Gregori, his second in command, Mikhail’s most trusted hunter, blasted out of the sky toward the three human assassins surrounded by the wolf pack. There on the meadow, with the world coming to an end, he took the shape of a huge black wolf, a wolf with the hungry, mad eyes of retribution.
“My God.” Jacques was on his knees beside Mikhail, gathering handfuls of rich soil. “Go, Byron, for the herbs. Hurry.”
Within minutes they packed Raven’s wounds with their poultices. Mikhail ignored the others, cradling Raven in his arms, his large body bent protectively to shield her from the onslaught of the pounding rain.
Mikhail’s entire being was concentrated, focused on only one thing. You will not leave me, he commanded. I will not release you. Lightning sizzled, whipped across the sky, slammed into the earth. On its heels thunder boomed, shook the mountains.
“Jacques! Eleanor is going to give birth.” Vlad was desperate. “There is no midwife.”
“Get her into the house. Call Celeste and Dierdre to her aid.” Jacques toed Jacob’s body contemptuously as he added his large frame as a shelter over Raven. “Eric, clean up here. Make certain no one will find their bodies,” he added as he lent his large frame as a shelter from the wild storm over Raven.
“She is not dead,” Mikhail hissed, seeing the compassion in his brother’s eyes.
“She is dying, Mikhail.” Jacques’s chest hurt with the knowledge.
Mikhail dragged her to him, bent his head until his cheek lay against hers. I know you can hear me; you must drink, Raven. Drink deeply.
He felt the faint stirring in his mind. Warmth, regret. So much pain. Let me go. I’m sorry.
No! Never, sivamet—my love, do not talk. Just drink. For me, if you love me, for me, for my life, drink what I offer. Before Jacques could guess his intent and try to stop him, Mikhail jabbed deeply into his own jugular.
Dark blood spurted. Mikhail forced her mouth to him, using every considerable power he possessed to force compliance. Her will obeyed, her body was almost too weak to follow. She swallowed what poured into her but could not draw deeply on her own.
Bolt after bolt of lightning slammed to earth. A tree exploded, and rained fiery sparks. The earth heaved again, rolled, came apart at the seams. Gregori loomed over them, the darkest of the Carpathians, his pale eyes ice cold and holding the stark promise of death.
“The wolves did their job,” Eric reported grimly. “The lightning and earthquakes will do the rest.” Jacques ignored him, gripping Mikhail’s shoulder. “Enough, Mikhail. You grow too weak. She has lost too much blood. She has internal injuries.”
Black rage filled Mikhail. He threw back his head and roared his denial, the sound exploding through the forest and mountains like the booming of the thunder. Trees burst into flames around them, exploding like sticks of dynamite.
“Mikhail.” Jacques refused to relinquish his hold. “Stop her now.”
“She has my blood; it will heal her. If we can keep blood in her, get her into the soil, and perform the healing ritual, then she will live.”
“Ka´cak—stars, Mikhail. It’s enough.” Jacques’s voice held very real fear.
Gregori touched Mikhail to draw his attention. Those pale eyes held command. “If you die, my old friend, we have no chance of saving her. We must work together if we are to do this thing.”
Raven’s head lolled back, her body limp like a rag doll. Mikhail’s blood ran unchecked down his chest. Jacques leaned into his brother, but Gregori was there before him, closing the gaping wound with a single stroke of his tongue.
Mikhail was nearly oblivious to his surroundings; he was directing his entire being, his entire discipline, to Raven. She was slipping away from him, fading slowly but surely. Her heart beat erratically, one beat, a miss, a single beat. There was an ominous, eerie silence.
Swearing, Mikhail laid her flat, physically breathed for her, and manually stimulated her heart. His mind sought the trail of hers, found a small, huddled light, dim and fading. She floated on a sea of pain. She was weak beyond his imaginings. Breathe, massage. Call her back, reinforce it with an order. Repeat the process.
A torrent of water raced down the rocky canyon behind them, a solid wall gathering speed and force. The ground shook again. Two trees exploded into fiery conflagrations despite the heavy rains.
“Let us help,” Gregori ordered, the command penetrating the deep sorrow and determination.
