And his lifemate was human, to boot. That made her existence even more of a miracle. He’d never heard that a Carpathian and a human could be lifemates.
Not that it mattered. She was here, in his arms, and he was more content than he’d ever dreamed possible just holding her and breathing in her scent. Even the Old One seemed entranced by her. She smelled of wildflowers over spring rain, a miracle of fresh beauty in the midst of Mitro and the volcano’s destruction.
While she was healing him, his soul recognized and cried out for hers. He felt her soul answer. She didn’t recognize the calling, only the flash of pain at the knowledge that she was so close and yet they weren’t joined. Deep inside him, the second soul had reached for her as well, already so much a part of Dax, that the dragon knew Riley was their salvation.
His thoughts turned immediately to her welfare. She must be the one he’d felt trying to keep the volcano contained, and no doubt the effort of those exertions as well as the miraculous way she’d healed him had clearly exhausted her, leading to her collapse. He checked her carefully, just in case, but her only injuries were minor cuts and bruises from her race through the jungle, and those he mended with a thought. She needed sleep, then water and food, but the latter could wait until she awakened.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Even smudged with dirt and ash, she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever beheld, and she seemed so fragile in his arms. The mere thought of the slightest harm befalling her made his muscles clench and the Old One strain against Dax’s control. He and the dragon, both, were united in their determination to protect her. With a thought, Dax cleansed the ash and dirt from her body, leaving her and her clothing clean.
Dax finally tore his gaze from his lifemate, and turned his attention to the two men who had offered him their wrists. Jubal and Gary were friends to the Carpathian people. He’d learned their names and searched their memories when he took their blood, and used that connection to absorb their language, a more modern dialect of the language he’d correctly identified as English. They were now under his protection as well. As for Ben, Dax owed the man a debt for the way he had stayed to protect Riley despite the danger to himself.
“Eat, drink and rest for a few minutes, my new friends, but then we must get moving. Mitro, the vampire I was hunting, is free of his bondage, and it isn’t safe to remain here.” He looked down at Ben, who had slumped over onto his bag. “He will be fine once he wakes. If you would be so kind as to prepare him food and water as well.”
“You’re going to hunt the vampire.” Gary made it a statement.
“He won’t expect me to have healed so quickly. He’ll need blood and a place to go to ground. If I’m lucky, I will be able to destroy him this night.”
Gary glanced at the sky. “There’s not much in the way of night left.”
Dax nodded. “I task you with watching over my lifemate.” There was a small edge to his voice, the first of the night. “I will return tomorrow eve. See to it that she is well.” He looked around. “You will need to find a place easier to protect. Mitro is capable of sending anything at you. He will know I will work to keep you safe, and above all else, he wants Riley dead. He believes her to be Arabejila. I’m certain of it.”
“Just up ahead, there’s a small hollowed-out clearing,” Jubal said. “I noticed it when we first hit the base of the mountain. It’s protected on three sides by boulders with a small stream on the other side. We can set up a tent there with netting for Riley.”
Dax checked the location with a judicious eye and then added safeguards to keep out any threat. “I will return.”
He took to the air with great reluctance, streaking away from them. He had little time. Mitro would hunt for blood before he went to ground, and he was in a rage. He would do as much damage as possible. Dax went back to the spot where the two dragons had fought. Blackened pools of acid stained the ground, and burned through any plant or tree that had been left standing on the side of the mountain close by.
The mountain was ravaged by the mud and fires. Still, everything seemed so different, new to his eyes. Even with the powdery ash settling on the trees and brush at the base of the mountain, and choking the air, he could still discern color, a gift from his lifemate. Blacks were vivid and bright. Whites and glimpses of green and brown sent a small frisson of joy through him in spite of his grim task. In a way he was grateful for the ash. The colors were so unique to him, so vivid and brilliant, they almost hurt his eyes.
He picked up the scent immediately. Mitro was gravely wounded and had no energy to waste on hiding from Dax. He would expect the hunter to go to ground near the humans, not chase after him.
