“Are we going to talk about it?”
“No.” Her voice was tight. She couldn’t help it. She was turning into one of those girls. Needy. Leaning on him. And now she’d trapped him.
“Do you remember how it felt when I put you over my knees and spanked your rather superb bottom?”
There was something in his voice, an equal tightness. She glanced up warily, but he was looking over the lake again.
“Yes.” She bit her lip and kept her head down, staring at the icy ground. The blades of grass looked as if they were lined with frost, lending them a silvery appearance. Even though it was cold, and the wind was really kicking up a fuss, it was a beautiful world to be sharing with a man she was falling in love with. Or maybe she was already gone. Completely. Maybe she loved him so much she was afraid they would lose their chance at a life together, because he would never stop doing what he thought was right.
“I suggest that you bring that memory up and revisit it. Let yourself feel it all over again.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“We can re-create it if you would rather.”
His voice was so mild she looked up at him sharply. There was nothing mild about his expression. He wore his stone-face. Implacable. Filled with resolve.
“Isai . . .” She started hesitantly. He was upset with her. Isai didn’t get upset.
“Trapped me? You do not want to talk about it? You are my lifemate. You were born with the other half of my soul. We are destined to be together. You may not have wanted that fate, but you accepted it. We are tied together and there is no way to break that bond. I knew the first time I made love to you. Not the first time we had sex, but that very first time, when we came together, and I was loving you. You know when. I knew it happened then and I waited for you to say something. Your dragon grew bright and hot. Glowing. I saw him. I felt him. He didn’t hide from me because he knew I was your other half. He would never have allowed such a thing to happen with another man.”
There was a bite to his voice that made her wince. They walked for a few steps, the pace slow, as if they were two lovers strolling around the lake together. She wore a warm coat, long, with weapons hidden in the inside lining where there were loops to hold them. The hood was warm and covered the back of her neck, the lining made of some material Isai had come up with to shield her from any weapon should they be attacked. She had reinforced that armor with a protection spell.
“Why do you insist on casting me in the worst possible light, Julija?”
Her heart twisted and squeezed down hard. Was there hurt in his voice? “Isai, I don’t do that. My insecurities have nothing to do with you. You’re like this larger-than-life hero who has come into my life and swept me off my feet. You’re perfect, other than that spanking thing.” She tried to insert a little humor, but it fell flat. She wasn’t feeling humorous. She wanted to cry for herself. For him. For the knowledge that they weren’t going to survive this deadly task.
“Everything seems so fated. Like we have no choices. I knew when we talked purity that innocence was involved and, low and behold, I believe absolutely that I’m pregnant. There is an innocent life growing inside me. It hasn’t had time to even develop and yet I’m taking it into a conflict that we have little chance of living through. More, I will use my blood, our blood, the blood of my unborn child in an attempt to destroy a book that is so vile that I would never want my child on the same continent with it.” She had known the moment she realized she was pregnant that it would be a combination of their blood, the child’s, hers and Isai’s. It was fated. None of them had a way out.
“This is not so. We could turn our backs on our duty.”
“You would never do that.” She tried not to sound bitter.
“Neither would you.”
He turned her to face him, to stand directly in front of him. She realized that tears were running down her face when he brushed at them with his hands.
“Julija, why wouldn’t you tell me of your fears instead of jealously guarding them, keeping them from your lifemate? I am your partner. When you are afraid, when you have these kinds of worries, who better to share them with?”
She’d been alone so long, holding things to herself, she almost didn’t know how to reach out and share with him. This? This was huge. She wrapped both arms around her body, trying to shield her child. “I don’t want this for our child. I don’t want either of us to die here. We haven’t had a chance at a life together. We have to do this and even if we didn’t, Barnabas and Anatolie won’t ever let me leave.”
“Anatolie might, but you are correct: Barnabas is not going to leave you alone. I know you fear his power, Julija, and you have every reason to do so. I believe you are a match for Anatolie. Barnabas, no. But together, you and me, I believe we are. I feel very strongly about that. Now we have a third. A triangle of power.”
“I don’t want our child to have been conceived because we need him or her to complete this task. It feels like I did that. Worse, we haven’t been together five minutes and already there’s a baby coming. Who wants that?” She pressed her fingers to her mouth and to her horror, they were trembling.
“I want that, Julija. I hope you want it as well. Neither of us planned for it . . .”
“But we didn’t do anything to not make it happen. That was irresponsible of me. Of both of us. I knew I wasn’t on birth control. I had been, but the shot wore off and I didn’t get back in because . . . well . . . for reasons.” She hadn’t wanted the doctor to see her with bruises and lacerations from the shadow cats. They hadn’t accepted her help easily. If the doctor had told her father, they all would have found out. “That doesn’t matter. I should have been careful.”
