Peter’s blood smeared his face and teeth. Obscenely, his tongue came out and licked at the red stains on his lips. His eyes burned at her, taunted her. “I found you first. I knew I would.”
“Why did you kill him?” There was horror in her voice.
He laughed, launched himself into the air, and landed a few feet from her. “You should try it sometime; all that fear floods the bloodstream with adrenaline. There’s nothing like it. I like them looking at me, knowing it’s coming.”
“What do you want?” She never took her eyes or her mind from him, her body remaining still and ready, perfectly balanced.
“I will be your husband. Your lifemate.” There was a threat in his voice. “Your father, the great Mikhail Dubrinsky, will just have to take back the death sentence he pronounced on me. The long arm of his justice doesn’t quite reach San Francisco, does it?”
She tilted her chin. “And if I say no?”
“Then I take you the hard way. It might be fun—a change from all those simpering human women, puppets begging to please me.”
His depravity sickened her. “They don’t beg you. You take their free will. It’s the only way you could have a woman.” She put all the loathing and contempt she was capable of into her voice.
The ugly smile faded from his hollow features, leaving him an ugly caricature of a man, a creature from the very bowels of hell. His breath escaped in a long hiss. “You will pay for that disrespect.” He lunged toward her.
A dark shadow moved out of the night, muscles rippling like steel beneath an elegant silk shirt. The shadow glided in front of Savannah like a shield, forcing her behind him. One large hand brushed her face where her assailant had struck her. The touch was brief yet incredibly tender, and the momentary contact seemed to take the pain with it as the newcomer’s fingers slipped away from her skin. His pale, silvery eyes then slashed at the skeletal creature.
“Good evening, Roberto. I see you have dined well.” The voice was pleasant, cultured, soothing, even hypnotic.
Savannah choked back a sob. Instantly she felt a stirring in her mind, a flood of warmth, the feeling of arms drawing her into their strong shelter.
“Gregori,” Roberto growled, his eyes glowing with bloodlust. “I have heard whispers of the dangerous Gregori—the Dark One, the bogey man of the Carpathians. But I do not fear you.” It was bravado, and they all knew it; his mind was racing frantically for an escape.
Gregori smiled, a small, humorless quirk of his lips that brought a distinctively cruel gleam to his eyes. “You obviously have never learned table manners. In all your long years, Roberto, what else have you failed to learn?”
Roberto’s breath escaped in a long, slow hiss. His head began to undulate slowly from side to side. His fingernails lengthened, becoming razor-sharp claws.
When he attacks, Savannah, you will leave this place. It was an imperious command in her head.
It was my friend he killed, me that he threatened. It was against her principles to allow anyone else to fight her battles and perhaps be injured or killed in her place. She did not stop to think why it was so easy and natural to speak with Gregori, the most feared of the Carpathian ancients, on a mental path that was not the standard path of communication for their kind.
You will do as I tell you, ma petite. The order was spoken in her mind in the same calm tone that carried undeniable authority. Savannah caught her breath, afraid of defying him. Roberto might think he was up to taking on a Carpathian as powerful as Gregori, but she knew she wasn’t. She was young, a novice at her people’s arts.
“You have no right to interfere, Gregori,” Roberto snapped, sounding like a spoiled, petulant boy. “She is unclaimed.”
Gregori’s pale eyes narrowed to a slash of cold silver. “She is mine, Roberto. I claimed her many years ago. She is my lifemate.”
Roberto took a cautious step to the left. “There has been no official acceptance of your union. I will kill you, and she will belong to me.”