She took a breath and leaned closer to Manolito, needing the warmth of his touch, the feel of him close to her, but he felt cold, lifeless, his spirit a great distance from his physical body. “I have to go to him.”
“Breathe. Let me do this. He would want me to.” Riordan kept his voice as soothing as possible. MaryAnn had had too much to contend with in the last few days. She looked worn out, and by tomorrow night, when they next arose, in spite of what he would do here, she was going to feel the effects of crashing through branches to the ground.
He took a breath and released his body, allowing his physical self to drop away so he could become the necessary healing light of energy. He entered her body to survey the damage. The vampire had purposely infected her blood. He had not ripped and torn big chunks of flesh away; rather he had punctured deep with his razor-sharp teeth, using a sawing motion to inject thousands of tiny parasites into her bloodstream. Why? Why not try for a kill? The wolf was unexpected, but that should have pushed the vampire to defend himself with even more vigor.
The vampire had gone for the most damage he could inflict, rather than for a kill. The jugular was left intact. He had raked and torn at the wolf ’s belly, bit the shoulder, but not a single wound was a kill target. No vampire had that kind of control during a life-and-death battle—not unless he was programmed. And who could manipulate a vampire, even a lesser vampire, when his life was at stake? By nature, vampires were selfish and cunning. Riordan observed the parasites teaming in MaryAnn’s bloodstream with dismay.
He entered his own body. “This may take a little while. Are you feeling sick?” He hadn’t detected poison, so the vampire hadn’t injected a lethal chemical into her.
“It can’t take too long. We have to help Manolito.”
He studied her face. Aside from looking so weary, she didn’t appear to be alarmed, so she didn’t know. He would bet his life the wolf did. “Rest,” he advised, more for the wolf than for her. Because the wolf was going to be needed later; he was certain of that.
MaryAnn closed her eyes and leaned her head against Manolito’s shoulder. Riordan stood over her, shedding his body so that he could fight the battle against the parasites the vampire had left behind.
Manolito stared in shock at Draven Dubrinsky. The man was long dead. Why hadn’t Vlad warned him that his son resided in the meadow of mists and shadows? Draven, like his father and Mikhail, was a vessel for the power of the Carpathian people. He would know the exact tone, the exact path, mind-to-mind, even of lifemates.
Manolito’s heart jumped, his belly knotted, but he kept his pulse steady and strong, his features expressionless. His first thought was to warn MaryAnn. To do that, he would have to merge with her. Would that pull her into the world enough that Maxim would be able to grab her?
He let his breath out slowly, keeping his mind away from MaryAnn, blocking her out so that if Draven touched his mind, he wouldn’t be able to find her, or even a hint of a path to her. She wasn’t Carpathian. Draven couldn’t automatically search her out as he might a full-blooded Carpathian female.
He refused to look at the son of Dubrinsky, choosing to keep the battle between him and Maxim. He knew the Malinovs, and he was more than willing to match wits if that was what it took to keep the Carpathians safe. “You cannot drag her into this world through me. Not with the likes of him.”
“Do not be so sure of yourself, Manolito. That was always your downfall. You and all your brothers.” Bitter contempt curled in Maxim’s voice. “How do you think your woman will fair against one of our most powerful?” His laughter was soft and mocking. “I do not think so well.”
Manolito frowned as the rain forest closed in around him. He saw MaryAnn sitting beside his physical body, knees drawn up, one hand twisted in his hair. There was blood on her shoulder and down the front of her. Her shirt was torn. He couldn’t see her face, but she seemed to trust the man standing so close to her. Riordan. His brother. Bending close to examine the wounds.
He should have looked protective, but there was a furtive, cunning quality about him as he stood over her, like predator over prey. He turned his head and smiled at Manolito. Riordan’s face blurred and became that of Kirja, one of Maxim’s brothers.
Manolito’s heart nearly stopped. He held himself still, afraid of moving, of triggering the attack on MaryAnn. Everything in him told him to reach for her, to warn her…
Maxim leaned close. “Humans are so easily fooled.”
Manolito closed his eyes as relief swept through him. “I do not think so. And as I recall, my brother Rafael ripped Kirja’s heart from his body and sent him to the deepest pits of whatever hell is waiting for the likes of him.” A human might not sense the danger, but the wolf would. A guardian would have sprung forth instantly had a vampire been attacking MaryAnn.
