Dark Legacy (Dark 27)

The Carpathians were playing catch-up with the vampires. The Malinovs had put a plan in place centuries earlier and had the patience to carry it out. Vadim was a huge part of that. If Dragomir could discredit him and cause doubt among his followers, it would be all to the good.

Amelia's body convulsed again, this time a long, violent seizure. The bursts of electricity aided Dragomir in finding Vadim's sliver as it skittered up the brain, looking to slither into the bloodstream. He pinned it down with a concentrated flow of white-hot light, refusing to allow it to get away. Another section incinerated and dropped off, turning to ash. Vadim howled with pain and rage.

She will suffer as no one has ever suffered.

Dragomir didn't respond to the threat, although he didn't like the confidence in Vadim's voice. By all reasoning, the master vampire should have left the area. There were too many hunters. He had to know that the hunters would do what they did best. They were going to track him and kill him. Not just him, but a good portion of his followers. Still, the vampire stayed. Whatever he needed from Emeline was so important that he refused to cut his losses and retreat. Vadim also had managed an attack on the compound when they all should have been safe.

This child won't be able to take much more. Her body is going into shock, Gary warned. He fended off the attacks, but he couldn't stop her body's natural reactions.

Dragomir followed the last tiny segment of Vadim's sliver. It was miniscule, but it was still dangerous. He didn't dare allow it to escape his light. He just had to get close enough . . . The sliver tried to take refuge in a layer of neurons, desperate to conceal itself. He knew he had it then. He didn't wait, but sent a burst of white-hot light straight into the tiny bit of matter, burning it until it was nothing but ash.

Thunder crashed across the sky, rolling through so strongly it shook the compound. Outside, the last of the mutated creatures converged on Emeline's house, trying to find cracks to slip through. The birds went for the chimney. They flew into the windows over and over, pecking wildly to try to break the glass. The little gopher mutations covered the porch while the frogs attached themselves to the door and sides of the house.

Dragomir slipped out of Amelia's body back into his own. Pain blasted through him. He looked down at his arm to see it blackened, blistered, the skin sloughing off.

Emeline gasped. Let me come to you.

It's what he wants. You can't leave the safety of the house until all the creatures have been dealt with. The children are safe. That's what matters.

Not to me. You matter to me. I have to come to you.

Gary materialized beside him, swaying with weariness. Andor immediately extended his wrist to allow the healer to feed. "You have to shut down your heart and lungs. I've seen this poison, Dragomir. It is . . . difficult. The same as the poison used by Leon. Xavier created this, not Leon, and Sergey or Vadim must have accessed his memory of it. It will eat through muscle and bone if I don't stop it. Shut down now." There was a bite to Gary's tone, as if he was weary of having to tell others what to do all the time--especially more than once.

Tariq dropped a hand on Dragomir's shoulder. "Thank you for saving Amelia. I'll take care of Emeline."

"The house is covered with Vadim's creatures. He's up to something, Tariq. Amelia wasn't his big gun. She was always expendable. He didn't want to lose the sliver, but he was willing to give it up. You know he isn't finished. He has something far worse in store for us. It's already here. And how did he attack us? How did he get through the safeguards?"

"Dragomir." Gary's tone was a warning.

He wondered vaguely if the healer would try to force him to sleep before he could make Tariq and the others understand the danger was worse than ever to the compound and people residing in it.

Please do what he asks, Emeline whispered in his mind. Please, Dragomir. For me.

Women. They were a curse. He had duties. His honor demanded he aid Tariq and the others, but his woman . . . She broke his heart. How could he refuse her? Not when she was silently weeping and so scared. For him. She had Vadim's mutated creatures trying to break down her doors and windows, trying to chew their way to her, but she was thinking only of him.

He looked up at Sandu. Sandu nodded. Dragomir did as Emeline asked and shut down his heart and lungs, allowing the healer to enter his body. Sandu followed on the pretense of learning about the poison. The brotherhood backed one another up at all times. They knew little about Gary. He was a dangerous hunter and a skilled healer, but there was death in his eyes and a layer of coldness only the ancients from the monastery recognized. He belonged with them, behind those high walls where they couldn't do damage to others. He didn't have the code inked into his back reminding him that they lived by honor. They lived for their people. They lived for the one. He needed that reminder.

