she held the door for him, then ran for the phone. "i need to call an ambulance."

"kara..." her mom's voice carried to her, thin as worn cotton. "don't. the doctors...can't do anything."

a sudden crack of thunder rattled the windows and doused the lights, blanketing them in utter darkness. the portable phone in her hand went dead. kara slammed the phone on the counter in a burst of helpless fury. with the electricity out, she was trapped. cell phones had never worked out here, and her closest neighbor was almost a quarter mile away.

"carry her to the car. i'll drive her to the hospital myself."

"no... kara." as weak as her mother's voice was, the determination rang clearly. "stay here."

kara wanted to scream her frustration. instead, she rummaged through the drawers until she found a couple of flashlights. if they were staying here, her mom needed blankets and towels, dry clothes and maybe some hot tea to warm her insides. kara refused to let her die from this. not from this.

flicking on the flashlights, she stabbed the darkness with two steady beams of light, illuminating the big man, wet and dripping, holding her mother with surprising care. his expression remained closed, but no longer quite as cold or forbidding as before. the tiny bit of softening did nothing to ease her wariness of him. her fear, however, was all for her mom.

kara turned toward the living room and motioned the stranger to follow with a sweep of one flashlight. "put her on the sofa." she set one light on the coffee table and took the other with her as she ran to the downstairs linen closet and grabbed a couple of blankets.

hurrying back, she covered her soaked and shivering parent from shoulder to feet, then grabbed a towel and sank to her knees beside the sofa, dabbing her mom's trembling face as she tried to ignore the stranger looming behind her like the grim reaper.

"you're not human, kara," he said. "you're therian. and you've been marked as our chosen one."

his words vibrated through her like the discordant notes of a song. the man was certifiably crazy, but he could sing the alien national anthem for all she cared as long as he left her alone to tend her mom.

"you think you belong here," the man continued, his voice a deep, pleasant rumble so at odds with the absurdity of his words. "but you don't."

her mom's lashes fluttered, her pain-ridden eyes filling with distress as she looked toward the stranger.

"stop it," kara hissed, turning halfway around. "what is wrong with you?"

"you need to understand the truth."

kara turned her back on him, but he moved beside her, standing over her. "tell her."

"tell her what?" but when kara glared up at him, she found his gaze not on her but her mother.

"she deserves the truth," he said.

kara lurched to her feet and faced him, anger snapping her patience. "leave her alone. she's been through enough tonight, thanks to you."

a hint of regret warmed his amber gaze. "for that i'm sorry, but her time in this world is almost over. yours has just begun. and you need to know the truth."

"what truth?"

"that you're not her daughter."

"of course i'm her daughter." but she found herself turning to her mother, seeking confirmation... and found tears and denial swimming in the woman's eyes.

kara sank to her knees beside the sofa and took her mom's icy hand in hers. "i'm yours. of course i'm yours,".

tears pooled on her mother's ashen cheeks, her body no longer shivering. her head moved from side to side in tiny, damning movements, a single word escaping her lips.

"no."

"mom? what are you saying?" a chill that had nothing to do with the rain lifted goose bumps on her arms. it wasn't true. it couldn't be true.

and suddenly she understood. kara swung her furious gaze on the stranger. "this is your doing. you're manipulating her just as you manipulated me."

he shook his head, his wet locks brushing his shoulders. "you're mistaken. the only wrong i've done is take you away when she needed you."

"i don't believe you."

his gaze fell to the sofa behind her, and his eyes flinched. "radiant. kara. her spirit has fled. i'm sorry."

kara jerked at his words and whirled back to where her mom lay still as....

"mom?"

she grabbed her mother's thin wrist with frantic gentleness, searching for a pulse, but there was none. "momma?"

it was over. just like that, she was gone.

"no, mom, no." tears clogged her throat, choking her, as she sank to her knees beside the sofa and touched the cool skin of a papery cheek. "please don't go. don't leave me." sobs broke over her in a torrent of grief as her head sank to the once-strong chest upon which she'd cried countless tears over the years. "i need you."

misery swallowed her in a loss so deep she was afraid she'd never escape. she didn't even notice the hand on her shoulder until the weight that crushed her heart started to lift enough that she could breathe again.

he was trying to steal her grief as he'd stolen her fear.

kara surged to her feet in a sudden, blinding fury. "get away from me! she's dead, you monster, and it's your fault."

she launched herself at the man, slamming her fists against his massive chest, unthinking, uncaring that he was twice her size and could snap her in half with his pinkies. but he didn't move. he took her blows without trying to defend himself, without touching her at all.

the maelstrom finally ran its course, leaving her exhausted and aching as if she'd been the one beaten instead of the one administering the blows. but before she could move away, he grabbed her and shoved her behind him.

"shit." the word exploded under his breath even as he yanked two knives from his boots and held them aloft.

the man was certifiaibly....

the thought fled as she eased around his broad back and saw what was coming through the windows... the closed windows.

a scream lodged in her throat.

draden.

lyon shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, twin knives at the ready as half a dozen of the semicorporeal fiends flew straight for him, each of their bodies little more than floating gas beneath a head shaped like a hideously melted human face. his only thought was to protect the radiant from the monsters that would drain the life force from her just as surely as the disease had stolen the spirit from the woman who'd raised her.

"what are they?" behind him, kara's fear washed over him like an icy stream.

