Dark Carousel (Dark #30) - Christine Feehan Page 0,137

about helping her.

She needs time.

Charlotte’s voice soothed him, but . . . I’m not certain she has time—if any of them have time. We have to come to a decision on Liv and act on it this next rising. That told him he was still concerned about converting the girl and what harm could be done to her. He was a man who was thorough. He studied a problem from every angle and then attacked it with confidence, but these were children and he was responsible for them. More, he cared about them. If he lost Liv in the conversion, he would never forgive himself.

Liv was now in bed, Mary singing softly and Donald sitting on the opposite side, holding Liv’s hand. Even as she drifted off, there were tears on her face.

I should be there with her, Charlotte reiterated, and her voice broke.

That little catch in her voice made his heart hurt. Sielamet. It won’t be much longer. We’re building something good here. I’m going to send you back to sleep and when we next wake, we can call the others to help in converting Liv. It was all he could give her. Her tears broke his heart, just as Liv’s did. The only solution was to bring Liv fully into their world. It wouldn’t change what happened to her, but it would give her other tools to deal with the trauma, and Vadim wouldn’t be able to get to her.

I would like to go on record that this paralysis thing is for the birds. Seriously, Tariq, the rest of it, even the blood thing and being in the ground, I can deal with, but not being able to move sucks. Anyone claustrophobic might have a real problem with this.

Just like that, Charlotte managed to push the harsh realities of his life away to replace them with a softness and warmth inside. With amusement. She was so perfect for him. For the children. For his fellow hunters, the ones she was a little afraid of, but still worried about and admired and respected.

You do realize it is impossible not to fall in love with you. He took his gaze from the screens and watched her face. The softness. The way she looked as if she might cry.

That’s how I feel about you.

Mary has a beautiful gift. She can sing Liv to sleep. If I could sing, sielamet, I would sing you to sleep, but I don’t have that gift.

He felt her smile, and it touched him somewhere deep inside. If it was possible to love a woman completely in such a short period of time, he was already there. He knew her intimately, inside and out, and she was everything he’d ever wanted.

Sleep now, my love. I will wake you in the soil so you can practice opening the earth and closing it over you.

I’m not certain I’m ready for that, Tariq, but I’ll try.

There it was again. One of a thousand reasons. It scared her to think about the soil closing over her head—a very human reaction—but she was willing to give it a try. For him. He saw that very clearly. But not just for him. She wanted to be independent, and she wanted to be able to take care of her children.

He added that to the already thousand reasons he’d fallen hard, and he sent her to sleep. He would wait until he was certain Liv had settled and didn’t need further aid. His greatest worry was that she would harm herself. He watched Donald and Mary slowly get up and slip out of Liv’s room, retreating back to their small cottage. They’d lived in their car so long that anything larger than the little cottage was daunting to them. They held hands all the way back to their home, strolling rather than hurrying.

The camera system was thorough, allowing him to see every square inch of his compound. He’d designed the defense system himself, working with Josef, the young Carpathian he considered a genius. He’d never actually met Josef, but they communicated regularly via computer and cell phone. The boy had ideas, a really good grasp on modern technology and how it could help living and working right in the city the way Tariq did. He liked the kid and wished he’d relocate to San Diego and help him and the other hunters track down the women in the database for psychics.

Tired, he took one last look at Liv to assure himself she was all right

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