Christine Feehan 5 CARPATHIAN NOVELS

by Christine Feehan

MaryAnn went rigid. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” She held up both hands, palms out as if she could block the information flowing into her. “Did you take my blood?”

  “Of course.”

  There was that puzzlement again, as if she was maybe not quite as bright as he’d expected. “And you think I’m the other half to your soul. Destiny told me that in your society the man can marry the woman without her consent and bind them together. Is that true? Did you do that to us?”

  “Of course.”

  MaryAnn scrubbed a hand over her face. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “How many times does it take to convert a person to Carpathian?”

  “It takes three blood exchanges if they are not already Carpathian.”

  She bit down hard on the end of her thumb, memory flooding her. She looked down at her fingernail—the one she had broken earlier in the forest. It had grown to the length of the others and then some. All of her fingernails had grown. Sometimes that was a problem. She had to cut them often, but not daily. Maybe it was the Carpathian blood accelerating the growth. “How many times have you exchanged blood with me?”

  Her palm slid over the mark on her breast. It still throbbed and burned as if his mouth was on it. Why could she imagine that all of a sudden? Why was she so certain his mouth had been there? Why could she feel his mouth, burning like a brand, against her skin when his lips should never have been there? Not skin to skin. He had kissed her, slid his mouth over her; she still had a warm, wet spot on the nearly nonexistent lace of her bra. As sexy as it had been, it wasn’t his mouth on her skin, so why was the memory suddenly so strong?

  “I would imagine many times.”

  She inhaled sharply. “You don’t really know, do you? Manolito, if you don’t know, and I don’t know, we could be in real trouble. I am not Carpathian. I was born in Seattle. I went to school there and then to Berkeley, in California. If it’s true that you’ve exchanged blood with me, I know I haven’t gone through the conversion. I would know if I had to sleep in the ground. I’m still just me.”

  “That cannot be so. I remember taking your blood, binding us together. You are a part of me. I cannot be mistaken.”

  She opened her mind and memories to him. “I’m telling the truth when I say I haven’t met you before. It’s the truth that I saw you at a party in the Carpathian Mountains, but we were never formally introduced. I am physically attracted, but I don’t know you at all.” Okay, wildly physically attracted, but this was serious and she could overlook it—she hoped. Everything was falling into place. The things Riordan and Juliette had told her were beginning to make sense. Her heart thudded hard.

  He was silent, assessing her memories of him, dwelling a little too long over the one he found of a man coming into her house and attacking her. He felt the lengthening of his sharp teeth and the demon within roaring for release. Very carefully, he hid his reaction. She was coping with enough, and if he had somehow brought her into his life without her knowledge—or his—raging like he wanted to because she hadn’t been safe would only make things worse.

  “If what you say is true, MaryAnn, then how is it we are life-mates? Speaking the ritual words cannot connect two people who are not one. I could say them to every woman I met, but it would do me no good.”

  “Maybe you made a mistake,” she ventured. “Maybe we aren’t really connected.”

  “I see in color. I feel emotions. I can think of no other woman but you. I want no other woman. I recognize your soul. We are lifemates.” His voice was firm, brooking no argument.

  MaryAnn couldn’t find an argument. While it was true that she didn’t know everything about Carpathian life, she knew enough that the possibility was strong. Judging by her reaction to him alone, she had to admit it was probable. “All right. Say we are lifemates, Manolito. You say you wronged me in some way and that is why you’re stuck here. Why do you think that?”

  His thumb slid up the back of her hand, stroking tiny caresses over the silky smooth skin. He bent his head to nibble the pad of her thumb while he thought about it, the gesture automatic, sexy, burning through her with ease. “I felt like I was being judged for something I had done to you. I should know if I wronged you.”

  “I should know, too,” she conceded, trying not to react to the feeling of his teeth scraping erotically over her thumb. How could such a small thing be felt in the pit of her stomach? Or make her womb clench? Or her breasts feel swollen and achy? There was no way she could ever let this man touch her in a bedroom. She’d never get over it.

  “I’m reading your mind again.”

