Home > Dark Sentinel (Dark #28)(17)

Dark Sentinel (Dark #28)(17)
Author: Christine Feehan

Andor shook his head. “I cannot believe that my own brothers have encouraged you to be a little hawk. I doubt they would be quite so lenient with their own lifemates.”

“You don’t understand, Andor.” She leaned closer to him. “I lost everyone, my entire family. Everyone I loved. I couldn’t save them. It was already too late by the time I got home. I wasn’t about to lose you. Can’t you understand?”

“I understand,” he said gently.

Her grief tore at him, and then she gave a little shrug, pushing her greatest sorrow down so she could function.

“We’ve had to fight off a few attacks and everyone is exhausted. We needed everyone to be able to help if we were to succeed. Women are capable of fighting these things if given the proper training. I’m not saying all women should, but neither should all men. We’re all different, Andor. I found that out when I trained in my parents’ dojo.”

When he shook his head, she framed his face with both hands, insisting he really hear what she needed to say. “I was raised on martial arts and I loved it. My family lived that life. Others came to learn various degrees of self-defense, or wanted to train to fight in a ring to get trophies. Some of the people that came through were very gentle creatures and couldn’t find it in themselves to attack no matter what. Others were eager for the challenge, for the battle.” She let go of him and sank back to her knees again.

“What are all these weapons?” Andor nodded to the various items that surrounded him, laid carefully out in a circular pattern about six feet from him.

“I have to fight from a distance, so I needed several flamethrowers and ways to kill a vampire should they get past Sandu, Gary or Ferro.” She shuddered. “They really are disgusting, vile creatures. Ferro and Sandu have really helped me build up my shields to make them stronger. I do the exercises all the time. Two of the vampires nearly penetrated them and got to my memories. I couldn’t believe how powerful they were. I could feel the compulsion in their voices. I didn’t want them to be able to find you there, just in case. You were in the ground, and they didn’t know you were even alive or anywhere near here. If they’d managed to kill me …”

“Stop. Do not say it.” Real fear gripped him. After centuries of searching, if they brought him back only for her to have died, he feared what could happen. “It is frustrating to know I cannot aid the four of you.”

Her face changed instantly. Softened. Her eyes went to a sea green. “I know it must be horrible for you to just have to lie quietly.”

“It is far more than being uncomfortable, Lorraine. It is the fact that the four of you, my woman and my brothers, are in danger and cannot leave because of me. I have never been in such a position before.”

“I know that,” she replied, her voice soft with some emotion that tore at his heart. “I’ve seen you, inside your mind, your memories, the way you protect everyone. You’re the guardian, the one who would stand for all of us. Now you have to allow us to stand for you.”

“It is so much more difficult than one would think.”

“I have to take care of business. Unlike Carpathians, who have only to wake up and clothe themselves to look completely refreshed, I have to wash up, brush my teeth and use the bushes for business.”

“I can help with the washing and brushing of teeth,” he offered.

“No,” another voice chimed. “You can’t.”

Andor glanced over at the healer. Gary sat up. He looked so exhausted, Andor wanted to order him to go to ground. A Daratrazanoff was not the kind of man to be ordered. They gave orders. Gary spoke in a soft voice, but it carried, and with it, authority.

Andor had never been one to recognize authority. He had sworn allegiance to his prince so many centuries ago he could barely remember. Like his brethren, he believed his prince, Vlad, had betrayed them. Instead of destroying his firstborn son, he had allowed a series of events to unfold that nearly destroyed their people. Vlad, through his inability to cause his lifemate sorrow because of her love of their child, had brought the Carpathian people to the very brink of extinction. Andor and the other ancients living in the monastery had not sworn their allegiance to the new prince, the second son of Vlad.

Lorraine leaned close to Andor, her silky hair brushing his face as she kissed the side of his mouth. “I’ll be right back. You two can posture at each other.” She smiled at Gary. “Good evening. I see you didn’t go to ground again. Ferro said that is very dangerous and that you need the healing soil.”

“I was too exhausted to open the earth,” Gary admitted.

“Perhaps, but I think you were guarding me as well as Andor, offering your body in exchange for ours.” She stood, dusted off the seat of her jeans, which called attention to her bottom, and sauntered away, toward the trees.

