“Enough!” the vampire hissed, his voice grating and cracking with his smoldering anger. “I will not be swayed by your childish tricks. Repetition is boring. I am not amused.”
“I was not attempting to amuse you,” Jaxon said softly. “I was attempting to warn you. There is a difference.”
The images of Lucian began to move, at first merely swaying back and forth with the wind, then actually circling, their feet picking up a peculiar dancing rhythm. Immediately the vampire focused on Jaxon, his lips pulling back into a snarl. “How dare you attempt to trick me!” The voice cracked and broke, all gravel and chalkboard. Saliva sprayed into the air as he spat the words at her.
The vampire glared at her, his eyes narrowing to focus on her throat, his expression grim and hateful as he deliberately closed off air to her lungs. Or attempted to. Jaxon merely felt the brush of his evil hands as he tried to strangle her from a distance, but then the grip was gone, and Jaxon watched the vampire’s eyes widen in horror, his hands flying up to protect his own throat.
All around them the clones of Lucian began to laugh softly. “You know better than to lay your hand on the lifemate of another. The law is clear and ancient and as old as time itself. I remember you now. Matias. You fought in the battle against the Turks but deserted when the sun began to rise. You sought the earth far too early, and I knew then I would face you in our own battlefield.”
The vampire was struggling to remove the invisible hands around his throat. His face was turning purple. All at once he dissolved, only to appear directly behind Jaxon, his arms attempting to whip around her, claws poised at her neck like a knife. The talons hit something solid and snapped off. His arms touched empty space.
Lucian spoke. “You can try, but you know it is futile. I would never allow my lifemate to be touched by one such as you.”
Even as the clone spoke, the vampire was struck from behind, the blow delivered with enormous strength, the hand crashing through ribs, tearing through muscle and sinew straight toward the vulnerable heart. The vampire roared with pain and anger, whirling around to face the hunter, abandoning his hope of using Jaxon as a hostage. Some impenetrable force field surrounded the woman, and he had no time to examine it for weaknesses. Right now his life was hanging in the balance. As he turned, he raked out with his poisonous claws, uncaring where he struck, only seeking to inject venom into his adversary. Lucian was not behind him. Facing him were clones, or the illusions of clones. Ten of them standing like statues, no expression on their faces, no movement to betray if any were really alive.
Blood was pouring out of the gaping wound, and the vampire knew if he attempted to take to the air, the hunter could trail him easily. He had no choice but to make a stand and fight his way free. He stepped away from the woman and the compassion and sympathy in her large eyes. Looking at her hurt him, made him weak. She believed him already defeated. He was great and powerful and would not be lessened by a lifemate’s belief in the hunter’s abilities. Even as he told himself that, he knew he believed himself already defeated by Lucian. No one could destroy or escape such a powerful hunter. It couldn’t be done.
Matias swore aloud, the sound of his voice crass and ugly in the clear air the wind of the storm had brought. He heard that jangle, the discordant note he could no longer prevent, no longer control. He saw himself clearly, the flesh sliding from his bones, the jagged, bloodstained teeth, and empty, dead eyes. His head swung from side to side in a desperate attempt to shake the truth from his sight. “Stop it! You are doing this to me, playing tricks in my mind. Is that how you defeat your enemies? Lucian the great. Lucian the powerful. You do not face us as is honorable. You use tricks and illusions.”
One of the clones to the vampire’s right bowed slightly from the waist. “Do you think to chastise me, old one? You have no honor, and there is no honor in facing one such as you. It is a complete waste of my time.”
The vampire’s poisonous blood was pouring into the ground, spreading out, searching for victims. It moved slowly, relentlessly toward Jaxon, inching its way as it soaked the ground, seeking her feet. The vampire swung around in a wide circle, allowing his blood to spray in a wide arc so that the droplets would be carried on the wind.
At once another clone lifted an arm and waved his hand casually to still the wind so that the poisonous drops fell to the ground. The paper dolls that were Lucian kept their carefully expressionless masks. Nothing seemed to touch them, to shake them.
The vampire screamed in frustration and hatred, whirling around faster and faster so that he stirred up the wind to a wild twister, blowing with hurricane force at the line of clones surrounding him. The figures shimmered into transparency but never quite dissolved completely. The attack came from above, the bird plummeting from the sky directly over the vampire, into the very core of the cyclone.
Jaxon covered her ears as the shrieking took on new heights, scraping so hideously that she wanted to cry. Tears burned her eyes and tangled in her lashes. She wanted to run, to dissolve into mist and hide in the thick bank of fog. She had complete faith in Lucian, knew he would destroy the ancient vampire, but the unfamiliar sounds and sights of such a battle were terrifying.
Even as the thoughts entered her mind, she felt reassurance and warmth pouring into her. It was odd how much they were connected, how Lucian could be fighting for his life yet still know exactly how she was feeling and seek to soothe her. She knew she loved him at that moment. Really loved him. She wasn’t obsessed or crazy or hypnotized. If there was a choice to be made, she would always choose to stay with him, not because of their intense chemistry, but because of who he was. Lucian. Thoughtful and kind and loving. She truly loved him.
The vampire slipped out from under the bottom edge of the whirling tornado, flying straight at Jaxon with his talons curved and sharpened, razor-edged. She stared at him impassively, although her heart was pounding. He intended to rip her heart out, to use her to destroy Lucian, his only real chance for revenge. His gaunt face was slashed with crimson lines; around his neck was a ring of ruby blood. Where his eyes had been were empty, lifeless sockets, bloody pits ravaged by the destroyer.
Even as the vampire launched himself at her, hatred and loathing issuing from his throat, malice in every line on his face, Lucian quietly materialized in front of her, a solid form, immovable, impenetrable, as still as the mountains around them. It happened so fast, the vampire had no time to turn, no time to counter. It impaled itself on Lucian’s outstretched hand.
Jaxon turned her face away from the awful finality of that scene, but the sucking sound and the shrieks would echo for a long time in her head as Lucian extracted the heart of the creature and tossed it some distance from the body. There was no hatred or anger in Lucian, no remorse or guilt. There was no contempt or disgust or feelings of any kind that Jaxon could detect. He simply carried out his responsibility, separate from his emotions. It took her a few moments to realize he had not had access to emotion for centuries, and in battle his mind simply functioned as it had for over two thousand years.
Jaxon was so exhausted she could barely stumble her way to the rocks, where she could sit and escape the river of poisonous blood soaking the ground. She didn’t want to see the vampire’s body as it flopped and writhed on the ground, forever seeking its pulsating heart. She kept her face averted as Lucian gathered energy from the skies to direct straight to the heart so that it incinerated the organ into fine ash. She felt the heat from the white-hot ball of flames sweeping the ground to cleanse the earth of poisonous blood, knew the exact moment it destroyed the body.