  “You do that a lot.” She wasn’t going to apologize. “Stop being so sexy. I’m trying to think here. One of us has to get us out of here.” She sent him a smoldering look from under her lashes, but he only grinned at her, his smile sending need skittering over her body as easily as his caresses had. She was in trouble. Big trouble. Huffing out her breath, she pulled her gaze away from his, determined to find a way to free them.

  “Could that be the wrong, Manolito, because tying us together without my consent and taking my blood without my knowledge shouldn’t be okay by anyone’s standards. Maybe you need to feel remorse in order for us to get out of here.”

  “I can say I feel sorry for claiming my lifemate, but it would not be true.”

  She sighed. “You aren’t exactly getting into the spirit of the thing here. If we want out of this shadow world and you somehow wronged me, shouldn’t we be figuring out what you did?”

  “The wrong cannot be binding us together. That is a natural act for a Carpathian male. I would be wrong not to bind our souls. I would turn vampire and you would eventually die of heartache.”

  She snorted. “Of heartache? I don’t even know you.” But she’d grieved for him. Cried for him. Had been clinically depressed and now she was feeling hot and bothered and exhilarated in spite of the fact that she was surrounded by ghouls and insects and spiders the size of dinner plates. She tried again to make him understand. “What if I was married? You didn’t even wait to find out. I could have been.” Because a lot of men thought she was fine.

  His fingers tightened around her and tiny flames leapt in his eyes. “There is only one man for you.”

  “Well maybe you were late in coming. The point is, I could have been married. I had a life before you came along and I liked that life. No one has the right to turn someone else’s life upside down without that person’s consent.” She forced herself to look into his eyes. “I don’t love you.”

  His eyes went very black, liquid heat, turning her inside out and stealing reason along with her ability to breathe. “That may be, ainaak enyem, but it cannot change what is. You are my lifemate, the other half of my soul, as I am yours. We are meant to be together. I must find a way to make you fall in love with me.” He leaned close, so that she felt the warmth of his breath on her skin, so that when he whispered to her, she felt the brush of his lips, soft and firm and tempting, over hers. “Rest assured, päläfertiil, that I will focus my complete attention in that direction.”

  Her heart went crazy, pounding and slamming so hard she thought she might have a heart attack. “You’re lethal. And you know it, too, don’t you? Were there other women? Maybe that’s your big wrong.” And the thought set her teeth on edge, even though it was silly. He hadn’t known her, he still didn’t, but reason didn’t seem to enter into her emotions. That strange wild thing hiding deep within her began to awaken and stretch, raking with sharpened claws at the inside of her belly.

  Horrified, MaryAnn jumped up, yanking her hand away from his. She was buying into this entirely. The nonexistent shadow world. The lifemate of a man she didn’t know. A species that dealt with vampires and mages. Nothing made sense in this world, and she didn’t want to be there. She wanted Seattle, where the rain came down to clear the air and the world was right.

  MaryAnn felt Manolito’s restraining fingers circling her wrist, but when she looked down at his hand, it was gray
. She blinked. All around her, the rain forest was vivid and bright, the colors so brilliant they nearly hurt her eyes. The sound hit her then, the continual drone of insects, the rustle in the leaves and the shifting of animals moving through the underbrush as well as the canopy overhead. She swallowed hard and looked around her. The water was pure and clean and rushing with enough force to sound like thunder.

  She reached for Manolito, clutched him to her, afraid she would lose him. His form seemed solid enough, but there was something not right about his response, as if part of him was otherwise occupied. “I think I just did something.”

  “You are fully back where you belong,” Manolito said, relief in his voice. “We need to get you to safety before the sun comes up. You may not be Carpathian, MaryAnn, but with at least two blood exchanges, you will suffer the effects of the sun.”

  “Tell me what’s happening.” She hadn’t liked that other world, but being alone in this one was terrifying. “I don’t want to be separated from you.”

  The anxiety in her voice turned his heart over. “I would never leave you, especially not when danger surrounds us. I can fully protect you even with my spirit locked in this world.”

  “What if I can’t protect you?” she asked, her dark eyes filled with trepidation.