Jacques moved his brother gently aside and took over CPR while Gregori breathed for Raven. In and out, Gregori filled her lungs with precious air. Jacques forced her heart to continue. It left Mikhail free to concentrate on his mental quest. A stirring in his mind, the lightest of touches, but he knew it was Raven, and he locked on to that trace and followed it ruthlessly. You will not leave me.
Her spirit tried to move away from him, up and away. There was too much pain in the direction in which he called her.
Panicked, Mikhail yelled her name. You cannot leave me, Raven. I cannot survive without you. Come back to me. Come back to me, or I follow you where you lead.
“I have a pulse,” Jacques said. “It is weak, but it is there. We need transport, Byron.”
There was a shimmering in the gathering darkness. Tienn appeared beside them. “Eleanor has given birth, and the child lives,” he announced. “It is a male.”
Mikhail let out his breath in a long, slow hiss. “She betrayed Raven.”
Jacques shook his head in warning when Eric would have spoken, would have tried to defend the woman. Mikhail was in a killing rage. The slightest mistake might provoke him. Mikhail’s fury was triggering the turbulent weather, the raging storm and heaving earth.
Mikhail sank back into his mind, holding Raven to him, taking as much of her pain as he could. The trip home was a blur to him, the rain pelting the windshield, lightning sizzling and snapping. He would have preferred the dizzying speed of their mode of travel, but he dared not risk further damage to Raven.
The village was deserted and dark, the electricity out in the terrible ferocity of the storm. Inside their houses, people were huddled and praying, hoping to live through the ferocious storm, not understanding that their very lives could depend on one small human woman’s courage and tenacity.
Eleven
Raven’s body, limp and lifeless, was stripped of her bloodstained clothing and placed on Mikhail’s bed. Healing herbs were crushed, some lit. The poultices were replaced with newer, stronger ones to try to stem further blood loss. Mikhail touched with trembling fingers the dark bruises on her face, the dark marks that stood out starkly against her full white breasts where Jacob had deliberately hurt her in his jealous, drugged rage. Fury seized Mikhail, and he longed to crush Jacob’s throat beneath his hands. “She needs blood,” he said abruptly.
“So do you.” Jacques waited for Mikhail to draw the sheet over Raven before he offered his wrist. “Drink while you can.”
Gregori touched his shoulder. “Forgive me, Jacques, but my blood is stronger. It holds immense power. Allow me to do this small thing for my friend.” At Jacques’s nod, Gregori drew a single mark over his vein.
There was silence as Mikhail availed himself of Gregori’s rich blood. Jacques sighed softly. “She has exchanged blood on three occasions with you?” He forced his voice to be neutral, not wanting to appear to reprimand his leader and brother.
Mikhail’s dark eyes flickered warningly. “Yes. If she lives, she will most likely be one of us.” It was left unsaid that she might live to be destroyed by the very one who had converted her.
“We cannot seek human medical aid for her. If our way does not work, Mikhail, her doctors will be useless anyway,” Jacques cautioned.
“Damn it, do you think I do not realize what I have done? You think I do not know I failed her, that I failed to protect her? That by my selfish actions I put her life in jeopardy?” Mikhail stripped off his bloody shirt, balled it in one hand, and threw it to the farthest corner of the room.
“This is senseless, looking back,” Gregori said calmly.
Mikhail’s boots hit the floor, his socks. He dragged himself onto the bed beside Raven. “She cannot take blood our way; she is too weak. We have no choice but to use their primitive transfusion methods.”
“Mikhail . . . ,” Jacques said warningly.
“We have no choice. She did not take all that she needed, not even close. We cannot afford the delay of argument. I ask you, my brother, and you, Gregori, as my friend, to do this for us.” Mikhail cradled Raven’s head in his lap, sat back among the pillows, and closed his eyes tiredly while they began the primitive process.
If he lived another thousand years, Mikhail would never forget that first stirring of unease in his mind while he lay as dead beneath the earth. Knowledge had exploded in his brain and spread terror in his heart and fury in his soul. He had felt Raven’s rippling fear—a woman’s fear of rape. Jacob’s hand on her precious body, the brutal blows, the tearing sensation of the knife as it sliced through skin and into her soft insides. So much pain and fear. So much guilt that she had failed to protect Eleanor and her unborn child.
