Dark Sentinel ('Dark' Carpathian Book 32)

by Christine Feehan

  At once, Genevieve was there, handing out a glass of orange juice. “Why is everyone so upset?”

  Andor realized these humans had thrown their lot in with Tariq. Each of them had agreed to have barriers put in place to keep any vampire from knowing they were part of Tariq’s force. Their brains also were shielded from allowing them to talk about vampires or Carpathians to anyone but a recognized part of the security force. Safeguards also had been added. Even Genevieve had shields to keep her from accidentally blurting out what she knew of the Carpathian people.

  He wasn’t used to living with them, or trusting them. Tariq did both. He trusted them to watch over the compound and his children. Lorraine had asked a good question when she was worried about the babies. If they couldn’t go to ground with their parents, who would watch over them? Who would raise them? In that moment, he understood why humans such as Gary had been, before he became fully Carpathian, revered. They had done everything necessary to ensure no harm came to a member of the Carpathian race.

  “Lorraine was attacked by a crow during the encounter with the vampires. We realized early on that the entire skirmish had been orchestrated just for that purpose. He had not tried to acquire her, or kill her, so that meant he put something in her to bring back here.” As he laid out the scenario to Genevieve, he found it helped to think it through.

  “How horrible for her. I can’t imagine how she must have felt.”

  “We searched, all of us, over and over, and we could not find it,” Andor continued. “We all came to the same conclusion—that he had to have planted something on her—but none of us, after repeated attempts, could find it. We looked inward, where he was most likely to plant something. A sliver. A parasite. Something that might eventually kill her. We looked at every organ, her bones, her bloodstream. Not one of us thought to look outside her body, in her skin, where he carefully planted what he wanted to get inside.”

  Genevieve gave a little shiver. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “What was it? What is its purpose?”

  None of them knew, other than perhaps it was the parasite to prevent them from having children. Still … it had waited to infect the ground. The healing ground. If a woman was giving birth, or pregnant, she would most likely rest in that soil, the best they had around them. “I do not know, Genevieve. We hope to find that out. We’ll be searching for it, but we have no way of knowing what it is.”

  “How do you know it’s there, then?”

  His head snapped up. He flashed her a small smile. “You are a brilliant woman, Genevieve. No wonder you are guarded carefully. We cannot lose your great mind.”

  He turned and was gone, streaking back to the main house and moving beneath it to where Tariq had set up the healing grounds. The Carpathian hunters had gathered. They didn’t want their women near the contaminated soil. It was too late for those already lying beneath it.

  “Lorraine might know what to look for. She woke when it escaped her skin. She would have a feel for it, perhaps even be able to identify it.”

  “If you wake her too early and she isn’t ready,” Tariq cautioned, “she might still feel the pain of the transformation.”

  It was a risk. The others waited patiently for him to decide. He let his breath out slowly. He had to make his decision based on what Lorraine would do. She would want to be awakened and apprised of the situation. From there she would be able to tell them whether or not she could help.

  “I will wake her,” he said. He opened the soil over where his beloved was sleeping, remembering at the last moment to cleanse and clothe her before bringing her to the surface. He caught her up in his arms, cradling her close to his chest. “Awaken, Lorraine. We have need of your help.”

  Her long lashes fluttered against her pale skin. It took a moment before she lifted them so he could stare into her green eyes. The impact was immediately and nearly overwhelming, a visceral feeling that cut right through him, gutting him. She did that with one look. He smiled down at her, seeing the confusion in her eyes, feeling the wince when she moved her body just slightly. It was too soon and her body wasn’t fully healed.

  She woke starving, every cell crying out for nourishment. He hadn’t considered that, either. She would be waking without control. I am going to feed you, Lorraine. Take what is freely offered. He turned his body to try to give her privacy from the others. He was a big man and sheltered her against his chest.

  She glanced over his arm and saw the others. “Tell me what is going on.”

