"And?" she prompted when he fell silent again. "You don't get that worried look in your eyes because the professor broke something. What else?"
"Dax found two of the porters dead that first night. They were returning to see if we all made it away from the volcano. Fernando and Jorge."
She shook her head. "That's so terrible." She knew the bad news wasn't over and waited in silence for him to tell her the rest.
"One of the guides and one of the professor's students are missing. Pedro went to find clean water for breakfast. Marty went with him. They never came back." Gary's expression went grimmer. "Dax believes the vampire he's hunting might have found them." The look on his face said he believed it, too. "But just in case he's wrong, we have most of the men out looking for them now," he added.
Giving her a moment to process the news, Gary handed her empty soup bowl out to Jubal again and exchanged it for two blue metal camping cups.
Vampire. Riley shook her head in disbelief. Vampires were one of the monsters from stories. They were the thing you dressed up as on Halloween, the evil creature in a scary movie. They weren't supposed to be real. But then again there weren't supposed to be dragons, and her mother wasn't supposed to be dead, and ... her heart seemed to skip as she thought about that man. He wasn't supposed to be here, either, whatever he was.
She took the camping cup Gary held out and took a grateful sip of the tepid water. It was warm and tasted of ash and chemicals, but it quenched her thirst and soothed her parched throat.
"What else aren't you telling me?" The image of two dragons facing off in front of them rose to mind. "What about the hunter, Dax? Did you know he was here the whole time?"
"No, of course not. We had no idea Dax or the vampire was here. I don't think anyone did. From what Dax told me, he and Mitro-the vampire-were locked in the earth under the mountain for a very long time. A Carpathian woman named Arabejila, who came here with Dax to hunt Mitro, sealed them both in. Dax suspects Arabejila was your ancestor, and that she's the one who passed down the ritual you and your mother performed to keep the volcano from erupting and freeing them. According to Dax, Mitro is worse than most vampires, and he has a gift for escaping bad situations. Maybe that gift helped him wear down the barrier, but in any case, he's free now." Gary noticeably swallowed after he spoke.
"So what exactly is a Carpathian? You keep using that word like it should mean something to me." Riley needed an explanation as to how vampires and dragons had become a reality.
"The Carpathians are an ancient race-a different species, really-that has existed alongside mankind for a very long time. In fact, the Carpathians say they are of the earth itself. They have very long life spans, and possess amazing gifts and abilities, which is no doubt what spawned all the legends and myths about vampires and shapeshifters. It would take a very long time to give all the details, so I'll just hit the high points. I am sure Dax will be happy to answer any other questions you may have." He gave a small grin.
"Jubal and I have been friends of the Carpathians for some time now. We work with them and for them and count ourselves lucky for the privilege. They are really remarkable beings."
Riley couldn't stop herself from glancing down at Gary's wrist where Dax had taken his blood. If he'd lived with the Carpathians for a long time, was he a friend or more like a pet cow they milked whenever they needed to feed?
Noticing the direction of her gaze, Gary smiled. "I'm fine. Sometimes you can get a little dizzy from blood loss, but Dax was careful not to take too much. They need blood to survive, and the way I see it, giving to them isn't much different than donating to the Red Cross or the local blood drive."
"Except the Red Cross doesn't drink what they take."
"No, but they do use it to save lives. Humans need blood to survive, and so do Carpathians. The only real difference is how they get it. Besides, most people never know they have had their blood taken. It's really quite unobtrusive and painless. Carpathians use their abilities to put a person into a dream state."
"So they enthrall people. Like vampires do in novels and movies."
"Yes, there's nothing malicious about it. Most usually flood the person with happy thoughts, take what they need and leave pleasant memories behind when they leave."
Gary rubbed his wrist as if he could still feel the teeth breaking through the skin. Maybe he could. He hadn't looked like he was in a trance state when Dax was drinking from him.
"Why aren't there any marks?" Riley asked. "I watched him take your blood, but I don't see any sign of a cut or even a scratch on your wrist."
"That's because a Carpathian's saliva has rapid healing agents in it that seem to work on just about anything organic. Wounds close almost instantly. It's really something. They have other gifts, too. Abilities that would seem to fall more in the realm of magic than science. But all those gifts come at a price."
"What price?"
"A pretty steep one. The way it was explained to me, each Carpathian male is born with a seed of darkness in him. At first it's nothing-less than nothing. Like a grain of sand in the ocean. But as the males age, the darkness in them grows."
"By 'darkness,' what do you mean, exactly?"
"I guess you'd call it evil-or, rather, the capacity for evil. Sort of like all the aggressive emotions-hate, violence, selfishness. Once a Carpathian male reaches adulthood, that darkness starts pushing, trying to dominate him. Like I said, Carpathians live a very long time. The longer the male lives, the stronger the darkness inside him becomes."
Gary paused to take a sip of his water, but whether he did so from thirst or nerves, Riley couldn't say. He looked a little uncomfortable.
"The Carpathian males lose the ability to see in color, then the ability to feel emotion. I don't have a clear understanding of how that works exactly. I think it's a little different from person to person. For some, I gather it's a clean cut, like the lights just went out and every emotion they ever had is simply taken away. Love, sadness, joy, regret, all of it's gone, and what is left is just emptiness. For others, it's apparently not such a drastic change, and their emotions just fade. There are some who use their memories to recall what emotion used to feel like, but I'm told it's like hearing under water. It's not the same, but they cling to it, because it's all they have. But even that doesn't last. The darkness eventually corrupts everything, and the Carpathians know it. That leaves them only two choices: either meet the sun and die-and yes, that part works just like it does in all vampires-or embrace the evil and become a vampire, as Mitro did."
Riley looked down at her hands, inexplicably sad. "How terrible for them. So they are vampires, after all."
"No, they aren't. But they can become vampires if they embrace the darkness inside them. That's what we tried to tell you before. The vampires aren't just evil; they've chosen to be evil. They choose to give up their souls because they feel a rush when they kill while feeding. They relish the hate, the destruction, the corruption. There's no worse monster on this earth than the vampire. And the Carpathians like Dax hunt them. And Riley, something you need to understand is that some of the vampires they hunt were once their friends. Maybe even family members. It takes a very strong person to bear a burden like that."
Riley struggled to wrap her head around the information Gary was sharing. Rationally, she had a hard time believing in vampires and shape-shifters, but she'd seen them herself. She couldn't deny they existed. But then, she knew magic existed-the sort of magic that defied rational thought. She possessed it herself, as had her mother before her. The hardest part to come to grips with was the idea that Dax wasn't yet a vampire but might become one. Seeing the image of Dax, standing before her as red and gold flecks fell down all around him, his eyes so focused and yet so lost.