“He poisoned you, Destiny.” He spat the words out. The wind rushed down the street in a gust of rage. “You let him poison you.”
Her heart stuttered. “My blood’s already tainted, Nicolae. It doesn’t matter what he does to my blood.” There was a strange mumbling in her ears. Words she couldn’t catch, but the voice was tearing at her insides like sharp talons.
Nicolae yanked John Paul around, looked deep into his mind, into his memories, shook him in sheer frustration. “He has no memory of what led up to this. We have no time for this. Go home, man, and sleep this off. I will attend to you later.” Much later. His mind was consumed with the immediate problem.
John Paul looked at neither of them but obediently shuffled away, toward his home, looking neither right nor left, uninterested in the world around him.
Nicolae scanned the area carefully. The clouds overhead spun in thick threads of black, but there was no wind. He moved, gliding with incredible speed, his fingers settling around Destiny’s arm. “We need to go now.”
“I don’t want the vampire to hurt someone here, not even John Paul, because he’s angry he missed me.” Destiny tried not to sound as if she were pleading. The buzzing in her head was getting worse, a million bees stinging her from the inside out. It took a great effort to keep from covering her ears or tearing at her head to remove the voice.
The long fingers tightened around her arm like a vise. “Destiny, the vampire has not missed you yet. His poison is in your bloodstream, destroying your cells while we waste time talking. We must seek shelter, a place we can defend.”
The urgency in his voice told her, even more than the raucous sound in her head, that they had to hurry. Taking the image of an owl from his mind, she immediately began to shift her shape. Only it didn’t work. Her form shimmered, but nothing happened. “Get out of here, Nicolae.” She shoved him hard with the flat of her hand. “He’s using me as bait to trap you. Get away from me.”
Nicolae swore in the ancient language. “What happens to you happens to me. We stay together.”
She shoved him again, this time hard enough to rock him. “That’s what he wants. I’m weighing you down, a stone around your neck. Get out of here. If you care about me at all, leave me here.” The worm stings were getting worse, not only in her head now but spreading through her body until she thought she might go mad. She couldn’t tone it down, or control the pain at all.
More than the madness, more than the pain, her one thought was his protection. She knew she was right. The vampire had realized that Nicolae was his most powerful enemy. Though she had failed to detect Nicolae’s power, the undead had sensed it. The vampire recognized an ancient and knew that if he were to succeed in his plans, it was important to destroy Nicolae.
Nicolae ignored her protests, simply blocked out the sound of the tears in her voice. He couldn’t afford to feel emotion. He swept her up in his arms and took to the skies. She went still, knowing better than to fight him, sensing his utter resolve. He would force compliance from her, and both of them knew that if he did such a thing, she would be unable to view it as anything other than a complete violation.
She slipped her arms around his neck and concentrated on their back trail, trying to focus despite the strident voice shrieking in her head and the fiery stings in her body. She would not leave the entire fight to Nicolae, no matter how difficult it was to concentrate.
Her pain was excruciating. Nicolae could feel it coming from her in waves. He shared her mind and heard the hideous voice of the vampire. Her heart was beating far too fast, galloping with the effort to overcome the strain of the poison and the stinging army attacking her from the inside. She was fighting to stay focused, to weave holding spells and throw up flimsy battlements to delay the vampire following them. To give Nicolae more time.