Afanasiv had an uneasy feeling that what was inside Olga was only the opening salvo. If this was really the opening gambit to Xayvion’s scheme to wipe out the Lycans, there had to be more. A lot more.
Dimitri, reach out to Fen and Zev. Call in everyone close. Have the wolves search. Read the land. I believe there are more vampires and demons hunting us and any Lycans they can find this night. Vasilisa, have one of your brothers send the warning to your people to beware, to arm themselves.
One of us would have to be outside to send a message that would be heard throughout our entire territory.
Find a way without triggering Olga into action.
That will be difficult. She is snarling and going from wolf to woman and railing against us as if we treated her like garbage the entire time she was with us. None of what she is saying is the truth, Siv. None of it.
She is not Olga. She is a Trojan horse with an army of the enemy inside her, waiting for the signal to get out and murder the royals. That includes you, sívamet. All of you must be prepared to fight for your lives.
We have been doing so since we were very young. My mother began my instruction in the art of fighting demons when I was a toddler.
There was confidence in her voice, but he could still feel her fear for him. She was very opposed to the two ancients making an attempt to turn the tables on Xayvion. He sent her reassurance and continued inspecting every fold, looking for the slightest anomaly. Surprisingly, it didn’t take them long to find the tiny bump nestled in a crevice of Olga’s occipital lobe. The occipital lobe was located at the back of the skull behind the temporal lobe. The occipital lobe had been their first choice to search because it would allow Xayvion to use Olga’s vision and also, through the temporal lobe, hear what was being said.
Now would be a good time to create a diversion, one that has Xayvion watching you closely and trying to keep all of you in sight. Try not to trigger Olga, but one of you slip out and warn the Lycans of the possibility of vampires or demons or even humans being used to try to wipe out as many families as possible. Then get back inside as quickly as possible before Olga notices one of you gone.
Benedek interrupted.Tell me which royal will leave the room, and I will duplicate him. The women are hidden and protected. I can aid you.
Vasilisa swamped Afanasiv with warmth, and then she spoke to her brothers.Grigor, you are closest to the door. Benedek will cast an illusion that you are here with us. Slip out and warn our people.
The room is small to fight adequately,Petru observed.All of the royals could slip out and we could duplicate them.
Afanasiv had already considered that possibility. His every instinct told him the mage had thought of that likelihood and had somehow prepared for it.I think he would know. One, if there is chaos for a moment, he wouldn’t feel the difference, especially if Benedek gets weight and feeling exact.He added the last as a caution to his brother from the monastery.
“Olga, I don’t understand you.” Vasilisa took a step toward her aunt. “I really don’t. You’ve become so belligerent toward all of us for no reason at all. When did your animosity start? When we were just children? If you really did hate our mother, if she really was that awful to you, and I’m in no way conceding that she was, how could youextend her behavior to us? We all adored you. We put you up on a pedestal. You know we did.”
As she spoke, she let her voice go from calm to that edge of anger. The walls of the room expanded and contracted. The floor beneath their feet undulated, the boards creaking and moaning in protest. Vasilisa didn’t seem to notice as she took another step toward Olga. Her eyes changed dramatically, becoming a deep blue that seemed to pierce right through her aunt like twin lasers. Her dark hair, the mass of silk that had appeared to be tamed, was suddenly wild, crackling with energy, tendrils rising into the air around her head like antennae.
She appeared so threatening that Olga took a step back, her hands coming up, fingers curling defensively. Fur broke out on the backs of her arms and hands, and her immaculate crimson nails appeared to be hooks that could rend and tear. She snarled and growled in warning.
“Why would you hate us so much when we were just children and couldn’t possibly know how our mother treated you?” Vasilisa demanded. “Welovedyou. We loved you before our parents were killed and even more after. How could you not feel that from us?”
Olga tossed her head and then shook it over and over, the growls still rumbling in her throat. As Vasilisa became more belligerent toward Olga, the building reacted to her anger. She was clearly trying to keep it under control, pacing back and forth. The walls continued to breathe in and out. The floor undulated as if a seismic event were occurring. Pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling so that it rained white powder and chunks of mortar.
