"We have a good bit of forest. I need that, Emeline. I need wild country. Tariq fits here. He dresses the part and looks like a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I can't be that man. I need freedom. My brothers need the wild as well."
"Will they stay?" She held her breath, waiting for the answer. She wanted them to stay. It was selfish. Each of them needed to go out into the world and find their lifemate, but they added protection. She had the baby to think about.
"For a while. Until they know we're safe. With Elisabeta here, they'll make certain Sergey can't get to her."
"He'll always try, won't he?" She shuddered. "Just the way Vadim won't leave me alone."
"The underwater pathways have been found and are closed to them," Dragomir assured. "Vadim has always been the brother that wanted to work with science and technology. He needed you for his experiments, but now that his cities have been taken from him, he will have to rebuild. You are not as important."
"You're talking as if you believe he's still alive."
He shrugged. "I have no way of knowing. I had thought him dead, but when I touched those ashes, I didn't feel anything. A master vampire would have left behind something of himself, some taint I would have felt as the wind took him. On some level, I registered that but didn't let the significance sink in. Like you, I wanted him dead. The loss of three splinters and that small piece of his heart diminished his power drastically. I don't know how long, if ever, it would take to recover from something like that. In any case, this will be our home, if you approve. It borders Tariq's property, and we'd just expand the safeguards. That allows the children and Genevieve to safely go from Tariq's to Maksim's and now this property. They could fly their dragons. So could you."
She tilted her head back to look up at him, suddenly suspicious. "My dragon?"
His smile was back, that beautiful curve to his lower lip. "You have to have your own dragon, sivamet."
Excitement sent adrenaline rushing through her veins. "Where?" she demanded.
He caught her hand and tugged, leading her around the side of the house to the large courtyard. There was an entertainment patio, and a play yard for children. Sitting to one side of the play yard were two dragons made of stone. One was large and golden with emerald eyes.
Her hand went to her throat and she stopped moving, went completely still, her lungs fighting for air. He had done this. For her. Given her a golden dragon because she'd said she wanted to fly a dragon. God. Dragomir. Her man. "I don't think you're real," she whispered. She turned her head to look at him. "I don't. You can't be real, honey. Who does this?"
His answer was not in words. He bunched her hair in his fist, yanked her head back so that there was a bite of pain in her scalp and kissed her. Hard. His tongue warred with hers. His teeth bit down on her lower lip, tugged, and then his tongue soothed that bite. "I'm real, Emeline. Very real."
She laughed when she really needed to cry, joyful tears burning behind her eyes. Her beautiful man. He caught her hand and tugged until both were practically running toward the golden dragon. When they got close, she saw the second one. This was purple, a soft lavender, and was small. She turned and flung her arms around his neck. "You made her one, too."
"Yes." His mouth was raining kisses all over her upturned face.
There was heat. Fire. Hot molasses in her veins. She nipped his chin and kissed her way down his chest, her hands at the waistband of his trousers.
"Where is your dragon?" She had his trousers open and his cock out. She let out her breath as she cupped his heavy sac. "You're so beautiful."
"I am the dragon, Emeline," he said and put his hand on her shoulders, exerting pressure so that she knelt in the thick grass. He waved his hand, and she didn't have a stitch on. "I prefer you naked when your mouth is on my cock. I love watching you. Looking at your body. Seeing your mouth stretched over me and your eyes on mine. That gives me more pleasure than you can imagine."
She knew it did. She was in his mind when she licked up his shaft and took him deep. She was in his mind when his body moved in hers. Fast. Slow. It didn't matter. It all gave him pleasure.
Whether Vadim was alive didn't matter. Not then. Not when she was with her man, taking the control, watching the helpless passion carve lines of pure sensuality into his scarred face. Not when desire darkened the gold of his eyes to liquid and his hand gripped her hair and his hips moved so carefully into her. Dragomir was hers. She had everything with him. Everything. It wasn't the home he'd given her, or the dragon, or even the acceptance of the Carpathian people that he'd asked for her and their child. It was Dragomir. She had him, and she knew that would always be enough.
