Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 165649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 663(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 663(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“You will remember. We are coming closer to figuring this out,” he assured her. If he knew what to look for he would have searched her memories himself. “You are needed again, Elisabeta. Gary and Tariq are both infected. Josef as well and some of the others. The hunters must be cleared first so we can leave. While I take you to them, would you consider a way Sergey might think he could bring down the safeguards we have woven? He must believe he can get past them, yet so many of us added to the weaves, including Julija, and she is a mage of the highest order. It makes little sense.”
He couldn’t just take his woman and go out of this country, far from a place that was painful to her. He didn’t want to bring her to the others and have her work on removing the infection from them, especially when he knew Sergey was planning on attacking and she knew it as well. He felt as if he wasn’t protecting her the way he should be, that she was being attacked on every front.
Elisabeta framed his face with both hands. “You always think of me, Ferro. It humbles me the way you do that, the way you think you should shield me from the harshness of what is happening around us. I always knew Sergey would come for me. When the Carpathians rescued me, they knew it as well. I had been his prisoner for centuries. You saw the way he controlled me, the deaths he put on my soul.”
“Never. Minan piŋe sarnanak, never on your soul. Every death is on him. Completely on him. You cannot take that on your shoulders. That is what evil wishes, to convince the innocent that what evil does is the fault of the innocent. You took no life. You would never do so. You would never conceive of taking a life. Sergey is evil and cruel and he enjoyed seeing not only you suffer, but those he tortured and killed suffer as well. Had you complied with him, do you honestly believe he would have spared them?”
She shook her head. “Even when I was very young, I could read him. That was his greatest downfall and one of my worst and greatest gifts. After he took my blood and forced me to take his, before he turned vampire, it allowed me to see into him much more clearly than he realized. Being in that cage, with only limited space and so much time, I could only do physical and mental exercises to keep myself sane. One of the best was observation. He was with me a great deal of the time, even if he wasn’t interacting with me. I knew he wouldn’t have spared any of the victims.”
There was so much sorrow in her that, again, he felt her unshed tears. He gathered her close to him. “I cannot take away the scars he left on you, Elisabeta, the ones unseen on flesh. He deliberately cut as deep into your soul as possible. But I can be your refuge. I want always to be that for you.” He bent his head to hers and brushed his lips gently across hers. “Yet I always seem to be asking such sacrifices of you.”
“It is no sacrifice to aid others. Just as you are compelled to hunt the vampire, Ferro, I am compelled to help others in need.”
“Then we must go. Time is slipping away.” Ferro didn’t want to lose one moment of their time together, but already he was aware of Sandu, Gary, Andor and Dragomir pushing at him to hurry. Sergey would be expecting the warriors to rush out to the hunt. “Slide your arms around my neck, beloved. I need to hold you close while I take you to the others. When you remove each of the burns, let us know how deep they are and if you can get any hint of when they were created or how.”
Ferro took her to the group that had gathered there in the courtyard. Tariq had brought them all together, warriors, humans and children, any found with the infection and those that would be the first line of defense against the vampire and his army.
“Good eve, Elisabeta,” Tariq greeted. “Thank you for once again coming to our aid.” He gave her a courtly bow.
Ferro was a bit surprised that the other ancients and even Josef followed his example of respect and did the same. Elisabeta kept her eyes downcast but she gave a dip of her head and a small smile to the others while her fingers spasmed in his hands. She took a step back into his body, as if for protection. He knew he shouldn’t like that—he wanted her to be confident—but there was a small part of him that liked that he was the person she turned to when she had need of someone to anchor her.