Raven’s weak touch had slipped inside his mind, so whispery, edged with pain and regret. I’m sorry, Mikhail. I’ve failed you. Her last coherent thought had been for him. He loathed himself, loathed Eleanor for not having the discipline to learn mental communication, focused and pure.
In that one second of understanding, as he lay helpless, locked in the soil, the very foundations of his life, his beliefs, had been rocked. As he burst free, Jacques rising with him, he had mentally reached for Jacob, had buried the bloodstained knife to the hilt in the murderer’s throat.
The storm enabled Vlad to break Eleanor and him free without the fear of blindness or that one moment of complete disorientation that would have given the assassins the time to kill his laboring wife.
Mikhail sought Raven’s mind, crawled to her with warmth and love, his arms a shelter. The needle jabbed the inside of his arm, pierced hers. He had no doubt that his brother would monitor the transfusion closely, making certain Mikhail was replenished with ancient Carpathian blood when needed. Jacques held Mikhail’s life along with Raven’s in his hands. If she died, Mikhail followed her—that was an indisputable fact. He could not afford to remain alive if he lost her. He knew in his heart, that the black fury that remained would endanger anyone near him, Carpathian and human alike. He could only hope that Gregori was up to the job of dispatching Carpathian justice to him swiftly and accurately should Raven die. The last thing he wanted was to choose to give up his soul.
No. Even in an unconscious state, Raven was trying to save him.
He stroked her hair in long caresses. Sleep, little one. You are in need of healing sleep. Using his mind, he breathed for both of them, in and out, forcing oxygen into his lungs, her lungs. He kept the rhythm of their hearts together. He took on as much of the mechanics of her body as he could to enable her to heal.
Jacques knew Mikhail had no real choice. He could not live without his lifemate and remain Carpathian; he would succumb to the darkness that lived in all of them. Right now Mikhail was using his power to keep her blood flowing, her heart pumping, and her lungs working. It was a draining process.
Gregori met Jacques’s eyes over Mikhail’s head. He was not going to allow the couple to die. It was up to them to heal her. “I will do it, Jacques.” It wasn’t a request.
The air stirred beside them, and Celeste materialized with Eric. “He chooses to follow her,” she said softly. “He loves her that much.”
“It is already known?” Jacques asked.
“He is withdrawing,” Eric answered. “All Carpathians can feel it. Is there a chance to save them?”
Jacques looked up, his handsome face haggard, his dark eyes, so like Mikhail’s, grief-stricken. “She fights for him. She knows he will choose to follow her.”
“Enough!” Gregori hissed, bringing them all to attention. “We have no choice but to save them. That is all that can be in our minds.”
Celeste reached toward Raven. “Let me do this for her, Jacques. I am a woman, I carry a child. I will make no mistakes.”
“Gregori is a healer, Celeste. You are with child, and it is difficult,” Jacques denied softly.
“Both of you are supplying blood for them. You could make a mistake.” Celeste pushed the sheet from Raven’s stomach. Her gasp was audible, her horror very real. Involuntarily, she stepped back. “My God, Jacques. There is no chance.”
Furious, Jacques elbowed her out of the way. Gregori stepped between them, his pale eyes flowing over Celeste like mercury, glittering with a calm, cold menace, with a terrible rebuke. “There is no question that I will be the one to heal her. And she will be healed. While I perform this task I want only those who believe completely to attend. Go now if you cannot give me this aid. I must have only complete conviction in my mind and the minds of those around us. She will live because there is no other alternative.”
Gregori placed his hands over the wounds, closed his eyes, and went seeking out of his own body and into the one lying so hideously wounded, as still as death.
Mikhail felt Raven’s stirring of pain. She flinched and tried to move away, tried to fade so that this new, painful sensation could not touch her. Mikhail surrounded her effortlessly, held her still for Gregori to do the intricate work of repairing damaged organs. Relax into it, little one. I am here in this place with you.