  He looked down at her face. There was nothing there but concern. Certainly, no panic or after the fact wanting to take her decision back.

  I will tell you after you have fed. He used his teeth to open his wrist. He pressed it to her mouth, giving her no choice but to drink him down.

  She caught at his arm, holding it in place, her need pushing aside her fear of anyone seeing her feed. Tell me. What is wrong?

  At sunrise, I put you to sleep. The transformation was particularly difficult for you.

  There was a lot of pain, she agreed.

  There still is. He couldn’t afford to be weak from blood loss. He had to watch the amount she consumed.

  Not like there was last night.

  To his shock, she swept her tongue across the laceration and sat up in his arms. “Tell me, Andor. Something’s terribly wrong for all of you to be gathered together like this, wearing your grimmest faces.”

  “Do you remember, just as I put you to sleep, what you said to me?”

  She frowned, and he couldn’t help brushing a kiss across her nose, even though he knew it might be distracting. As he raised his head, her eyes went wide and one hand went to her throat defensively. She remembered. She had that haunted look in her eyes, the one she got every time Sergey was mentioned or she thought about him.

  “Yes. I felt something moving on my skin.” Her frown deepened and she gave a little shake of her head.

  Andor carried her back from the center of the healing grounds to the edge where the others waited. They needed to hear what she had to say.

  “No, that’s not right. It was in my skin, and I knew the moment it moved that the crow had put it there. It felt dark and ugly. When it moved across my back, I could actually feel my cells shrinking away, trying to avoid it.”

  Sandu nodded. “That is the abomination of the undead. They are soulless creatures and wholly evil. Your body would shrink from all contact.”

  “Why couldn’t I feel it when he put it in my skin? It had to be touching me. I could see, if he’d gotten inside me, how I wouldn’t know, but if he planted it into my skin, I should have felt it, right?”

  “You actually did,” Andor said. “You thought a couple of times that you itched between your shoulder blades but you put it down to being a target. I caught those thoughts.”

  “Maybe, but it should have been more, something dark and ugly like when it emerged,” she argued.

  There was a moment of silence and then they all began talking at once to one another, putting out all kinds of theories. It was Petru who held up one hand for silence. When the others quickly subsided, the ancient put forth his own opinion. “She would not have felt this, if at the time it was planted, it was benign.”

  Andor was stunned. He should have thought of that—considered that whatever Sergey introduced into Lorraine wouldn’t in any way appear threatening or harmful. She would have known immediately where it was if it were malicious. She had said her back itched, right between her shoulder blades.

  “Lean forward, csecsemõ, I want to look at your back,” he said. He had seen her back before, that smooth, sleek expanse of silky skin.

  Lorraine complied immediately, and he pushed her T-shirt up to expose her skin. The others gathered around to stare at the blackened cells. The evidence was damning. They knew something of Sergey’s had escaped into the healing soil—it was no longer a matter of speculation.

  “Can you tell us what it looks like, Lorraine?” Gary asked.

&nb
sp; “I didn’t see it. I only felt it.”

  “I understand that,” the healer persisted. “But you had to have felt its size and shape. Call up the memory just as you did when we were trying to find what the crow planted in you.”

  Lorraine didn’t argue. She always seemed ready to comply when it was a matter of urgency. She didn’t ask questions or insist on answers they didn’t have, she simply nodded and looked into her mind, trying to find the exact moment she was aware of the creature living in her skin.

  Andor stayed very still in her mind, waiting to see the memory, hoping to help with the details. Pain crashed through him—through her, only because they both replayed the event in their minds, deliberately calling up exactly how it felt along with the memory.

  She took the pain on a quick inhale, drawing air into her burning lungs. Breathing through the constant convulsions, the twisting of her organs as the blowtorch inside continued to reconstruct her body. There was that moment of peace as Andor sent her to sleep. She was nearly there, drifting away from the pain, so thankful it was over.

