A scurrying of feet told him he had missed another enemy she had not. He dared to glance at Garald to see if he had known something else was with the vampires. He shook his head, eyes restless. Like Siv, he was looking for other enemies, as well.
“Vitus has several pawns he will sacrifice before he sends in Mars and Rufus. They’ll direct the pawns. Vitus will be safe somewhere close by. I’ll try to find him. He’ll be a blight in the trees or a rock, mirrored in the ice somehow. He is very old and has learned ways to prolong his life that few know. At the first hint that the battle is not going his way, he will attempt to run. I must pursue him if I am at allcapable. I cannot allow him to get away. He has destroyed entire villages in his petty need for revenge. He enjoys inflicting horrific pain on humans before he allows them to die. I cannot allow his life to continue.”
He knew he was apologizing ahead of time to his lifemate. He didn’t want her to judge him too harshly if he left her when he believed she was safe. Naturally, he would want to be with her now that he had found her, but he was a vampire hunter, and he had his duty to carry out. He would have to follow Vitus should he run.
She inclined her head slightly to acknowledge that she heard and understood him. He was connected to her, but he didn’t have time to evaluate what she was thinking. The pawns had begun to scramble through the rocks to reach them.
“Fighting a lesser vampire is not easy, although I may have made it sound so,” Siv continued. “They are in various stages of development, some barely able to function and some getting very close to emerging into fighting machines. You have to be extremely cautious.”
He shouldn’t have been so dismissive when he spoke of the pawns. Garald and Vasilisa acted so confident in their fighting abilities, it was easy to feel as if he needn’t worry about them, but he wasn’t going to take chances losing his lifemate when he’d just found her.
The pawns drew closer, showing themselves against the white backdrop of pristine snow. Most maintained the facade of the Carpathians they once were—tall, handsome men with long dark hair. Eyes were sunken in on some of them. A few had tiny little parasites crawling around their mouths and noses. One had only patches of hair on his head, the bald spots red and raw with a multitude of white parasites wiggling on his scalp.
“Have you seen any of them before?” Vasilisa asked him.
“My lady,” he replied as gently as he could. “Had I seen them before, they would not be here now. Why do you still have the sword raised high in the air?”
She had barely glanced at the pawns, and they were drawingcloser. Her attention was riveted on something else—something he couldn’t see. He had the vague impression of shadowy figures movingunderthe snow, but he couldn’t be certain. It was almost as if he was looking too hard and wanted to find something. But he didn’t for one moment dismiss his lifemate’s curious concern. He had fought beside his brother Sandu and his lifemate, Adalasia, when she fought demons from the underworld. He had a bad feeling his lady was about to fight that same battle, only she would do so on her own.
“You know they are there,” Afanasiv said.
Garald took a deep breath as he surveyed his opponents. “On the right, lover boy, what the hell is that? I thought vampires might be the worst of it, but no, that looks pretty damned revolting.”
Even Vasilisa took her concentration off her surroundings for just one moment to glance to the right to see what her brother meant. “Oh. Ugh. Not looking good. I think his head is falling off.”
“That is a puppet. A ghoul. Whatever you choose to call it. The vampire takes a human and makes him into a flesh-eating monster. In exchange for his soul, he will do anything the vampire commands, including murder his entire family, his own children, his parents, everyone he’s ever known,” Siv explained.
Vasilisa turned away from the sight of the puppet as he stumbled and clawed his way up the rocky hill in an effort to keep pace with the pawns.
“He will try to tear the flesh from your bones with his teeth if he gets close despite anything the vampire or the pawns tell him. Puppets have little or no self-control,” Siv warned.
“Vasi,” Garald whispered, sorrow permeating his voice, driving all cockiness away. “That’s Mark. I sent him out to inspect the high meadow right after the quake. He’s one of our best trackers. I saw strange tracks I couldn’t identify. I would have gone myself, but I was called back by the council.”
Vasilisa took a deep, steadying breath before she turned to inspectthe puppet staggering up the hillside so determinedly. Siv wanted to step up and put his arms around her, something he’d never done in his life for anyone that he could recall. He could feel the grief coming off both brother and sister in waves.
“You can’t allow them to know you know him or care that he is the way he is,” he advised, aching for them. For her. He would have to destroy the puppet first, before either of them had a chance to think too much on how this man had gotten the way he was. “He is no longer the man you knew.”
Garald started to say something, shook his head and went silent for a moment. “This isn’t your fault. Vasilisa, whatever happens, loyalty and love.”
“Loyalty and love,” she murmured back to him. The ancient sword pointed into the sky, and she called out in her own language. “You cannot hide from the light.” The sword blossomed into radiant light, a crystal heat that spread like the sun across the sky, encompassing the floor of the gorge where Siv and Garald feigned being captives. The sudden brightness illuminated the ice sculpture that was the waterfall, as well as the series of dark rocks the falls fell over and the pool of water below.
With Vasilisa’s crystal light burning in the sky, the ice sculpture of the falls was magnificent. Nothing but nature could provide such a stunning display of beauty. Siv found it obscene that the swaying pawns, the puppets and the small, strange creatures emerging from beneath the ground at Vasilisa’s command could possibly be anywhere in the same vicinity.
The vampires wailed and shrank back, trying to hide from the light. The creatures, seven of them, looked like crosses between small humans and large red or pink salamanders with enormous mouths. They had arms, legs and heads closely resembling those of a salamander, right down to suction cups on their feet and webbing between their toes. Their bodies were longer and shaped more humanoid. They crawled ontheir bellies toward Vasilisa in little stops and starts. The hideous noises they made sounded either like high-pitched shrieks that hurt the eardrums or excessively low notes that hurt the organs in the body.
Siv turned the sounds down until they were barely heard and then connected with Vasilisa to ensure she had been able to turn the sounds down as well. As a Carpathian and Lycan blend, she certainly was capable. She had done so. She gave him a haughty little chin lift.
Next, he touched her brother. Siv was extremely cautious reaching out to slip into her brother’s mind. Garald seemed to be very sensitive to any energy moving around him. The moment it got close to him, Garald blocked it. It seemed to be an automatic response anytime outside energy came near him, which was intriguing.
Few things were new to him. He had seen demons. The hounds of hell. He knew the tricks of the master vampires. He had fought creatures he knew no name for. Garald was undoubtedly Lycan, and he was of a royal bloodline, but what exactly did that mean? Both Vasilisa and Garald possessed something very different in their makeup. He had thought, with Vasilisa, it was the combination of being Carpathian and Lycan, but now he realized it was far more than that.
Are you paying attention to the sickening abominations creeping closer to us?
I am always aware of the close proximity of any vampire, my lady. Have no fear. While you battle the demons, I will take care of the vampires and puppet.
The lesser vampires called out to the puppet to stop, the one Garald had named Mark. Siv could have told all of them that the ghoul was too far gone to hear anything. He wouldn’t even recognize his master’s voice. He had seen hundreds of them over the centuries, and this one exhibited all the signs of the last stages of decomposition. The skin was rotting and sloughing off his scalp, face and neck. His head was skewed to one side, his neck broken so the head bounced and flopped obscenely with every step.
The high-pitched shrieks and keening continued with everystaggering step. Mark’s arms were outstretched in front of him, but the skin had split open to reveal another set of raw muscles that were eaten through with the same rot. Worms crawled through the holes in the flesh and dropped to the ground, leaving behind tiny trails of smoke in the snow.