I can’t do this. It was more a feeling than words. So much pain.
Choose for us, then, Raven. You will not go alone.
“No!” Jacques’s protest was sharp. “I know what you do, Mikhail. Drink now, or I will not continue the transfusion.”
Fury welled up, shook Mikhail out of his semi-stupor. Jacques met the rage in his dark eyes with deliberate calm. “You are too weak from loss of blood to oppose me.”
“Then let me feed.” There was cold fury, black as night, in those words. Pure menace, the threat of death.
Jacques exposed his throat without hesitating, managing to prevent a groan of pain as Mikhail bit deep, fed hungrily, ferociously, like a savage animal. Jacques did not struggle or make a sound, offering up his life for his brother and Raven. Eric moved toward them as Jacques’s knees buckled and he sat down hard, but Jacques motioned him away.
Mikhail lifted his head abruptly, his shadowed features so haunted and grief-stricken, Jacques ached for him. “Forgive me, Jacques. There is no excuse for my treatment of you.”
“There is nothing to forgive when I offer freely,” Jacques whispered raggedly. Eric moved immediately to his side, supplying Jacques with blood.
“How could anyone do such a thing to her? She is so good, so courageous. She risked her life to help a stranger. How could someone want to harm her?” Mikhail asked, raising his eyes toward the heavens. Silence was his only answer.
Mikhail’s gaze found Gregori. He watched his friend work with the intense concentration of the healing ritual. The low chant, spoken in their ancient tongue, was soothing to him, brought a measure of relief to his tormented soul.
Gregori separated from his body, leaving behind an empty shell the others guarded as he became pure healing energy, entering her body to repair from the inside out. He could feel Gregori with them, working, weaving the magic of body repair, a painstakingly slow process. The ritual was as old as time, one they all were intimately acquainted with, and the traditions added to the soothing calm that Gregori brought to them.
“Enough blood,” Jacques whispered hoarsely as he lit the scented candles and began another low chant.
Gregori stirred, his eyes remaining closed, but he nodded, swaying a little from using such tremendous energy in an attempt to heal such horrific wounds. “Her body is attempting the conversion. Our blood is soaking into her organs and working to change and repair tissue. She needs time for the process.”
He rested only for a few moments before moving back inside to the deep penetrating woun
ds he was aligning. Her womb was damaged, and it was far too important to take any chances. She must be made perfect.
“Her heart is too slow,” Jacques said weakly as he slid from the bed to the floor. He looked startled to find himself there.
“O köd belso˝—Darkness take it,” Eric swore. “What a hell of a night.”
“Her body needs more time to make the change and heal,” Celeste added, watching Gregori work. She knew she was witnessing a miracle. She had never been this close to the legendary Carpathian everyone whispered about, and it gave her an eerie feeling. Few of their people actually saw Gregori up close. Power emanated from his every pore. He guarded Mikhail, unless he was out hunting vampires and bringing Carpathian justice to one. No one ever wanted him on their trail. He was unrelenting, implacable, and he killed swiftly without hesitation.
“She is right,” Mikhail agreed weakly. “I will continue to breathe for her, continue to ensure her heartbeats. Eric, you must care for Jacques.”
“Rest, Mikhail, see to your woman. Jacques will be fine. Tienn is here if there is a problem. Gregori has many hours of work ahead of him,” Eric replied. “If it is necessary, we can call others in to help.”
Jacques reached up his hand to his brother. Mikhail took it. “You must calm your anger, Mikhail. The storm is too strong. The very mountains rage with you.” He closed his eyes and laid his head against the bedframe, his hand still clasped in Mikhail’s.
Raven felt almost detached from what was happening to her body. Her awareness of others in the room and their movements came through Mikhail. He was with her somehow, in her body, breathing for her. And there was another, one she didn’t recognize, but he was also in her, working as a surgeon would, repairing the extensive damage to her body, to her internal organs, paying special attention to her female organs. She wanted to just stop, allow the pain to swamp her, to carry her someplace far beyond feelings. She could just let go. She was tired, so tired. It would be so very easy. It was what she wanted, longed for.
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