She was . . . magnificent. The moon was mostly obscured by the veil of mist, yet her long braid seemed to give off sparks.
“How did you get your knowledge?” Fen asked.
She shrugged. “Perhaps you know the name of my father. He was the most powerful mage ever known, Xavier. He was a false friend to the Carpathian people, tricking them for years into thinking the alliance between mage and Carpathian was strong. He wanted immortality and the Carpathians did not give him their secret. He killed my mother’s lifemate and held her prisoner, as only the most powerful mage could. He forced her to have his children, triplets, two girls and a boy. My sister, Branislava, my brother, Soren, and me. He needed us for our blood.”
Fen was shocked and he knew it showed on his face. “I studied with this man, centuries ago. We all did. No one knew of his treachery?”
She shook her head. “My sister and I were held from birth in his lair deep beneath the ice where he fed from our veins, keeping us weak. Our mother had turned us completely when she realized what Xavier meant to do, in the hopes that we would find a way to escape. He killed her the moment he felt we could provide the blood he so craved.”
Fen had been centuries gone from the Carpathian Mountains and his brother hadn’t had time to give him much news. To know that a mage as formidable as Xavier had betrayed them and committed heinous acts against a Carpathian woman and his own children chilled him to the bone. He’d seen deceit in the form of vampires, but someone his people had considered such a friend and ally—Xavier’s betrayal seemed far worse. They had all trusted him.
“How long were you held captive?”
For the first time he saw her hesitation. Her hand trembled when she reached up to push back stray strands of hair. Fen covered her hand with his.
“My entire life. Centuries. We never left the ice caves until nearly two years ago. We’ve been in the Earth healing,” Tatijana admitted.
“And the prince allows you to go unescorted? Unprotected by his hunters?” He didn’t bother to conceal the edge—or disgust in his voice.
Tatijana hastily shook her head. “He has no idea that I’ve awakened. None of them know. My guardians believe we are safe beneath the ground. I needed to feel freedom.” Her gaze met his. “I
needed
this.”
He understood what she was trying to convey. She hadn’t slipped away out of spite, or because she frivolously wanted to outwit her guardians, she really did need to feel freedom—and he understood that. In a way, Carpathian hunters lost their freedom when they lost all emotion and color. They had one purpose after that—to find their lifemate. If they didn’t manage to do so, as the years went by, they would run the risk of becoming nosferatu—the undead. The only thing left for hunters was to hunt and destroy the vampire and search for their lifemate.
“I told you about me,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”
“I think we’re about to have company. Two out of three. The third one chose to abandon his friends when he couldn’t talk them out of their drunken idiocy—and I must say—he definitely tried.” He wanted to laugh at the expression on her face. She looked absolutely pained—and adorable. He’d never considered using that word, but now he knew what it meant.
“You have got to be kidding me.” She threw her hands into the air and whirled to face the two men creeping out of the bushes. “Are they really that stupid? What’s wrong with them?”
“It’s called alcohol. You spit it out when you tried it, but many humans like and are very affected by it. The more they drink the less inhibited they are, and they make really stupid decisions sometimes.”
“They aren’t even coordinated,” she pointed out. “One can barely stand. Do they really think they would have a chance against you? I can see them making the mistake about a woman, but they have to have seen you in the tavern.”
“Alcohol impairs the ability to think straight.” Fen turned to face the two men coming toward them, shifting position to place his body just a little in front of hers.
Tatijana pressed her lips together, an ominous warning. Fen caught the look on her face out of the corner of his eye. She suddenly looked both irritated and determined. He felt the burst of energy, and then she moved with blurring speed.
You must appear human!
he warned quickly, moving with her as he pushed the warning into her mind.
At the last moment she emerged out of the mist as human, leaping through the air to land a perfect roundhouse kick, her foot slamming into the most aggressive man’s gut, doubling him over so that he folded in half. He swayed and slowly sank down onto the ground, blinking up at Tatijana.
Fen whistled softly as the second man staggered to a halt and stood swaying, staring at his companion with blurry eyes.
