She knew the vampires and Xavier searched for Razvan. They had visited the cabin where she’d fed from the human in the forest, but, thankfully, the human had been long gone. The stench of vampire remained in the cabin, and fortunately the vampires were unable to track her. They found the spot where Razvan had fallen. Footprints circled the area and the foul stench of vampire radiated from that central spot for days before they’d moved on.
She’d made certain neither she nor her pack set foot on the ground close to her lair after that. She’d even resorted to visiting the village to bring rich blood back to feed Razvan, barely rousing him, healing him each night and keeping his mind free of the damaging images and memories that haunted and tormented him. If, after he was at full strength and fully healed, he chose to meet the dawn, she vowed to herself that she wouldn’t stop him a second time. But night after night, holding him in her arms and singing the healing chant, her blood flowing into him, she knew it would be difficult to let him go. She would though. She would set him free, with no guilt, because saving him had been
her
choice. Staying to help her defeat Xavier had to be his.
The child’s cry drew her attention back to the forest below her. Why hadn’t an adult answered that distress call? What kind of parents would leave a young one to the dangers of a snow-covered wood at night? Even the villagers crossed themselves, hung garlic and crosses in the windows and over doors, believing in the persistent rumors of the undead walking the night.
She sank back on her heels. She didn’t do children. She hadn’t even held a baby, not once in her entire life cycle. She couldn’t remember interacting with children when she was younger—
before
—in the before. If a child saw her in her true form, especially a Carpathian child used to the perfection of form, the child might run from her.
She touched her neck. In this form, she never gave a vampire the satisfaction of seeing her scars. The vampires and Xavier had done their worst to her, but she remained flawless, untouched, unmarred by their barbarity. If nothing else, it gave her a psychological boost to know they were so shocked by her beautiful appearance.
The child’s voice crescendoed and Ivory winced. She was going to have to at least check that the little thing wasn’t injured, but that meant exposing herself when she was certain there were both vampires and hunters in the vicinity. She took a deep breath and shrugged, allowing her pack to merge with her skin in the form of tattoos. They would watch her back, and could draw more information from the wind than even she could. With six pairs of intelligent eyes and six noses gathering every detail around them, she felt more secure.
Let us get this done. And when we find the child, no scaring it. We will take it back to its mother and be done with this
.
The pack didn’t seem anymore enthusiastic than she was. She hadn’t let them run free for some time, knowing the vampires often searched out the wolf packs, hoping to find evidence to track them back to her lair.
Soon
, she assured.
She dissolved into vapor and streaked over the snow, staying low to the ground, giving the wolves every opportunity to take in every scent.
Foul ones. Humans. Carpathians. Blood. The walking dead
.
Ivory processed the information and directions as fast as the wolves fed it to her.
Foul ones
was the wolf name for vampires. But the walking dead were puppets—nonpsychic humans given vampire blood and promised immortality. The vampires often used them to attack during the day. They were nearly as foul as the vampires themselves.
She moved even faster, suddenly afraid for the child. For one moment, below her, she caught a glimpse of a man running through the snow, and then he disappeared in the trees. The child’s father? If so, he was arriving a little late.
She spotted a little boy, thin, with a mop of dark hair reaching his shoulders, struggling against the type of snares that had trapped the wild wolves. Her heart dropped. Another trap. She wasn’t fool enough to believe that the boy had walked into the mass of snares himself. He’d been forcibly taken from somewhere—she knew by the smell of death and blood—and staked out like a sacrificial goat, the thin wires cutting into his hands and ankles. There was one around his neck. He was crying, but he stood stoically, refusing to fight and worsen the already deep cuts.
She didn’t believe this boy had been set out as bait for her—more likely for Razvan. He had a child and he had given his soul, or at least a piece of it, to save her. Xavier would know he would risk everything to save a child. She was in for a fight, but she couldn’t leave that child. The vampires were expecting a starving, sick, tortured Razvan, not the slayer, scourge of all undead.
