It wasn't easy finding the connection My Lady Moon's eyes had last made with his, but I did and I did it with haste. As my body crumpled in the snow, hundreds of miles away, Doug's body jolted spasmodically. But it only lasted a moment, only until I was fully clear of the ethereal and completely within him.
Adeline was babbling. She was frantic and frightened for her daughter's safety. She did not notice the change in her husband-to-be. She did not see the demon in his eyes, and that was just too bad. She would have recognized me. And it was just too bad that I did not have the time to waist on strangling the wretched woman for Luna's sake. Perhaps, some other time.
"We have to go look for her! She's going to hurt herself! You know she does that right? Have you seen her arms? She's tried, several times, to cut herself to death. She gets that from her father! Oh, Doug, what if she purposefully drives that motorcycle off the road? We have to find her!" Addy had tears in her eyes, when Doug focused on her face. He touched a palm to her cheek, the way Doug would have in an attempt to soothe her. She was warm and clammy, weak and vulnerable. She felt nothing like her daughter. And of course she didn't, for Adeline was not a Lanchester. She was a pathetic heir to the remarkable, royal Trentis bloodline.
"I will find her. Do not fret, Adeline. I will find her and bring her back home to you," I promised her. But it was Doug's voice. And it was Doug's worthless body that would have to uphold to that promise. But it was my will. And that alone would more than double this meatless, worthless excuse of a man's strength. There was something to be said about the human's adrenal glands and that sudden explosion of its excretion. I would channel my will through this vessel in this very way.
I moved Doug swiftly out the door. Having such an odd, awkwardly tall frame and useless, spongy muscles, it took a bit longer than normal for me to acquaint myself with Doug's abstruse body and for me to fully acclimate.
I stopped Doug at his car for the baseball bat he had kept in the back seat, and I sent him off down the road. Adeline was standing in the threshold, wondering why Doug hadn't taken the car. A vehicle could not sneak up on the Hylander the way I would enable Doug to be capable of. And Doug was not going very far. He knew exactly where Adeline's daughter had made her bed of bloody grass, for I told him where. He understood that the Hylander was lying her down beneath him, at this very moment.
But Adeline did not need to know these sorts of things.
****
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Luna