She leapt up before Manolito had an inkling she was going to move. There was no slight movement of her body to indicate a shift. She simply moved all at once, leaping to her feet and over the railing before he knew what she intended. Heart in his throat, he leapt after her. They were one hundred and fifty feet in the air. The fall would kill her.
MaryAnn! He called her name even as he pursued, sending air to keep her floating as he streaked downward, but she was already on the ground, crouched low in a fighter’s stance.
He slowed his descent to study her. Her hair was thick, long and wavy, gleaming a blue black as it cascaded down her shoulders and back. Her hands curled into claws, and the amazing bone structure in her face stood out beneath her taut skin. She backed away from him as he settled in front of her.
“I want to go home.”
He knew she was in good hands—his hands—yet her voice trembled and she looked so frightened he felt terrible.
“I know you do, MaryAnn. I will get you back to your home as soon as I can.” And he realized it was true. For the first time, he realized she might need Seattle. She might need that cold, rainy city just as much as he needed the rain forest. “I promise, csitri, when I can fully leave the land of shadows, I will escort you home.”
MaryAnn drew a deep, shuddering breath. “You promise?”
“Absolutely. I give you my word, and I have never broken it in all my centuries of existence.” He held out his hand to her. “I am sorry I cannot understand what you are going through.” If she opened her mind to his, he could feel her emotions, not just visibly see them, but she held tight to her resistance.
MaryAnn looked around her. “I don’t know how I got here.” She looked up at the top of the canopy. She couldn’t even see the deck he had constructed. “How did I do that, Manolito?”
He kept his hand extended to her. The leaves were rustling around them. Shadows moved. He took a step closer to her. MaryAnn put her hand in his, and he pulled her into his arms and took to the air, taking them to the protection of the deck he’d woven. She stood on the platform, her arms around his neck, her face buried against his shoulder, trembling with the truth.
“The truth,” he murmured softly.
MaryAnn jerked away from him. She knew it was the truth. She had been that infant someone had hunted through a forest and nearly killed. Her parents had hidden the truth from her for years. The foundation of her solid world was shaken, and she needed to find a way to quiet the growing thing inside of her so she could come to terms with what was happening, but she didn’t want Manolito to throw the truth of her life in her face.
Manolito looked around at the various leaves. Some broad, some lacy, some small and others large, all a dull silver instead of gleaming as they should. The safeguards were in place, keeping out all enemies so he could spend time with her, trying to ease her into his world. He had intended to bring her fully over so she, too, was wholly Karpatii. Instead, he had forced her to bare her soul to his, to risk everything for him. Now he needed to give something back. Something of equal value. She had given him truth; he could do no less.
He paced restlessly across the small confines of space. “You gave me truth, MaryAnn, when it cost you. I have something to tell you. Something that shames me, and not just me, my entire family. What is inside you is noble and strong, and I doubt you need fear it. I have no such secret to share with you, although I wish it were so.”
She blinked away tears and looked at him, somewhat shocked. He appeared nervous. It was the last thing she expected of a man as confident as Manolito. Her natural compassion rushed through her, and she put her hand on his arm, flooding him with warmth and encouragement.
“Do not aid me in this,” he protested, shaking his head, but once again she had opened her mind to his, surrounding him with the brilliant colors and her soothing personality. “I do not deserve it.”
He didn’t deserve to be so smug about claiming her, but she pushed that sudden thought down and gave him a look of support. Manolito continued to pace, so she sank down onto the flowers, surprised that once again they released their fragrance, filling the air with soothing scent. Drawing up her knees, she wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on top, waiting for him to continue.
Manolito took a slow, careful look around and wove more safeguards, this time enclosing them within a sound barrier to give them even more privacy. “Sometimes the forest has ears.”
She nodded, not interrupting, but somewhere in the pit of her stomach she was beginning to believe that what he was going to tell her was of monumental importance to both of them.
Manolito rested his elbows on the railing and looked down at the forest floor beneath them. “My family was always a little different from most of the other warriors around us. For one thing, most families never have children within fifty to a hundred years of one another. Of course it happens, but rarely. My parents had all five of us with no more than fifteen years separating us, other than Zacarias. He’s nearly a hundred years older, but we were raised together.”
She could instantly see the problems that might go along with such closeness, particularly young boys feeling the first taste of power. “You had a gang mentality.”
There was a small silence while he absorbed that. “I suppose that could be so. We were above average in intelligence and we all knew it; we heard it enough times from our father as well as the other men. We were fast and learned quickly, and we heard that, too, as well as it being drilled into us what our duty was to be.”
MaryAnn frowned. She’d never thought about Manolito or his brothers being children, growing up in uncertain times. “Even then, were more males being born than females?”
He nodded. “The prince was concerned and we all knew it. So many children died. The women were beginning to have to go aboveground to give birth, and some children could not tolerate the ground in infancy; others could. Changes were happening, and the tension grew. We were trained as warriors but given as much schooling as possible in all the other arts. Resentment began to grow in us when others, not quite as intelligent, were given chances at higher learning while we had to hone our fighting skills on the battlefield.”