  Manolito pulled her close to him to try to comfort her. Even as he did, the ground beneath him heaved and a huge plant burst through the soil close to his feet. Tentacles slithered across the ground, searching even as the middle of the bulb opened and a yawning mouth gaped wide, revealing thick tubes topped with poisonous stigma, sticky knobs waving toward him, trying to touch his skin.

  “Watch the ground, MaryAnn,” he warned, whipping his arms around her and leaping back. He landed ten feet from the seeking plant, scanning quickly to pick up signs of an enemy. His senses didn’t work as well in the shadow world, but he feared whatever happened to him here could very well mirror what happened in the other world.

  “What is it?” She raked the ground with sharp eyes, her vision clearing entirely so that she almost felt as if she was seeing in an entirely different way. She could see Manolito, but whatever attacked him in that world she couldn’t focus on. She saw it as blurring shadows, something nightmares were made of, insubstantial and eerie. His arms were fading, as if he was being pulled more and more into the other world.

  “Don’t let go of me!” She tried to grab his shirt, but she felt him letting go of her mind. She hadn’t even known he’d been in it, but once he was no longer there, his form became nearly transparent.

  “I cannot allow you in danger here. We do not know what can happen in this realm. You are safer where you are while I deal with this.”

  “What is ‘this’?” She yelled it, called him, implored him, but he was gone, other than that wavering shadow flicking in and out among the shrubbery, until even that was gone and she was alone.

  Fearful, mouth dry, heart pounding, MaryAnn looked around her. No matter how hard she wished it away, the rain forest surrounded her. She swallowed hard and backed up a few more steps, her heels sinking into muddy water. Leaves and aquatic vegetation hid the shallow channel she’d accidentally stepped into. Water and mud were everywhere.

  The rain poured down, making its way through the canopy to pepper the forest floor. Leaves rustled and something moved in the water. She wrapped her fingers tightly around the canister of pepper spray and tugged it from her belt loop.

  “Great time to disappear,” she whispered aloud, spinning in a circle, trying to see around her.

  The branch overhead shook, and she tilted her head to look upward. She could see a snake looking down at her through the leaves. She swore her blood froze in her veins. For a moment she couldn’t move, staring up at the thing, mesmerized. A hard tug at her ankle yanked her back to reality. Teeth bit through her boot and into her skin. She gasped, instinctively trying to pull her foot out of the water, but a snake with a very broad head held her while its long, thick body coiled around her legs, preventing movement.

  She screamed. It was pure terror, a reflexive action she couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. In her wildest imagination, she had never been attacked by a hundred-pound anaconda. She tried frantically to get to the head, hoping if she sprayed the pepper spray she’d have a chance, but the body seemed endless, without a head or tail. Already she could feel it crushing her bones. Panic wasn’t far away, and deep inside, the wildness that she kept locked up so tight began once again to unfurl.

  “Hold still! Don’t fight.” The command was sharp, the voice unfamiliar.

  MaryAnn clutched the pepper spray and forced her body to quit fighting. A hand with a wicked-looking knife came into view. Pain speared through her, as teeth sawed for a better purchase on her ankle. Anacondas didn’t chew, but they held their prey while their muscular bodies crushed, and this one wasn’t giving up so easily.

  She saw the hand slash in and out of sight. The snake slumped to the ground and MaryAnn scrambled out of the water, knocking her heel sideways so that it wobbled under her as she ran away from the snake. She caught a tree trunk, hugging hard, breathing deep to try to calm the panic.

  “What are you doing here? Are you lost?”

  She turned around to find a man calmly pulling a pair of jeans from a small pack around his neck. He was totally naked. His body was strong, muscular, with scars here and there. She bit down hard on her lip, the urge to either laugh or cry very strong.

  “You could say that.” As men went, he was built. He had a strong face, and even though he’d tugged up his jeans, she could see he was well endowed. “Do you just walk around the rain forest naked?”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted, his serious eyes studying her and the can of pepper spray she had in her fist. “I suggest you stay out of the rivers and channels. Anacondas and jaguars and other predators patrol through here.”

