Dark Tarot (Dark Carpathians)

She felt silly saying that aloud to anyone. No one talked about souls. Hearts—yes. Souls weren’t something anyone could define. Not even her. She felt the weight of Sandu’s soul often. It wasn’t a burden. It was a gift. That was how she would have described it. She was fierce about protecting that gift. She had never said a word to anyone—not even her mother—about the strange feeling of having something so valuable and immense in her that she knew belonged to someone else.

She’d been a young girl—a teen—when she first became aware of that gift. It was as if she could feel another being far off calling to her. The voice was too faint to be heard, but when she felt alone—and more often than not, she was alone—that gift inside her comforted her. In her family, they didn’t encourage friendships. They were always polite and, on the outside, appeared to be outgoing, but they kept to themselves. No child was invited into their home. There were no birthday parties. She was often lonely, but she would wrap herself in that warmth, and the loneliness would be gone.

“Anything of Sandu was never a burden for me. He . . . saved me more than once. I have been in training most of my life, separate from others. That can be very lonely.”

Jaxon was so silent that Adalasia faced her again and caught the look of complete understanding. She knew. She had firsthand knowledge of what Adalasia was talking about. Maybe they were more alike than she’d first thought.

Jaxon’s fingers stroked her throat. “There was a serial killer in my life for years. He stalked me, believing he was my father. He killed anyone he thought came between the two of us. No one was safe, not even a neighbor who was kind to me. I was afraid to smile at anyone, even a clerk in a grocery store.”

“Jaxon,” Adalasia whispered. “How terrible.”

“No one seemed to be able to stop him. He killed my family and then my foster family. Everyone I cared about. I was terrified for Lucian.”

“But Lucian is Carpathian, with so many powers.”

“Exactly. And used to being so powerful. He dismisses the ordinary as if it could never harm him when that isn’t true. Carpathians are not immortal. They have longevity, but they can be killed under the right circumstances. He took so many chances.” Her voice trembled as if she were reliving those days.

It occurred to Adalasia that Sandu would do the same. “Is he still like that?”

“He tries not to be and I remind him. Constantly. I think I’m a nag. There is a society of humans that hunt us. They say they hunt vampires, but they don’t care if they kill us or vampires. Some, I think, are legitimate. They’ve run across vampires who have killed loved ones. They’ve seen evil and want to destroy it. Others like the power of killing and go on witch hunts, naming enemies without proof. They’re dangerous, but often, because they are so powerful, Carpathians don’t take them as seriously as they should.”

In spite of the fact that Adalasia didn’t quite trust Sandu, and she didn’t yet know how they were going to work out their differences, she knew they had to work them out. She also didn’t want anything happening to him. “Thank you for warning me. I’ll see to it that Sandu takes heed of human danger. I know that wherever we go, the Castellos will follow us. They are my enemies. He dismisses them as well because they’re human. I know they are more than that. I just don’t know what they are yet.”

She turned back to the books, almost a compulsion now. “May I look at these? I can barely contain myself. I know how to handle old manuscripts. I promise I will be very careful.”

“I can provide the proper temperature and humidity the books need while you look through them. Lucian taught me,” Jaxon said.

The glass door swung open. Adalasia found her heart pounding. There were so many books that were worth a fortune. Books that belonged in museums. Books that only scholars would treasure. Her gaze found one that immediately intrigued her. It was leather-bound. The leather was clearly a hide of some sort that had been hand-cured. The interesting thing was, the lettering on the edges was in a language long dead. Long gone. She had been forced to study it from the time she was a child and thought her mother crazy for making her learn it, and yet now, she understood.

Tribal Italian and Rome: Unification or Defeat. She pulled it off the shelf and very carefully opened it. Without a doubt, the tome was written in the long-forgotten language that had been swallowed whole by Latin and other dialects. This was pure Etruscan. One more reason to know she was on the right path. The journey might be frightening and difficult, but how could details like this not be a confirmation that Sandu and she were exactly where they were supposed to be?