“Do you believe, looking back, that you had reason for that resentment?” she asked.
He shrugged, his powerful shoulders rolling, the muscles in his back rippling. “Maybe. Yes. At the time we did. Now, as a warrior and seeing what has happened to our people, certainly the prince needed us to fight. The vampires were growing in numbers, and to protect our species as well as the others, our fighting skills were needed perhaps more than our brains.”
He sighed as he looked down from the treetops. “When we first came here, you have to remember, there were few, almost no, people at all. We were alone, only occasionally pitting our skills against an enemy. Five of us with our emotions growing dim and the memory of our people and our homeland fading along with the colors around us. We thought that was bad. And then we began to face more and more old friends who had turned. Our lives as we had known them as Carpathians were long gone.”
MaryAnn’s teeth bit at her lower lip. “Did your prince give you a choice to leave the Carpathian Mountains? Or did he just send you?”
“We were given a choice. All warriors were told of what was to come and how we were needed. We could have stayed, but honor would never have allowed that. Our family was considered as having among the best fighting skills.”
“But you could have,” she said, persisting. “Your fighting skills must have been needed there as well.”
“Considering what happened, yes,” Manolito agreed.
For the first time he tasted bitterness on his tongue. They had agreed to go when the prince had put out the call to his oldest warriors, thinking, believing, the prince knew the future, knew what was best for his people. When the ranks thinned and their enemies moved in, the prince had aligned himself with humans. All had been lost when they had tried to protect their human allies.
Centuries later, now, when he could once again feel, he was still angry over that decision, still disagreeing and not understanding how Vlad could have made such a mistake. Had sentiment overruled reason? If so, no De La Cruz would ever make such a mistake.
“You’re angry,” she said, feeling the waves of his antagonism washing over her.
He turned around to lean his hip against the railing. “Yes. I had no idea I was angry with him, but yes, I am. After hundreds of years, I still blame the prince for going into a battle they couldn’t win.”
“You know that wasn’t what decimated your people,” she pointed out as gently as possible. “You said yourself, as young as you were, growing up, you noticed the lack of women, and babies weren’t surviving then. The changes were already happening.”
“No one wants to think their species is slated by nature, or by God, for extinction.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I do not know what I think, only what I would have done. And I would not have taken our people into that battle.”
“How would the outcome have been any different?”
“Vlad would still be alive,” Manolito said. “He would not be among the fallen. We would not be left adrift with so few women and children the sheer odds make it impossible to keep our people alive. Add to that our enemies, and we are lost.”
“If you believe that, why did you save Mikhail’s life? I heard about it, of course. Everyone was talking about what you did for him in the caves when he was attacked. If you don’t believe he’s capable of leading the Carpathian people, why risk your life for his? Why die for him? Especially if you had already seen me and knew you had a lifemate. Why would you bother?”
He folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her from his superior height, a frown on his face. “It is my duty.”
“Manolito, that is ridiculous. You aren’t a man to blindly follow someone you don’t believe in. You may have questioned your prince’s decision, but you believed in him, and you must believe in his son or you would never have gone into battle with him, pledged your allegiance to him or given your life for his.”
“I did much more than question my prince’s decisions,” he said.
She watched the shifting of shadows across his face, the flicker of torment in the depths of his eyes. Now they were getting somewhere. Now he was going to reveal his deepest guilt. She knew what he was going to say before he said it, because his mind was deeply merged with hers and she could see the guilt there, the fear that he had betrayed a prince he admired, deeply respected and even loved.
He didn’t see it that way, and that fascinated her. He didn’t realize how much he admired Vlad Dubrinsky and how upset he had been at the prince’s ultimate defeat and death at the hands of their enemy. More importantly, he didn’t realize that his anger was at himself, for going, for choosing to fight in a remote land for people who cared nothing for the Carpathians.
“I betrayed Vlad every time I sat down with my brothers and questioned his judgments and decisions. Riordan and I told you some of it earlier, but it was a very watered-down version of our talks. We made an art of it. Picking apart the prince’s every command and examining it from every angle. We believed he should listen to us, that we knew more than he did.”
“You were young, not yet grown and still able to feel emotion.” She knew that much because his emotions then had been very strong. He had felt superior, both physically and intellectually, to many of the other fighters. His brothers had all been the same, and they enjoyed their debates on how best to serve their countrymen, how best to steer the Carpathian people through the perils of each new century. “Was it betrayal, Manolito, in your hearts and minds, when you debated, or was it merely trying to discuss ways to better the lives of your people?”
“It may have started that way.” He pushed both hands through his hair. “I know we clearly saw the fate of our people when few others could see the future. We did not need to have precognition, only our brains, and it was irritating that others could not see what we saw.”
“Did the prince listen? You must have gone to him.”
“As head of our family, Zacarias did. Of course he listened. Vlad listened to everyone. He led us, but he always allowed the warriors to speak in counsel. We may have been young, but he respected us.”