  The moment her back settled into the soil, she felt the other thing and knew it was evil. It was squishy and yet firm, a long skinny creature. The tiny feet felt like a hundred of them, razor sharp, stepping on her, dragging the stinger over her skin. It hurt, but in a different way from the conversion. This hurt her soul. It held a kind of agony all its own.

  “I knew immediately Sergey’s crow had planted it.”

  No one, least of all Andor, pointed out the master vampire had been inside the crow. They’d all missed that. He had so many spies, it was impossible to pinpoint a single crow and know it was the head of the vampire army. Now, all of them had studied the crow and would be able to pick it out of any flock, but he doubted if Sergey would use the same trick again. He was too clever for such an obvious mistake.

  “It slit open my skin and clawed its way to the surface. The moment the healing soil touched it, it wiggled and slashed as if very excited. I tried to hold it back. It was silly to think that by tightening every muscle in my body, I could keep it from entering the soil, but I did, just in case I could contain it. I couldn’t.” There was regret and guilt in her voice.

  Andor immediately caught her chin and lifted her face toward his. “This is not your fault. Nothing about this mess is your fault. Every one of us failed to consider the crow’s talons. To be fair, that laceration in your skull was deep.”

  “He’s so smart,” she whispered. “Scary smart.”

  “We know what we’re looking for,” Gary said. “Thank you, Lorraine. It’s small, about, what do you think? Two, three inches long?”

  “Longer. Almost like a small snake. More like six or seven inches, but very, very thin, like a pencil, maybe,” Lorraine explained.

  Andor remained quiet. Gary had a way of enticing a person to give him more information without realizing he was coaxing more details out of them.

  Gary nodded. “But with legs, like a centipede.”

  Lorraine frowned. “Yes.” There as a bit of reluctance in her voice. “I did feel the feet, as if there were a lot of them, but that wasn’t necessarily how it moved. It moved more like a snake might, wiggling but …” She trailed off.

  Gary was silent a moment. Andor breathed shallowly, watching Lorraine’s face. It cleared suddenly.

  “Sideways, the thing moved sideways, like a sidewinder would move. I could feel the brush of its feet. They were sharp, like a tack might be, but their purpose wasn’t to walk. It was more like the creature used them to stop his momentum, turn or rake.”

  “That’s perfect, Lorraine. You’ve given us a good picture of the creature. We’re going to be searching, but this is a huge area for something that small to be hiding in.”

  “Don’t forget it has a stinger. I felt that as well. It didn’t sting me, but I remember I was waiting for it to do so.”

  “It is too bad it didn’t tell you where underground it was going,” Petru said.

  She shrugged. “You just have to figure out its main goal. What its purpose is. Once you know that, you know where it is.”

  Main goal. Main purpose. Andor turned those words over and over in his head. “What does Sergey desire the most?” He murmured the words out loud.

  “Power,” Tariq said. “He wants to rule the planet. I believe every Malinov had that goal.”

  “Wealth,” Tomas said. “My brothers and I have often commented on how the Malinov brothers would rather go to the trouble of stealing than work for their gain. They steal lives, they steal money. They steal anything that would benefit them.”

  “Children,” Dragomir guessed. “More than anything, the plan was to get psychic women and force them to have their children so they could have replacements in case of their demise.”

  “No.” Andor shook his head. “We’re talking specifically Sergey, not Vadim or any of the others, dead though they are.”

  “We hope they’re dead,” Gary said.

  Every ancient looked to the healer. “What do you mean?” Mataias asked. “Of course they’re dead.”

  “Not necessarily completely. Suppose they were talked into giving a sliver of themselves to their youngest brother. The brother no one thought had any kind of intelligence when it came to battle strategy. Or any kind of courage. Suppose he cultivated that image from the time he was very young, and the others, individually, were asked for aid. They might help their youngest brother out. Each would do so without the other knowing. If they placed a sliver of themselves in his mind, he would have all of that amazing intelligence as well as the slivers of Xavier. That would make Sergey the most powerful vampire, not only alive, but for all time.”

