Dark Slayer Page 0,19

vampire blood and promised immortality. The vampires often used them to attack during the day. They were nearly as foul as the vampires themselves.

She moved even faster, suddenly afraid for the child. For one moment, below her, she caught a glimpse of a man running through the snow, and then he disappeared in the trees. The child's father? If so, he was arriving a little late.

She spotted a little boy, thin, with a mop of dark hair reaching his shoulders, struggling against the type of snares that had trapped the wild wolves. Her heart dropped. Another trap. She wasn't fool enough to believe that the boy had walked into the mass of snares himself. He'd been forcibly taken from somewhere-she knew by the smell of death and blood-and staked out like a sacrificial goat, the thin wires cutting into his hands and ankles. There was one around his neck. He was crying, but he stood stoically, refusing to fight and worsen the already deep cuts.

She didn't believe this boy had been set out as bait for her-more likely for Razvan. He had a child and he had given his soul, or at least a piece of it, to save her. Xavier would know he would risk everything to save a child. She was in for a fight, but she couldn't leave that child. The vampires were expecting a starving, sick, tortured Razvan, not the slayer, scourge of all undead.

She formed close to the boy, noting that he didn't wince or scream out in fright, which meant he'd seen a Carpathian before and they had allowed him to retain his memories. "It's a trap," he mouthed. He stared at the wolf tattoos with their bared teeth and lifelike eyes covering her shoulders and arms as she bent to gently set her crossbow in the snow and withdraw a pair of cutters.

She nodded her understanding. "Keep crying," she hissed as she snipped his left wrist free. It was brave of him to try to warn her when he must have been terrified.

The boy didn't miss a beat, keeping up a lively rendition of wailing while she cut loose the wire on his neck and carefully removed it. Her fingertips brushed the thin necklace of blood circling his neck. Her fingers crept up to her own neck, fluttered there for one moment as she remembered the bite of the sharp blade.

The boy couldn't be more than eight or nine, with his thin face and large, intelligent eyes. He was watching her carefully, studying her closely as she reached across him to snip at his other hand.

Behind you.

The alpha gave her the warning and she felt the large wolf shift in preparation for the attack. Raja's head lay across her neck, his eyes looking straight back. Ever so slightly he turned his head and the movement made the boy gasp. Ivory thrust the cutters into his hands and held out her arms away from her body, bending her knees until she was in a crouch, her right arm slowly dropping to reach for her crossbow.

The child's eyes widened in alarm and fear as he looked over her shoulder and saw the large man coming up behind her with an axe gripped in his hands. The woodsman's face had a blank look and he shuffled, his eyes a strange red. He lifted the axe above Ivory's head, still several feet out. The boy opened his mouth to call a warning, but no sound emerged.

Ivory felt the slight wrench of pain that always accompanied her pack separating themselves from her as the savage wolves leapt, completely silent as they made their concentrated attack, the communication in their minds only. Her fingers closed over the crossbow and she grasped it, winking at the boy to reassure him as she dove away from him, somersaulted and came up on one knee, her crossbow aimed at the attacker. The boy stared openmouthed at the six silver-tipped wolves, more shocked at the sight of them than the soulless attacker.

The wolves drove the ghoul backward, teeth clamped around each arm, the alpha going for the throat while the other wolves grasped legs and held him. Vampire puppets were extremely strong, programmed by their masters for one task; very few things could stop them once they were set on a path. The wolves tearing at him did little other than keep him on the ground beneath the writhing mass of silver fur.

Ivory felt the surge of power crackling in the air and