Dark Challenge. Christine Feehan. Dark Series – book 5

He closed his eyes and leaned against a tree trunk. A leopard. Who would have thought a leopard would score such a blow against him? Had he been so distracted by the presence of his newfound lifemate that he had been careless? How could an animal have outmaneuvered him? And what of the assassins and the way they were killed? No cat or even human avenger could have accomplished all that so quickly. Julian had supreme confidence in his own abilities; few of the ancients, and certainly no mere animal, could defeat him in battle. There was only one who could. Gregori.

He shook his head to try to clear his thoughts. The way the cat had battled, so focused, so relentless, was all too reminiscent of the Dark One. Why couldn’t he shake that thought when he knew it was totally impossible? Could another ancient have hidden from all of his own kind? Gone to ground for a few hundred years and emerged undetected?

Julian tried to recall what he knew of Gregori’s family. His parents had been massacred during the time of the Turk invasion of the Carpathian Mountains. Mikhail, now the Prince and leader of the Carpathian people, had lost his parents the same way. Entire villages had been destroyed. Beheadings were common, as were bodies writhing on stakes, left to rot in the sun. Small children were often herded together into a pit or a building and burned alive. Scenes of torture and mutilation had become a way of life, a harsh, merciless existence for Carpathians and humans alike.

The Carpathian race was nearly decimated. In the horror of those murderous days they lost most of their women, a good number of their men, and, most important, nearly all of their children. That had been the most violent and shocking blow of all. One day the children had been rounded up, along with mortal children, and driven into a straw shack, which had been set on fire, burning them alive. Mikhail had eluded the slaughter, along with a brother and sister, Gregori had not fared as well. He had lost a brother around six years of age and a new baby sister, not yet six months.

Julian took a deep breath and let it out, going over each and every male Carpathian he had encountered over the centuries, trying to place the unusual black panther.

He recalled the legends about two ancient hunters, twins, who had disappeared without a trace some five or six hundred years earlier. It was believed one had turned vampire. He inhaled sharply at the thought of that. Could he still be alive? Could Julian have escaped relatively unscathed from one so powerful? He doubted it.

Julian searched every corner of his mind for information. Had there been a child he didn’t remember? Wouldn’t any Carpathian, male or female, from Gregori’s bloodline be far too powerful to miss? If there was a chance that any relative of Gregori’s existed some where, anywhere, in the world, wouldn’t the rest of their people know it by now? Julian himself had traveled near and far, in new lands and old, and had come across no strangers of their kind. True, there were rumors and hopes that Carpathians as yet unknown to their people might well exist, but he had never found them.

Julian dismissed the matter for the moment and sent forth a call, luring prey in close to him rather than wasting valuable energy hunting. He waited beneath the tree, and a light breeze carried to him the sounds of four people. He inhaled their scent. Teenagers. Males. They had all been drinking. He sighed again. It seemed that was the favorite pastime of young mortals—drinking or using drugs. It didn’t matter; in the end, blood was all the same.

He could hear their conversation as they stumbled almost blindly through the forest toward him. None of the boys had permission from their parents for this camping outing. Julian’s white teeth gleamed in the night in a slightly mocking smile. So the boys thought it was funny to make fools out of people who loved and trusted them. Their species was so different from his own. Although his race was often more predator than man, a Carpathian male would never harm a woman or child or be disrespectful to those who loved or protected or taught him.