Hard hands caught her under her armpits and yanked her through the door. It was the hunter--the one she'd rescued--the one Emeline had taken the time to give blood to.
"Emeline," she whispered, looking up at him.
He didn't answer. He set her aside and strode purposefully into the room with the burning puppet, ignoring her plea to leave her and save her friend. Blaze leapt to her feet and then collapsed when her ankle gave out. She glanced down and her stomach lurched. The hand was still embedded in her ankle. It took a few precious seconds for her to get the courage to rip the talons, one by one out of her flesh. Each time she tugged at one of the talons, her stomach rolled and bile filled her mouth.
She tossed the hand away from her, jumped to her feet in spite of the blood streaming from her ankle and ran back through the other two rooms to the tunnels. Like every single time in her dreams, Emeline was gone. This was where she woke herself up. There was no waking up from this. No do-over.
They have Emeline, Maksim. They took her deeper into the tunnels.
We are in the tunnels, draga mea. Every hunter we have available to us. Get out and let us take care of this.
She couldn't. She couldn't leave Emeline. The last of her family. She pushed down terror and followed her scent. Emeline always smelled like a combination of fresh magnolia and lily of the valley. Her scent was delicate and beautiful. Just like Emeline. She raced through the tunnels. Twice she shot a guard and kept going. Once she ran into a puppet, ripped herself out of his hands and continued. Behind her the hunter followed. Each time she shot a guard, he followed up, making certain of the kill. She glanced over her shoulder just as he plunged his hand into the puppet's chest and ripped out the heart.
She was very thankful she had rescued him and that Emeline had given him blood. He was thin and pale and clearly had been tortured for a very long time, but he didn't hesitate to guard a Carpathian woman. She turned the next corner and skidded to a halt. Emeline wasn't there, but there was no getting past the two vampires clearly waiting for her. Grinning maliciously. Knowing she was coming.
Maksim. She breathed his name. Find Emmy. Please, please find Emmy.
Look at them. I have to see them, Maksim ordered, his voice calm. You have to concentrate on your fight, not on your friend. You know that.
She pressed her lips together. Maksim didn't have a lot of give in him. There was no room for argument, nor was there time. She could only hope he was closer to Emeline than she was and that whoever had her kept her alive until the hunters could find her. She let out her breath slowly and kept her gaze glued to the two vampires. They separated and the one on the right crooked his finger at her.
"Come to me." The vampire to her right whispered the command.
She recognized the compulsion, but her brain didn't accept compulsion easily, and she remained where she was, shifting her stance, staying loose so she could move fast.
The moment he rushes you, and he will, run straight at him. Make a fist and use the combined momentum from your speed and his to drive your fist into his chest. Go for the heart. It will burn unlike anything you have ever felt. Ignore it and extract the heart. He will tear at you. You have to have patience and stay in position. The other will come at you, but get the heart. Try to keep the body of the undead you are fighting between you and the other at all times.
She didn't have time to digest what he said, or protest. She had come into this knowing she might have to fight a vampire. In any case, she knew the Carpathian hunter she'd rescued was somewhere very close. She saw the vampire's eyes and knew the moment he decided to rush her. She ran at him, at an angle, trying to do as Maksim had instructed, trying to put the other vampire on the other side of him. She slammed her fist into the chest wall, right over the heart, driving deep.
Pain blasted through her. Excruciating. Sheer agony. She kept driving forward, pushing pain to the back of her mind, although it wasn't working so well. The vampire screamed and ripped at her shoulder and neck with long, curled nails. He tried to lean into her to get at her with his teeth, but she kept circling, her hand buried deep in his chest.
Maksim moved in her mind, helping her to cut off the pain so she could continue. She heard movement and glanced over the vampire's shoulder. The other had moved toward her but he stopped abruptly. She knew instantly the other hunter had joined the fight. One moment the second vampire moved toward her, and then the hunter emerged between them.
Val Zhestokly. I thought him long dead. We all did. He is one of our ancient legends. Maksim breathed the name with utter respect. No one knew what happened to him.
