Christine Feehan: Dark Demon 16

You have to stop! The words swirled in his mind, a telepathic link of unexpected strength. Your emotions are so incredibly strong I can't imagine how you don't recognize they exist. You're devastating me, ripping my heart out. I can't afford this right now. Control your emotions or get the hell far away from me!

The feminine voice swirled in his mind, slid over and into his body, invaded his heart and lungs and rushed through his bloodstream with the raging force of a firestorm. For nearly two thousand years he had existed in the gray shadows feeling nothing at all. He had lived in an endless, starkly barren world without desire or rage or affection. In that one moment everything changed. His mind was instant chaos.

Colors blinded him, running together in vivid, dazzling streaks his eyes and mind could barely accept. His stomach churned and rolled as he fought to maintain alertness when the very ground beneath his feet swelled and buckled. A floodgate opened and where before there had been nothing, now there was everything, a wild jumble of every emotion with his tremendous strength and power feeding the chaos.

The trees nearest him split in two, the sound horrendous as trunks hit the ground, shaking the earth. A rift opened in the ground close to him, followed by a second jagged tear and then another. The rocks shifted and buckled and another row of trees split and flattened.

The demon in him lifted its head and roared for release, tearing at him with great claws, fighting for the freedom to abandon honor and go after the one thing that belonged solely to him. His savior. Or maybe she was his damnation. His incisors lengthened and his blood was so hot he feared he might burst into flame.

Oh my God! You're one of them. Terror made her voice tremble.

Just as he had shared his loneliness, pain and sorrow with her, he shared his darkness and the terrible intensity of overwhelming emotions. She felt his edgy need for violence. The rush the kill provided. The primitive, raw, sexual hunger that ruled his body and mixed with the possessive lust to claim her. She shared it all with him, not only the wild elation, but every fierce need and desire pouring into his body. Every questioning of his life, the gradual need to hunt and kill. The madness of his beast rising and fighting to get loose, to be unleashed for the sole purpose of getting to her.

Fear hit him, great waves nearly amounting to terror, just as quickly building into resolve. The emotions were so strong his stomach rolled. It took a moment before he realized her feelings were pouring into him with every bit of strength as his own. He touched the stream of feminine passion and found power. She would fight. Surrounded, she had no choice but to fight and win. The fear was banished, The terror gone. She would defeat whatever, whoever came at her because it was the only way left to her to survive.

Vikirnoff closed himself off from her, abruptly halting the sharing of the storm of emotions breaking through him. He searched for a mental path, a trail that would lead him back to the woman. She belonged to him. No other. Not another Carpathian. Not the vampires on her trail. She was his. He would have her or many-human and Carpathian alike-would die.

Taking a deep breath to restore his control, Vikirnoff lifted his head slowly and looked around him. The forest seemed to expand and grow and glitter with brilliance, even in the dark of night, as if he had taken a strong hallucinogenic. Above his head the clouds were black with wrath, edged with nickering white-hot lightning. Twisting tendrils of fog snaked through the trees and gathered along the ground.

Vikirnoff remained still, allowing his experience as a hunter to guide him, rather than following the dictates of his chaotic mind. He waited, sorting through the frenzied

sensations, waiting for calm before taking action.

All the while he savored the sound of her voice. The path leading back to her was subtle, almost too subtle to follow. It was puzzling. She was Carpathian, yet not Carpathian. She was human, yet not human. He felt the whisper of power in her voice, the subtle «push» when she tried to force obedience. She had tried to force his obedience. He took another deep breath, inhaling to take air deep into his lungs, but most of all to find her scent.

Chapter 2

Natalya swiped at the empathetic tears clouding her vision. Her heart pounded in terror, but she set her teeth grimly. She could kill Henrik and she might even best Arturo. She could even get away from the wolves, but she had just touched a being so powerful she never wanted to tangle with him. At the first touch, she thought him a hunter, one of those who had killed her twin brother and was hunting her. But his emotions had been so sad, so despairing, he'd nearly torn her heart out.

She had never experienced such a strong connection before. She hadn't meant for him to hear her protest. She had no idea how they were on the same mental path to share such intense emotions, but she didn't want to stick around to find out how it had happened. She'd never been bombarded with such an overwhelming explosion of feelings before. His feelings. Lust and possession. Elation and relief. All superceded by the overwhelming need to kill. She needed to escape fast before whatever, whomever, she had accidentally touched psychically tracked her down.

«Look who's crying now,» Henrik sneered. «I knew you were all talk.»

«That's right, Freddie boy, I like to talk,» Natalya agreed as she directed three throwing knives in rapid succession at him. Each scored a hit, burying deeply all the way to the hilt, one in the heart, one in the throat and one in the mouth. «But, as I've already said, I hate to listen to whiners.»

Henrik dropped to the ground again, howling and writhing, clawing great holes in the soil, his blood withering the vegetation in a broad circle around him.

Arturo sighed. «That wasn't nice, Natalya. He's going to be much more difficult to control. I don't want you dead and he'll insist.»

Natalya glanced into the darkened interior of the forest. So far it had just been too easy. Neither vampire was trying to kill her. Her last few encounters with the undead had been strange in that none of them seemed willing to kill her. It gave her a distinct advantage in

battle, but it boded ill for her future. She had discovered some years earlier that they were hunting her for a purpose she couldn't fathom and they were very persistent in their pursuit of her.

«I don't think you really need him, Arturo,» she said. «He's rather a pathetic fellow, don't you think?»

«But a useful sacrifice,» Arturo pointed out.

Natalya was having trouble with her vision. Colors ran together, vivid and brilliant in spite of the darkening clouds spinning around the moon. The leaves glittered silver, dazzling her eyes so that when she launched her attack at Arturo, she was slightly off in her depth perception. She couldn't afford to wait. It was obvious Arturo was using Henrik as a stall tactic, waiting for reinforcements, and she knew the hunter was coming.

Out of necessity she went for the kill, somersaulting through the air, only baring the knife concealed in her hand at the last second, as she plunged it straight for Arturo's chest. He leapt to the side, so that she sliced a long thin cut across his shoulder and arm. As she sprang past him Arturo whipped his other arm around and slammed talons into her side, raking deep.

Pain blossomed, low and deep and bone-jarring. Vikirnoff looked down, shocked to see blood seeping from a gaping wound. He pressed his hand over his side, eyes glowing a hot red, fangs bursting into his mouth. He growled low in his throat, already shifting shape, taking the form of an owl. As his muscles popped, sinews crackled, and then the pain vanished. He glanced down again and there was no blood. None. His clothes, his skin and, as he completed the change, his iridescent feathers, were immaculate.