APPENDIX 1
Carpathian Healing Chants
To rightly understand Carpathian healing chants, background is required in several areas:
The Carpathian view on healing
The Lesser Healing Chant of the Carpathians
The Great Healing Chant of the Carpathians
Carpathian musical aesthetics
Lullaby
Song to Heal the Earth
Carpathian chanting technique
1. THE CARPATHIAN VIEW ON HEALING
The Carpathians are a nomadic people whose geographic origins can be traced at least as far as the Southern Ural Mountains (near the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan), on the border between Europe and Asia. (For this reason, modern-day linguists call their language "proto-Uralic," without knowing that this is the language of the Carpathians.) Unlike most nomadic peoples, the Carpathians did not wander due to the need to find new grazing lands as the seasons and climate shifted, or to search for better trade. Instead, the Carpathians' movements were driven by a great purpose: to find a land that would have the right earth, a soil with the kind of richness that would greatly enhance their rejuvenative powers.
Over the centuries, they migrated westward (some six thousand years ago), until they at last found their perfect homeland--their susu--in the Carpathian Mountains, whose long arc cradled the lush plains of the kingdom of Hungary. (The kingdom of Hungary flourished for over a millennium--making Hungarian the dominant language of the Carpathian Basin--until the kingdom's lands were split among several countries after World War I: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and modern Hungary.) Other peoples from the Southern Urals (who shared the Carpathian language, but were not Carpathians) migrated in different directions. Some ended up in Finland, which explains why the modern Hungarian and Finnish languages are among the contemporary descendents of the ancient Carpathian language. Even though they are tied forever to their chosen Carpathian homeland, the Carpathians continue to wander as they search the world for the answers that will enable them to bear and raise their offspring without difficulty.
Because of their geographic origins, the Carpathian views on healing share much with the larger Eurasian shamanistic tradition. Probably the closest modern representative of that tradition is based in Tuva (and is referred to as "Tuvinian Shamanism")--see the map on the previous page.
The Eurasian shamanistic tradition--from the Carpathians to the Siberian shamans--held that illness originated in the human soul, and only later manifested as various physical conditions. Therefore, shamanistic healing, while not neglecting the body, focused on the soul and its healing. The most profound illnesses were understood to be caused by "soul departure," where all or some part of the sick person's soul has wandered away from the body (into the nether realms), or has been captured or possessed by an evil spirit, or both.
The Carpathians belong to this greater Eurasian shamanistic tradition and share its viewpoints. While the Carpathians themselves did not succumb to illness, Carpathian healers understood that the most profound wounds were also accompanied by a similar "soul departure."
Upon reaching the diagnosis of "soul departure," the healer-shaman is then required to make a spiritual journey into the netherworlds to recover the soul. The shaman may have to overcome tremendous challenges
along the way, particularly fighting the demon or vampire who has possessed his friend's soul.
"Soul departure" doesn't require a person to be unconscious (although that certainly can be the case as well). It was understood that a person could still appear to be conscious, even talk and interact with others, and yet be missing a part of their soul. The experienced healer or shaman would instantly see the problem nonetheless, in subtle signs that others might miss: the person's attention wandering every now and then, a lessening in their enthusiasm about life, chronic depression, a diminishment in the brightness of their "aura" and the like.
2. THE LESSER HEALING CHANT OF THE CARPATHIANS
Kepa Sarna Pus (The Lesser Healing Chant) is used for wounds that are merely physical in nature. The Carpathian healer leaves his body and enters the wounded Carpathian's body to heal great mortal wounds from the inside out using pure energy. He proclaims, "I offer freely my life for your life," as he gives his blood to the injured Carpathian. Because the Carpathians are of the earth and bound to the soil, they are healed by the soil of their homeland. Their saliva is also often used for its rejuvenative powers.
It is also very common for the Carpathian chants (both the Lesser and the Great) to be accompanied by the use of healing herbs, aromas from Carpathian candles and crystals. The crystals (when combined with the Carpathians' empathic, psychic connection to the entire universe) are used to gather positive energy from their surroundings, which then is used to accelerate the healing. Caves are sometimes used as the setting for the healing.
