Dark Song

by Feehan, Christine

  “Everyone always underestimates him. His brothers did. The mages have done so. He has slivers of them in his head now, so that gives him access to their knowledge. He has created spies using human psychic males. He has an army of vampires here in this country and abroad. He planned for centuries so quietly, allowing others to make fun of him and to treat him as if he wasn’t bright. He never quite lost all of his emotions because he thought, ahead of time, to take me prisoner. If you underestimate him, the way everyone has, simply because you’re older and have more fighting experience, you will lose.”

  Her voice was so low he could barely hear her, but it was impossible not to catch the notes of fear, of weeping, of utter hopelessness. She didn’t believe he would listen to her. Men were arrogant. She had seen so many die over the centuries, men who had been intelligent and had risen to power only to be defeated in the end. Sergey was the last of the Malinovs, the last of the five brothers and the only brother no one, Carpathian and vampire alike, thought would ever be leader, yet he had proved the most powerful of them all.

  “I did not live this long by underestimating my enemies, piŋe sarnanak,” Ferro said gently. “I appreciate that you would worry about me, Elisabeta. Always tell me when you have concerns.”

  Her lashes lifted again, and this time he found himself staring into her dark, liquid eyes. His stomach did a strange clenching. His groin tightened. It would not be good for either of them if that liquid spilled over onto her high cheekbones. He wouldn’t know what to do with tears. He had never dealt with such things.

  “You aren’t going to punish me for the things I said to you?” Her hand tightened in his shirt as if she were bracing herself. He felt a little shudder go through her body.

  “I might have to kiss you now and then,” he said. “That is the closest you will get to a punishment and only because it is difficult to resist you.”

  She blinked up at him as if she couldn’t process what he’d said. He took a step out of the healing grounds, forcing her to move with him. That instantly took her mind off what he’d just said and put it back on the world around her. He kept her in the gardens, avoiding the playgrounds where the children might be or the homes where the women often gathered to talk on the front porch. He wanted to just walk with her in the beauty of nature so she could feel air on her face and freedom surrounding her.

  Ferro knew she couldn’t be out of the ground too long. They were going to have to start their life together in baby steps. So many people were waiting to meet her. Tariq, the owner of the compound—the man the prince of the Carpathian people had appointed to take his place in the United States—wanted Gary Daratrazanoff to examine her for signs that Sergey had left something of himself behind in her to spy on them. He wanted that done as soon as possible. Although he understood why Tariq felt it was needed, Ferro would rather take Elisabeta and leave than subject her to that.

  Ferro was very uneasy subjecting Elisabeta to Gary’s examination. Both Carpathians had given Elisabeta blood numerous times. Ferro’s soul was tied to Gary’s through Andor and Lorraine, a tie that bound them together with several other ancients. Ordinarily, that would have assured that Gary’s first loyalties were the brethren, but Gary was second-in-command to Tariq. His lineage, the Daratrazanoff line, had always been second-in-command to the prince. Gary had been sent by the prince to guard Tariq, and that would put his loyalty to Tariq first. Ferro knew the strange, vague threat was emanating from one or both of the two men he should have every reason to trust.

  Women were sacred, particularly Carpathian women. Lifemates were held as cherished treasures. In a time when children were so scarce their people were on the very verge of extinction, the last thing a Carpathian male would do was threaten a female, especially a lifemate. Ferro couldn’t even say if there was a concrete threat, only that he had the vague impression of one and that it seemed to emanate from a man tied to him soul to soul. Even that he wasn’t one hundred percent certain of, but to a man like him, it was enough to make him wary and to want to take his woman and leave.

  Her brother, Traian, had arrived with his lifemate, Joie, from the Carpathian Mountains. Traian was very eager to see his sister after so many centuries. Ferro knew it was natural to want to see her, but she was nervous and didn’t clearly remember him. Sergey had deliberately stamped out her memories of her past as much as possible. When she tried to remember, there was pain involved, although she didn’t associate the emotional and physical pain with the vampire anymore. It was going to be a long road back for her.