  Tariq shook his head but didn’t say anything. The others looked a little stunned, or like him, Andor suspected, shell-shocked. It was not only possible, it would explain a lot of things.

  “He planned this all along,” Andor said. “The entire thing, the underground city, the gathering of the armies, the slow takeover.”

  “He wouldn’t have to take over,” Gary said. “That might have happened out of necessity. Vadim might have been catching on to the true genius in the family. Sergey couldn’t afford to have his brother know his plans. As long as he was considered the least of the threats, no one would be sent after him.”

  “So, we’re back to the original question,” Andor said. “What does he want most? He took Elisabeta before he ever turned vampire. He kept her from his brothers. He kept the knowledge of her from them. There was no trace of her in all those centuries, which means he had prepared places for her. He didn’t take her on a whim, it was completely planned out, every single step. I think Elisabeta is what he desires most.”

  “Is she his lifemate?” Siv speculated.

  Andor shrugged. “We have no way of knowing that. We can only try to keep her from him. She is light. He is darkness. She is good. He is wholly evil. I think that creature was sent by him to find her. He needs to know where she lies.”

  “This is pretty far thinking,” Lojos said. “Vampires don’t usually have this kind of fixation on a woman. Even if she was his lifemate, she couldn’t help him.”

  “No, but she can give him the things he lacks. Color. Even emotion. It makes sense when we know Sergey has held up so much better than the others,” Gary said. “His body hasn’t rotted the way his brothers’ all did.”

  Andor had to agree. “Sergey knew Lorraine was my lifemate and human. He also knew I would protect her. He made certain to make us all think that acquiring her was his goal, but he wanted her brought here, to this compound, because when I converted her, she would be put in the healing soil, where Elisabeta was already lying in a deep sleep.”

  “Do you really think a vampire is capable of that kind of planning? To use a wounded ancient and his potential lifemate to bring a weapon or beacon right into the Carpathian stronghold?” Lojos asked. “This turns everything we know about vampires on its head.”

  “I believe it absolutely,�
� Andor said. “And the more time we take discussing it, the more time it has to find her.”

  The ancients looked at one another. “How do we best use this information, providing it is correct?” Petru asked.

  “We open the earth around her,” Tariq said. “Search it first and then isolate it if the creature isn’t found.”

  He floated above the healing soil and began cutting out a wide cube toward the left of the center. The cube moved up into the air, and was set squarely on the cement pad away from the wide expanse of healing soil.

  “Who else is in the ground?” Andor asked, setting Lorraine carefully on the cement pad a short distance from the cube.

  “Ferro. Liv normally sleeps here as well, but she awakens before the rest of us do. She enjoys playing with her siblings,” Tariq answered.

  “It will be impossible to tell where Ferro went to ground,” Benedek stated. “Even within the monastery, we never knew where he slept. He is always careful.”

  “We should consider waking him,” Tariq said as he paced around the room.

  Before he could say another word, or the others could respond, the soil on the right side, above where Andor was certain Elisabeta slept, spouted up like a geyser. Great columns of fine dirt sprayed into the air. Ferro shot up and then turned and dove across the cement barrier, back into the deep soil in the healing grounds.

  “The creature. I saw it just for a moment,” Andor said, and followed Ferro’s example. He chose a place just ahead of where he thought the hideous little organism, half reptile, half anthropod, wholly evil, might be.

  Behind him, the other ancients fanned out, each choosing a side of the ring, forming a large circle where they hoped to corral Sergey’s servant. Andor began to quarter the area he had chosen to protect. Each of the ancients sent Ferro their coordinates. He was the active pursuer. No one knew exactly what shape he was in, but it didn’t matter. The creature had disturbed his sleep, and he was already hunting it.