“Without Carpathians there would be no vampires. Do you despise me because I’m Carpathian or wish that I wasn’t?”
“Of course not. I think it’s cool that you’re Carpathian. You do wonderful things.”
“I think it is extraordinary that you are mage, and more, that you bear the mark of the high mage. That means you hold tremendous power inside of you.”
She turned her head to look up at him. “You like that I have power? Why?”
There was a note of wariness in her voice. He wanted to smile, there in the darkness, surrounded by the suspicious shadow cats. Each of them had reason to be leery, but still, they were coming together, giving one another a chance.
“I will always know, should we be separated for any reason, that you are strong enough and dangerous enough to take care of not only yourself, but our children. Tariq Asenguard has the compound in San Diego where Elisabeta is being safeguarded. There are a few women who are teaching the others how to defend themselves. In the old days, many of our women were Carpathian and learned from the time they were young how to fight off a vampire if it was necessary. They didn’t hunt, as we do, but if necessary, they could defend themselves. Now, with some human women becoming lifemates, that is not the case and the fear is we will lose them.”
She smiled at him. “I’m glad you like that I can defend myself.”
“What I do not like is you using yourself up.”
“What does that mean?”
He heard the genuine puzzlement in her voice.
“Julija, you were so exhausted you would have died falling from the cliff.”
“It was more that I haven’t practiced shifting. I didn’t know I could. I think mage first, so I was trying to think of a spell to give me wings. I’ll get the hang of it. I don’t know why I never consider that I might be able to shift. I really thought that everything I did was an illusion, not reality.”
He brushed a kiss on top of her head. “In some ways, it is both. But the illusion becomes reality for us. Shifting is very real and a skill that would be good for you to practice. You want to become very adept at it. The faster you are, and the more images you can hold in your mind in detail, the easier you can call them up when needed, without any real thought. As a child, a Carpathian starts training almost immediately. No one wants their son or daughter to try on their own and end up in the middle of a rock.”
He watched her closely. There was no indication that she was uncomfortable. He had heard that conversion was horribly painful. The impurities and toxins in the body had to be purged. Organs were reshaped. That was an extremely painful process. Sometimes there were convulsions.
He ran his hand down her side, over the curve of her hip to her thigh. She was totally relaxed, her body lying close to his. He kneaded her firm bottom and then traced her ribs.
“You were magnificent today, sívamet. I could barely conceive of your courage.”
“I wasn’t certain I could pull it off, but I knew, even with me taking down Vasile’s safeguards, he would have all kinds of traps laid out. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to know. If I had tried to help you with them, I couldn’t focus on taking his magic. To me, that was the far more important obstacle to remove for you.”
“You chose right. I had no problems with his many monsters.”
She turned her head and lapped at the raw tears in his belly. “They came close.”
“You have to get close to monsters to stop them. Then they have to burn to ensure they do not rise again.”
“You burned them after. You had to have, or I would have seen the flashes.”
“Vasile would have seen them as well,” Isai conceded. “I loved what you did, Julija . . .” He trailed off.
“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”
“I am not certain my heart can take you doing it again. Hunting a dark, powerful mage can be much more dangerous than hunting a vampire. You made it easy for me today, I will admit that—”
“We make a good team,” she interrupted and then yawned.
He rested his hand on her forehead. There was no spike in her temperature. He had been told that in a conversion, the temperature could soar to dangerous heights.