  The moment Ferro had heard the sound of Elisabeta’s voice and knew she was his lifemate, he had taken over her care when he wasn’t hunting the enemy. He very gently moved through her mind to examine the fragmented pieces of her memories each rising as he fed her. He hadn’t been invasive on purpose, not wanting her to associate him with Sergey. The glimpses he caught of the vampire’s punishments had set the predator in him snarling and ready to hunt down Sergey until the task was complete. He knew, right then, Elisabeta needed him more, and he would have to wait to hunt the master vampire.

  Elisabeta stumbled as she walked, every step hesitant, like a small child relearning her steps. She didn’t take her eyes from the ground and her fingers dug into his arm and rib cage as if those were her lifelines. The ground was very uneven on the path through the gardens, unlike the healing grounds made up of soil rich in minerals smoothed over every day by the Carpathians. Ferro inwardly cursed himself for not considering that Elisabeta wasn’t simply having a difficult time walking because she wasn’t used to shoes, it was because she hadn’t walked.

  “Kislány piŋe sarnanak, I want you to look into my mind.”

  She gasped and shook her head, halting, her hands gripping him so hard he thought her fingers might actually meet in the middle of his skin. He very gently pried them open and held both hands to him.

  “Only so you can see how to move your feet. It will help you. I will teach you so many things this way. You do not remember, but it is the way Carpathian people instruct one another. We pass information back and forth in this manner. I am your lifemate. You have nothing to fear when your mind touches mine. I will shield you from too much information at once.”

  Elisabeta pressed her lips tightly together, refusing to meet his eyes again. She kept her lashes stubbornly lowered and her mind as blank as possible. He wasn’t a man given to smiling. He had forgotten humor over the centuries, if he’d ever had a sense of humor in the first place. He didn’t have a soft side, either, but his little songbird was fast bringing one out in him.

  She had a will of iron, which was how she had managed to survive for so many centuries living in the conditions she had. Sergey must have come up against her stubborn nature often, at first beating her into submission, or at least trying to. When that didn’t always work, he had switched tactics, trying to starve her. She showed him her willingness to die, so again, he found her weakness, bringing others in front of her, torturing them, until she did as he wanted.

  “Tell me why you fear to learn from me this way.” He kept his voice as gentle as he was capable, making certain not to in any way frighten her more. Just the way he phrased it made it an order to her, not a simple request.

  She hesitated, clearly weighing what a refusal to comply might cost her. He brought both her hands to his mouth and scraped his teeth on her knuckles.

  “Do not fear me, Elisabeta. You can choose not to answer me, and nothing will happen to you. I wish to make it easier for you to walk. That is all. There is nothing else. You will not learn anything else of me by touching your mind to mine. Not of my past, not of what I intend for us in the future. We are going slowly. I want only to help you with this one simple task. If you are not yet ready for this, you have only to say so.”

  While he spoke to her, he rubbed his chin back and forth across her knuckles, scraping her sensitive skin with the shadow on his jaw just the way his teeth had. Intimate. Provocative. Tying the two of them together
in a way he’d never known—in a way she had never known. It was a small thing, but it felt huge. She didn’t pull her hands away and he didn’t want her to. He wanted those small, slender fingers to remain in his, keeping a physical contact between them while she decided what she was going to do.

  Her lashes fluttered again, drawing his attention to them, and his groin tightened. She could move him with just the smallest feminine gesture. “I do not know how to make choices. They confuse me.”

  “Yet when I give you a command, you choose to disobey me.” He kept his tone mild, without reprimand.

  Faint color stole into her cheeks. She touched the tip of her tongue to her lip again and he wanted to groan. That was clearly a nervous habit. She had quite a few of them, each more endearing to him than the next— and maybe a little sexy. He had never thought in sexual terms, and it was the last thing he needed to be thinking about right then.

  “Mind-to-mind contact can be . . . intimate. Or ugly. Or really painful. Three things that make it very scary to try.”