Once more Dax took to the sky, using the form of an owl. The owl’s vision provided him with the ability to see so much more and its small body would barely be noticed. As it was, with the ash in the air, Dax was forced to send a wind in front of him to clear the skies enough to see anything unusual. Mitro wouldn’t have gotten far without blood. He crisscrossed the area patiently, widening his circle until the owl caught sight of something lying near the stream.
Immediately, Dax descended, the owl settling in a tree above and to the right of the scattered objects below. A heaviness in his chest, along with the knots in his stomach forewarned him. There were two bodies, both had tried to run, and had died hard, screaming in fright. Their eyes remained wide open, mouths still forming their last cries, both throats shredded. Bright ribbons of blood streaked their bodies. Mitro had always been a messy eater.
Inside the body of the owl, Dax sighed. He had known Mitro would find blood; he was too cunning not to. The rain forest was a big place, and there were few humans anywhere near the mountain, yet unerringly, Mitro had been drawn to them.
Dax shifted into mist and drifted down to study the two bodies. Both appeared to be native to the forest, although dressed in the same way as Gary and Jubal. A machete lay inches from one of the bodies, its blade stained dark. He moved over the second body, and found what he expected. Blood had seeped from under the body where he’d been cut multiple times by the machete. That was just like Mitro, forcing someone to hack up a friend or loved one for the vampire’s amusement.
Mitro was definitely up to his old tricks. He hadn’t been an hour or so out of his prison and he was already killing and torturing. Sorrow pressed down on him, an unexpected emotion. So many lost years attempting to destroy a depraved, vile creature, and failing time and again. Having to look upon the aftermath of the undead’s path of destruction over and over was far more wearing than he’d realized. Now, with his ability to feel, Dax was weighed down by every single one of those lives lost over the centuries.
At once he felt a stirring, a brushing of souls. His. The Old One’s.
Hers.
His heart leapt. The burden of destroying Mitro was his, but he wasn’t alone.
Ours,
the Old One corrected.
A soft whisper stroked a caress in his mind.
Ours,
Riley’s voice echoed.
Dax was not alone. He would find Mitro and destroy him, that was his bound duty, but this time, he would have something of his own to fight for. The owl spread its wings and took off as dawn was about to break. He was grateful for the ash, obscuring the gathering light. He’d been deep inside a mountain for so long that even deep within the owl’s body, that shrouded, first light hurt his skin and pierced his eyes.
He hurried back to his woman.
Päläfertiilam.
Lifemate.
“D
reams are the angels’ way of showing us what is on the other side,” Riley’s grandmother had told her when Riley was just a child. If that was true, then heaven was a warm and sultry place, considering the dream Riley had just had.
The dream had been so wonderful, in fact, she was loath to leave it. She clung to sleep, to the wispy remnants of that dream, filled with soft caresses and strong hands, until the clamor of voices around her grew too loud to ignore.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she sat up, frowning and disoriented, to find herself in what looked like her own tent. Light shining in through green fabric revealed a neat and ordered space that for the first time since its purchase was now also perfectly clean—with no hint of the dirt or the smell of wet canvas that had clung to it throughout the trip through the jungle. She was still fully dressed, although her boots were sitting beside her pack and her jacket had been neatly folded and put on top as well.
She could hear people moving about and talking outside the tent, and judging by the number of voices, her small party must have met up with other survivors. She sat up abruptly, hope blossoming. Or maybe everything that had happened since heading up the river had all been one horrible, bizarre nightmare.
Before she got her hopes up too far, however, the tent zipper came undone, and the panel fell back to reveal an outside world covered in a thick blanket of gray volcanic ash with more still falling from the sky. Not a dream then.
Riley found a sad comfort when Gary stepped through the tent’s opening with a hot bowl of soup and a spoon in his hands. “Oh good, you’re awake. I have your breakfast—or dinner, since the sun is about to set.”
“Hello, Gary.” Nodding her thanks, she took the bowl and set it aside. Her body was still waking up, and she wasn’t hungry. “What’s happening? Where are we? Is everyone okay? How long have I been asleep?”