The Lesser Healing Chant was used by Vikirnoff Von Shrieder and Colby Jansen to heal Rafael De La Cruz, whose heart had been ripped out by a vampire as described in Dark Secret.
Kepa Sarna Pus (The Lesser Healing Chant)
The same chant is used for all physical wounds. "Sivadaba" ("into your heart") would be changed to refer to whatever part of the body is wounded.
Ku nasz, nelkul sivdobbanas, nelkul fesztelen loyly.
You lie as if asleep, without beat of heart, without airy breath.
Ot elidamet andam szabadon elidadert.
I offer freely my life for your life.
O jela sielam j orem ot ainamet es soNGe ot elidadet.
My spirit of light forgets my body and enters your body.
O jela sielam pukta kinn minden szelemeket belso.
My spirit of light sends all the dark spirits within fleeing without.
Paj nak o susu hanyet es o nyelv nyalamet sivadaba.
I press the earth of our homeland and the spit of my tongue into your heart.
Vii, o verim soNGe o verid andam.
At last, I give you my blood for your blood.
To hear this chant, visit: https://www.christinefeehan.com/members/.
3. THE GREAT HEALING CHANT OF THE CARPATHIANS
The most well-known--and most dramatic--of the Carpathian healing chants is En Sarna Pus (The Great Healing Chant). This chant is reserved for recovering the wounded or unconscious Carpathian's soul.
Typically a group of men would form a circle around the sick Carpathian (to "encircle him with our care and compassion") and begin the chant. The shaman or healer or leader is the prime actor in this healing ceremony. It is he who will actually make the spiritual journey into the netherworld, aided by his clanspeople. Their purpose is to ecstatically dance, sing, drum and chant, all the while visualizing (through the words of the chant) the journey itself--every step of it, over and over again--to the point where the shaman, in trance, leaves his body, and makes that very journey. (Indeed, the word ecstasy is from the Latin ex statis, which literally means "out of the body.") One advantage that the Carpathian healer has over many other shamans is his telepathic link to his lost brother. Most shamans must wander in the dark of the nether realms in search of their lost brother. But the Carpathian healer directly "hears" in his mind the voice of his lost brother calling to him, and can thus "zero in on" his soul like a homing beacon. For this reason, Carpathian healing tends to have a higher success rate than most other traditions of this sort.
Something of the geography of the "other world" is useful for us to examine, in order to fully understand the words of the Great Carpathian Healing Chant. A reference is made to the "Great Tree" (in Carpathian: En Puwe). Many ancient traditions, including the Carpathian tradition, understood the worlds--the heaven worlds, our world and the nether realms--to be "hung" upon a great pole, or axis, or tree. Here on earth, we are positioned halfway up this tree, on one of its branches. Hence many ancient texts referred to the material world as "middle earth": midway between heaven and hell. Climbing the tree would lead one to the heaven worlds. Descending the tree to its roots would lead to the nether realms. The shaman was necessarily a master of movement up and down the Great Tree, sometimes moving unaided, and sometimes assisted by (or even mounted upon the back of) an animal spirit guide. In various traditions, this Great Tree was known variously as the axis mundi (the "axis of the worlds"), Ygddrasil (in Norse mythology), Mount Meru (the sacred world mountain of Tibetan tradition), etc. The Christian cosmos, with its heaven, purgatory/earth and hell, is also worth comparing. It is even given a similar topography in Dante's Divine Comedy: Dante is led on a journey first to hell, at the center of the earth; then upward to Mount Purgatory, which sits on the earth's surface directly opposite Jerusalem; then farther upward first to Eden, the earthly paradise, at the summit of Mount Purgatory; and then upward at last to Heaven.
In the shamanistic tradition, it was understood that the small always reflects the large; the personal always reflects the cosmic. A movement in the greater dimensions of the cosmos also coincides with an internal movement. For example, the axis mundi of the cosmos corresponds with the spinal column of the individual. Journeys up and down the axis mundi often coincided with the movements of natural and spiritual energies (sometimes called kundalini or shakti) in the spinal column of the shaman or mystic.