“Nice,” Fen commented. “I’m impressed.” He held out his hand to Tatijana. “Get along home, boys. The woods can turn dangerous very fast at night.”
Tatijana took his hand and went with him into deeper forest. He took the narrow path leading back toward the village. She wouldn’t show him her resting place, but she would be much safer in the village than the forest. His last glimpse of the two attackers was of one trying to help the other off the ground.
The mist enfolded them once again. Tatijana cleared her throat. “You said you were chasing a particularly violent vampire. Please continue. I’d really like to hear.”
Fen glanced down at the top of her head. She didn’t come up to his shoulder, but already she was a force to be reckoned with. She hadn’t put any compulsion in her voice, yet there would be no resisting her. He had no experience with lifemates, so he had no idea if the spell she’d cast was one any woman could easily place on her Carpathian lifemate.
“The vampire was named Vitrona and I could not get ahead of him no matter what I did. I never felt him. Not once. I could only follow in the wake of his total destruction. Entire villages, so many people and mostly Lycans. He was wiping them out. More than once he doubled back and caught me off guard, something that had always been impossible. I have hunted the vampire long centuries and even back then I was no beginner.”
“I have seen vampires and the cruelty they exhibit,” Tatijana admitted. “Xavier had an alliance with one.”
Fen shook his head. “Centuries ago, vampires did not make alliances. They have evolved into even more of a threat, but this one, Vitrona, killed not only for the rush, but for pleasure. It seems he was not only vampire but Lycan—well—not Lycan—werewolf as well.”
She gasped, one hand going to her throat. “Lycans can walk in sunlight. They can go undetected by Carpathians and Mage. Lycans are the one species Xavier had difficulties obtaining because it was so hard to locate them.”
“The Lycans kept to their own villages back then, but that policy changed when Vitrona tore through their ranks, killing everyone, man, woman and child. No one could stop him.” Fen ducked his head, the memories of finding so many brutally murdered families washing over him. “Not even me.” For a moment, sorrow choked him—sorrow he hadn’t been able to feel until his lifemate had brought intense emotions back to him.
Tatijana’s fingers tightened around his. “I didn’t think when I asked you to tell about this that you might have to relive it with emotion this time. Please forgive me. You don’t have to continue.”
Fen was a little shocked at how the psychic connection between them continued to grow stronger with each passing moment in her company. He touched her mind, brushing lightly, and found she was distressed at the thought that she had caused his discomfort. No one had ever been upset on his behalf that he could remember.
He brought her hand to his chest, pressing her palm close over his heart even as he continued walking with her toward the village—and safety. The veil of mist blanketed the forest now, making it nearly impossible to see the trees until they were right up on them, but he could feel them through the hair on his body and the energy radiating from the living plants.
He guided her unerringly along the path, cutting through the interior and picking up his pace. His warning system was beginning to give off little ripples.
“You gave me a gift beyond measure, my lady. Walking with you is both peaceful and exhilarating. Just to have your interest in my past is a miracle I did not expect.”
She gave him a glance from under long lashes, a brief glimpse of her astonishing green eyes. “I have an interest in your future as well, Fen. From what I’ve gleaned about lifemates, one does not do well without the other for long.”
“Then I will continue with my story. I followed Vitrona for a full, very long year, and during that time, I became aware of another hunter tracking him—a Lycan. He was an elite hunter, one who tracks down and kills rogue werewolves, those who kill humans and their own kind, just as we destroy the vampire who preys upon humans. The Lycan’s skills were formidable. I found myself having great respect for him. He came closer than me on two occasions and yet, he, too, missed Vitrona.”
“How awful for both of you,” Tatijana said. “What was so different about this vampire?”
“When one hunts the undead, there are certain signs to look for, but this vampire was nearly impossible to find by any of the usual means. There were no scorch marks in his passing unless he deliberately made them. There were no blank spaces indicating he was hiding. The Lycan, his name was Vakasin, eventually hunted him solely by scent. We joined forces, knowing that would double our chances of executing the monster. Many times we engaged him in battle, and both of us sustained terrible life-threatening wounds.” Fen hesitated, uncertain how to tell her the rest—fearing her reaction.
