The Beast That Was Max Read Online Free PDF

understood who had smiled at him from his own body.
    "This is your guardian angel, Max," Lee said to her as they followed the press of crowd toward the Lincoln.
    The Lexus drove off with a squeal of rubber, as if the driver was eager to escape his passenger's presence.
    "How did it feel?" Mani said, hips and shoulders swaying, watching him with the barest turn of her head. The sound of her voice resonated in his mind. A part of him was reluctant to let her go. The Beast hissed at the rival connection that had suddenly taken root in Max.
    "Like death," he answered.
    "And yet you live. Life is a strange paradox, is it not?" She laughed as Lee opened the Lincoln's back door and let her in.
    Her body, the kaleidoscopic assault of memories and sensations, the separation from himself, returned in a play of shadows running through his mind. He shook his head to clear it. Something stuck in his mind, a feeling he had never experienced before. Not the web of her power or the remnants of an ancient spirit, but the hint of yet another thread of life and power inside her. Max tried to tease the memory from a mix of images and emotions.
    The Temple group surged on, except for one young Asian man who thrust his chest out in front of Max, distracting him. "If anything happens to her, we will hunt you down," he said, with intensity surprising for his youth and stature. A grief-stricken expression crossed his face when he saw Lee close the door behind Mani.
    "You won't like what you find," Max said. The boy ran away, tears streaming down his face, before Max could snatch him and break his neck. The Beast howled, frustrated once again. But the Beast's anger did not trouble Max as much as the sense that the boy had been so focused on Mani and whatever ruined emotions lay between them that he had blinded himself to the danger of the rage his provocation had raised.
    Max remembered the monks peeking out from the Temple, his own near-loss of self. The woman's power ran deep into those she chose to target. Subtle, brutal, seductive, she had more than one way of conquering. Having survived her direct tests of his strength, he had no intention of falling under her sexual or emotional spell.
    Max went to the driver's side and entered the car while Lee covered the area. As soon as he was inside, he turned to the woman and said, "I should kill you for what you did."
    "Some add to life, others take away from it," she answered, settling into the backseat. She drew her legs up under her and hugged herself.
    "Which do you do?"
    "I take away from death."
    "Why did you do that thing to me?" Max asked, wanting even more to ask how she had managed the transposition he had just experienced. But what drove him was the need to establish his territory, to warn her off, kill the bond between them she seemed to want to establish. Demanding explanations of how she did what she did only invited and prolonged unwanted contact.
    The Beast paced restlessly, crying to vent its lust. She lingered inside him like a perfume. To Max's shock, the Beast seemed to calm down just a bit from his body's memory of her habitation.
    Lee dropped into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and slapped the dashboard twice with impatience. "Do what?" he asked, checking his watch.
    "To warn you," Mani said. "And teach you that you cannot always pursue what you want by force, so we may both live to see this episode to its end."
    "Are you getting yourself in trouble with her already, Max? Damn, man, just relax, okay? We're going to Mott Haven 149th Street. Take the Deegan to Third Ave. Oman's picked up a city-owned place down there. He leased that nice little factory he had in Brooklyn to a floating club called Painfreak. You ever hear of it?"
    Max let the question slide over him.
    "Thought you had. They burned the place down the last time the club came to town, that's why I figured you'd know them. I bet Oman's having an orgasm with that upgrade to Nowhere House status. I've been