnapper dropped his weapon and clawed at my arms as I clung to him, squeezing his windpipe with strength I did not know I had and screaming like a banshee. The fear, the pain, the endless attacks for the last month had finally made me snap and I poured all my pent up anger and fear into choking the life from the man who was trying to kill my friend.