Tatijana stopped walking and turned to stand directly in front of him, blocking his path, forcing him to halt. “I told you about Xavier. He was the most hated criminal the Carpathian people had. Women lost their babies and eventually couldn’t have children. The high mage who committed such treachery against the Carpathian people was my own father. I think whatever your secret is can’t be as bad. Whatever happened, you need to tell me.”
The only person Fen had trusted enough to tell his secret to was his brother. He had just met Tatijana, but she was his lifemate, and one couldn’t lie to one’s lifemate. She could slip in and out of his mind at will, just as he could hers, making it impossible to hide anything.
He found it strange that he was already so comfortable, as if they’d been together for a long time, yet the mystique surrounding her was as strong as ever, drawing him with a magnetic pull as strong as their obvious connection.
“I often needed blood and there was no one else to provide it but Vakasin. I sometimes provided blood for him when our hunt took us places where there was no sustenance for either of us, or our wounds were too many and we had to wait to heal. In a battle, we both sustained life-threatening injuries and we had to have large amounts of blood to survive.”
Tatijana continued to look up at him, wide-eyed. Unblinking. Holding him captive so that he could not look away from her even though his next words might turn her against him.
“Vakasin and I both became an abomination—what the Lycans refer to as the
Sange rau,
which is literally
bad blood
, a mixed blood. We became like Vitrona. Both Lycan and Carpathian. We had no idea how it happened, probably over time, our blood mixing, yet not mixing, changing us, yet not really changing us.” He confessed his sin quickly, in a rush to get it over.
She didn’t change expression or step away from him. She just looked at him as if expecting more. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps you don’t understand what I said. I am not Carpathian and I am not Lycan. I am both. An outcast that cannot be tolerated by either species. The Lycans have elite squads that hunt and kill someone like me on sight.”
Tatijana frowned. “Why would that be? Lara is lifemate to Nicolas, and his brother Manolito is lifemate to MaryAnn. Manolito and MaryAnn are as you are, and no one is hunting them.”
Fen shook his head. “That cannot be.”
“I heard Nicolas telling the prince that MaryAnn was Lycan and they were as you describe. No one seemed upset by it.”
“No one can know. They cannot. This has not been made common knowledge or my brother would have told me. They are in terrible danger. If the Lycans hear of this, they will send their hunters. They hunt in packs and once set on a trail, they do not stop until they kill their targets.”
Tatijana drew in her breath. “If the Lycans killed or attempted to kill MaryAnn and Manolito, his brothers would start a war. As I understand it, the De La Cruz brothers would take on the world for one another. Lara and Nicolas gave us quite a bit of information when they would come to give us blood while we were healing in the earth.”
“It is important, Tatijana. You have to warn them. Once the death sentence is handed down by the council, the elite hunters will spend centuries, if necessary, to find and destroy them. There are only a couple of us. Vakasin was killed by his own kind after he helped me to rid the world of Vitrona. They were savage with him when he had done nothing wrong. He tried to tell them that Vitrona had turned vampire, that he didn’t represent what we could be, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Could Vakasin have turned vampire?” Tatijana asked. “That’s what they were afraid of, wasn’t it?”
Fen nodded slowly with a small sigh. “He didn’t have time to find out. Like Carpathians, Lycans live long lives. I don’t know what the consequences of a Lycan-Carpathian cross would be. Obviously, I could turn without my lifemate, but staying in Lycan form helped throughout the long, empty years.” He hesitated. “The gifts grow stronger over time, mutating, and as one grows more powerful, that aid disappears and the call to darkness grows.”
He shook his head, sorrow nearly overwhelming him. He had respected Vakasin as a hunter and a man, but until this moment he hadn’t realized he’d felt affection for him. Camaraderie. The bond between two men who shared battles and watched each other’s backs. He’d been unable to feel those things until Tatijana. Emotions, he found, were both a blessing and a curse.