do his worst. He would sense his prey was weak and would strike hard with everything he had at his disposal. To rid her body of the splinter in the middle of the conversion was madness, but Tariq had to go with his gut. Emeline had reminded him of that by sending her message through Liv.
It is too dangerous. We should wait.
We have to do it now. He’s attacking her. If we don’t stop him he will win this battle in the end. We will successfully convert her with very little pain, but she will die. He put conviction in his voice. In his mind. He knew he spoke the truth. He was a good enough healer to get by, but not like Dragomir was reputed to be. Tariq would rather have waited for a Daratrazanoff, one of a line of legendary healers, but he had run out of time.
You hold your woman to you.
Unexpectedly it was Siv who intervened, a man much like Dragomir. He had also been in the monastery, a place where very ancient hunters retreated when all was lost to them. No memories. No emotion. No color. Not even the whisper of temptation. After centuries of hunting vampires, they believed it was cowardice to seek the dawn so they withdrew into the monastery to protect humans and Carpathians alike. Siv had left half a century before Dragomir, probably around the same time Val had left.
I will aid Dragomir while you hold her spirit in your hands.
The unexpected offer was humbling to Tariq. Like anyone else, he was uneasy in the presence of the three legendary hunters. Any male wearing the tattoo art of the monastery was unpredictable and extremely dangerous. He had welcomed them as hunters, as brethren, but he watched them closely.
I will add my strength to my brothers’. That was Val.
I will safeguard them and you while Maksim’s woman and the others shoulder her pain, Nicu said.
There it was. Solidarity. What it meant to be Carpathian. They were far from the mountains of their birth. Far from their prince and his power. Still, they stood together as they always had in times of trouble. Protecting their women and children.
I will hold in mind the safeguards woven around the splinter to cage it in. Take great care that he doesn’t attack one of you, Tariq cautioned.
Dragomir made a sound. A single note of disgust that spoke volumes. He had known the Malinov family—not Ruslan and his brothers, but their parents. Clearly he didn’t think much of them or the threat they presented, and that was what worried Tariq the most. If those from the monastery, locked away while the world had changed so drastically, while their enemies had changed, underestimated the danger, they could fall. Tariq knew they used the ancient method of sharing information to catch up on everything they had missed over the lost time. All Carpathians did so, but the intricacies of technology, of the sophisticated weapons man had developed, the monitoring systems, the dangers of cell phones and cameras, all would be difficult for an ancient to understand overnight.
All the while Tariq held Charlotte close, feeling the shudders and contortions of her body, holding her waning light to him beneath their blanket of mineral-rich soil. I am with you, sielamet. Do not try to stray too far from me. You will feel the others enter. The light will be powerful. They are coming to aid you, to remove all trace of Vadim from you. He didn’t want her to fear the others, and he knew it was a huge thing to her to get rid of any part of Vadim. Knowing that they were removing the shadow from her might help to keep her with him.
Her light had moved inches downward, journeying away from her body, bumping into the circle he’d created to contain her. I am with you, he whispered again. Softly. Intimately. Into her mind. Stay with me, Charlotte. With us. We need you. All of us.
Dragomir was so powerful that when he entered, pure spirit, it felt like an invasion. A takeover. More, his spirit wasn’t pure light as all healing spirit was. Tariq had never witnessed a spirit so ravaged. It was more streaks than solid. More ivory than white, and that ivory was stained and worn.
Siv entered next and like Dragomir’s, his presence was an intrusion of sheer dominance. His spirit was no longer white and solid, but a mix of silver streaks and white light.
Val