There was plenty of room in the three-person tent, and Gary sat down on a camping stool someone had brought in. “Jubal and Ben are fine. In fact, they’re outside now.” He indicated the door flap. “We’re in a camp some of the locals set up as a gathering place for survivors. As for how long you slept, you have been resting for two days now.”
“
Two days?
” she repeated, incredulously. She’d never slept so long in her entire life. Her brow furrowed with sudden suspicion. “Did the vampire hunter put me to sleep?”
“No, he didn’t. Apparently, you drained every reserve of strength you had saving our butts and healing him. Which is why you need to eat now, whether you feel hungry or not.” He cast a pointed look at the soup bowl.
“Two days,” she muttered. “Good God.” She lifted the spoon to her lips and numbly took a bite. The flavors exploded across her tongue, and she glanced down at the soup in surprise. It was really good, and as she swallowed her first bite she realized she really was hungry.
“I’m not sure you are aware of what you did, or if you even remember,” Gary continued when he was satisfied she was eating. He lowered his voice so others outside couldn’t hear him. “Dax, the Carpathian hunter, was badly injured and you used your gifts to directly heal him. He told me that you didn’t just draw power from the earth like you did to hold the vampire, or when you redirected the volcano’s eruption. You used that power, but you drew most of the energy from yourself and poured it into him. Riley, you healed him completely. And by that, I mean you regrew bone and tissue from nothing. I’ve been around Carpathians, and not even the strongest healers among them could have done what you did by themselves and in so short a time. It’s nothing less than miraculous. After you passed out, Dax checked you out himself, but he couldn’t find anything wrong, so he told us just to let you rest. So we have.” He glanced down. “More soup?”
It took a moment for Riley to realize she was staring blindly at the now-empty bowl. “Yes, thank you.”
Raising his voice, Gary called out to Jubal, and seconds later exchanged her empty bowl for a full one. Jubal himself only poked his head into the tent long enough to give her a huge smile and a wave, which she returned automatically. Then he ducked back outside, and the tent flap closed behind him.
“Riley, you’ve suspected for a while now that Jubal and I know a lot more than we’ve been willing to share. We keep secrets for many reasons, mostly because keeping those secrets helps protect people we care for. But because Dax sees us as your “protectors,” he’s given us permission to share some of our knowledge with you now.” He looked like some of her fellow professors did right before they started their first two-hour lecture on a topic that would take years to fully explain.
“Wait.” She held up a hand. “Before you get started, tell me about the others. You said Ben and Jubal are okay. What about the rest of the people from the boats? Did they survive?”
“Dax found Miguel, Hector, Don, and Mack Shelton when we were coming down the mountain. And following the trail of the professor and his students is what led us here.” Something in the tone of his raised voice caused a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“What happened?”
“The professor fell. Oh, don’t worry, it’s nothing too bad, except he’s in the jungle, and needs to be able to walk, but he’ll be okay. He broke his leg.”
“And?” she prompted when he fell silent again. “You don’t get that worried look in your eyes because the professor broke something. What else?”
“Dax found two of the porters dead that first night. They were returning to see if we all made it away from the volcano. Fernando and Jorge.”
She shook her head. “That’s so terrible.” She knew the bad news wasn’t over and waited in silence for him to tell her the rest.
“One of the guides and one of the professor’s students are missing. Pedro went to find clean water for breakfast. Marty went with him. They never came back.” Gary’s expression went grimmer. “Dax believes the vampire he’s hunting might have found them.” The look on his face said he believed it, too. “But just in case he’s wrong, we have most of the men out looking for them now,” he added.
Giving her a moment to process the news, Gary handed her empty soup bowl out to Jubal again and exchanged it for two blue metal camping cups.
Vampire.
Riley shook her head in disbelief. Vampires were one of the monsters from stories. They were the thing you dressed up as on Halloween, the evil creature in a scary movie. They weren’t supposed to be real. But then again there weren’t supposed to be dragons, and her mother wasn’t supposed to be dead, and … her heart seemed to skip as she thought about that man. He wasn’t supposed to be here, either, whatever he was.