Nicolae could barely look at her. She was seething with anger—justifiably so, after such an attack. She hadn’t called him to her. His heart was still trying to recover. The sight of her, covered in tiny pinpoints of blood, sickened him. He could feel the demon in him roaring for release, fighting for supremacy, needing to protect her, needing to destroy anything that dared to jeopardize her safety. He kept his face carefully turned from hers, knowing his eyes would betray his inner struggle.
She was his lifemate, and more than any other thing, her health, happiness and protection mattered to him. Yet securing her happiness and protecting her seemed to be dramatically opposed to each other.
Destiny scanned the area, searching for her enemy. “Coward,” she spat, into the wind. “A woman defeats you and you hide. There is no greatness in you. Slink away. Be gone. You are not worth the time to hunt you down.” She waved her hand, a gesture of disgust, of disparagement, pure scorn in her voice and manner. She sent the wind out over the city, into every hole and every cemetery, into any place the undead might choose to call his lair.
Nicolae reacted immediately, stilling the wind, calming the fog, his glittering gaze capturing hers, allowing her to see the fierce flames burning there. The depth of his displeasure. “Enough! You will not challenge this vampire. You will not, Destiny.”
Her chin lifted belligerently. “I’m a hunter. That’s what I do. I find them any way I can, and I destroy them. You taught me that, Nicolae.”
She was bleeding from countless bite wounds, tiny gashes and gouges from razor-sharp teeth. There were lines of strain around her mouth. Her eyes were more wary than angry. She tilted her head to one side so that her long, thick braid fell over one shoulder as she studied his set jaw.
He looked intimidating. Ruthless. And she was right in thinking him far more powerful than he had ever shown her before. A trembling started somewhere deep inside her. Even her mouth went dry. She feared him more than the vampire she hunted. Nicolae could hurt her so easily. Destroy her with the wrong word.
“Do not!” He spoke harshly, his voice, always so unfailingly gentle, was completely different now. “I will not hear your meager excuses. You were heedless of the danger. If you hunt the undead, you must not do so with half your attention. I did not teach you to be careless or scattered. And I did not teach you to be foolish. You have skills and you have a brain. I counted on you to use both.”
Her fingers curled into fists at the reprimand. Color stained her cheeks. “I would have handled it. I didn’t ask for your help, and I didn’t need it.”
“You sound like a defiant child. You’re a grown woman, a hunter of skill.” He turned away from her, striding over to John Paul, his quick, fluid movements betraying the anger still seething deep within him. He glanced at her, his features set and harsh. “You should have called me to you immediately. You know you should have. You were being childish, angry because the lifemate you thought your equal in strength turned out to be more than you bargained for. That is no reason to place our lives in danger.”
Nicolae reached down and caught John Paul by the back of his shirt, jerking him to his feet and waving a hand almost carelessly to still any protest.
Destiny stood in the street, watching warily. “I didn’t think it necessary, Nicolae. I’m telling you that in my judgment, it wasn’t necessary.”
The full force of his glittering gaze hit her as he turned back to face her. “Are you so foolish as to think those creatures were the actual attack on you? Why would a vampire waste his energy?”
The disgust in his voice brought tears burning behind her eyes. “Of course I didn’t believe that. I knew he was trying to weaken me. He used a holding spell to keep me there. He would have shown himself if you hadn’t arrived.” He had always respected her, respected her abilities. His words had hurt more than the teeth biting into her flesh.
“He poisoned you, Destiny.” He spat the words out. The wind rushed down the street in a gust of rage. “You let him poison you.”
Her heart stuttered. “My blood’s already tainted, Nicolae. It doesn’t matter what he does to my blood.” There was a strange mumbling in her ears. Words she couldn’t catch, but the voice was tearing at her insides like sharp talons.
Nicolae yanked John Paul around, looked deep into his mind, into his memories, shook him in sheer frustration. “He has no memory of what led up to this. We have no time for this. Go home, man, and sleep this off. I will attend to you later.” Much later. His mind was consumed with the immediate problem.
John Paul looked at neither of them but obediently shuffled away, toward his home, looking neither right nor left, uninterested in the world around him.
Nicolae scanned the area carefully. The clouds overhead spun in thick threads of black, but there was no wind. He moved, gliding with incredible speed, his fingers settling around Destiny’s arm. “We need to go now.”
“I don’t want the vampire to hurt someone here, not even John Paul, because he’s angry he missed me.” Destiny tried not to sound as if she were pleading. The buzzing in her head was getting worse, a million bees stinging her from the inside out. It took a great effort to keep from covering her ears or tearing at her head to remove the voice.
The long fingers tightened around her arm like a vise. “Destiny, the vampire has
not
missed you yet. His poison is in your bloodstream, destroying your cells while we waste time talking. We must seek shelter, a place we can defend.”
The urgency in his voice told her, even more than the raucous sound in her head, that they had to hurry. Taking the image of an owl from his mind, she immediately began to shift her shape. Only it didn’t work. Her form shimmered, but nothing happened. “Get out of here, Nicolae.” She shoved him hard with the flat of her hand. “He’s using me as bait to trap you. Get away from me.”
Nicolae swore in the ancient language. “What happens to you happens to me. We stay together.”
She shoved him again, this time hard enough to rock him. “That’s what he wants. I’m weighing you down, a stone around your neck. Get out of here. If you care about me at all, leave me here.” The worm stings were getting worse, not only in her head now but spreading through her body until she thought she might go mad. She couldn’t tone it down, or control the pain at all.
More than the madness, more than the pain, her one thought was his protection. She knew she was right. The vampire had realized that Nicolae was his most powerful enemy. Though she had failed to detect Nicolae’s power, the undead had sensed it. The vampire recognized an ancient and knew that if he were to succeed in his plans, it was important to destroy Nicolae.
Nicolae ignored her protests, simply blocked out the sound of the tears in her voice. He couldn’t afford to feel emotion. He swept her up in his arms and took to the skies. She went still, knowing better than to fight him, sensing his utter resolve. He would force compliance from her, and both of them knew that if he did such a thing, she would be unable to view it as anything other than a complete violation.
She slipped her arms around his neck and concentrated on their back trail, trying to focus despite the strident voice shrieking in her head and the fiery stings in her body. She would not leave the entire fight to Nicolae, no matter how difficult it was to concentrate.
Her pain was excruciating. Nicolae could feel it coming from her in waves. He shared her mind and heard the hideous voice of the vampire. Her heart was beating far too fast, galloping with the effort to overcome the strain of the poison and the stinging army attacking her from the inside. She was fighting to stay focused, to weave holding spells and throw up flimsy battlements to delay the vampire following them. To give Nicolae more time.
Nicolae buried his face for one moment in her throat, inhaling her scent, whispering softly to her.