“Vasi, take a breath, you’re losing control,” Andros ordered, backing away from his sister, his hands up defensively.
Rudlof cringed away from both Olga and Vasilisa, his movements distracting now that he found he was without silver chains holding him prisoner. He rushed first toward one corner of the room, hands over his head, and then to the other, back and forth, agitated by the way the house appeared to have come alive and was shaking to pieces.
“Why don’t you tellhershe’s losing control,” Vasilisa demanded, swinging around to confront Andros. Even pacing and throwing her arms wildly into the air, she kept her body solidly between Olga and the ruling king.
It was now or never. Afanasiv had to admire his lifemate. As a diversion, it was perfect. The chaos she created was believable. Benedek had cast the illusion of Grigor pressed up against the far wall between the door and window. The window bulged outward and his head swiveled between watching it and his sister. With Rudlof so agitated and scuddling back and forth, his bulk continuously blocked the royal from Olga’s sight, just giving flashes of him.
Petru and Afanasiv waited until they felt the presence of the high mage. The activity drew him, as they were certain it would. He tried to sort out what he was seeing. Tried to force Olga to face in the direction he wanted her to go. She growled continuously and kept shaking her head, which rocked him and gave him very little in the way of assessing the room.
Petru and Afanasiv drifted into the sliver and straight into the open mind of Xayvion. He was so occupied with trying to control his crumbling Trojan horse that he had no chance of feeling their careful entry. It had never occurred to him that he was vulnerable to an attack—or that anyone would be foolish enough to try such an audacious venture. He hadn’t erected safeguards.
They had to be very careful as they sorted through his mind, looking through his memories for the purpose behind his need of Dragonseeker blood and his plan for wiping out the Lycan species. Afanasiv caught the first hint of Xayvion studying Xavier as he repeatedly tried experiments with Rhiannon’s blood. She was Dragonseeker, a woman he had taken prisoner and had three children by. Each time he took her blood, her blood changed properties. Xavier became furious at the phenomenon. The same thing happened when he took the blood from his children and then his children’s children. No matter how hemanaged to get Dragonseeker blood, the blood changed properties before he could experiment on it—as if it were alive.
Xayvion was fascinated by the idea that the blood recognized an enemy. What else did it do? Were all Dragonseekers children of Mother Earth? Lycans used the ground’s warning system to talk to one another, but it wasn’t the same thing. Carpathians were rejuvenated in the soil and considered the earth to be healing and a part of them, but that wasn’t the same thing, either. A “child” of Mother Earth would be healed by her in a different way, one Xayvion had heard rumors of but hadn’t witnessed. He wanted to experiment.
In his mind, there were a number of experiments he wanted to try with a Dragonseeker. He wanted to see how the ground reacted to a wounded child of Mother Earth. He believed that once he could duplicate the blood, he could trick Mother Earth into accepting him as her child, and he would gain even more power. He also felt he could draw a female to him.
He had the Dragonseekers in one place. He believed the women held great power, maybe more so than the males. His idea was to acquire a pair. Skyler would be the perfect prize. There was such power in her, although she had not quite come into her own. The male he wanted was Afanasiv, because he was truly an ancient, and his power was beyond imagining. To control him, he would have to keep Vasilisa alive. That meant not killing all the royals, but studying her, which would yield helpful ways to draw the Lycans back who had left their country.
He knew the royals were the glue that held the Lycans together. No one spoke of them, but they protected their people from demons and vampires and worked to keep them in the modern world. Destroying the Jaguar species had been far easier. The royals actually served their people, and it wasn’t easy to turn them against one another.
Lycans had left their homeland to live in other parts of the world. They were loyal to their species and to the royals, but they were spread throughout other countries. That meant finding a way to get them toreturn. Xayvion had come up with a three-pronged attack. Kill the royals and as many Lycanfamiliesas possible, leaving no witnesses other than a child or two this night. Those witnesses would speak of Carpathians coming in the dead of night to murder parents and siblings.