MaryAnn watched the raw emotions chase across his face. Manolito faced vampires and mages with poisoned knives stoically, his features stone, yet now he was upset, his past too close to the surface. She wanted him to understand that the boyhood memory wasn’t one of betrayal. She sought the right words, the right feelings…
Do not! The command was sharp and pushed at the walls of her mind. “I do not deserve the warmth you send to me. Nor do I deserve the feelings you are trying to plant in my memories.”
She blinked at him, shocked that he would think she would try to plant anything in anyone’s mind.
“We came up with a plan, MaryAnn. In our arrogance and superiority, in our belief that we knew more than any other, we came up with a plan to not only destroy the Dubrinsky family, but all enemies of the Carpathian people. The Carpathians would rule all species. And the plan was not only brilliant and possible, but it is being used against our prince as we speak.”
His voice broke on the last word, and he hung his head in shame.
14
MaryAnn took several breaths, unable to see into his mind. She didn’t know if she had pulled away or if he had, but she could only stare at him in disbelief. Manolito De La Cruz was loyal to Mikhail Dubrinsky. She had seen his heroism. She could see the scar on his throat where he had nearly been killed. It took a great deal to kill a Carpathian, but someone had managed to do so while he had been protecting the prince. She would not believe even for one moment that he was involved in a plot to destroy the Dubrinsky family.
“I don’t understand your thinking, Manolito. My friends and I talk politics all day and we often don’t agree with our government, but that doesn’t mean we are traitors to our country or people.”
Enclosed as she was inside the bubble preventing sound from escaping, MaryAnn couldn’t hear the birds or insects. The silence seemed deafening. His misery was overwhelming. It was strange that she couldn’t read his mind, yet she could feel his emotions, so strong and deep. The shame. The anger. The guilt. Even a sense of betrayal.
“Tell me.” She made it a command this time. If she was his life-mate as he claimed, then he needed to share this with her. It was eating him alive, and she began to realize, as she watched him stare down at his hands in a kind of wonder, that at that moment, he was more in the realm of the other world than with her.
She caught his hand and tugged until he sank beside her on the cushion of flowers. “Manolito. This is destroying you. You have to resolve it.”
“How does one resolve betrayal?”
She tightened her fingers around his. “Did you set out to make a plan to overthrow your prince?”
“No!” His denial was instant and strong.
And the truth. She could hear the ring of honesty in his voice.
“Not my brothers and certainly not me. We were just talking, complaining perhaps, debating certainly. But that was all.” He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his temples as if they were aching. “I honestly do not know how we began to flesh out the details. I do not know how or why an actual plan to overthrow our prince began, but later, when we were angry, we spoke of it for real.”
Ever since his brother Rafael had killed Kirja Malinov, he had tried to remember. All of his brothers had tried to remember. At first they sat quietly around a campfire debating the pros and cons of all decisions Vlad had made. “There was only one other family with children as close together as ours: the Malinovs. When our mother gave birth, so did theirs. We grew up together, my brothers and the Malinovs. We played together as children, fought together as men. The bond between our families was so close. We were different from other Carpathians. All of u
s. Maybe because we had been born close together. Most Carpathian children are born at least fifty years apart. Perhaps there is a reason for that.”
“Different in what way?”
He shook his head. “Darker. Faster. Stronger. The ability to learn to kill came too fast, long before we were out of our normal childhood. We were rebellious.” He sighed and leaned over to rub his chin in the wealth of her hair, needing the feeling of closeness. “The Malinov brothers were lucky. There was a beautiful female child born to their family about fifty years after Maxim—the youngest boy—was born. Unfortunately, their mother did not survive long after the birth and their father followed her into the next world. The ten of us became her parents.”
She felt the sorrow in him, sorrow that hadn’t dimmed through the centuries in spite of the intervening years when he could no longer feel emotion. It was still there, eating at him, tightening his chest, roiling in his gut, choking him until he could barely breathe with it. She saw a child, tall, gleaming black hair, straight and thick, flowing like water down to a small waist. Huge, bright eyes, emeralds shining from a sweet face. A mouth made for laughter, nobility in every line of her body.
“Ivory,” Manolito whispered her name. “She was as much ours as theirs. She was bright and happy and caught on to everything so fast. She could fight like a warrior, yet use her brain. There wasn’t a student that could outthink her.”
“What happened to her?” Because that, after all, was what had led up to the bitterness she often sensed in Manolito’s mixed emotions toward his prince.
“She wanted to go to the school of mages. She was certainly qualified. She was bright enough and could weave magic that few could break. But we, all of us, her brothers and my brothers, didn’t allow her to go unescorted anywhere. She was a young woman and chafed under ten brothers telling her what to do. It didn’t matter to us; we wanted to see her safe. We should have seen her safe. She was the beauty that we were fighting for, striving to protect. Her laughter was so contagious that even the hunters who’d long ago lost their emotions had to smile when she was around.”
Christine Feehan 5 CARPATHIAN NOVELS Page 178