Sandu watched as the healer tracked the path of the poison. It appeared a long, dark ribbon winding its way through Dragomir's body, toward the heart. It was thick, like sludge, and it moved with infinite slowness. Everything it touched turned dark and discolored. The outside flesh was blackened and blistered, but inside, the dark muck burned deep trails along bone. When it touched a vein or artery, it burned through it, cauterizing the wound.

If you're going to be in here with me, get to work. I have to repair the damage to his body, the veins, arteries and anything else this has touched. You destroy it.

Sandu stared at the healer's white light. How did one stop that slow stream of death? It burned everything it touched, so it stood to reason that burning it would do no good.

How does one destroy it? I've never seen it before. He shared the image with those in the brotherhood.

You haven't seen it because it was originally Xavier's concoction. Sergey was always very interested in poisons and how they affected the body. If I had to guess which brother, Vadim or Sergey, accessed Xavier's memories, I would say Sergey. This is a mixture of an ancient poison developed by the high mage. It is extremely dangerous, even to the one wielding it.

Yet he had the girl put it on the blade of a knife. The water didn't damage it.

No, it wouldn't. The poison is too thick. As he explained, the healer was working to repair the damage done to Dragomir's veins. This poison is made in darkness. The spells cast over it are of darkness. The ingredients are those found only at night in the deepest part of the forest, in the darkest soil.

Sandu continued to share with the others everything the healer said. So, light kills darkness. That's what you're saying to me.

Gary didn't bother to respond. Sandu positioned himself at the end of the stream where it hadn't managed to spread yet. He shone the white-hot light of his spirit over the darkened sludge. The brown stream shuddered and then slowly shriveled everywhere the light touched it.

Can this be done outside his body, on the flesh that is being eaten away?

It is the only way to stop it. One must shed the body, become the spirit and destroy the stream that is slowly devouring Dragomir's outside body.

Sandu made certain his brethren heard every word and was satisfied when Afanasiv began the work of healing Dragomir from the outside in. It took the three of them several hours and quite a bit of blood to stop the poison, destroy it and repair the damage. By the time they were finished, it was close to dawn.

The ancients returned Dragomir to Emeline's house. Maksim and the triplets had destroyed Vadim's creatures. Charlotte, Blaze and Genevieve settled the children down in their beds with the Waltons watching over them. Tariq and Ferro took Amelia back up to her room and made certain she was in a healing sleep.

It was Sandu who opened the floor of Emeline's house and showed her over and over how to open the earth and close it. He floated Dragomir down into the healing soil. Emeline managed to float down on her own but she landed a little harder than she would have preferred. Wrapping her arms around Dragomir, she filled the dirt in around their bodies, burying his head, but leaving her own outside the cover of dirt. She couldn't quite

make herself bury her body entirely.

"I can do it for you," Sandu offered.

She shook her head, her arms tightening around Dragomir beneath that blanket of soil. Her breathing was coming too fast, her heart beating too hard.

Sandu ignored her, waving his hand to put her to sleep and then covering Dragomir and Emeline with the richest soil possible. He opened the earth above them, prepared to take on any enemy threatening them. Emeline was a Carpathian woman. Dragomir's lifemate. She was also the vessel carrying another female child. That child held the fate of a Carpathian hunter in her hands. No one would harm her on his watch.

Spreading out beneath the house, Ferro and Andor took refuge in the soil. One to the right of Dragomir's resting place and the other to the left. Afanasiv and Nicu slept beneath the house as well, one under the porch in the front and the other under the porch in the back.

When the sun came up, only the security company moved in the bright light of day.

