Christine feehan - Dark Slayer 20

She spoke in a soft, clear voice, as if she was telling a tale she had heard about someone else, as if the horror of those endless years had not been hers to bear. He had his horror locked away in his mind, but somehow hers seemed so much worse.

Something frightening deep inside Razvan lifted its head and roared in rage. He had long ago buried any aggressive feelings. Too many years of captivity, of being unable to do anything about it had pushed rage and anger aside, and then, finally, his emotions had faded into oblivion, so that he forgot the intensity, the sheer strength of feelings.

«That was a terrible time for me. I couldn't be out of the ground for very long, but I went looking for my brothers. I needed them. I could barely function. My mind or my body.» She ducked her head and her hair fell around her face, hiding her expression. Her voice remained as steady as ever. «It took me twenty-two years to locate the first of my brothers. I had a few run-ins with vampires along the way and inadvertently began building a reputation for slaying the undead. They began to hunt for me. I still had to spend most of my time in the ground in order to hold my body together.»

«You do not have to tell me this if it distresses you,» Razvan said.

Ivory shrugged her shoulders and tossed back her hair, her eyes steady. «It matters little now. It was a long time ago. Over the next fifty years I searched for my family, only to find that they had all turned. It felt very much like they had betrayed me.»

Ivory felt the lump rising in her throat, threatening to choke her, threatening to humiliate her. She shrugged a second time. «I had the wolves. You understand? They were everything to me. They do not have a long life span in the wild and so each new litter of cubs, each renewal, was my only family. I needed them.»

Razvan wanted to hold her, to offer her comfort, but when he took a step toward her, she moved away from him, back toward the other room as if she hadn't noticed. He followed her, moving through the pack of wolves, ignoring Raja's bared teeth as if the wolf was beneath his notice. He couldn't help but be intrigued by the story. He had no idea that wolves could carry Carpathian blood, and he doubted if anyone else had known it either.

«So these wolves are not the original pack,» he prompted, watching as she picked up a comb and began running it through her hair. It was a soothing action, not one of necessity.

Ivory moved restlessly to her memorial wall. Her family wall. She touched Sergey's face, traced the beloved lines carved there. «No, several generations were born and died, but they were always with me. Eventually the vampires began trying to find my pack to kill them. They came to think the wolves protected me in some way. Believe it or not, the undead can be very superstitious, especially since they have an alliance with Xavier. He feeds them stories to make them believe he is stronger than they are.»

Razvan watched the pads of her fingers move over her brother's face, stroke after stroke, the gentle, loving motion mesmerizing. He could only imagine someone loving him that much, missing him and wanting to save his soul the way he sensed she did her brothers'. He was dead to his own sister, much in the same way he knew Ivory had to have separated herself from her brothers now to keep her sanity, to keep from being overwhelmed by sorrow.

Feeling a driving need to hold her in his arms and comfort her, he did the only thing he could think to do that wouldn't earn him a blow. He stepped up behind her and held out his hand for the comb. «Let me.»

There was silence. She held very still, her face turned toward her memory wall, her hand not moving, her breath not flowing. He could feel the faint trembling of her body. A wild creature held captive, unknowing whether or not to accept kindness. Very slowly, she held the comb back over her shoulder, not looking, not letting him see her face.

Razvan's fingers were gentle as he took the instrument from her and began a slow glide through her hair. «How did you come to have your present pack?»

Again there was a brief moment of silence while she tried to accustom herself to Razvan combing her long hair. She cleared her throat. «I still could spend little time aboveground. When I did, it was with the wolves or hunting. My pack had given birth to a new litter of pups. Six of them. Three male, three female. The entire pack was excited, and I more than any of them. The pack's good times were mine.» This time her fingers traced the ancient Carpathian text. Siv pide kod. Pitaam mustaakad sielpesaambam . Love transcends evil. I hold your memories safe in my soul.

He realized the importance of that simple statement. She had no other contact, human or otherwise, that wasn't an enemy. The pack had virtually become her family and her friends, her very community and only confidants. She had seen the empty shell of her brother and needed the reassurance of her wall, her home, the words she had come to believe in. He felt the first stirrings of love for her, the beginning, and recognized he was stepping on a path he would not-could not-leave.

«Over the years, while living with the wolves, I realized a few had the ability to communicate with me telepathically. At the time the litter was born, the alpha male and female were both able to talk to me and I was not quite as lonely. I felt as if I had a family again.»

She dropped her hand from the wall as if bracing herself. «One evening I rose and went in search of the pack. The vampires had gotten there before me. There was blood everywhere, fur and bones and carcasses strewn over the very meadow where they had done the same to me.»

She pulled away from him, paced across the room. He could see her hands were shaking, but she put them behind her back as she turned and faced him. There was guilt and defiance mixed on her face. «I found the cubs in the den. All of them were dying. The vampires had inflicted wounds on them, but hadn't killed them outright, leaving them to suffer horribly before they died, or for other wild animals to finish them off.»

She tilted her chin. «I saved them. I crawled into the den and I fed them my blood. I did not think beyond that moment. I just could not bear to lose everyone all over again. I had promised their ancestors that I would look out for them, but because they had aided me, the vampires destroyed the entire pack.»

«It was not your fault.»

«Perhaps not, but it felt as if it was my fault. I stayed in the den to protect them, burrowing beneath the ground during the daylight hours and staying with them during the nights. I had to give them blood and, at times, I had to take theirs as I couldn't hunt. Raja was the first to turn. I had no idea it was even possible, but I knew the ramifications. No wolf pack could be Carpathian and let loose on unsuspecting humans. They would be immortal, or nearly so as we are. The first was an accident, but the rest, although it broke a moral law, was done with great purpose.»

She met his eyes, expecting condemnation. Razvan shook his head. «It seems all of us have chosen a path that perhaps has not always been the wise one. You. Me. The healer. Yet our paths have merged and become the same.»

Ivory shook her head. «You are a very different type of man.»

«Am I? Perhaps I have been away so long I never learned what a man was supposed to be.» He gave her a lopsided half smile that stole her breath. She had never felt the strange girlish fluttering a mere smile from him seemed to generate, but the very feel surrounding him was one of peace and gentleness.

«I was not insulting you. I like that you are different.» Maybe a little too much. She had a purpose-they both did-and it required full effort and attention. They didn't dare lose sight of their final objective, nor could she change the course she had set herself on.