You have studied him
.
I went to his school for a short time
, Ivory informed him
. I loved the work and was good at it. Unfortunately, I also paid attention to him and realized he was not as he appeared to be. In those days, I was rather young and naive and did not know how to hide my thoughts and suspicions
.
Razvan’s warmth flooded her mind, making her aware that the cold of the night had pierced her, or perhaps it was thinking of the past.
You have learned well over the years. I have observed him at work on a daily basis. I watched the madness in him progress over the years until his mind was no longer functioning properly. There is no reason. He has become a megalomaniac, believing himself a superior being to all who walk the earth. He is particularly bitter with the immortality of the Carpathians and is always experimenting to find a way to destroy them
.
A ribbon of icy water cut through the valley, meandering through several wide meadows used for pastures and winding in and out of groves of trees. Ivory followed the same path, staying high, not moving fast, but drifting along, taking note of all movement—the animals, smoke coming from chimneys, any humans—she took it all in and shared with Razvan.
There is always a pattern to movement
, she instructed.
Animals are important to watch, even the smallest of them. Mice will scurry into the underbrush at the first sign of danger. They see shadows from above. All prey animals do, and their instincts are good. You do not have to be connected to them to use them as a warning system
.
Razvan stopped drinking in the sheer beauty of his surroundings and began to pay attention to the things she pointed out. Ivory was the consummate warrior. When she left the lair, everything was all business. All survival. He needed to learn, and she was willing to instruct him.
He scanned the uneven terrain, seeing with new eyes.
Nature is your friend, your ally. Trees tell stories. Look at the area to the south. Just below the mountain near the small farm tucked into the shadow
.
The grimness in her voice alerted him to trouble, but he couldn’t see anything but glistening snow and dazzling ice and a few bare limbs poking out of an otherwise snow-laden tree. A few tracks in the snow led from a small house to a barn and then around to the back where several smaller buildings housed animals, but he couldn’t see anything that might have alarmed her.
What am I looking for?
Something sat in that tree watching the house. It was no owl. If you look closely at the tracks, someone walked out of the house out toward the barn and then around toward the shelter. The strides increased in length and depth, which means they began running. Whatever it is, it is still there. I feel the energy
.
Razvan inspected the naked tree branches and then tried to open his mind to the energy fields surrounding him. Information flooded in. As they approached the small farm, the air lost its crisp, fresh scent and began to feel and smell foul.
Vampire
. His hissed the word.
Tell me what it feels like to you. Reach out very lightly. Let your mind expand to encompass his but do not enter his
.
Razvan knew that if his touch was too heavy the vampire would feel his presence and be alerted. If his victim still lived, there would be no hope. The undead would kill and consume as much blood as possible to ready himself for an attack.
Vampires like their blood adrenaline-laced
, Ivory explained.
They terrify the victims on purpose and keep them alive as long as possible. The blood is like a drug to them and they need the high continually. Can you feel the chaos in his mind?
He could. The vampire’s mind raced so fast it was like trying to board a runaway train. Even the sound was chaotic, as if the volume was turned up and down so that one moment noises roared and shrieked and then receded, only to start again.
He cannot keep the sound of the victim’s heart under control. He is too excited. This one has recently turned. I doubt if he had time to have been recruited by the league of vampires or by Xavier. Usually at this stage they are left alone because they are too dangerous to approach. They cannot handle the highs they feel
.
Ivory circled the house.
Two children inside. The vampire knows it, although the man tries to hide the information. His woman is in the barn. She thinks to fight for her man. She has armed herself with garlic, crosses and holy water, but has no real weapon other than farm tools
.
There was admiration in Ivory’s voice. Razvan liked that about her. Her take on the world was very simplistic. A man and a woman fought together for their family, even against the worst kind of evil. Both knew they probably would die, but they hoped to take their attacker with them and give their children a chance to survive.
