His voice steadied her. Calm. Like a rock. Her anchor in a storm. She took in a breath of tainted, foul air as she pulled Trixie from the chair and pushed her toward the relative safety of the four walls. If they could get inside and weave safeguards, they could hold out until the hunters returned. As Trixie ran toward the nearest building--which was Fane's--she looked scared.
"I can't hear his song."
Trixie can't hear his song.
She will not be able to because he is in a form that would not have one. He is part of the air. You feel the thickness. The foulness. He is there.
"Just get inside. Teagan, hurry," Gabrielle hissed, as she shoved Trixie inside.
She took one step toward Teagan and felt a hand in her hair. The vampire dropped from the sky, forming as he did so, his hand reaching down to grip Gabrielle's long hair in a terrible fist of iron. He yanked her so hard she went flying back against him, coming off her feet, unable to turn her head to look at him, to give Aleksei what he needed.
Teagan skidded to a halt and backed up, both hands up in a placating position. "Let's all calm down," she said softly.
I can't see him, Gabrielle told Aleksei. He's got me and I can't get away.
Do not fight him. Stall. We are on the way back. He will want to brag. To talk. Let him.
Gabrielle closed her eyes for a moment and then made herself obey. She sagged against her captor as if in surrender. Without warning he bent his head and drove his teeth into her neck. She screamed. It hurt beyond anything she could imagine. The burn was fierce, like an acid dripping all the way to her bones while teeth tore at her flesh.
Teagan screamed as well and ran toward them. Trixie burst out of the building, armed with her gun, firing the wooden stakes. The first hit the vampire in his neck as he bent over Gabrielle. The second hit his throat as he turned, his glowing red eyes finding a new target.
"Get away from her," Trixie yelled.
The bracelet on Gabrielle's wrist released, spinning, the flames dancing in the air in a whirling circle straight at the vampire's thick wrist. It sliced through flesh and bone cleanly, leaving flames behind, flames that swept up the vampire's arm so that he shrieked and let go of Gabrielle.
Teagan caught Gabrielle's arm and yanked her away from the tall vampire, who had his attention centered solely on Trixie. Blood poured from Gabrielle's neck where the vampire had torn great ragged lacerations in her flesh to get at what he wanted most. Teagan continued to drag her as far from the vampire as possible before she helped her to sit on the ground.
Gabrielle turned her head toward the vampire to allow Aleksei to use her eyes in order to see the undead who had lain in wait, keeping hidden, biding his time to wreak his revenge on the three hunters. The action caused more blood to gush from the wound in her neck.
The vampire made a horrible sound, a rattle in his throat as he put out the flames, the sunken holes he had for eyes centered on Trixie as he stepped toward her. Trixie backed up but gamely let loose another wooden stake. This one hit the undead in the center of his chest. He snarled, batted at it and lunged at Trixie, raising his good arm, fist clenched so that his forearm and fist had become a huge hammer. He was so fast there was no getting away from the killing blow.
Trixie threw the gun at him and turned to try to run, knowing it was too late. She heard, as if in the distance, Teagan and Gabrielle scream. She tripped and fell as a blast of hot air burned her skin. Her flesh seemed to shrink in an effort to avoid an unnatural abomination--to prevent it from touching her, let alone striking her.
She rolled to see him standing over her, his hideous teeth jagged and covered in Gabrielle's blood. Black blood dripped steadily from the stub where his hand had been. His skeleton-like face was smeared with blood. His arm raised and descended, and she knew she was dead. She closed her eyes and prayed Teagan and Gabrielle were running.
The blow never came. She heard a grunt and a horrible growling rattle in the vampire's throat a second time, as if he was choking. Cautiously, she opened one eye and saw another man there. He wasn't as tall as the Carpathians she knew, but his hair flowed around his shoulders. He was leaner, but all defined muscle. She could see the ripple beneath the shirt as he backed the vampire well away from her.