She could have told him. He'd been in that dungeon a very long time. Years maybe. Enough time to drive him mad, but he'd endured like so many of the ancients did. She had no idea how. Her hand closed around the withered heart. She ignored the nails digging at her shoulder and began to withdraw her arm.
The sound was terrible. The feel of the withered organ pumping in her hand disgusted her. She needed to vomit. She didn't. She kept pulling the thing from the chest until she had it all the way out. She threw it as far from her as possible. Zhestokly dropped his hands on her shoulders and moved her gently aside.
She bent at the waist, gagging. Still looking. One vampire lay motionless, but his eyes were open and he stared intently at the blackened organ lying only feet from him. The undead she'd fought with lay in a corner where Zhestokly's powerful shove sent him flying. Flames arced in the air--and then leapt from the two hearts to the two bodies of the vampires.
She knew tears were running down her face, and she pressed her hand deep into her stomach. Zhestokly wrapped his arm around her waist. "You have to get out of here."
"They have Emeline," she whispered. "I wasn't fast enough."
"She gave me her blood. I can track her. You get to safety."
Blaze, get the children out. I am close to her. Zhestokly will catch up. Mataias is on his way to help you guard the children.
Blaze looked into the ravaged face and beautiful but dead eyes of Val Zhestokly. She took another breath and slowly nodded. She had no real choice. She couldn't fight vampires, especially master vampires, and she knew Emeline had been taken to one.
Draga mea, go. Hurry. I am entering the lair now. I need to know you are safe.
I'm on my way, she assured Maksim. Please be safe.
Relief swept through Maksim as he entered the hidden lair of one of the master vampires. Immediately he realized this was Vadim's lair. It had been many centuries since he had encountered the Malinovs' particular brand of cruelty, but his lair said it all. There were several humans chained to the walls. Most were women, and all hung limply, in various stages of decay.
There was a woman on the floor by a bed with a shackle around her ankle. Clearly she had been pregnant and she had died recently--very recently. Vadim had killed her by cutting the baby from her. The baby lay on the bed, a twisted corpse that had to have been stillborn. He started to turn away, and something about the baby's features caught his attention. His breath caught in his throat as the truth hit him--confirming what he feared all along. Vadim was looking for a mate, and he thought he found her in Emeline.
He is trying to breed--to have children. That is why he wants Emeline. She proved to be a powerful psychic and he wants her to have his child. He sent the message to all the hunters.
The command center is for three things, Tariq said, obviously in the control room. They are tracking Carpathian hunters, telling one another where we are, when there are signs of us in an area and to lie low or get out until we move on. They have the database of psychic women. And they are going after the women.
Maksim stepped away from the dead woman and baby. No one imagined that a vampire could breed--or would consider it. The Malinov brothers were different--very different--and they were taking steps to incorporate humans into their war on the rest of the world. They were trying to own businesses and create the image of a crime lord family humans feared.
This ca
nnot be their only base, Lojos added. This is far too big an organization. They have moved their operations away from the Carpathian Mountains. Before they were focusing on killing the prince. Now, it seems, they are trying to build forces and incorporate into the human world. We didn't find evidence, but you know they have to have at least one more place of operation.
Maksim was on the move, following the scent of Emeline's perfume. The lair had several exits, and Vadim had used one running beneath the city--a long, narrow tunnel with no torches to light the way. He knew Emeline had to be terrified.
Sergey is with Vadim, Val Zhestokly added. He was close behind Maksim, moving fast. They are experimenting with children. Seeing how much blood they must give them in order to change the children to become like them. They mostly use humans to guard them, but sometimes a puppet finds their way into the prison and they devour the children. Vadim retaliates, but they lose one or sometimes several and have to replace them.
Maksim kept his emotions away by reverting to the hunter he'd been for centuries. He couldn't think about those children or what they had gone through. There was nothing he could do about it. Lojos and Tariq, circle around to the north side of the tunnels. Vadim has to come out somewhere with Emeline. He is heading in that direction. Split up and see if you can find other entrances to the north.