His first thought was to send Ivory to get the woman and her children to safety while he took on the vampire. He had no doubt that he could kill a vampire. He had a rudimentary knowledge of how to slay them, but she would have a better chance to save the farmer as well. He needed time to perfect his fighting skills, so he remained silent and left it to Ivory to tell him what she wanted to do.
I would not do what you told me to do anyway
. There was a distinctly teasing note in Ivory’s voice, although they both knew she was perfectly serious.
Deep inside, in spite of the gravity of the situation, Razvan found himself happy. Little moments like this, shared amusement, things he’d forgotten existed between people, made up joy in life. He’d forgotten that, and he bet Ivory had as well.
You are a bossy little thing, but I like that. I must be a little strange
.
A little?
She gave a snort and slipped into the barn through a crack in the window frame.
A woman frantically searched through several farming tools, dragging anything with a sharp blade out to a center pile. Tears ran down her face, but she worked fast, her breath coming in soft sobs.
“Shh,” Ivory cautioned as she materialized to one side of the woman. “I am a Carpathian warrior come to aid you. Please put down your weapon and do exactly as I tell you. You will have to trust me.”
Razvan instinctively stayed in the form of vapor, knowing his presence would only serve to frighten the woman further.
“With your help, I think we have a chance of saving your husband.”
Ivory’s voice was quiet and calm. She looked regal, a snow princess come out of the world of nature in her long silver wolf coat, so thick and luxurious falling to her ankles. Her hair cascaded in a long blue-black fall and her face looked serene and innocent. Her voice sounded like warm, melting honey. In contrast, she carried a lethal-looking crossbow and the belt at her hip was covered in weapons. But it was the double rows of tiny crosses embedded in her buckles that eased the woman’s tensions.
The farmwife made the sign of the cross in the air. Ivory answered her with the same sign and the woman relaxed and tossed her curved scythe onto the pile of tools.
8
I
vory walked from the barn toward the stable, her head up, her eyes glowing a strange whiskey gold as she approached the building. From his position inside the stable, where he now waited for her, Razvan could see her advancing, each confident stride carrying her closer. She took his breath away. She definitely had an otherworldly quality, as if the legend of the Dark Slayer had come to life and moved with grace and elegance through the snow.
The vampire toying with his victim looked up as the horses, nervous and stamping in their stalls, suddenly quieted. Pigs stopped squealing. The stables went eerily silent.
Ivory flashed a small smile toward the vampire. “I do not recognize you, but I see you have no table manners. Perhaps you wish to taste something much richer.” Deliberately, her eyes on the vampire, she set her teeth into her wrist.
Razvan noted the vampire immediately lost interest in the human, dropping him to the floor, where the farmer did his best to crawl away while the vampire was fixated on the sight of those small white teeth sinking into a delicate wrist. Two beads of blood welled up, ruby-red, dotting her smooth, petal-soft skin. The fragrance of her drifted to the vampire mixed with the tempting scent of Carpathian blood.
Razvan watched as the farmer crawled toward a broken board in the wall. Instead of creeping through the hole in the wall, he reached to try to pry loose the board for a weapon. Razvan materialized on the other side of the wall and leaned in, finger to his lips. Taking a cue from Ivory, he sketched the sign of the cross in the air between them, knowing neither a minion sent from Xavier nor a vampire would do such a thing. When the man’s eyes cleared and he nodded slightly, Razvan beckoned to him to slide through the ragged hole. As the man crawled into the snow, Razvan took his place, donning the illusion of the farmer’s body and clothes.
The vampire shuffled closer to Ivory. He bowed, smiling at her. As further evidence that he was recently turned, his teeth didn’t have the spiked points, nor were they stained black. He still maintained his rugged good looks. “What are you doing wandering around alone without benefit of protection?”
Ivory smiled sweetly. “What makes you think I am alone? Or without protection?” Keeping her gaze locked with his, she licked at the blood drops, closing the wound and depriving him of the treat he was so looking forward to.
The vampire shook his head. “You have no protection, lady, or I would feel them near.”
