“What are you trying to tell me?” She ran her hand over the bark of a small branch. She could hear the sap running in the tree. Insects swarmed over her head in the canopy above. An occasional owl flitted to branches near them out of idle curiosity. A few miles away, a cougar hunted with hunger rumbling in its belly.
“I want you to know our world. It is not the depraved world of the vampire. We are not all evil any more than every human is evil. We have wonderful gifts and many problems to overcome. We have longevity, yes. We appear immortal, yet we can be killed. Not easily; a wound that should be fatal can be healed with our saliva and good rich soil. The blood of an ancient has healing properties. We use the herbs and plants that abound in our world. We can command the weather should we have need. But we must rest in the hours of the sun. We have limitations.”
Destiny regarded him carefully. “Tell me more.”
“I have told you these things often, Destiny. Are you finally ready to listen?”
“I thought they were fairy tales. I needed something to live for, and you gave it to me. You turned me into a hunter of the undead.”
For the first time he looked sad. Nicolae raked a hand through the dark silk of his hair so that it spilled around him like a halo. “I know I did, Destiny. I could not think of another way to stop the things the vampire was doing to you. I could not find you. You would not speak to me. I had to use you to kill him.”
She lifted her chin, her eyes stormy. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for that. It’s the one thing I don’t feel sorry for, and I don’t ever want to. He did things—things I still can’t face. With your help, I found the strength to defeat him. Don’t you take that away from me. I deceived him and I managed to rid the world of something evil. I was only fourteen when I did it.” She averted her face, but he caught a glimpse of hell in her mind.
“I did not want death ever to touch you. I never wanted that for you.”
“It touched me the day I first heard his voice.” She turned back to him, her gaze moving moodily over his face. Studying him. Looking to see beyond the mask he wore. “A voice like yours. Beautiful beyond belief, but so dangerous. Compelling and intense and filled with promises. You have that same danger in you. The power to crush another with your voice. To lure someone to you and compel him to do your bidding.”
He nodded slowly. “That is so; it is a two-edged gift that can be used for good or evil. You have that same gift now. You have employed it, Destiny.” His gut clenched. “On the young man you used for sustenance. You called him to you, kept him calm with promises of paradise.”
Destiny couldn’t deny his charge. She knew her voice held enthrallment. It was easy to lure men to her, to hold them compliant while she fed. It was easy to leave them with pleasant memories, and somehow that lessened the guilt she felt.
Nicolae stirred, a rippling of muscle, of menace, instantly drawing her full attention back to him. He struggled to keep the demon leashed and under control. Jealousy was an ugly emotion. It had no place in his life, in his relationship with Destiny. She feared intimacy and the sharing of her body, and he knew why. He knew her darkest secrets. Jealousy was beneath him, and he refused to allow it to grow into a cancer when they already had so many obstacles to overcome.
“Thank you,” she said simply, watching him with her careful eyes.
His grin was sheepish. “It is a male thing.”
Her eyebrow shot up. “I thought jealousy was universal. I didn’t like seeing your arms around Mary Ann, but I thought it was because I was afraid for her.” She shrugged her shoulders, the movement strangely elegant.
Nicolae found everything about her intriguing and tempting. She touched him on so many levels, not the least of which was his instinct to protect. Destiny did not want a protector, didn’t believe she needed one.
But he saw the vulnerability around her soft mouth, saw so clearly the torment in her eyes. He could see the terrible struggle for sanity that she endured at each rising. Every cell in his body roared at him to take her into the shelter of his arms, to shield her with his body from every hurt. She stood there so bravely, admitting to him that it had bothered her when she saw him with Mary Ann in his arms. And she had confessed in order to make him feel better.
His grin widened foolishly before he could resume his customary mask. Warmth spread through his body and tugged at his heartstrings.
“Mary Ann is quite a woman. She has a gift or two of her own.” He was careful in choosing his words.
Destiny nodded. “I think that’s what drew me to her. Mary Ann isn’t even aware of her psychic ability. I felt the small surge of power each time she connected with a woman to counsel her. I spent a lot of time standing on the balcony of her office listening to her. Even her group sessions touched me.” She was admitting something to him she hoped he would comprehend. She recognized she couldn’t live a normal life and had tried to find a way to heal herself.
“You are not a monster, Destiny. Our people face many problems. Our men lose their ability to see in color, to feel emotion after two hundred years. Everything fades. In the old days, when our people were plentiful and our lifemates were close, it wasn’t so. Now we feel the scarcity of lifemates acutely. With no women to give us children, there was no hope for our dying race. Many of our males have chosen the momentary rush of power, the high of a kill over honor and a barren existence. That forces us to hunt them despite the fact that they are often family and friends. Each kill we make spreads the darkness until it consumes us. It is not an easy life, tormented by fading memories of color and laughter and what it was like to have genuine emotion.”
Destiny rubbed her temples. She didn’t like to think about his life, or touch on his memories. A barren life of gray and white, an endless desert stretching out in front of him. Until she had connected with him. She saw clearly his worry for Vikirnoff. She saw clearly his need of her.
“Some human women with psychic abilities are capable of being converted to our species. You are obviously one of those women. We need children. Our women, our children, are precious to us, true treasures. We protect them with everything in us. Our women and children are our only hope.”
“And that’s what the vampire did to me, right? He converted me. How?”
“It takes three blood exchanges, but with a lifemate, it’s not painful or terrible in the way you experienced. When we make love, it’s natural to share each other’s essence. To want our blood to flow in each other’s veins. It’s almost a compulsion. When we are with our lifemates, kissing them, skin against skin, exchanging blood is a beautiful need.”
His voice seemed to whisper over her, a soft temptation she couldn’t think about. “I see what you’re trying to say to me. I look into your mind and heart and I can see that you mean what you’re saying. I only wish this were all true, Nicolae, but it can never be for me. I believe that what you say about Carpathians is fact. I sense goodness in you, along with the crouching beast. But you and I both know I wasn’t converted by you. Or by a Carpathian male. I can smell tainted blood miles away. The stench is disgusting. Do you believe I can’t smell it on myself? In the cave, they called me to join them. You heard them calling me. Even the undead recognize what I am. Perhaps if one of your kind had converted me, I’d be all that you say, but it was a vampire, and his blood runs in my veins.”
“You can be healed.”
“Can you heal my memories? Can you remove the things that were done to me? You think you made me into a killer; Nicolae, but it wasn’t you. It was never you.”