Elisabeta’s affection slipped into her mind, warming her. I have never had a friend before. I like having someone to talk to as well.
I’ll get back to the compound as soon as I’m done here, Julija promised.
I would like that. Elisabeta sounded and felt shy to her.
Before Julija could reply, Elisabeta had slipped away leaving her . . . alone. She patted both cats on the head and stood up, needing to move. She wasn’t wholly Carpathian. She could give the illusion of being clean, and she could cast a spell to clean her body and hair if necessary, but it didn’t feel like a real shower.
She looked around the cavern. As in most caves, water trickled from the walls. She studied the various paths of water. All led downward in little jagged trails, but one was wider than the others and formed a small puddle at the far end of the chamber. She might be able to do something with that. There was no rock to build up to form a barrier to give herself a pool or bath of any sort.
She was just standing there, frustrated, when she felt him come up behind her. There had been no warning, not even from the cats, and that told her more than anything else could have. They always reacted to her family, mostly slinking away in fear, or hissing their hatred and submission. The shadow cats chuffed softly in greeting and bumped into his legs, winding around them. He was so close, she felt the cats’ movements, but she didn’t feel him.
“I want to take a shower.” She blurted it out like a crazy person, but just his presence was overwhelming when she felt she had told him far too much about her life. She couldn’t face him, not with him knowing the worst about her. It was humiliating, and she couldn’t think about anything else, vividly remembering the way Barnabas had hurt and displayed her for his class.
“You are Carpathian, Julija,” he said softly, his voice whispering against her ear.
She felt her hair move with every breath he took. “I’m mage. I don’t understand what you mean.”
“If you wish a shower, you can create one for yourself. If you don’t want to bother, you simply can freshen yourself and change your attire.” He stepped out from behind her and walked in a slow half circle to stand in front of her. “You have already been doing it, probably most of your life.”
She shook her head. “I’m mage, Isai. What I do is mostly illusion. I will admit, my illusions are considered some of the best in my world, but I kind of had a knack for it from childhood.”
“Julija, you had a knack because your illusions aren’t tricks or deceptions, they are real. There is no doubt in my mind that your father is aware of this. Most likely, he discovered it when you were a child. Rather than allow you to realize what was happening, he fostered the idea that you were extremely good at illusion.”
She shook her head. “I practiced all the time. I still practice.”
He stepped back and indicated the wall behind him. “Build yourself a pool from the rock.”
She frowned and circled around him slowly, studying the rock surface and the smaller stones on the floor of the chamber. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Everything around you has properties. You can manipulate those properties. You do it all the time when you’re building what you think are illusions. If it was merely an illusion to widen the crack in the rock at the entrance to the cave, how would you slip your body through? If it was illusion to make your body paper thin, how would the reality of it work?”
She frowned up at him. She hadn’t thought of that. “I’ve used magic spells my entire life. They’re second nature to me. Magic can create the things you’re saying I do as a Carpathian.”
“Magic can do a lot of things, but can it build you a pool?”
Once again, she took her gaze from Isai to study the rock. She lifted her hands and began to weave together a spell to gather the smaller pebbles into a basin to begin her build. Before she could utter a single word, he caught her wrist and pulled her hands down.
“In your mind, build what you want.”
“I was doing that.” She glared at him. “You stopped me.”
“You are using magic as a crutch. There is no reason to use it on something so simple as creating a pool for you to bathe in if that is your wish. You can give yourself a shower without taking one. You can change your clothes. Build it in your mind. See yourself clean and refreshed. Design the clothes you want to wear. It all takes place in your mind first.”
“I do that.”
“I know you do, that is how your illusions are so perfect. You already have built whatever it is you want in your mind and then you come up with your spell. I’m telling you, you do not always need that spell.”
“You use it for your safeguards.”
“Because we were taught that was how best to ensure we were safe when we went to ground. Over the centuries, all of us have changed those weaves and made them stronger, using our own abilities to strengthen our guards so we can rest easy in the ground. Had we not done so, Xavier would have long ago found a way to eradicate our species.”