Maksim streaked through the tunnel, shifting as he did so, becoming nothing but molecules, moving fast without form so that he could add more speed to his hunt. Emeline couldn't be alone with Vadim--not even for a moment. He would know they were after him. He would throw up obstacles to give himself time with her. He didn't want her dead--he wanted her to carry his child. He couldn't escape the tunnels with her, so he had to have time with her before the hunters found her.
Swearing in the ancient Carpathian language, he followed Emeline's elusive scent. This was Emeline--Blaze's friend. More, Blaze regarded her as family. A sister. All she had left until he had come into her life. Emeline had to be found.
Please, Maksim, Blaze whispered in his mind. Please save her. Please bring her back to me.
I will not let him have her, he promised. He shouldn't promise her. One couldn't predict the outcome of a battle with a master vampire, but he wouldn't stop until he got Emeline back. None of the hunters would.
He stopped moving abruptly because the scent changed. It went from delicate and afraid to sheer terror. More, the scent was mingled with that of Vadim. His powerful scent had permeated his lair and there was no dismissing that the master vampire was close.
Behind him, Zhestokly closed ranks, guarding his back as he carefully moved to the door of a chamber. The door was heavy and wooden. Very thick and ancient. He felt the safeguards instantly. He had no choice but to shift into his real form and begin to unweave the shields on the door. It was a slow, painstaking process. He couldn't make a mistake or he would have to start over, and Emeline didn't have that kind of time. Fortunately, Vadim was in a hurry and he couldn't have used a very difficult safeguard.
Emerging from the wall, Zhestokly whispered softly and shifted into his real form, facing the master vampire coming at them. Clearly he was the protection for Vadim.
He cannot run with her knowing he can get away. He will send everyone he has to slow us down, Maksim said. He must have an escape route there in his second lair. You are weakened by long years of torture and short on blood. Take down his safeguards.
Zhestokly didn't pretend he hadn't been weakened and that he was holding on by sheer willpower. He needed the rejuvenating soil that he'd been kept from. He needed the blood of the ancient Carpathians to help heal him and give him strength. He would take on a master vampire because it was his duty. He knew he had the skills and experience, but perhaps not the strength. He stepped up to the door, raising his arms, as Maksim whirled and rushed Reginald Coonan.
At the last moment Coonan disappeared to reappear behind Maksim, slashing at his throat with claws as he went by. Maksim had already dissolved, shimmered transparently, his back still to Coonan. Coonan took the bait and drove his fist hard through Maksim's back. His punch was so hard, so brutal, that when there was nothing there but air, he fell forward, stumbling with his own momentum.
Maksim was already in front of him, the illusion of himself disappearing as he slammed his own fist home, driving through muscle and tissue to reach for the withered heart. Coonan didn't wince, or scream. He simply leaned his head down toward Maksim's arm and bit through it with his serrated, pointed teeth. His teeth met through the thick muscle, and he jerked his head back to try to tear a chunk of flesh away. Maksim moved into him, hard, using his strength to drive Coonan's head back with the heel of his hand up into his nose, forcing Coonan to open his mouth.
With one hand still moving inside the chest cavity, seeking his prize, he kept punching with the other hand. Throat. Nose. Eyes. Back to throat. Over and over. Hard, chopping punches. So fast his fist blurred, but each punch knocked Coonan's head back until the punches could include the mouth. He smashed at the teeth. Knocked them loose. Knocked them out. Sent them down the vampire's throat.
All the while Coonan ripped at Maksim with both hands, tearing strips of flesh from his ribs, but unable to get loose. As Maksim's fingers closed around the heart, Coonan realized he couldn't get away. He opened his mouth to scream. He was the first line of defense, but there were others. He needed to warn Vadim. He needed to call for aid. He'd been certain he could take the hunter, but Maksim had been too fast.
He screamed and howled, but nothing emerged from his throat. Not a single sound. Worse, each time he tried to swallow, his serrated teeth dug deeper into his throat and vocal cords as if they had a life of their own and were sawing at him viciously, cutting his insides to pieces. His throat, his esophagus, his intestines, everywhere inside his body as if the teeth had multiplied.