“I hope you are certain.”
With that, Kirja knocked MaryAnn aside and, in one quick motion, slit Manolito’s throat where he sat so helplessly. MaryAnn cried out and tried to crawl away, but the vampire dragged her back by her ankles, flipping her over and ripping the clothes from her body. He kicked her ribs viciously and then bent down to punch her relentlessly in the face. She rolled away, and he grabbed her by her hair and dragged her over to Manolito, holding her there while he forced her to watch him lapping at the blood pulsing from her lifemate’s throat.
Manolito discovered there were far worse things than physical torture. He told himself it wasn’t really MaryAnn, but his eyes and brain refused to believe him. He told himself Kirja was long dead and gone from the living world, but the blood and screams were all too real. He shuddered as Kirja continued to beat her. He felt his stomach rebel when the vampire committed further perversions on her, every atrocity Maxim could think of, and he could think of many.
Manolito had no way to stop the images, so he tried to shut down his emotions. There was no way. In this land, he was meant to feel emotions—they all were—and the emotions were amplified a thousand times. He knew now how the undead could drive a spirit mad. He couldn’t compartmentalize; he had to feel every blow, every sick, disgusting thing MaryAnn had to endure. His lungs burned for air. His hands trembled. He curled his fingers into a fist to…what? They had no bodies. This was a mind game. They were waiting for him to break. The hope was that he would merge with MaryAnn to check on her, to ease his own suffering.
He shook his head. “I will never let you have her, Maxim, no matter what you do to me. No matter what you show to me.”
Kirja plunged his fist into MaryAnn’s chest and pulled out her heart, holding it high in the air while she screamed. Manolito’s body jerked, but he stood impassive. If his fate was to endure the next centuries feeling her pain and watching her torture, he would do so. They could not have her. It may have been only minutes, or hours—time meant little in this place—but it seemed lifetimes, centuries, watching the other half of his soul being forced to endure whatever Kirja, Maxim or Draven conceived. The sound of MaryAnn’s pleas and screams, the images of her torture were burned forever into his heart, his mind and even deeper into his soul.
“He cannot love her to stand there like that,” Draven said. “Any man would break if he saw his true lifemate so brutally handled.”
Manolito looked through him. Draven Dubrinsky would never know what love was. Manolito knew. He felt it in every blow of Kirja’s hand, every kick of his feet, every touch on MaryAnn’s body. An illusion. All illusion.
He forced a smile when he could feel blood running down his body in rivers of sweat. That, too, was an illusion. “A game, Maxim, that is all. You play games with me and you know I will never break. You know me. So keep it up if you must, but it seems childish, even for you.”
Maxim snarled, showing his pegs for teeth, and waved the illusion away.
“Acknowledge me,” Draven snarled, already furious that the Carpathian male wouldn’t look at him.
“I have no wish to speak with you, see you or in any way render you real,” he said, watching Maxim more than Draven. Vlad’s son had power, but it was Maxim who had the cunning and the hatred enough to return to destroy the Carpathian people.
“I find it—
distasteful
—Maxim, that you would choose to spend time with one such as this. He caused the death of our beloved sister. You may have embraced him, but I do not wish to spend time with him. Do not think I fear one such as this reject from the Dubrinsky lineage. Long ago I would have welcomed the chance to take his life. It would have been nothing against the loss of one such as Ivory, but still, I would have welcomed it, as you should have, Maxim.”
He kept his gaze fixed firmly on Maxim, his tone dripping with contempt.
Maxim growled, spittle running down his chin as he swung his head from side to side in a threatening manner. “Do not use that condescending attitude with me. Your disloyalty proved long ago whose side you were on.”
For the first time, Manolito allowed a whip of anger to seep into his voice, and he lashed Maxim with it. “Do not dare use the term disloyal when your sister’s murderer stands at your side. You have sunk lower than I thought possible, becoming the dog for this foul abomination. Crawl on your knees to him, Maxim, like those who seek your approval. Lick his boots if you must. I have no further business with you, not when this…” Deliberately he waved his hand toward Draven. “This…piece of garbage is your master.”