"stay behind me." he had no more time to talk as the enemy closed in. lyon dodged fanged mouths, stabbing cleanly through the bodies and popping out the hearts of one, two, three....

the fourth latched onto his scalp from behind as the fifth went for his throat.

the sixth....

he heard a shriek and whirled, two draden still attached to him. the sixth swooped in on the radiant only to collide with her upraised fist. kara screamed with pain as her hand disappeared inside that razor-sharp mouth. her gaze slammed into his, her eyes twin pools of blue terror.

"grab the heart!" lyon fought the creatures locked on to his neck and head, desperate to help her. six months it had taken him to find her. he'd be damned if he'd lose her now.

chapter three

panic engulfed her, pain ripped through her hand and body as kara struggled against the monster, hitting its gelatinous head with her free hand, trying to pull her captured hand loose of its fiery mouth.

pain shot up her arm as if she'd stuck her hand into raw flame. the thing was trying to suck her in. she could feel it pulling at her as if it meant to swallow her whole. terror threatened to cut off her air.

"pull out its heart!" the man's words barely penetrated the fog that encased her brain.

its heart. its heart? how could a body with no form have a heart? but her free hand reached inside the ghostlike body as if she'd been doing this all her life, and closed around a beating, pulsing glob. holy cow. with a hard yank, the creature disappeared in a puff of smokelike energy, freeing her ripped and shredded hand. bone showed through ribbons of bloody flesh.

her head spun with dizzying lightness. her legs refused to hold her, and she slid to the ground, curving around her injured hand. beyond screaming, beyond crying, all she could do was shake, her body quaking with pain. disbelief. shock.

she couldn't think. refused to think about what she'd just seen. about all that had just happened. her world had gone insane.

cold. so cold.

her mom was dead.

"radiant." out of the corner of her eye, she saw the stranger lower his big body to the floor beside her until he was sitting, his back against the love seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him. "let me see your hand.".

"no. i'm fine." words were coming from her mouth, but she wasn't sure what she was saying. she barely recognized her own voice. so cold.

she felt a warm, callused hand slide across her jaw and cheek, one long finger curling behind her ear as it had earlier just before she'd lost consciousness.

"do it," she whispered. "knock me out."

"you want to escape."

"i can't... do this." tears burned and slid down her cheeks as the pain in her hand nearly rivaled that in her chest, but the grief was worse, tearing so much deeper, "it hurts too much."

the man released a heavy breath. "making you sleep won't get rid of the pain." slowly, he removed his hand. "i can't take it all, but i can help. i owe you that much."

his hand slid beneath her hair to curl around her neck, but instead of easing her pain, misery swamped her, a hundred times worse than before.

"oh, god. oh, god."

"easy, little radiant, i had to strip away your defenses to get to the real emotions. give me a minute."

grief tore through her body like a muscle-wrenching poison, doubling heir in half. "i can't do this. i can't..."

all at once, the pain eased, and she began to breathe again. in the space of half a dozen heartbeats, her grief lessened, aging, as if she'd been living with it for weeks or months, instead of minutes, dulling around the edges and slowly losing the ability to cut. the fear and confusion quieted in her head. only her hand still swam with pain.

kara lifted her gaze to his, meeting enigmatic amber eyes. "how do you do that? are you some kind of healer? "

"it's just a skill."

she stared at him, really looked at him, her gaze skimming over the hard bones of an undeniably arresting face. his expression remained cool, perhaps guarded, but his eyes had warmed considerably.

"what's your name?"

"lyon."

"is that your first name or your last?"

"my driver's license would say my last. but only humans use the first."

she looked away, a succession of chills snaking through her body before being snatched away, one after another, through the man's touch. only humans. as if he wasn't one himself.

with a breath-stealing slam of understanding, she knew he wasn't. the things he could do... she dipped her forehead to rest on her updrawn knees. "i can't deal with this."

his thumb slid down her neck and back up again in a gentle and oddly sensual caress. "you can. any woman with the courage and presence of mind to kill a draden the first time she sees one can handle a bit of truth."

kara laughed, the sound more hysterical than humorous. "a bit of truth?" she raised her head to meet his gaze. "you're not crazy, are you? all that talk earlier of a different race... it's real."

"yes."

"you're not human."

"no. neither are you."

and somehow she knew that. she'd always known in some dark corner of her mind that she wasn't normal. her cuts healed much too fast, and she never got sick. had never, in twenty-seven years, even run a fever. was that why her mother never let the doctors near her?

had she known?

"what are we? aliens?"

the man's smile, wide, crooked, and utterly charming, was so fleeting she almost missed it, but for an instant it transformed his face.

"we're therians. a race similar to humans, but far less fragile. we don't age, and we heal most wounds quickly."

"so we're immortal?"

"to the humans, yes. or virtually so. but we can die like any creatures. we just do it far less easily."

questions crowded her mind as fear tried to clutch at her heart, but he held the emotion at bay with his touch.

"there's no need to be alarmed, little radiant."

"why do you call me radiant?"

"you are the caller of the energies of the earth. it's through you that your race renews its strength."

"i don't understand." she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "i don't care. i don't want to be your radiant."

the very thought that she was some kind of immortal chosen one was absurd. she was just kara macallister, preschool teacher. a woman of average looks, average intelligence, average athletic ability. she was average in so many ways her picture ought to be inserted beside the word in the dictionary.

"i can't possibly be the one you're looking for. there's got to be a mistake."

she curled in on herself even tighter, inadvertently squeezing her injured hand. the wave of fresh pain brought tears to her eyes.

"i've got to heal that injury, kara."

"it'll heal on its own."

"no. it won't. a wound from a draden is different. let me see your hand." his thumb slid under her chin, and he tilted her face up to his. "i won't hurt you."