En Sarna Pus (The Great Healing Chant)
In this chant, eka ("brother") would be replaced by "sister," "father," "mother," depending on the person to be healed.
Ot ekam ainajanak hany, jama.
My brother's body is a lump of earth, close to death.
Me, ot ekam kuntajanak, piradak ekam, gond es irgalom ture.
We, the clan of my brother, encircle him with our care and compassion.
O pus wakenkek, ot oma sarnank, es ot pus funk, alnak ekam ainajanak, pitanak ekam ainajanak elava.
Our healing energies, ancient words of magic and healing herbs bless my brother's body, keep it alive.
Ot ekam sielanak pala. Ot ombo ce palaja juta alatt o juti, kinta, es szelemek lamtijaknak.
But my brother's soul is only half. His other half wanders in the netherworld.
Ot en mekem NGamaNG: kulkedak otti ot ekam ombo ce palajanak.
My great deed is this: I travel to find my brother's other half.
Rekature, saradak, tappadak, odam, kaNGa o numa waram, es avaa owe o lewl mahoz.
We dance, we chant, we dream ecstatically, to call my spirit bird, and to open the door to the other world.
Ntak o numa waram, es mozdulak; jomadak.
I mount my spirit bird and we begin to move; we are under way.
Piwtadak ot En Puwe tyvinak, e cidak alatt o juti, kinta, es szelemek lamtijaknak.
Following the trunk of the Great Tree, we fall into the netherworld.
Fazak, fazak no o saro.
It is cold, very cold.
Juttadak ot ekam o akarataban, o sivaban es o sielaban.
My brother and I are linked in mind, heart and soul.
Ot ekam sielanak kaNGa engem.
My brother's soul calls to me.
Kuledak es piwtadak ot ekam.
I hear and follow his track.
Sagedak es tuledak ot ekam kulyanak.
Encounter I the demon who is devouring my brother's soul.
Nenam coro, o kuly torodak.
In anger, I fight the demon.
O k
uly pel engem.
He is afraid of me.
Lejkkadak o kaNGka salamaval.
I strike his throat with a lightning bolt.
Molodak ot ainaja komakamal.
I break his body with my bare hands.
Toja es molana.
He is bent over, and falls apart.
Han cada.
He runs away.
Manedak ot ekam sielanak.
I rescue my brother's soul.
Al@dak ot ekam sielanak o komamban.
I lift my brother's soul in the hollow of my hand.
Al@dam ot ekam numa waramra.
I lift him onto my spirit bird.
Piwtadak ot En Puwe tyvijanak es sagedak jalleen ot elava ainak majaknak.
Following up the Great Tree, we return to the land of the living.
Ot ekam ela jalleen.
My brother lives again.
Ot ekam we n ca jalleen.
He is complete again.
To hear this chant, visit: https://www.christinefeehan.com/members/.
4. CARPATHIAN MUSICAL AESTHETICS
In the sung Carpathian pieces (such as the "Lullaby" and the "Song to Heal the Earth"), you'll hear elements that are shared by many of the musical traditions in the Uralic geographical region, some of which still exist--from Eastern European (Bulgarian, Romanian, Hungarian, Croatian, etc.) to Romany ("gypsy"). These elements include:
the rapid alternation between major and minor modalities, including a sudden switch (called a "Picardy third") from minor to major to end a piece or section (as at the end of the "Lullaby")
the use of close (tight) harmonies
the use of ritardi (slowing down the piece) and crescendi (swelling in volume) for brief periods
the use of glissandi (slides) in the singing tradition
the use of trills in the singing tradition (as in the final invocation of the "Song to Heal the Earth")--similar to Celtic, a singing tradition more familiar to many of us
the use of parallel fifths (as in the final invocation of the "Song to Heal the Earth")
controlled use of dissonance
"call and response" chanting (typical of many of the world's chanting traditions)