Gary slammed his booted foot down on his wrist to prevent him from reaching it as the spinning white-hot ball of lightning struck the heart, incinerating it. Valenteen grasped Gary’s ankle in his talons, driving them deep, digging through flesh to try to get to bone in an effort to force him to move.
“Get away from him,” Traian ordered, his voice hoarse. “If I destroy his body, his servants will leave as well, but you have to get back.”
Gary jerked a long-bladed knife from inside his loose jacket, took a breath and slammed the blade as hard as he could across the wrist of the vampire, the edge going through skin and bone. The hand fell away from the arm and he leapt back. Valenteen shrieked and the bats and insects renewed their frenzied biting, swarming over Traian, trying to drive him to the ground.
With a tremendous effort, Traian reached for the lightning once more, commanding a single bolt through the hole in the above bedroom floor to strike the body of the master vampire. Valenteen’s body began to incinerate, exploding outward with wiggling white parasites, spewing ash and cinder. His mouth gaped wide, teeth bared, fiery eyes promising retaliation and then that too was gone. Only the hand remained, the talons digging long lines in the floor as it tried, with one last effort of pure malevolence, to get to the Carpathian hunter. The lightning forked, jumping to the hand to incinerate it as well.
The moment the last remnant of Valenteen had been reduced to ashes, the bats and insects fell away from Traian to flit aimlessly through the halls as if, without the direction of their master, they had no idea what to do.
Traian bathed his hands and arms in the energy, removing the acid burning his flesh before he attempted to stagger over to Joie. Joie lay on the floor in the hallway, watching him with a kind of awe. She couldn’t talk because of the wound in her neck and loss of blood. She was barely conscious but seemed to know they were all there. Her fingers moved a little against Gabrielle’s thigh as if to reassure her.
“Your wound must be attended first,” Gary told Traian. “She’ll need to be brought over and you cannot do that without strength. Jubal, we’ll need soil. There’s a bag in my closet. Get it as fast as you can.”
Jubal nodded and forced his body, covered in bites and throbbing in pain, to move. He tore open the door to the closet to find the bag of rich Carpathian soil.
“I don’t understand how they could get in from above us,” Gabrielle sobbed, pressing harder on Joie’s wound. “Do something, Traian. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“Whoever had the room above mine must have allowed the vampire in,” Gary explained. He very casually sliced a long line in his wrist and held the welling blood out to Traian. “Drink now. You’ll need more later. You know what you have to do here, if she’s going to survive.”
“What?” Gabrielle demanded. She took a breath and looked from one man to the other. “Tell me what we have to do. Don’t let her die, Traian.”
“Pour a handful of soil into that bowl and bring it here,” Gary instructed Jubal.
Traian drank from the man’s wrist, his eyes on Joie, his mind in hers. Stay with me, sivamet—my love. You must give yourself into my keeping.
Joie tried to smile at him in reassurance. She was cold, very cold, but she didn’t hurt anymore. She knew she was drifting away from all of them. Gabrielle, her beloved sister, trying so frantically to close the wound, Jubal, hell-bent on action to save her, and Traian . . . Traian. She didn’t remember if she’d told him she loved him. She’d never thought it ever possible that she would find a man to love. She regretted that she hadn’t had time with him.
You will stay with me. This time it was a command.
Traian closed the wound on Gary’s wrist with a small nod of his head in thanks. He buried his face against Joie’s torn throat, using his own healing saliva to close the wound. She needed blood and soil, but more, she needed strength to get through the conversion and they had very little time.
“Carpathian soil,” Gary said, taking the bowl from Jubal’s hand. “We’ll need your saliva to mix this. I have to plug that hole in your chest.”