He shook his head. “It would not have mattered how careful you were. You are Carpathian. Your birth control did not prevent you from getting pregnant. In your case, your dragon did. Or maybe both, your Carpathian nature and your dragon. We do not have the exact same concerns as humans. Perhaps mages do, but we do not. A Carpathian’s body releases the egg only when it believes it is the right time for that being to come into the world. Sometimes it is only one every fifty years or so. Sometimes longer. A few lucky ones are close together and raised that way. You do not have the control.”
She shook her head. No matter what he said, it didn’t take away from the fact that their child was barely a thought and yet already he or she would be going into a very dangerous situation. If Anatolie or Barnabas found out she carried a Carpathian child, one fathered by a powerful ancient, they would move heaven and earth to get her back. She knew both would abandon their quest for the book, at least for the moment, in order to secure her. Like Elisabeta, she would become a prisoner.
Isai framed her face with both hands and gently ran his thumbs over her cheeks. “Like Elisabeta, you have been a prisoner your entire life. You tried not to look at it that way because you had some freedoms, but that was what it amounted to. It will not happen again. They cannot have you. You are free now, Julija. You can soar through the sky or lie with your feet up in a house of your choosing. You will meet many men and women back at Tariq’s compound. They will offer you sincere friendships and you will be able to wreak havoc with the other women and laugh about it. Our child will play with their children in a safe environment, well protected from vampires, mages or any other danger. As for me, I want you with every breath I take. Not just your body, but your heart and mind. You bring me joy. This child, our child, how could it not bring the same to me? To us?”
“This book . . .” She tried to hold on to fear and distress when he was so matter-of-fact.
“We have a plan to destroy this book. The very fact that you are pregnant only reinforces that we are on the right path. I have absolute confidence that we can destroy it.”
“I’m so afraid,” she admitted, trying not to let her teeth chatter.
“You should have told me. Come to me when you have these fears. We are meant to face them together.”
He shrugged. “Then all along we were not meant to destroy it. We leave fate to find another couple and we return to the compound. Ferro will not wait much longer for Elisabeta, and you need to be there to help her through her transition. It will be very hard on her.”
Julija appreciated him understanding about Elisabeta. She had never had such a friend. They hadn’t really spent any time in physical form together, it had almost always been telepathically, but the conversations were meaningful, and they told each other almost everything. Elisabeta meant quite a lot to her and Julija had given her word that she would be there to help her when she rose. Of course, at the time, neither knew of the complication that her lifemate would be right there in the same place where they had put her to ground.
Isai brought her in close to him, his arms around her. “You have to get to a place, Julija, where you fully trust me. I think we are there and then you retreat.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but then she snapped it closed. He was right. Her ear was over his heart and she listened to that steady beat. “They wanted a baby from me. A baby whose father was Carpathian. They discussed ways to achieve that goal. I overheard them talking. One of the ways was to deceive me into thinking that any Carpathian male was my lifemate.”
Isai rarely reacted to anything, but she felt the difference in him immediately. A kind of raw fury burst through him. He shook with it. Not overtly, but rather beneath his skin where no one would see, but she felt it. That fury ran like a river, very deep in him and anything or anyone caught in it was risking their life.
“I assure you, woman, I am your lifemate. There is no other and there will never be any other. There is no hoax. You are free to examine my mind at any time. I will hold nothing back from you, not even the things I have seen in this life that you should never see. If that is what it takes to convince you I am real, and you belong to me, then that is what we will do.”
Julija bit down hard on her lip. She had never seen Isai’s cool demeanor so intense, or electric. He meant every word. The sapphire eyes burned into her. Burned deep. She held her breath, thinking flames burned behind that blue.
“We have to be totally in sync, Julija. This entire lake could be a trap. The moment we bring that book to the surface, we will be attacked. We do not know who or how many enemies we will have coming at us. If we are not totally together, if you do not trust me implicitly, we are not going to survive.”
Julija looked up at his face. He looked a warrior of old, honed in violence, invincible. She couldn’t imagine anything or anyone defeating him—not even Barnabas. Her breath caught in her throat. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. Her hand went up defensively, as if she had just committed blasphemy of some sort. She forced her mind away from panic. She’d been having panic attacks far too often and she was letting them get the better of her. Where was this coming from? She refused to think about the lack of air. She was Carpathian and didn’t need it. Instead, she turned her attention to her throat. Was there something there? A tendril of something elusive? A wisp weaving in and out of her throat.
She stroked her finger along her pulse thoughtfully, pulling the air from her lungs and forcing it through her mouth and nose.
“Do you think my ‘lesson in love’ started out in order to make certain if I did, by chance, ever meet you, I would be so afraid I wouldn’t accept your claim on me? If Anatolie went to Barnabas first and asked for his help, I think Barnabas would have agreed, maybe for a price, but he would have agreed.”
“That is possible, Julija. What are you thinking?”
“When you looked at me just now, I thought that you looked invincible, as if no one could defeat you. The moment I did, my throat started to close, and I recognized the touch of a spell. I think my panic attacks and my belief that Barnabas can’t be defeated have been spell-cast. I don’t know how or when it happened, or even if it was my father or Barnabas, but it’s there.”
“How do we remove it?”
