“What did you do to him?” Ginger gasped.
“You’re next, you know,” Professor Reese smiled gently, the way he did when he was asking one of his students to fetch him coffee. “You’ll still be able to understand what’s going on around you, and feel rage and despair and humiliation. But you won’t be able to do a damned thing about it. I could tell you to gauge your own eyes out, and you’d do it.”
Ginger’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it would crack through her rib cage.
Was Loch’s mind gone forever? Was there no saving him? The thought made her so angry that her vision swam red. Her mate. Loch was her mate. Professor Reese was hurting her mate.
She needed to stall. This couldn’t be the end. Ginger Colby was not a quitter. “Tell me what happened first,” she pleaded.
His smile spread wider. He was a raging egomaniac, and she knew he couldn’t resist the urge to brag.
He turned to Jason. “Tell them what you did,” he ordered him. “Tell him about how you brought about the end of the Panther nation.”
A tear glittered in Jason’s eye, and he blinked hard, and began talking, in a wooden, despairing voice.
“I was supposed to guard the icons,” he said. “It was my sacred duty, but I let myself be distracted by Tommy Deerkiller’s daughter. While we were in the woods together, someone broke in to the hut where we keep them. It was probably Tommy; we’ve known for a long time that he was stealing and selling sacred panther items. I heard the noise and ran back there and interrupted the burglary, but it was too late. Someone had disturbed the wooden box which held the most powerful of icons, the Mind-stealer. The box was on the floor and there were stone amulets scattered all over. I told my father. He said that it was high time we found a way to destroy the icon, but we didn’t know which one it was.”
“How could you not know?”
He stayed silent.
“Answer her,” Reese said.
“We never open the box. We simply guard it. It hasn’t been opened in centuries, since the death of River Runs Red. We thought that there was only the Mind-stealer in there. We were shocked to see all the icons scattered on the floor.”
Ginger glanced over at Loch. His face twitched, his eyes blazing with anger, but he stayed frozen where he sat.
“Richard and his father contacted me at the university, and secretly hired me to come out here and look through the icons and identify the Mind-stealer,” Professor Reese said with a smile. “I set up the dig so that I could get close to the panther’s property, and then Richard and Jason arranged for a disturbance on the far edge of the property to distract everyone, so I could have time to come on the property and look at the icons in the hut where they’re guarded. I saw the shape-shifter icon in there, recognized it, and changed shape just as Montgomery came into the hut to confront me.”
“You killed him and took his place,” Ginger said. “Why take his place?”
“For all kinds of reasons. For power. For fun. To hide the fact that I’d killed him. So I could stay on the property and look through all of the icons at my leisure. I’m the ruler of the panther nation now. I’ve been fucking every young panther woman I fancy. It’s been delightful.” He grinned, and his eyes had a mad glow to them. Jason’s face twitched with anger, but he stood still as a statue.
“Jason’s sister was particularly tight and delicious. I fucked her in every hole,” The professor taunted. “Of course, she cried when I popped her cherry, and she cried even harder when I took her up the ass, but no panther dares to refuse the orders of Montgomery Eagle Feather. She could barely walk when I finished using her. Limped out of her bleeding, and wailing like a kitten.”
Jason’s lips quivered.
“Got something to say, Jason?” the professor grinned.
Jason stood silently, with murder blazing in his eyes.
“Why did you kill Tallulah?” Ginger blinked back tears.
“Ahh, yes. Quite sad. Tallulah was an angel, wasn’t she? But it had to be done, you see. The Mind Stealer is the most powerful icon of all, giving the wearing complete control over any shifter…but it is only activated by the fresh blood of a human virgin.”
Ginger felt as if she were going to vomit. Tallulah must have been overjoyed when she saw the professor again, and over the moon when he asked her to marry him. She’d eagerly run off to her death. Ginger could only pray it had been quick.
“When did you kill her?”
“Last night. The people here were starting to suspect me. Jason and Richard came to confront me. I needed to gain control of them.”
“If the icon gets its power from fresh blood, won’t the power wear off?” she asked despairingly.