She formed close to the boy, noting that he didn’t wince or scream out in fright, which meant he’d seen a Carpathian before and they had allowed him to retain his memories. “It’s a trap,” he mouthed. He stared at the wolf tattoos with their bared teeth and lifelike eyes covering her shoulders and arms as she bent to gently set her crossbow in the snow and withdraw a pair of cutters.
She nodded her understanding. “Keep crying,” she hissed as she snipped his left wrist free. It was brave of him to try to warn her when he must have been terrified.
The boy didn’t miss a beat, keeping up a lively rendition of wailing while she cut loose the wire on his neck and carefully removed it. Her fingertips brushed the thin necklace of blood circling his neck. Her fingers crept up to her own neck, fluttered there for one moment as she remembered the bite of the sharp blade.
The boy couldn’t be more than eight or nine, with his thin face and large, intelligent eyes. He was watching her carefully, studying her closely as she reached across him to snip at his other hand.
Behind you
.
The alpha gave her the warning and she felt the large wolf shift in preparation for the attack. Raja’s head lay across her neck, his eyes looking straight back. Ever so slightly he turned his head and the movement made the boy gasp. Ivory thrust the cutters into his hands and held out her arms away from her body, bending her knees until she was in a crouch, her right arm slowly dropping to reach for her crossbow.
The child’s eyes widened in alarm and fear as he looked over her shoulder and saw the large man coming up behind her with an axe gripped in his hands. The woodsman’s face had a blank look and he shuffled, his eyes a strange red. He lifted the axe above Ivory’s head, still several feet out. The boy opened his mouth to call a warning, but no sound emerged.
Ivory felt the slight wrench of pain that always accompanied her pack separating themselves from her as the savage wolves leapt, completely silent as they made their concentrated attack, the communication in their minds only. Her fingers closed over the crossbow and she grasped it, winking at the boy to reassure him as she dove away from him, somersaulted and came up on one knee, her crossbow aimed at the attacker. The boy stared openmouthed at the six silver-tipped wolves, more shocked at the sight of them than the soulless attacker.
The wolves drove the ghoul backward, teeth clamped around each arm, the alpha going for the throat while the other wolves grasped legs and held him. Vampire puppets were extremely strong, programmed by their masters for one task; very few things could stop them once they were set on a path. The wolves tearing at him did little other than keep him on the ground beneath the writhing mass of silver fur.
Ivory felt the surge of power crackling in the air and rolled closer to the boy. “Hurry up. We are about to have some very unpleasant company.” She kept her body between the child and the snarling, writhing ghoul and whatever else was coming at them.
A man broke from the trees, sprinting fast. “Travis! Trav! Are you all right?” He skidded to a halt, taking in the ghoul, the wolves and the woman aiming the very lethal-looking crossbow right at his heart.
“Gary! That’s Gary,” the boy yelled, his voice bursting with relief.
“Stay away from the wolves,” Ivory cautioned. Her gut tightened. Now she had two humans to protect. Neither seemed shocked at the ghoul, nor at her appearance, as if a female hunter, a pack of wolves and a mindless assassin were everyday occurrences. She knew little about Carpathian politics, and didn’t want to know more. She was a slayer. And a vampire was close.
One of the wolves yelped, and out of the corner of her eye she caught movement as the ghoul flung one of the smaller females. The body dropped almost at the feet of the man called Gary. He leapt back, eyeing her warily.
“You have a vampire coming down on top of you,” Ivory pointed out. “Move or die.”
Above his head, in the whirling mist of snowflakes and fog, she could see the outline of the grisly form of a vampire. Power radiated from him, and her heartbeat ratcheted up a notch. This was no lesser vampire; she’d fought enough of them to know.
Gary dove toward the boy, landing belly down, crawling the rest of the way. Travis sank down in the snow in an attempt to cut the wires from his ankles.
The vampire struck at her wolves, raising his hand to call down the lightning, thrusting the white-hot bolt at her pack, uncaring that the monster he’d created might be in the path of destruction. She slammed the bolt with a second one, driving the sizzling, crackling energy away from the writhing bodies. A tree exploded just beyond the wolves, the splinters and debris raining down on the ghoul and the pack. Her pack leapt back, circling the puppet, paying no attention to the vampire, leaving him to Ivory.
