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She didn’t want to choose Andor to run away from her problems. She wanted to choose him and the life he offered her because she loved him that much. It shouldn’t be an obligation, or because she wanted to hide, or even fate or destiny. Andor was a man who deserved to be loved wholeheartedly. She hadn’t considered she would find a man she could love that way until she found him.
A rustle of leaves warned her and she spun around, her mind quickly going to where every weapon the ancients had created for her was hidden. She catalogued them, from the ones she was most experienced with, the most lethal, and then what she had to do to kill a vampire’s puppet.
Two men came out of the trees and slipped down the hillside on their butts. One laughed, the other looked embarrassed. Neither looked like a flesh-eating puppet. They both looked totally human with their backpacks and hiking boots.
“Hey there.” The embarrassed one spoke first. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? I’m Herman, by the way, and this is Adam.”
“Lorraine.” She edged over until she was close to her pack. She should have been carrying her gun at all times. There was one right next to where she’d been sleeping and another in her pack. She knew better than to walk anywhere without a weapon, but she’d opted for a flamethrower. A gun would discourage a human a lot faster. “I’m looking to be alone out here, to just contemplate life.”
“We’re doing the same,” Herman said. He glanced over his shoulder at Adam, who was dusting off his backside and still grinning.
“We’re not very good at camping,” Adam offered. “It’s our first time. So far, we couldn’t put up the tent or start a fire to cook anything.”
That part might be the truth. The backpacks looked new and Herman wore his too low, which would make him very uncomfortable as they hiked longer distances. Neither of them had hiking boots that appeared broken in. That would make their feet hurt and cause blisters. As if to prove her point, Adam sank down at the edge of the slope and began to unlace his boots.
“I hate these things. I should have just worn tennis shoes.”
“Stop complaining,” Herman advised and took a few steps toward her.
“Stop.” Lorraine believed in giving fair warning. “I’m not comfortable with you any closer. I do have weapons on me and I’m very skilled in their use.” Not that she thought either of the two men were much of a threat. They certainly didn’t look it. On the other hand, she’d been fighting hideous creatures with amazing powers so the two men were bound to look harmless in comparison.
Herman was much more muscular than Adam. Adam was slender with sandy-colored hair and a perpetual smile. Herman, on the other hand, had a perpetual scowl and he was giving it to her now as he all but skidded to a halt a few feet from the invisible line separating her from them.
“What the hell do you think we’re going to do?” he demanded belligerently.
“Herman.” Adam stood up slowly, one shoe dangling from his hand. “She’s a woman alone out here. Back off. You don’t have to be on top of her to talk to her.” He sent an easy smile toward her and sank back down onto the slope. “Herman hasn’t had anything to eat today and he gets testy. Low blood sugar. We really thought we’d be able to do this. All our friends constantly tell us how fun camping is, but so far it sucks. They dared us to try it and we did, mostly because they bet us a lot of money we wouldn’t.”
She rummaged in her pack until she found a couple of bags of trail mix. “Here, this might help.” She tossed one to Herman. Anything or anyone could go out of the circle, but nothing could get in—not without an invitation. That safeguard had been factored in just in case she accidentally forgot the exact lines of defense. She could reach for any of the men bound soul to soul to her and they would hopefully wake enough to invite her back inside. She wasn’t the kind of woman to forget exactly where the safety lines were.
“Thanks,” Herman said, sounding a bit mollified. “Sorry I snapped at you. I can see how you might consider a couple of men a threat.”
“Do you have any water?” Adam asked.
She frowned. “How could you come out this far without water or food?”
They looked at each other and then back at her. Herman sighed, stuffed a handful of trail mix into his mouth and then offered some to Adam. “We’re lost. We got turned around and thought we were heading back but nothing looked familiar.”
She pulled her pack close, turning slightly so her body blocked the movement of her hand as she pulled her gun out and shoved it into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back. She took her largest water bottle out, turned back to them and tossed it to Adam. He caught it in midair, just as Herman had caught the bag of trail mix.
Her heart jumped and then settled. “Where do you live?”