Julija had to agree with him. She took a breath and once again studied the wall, a tendril of excitement sliding down her spine. Was it possible? Could she do what Carpathians could do? If that were so, then her magic would add to that power . . . She broke off her thoughts, elation causing a little thrill of anticipation.
Isai nodded at her. “You can do this.”
Could she? Something very simple. She considered what that might be. She wanted her pool wide enough that she could turn around in it easily. She stared at the rocks, feeling for them, studying how each was formed. Magma from long ago had crystalized. The granite had traces of various minerals such as feldspar and quartz with bits of others as well.
Using the rock, in her mind she began creating her dream pool. She closed her eyes and, keeping the build in her brain, simply manipulated the properties of the rock, heating them so they ran together again, forming a wide, thick wall that was just a little deeper than her waist. She layered her granite there until she had exactly what she wanted.
Julija had always enjoyed creating things and she’d spent hours in her mind, building the things she wanted. It never occurred to her that she could accomplish the things she wanted without magic. In her creation, water ran from the wall into her pool, the temperature perfect for a refreshing shower. She paid attention to every detail, just as she’d learned to do over the years with her magic.
The sound of water falling into a pool grew in intensity. She imagined the spray, tiny droplets, hitting her face as the water entered from where it fell naturally from the wall. She made certain to color the water, that deep crystal blue she always found waterfalls and the pools beneath them to be. The beautiful ones. Her rock formations followed the lines of a natural basin, collecting the water as it ran off the wall. There was natural drainage, a small runoff that took excess water out of the cave, to run back into the ground.
Once again, she stepped forward, raising her hands into the air to aid her near-perfect illusion. Isai blocked her. “Before you do that, look at what you’ve done.”
She could hear the water falling into the pool, the sound as real as the illusion in her mind had been. She’d always been good at illusion because she did pay attention to detail. She turned her head slowly and the basin was there. Solid. Real. She stared at it for a long time and then looked up at him.
“You did something.”
He shook his head. “No, little mage. You did something. You created exactly what you wanted to create because you are Carpathian. You are also mage, and that makes you extremely powerful. And dangerous to your father and his followers.”
She couldn’t help the little surge of hope, but she didn’t dare believe him. She would have known, right? How could she not know? It didn’t make sense.
“Come here to me. You need to feed. You are very pale. If you are going to continue to create things, you will need your strength. I have fed, although, I do crave the taste of your blood. A lifemate’s blood is perfection to him.”
She was a little obsessed with his taste. She had continually pushed aside the need that would come at her out of nowhere. Just him making the offer to her brought such a surge of absolute hunger for his taste alone, it shook her. That wasn’t right. She recognized that she shouldn’t want his blood to the point that everything else went out of her head. Worse, the moment he made his offer, she wanted him to take her blood.
Daringly, she looked up at him, already taking the few steps that separated them, so she was standing in front of him. “I want you to take mine as well.”
“That can be dangerous, kislány hän ku meke sarnaakmet minan.”
“We both live dangerously,” she pointed out. “Just by being who we are.” She ran her hand up his body, from his wonderful abdomen with its multitude of muscles to the defined muscles of his chest. Her lips followed the path of her palm. “You taste delicious. Your skin.” He did. She didn’t care what that sounded like, need was on her. Overwhelming her.
She found his heartbeat and then slid her tongue over the beating pulse just above that. She felt the slide of her teeth and she bit deep. His body jerked. She felt the lengthening of his cock while the taste of his ancient blood burst through her senses. Perfection. Absolute perfection.
She stroked his cock, petting him, wishing his clothes were gone. He couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking, so she built that picture in her mind while she drank. Isai. Naked. Her hand around the thick length of him. Shockingly, his clothes were gone, and she found herself with his hot girth in her fist. That was even more perfect.
She drank more and slipped her thumb over the wide crown to smear those pearly drops and use them to help pump him while she consumed his blood. When his hand came up to warn her to stop, she did so immediately, licking across the twin little holes that proclaimed him hers and then licking her way down his chest and abdomen to his cock.
Take my blood. She had to entice him. She could already feel his rejection, the way he was steeling himself to back away from her. He hadn’t been able to resist her when she was feeding, the erotic pull between them was too strong, but now that her tongue had closed the twin holes, he was gathering his strength. Please, she added.