Gary rolled to finish extracting the boy, shielding the small body with his own as Ivory fired one of her small arrows into the vampire’s chest. It hit him just below his heart, and he turned his head, deigning to acknowledge her for the first time.
Ivory’s breath caught in her throat. A small sound escaped. Stunned, she could barely stammer, nothing coherent emerging from her.
Gary looked at her sharply, and then up at the vampire as the creature slowly lowered himself to the ground. The caricature of a man had probably been handsome at one time. He was well built, with wide shoulders and long hair that once had been thick and full, but now the vampire obviously didn’t bother to hide his evil appearance. His skin was pulled tight on his skull and his teeth were sharp and pointed. He not only looked strong, but the power radiating from him hung in the air. The glowing eyes were locked on the female hunter, but he looked nearly as shocked as she did.
“Sergey,” Ivory whispered.
The vampire winced visibly at the sound of her sweet, pure voice. He stood a long moment in silence, his looks subtly changing. In the blink of an eye his teeth were not long, pointed and stained, but white and straight. The face was fuller and the eyes had gone dark. The ghoul moved and the vampire merely flicked a hand toward him to freeze him where he was. Even the wolves didn’t move; they were statues, staring at the woman and the vampire as they faced one another.
“Ivory?” The voice grated. He cleared his throat. “Ivory?” he repeated and this time the tone was beautiful. Gentle. Affectionate. His hands came up to cup the shaft of the arrow where black blood dripped down his chest. “You are alive.”
Her hands trembled and she took a breath. One. Just held it and then released the air in a long gasp as if she was fighting to breathe. Her gaze dropped to the arrow in his body, the blood slowly dripping down his shirt and welling around the entry wound.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I am alive and my soul is intact. How is it that you, my beloved brother, would join the ranks of the evil ones who would destroy your sister? Answer this for me.” Each word was squeezed painfully from her heart, constricting her throat, threatening to strangle her with raw grief and the terrible sense of betrayal.
Ivory’s throat was clogged with tears. She doubted she could say another word without bursting into sobs. She refused to look away from the vampire, not even for a moment, although it was much more difficult to think of him as an enemy when his form was so dear and familiar. She longed to fling herself into the comfort of his arms and rest her head against his shoulder, crying for her lost past.
She sought the path she might best use to warn the human.
Take the boy and slip away. Get far from this place. I am not certain I can defeat this one in battle
.
Sergey. He’d been a genius fighter. Few compared. Now he had centuries of battles with some of the best Carpathian hunters, not to mention the vampires that he’d defeated to add to his experience. She tried not to see the sly, cunning intelligence slipping into the depths of his eyes. She didn’t want to believe her first vision of him. She had avoided her brothers once she’d confirmed the whispered rumors.
Gary caught Travis by his upper arm and began to slowly ease him back into the woods. The vampire’s head turned slowly toward them, and for a moment that soft, dark color was ringed in red and glowed at them like a feral animal.
“Do not look at them, Sergey,” Ivory snapped. “Or should I call you
hän ku vie elidet
—vampire, thief of life.”
His gaze flicked back to her and he looked sad. “You are my beloved sister . . .”
“Do
not
call me beloved when you betrayed me. You are in league with those who would have stolen my life.”
“They have been brought to justice.”
“Have they?” She stood, tall and straight, the moon gleaming off her blue-black hair. “You cannot lie to me, Sergey. Others perhaps might believe you, but I have hunted the vampire for many centuries now and I know the ones who took me to the meadow of our father and chopped my body into pieces and left them for the wolves. I know they live, so do not tell your pretty lies to me.”
“Did they really do that to her, Gary?” The boy sounded fearful with his loud whisper.
She caught a glimpse of the man holding the boy closer, trying to soothe him. Each time they moved, the ghoul stepped with them in a macabre dance of death. Every time the ghoul shifted, the wolves circled and darted toward him, teeth bared.