Andor nodded slowly. He was tiring and that made him worry even more that the blood was leaking out of his body too fast. If he tried healing himself and used up all his strength, there would be no time for the others to come. On the other hand, if he didn’t and he bled out, Lorraine would be as lost as he was.
“The heart of a vampire must be removed and burned. He can regenerate over and over if you do not burn the heart. He can take any shape, including those of your loved ones he picks out of your mind. His voice can rule you, compel you to do his bidding, even things abhorrent to you. You are telepathic and know about shields, so you have to have yours up and strong at all times in his presence. You can’t be deceived by his lies or the images he creates.”
“So, I’d need something to burn him and his heart as well.”
He liked that she sounded thoughtful. A part of her was actually thinking about the possibilities. She wasn’t certain if his information was the truth, but she was still giving it consideration.
“Yes. But even if he appears to burn, you have to make certain the heart is destroyed, completely incinerated.”
She nodded. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want to have to fight such a creature, but if I had to do it, I want to know how. What about insects and rats, like you see in movies?”
“He can create an army of both, the same with bats. He can create human puppets.” He gave a small sigh. “There were so few of us, but I think Carpathians thought that we would eventually win the war on vampires and just have to occasionally destroy one here and there.”
“Why didn’t you enlist the aid of humans if they were in danger, too?”
“You know why. Men like those three. There are always fanatics, and we would be persecuted and forced to defend ourselves. Most of us stayed away from humans. Tariq is one who didn’t. He liked humans and embraced their technology. That gave him an insight the rest of us didn’t have. The vampires were making a stand, here, in the United States, building their armies and learning to use computers and software to track hunters, and also to find psychic women.”
“How did they do that?”
“They have a psychic testing center, the Morrison Center. Men and women go there either for fun or really believing they have talent. As soon as it is determined that someone really has psychic ability, they’re targeted.”
She was silent a moment. She shifted her weight off her hip, turning over onto her back and staring up at the ceiling of the tent. “The Morrison Center?”
“Yes. They have them all over the world now.”
“Representatives came onto the college campus where I was going to school. I almost went, but decided against it. I didn’t like anyone knowing my business. That was something my father drilled into me.”
He remained silent. It had been that close. Had she filled out their forms and been tested, she might have been lost to him.
“They were there during the sunny part of the day.”
“Because the men and women who work in those places have no idea that their system has been hacked.”
She frowned, but kept staring up at the ceiling. “Can you heal yourself? If I give you a lot of my blood, can you heal yourself?”
He shook his head. “The best I can hope for, sívamet, is for your blood to keep me alive and to give me the strength I need to set safeguards my brethren can unravel but vampires cannot. That way, if the enemy gets here first, you will be safe.”
“I’m going outside for a few minutes. Is the ceiling on this tent heavy enough to keep you from burning during daylight?”
“I will shut down my heart and lungs, and you will have to finish burying me.” He kept his eyes on her.
The breath exploding from her lungs in protest was audible. Her body snapped around so she was facing him. “I am not going to bury you alive. It isn’t going to happen. I semi-believe you but I don’t at the same time, so if you’re insane, then too bad, I’m not helping screw you up.” She leapt up and nearly ripped the door to the tent getting out.
She was fast. Very fast. You will need that speed if you have to fight a vampire. Hitting them with your saucepot will not kill them.
Don’t talk to me right now. I’m upset and I need time to think.
You cannot be out there too long. I cannot stay awake much longer. That much was true, but it wasn’t because the dawn was creeping slowly toward them. Nor the fact that he didn’t like her where he couldn’t see the enemy coming at him. He couldn’t move, his body already beginning to succumb to the pain he’d kept at bay through sheer effort. That effort was costing him.
She didn’t respond, and he closed his eyes and allowed himself to think about finding her. How it was so simple. One moment his world was the same, and the next it was entirely different. One moment. That was all it had taken. He remembered searching. Looking for her from continent to continent. He had known then it was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but there was the theory that fate would eventually throw her in front of her lifemate. That belief came from the fact that the two halves of the same soul would forever be reaching toward each other.