Coonan realized he'd become complacent when he hadn't fought hunters in over fifty years. He hadn't considered an ancient would find him. They were protected. Sergey and Vadim had all kinds of guards around them. He reached out, using the telepathic communication of his kind--the path of all Carpathians.
He is killing me. I need aid. Come to my aid! Even as he sent the message, he knew Vadim wouldn't release his other guards to allow him to live.
Vadim had a master plan, and he'd been working toward it for centuries. He found the woman he believed was strong enough to survive and keep his child alive. He wasn't going to risk it all for Reginald Coonan.
In any case the hall filled with Carpathian hunters. Ancients. He recognized some of them from his childhood, but there was no appealing to them. They had dead eyes. Emotionless robots that dispensed the prince's justice far and wide. He was caught and there was no escaping.
He felt his heart leave his body. No. No. He tried to moan. Even that didn't leak out into the hall, not even that despairing sound. There was nothing left of him, not with his own teeth devouring him from the inside out. Not with the hunter extracting his heart and tossing it like so much garbage onto the floor of the tunnel.
Humans are garbage. Fodder for us. We are superior to all of them. He tried to reason with them, stretching his hand toward his heart, willing it back into his body.
We can rule them. Take their riches. Their women. Feed on them. Make them serve us. See what we could be. Listen to Vadim and Sergey. They both share a splinter of Xavier and have his knowledge, his ability. Keep me alive. Join us. Join our cause and become great.
He repeated nearly word for word the mantra that had ensnared him. That he had come to believe in. If he could just convince them. His body swayed and his knees suddenly couldn't hold him. He smelled fire. Not just any fire, but white-hot, as if they had called down the lightning. That was impossible because they were beneath the ground, another layer of protection from the Carpathian hunters. Still, he smelled it. Saw the bright orange-red flames leaping from Maksim's fingertips to his heart on the ground.
Coonan lunged toward his heart, crawling on his
belly, trying to cover the blackened organ with his body to prevent the flames from reaching it. He was far too late. The flames engulfed his heart just as he flung his body over it. The fire burned so hot, the organ disintegrated almost instantly and burned through Coonan's body at the same time so that orange-red tips danced across his back, bursting through the center of him macabrely.
The safeguards are gone. The room is filled with Vadim's pawns. I feel them. Some are gleeful, others know to feel fear, but they face us to give him time to escape, Zhestokly told the others.
Maksim knew his use of the telepathic path for all Carpathians was deliberate--an announcement in the calm, measured way of the hunter. Vadim and his pawns would know the hunters were on them. Vadim would have to abandon the woman if he wanted to escape. Maksim finished incinerating the master vampire and turned with the others to the entrance.
They went in hard and fast, six of them. Maksim tried to stay close to Zhestokly. The ancient was weak, and Emeline's blood wasn't going to give him much strength. He'd been starved for years. It was a miracle and a testament to his honor that he had been able to keep himself from taking too much of her blood. He had stopped before he threatened her life or weakened her to the point of absolute vulnerability.
The chamber was large with a high ceiling. There were two arched doors with the same heavy wood. Maksim fought his way toward the door to his left, following Emeline's scent and Zhestokly, who had taken her blood and would know where she was. The Malinov brothers had recruited an army of lesser vampires. Many had no idea of how to fight experienced hunters. Maksim kept a firm grip on his emotions, pushing them deep so he could fight without feeling the kills of so many of his kind.
Malinov was recruiting from young males, convincing them they had a better chance of finding a lifemate with him than with Mikhail--prince of the Carpathian people. Some of the lesser vampires couldn't have been more than two hundred and fifty years old. They had no business turning. Nothing would drive them to that. Vadim and Sergey had to be very persuasive. They both had a splinter of the high mage Xavier in them. He was devious and cunning, but he also had a way of charming others, convincing them with his golden voice that he could rule the world and give to others what they deserved.