know he thought she was. She turned her face up to his and smiled. Thank you. I’m glad you think so.
Lights from the inn lit the ground below them. Traian dropped to earth some distance from the building, where the shadows were deep. Music spilled out of the two-story building, floating out in all directions. People mingled on the wraparound verandah and on most of the balconies, some dancing, some talking, and others pressed close to one another.
“The festival,” Joie said. “I forgot about it. Look at me—I’m a mess.”
“You look beautiful to me,” Traian objected. “Which room is yours?”
“Second story, third balcony on the left.” She grinned at him. “Are we floating?”
“Is the window locked?”
“That wouldn’t stop me. I have second-story skills.”
His eyebrow shot up. “I am very impressed. I am a hunter and I am certain those skills could come in handy.”
She narrowed her gaze, locking her fingers behind his neck. “They come in handy for a bodyguard. I do have a business, and I’m known to be one of the best.”
“I’m sure you are.” He took her into the sky fast, enjoying the way she clung to him, tightening her arms and gasping as he shot up.
Don’t you laugh at me.
I’m not laughing.
I can feel you laughing. You know, it isn’t normal to fly through the sky.
It is normal for me.
The balcony floor felt solid beneath her feet. She let go of his neck immediately. “Great, I would have to do this with a hundred people around.”
“They cannot see you. I have shielded us from their eyes.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “We’re invisible? Sheesh. Is your life easy or what? I wouldn’t mind being invisible in my line of work. No wonder vampires are afraid of you.”
“They fly, and they can cloak their presence as well.”
Joie pushed open the door to her room. “How perfectly charming of them. Where do they come from?”
Traian followed her into the room. She heard his heavy sigh and turned around to face him. He definitely looked troubled, and very reluctant to answer her question.
“I’m not going to like your answer, am I?”
“Vampires are Carpathians who have chosen to give up their souls for a brief moment of power, the thrill of the kill—a rush if you will. Our males lose their emotions and the ability to see in color after the first two hundred years of existence. Some earlier, some later, but all of us eventually lose everything we hold sacred if we do not find a lifemate. Only one woman, the light to our darkness, can return those things to us. For several centuries now, our race has few women and fewer children. We are on the verge of extinction. There is little hope, and more and more of our males are turning.”
Joie tried to take in the enormity of what he was saying. “There is only one woman who can restore colors and emotion for every male? Just one?”
Traian nodded. “Only one. We can search centuries for her. If we miss one another, or we hunt and kill too long, the need to feel emotions, whatever that is, becomes too tempting and many succumb. Our choices are to turn vampire, or allow the sun to take us.”
It was a brutally grim destiny. Joie removed her harness and carefully placed her climbing gear on the floor beside the closet. She removed her crampons and boots, grimacing a little as she saw the mud she’d brought in with her. She needed the time to digest what he was telling her before she managed to meet his gaze. There was compassion in her eyes.
“How terribly sad for all of you. So you and the other hunters are forced to police the vampires. Even if they were once boyhood friends . . . or family.”
He nodded, astonished at the wealth of understanding he read in her expression. She clearly saw what others did not: deep below the surface, every destruction of a childhood friend or cousin had cut pieces out of his soul until he feared there was little left. Yet her understanding, the compassion washing over him, changed something. He felt it, felt the first healing touch and the power a lifemate wielded.
She stood there in her filthy clothes with mud smeared all over her face, and she was beautiful to him. A lump the size of his fist rose in his throat, and he turned away from her, afraid of allowing her to see the emotion threatening to choke