He didn’t know if the theory was true or not, but she had come out of nowhere. Her quest for peace, wrapped up in whatever terms she called it, had brought her to him right at the very moment when he’d considered giving up.
Csecsemõ, thank you for staying even if you are having a difficult time believing me.
The problem, Andor, isn’t that I’m having that difficult of a time believing you, it’s that I do believe you. I don’t want to look into your mind because I’m afraid of what I’ll see, and that makes me a coward.
You are no coward, Lorraine.
I have to look if I’m going to protect us. I’m working up my courage.
I despise the fact that I have met you at my weakest moment. In my world, it is my responsibility to protect my woman. Not the other way around.
Welcome to the new world, Andor. Right at the moment, if you’re not crazy, I would much rather be living in yours, where you have to fight some hideous creature capable of tearing your body apart the way something did.
Was she weeping again? He didn’t think so, but he put his hand over his aching heart just in case. The agony was no longer as physical for him as emotional. He really felt useless lying in the ground, his strong body so weak he had to rely on his woman—his human woman—to protect him. That just wasn’t done. It was sobering and very humbling. It was possible he needed a lesson in humility, but not right then, not when she was in danger.
I can do this. There was determination in her voice.
She was returning. He could feel her. He wanted to make one blood exchange so he could find her no matter where she was in the world. They didn’t need it to forge a telepathic bond, but it would make their connection even stronger. The problem was, he needed every single drop of blood he had.
She pushed open the tent door and then zipped it up behind her. She had her backpack and she opened the flap and began pulling out items. She set them close to her sleeping bag, on the far side where he couldn’t see them clearly, but he could smell them.
“Weapons? Gun oil?”
“I’m out in the middle of nowhere. I expected wild animals, but figured I wouldn’t have that much trouble with them.”
“You had a gun but you brought a cooking pot to a site where you knew someone was attempting murder?” He spoke quietly, for the first time anger beginning to stir. He recognized the emotion, although it was foreign to him. She had a weapon but hadn’t armed herself before exposing herself to danger. That was unacceptable.
“I was at the stream with my saucepot when I heard your thoughts and then realized someone was trying to kill you. I didn’t have time to run back to my camp and get out a gun. I thought you’d be dead by then.”
“What about you? Did you think someone might kill you?”
“No. I thought I was going to bash someone in the head. I didn’t realize there were three of them, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have gone back for the gun. It would have taken too long.”
I want to shake you right now. He didn’t say it aloud because he couldn’t. He needed the more intimate form of communication so she would feel his emotions. Feel the way he felt so helpless.
Please don’t. Give yourself a transfusion instead.
Remove your shields.
She sat close to him and extended her arm. “No, this time I’m going to watch you.” There was pure challenge in her voice.
“Lorraine. Be very careful what you wish for.”
“I didn’t see how you did it last time. I want to see this time. You stay out of my head.”
He knew what she was doing, proving to herself one way or the other that he was as crazy as a loon, or she was really in trouble and he was telling the truth. He also knew she had carefully analyzed everything he’d told her about himself and the Carpathian people.
Having grown up reading vampire stories and watching the films, she would acquaint the things he’d told her with vampires. Sleeping in the ground. Paralyzed during the day. Burning in the sun. She was demanding to know if he drank blood, or if he had somehow, in that short time, in his weakened state, managed to give himself a transfusion without tubing and needles. She’d put it all together and realized giving himself a transfusion the way humans would was impossible.
“Lorraine.” He tried again.
“Just do it. I mean it, Andor. If you need blood, take it.”
He took her hand very gently in his, his thumb sliding over the pulse thudding in her inner wrist. “I would ordinarily, since it is your blood, the blood of the woman who is mine, take it differently, but since I cannot, this will have to do.”
He brought her wrist to his mouth. Kissed that now frantically beating pulse. His tongue slid over her skin. She gasped, a small sound he felt in his heart. His teeth scraped. Teased. She bit her lip, her eyes going dark with heat. He didn’t look away, refusing to allow her to pull her steady gaze from his. He used his tongue a second time, making certain the skin was numb before he sank his teeth deep. She cried out and tried to jerk her arm away, but he held her firmly.