Ivory made an elegant, derisive sound that wiped the smile from the vampire’s face. “You did not hear me. Why, then, would you think you could hear my lifemate? You were so busy toying with your food, you forgot the most basic of all lessons. It is no wonder that you will not survive this night.”
She poured contempt into her voice, yet she sounded very much the lady. Soft-spoken, nonthreatening, delivering the reprimand from princess to peasant. Razvan’s admiration for her grew. She mesmerized the vampire without doing anything but talking. The undead had all but forgotten about the lowly farmer. He didn’t view the human as a threat at all. Instead, he concentrated his attention on Ivory, wanting her rich Carpathian blood, a treat for a vampire who had recently turned.
The vampire scowled at her. “You dare to reprimand me when you walk the night alone? What are you doing here?” His voice turned wily and what he perceived as suave. “And such a beautiful woman, too. I have need of a lifemate.”
“Your youth is showing. So impetuous and wrong. Only those newly turned vampires still believe they can force women to become lifemates. Too bad you will not have the time to grow experienced.” She tilted her head to one side and studied him, her gaze sweeping him up and down. “You are new enough that you still have your looks. Looks are wasted on the young.”
Before he could reply her hand went to the loops on her holster and she flung six coated arrowheads into his chest in a straight line up and over his heart. Razvan rose to his feet and punched through the chest wall hard, the vampire blood burning over his arm and fist. He had so many scars that he barely felt the bite of the acid as he gripped the heart and began to extract it.
The vampire roared and slammed his head against Razvan’s. He tried to dissolve, but the coated arrowheads prevented his chest from shifting to vapor. Raking at Razvan with talons, he tore the flesh from the heavy muscles covering Razvan’s chest in an effort to dig through and get to his heart. Razvan yanked his arm back, using more strength than he had thought it would take. The heart was black, but still a normal size.
“Do not look at it. Incinerate it,” Ivory said.
Razvan called down the lightning, careful to keep it from striking anything but the vampire and his heart. He bathed his arms and hands in the white-hot energy field. “Controlling the lightning is difficult. I almost missed and nearly hit you.”
“I was prepared for it.” She sighed and regarded him with worried eyes. “Hesitation can get you killed. You were on him fast enough, but you cannot count him dead until the heart is incinerated. You should have burned that first. A more experienced vampire would have repaired himself while you were still marveling at your work.”
Razvan laughed aloud. Killing vampires was dirty work. The fetid breath and claws tearing into his chest and belly had been both frightening and exhilarating. He’d done it. He’d killed his first vampire. It hadn’t been a perfect kill, but he had destroyed the undead and saved the farmer. It felt good to do something positive instead of waking up to find that his body had impregnated a woman, or delivered a poisonous blow to his sister or her lifemate. There was no way to tell Ivory how he was feeling, so he didn’t try. He flashed her a smile and bowed.
“I will remember.”
She was certain he would. He looked so happy standing in that bare, run-down stable with his clothes torn to shreds and his blood streaking his chest and arms and belly. She ran her worried gaze over him. Blood dripped steadily, but there was light in his eyes and in his mind. He made her feel humble with his simple pleasure in doing something she considered a job. He considered it good.
“Thank you for allowing me the experience. It is the only way I will learn to become an asset on our hunt.”
Ivory shrugged, feigning indifference when everything feminine and nothing warrior about her was reacting to that look in his eyes. “It was your plan,” she pointed out.
He flashed a half grin at her, shrugging modestly. “In the old days, before I realized Xavier was in my mind, I was good at planning battles. I kept myself sane, exploring his weaknesses, and everyone else’s as well. The vampires. Carpathians. Even the Lycans. But one day I realized that whenever I discovered that Xavier had a weakness it suddenly would be found and shored up. I was aiding my own enemy.”
She wanted to comfort him, to just wrap her arms around him and hold him close; instead she leaned down to casually pick up her arrowheads and place them in the small pouch at her side. Razvan wasn’t asking for pity; he was stating a fact. But it struck like a blow, that boyish memory that had to hurt like hell. “You took the vampire down fairly easily. And that’s what counts.”