14

Amelia's so far away, none of us can reach her," Dragomir told Emeline as he gathered her close to feed her. "Tariq is hoping you'll try. The healer thinks she doesn't want to come back. She knows Vadim used her to try to kill me, her sister and the other children. She knows he used her to try to reacquire you. Charlotte and Blaze have tried. Gary has tried; so has Tariq. Danny is at her bedside along with Liv, but nothing is working."

They had to have the conversation about Dragomir imperiously preventing her from helping during the attack, but right then he sounded so distressed over Amelia that she couldn't help reaching up to link her fingers behind the nape of his neck as she fed. He tasted delicious. Perfect. Truthfully, she was just thankful he was alive.

You throw yourself into battle without thinking of the cost to yourself, she pointed out. It's terrifying, Dragomir. You almost died. That poisonous knife could have killed you. So many things could have killed you last night. You don't weigh the consequences; you just do whatever it takes to save the day.

She had woken with her heart pounding and the taste of fear in her mouth. She'd been disoriented, reaching for him, afraid she'd lost him. He'd promptly proven to her that he was alive and more than well, his body moving in hers, sending streaks of fire radiating through her until she couldn't think straight. He'd gone to feed, and in his absence, that same frightening feeling she'd woken with had consumed her. She hadn't wanted him out of her sight, which had made her feel needy and dependent.

His hand stroked caresses down her hair, hair that she'd woken with free of tangles, he'd still brushed it--because he loved to, he'd said. She was certain it was because she loved it. She'd gone to sleep in the ground and woken in her bed. Naked. His mouth on her. His hands so gentle she'd felt the burn of tears. After, when they lay together, holding each other, he'd talked to the baby, his mouth against her stomach, sending waves of love and reassurance.

"I am a Carpathian hunter, Emeline." His voice was as gentle as his hands had been, so at odds with the way he fought. With her, he was the complete opposite of the man she saw battling the vampires. She hadn't found a shred of emotion in his mind when he'd been in the lake, not even for Amelia. Now, with her, he was all emotion. Gentle and thoughtful. "I hunt and destroy the undead."

She ran her tongue over the two tiny holes in his chest, tasting those last delicious drops. She loved everything about him, everything about the way he touched her, the way he tasted, the man that he was, but she was beginning to think there was a lot about him she didn't know. She had access to his mind, his memories, everything he was. Dragomir didn't limit her ability to see him, not even his violent past, yet she hadn't probed. She didn't want to.

"I know you've always done that. Hunt vampires. I also know you're a huge part of keeping everyone here safe," she conceded, looking into his eyes. Those strange, golden eyes. "But the way you throw yourself into battle as if you have nothing to lose, as if you don't care that you might lose your life, is terrifying to me."

"I don't know any other way." He didn't blink, and her stomach did a slow roll. He looked wild. Dangerous. All predator.

She turned his statement over and over in her mind. "What you're saying is you will continue to battle vampires the way you've always done it."

His gaze remained fastened on hers. She felt captured there, a prisoner. There was no looking away. They were locked in a battle she didn't understand. It was as if he was holding his breath. Waiting. They stared at each other for what seemed forever.

"Dragomir, tell me."

He was so still. Holding himself together as if at any moment he might shatter. That was so unlike him. He always had such confidence in himself. Confidence bordering on arrogance.

"There is no other way to fight the vampire and win."

Again, his tone and expression gave nothing away. Nothing. He still waited, held himself too still, as if the axe would fall any moment. She was missing something important, something she needed to address immediately. She bit down on her lower lip, her heart beginning to beat out of rhythm with his. The moment that happened, he took her hand and pressed her palm to his chest, right over his heart.

"I need you to tell me what's wrong." Emeline whispered it. She did. She detested seeing him so upset. It hurt to see him so ready to believe . . . What? That she would be so upset with him that she would reject him? That didn't make sense, but the nagging feeling stayed with her.

"You're angry with me."

"I'm not." She wasn't. How could she be? He'd saved Amelia, even when she told him he was her choice and even implied if he had to choose, to save himself.

"Sivamet."

The endearment washed over her. Through her. His heart. He'd told her what it meant, and she loved when he called her that. It wasn't just the endearment, it was the way he said it, the tone, that soft caress to his voice. He meant it when he called her that.

