CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #3
“Beating is too tame for my tastes, and you know it.” When Ian simply stared, the monk’s gaze narrowed. “You’re really not afraid. I will have to change that. You do realize you’re weak, that the drugs are still in your system? Your powers are compromised.”
“I don’t care.” He started toward him.
Alarm flitted through the monk’s eyes. “I could change my mind. And you’ll die today.”
“With pleasure,” Ian said softly. “Because I will take ye with me.”
The monk lifted his hand. Ian saw the blow coming, a black energy force, and he braced for it. It drove him back across the small entryway and he hit the wall, hard. He fell.
The monk laughed.
Ian started for him again.
The monk smiled, enjoying himself, and struck him again.
Ian slammed into the wall behind the stairs. It hurt more this time. He slowly got up and smiled. He started forward again.
“You might not care if you die,” the monk said softly. “But I don’t want you dead.” His power blazed.
This time, he saw stars as he hit the wall. Eyes closed, he made no move to get up.
The monk came forward. He bent over him and stroked his cheek, the caress sensual. “Try it again,” he whispered.
Ian opened his eyes and looked at him. And he thrust the scalpel into his chest.
The monk jerked back, enraged, the scalpel protruding. He ripped it out. “That will hardly stop me!”
But Ian was blasting him with all the power he had left. The monk grunted, hurled backward across the entire entry, into the small table by the front door.
Ian ran toward him, straining to find more power. It blazed weakly. The monk got to his knees, his face a mask of rage, and a black cyclone struck Ian, driving him backward.
The monk had always had more power. He was not going to defeat him this way; he would die, and the monk would remain alive.
Ian suddenly thought of all the children that this man would continue to torture and abuse, all the women, all the men. A new rage began.
It was quiet and deep.
It was no longer about the years of captivity. It was about the Innocent.
As Ian prepared to get up, a gust of wind seemed to go through the entry hall. He hesitated, confused, as the swirling air seemed to form into a hundred shapes and forms. He glimpsed features, wide, livid eyes, open, gaping mouths. A wisp of bright blond hair. A teardrop, spatters of blood.
Fear and fury came into the entryway.
The monk saw it, too. He stood up, alarm on his face.
Ian heard their cries and realized he was face-to-face with the souls of the monk’s victims—the men, women and children he’d destroyed.
“For them,” he said harshly.
The lost souls stood between the door and the monk. Ian knew, in that moment, that the monk intended to flee.
“Coward!” he raged. “Ye have twice the power that I do! Will a few ghosts chase ye from this fight?”
The monk faced him and the mass of souls formed a tight circle around him.
Ian blasted him.
The monk raised his hand to send his own power back at him. Ian started to duck when he realized that the ghosts were restraining Carlisle. He could not lift his hand. Ian blasted him again.
The monk fell, crying out. The shadows engulfed him. He screamed.
Ian couldn’t see what was happening, but the monk thrashed as if he were covered with snakes and spiders. Those lost souls wanted revenge. He did not blame them. He hoped that they were torturing him.
Ian ran forward, seized the standing lamp and broke it. He knelt over him, holding a long section of brass over his chest. Terror covered the monk’s face. Their gazes met.
“No,” the monk whispered.
The front door burst open.
He glanced up, too intent to be incredulous. Sam rushed in with his father, Brie, Macleod, Tabby and Nick Forrester. No one was going to take this moment away from him. Now the monk would pay—and he would suffer, first.
“Vanquish him,” Sam said, drawing a gun out of the back of her jeans. “Or I will.”
It was the noble thing to do. He didn’t feel noble now. “I won’t let ye pass out,” he said softly, and he drove the brass stake through his chest and out the other side of his body. There was triumph. There was satisfaction.
The monk screamed. He tried to get up and started thrashing again, as if fighting off the ghosts.
Brie seized Aidan, to prevent him from going forward. “It’s Ian’s war.”
“He’ll leap,” Sam cried. She pointed the gun at the monk’s forehead.
Ian looked up at her and their eyes met. He wanted to torture the monk the way he’d been tortured. He wanted him to live for days, weeks, months, years, in pain, suffering and fear. He wanted payback. Sam knew it. She shook her head. “You’re not one of them.”
And the savage need to inflict pain, to do to the monk what had been done to him, receded. He got up and nodded at her, suddenly exhausted. Sam walked over and put a bullet in the monk’s head, dead center, and another in his heart.
The monk’s eyes were filled with pain and wide with disbelief as he looked at Ian. Ian stared at him as he lay there, dying.
Sam touched him. “Ian?”
He did not take his gaze from the monk. Ignoring her, he watched him bleeding out. The life faded from his eyes. And then the glowing red color there changed, turning blue and sightless.
It was over.