Riley took a half step to one side, coming around just a bit to face the other woman more squarely.

She didn't raise Jake's gun.

"And I came. All according to your plan. Or was it his plan? Does your father control you even from his grave, Leah?"

That surprised Leah, her smile fading and tension visible as she stiffened.

Riley nodded. "He really didn't like women, but he had tried to be what he believed was normal. No marriage on the books, no girlfriend we could ever find, so I'm betting your mother was a one-night stand. What was she, Leah, some hooker he paid to help him get it up?"

Leah's head moved slightly in an odd, twisted way-and in the circle all the candles flared suddenly brighter.

The extra light allowed Riley to see what she had been afraid of seeing. In the center of the circle, lying limply across the flat altar stone, was Jenny.

Not dead yet: The long, curved blade of the knife Leah held was not yet bloodied. But the dark woman was clearly unconscious.

Riley was still trying to hide the part of her mind and senses that was reaching desperately for a connection, so she made her voice a bit slow and uncertain.

"I guess the darkest energy would come from the sacrifice of a priestess, wouldn't it? And you need the darkest energy tonight. A full moon, a satanic priestess. What else, Leah? Does Jenny have some of your blood in her stomach like Tate did?"

"So you figured that out, did you?"

"That it was your blood? Had to be, really. Whoever planned that sacrifice had saved and stored the blood. And you really couldn't afford to have another body turn up before your plan was under way. So it had to be your blood."

"My father's blood."

Riley didn't allow herself to be distracted. "I'm betting you were a teenager when he found you. Or you found him. Evil calling out to evil, I imagine. It does that, we've found. Anyway, he had his apprentice. His blood princess. And you were good, I'll give you that. The whole time I was tracking him, you were on me, weren't you? I was focused on him, so obsessed I was blind to you being right there. Watching me. Reporting back to him."

"He would have beaten you," Leah said suddenly, her voice changing, dropping and taking on a guttural edge. "That was the plan. To seem to be shot. To fall into the river. So we could stop running. So we could settle somewhere."

"What went wrong?"

"So stupid and senseless. The body armor he wore saved him from your bullets. But it was heavy. The current was stronger than we'd anticipated. And he was winded from the chase. He drowned."

"Pity," Riley said without remorse. "I was hoping he really suffered."

Again, Leah's head moved in that stiff, twisted way, and again the candles flared, this time as though the flames were fed by gas jets. The clearing was nearly as bright as day, the woods around them dark and shadowed.

From the corner of her eye, Riley made sure Jake was still. And he was. In shock, probably, she thought. Shock of the emotional kind. Or total bewilderment.

She said, "I guess you've been having a lot of fun messing with my head, huh?"

"You have no idea," Leah said. "You were a challenge at first. I was only able to cloak my mind without affecting yours very much. That's why I resorted to the Taser."

"Yeah, that plus all the dark energy you were channeling, especially from the sacrifice, was enough to get the job done. And I'll bet you really enjoyed butchering Wesley Tate. Chip off the old block, aren't you?"

"I am my father's daughter."

Riley thought she had never heard anything so chilling as that proud statement. She drew a breath and fought to keep her own voice even and steady.

"So it was all about payback. You took your time, set up the situation just as you wanted it. Used the satanists as window dressing, something to keep us distracted while you were performing all the black rites alone. Using fire. Using blood. Using death. Whatever it took to get the power you wanted, you needed. To destroy me. Not just kill me. Destroy me."

"You took away my father. You have to pay for that," Leah said reasonably.

"Your father was a sadistic bag of evil," Riley said in a matching tone. "The world needed to be rid of him. The sane world, at least."

Leah stiffened again but laughed, the sound like brittle sticks rattling together. "You don't seem to get it, little girl. I've already beaten you. I've stolen time from you. I've wrecked your memories. I've fixed it so you don't even remember falling in love. How sad is that?"

"Now, see, that's the one step too far. That's the one that's going to cost you, Leah. Because I understand the need for vengeance. Makes perfect sense to me. Even to avenge a sadistic bag of evil like Price. I get that. But the memory of finding my soul mate? I want that back. And you're going to give it to me."

This time Leah's laugh was a bit-just a bit-uncertain. "What you don't get is that you've lost. Your mind is so weak there's no way it can even fight me, much less take back what I stole from it."

"You're right. I'm not strong enough to beat you. Not alone. But that's what you don't get, Leah. I'm not alone." Riley reached back with one hand and felt Ash's fingers close around hers.

There was a frozen moment when Leah realized, understood. She lifted her knife and lunged toward Jenny's prone body.

Needing the sacrifice. The power.

Riley fired one shot, hitting Leah in the hand so that the knife fell from her suddenly useless fingers.

"No," she said hoarsely. "I won't let you-"

Riley had never tried to do anything even remotely like this before, yet somehow she knew exactly what to do. When Leah gathered her fury, all her emotions, and screamed, sending a visible, jagged spear of dark energy from the circle aimed at Riley, it didn't find its target as a weapon, but as a tool.

It was almost like the Taser attack that had really started everything, only this time Riley wasn't caught, wasn't trapped, and was a long, long way from defenseless. And this time she didn't discharge her strength into the earth but channeled the sheer energy flung at her, took from it what she was determined to have, and then sent what was left streaming back to its source.

But when it returned to Leah, it was white-hot and burning, and her second scream shattered the night even as the energy shattered her circle of power. There was an almost blinding burst of light, the scream was cut off as though by a knife, and then it was over.

The candles were gone. The salt scattered to the winds. And clean moonlight shone down on the two women closest to the altar, one of them just beginning to stir and the other a crumpled form on the ground.

"Is she dead?" Ash asked.

"No," Riley answered. "But powerless now. Jenny was drugged, but she's coming out of it. She should be fine."

"With a stomach full of blood, she's going to be sick."

"Well, after that, she'll be fine. I don't know if she'll go back to being a satanist, but she'll live."

"Thanks to you."

She turned and looked at him, smiling. "Thanks to us. Hello. I remember you."

Ash was smiling as well. "Good."

Jake struggled to rise from the ground, his "What the bloody hell is all this?" several octaves higher than he, perhaps, would have preferred.

Riley glanced at him, and then said to her soul mate, "I have a feeling the debriefing is going to take some time."

"That's okay," Ash said, pulling her into his arms. "We have time."