A huge black wolf burst from the clearing to join him, loping easily beside him, pale silver eyes gleaming with menace. Together they raced through the narrow passages until they found a large, steaming chamber. The black wolf contorted, fur rippling along muscular arms as Gregori shape-shifted to his true form.
Mikhail laid Jacques’s body gently on the rich soil and lifted away the covering. He swore softly, unshed tears burning in his throat and eyes. “Can you save him?”
Gregori’s hands moved over the body, the vicious wounds. “He stopped his heart and lungs so that he could conserve his blood. Raven is weak because she fed him. She mixed her saliva and the soil and packed it in tight. It is already beginning to heal the wounds. I will need your herbs, Mikhail.”
“Save him, Gregori.” Mikhail’s body rippled with thick, glossy fur, bent, stretched, took shape as he ran along the maze of passages upward out of the bowels of the earth. He dared not think of Raven and how weak she was. The heaviness was invading his body already, demanding he go to ground, that he sleep.
Summoning his immense strength and a will honed to iron over hundreds of years, Mikhail burst into the open at a flat run. The wolf’s body was built for speed and he used it, running flat out, eyes narrowed to tiny slits. Paws hit the ground; back feet dug into soil to leap rotting logs. He never slowed, racing through ravines and over rocks.
The overcast sky helped to ease the effects of the sun, but his eyes were streaming as he approached the cabin. The wind shifted, bringing the foul stench of sweat and fear. Man.The beast snarled silently, all the pent-up rage in him exploding into white-hot fury. The wolf skidded to a halt, body low to the ground, once more the predator.
The wolf kept downwind, gliding through thick brush to creep up on the two men waiting in ambush. A trap for him. Of course the betrayer would know Mikhail would rush to aid his brother. The vampire was cunning and willing to take chances. The betrayer had lain in wait, feeding Hans Romanov’s fanaticism. It was probably the undead who had commanded Hans to murder his wife. The wolf slunk low on its belly, crawled forward until it was within feet of the larger of the two men.
“We’re too late,” Anton Fabrezo whispered, half rising to stare down the trail in front of the cabin. “Something sure happened here.”
“Damn truck, it would have to overheat,” Dieter Hodkins complained. “There’s blood everywhere and smashed branches. There was a fight, all right.”
“Do you think Andre killed Dubrinsky?” Anton asked.
“That’s our job. But the sun’s up. If Dubrinsky’s alive, he’s somewhere sleeping in his coffin. We can check the cabin, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Dieter said with irritation.
“Andre isn’t going to be happy with us,” Anton worried aloud. “He wants Dubrinsky dead in a big way.”
“Well, he should have provided us with a decent truck. I told him mine was breaking down,” Dieter snapped impatiently. He believed in vampires, and that it was his holy duty to exterminate them.
Dieter stood up cautiously, surveying the landscape carefully. “Come on, Fabrezo. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Dubrinsky will be in the cabin already laid out in his coffin.”
Anton laughed nervously. “I’ll drive in the stake; you cut off the head. This vampire-killing stuff is messy.”
“Cover me while I scout it out,” Dieter ordered. He took a step through the thick foliage, his rifle cradled in his arms. The bushes directly in front of him parted and he was face to face with a huge, heavily muscled wolf. His heart nearly stopped, and he froze, unable for a moment to move.
Black eyes glittered malevolently, streaming and red-rimmed. Sharp white fangs glinted, glistened with saliva. The wolf held him with those black eyes for a full thirty seconds, striking terror in Dieter’s heart. Without warning it lunged, jaws wide, head low, caught one booted ankle and crushed down with incredible power, breaking through leather and bones with a loud, sickening snap. Dieter screamed and fell. The wolf instantly released him and sprang back, regarding him with impersonal eyes.
From his position in the bushes, Fabrezo had seen Dieter Hodkins go down screaming, but he couldn’t see why. The terror in Hodkin’s tone sent fear spiraling through him. It took a minute for Anton to find his voice. “What is it? I can’t see.” He didn’t try to see either, sliding further down in the bushes, holding his gun up and ready, finger on the trigger ready to spray anything that moved. He wanted to yell at Dieter to shut up, but he remained quiet, his heart pounding in alarm.
Dieter tried to bring his rifle into firing position. Between the pain and the terror those black, venomous eyes were inducing, he couldn’t quite get the barrel around fast enough. Those eyes were far too intelligent, held rage and fury. That death stare was very personal. And it was the eyes of death that mesmerized him. He couldn’t look away, not even when the wolf lunged for his exposed throat. At the last he didn’t feel a thing, suddenly welcoming the end. The deadly eyes staring into his changed at the last moment, suddenly saddened as the wolf made the kill.
The wolf shook its shaggy head and eased into the bushes behind Anton Fabrezo. He could hear the heart thudding with terror, bursting with life. He could hear the blood rushing hotly through the body, smelled fear and sweat. Joy washed over the wolf, the need for blood, for the kill. Mikhail pushed it down, thought of Raven, her compassion and courage and the need to kill vanished. The sun broke through a small hole in the heavy cloud cover and a thousand needles pierced his eyes.
I need those herbs, Mikhail. The sun is climbing and time is running out for Jacques. Finish it now.
The wolf waited for the clouds to move back in place and then it walked boldly into the open, deliberately keeping his back to Fabrezo. Anton’s eyes narrowed, and an evil smile twisted his mouth. His hand raised the gun, his finger finding the trigger. Before he could pull the trigger the wolf whirled in midair and smashed into Anton’s chest, driving through bone, ripping straight for the heart.
The wolf leaped over the body, his manner contemptuous as he loped to the cabin. His eyes were tearing continually, streaming water no matter how narrow the slits. The heaviness spreading through his body was far more difficult to ignore. Aware of time passing, the wolf sprinted up the stairs to the door. One claw contorted, lengthened to fingers so that he was able to grasp the doorknob and push the heavy door open. The need for sleep was almost overpowering and Jacques was waiting for the herbs.
Distorted, clawed hands hung the bag of precious herbs around the thick, muscular neck, and then the wolf was in a dead run, racing the climbing sun as it burned away the thick cloud covering.
Thunder cracked unexpectedly. Thick black clouds, heavy with rain, blew across the sky, providing Mikhail with dense cover from the sun. The storm rolled in over the forest fast, with wild winds kicking up leaves and swaying branches. A bolt of lightning sizzled across the sky in a fiery whip of dancing light. The sky darkened to an ominous cauldron of boiling clouds. Mikhail bounded into the caves and raced along the narrow maze of passages toward the main chamber, shape-shifting as he ran.
Gregori’s cool silver gaze slid over him as Mikhail relinquished the herbs. “It is a wonder you have been able to tie your shoes without me all of these centuries.”
Mikhail sank down beside his brother, one hand over his burning eyes. “It is more of a wonder you have stayed alive with your ostentatious displays.”
Ancient language, as old as time, flooded the chamber. Gregori’s voice was beautiful yet commanding. No one had a voice like Gregori’s. Beautiful, hypnotic, mesmerizing. The ritual chant provided an anchor in the uncertain sea in which Jacques was floating. Rich soil mixed with Gregori’s saliva was a collar around the wounded Carpathian’s neck. Gregori’s blood, old and powerful beyond measure, flowed in Jacques’s starved veins. Gregori crushed and mixed herbs, adding them to the mixture around Jacques’s neck.