That was Isai, back to his pragmatic, logical self. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and hug him. She was already counting on that reasonable, rational, no-nonsense, sometimes annoying attribute in him. Instead she smiled up at him.
“We’re in sync, Isai. I may be under some ridiculous spell, but my feelings for you, apparently, are so strong that I am able to catch glimpses of how I really view you—and us—together. I feel so silly for allowing someone else to interfere with what I know is truth about you. Even with a spell on me, there is no excuse. Even though I overheard the ideas about trying to get me pregnant so they had another body with Carpathian blood to use, I know who you are in your heart. I know your mind. I do have enough confidence in myself to know that no one can hide from me forever. I would know Barnabas’s taint anywhere now. As many times as we have merged, he could not hide that from me.”
“We need to get rid of the spell and make certain there are no others lurking to harm you. Once the book is brought to the surface, we will have to either go to ground with it in a safe location, or destroy it, depending on how much of the night we have.”
“Vampires sleep during the day,” Julija reminded. “Mages do not.”
“Even should they find our resting place, they would not be able to enter. We will have the time we need if we can make it back there.”
Julija wasn’t going to think that maybe that was far too big of an “if.” “If I cast a revealing spell, would you be able to describe to me what you see from inside my throat?”
“Of course.”
The wind shifted just the slightest, and Isai stiffened. His blue eyes stared down into hers. “Look only at me, Julija. We have someone watching us. We knew this would happen. I want you to keep looking at me. I’m going to put my arms around you. You are very small in comparison to me and my body will shield you. Reach out very cautiously, masking your energy, and let me know if you recognize our enemy.”
Julija went gladly into his arms. She knew she was trembling, remembering that her brothers had come with other mages and those mages carried weapons. Rifles. Bullets that could reach them from great distances.
“They want the book and they cannot find it without us. Keep that in mind. We will learn who our enemy is and then we will rid you of all spells. When you cast the revealing spell, make certain it encompasses your entire body.”
He pressed a kiss on her forehead, his arms enfolding her gently. She took a deep breath and let her mind expand. She sent herself seeking into the cold, crisp air. It took a moment to find the trail. It led back toward the campsite where Crina had set up her tent. All along Julija had been so certain Crina and Barnabas had come looking for her, Crina bent on killing Isai for him, but this wasn’t Barnabas.
Julija wasn’t that surprised. He wasn’t going to be that easy for them to find. He had a way of blending in with the surroundings, spreading his energy so he was extremely difficult to find. She wasn’t easy to hide from, yet on more than one occasion, Barnabas had come to her without her knowledge.
“It is Anatolie. He is the one who deserted Crina, when we confronted her, not Barnabas. I don’t understand any of them, Isai. Why would he encourage her to come and then not protect her? There was no protection spell. Nothing.”
“Had there been you would have known.”
“They weren’t in love, I know that, but she gave him two sons. They lived together for centuries.”
“But she was not loyal to him. You said she conspired with her sons to get rid of him.”
“She did.”
“He had to have known. Anatolie may not have the need for cruelty in the way Barnabas does, but he can be extremely cruel when he does not get his way. Or he wants to punish someone. Anatolie is Xavier’s son, and Xavier was very much that way. Cruelty was in his blood, but he did not, for want of a better way to put it, derive sexual pleasure from it. Seeing others suffer might make him happy, especially i
f he considered them an enemy, but mostly Xavier used torture for information and experiments. His brother, Xaviero, needed to be cruel. By all accounts, he did derive sexual pleasure from watching others suffer. Clearly, his son Barnabas is the same.”
She sighed and shook her head. “They have these amazing long lives and yet what do they have to show for them?”
“Anatolie left Crina by herself because he knew you would defeat her or I would. She was of no more use to him and he was not going to take a chance on her getting her hands on the book. It was that simple. Now, he has to wait for you to bring the book out into the open.” He caught her face between his hands. “You remember that, my little mage. You can do what he cannot. You have always been able to. You were just far younger, and he made certain you had no idea what a little powerhouse you really are.”
She found herself smiling. She didn’t understand how that could be possible, not under the circumstances, when they were in the midst of unseen enemies, but Isai had a way of making her feel confident in herself. In him. In anything they did.
“Get rid of this pesky spell and any other hold Barnabas may have put on you. Then we can find this book. I am ready to destroy it and take you back to the compound to meet the others. If we are very lucky, my brethren have heeded my call.”
“Your call?”
“I sent for them last rising. They are a great distance from here, but I believe one or two will come. I did not tell you because we must count only on each other.”
“One or two?” she echoed. “I was thinking an army.”
“That is an army.”
She laughed and reached up for him. He obliged immediately, leaning down to kiss her. The moment he did, the world was right. He could kiss like sin, but it felt like heaven. There was something so perfect about the way he held her. About the way his mouth moved over hers. It didn’t matter if he was gentle or demanding, she felt love. She felt it. When he lifted his head and smiled down at her, her heart did a little curious shift.
Dark Illusion Page 34