Dark Curse Page 0,83

her.

"No matter how adept they become, we use every tool we can to give ourselves the advantage. I know you really want to do this, but it is always necessary to protect yourself."

Lara nodded. She'd been too distracted by him, not the promise of flying. "I'm sorry, that was careless of me." She wished, just once, that he'd be distracted enough by her to forget everything else but her.

"Reach out with your senses and feel the night. Merge with me if you need to and see how spaces should feel. After a while you will be uncomfortable, your mind and skin prickly if you sense the undead near. They are a toxin to our environment and we are sensitive to all things of the earth."

She reached out as directed, letting her senses expand. It took a little experimentation, but she felt triumphant when she achieved it. She sensed animals, and people. The wind whispered in her ear secrets of the night. "I think we're all right to go."

He nodded, his fingers sliding from her wrist to her hand and walked her from the cavern to the edge of the cliff.

Lara shivered with excitement. The night was overcast, with large gray clouds, heavy with snow, but everything sparkled, both in the sky and on the ground below, as if she was surrounded by a world of diamonds. "I've never seen the night like this before. I always thought I should want to be able to walk in the sun, but seeing the night like this, I can't imagine what I was thinking."

"Why would you want to be out where the light hurts your eyes and sun burns your skin?" There was real curiosity in his voice. "The night belongs to us. It is our world and the best part of it. Who would ever want the sun when they can have this?" He spread out his arms to encompass the night. "I might wish that I was not quite so vulnerable when the sun is high, but I would never give this up for the ability to see daylight."

Lara frowned. "I guess being raised where my skin burned and all the children could play and swim, but I had to hide away, made me long for something I couldn't have."

He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her to him to drop a hard kiss on her pouting lips. "Let me show you why the night is so much better. Aside from the obvious advantage, that it suits our physical hungers..." His voice held a suggestive tone and he smiled unrepentantly when she flicked him a quick glance. "... the night is just plain fun. Have you ever had just plain fun?"

Lara looked out over the valley far below them. She could see the bogs shimmering with ice crystals, the meadows capped with white powder. The world had a shimmery quality she'd never noticed before.

"Take a deep breath."

Lara did so. She drew the fresh, crisp night air into her lungs.

"Do you feel the energy? It surrounds every living thing. Tune yourself to it, the energy feeds your power, so you can use it to build whatever you need fast."

"Carpathians use energy differently than mages," Lara explained. "I've been mage-trained, I don't know how to just control it through me."

Nicolas shook his head. "You have been doing it all along, when you get upset. At the inn, you blasted us out of fear. You gathered energy and used it against us. For now, you need to feel the power, the way it feeds you subtly."

He lifted his arms to the night. In the distance, a wolf howled. Another answered. One by one several more took up the lonely chorus. "There. Hear that?"

"The wolves?"

"One wolf. That note that sounded different. There is a Carpathian running with our brethren tonight. You need to really listen, not just hear. You have the abilities, now you need the training and practice."

Lara looked below her toward the darkened interior of the forest. "Carpathians run with the wolves?"

"Of course. We take the form of a wolf, choose a pack and are accepted into it if we desire. We will do that if you like, but first, you need your flying lesson."

Lara shifted restlessly from one foot to the other while he explained-in detail, intedious detail-how she had to keep the image at all times in her head or she would fall from the sky.

"Okay already," Lara said when he began to go over the instructions again. "I got