“You are not in charge here, little witch,” he promised, his eyes fixed on the expanse of skin he’d displayed.
Rune! She sent out the mental scream, hoping that somehow he would hear it. But she knew in her heart that they were not connected mentally. Not yet. He couldn’t hear her thoughts. If he could, he would already be here, tearing into these men like an avenging angel.
Their grasp on her wrists and feet tightened and Teresa’s stomach fisted into an icy ball of dread and fear.
The leader ripped off her ruined jeans and warmth snaked across her skin even as the pebbled dirt beneath her scraped at her flesh. Still she fought, battling the moonlight magic for control of her body as she struggled to free herself from the relentless grip of the men holding her down.
The men laughed and Teresa struggled even harder. “Don’t do this,” she muttered. “You’ll be sorry if you do this.”
Now the leader laughed, delighted at her threats. “Will you do a spell on me, bruja? I don’t think so …” He reached for the elastic band of her panties, twisting his grubby fingers in the fabric.
In the next instant, the moonlight vanished. The pillar of light was gone as if it had never been and darkness enveloped all of them. She heard one of the men mutter a choked-off prayer, but the leader was not to be denied.
He gave a harsh order in Spanish. Just to the right of them, the river roared. Bugs clattered and a monkey high in the trees screamed. In the blackness, hands fisted tighter around her limbs and Teresa felt as if she had been swallowed by evil. There was no way out. She couldn’t fight them. Rune wasn’t here. And wouldn’t come back in time.
Would they kill her when they were finished with her? Was she going to die in this jungle, leaving her life, her quest, unfulfilled?
No, damn it.
She wasn’t going to die. She was going to find a way to survive, no matter what.
Rune would come.
Holding on to the mental image of him, she called on the last shred of her inner strength, focused her power and screamed, “Rune!”
Chapter 46
He felt rather than heard her cry. It was a knife to his chest. He sensed her pain. Her fear. And the danger closing in around her. Looking back toward their camp, Rune saw a towering pillar of moonlight and knew his witch was there at the heart of it. When that light suddenly winked out, he howled in rage, called on the fire and flashed back to his woman.
At the campsite, he found Teresa on the ground, screaming as four men held her arms and legs apart while yet another hovered over her.
He crashed into that man with a body blow that sent the tormenter flying into the jungle. Rune was after him a second later and in a rage beyond anything he had ever known before, he brought his own knife down in a swinging arc, slicing across the bastard’s throat. Not pausing to admire his handiwork, he raced back to the camp to find Finn snapping one man’s neck only to drop him alongside another of his dead friends.
Teresa had come up on her knees and, trembling with shock and terror, was holding her hands to the sky, waving them frantically. Lightning flashed down and stabbed the jungle floor in an incredible sweep of power and majesty. The night shone with the brilliance of a million candles as lightning bolts pounded the trees, the river, the rocks. Animals screeched and Rune felt the very air burn along with Teresa’s frenzied movements. She jumped to her feet and kicked one man’s nuts into his throat and he dropped like a stone.
Another of the bandits grabbed at her and Rune threw fire in a river of living flame that raced across the man, wrapping the bastard in what looked like a brilliant, fiery suit. He screamed and fled into the darkness, toward the river, no doubt planning on quenching the flames in the water. Rune smiled grimly. Water wouldn’t affect an Eternal’s flame. The bastard would continue to burn—he had dealt himself a cruel fate the moment he had touched Teresa.
Rune’s fury wasn’t abated. He picked up the emasculated prick whimpering in the dirt and gave his head a hard twist, then dropped him like the trash he was. In the next instant, Rune was