  He brought her hands to his chest. “You are my lifemate, Elisabeta. I am sworn to see to your happiness and protection. Mind-to-mind may feel intimate between us because it is supposed to. I will shield you from any ugliness you might find in my past, and touching my mind, you will never feel pain.” He waited, wanting her to make up her mind.

  The touch was tentative at first, so light he barely felt it. She brushed against his mind and retreated, running, almost like a child might. He didn’t go after her or reprimand her. He simply waited, sliding his arm around her back when he felt her sway. Standing was becoming difficult for her. He sank to the ground, taking her with him, sitting her on his lap in the midst of Tariq’s wild garden.

  All around them, plants rose up toward the sky, leaves looking various shades of dark green and silver. The moon slipped in and out of the gray clouds as the wind pushed them across the sky. Elisabeta shivered and curled into the warmth of his body, as if she couldn’t control her own body heat—something every Carpathian learned to do as a child. Had that fundamental ability been taken from her as well? It would be like Sergey, giving him one more thing to hold over her head. If she didn’t cooperate with him, he could make her freezing cold, or so hot she would be burning.

  “I’ve got you, piŋe sarnanak.” He began to hum softly.

  He didn’t like to sing in front of others, but he could soothe with his voice. When things in the monastery became too difficult for one of the brothers, he would sometimes use his voice to calm them, although he never acted as if that was what he was doing. He simply would pace away and sing softly as if to himself, just as he did now. He hummed at first, and then imitated the rain. He was good at pouring various sounds into music. He heard music in all things nature and re-created that for her, waiting for her to relax in his arms.

  It took a few minutes for Elisabeta to settle. She was really afraid. He let himself slip into her mind, not far. He never went too far, which went against everything he was. His personality demanded he take what was his. He was dominant by nature. His word was never questioned. He was a law unto himself. He hadn’t sworn allegiance to the present prince of the Carpathian people, nor had he sworn allegiance to Tariq Asenguard. He went his own way and he expected his woman, his lifemate, to go his way with him. He would need that.

  He sighed as he rocked Elisabeta gently to the tune of the rain in his mind. There was sorrow in his song. He couldn’t help that. He felt emotions now, when for so long he hadn’t. This woman had become the center of his world so fast. Lifemate. For so long she held the other half of his soul. She had guarded it from Sergey at a great cost to herself. The vampire had tried every way possible to take it from her. Ferro didn’t have to get into her mind to see; he knew from the scars on her body and more in her mind. The utter terror carved so deep in her that he knew it would always be ingrained in her.

  Had Sergey managed to wrest his soul from Elisabeta, the vampire would have controlled Ferro, made him a servant, used him ruthlessly to prey upon the Carpathian people. Ferro was a skilled hunter; a legendary, feared hunter. Sergey hadn’t known who Elisabeta’s lifemate was, but had he managed to take his soul from her and control Ferro, he would have had a weapon even the ancient hunters would have had difficulty destroying.

  Elisabeta touched his mind again, and this time he felt that light feminine touch as much more than a tentative, fearful brush. Elisabeta felt his sorrow and she reached for him the way a lifemate instinctively would. The way a woman would. Gentle. Caring. Soothing. Questioning. He felt her filling the emptiness of those lonely spaces he’d revealed to her inadvertently when he’d started his song for her.

  He had his shields up so there was no way for her to see into his past, all those kills, the battles with master vampires, the mortal wounds that should have taken his life so many times. He gave her none of that, or the way humans and Carpathians alike shrank from him in fear. He didn’t give her the battle he fought with the whispers of temptation to feel something after so many centuries of not feeling, or when those whispers stopped and he had nothing at all—the terrible emptiness that followed and the need to sequester himself in the monastery to protect everyone from him. Instead, he gave her the instructions on how to walk and how much he loved being with her, that his intent was to protect her from any harm.

  Elisabeta absorbed the information the way a Carpathian did, telepathically, almost automatically, her brain tuning itself to his, but her hands came up to his head so gently, it felt like her palms were the lightest of butterflies sliding up from his jaw to frame his face. His breath caught in his throat.

  “Tell me why you feel such sorrow.”