Andor watched her go, but his mind was reeling with the implication that Gary had been too tired even to open the earth. He had slept out in the open, just in a shallow depression beside Lorraine. They were all at the very end of their strength, even the healer. That told him far more than he’d realized about how dire the situation was. If the ancients couldn’t even get into the soil by the end of the night, they were expending too much energy keeping him alive.

Andor felt the healer move in his mind. He was strong. Ancient. A formidable man with insane fighting skills. He was a powerful healer, one very much needed in the United States, especially now that they found the vampires had slowly, over the centuries, fortified their position and had a good foothold already.

You will not live if you move too much. We have been unable to heal those wounds. Three are worrisome. I need to be able to concentrate on them, but the vampires know we are here and we’re hiding something. That something is you. Lorraine won’t go with an escort to the Asenguard compound without you. If we are to save her, we must save you.

I will order her to go.

All the orders in the world will not work on her.

Then she must be forced.

We are all tied to your fate. The four of us and you, Andor. She will not leave you. You may not have bound her to you with the ritual words, but the bindings are tighter than any I have seen without them. Part of that is her. She has a will like iron.

Ferro indicated that he felt the presence of vampires. I could see the darkness begin to take him over, Andor cautioned. He wanted Gary to realize the danger to Lorraine was very real, iron will or not. The others might have provided her with weapons, but if the vampires sent a concentrated force after them, especially during the day when they couldn’t aid her, she might be lost to them all. They must be close.

Gary nodded. They harass us continually. Sandu and Ferro sent for the others. I cannot begin to heal you properly until they arrive. They were also under attack. Sergey has become quite a battle strategist. Gary named the master vampire who had formed a plan centuries earlier and then methodically carried it out. He had shown himself only when he was at his greatest strength and was certain he had the ability to be victorious. Now, his army was nipping at the heels of the Carpathians, weakening them on a nightly basis.

“Call Lorraine back closer to us,” Andor said. “You can shield her from any eyes while she does what she has to do.”

Gary shook his head. “In truth, I cannot spare the energy. I have to get you to the point that you can travel. We need to take you to the healing grounds Tariq has built up. We also need the reinforcements of ancient blood. You have to stay very still and keep your body buried under the soil. You can’t move. I’ve managed to remove the poisons from your body that were injected into you as well as their parasites. I cut out the dead tissue and have stimulated some growth. There were so many places leaking blood, I couldn’t get to them all, so as fast as I stopped one, another seemed to spring up.”

“Lorraine has yet to understand that a hunter seeks to end the vampire when he finds one. I had no choice but to fight them.” It was no apology. He stated a fact. Hunters sought out the undead, tracking them from lair to lair. It was their job to destroy them wherever they were. In this case, he had been drawn into a trap. Three lesser vampires had been used as bait. It had mattered little to him, they all needed to be terminated.

“I understand,” Gary conceded. “But it doesn’t make the healing any easier.”

Gary’s head snapped up at the same time Andor felt the dead space in the night’s air that indicated the unseen presence of the enemy.

Lorraine. Get back here now. Are you within the safeguards?

Of course, I feel it. The four of you have shared your minds so much, you’ve trained mine. He thinks I’m all alone out here.

O jelä peje terád, emni—sun scorch you, woman, you are not bait for the undead. He was going to wring her neck when he was able to move again.

Her soft laughter flooded his mind and then it was cut off abruptly and she was gone. Behind her, along the walls of his mind where she had just brushed her amusement, pouring into him and making him feel whole, he felt a piercing pain, like a knife jabbing. It was the lingering sensation when all else vanished.

6

One moment Lorraine was laughing, amused by Andor’s archaic way of thinking, and the next something stabbed deep into her mind. She had the presence of mind to shut herself off from Andor, recognizing the attack of a vampire. This one was strong, stronger than anything she could imagine. The stab went deep, the pain radiating outward to encompass her entire brain. It was painful enough that she went down to one knee, dropping her head into her hand. Something had been ripped out of her mind before she’d managed to slam down her shields.

She took in several deep breaths and willed her mind to stay blank. She would not betray the fact that Andor was so injured and that all of the Carpathians were weak. They didn’t want to leave her alone during daylight hours, so they slept in shallow depressions, rather than sinking deep in the earth where they would have been safe and could recuperate. They did take turns, with Gary insisting he take a turn as well. She thought he should always go to ground, but no one listened to her. The ancients were still living in the dark ages as far as women were concerned.

   
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