“I am
royalty
,” Draven snapped. “
You
should be on your knees to me.”
Manolito didn’t bother to spare him a glance. He kept his gaze locked with Maxim’s as he conjured up a picture in his mind of Ivory. For him, she was as fresh and as pure as the last time he’d seen her, her memory such a part of him it would never fade. He sent it along the path of their blood bond. Ivory with her laughter and her bright soul shining. Ivory flinging her arms around Maxim and kissing his cheek. Ivory standing outside the Malinov home, sword in hand, blindfolded in the middle of the circle of her five brothers and the De La Cruz brothers as they taught her to fight.
Stop it!
Maxim screamed, pressing his fingers to his eye sockets.
Manolito projected the loving memories as relentlessly as Maxim had tormented him with MaryAnn’s torture. Ivory as a young child riding on Maxim’s shoulders. Her first time in the air with her brothers surrounding her, keeping her safe, Ruslan always beneath her, Maxim and Kirja on either side, while Vadim and Sergey prowled the air in front and behind. Her laughter. The moon illuminating her brightness as she raced down the stairs to greet them when they returned from battle.
Stop it. I beg you. Stop it.
Because in the meadow of shadows and mists, the ghosts could feel every emotion. Hatred. Bitterness. Sorrow. Regret. They were meant to feel it like the lash of the whip, driving home their destructive path. It was why Manolito so acutely felt the emotions pouring into him, even when he knew the scene of MaryAnn’s torture was illusion. He was meant to feel what he had not all those long centuries.
Maxim had no choice but to feel the love for his sister. Emotions poured into his mind with every memory. He covered his face with his hands and fell to his knees.
“You stand with the man who would have done those very things to her that you wanted done to my lifemate. Should I show you what was in Draven’s mind? The perversions he would have inflicted upon Ivory?”
Manolito would never have been able to do such a thing, but he knew Maxim would conjure them up in his own mind. He would know that he stood shoulder to shoulder with the one who had ultimately taken Ivory from them. He planned evil with the one who would have committed the ultimate betrayal of her.
“No. I cannot think of her.”
There were so many memories. Manolito felt the tears in his own heart. Ivory. He had loved her as a sister. She had brightened all their lives with her generous spirit and compassionate nature.
“You have done what you intended, Manolito.”
They all whirled around to face the couple who had come up so quietly behind them. Vlad and Sarantha stood hand in hand.
“You should not be here,” Manolito said. He glanced at Draven, at the snicker on his face, and wanted to smash something. Vlad and his lifemate deserved so much more from a son. “This is my mess, and I will find a way to clean it up.” He wanted to spare them the pain of facing the monster Draven had been. Somehow, he knew Ivory would have wanted that rather than revenge.
“You have destroyed their plans and managed to bring Maxim to the realization of what he has done. He will not aid his brothers,” Vlad said. “Your time here is over. I have yet to do my duty and then ours will be, too.”
Manolito looked down at his hands. They were no longer transparent. He closed his fingers into a tight fist and then opened his hand once again.
“We stand with you always,” Manolito said, knowing Vlad would understand he meant every De La Cruz.
“You and your brothers have been loyal to our people,” Vlad said. “I trust that you will aid the jaguars as best you can, and give that same loyalty I have always counted on to my sons.”
Sarantha stepped close to him and touched the scars. “You saved Mikhail’s life. And you saved our son, Jacques, by stepping in front of Shea and taking the poisoned knife. You also saved our unborn grandson. I thank you. It is not enough, but it is all I have to give.”
Vlad gripped his forearms. “Go now. Leave this place. You do not belong here anymore. Let me take care of the business I should have centuries ago. Live large and well, old friend.”
Manolito stepped away. He felt himself reaching for MaryAnn. For his brothers. For life. He stopped for a moment to observe Vlad and Sarantha face their son.
“You have had many years here, Draven, and we have stood by you, but no longer. Even here, when you are given the chance to redeem yourself, you refuse. We accept your decision. Go now, from this place to the next.”
“No! You cannot. I am your son.” For the first time, the smirk was gone from Draven’s face. He threw himself at his mother, wrapping his arms around her legs. “Do not let him condemn me. He cannot send me away.”