Falcon felt the fine tremor that ran through her body and instinctively drew her closer to him, so that the heat of his body seeped into the cold of hers. His hand went to the nape of her neck, his fingers soothing the tension in her muscles. “You do not have to continue, Sara. This is too distressing for you.”
She shook her head. “I found the box, you see. I knew it was there. A beautiful, hand-carved box wrapped in carefully cured skins. Inside was a diary.” She lifted her face then, to lock her eyes with his. To judge his reaction.
His black eyes drifted possessively over her face. Devoured her. Lifemate. The word swirled in the air between them. From his mind to hers. It was burned into their minds for all eternity.
“It was yours, wasn’t it?” She made it a soft accusation. She continued to stare at him until faint color crept up her neck and flushed her cheeks. “But it can’t be. That box, that diary, is at least fifteen hundred years old. More. It was checked out and authenticated. If that was yours, if you wrote the diary, than you would have to be…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It can’t be.” She rubbed at her throbbing temples. “It can’t be,” she whispered again.
“Listen to my heartbeat, Sara. Listen to the breath going in and out of my lungs. Your body recognizes mine. You are my true lifemate.”
For my beloved lifemate, my heart and my soul. This is my gift to you. She closed her eyes for a moment. How many times had she read those words?
She wouldn’t faint. She stood swaying in front of him, his fingers, a bracelet around her wrist, holding them together. “You are telling me you wrote the diary.”
He drew her even closer until her body rested against his. She didn’t seem to notice he was holding her up. “Tell me about the vampire.”
She shook her head, yet she obeyed. “He was there one night after I found the box. I was translating the diary, the scrolls and scrolls of letters, and I felt him there. I couldn’t see anything, but it was there, a presence. Wholly evil. I thought it was the curse. The workmen had been muttering about curses and how so many men died digging up what was best left alone. They had found a man dead in the tunnel the night before, drained of blood. I heard the workers tell my father it had been so for many years. When things were taken from the digs, it would come. In the night. And that night, I knew it was there. I ran into my father’s room, but the room was empty, so I went to the tunnels to find him, to warn him. I saw it then. It was killing another worker. And it looked up and saw me.”
Sara choked back a sob and pressed her fingertips harder into her temples. “I felt him in my head, telling me to come to him. His voice was terrible, gravelly, and I knew he would hunt me. I didn’t know why, but I knew it wasn’t over. I ran. I was lucky; workmen began pouring into the tunnels, and I escaped in all the confusion. My father took us into the city. We stayed there for two days before it found us. It came at night. I was in the laundry closet, still trying to translate the diary with a flashlight. I felt him. I felt him and knew he had come for me. I hid. Instead of warning my father, I hid there in a pile of blankets. Then I heard my parents and brother screaming, and I hid with my hands pressed over my ears. He was whispering to me to come to him. I thought if I went he might not kill them. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move, not even when blood ran under the door. It was black in the night, not red.”
Falcon’s arms folded her close, held her tightly. He could feel the grief radiating from her, a guilt too terrible to be borne. Tears locked forever in her heart and mind. A child witnessing the brutal killing of her family by a monster unsurpassed in evil. His lips brushed a single caress onto her thick cap of sable hair. “I am not vampire, Sara. I am a hunter, a destroyer of the undead. I have spent several lifetimes far from my homeland and my people, seeking just such creatures. I am not the vampire who destroyed your family.”