“San Diego,” Adam answered and then took a long pull of water from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We’re much more at home in a nightclub than the wilderness. I work as an advertising exec. Technically, Herman could be my boss, but since we both own the company, he’s not.”
Herman scowled at him. “You’re not a partner.”
“That’s up for debate. You got the money, honey, and I’ve got the brains and talent.” Adam laughed at his singsong delivery.
Herman’s scowl disappeared and he smiled and shook his head. “He’s ridiculous.”
“But truthful.”
“Yeah, you’re truthful,” Herman agreed. He looked back at Lorraine with an easy smile. “What are you doing out here? Are you alone?”
She felt the delicate probe in her mind. A touch. Barely there, but it was a push for her to tell the truth. She saw no reason not to, at least partially. “I’m Lorraine Peters. Nine months ago, my brother, Theodore Peters, killed our parents, aunt and uncle and some family friends. I was having a difficult time with the notoriety and decided to come out here alone to try to heal a little. It’s a pretty open wound.” That was strictly the truth and she even managed to get the word alone in there. She shrugged and tried to look as if she wasn’t in the least suspicious, but she was. They already knew the answer to their last question—whether she was alone or not—they’d acknowledged she was alone earlier.
They hadn’t hiked for four days into the wilderness. They had to have flown a plane and landed somewhere in a field nearby. Why would they lie? There was no way these two men had actually gone through brush and forest. They were definitely human, but they possessed psychic abilities, or at least Adam did. She just wasn’t certain what those psychic abilities were.
Herman seemed the more dominant of the two, but Adam raised her suspicions more. It was Adam who’d made the delicate probe. He was no master vampire, able to stab at her barricade. She was even stronger than she had been with all the exercises the ancients had her doing.
They looked very hip. They wore skinny jeans with a rolled hem. She didn’t know anyone who hiked in skinny jeans. Their clothes looked new in spite of the men sliding down the slope on their butts. They had admitted they’d never hiked before. She could buy that they were two men with a little more money than they knew what to do with who’d taken a dare from their friends and ended up lost—except she couldn’t. It was all too pat, and then there was Adam’s ability. She hadn’t known anyone else like her—not even at college—so what were the odds that he would go hiking, get lost and stumble on her?
She glanced up at the sun. Another hour until sunset? Andor would know exactly. Carpathians seemed to always know when the sun set and when it rose.
“I’m sorry about your brother and family,” Adam said. He looked and sounded genuinely sorry. “That must be terrible for you.”
“There aren’t any words,” Herman agreed. “I’m sorry, Lorraine.”
Their sympathy was unexpected. She was more than confused. They looked so sincere she felt grief rise, the fierce, debilitating grief that could overwhelm on a second’s notice. She pushed it down and gave them a halfhearted smile. “No, there aren’t a
ny words. I was away at college. One day I had them all and the next, my family was gone.”
Adam shook his head and looked down at the water bottle in his hand. “That’s why this says Theodore.”
Of course, she’d brought part of her brother’s camping equipment because it was better than hers and it made her feel close to him, as if she’d brought part of her big brother—the one who had loved and protected her—along with her into the wilderness. She nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m really so sorry,” Adam reiterated. “I can’t imagine.”
She didn’t reply, but she did take a slow, careful look around. The ancients had said Sergey sent spies in the form of animals. That he sent human puppets. She’d looked for images of such things in the hunters’ minds so she would recognize them. There had been nothing in their memories that she’d accessed like Adam or Herman. There was a crow staring at her from the branches of a pine tree. Another sat with folded wings and sharp, beady eyes several feet from the first bird, higher, up near the top of another pine. An icy shiver crept down her spine.
When she looked back at Herman, he’d followed her gaze to the bird. “Do they always do that, just sit and stare?”
“Yeah,” Adam chimed in. “It’s creepy.”
“He’s probably looking for a free handout. Crows are intelligent birds. If other hikers or campers have fed them, they learn to follow the campers to get a free meal.”
Herman looked away from the bird, shrugging his shoulders. “That makes sense.” He glanced at his watch. It was a quick look and one she probably would have missed if she hadn’t been trained from such a young age to see every nuance, every gesture and every facial expression. He glanced over to Adam.
“Are you feeling more comfortable with us?” Adam asked.