"Gary." Gabrielle breathed his name. How he had gotten there, made it through the safeguards and managed to save Trixie was a miracle.
Gabrielle stared in awe at the man she had known and loved for so long as Gary Jansen. That man was gone. In his place was an ancient warrior. A Daratrazanoff. He flowed when he moved. Glided. His strength was enormous as he shoved the vampire's arm up and away from Trixie and backed him up, forcing him away from the fallen woman.
He moved with absolute confidence, his features impassive, his eyes cool as he held the one arm up out of the way like a bridge while he slammed his fist straight into the vampire's chest, driving for the heart.
Trixie scrambled to her feet and made her way cautiously around the two circling fighters to get to the other two women. Teagan was on her knees beside Gabrielle, her eyes closed, and clearly Andre was directing her how to heal the wound in the Carpathian manner.
Gabrielle, making a soft sound of dismay, didn't take her eyes from the scene of combat. Gary had been an academic. More, he was a brain beyond most people's comprehension. He had served the world and then the world of Carpathians with his ability to see what others could not. She knew he still possessed that brain, but her Gary was no longer there. The ancients had poured themselves into him, giving him their blood and their memories. Good and bad. Skills and darkness.
She wanted to look away from the violence. It seemed such blasphemy when it was Gary, not Aleksei, battling the undead. A scholar with a gentle soul, a poet, a man with such a brain . . .
Kislany. That single endearment whispered into her mind so intimately. She closed her eyes, feeling his love surrounding her. She wasn't lost anymore, not when she had Aleksei.
He's gone, Aleksei, completely gone. I'm looking at him and almost don't recognize him. It's as if he's aged a thousand years.
He has.
She knew Aleksei spoke the stark truth. He didn't sugarcoat the truth for her. She bit her lip hard, wanting to weep for Gary. Inside she was weeping.
Gabrielle. You did not do this. He was converted and then brought to the cave of warriors for recognition. Had Gregori not claimed him, he could have lived a half-life. Carpathian and yet not, with no hope of a lifemate. No one knew exactly how it worked. Andre said few males are converted. Until the prince converted his lifemate it was not known it was even a possibility without madness setting in. There was never a reason to convert a human male.
Not until they fell in combat defending Carpathian women and children. She tried not to be bitter.
He is alive, kislany, that is a gift in itself.
He isn't Gary. I don't know this man, he isn't Gary. Over time, I saw the difference in his build and his combat skills. He had to become a fighter in order to defend the children, but he's completely different now. He looks like . . .
Gregori. The Daratrazanoff family.
Yes.
Because that is what he is. That is who he had to become to come fully into our world. Just as you are changed, so is he.
Aleksei was wrong. Essentially, she was still Gabrielle. She wasn't blind. She knew her looks were enhanced, but inside, she was Gabrielle. Gary was no longer Gary. He was all of those ancients who had gone before.
He was a hunter of the vampire. Skilled. Merciless. Capable of ripping out a heart and throwing it onto the ground. Capable of withstanding horrendous wounds without flinching to get the job done. Capable of calling down the lightning and incinerating the blackened, wizened heart and bathing his arms and torso in the white-hot energy in order to get rid of the acid-like blood from the undead before he directed the whip of lightning to the vampire's body.
"Eww," Trixie whispered. "So that's how it's done. I don't suppose they can put lightning in a bottle and sell that in their vampire-hunting kits on the Internet."
"I don't think so, Grandma," Teagan said, her voice even softer than her grandmother's. "I saw Andre do that several times and it never feels real."
Gary turned toward them, and Gabrielle's heart thudded wildly. Aleksei?
"I'm here, kislany," he said, and he was, striding toward her, right past Gary to wrap his arm around her, to inspect the side of her neck.
I have to go to him.
I know. Give me a minute to make certain this wound is thoroughly cleaned and as healed as possible until we get to ground.
I know. Two little words, but they said everything to her. Meant everything.