  Her eyes were looking straight into his for the very first time. Straight into his. He swore he was falling into a cool, dark pool, a deep well. Her soul. He was her lifemate and that demanded honesty. Either he told the truth or he refused to answer.

  “I am not the man I once was, minan piŋe sarnanak. Like you, the centuries and circumstances have changed me, and not for the better, I fear. You are a beautiful, deserving woman.” He couldn’t help pushing his fingers deep into the thickness of her hair. “I am not so deserving. For you, I wish that were not so.”

  He couldn’t look at her any longer. She was too innocent for a man like him. Innocence had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the kind of man he was. She belonged with the women in Tariq Asenguard’s compound. They were good women, if not a little beyond his understanding.

  There was Lorraine, the one he called sisar—sister. She was lifemate to one of his brethren, Andor, from the monastery. She had done what no woman, Carpathian let alone human—which she had been at the time— had ever done or thought to do. She had bound her soul to Andor’s brethren in order to save his life. If they died, she died. If they turned vampire, they would be able to find her and destroy her. He doubted if any other women would have had that kind of courage—to tie themselves to the unknown on the chance that they could call their lifemate back from the other world.

  Julija was the only friend Elisabeta had that Ferro knew of. The little mage had risked her life, allowing herself to be captured by Sergey in order to try to free Elisabeta. Ultimately, she was the one to bring Elisabeta to the Carpathians’ attention, allowing her to be rescued. Julija was a strong woman and lifemate to Isai, another one of his brethren from the monastery. Julija held great power and she went her own way in life.

  The two women were modern-day examples of what Ferro knew Elisabeta would be comparing herself to and most likely aspiring to be. While he wanted that self-confidence for her, he knew he was not a man who would be compatible with either Julija or Lorraine, as much as he might respect them.

  The way her mind moved in his was delicate, feminine, wholly beautiful, a whisper of a touch rather than a bold demand. It was unexpected, her soft, womanly presence that seemed to fill every lonely place in his mind. The experience of her sharing his mind was beyond intimate.
He had spent centuries alone, lost in that gray void of nothing.

  She brought life to him. Scent. He could inhale and bring her into his lungs. He would know her anywhere. Her scent was distinct. Exotic and rare. She had a faint fragrance of orange, the Italian bergamot he had encountered but never thought about. The orange held a note of lime, and the two citrus fragrances mixed with rare camellias, adding just a touch of spice to the blend. The scents mixed with sandalwood and vetiver, an Indian grass root. For Ferro, that scent would always be associated with Elisabeta.

  Color. She brought vivid, bright color into a world of gray. He hadn’t known there were so many shades of green. Or blue. Just looking at her hair, that dark silk, shining in the moonlight, he could see so many colors, and she had given him that. The garden, the lake, the sky, the birds and even the ground itself. She had made him see the world again in an entirely different light.

  Touch. He had never allowed anyone to touch him unless he planned to use them for sustenance, or he planned to kill them. Elisabeta showed him that touch could be something different, something warm and gentle. Tender even. Touch could mean so many things other than the precursor of death. Then, there was the feel of her skin, like the finest satin. Her hair, like silk. In a very short amount of time he had learned the beauty of touching.

  Sound. Her voice was like music to him. Soft. Intimate. Pouring over him like a gentle summer breeze. When she spoke, her voice was pleasing, moving through him, equally as effective as the touch of her fingers on his skin. That soft sound was that potent. He could almost feel the notes dancing over him, brushing his skin intimately, first there and then here, stroking and caressing, one moment soothing him, the next making him want to go up in flames.

  Ferro had lived centuries, much longer than most, and yet he had not tasted many things. Blood was blood. One needed it to survive. There was no taste. No rush. Nothing whatsoever other than when he was wounded and starving that made him crave or need more blood. Until he had tasted his lifemate’s blood. It was exquisite. Almost beyond comprehension. He could barely make himself stop feeding once he’d started. Her taste was some kind of aphrodisiac, something beyond description he would always crave. He thought about it, and the taste would come to him, vivid in his memory and then in his mouth.