"You are angry with me because you think I go into battle without thinking of you and our child. You are angry with me because when I went into danger, I refused to allow you to accompany me."

She opened her mouth to protest, but had to close it. He was right. He was so right. She hadn't wanted him battling the vampire when he could have been killed. He'd been horribly wounded more than once. She also was angry on behalf of all women that he would lock her in a house while a battle raged outside.

"Okay, yes," she conceded. "But I don't understand why you're so upset that I'm angry. It happens between two people when there is a misunderstanding."

He shook his head, his thumb sliding over the back of her hand. "There is no misunderstanding, Emeline." His voice was gentler than ever. Sad. There was sorrow in his eyes. "I have no choice. To come home to you, I must push you and our child from my mind and fight the way I always have. If I am divided, my thoughts with you, fear in my mind, I wouldn't stand a chance against the undead. I know no other way."

Her heart hurt. A physical pain. She forced air through her lungs. She wasn't weak. She had tied herself to a man who would always be on the front line. Always determined to keep those around him safe. That was who he was. If she loved him--and she did--she had to accept that in him. She also had to accept how he kept himself safe.

She touched her lower lip with her tongue, soothing the tiny bite mark she'd made earlier. She didn't like him throwing himself into battle with no thought for his own life, but if he said he had to fight that way to survive, then she had to find a way to accept it. He hadn't looked away from her. Not once. She felt him moving in her mind. That was intimate, the way his mind brushed over hers, so gently, the way he touched her skin, that was the way he touched her mind.

"I understand, Dragomir. I do. I'll do my best not to worry too much." Like that would happen. "I love you. When a woman loves a man, she worries. I can't stop that."

He brought her hand to his mouth, still looking into her eyes. "And the other?"

Emeline realized immediately it was "the other" he was most worried about. "I realize you are f

rom a different time where women didn't have rights and their men looked after them--"

"Carpathian women have always had rights," he interrupted. "They are cherished. Treasured. We know how capable they are."

"Blaze and Charlotte go with Tariq and Maksim. They are at their side when a battle comes."

"That affects us how?"

He seemed genuinely puzzled. She sighed. "Dragomir, I can't be locked up."

"You wouldn't have stayed where you were safe."

If she were honest, she wouldn't have stayed in the house. She would have tried to help in some way. She wasn't like Blaze, a warrior woman. She never had been. But she went her own way and made decisions for herself. She'd been doing that since she was a very young child.

"Maybe I wouldn't have . . ."

"You wouldn't have," he said. "There is no maybe, Emeline. You would have rushed to help those children without thinking of the consequences to you, the baby, or to me."

"It has to be my choice."

For the first time he looked away from her, but not before she caught that terrible sorrow deep in his eyes, as if she'd just shattered his world. She curled her palm around the nape of his neck. "We're talking it out, Dragomir. That's what couples do."

He shook his head. "There is no talking it out, Emeline. I am centuries old. There are things about myself I cannot change. One of those things is my need to keep you and our children safe. I have to know that before going into battle. You think it is reasonable to put yourself and our unborn child in harm's way. I do not."

"So because you're bigger and stronger we do it your way?" She tried to keep belligerence out of her voice, but she felt a little confrontational.

He shook his head. "We do it my way because I cannot do it any other. I want to be everything you need, Emeline. You do not need this, but I do. In a relationship, there has to be compromise. I must learn modern ways in order to ensure your happiness. In some things, you will have to forgo modern ways to ensure mine."

"Do you care if Blaze goes into battle with Maksim?"

He shook his head. "Blaze is a good warrior. You are not, nor will you ever be. I see into your mind, sivamet. You have compassion for all things. You have determination and courage. You would fight at my side, but the toll on you would be horrific. There is no need to prove to me or anyone else that you're willing to fight. I want you to learn to handle the modern weapons being developed to kill the vampire. I want you adept at using them. What I cannot have is you needlessly putting your life on the line because you think you should."