  “Thanks for the tip. I hadn’t noticed or anything. Those snakes aren’t poisonous, are they? Because it bit me.”

  “No, the danger is infection. Let me take a look.”

  MaryAnn inhaled sharply, everything in her rebelling at the idea of the man touching her. Shaking her head, she stepped back. “Thanks, but no. I’ve got some antibiotic cream I can use.”

  He studied her face for a long time, as wary as she was. “This island is private property. Who brought you here?”

  “I’m staying with the De La Cruz family. Manolito is around somewhere.” She didn’t want him to think she was alone.

  His eyebrow shot up. “It doesn’t make sense that he left you, even for a minute.”

  The worry in his voice gave her a small sense of assurance. “Do you know Manolito?”

  “I met him earlier this evening. Dawn is approaching, and many animals hunt along the riverways at dawn. Let me take you back to the house, and Manolito will follow when he is able.”

  MaryAnn searched the shadows for Manolito. She couldn’t touch his mind or feel him at all, let alone see him. Where are you? I don’t want to leave you. She reached out but found only a black void.

  If her rescuer ran around naked in the rain forest and he’d met Manolito earlier, there was a good chance he was a jaguar-man. Juliette’s younger sister had been captured and brutally attacked by the men of the jaguar species. MaryAnn took a firmer grip on the canister of pepper spray. She’d never find her way out of the rain forest, and she was terrified of being left alone, but she couldn’t leave Manolito, especially since she knew something was happening to him, and she was afraid to trust this man.

  “I’m Luiz,” he said simply, obviously reading her unease. “Manolito did me a great service today. I simply return the favor.”

  “I don’t want him to come back and find me gone. He’d worry.” She didn’t want the only person there—human or not—to leave her alone. She couldn’t look at the body of the snake. She hadn’t wished it harm, but she didn’t want to die here either. Getting consumed by an anaconda was on her list of least favorite ways to
go.

  “Carpathian males worry about very little,” Luiz said. “Come with me. You cannot stay alone. If you wish, you can carry the knife.”

  MaryAnn sighed. Carrying the knife meant getting close enough for him to hand it to her. It also meant that she might really stab him with it if he made a wrong move, and she was definitely opposed to that idea. “You keep it.” She had the pepper spray and that she wasn’t afraid to use.

  He smiled at her. “You are a very brave woman.”

  She managed a short laugh. “I’m shaking in my very favorite pair of boots. I don’t think brave is the word I’d use. Stupid. I’d be safe at home in Seattle if I just hadn’t been the save-the-world kind of idiot I tend to be.”

  He started down an almost nonexistent path. She could see it had been used by an animal. Taking a deep breath, she followed, sending up a silent prayer that Manolito would find her soon. Maybe if she got to Riordan and Juliette, they would be able to find Manolito again and help him.

  Luiz glanced back at her. “Can you walk with the heel of your shoe broken? I can cut them off for you.”

  That was sacrilege. He’d saved her from the snake, but he deserved pepper spray for even contemplating cutting the heels off her favorite pair of boots. It wasn’t too late to salvage them. “No, thank you.” She stayed polite, because he had to be a little crazy to think of such a dark deed.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, MaryAnn trying to keep her mind from straying to Manolito. It was difficult. Part of her wanted to rush back to where she had left him and wait until he returned. Part of her was angry with him for deserting her, and another part—the biggest—was terrified for him.

  “Why are the tree frogs following us?” Luiz asked.

  “Tree frogs?” MaryAnn bit her lip and glanced around, peeking through her eyelashes, hoping the jaguar-man was wrong. “I have no idea.” She took a quick look at the trees. Sure enough, frogs leapt from roots to branches, from trunk to trunk.

  “They seem to be following you.”

  “Do they?” She tried to sound innocent even as she hissed at the frogs, gesturing with her arms to go back. “You must be mistaken. More likely they’re migrating in the same direction we’re going.” Did frogs migrate? Maybe that was geese. Rain forest creatures were complicated. She glared at the brightly colored amphibians. They continued to hop happily alongside of her.