he looked at her, every negative emotion melted away. Isai didn’t attempt to hide his feelings for her, that stark, raw love that consumed him. She was his everything and he had no problems showing her that.
“Barnabas can never take anything from us, Julija. He simply cannot. He does not even come into our equation. Distance him so that he is nothing more than a bad memory that we are working to eradicate together. To do that, we have to get ahead of him. Figure out his moves and counter them, much like we would if we were playing chess on a board. He is nothing to worry about. Do you understand what I am saying to you? There is you. And there is me. There is us. Our family.” He indicated the cats. “That is enough to worry about.”
She wanted to cry. She was a crier, and that was a bit embarrassing since he was so pragmatic about everything. She was emotional. She loved him all the more because he meant every single word. He didn’t view Barnabas as a threat. He was an obstacle, but not once had Isai thought in terms of insurmountable. He was an enemy that had to be dealt with.
Julija nodded, tears swimming in her eyes. “I can’t believe I almost missed having you. How could I have been so careless?” She stroked the loving lines of his face. “What do you need? What are you looking for?”
“I want to know the reasons Barnabas is so obsessed with you. I think I am onto something, but the more I understand him, the better chance we have of defeating him. He has a master plan, Julija. I can feel it. If he is the same man, Barna, as the mage working under Xavier all those centuries ago, he is a mage to be reckoned with. Anatolie was afraid of him. Crina tried to curry his favor.”
“Sometimes when he looked at me, I saw someone else in his eyes.” She shivered and rubbed her hands back and forth on her arms for comfort. “Someone very dark and scary.”
Isai didn’t tell her she was crazy. Instead, he stood and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into the shelter of his body. His chin found the top of her head and he just held her until the goose bumps receded and warmth spread through her body.
When he stepped away from her, he was fully clothed. “It is possible he has a sliver of Xavier in him. Xavier would have been working on how to possess other bodies. He used the body of his grandson ruthlessly, looking to impregnate women so he could have children of Carpathian blood. He wanted immortality. Another way to find it would have been to put pieces of himself in other bodies.”
“I was always taught that weakened one. Anatolie said it was forbidden. Still, I thought he’d tried it on more than one occasion.”
Isai nodded. “It does. Your father may even have a splinter of Xavier in him. Who knows how many times Xavier did such a thing before he realized it weakened him? No one had done those types of experiments before. Xavier had to learn as he went along.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We need to find the book before there is a chance that Barnabas can get his hands on it. Then we need to destroy it. That is our first goal. Finding a way to destroy it. If we can, then we will chance undoing whatever Iulian has wrought. He believed the book could not be found because he’d hidden it with his blood. Unfortunately for him, I am the last of my bloodline now that he is gone. He didn’t know I still lived. He had to have spilled his blood, sacrificing himself to hide it.”
“If only you can find it, Isai, why can’t we just leave well enough alone? If we can’t find it because of Iulian’s sacrifice, neither can Barnabas.” She knew why. She’d argued with him over it, but now that they were here, and she knew Barnabas was so close, she wanted to run.
“You know he will never stop looking.” His voice was gentle. “If we destroy him, Sergey will look for it. One after another will come until it is found. It is best if the book is gone from this earth. This is a place where many people come to view the beauty of the land. We don’t want it to become