She gave them a little smile, shrugging at the same time. “Not yet. I’m out in the middle of nowhere by myself. Besides, you’re just passing through, trying to get home, right?”
Herman nodded. “We want to get the hell out of here.”
She pointed to a faint trail just at the beginning of the slope. “That will take you to the stream. You’ll find a fork. One trail is very well traveled, the other not so much. Take the well-traveled one and it will lead you, eventually, out of here. It will take a couple of days, but if you stay right on that path, you’ll get home.”
The two men looked at each other and then at her. “Can you come with us to show us?” Herman asked.
She shook her head. “Not happening. You’ll make it, but I’m not going off alone with two men. That would be foolish, and I’m not a foolish person.”
The crow sitting very high up in the pine tree spread its wings wide and flapped them. At the same time, the bird opened its curved, sharp-looking beak and croaked loudly. The sound grated on her nerves. She rubbed her arms up and down to still the goose bumps.
Herman sighed and stood up slowly. A noise, much like a growling bear, had Adam leaping to his feet. Both whirled to face the thicker tree line. Lorraine slowly got to her feet, her heart beginning to pound. That noise hadn’t been a good one. The crow squawked again, the sound like nails on a chalkboard. It seemed as if the creature lumbering toward them answered with another deep bellow.
Andor, something is going on. I have no idea what to do. Can you wake?
There was a brief moment when all she could hear was her own heartbeat. She held her breath, never taking her gaze from up the path above the two men.
I am here. I am reading the two men from the memories in your mind. Do not trust them.
That wasn’t helpful. She didn’t trust them. But something far worse than two human males was in that forest coming toward them. Brush swayed. She caught the faint difference in color as if something foul had tainted the vivid greens. Fronds curled in on themselves.
Do you see that?
I am looking through your eyes. Keep looking there.
Can you see Herman and Adam? The two men were looking up the slope as well. Both had abandoned their backpacks and were walking backward away from the slope. Adam still had Theodore’s water bottle in his hand, and she wanted to run and snatch it away from him.
Do not leave the circle, Lorraine.
It was the first time she’d really heard complete command in his voice. A shiver went through her, but she couldn’t tell if it was a bad one or a good one. Something about that tone in her mind set her on fire in a way she didn’t understand.
I hadn’t planned to. She was intelligent enough to know whatever was coming her way was not something good. “You two need to get out of here now,” she warned. “That doesn’t sound good. You’re out in the open.”
“So are you,” Herman pointed out. He kept backing up until he hit the safeguard. Sparks flew into the air, and he yelped. His shirt was singed, the smell of burning cloth lingering. He whirled around, slapping at his back and glaring at her. “What the hell was that?”
“It’s a safety boundary. No one can pass through it.”
The roar went up again and a hideous creature lumbered out of the trees. It walked slowly, ambling from side to side. The face was distorted, one eye drooped. There were pits in the face and the eyes flamed red.
“Holy shit!” Adam yelled and stumbled backward. He tripped and went down on his butt. He just sat there in the dirt, staring.
He has to move. He is fully human and that is a vampire’s puppet. It will attack him. It has most likely been programmed to acquire you.
I thought it would want to eat me.
I am only guessing, Lorraine, but you are most likely off-limits to it. Anyone else it stumbles across is not, including Adam and Herman.
“Get out of here!” she called. “Hurry!”
Fortunately, the puppet moved at a relatively slow pace. If Adam and Herman ran, they would be safe, but neither was moving. They seemed transfixed on the creature, so shocked they were frozen in place.
Lorraine, concentrate on the puppet. He cannot get to you. He cannot pass the safeguards. You would have to issue him an invitation.
“You have to run,” she said again to the two strangers.
Adam, eyes wide with fear, shook his head. “We can’t leave you here alone. We might be amateurs in the woods, but we aren’t cowards. Come with us and we’ll run.”
“I’m safe where I am. It can’t get to me. If you get out of here, you’ll be safe.”
Herman had once more backed right to the barrier, so close she could see his singed shirt where the back had come up against the thickly woven safeguards. He looked at her over his shoulder, his face distorted with fear. “How do we get to where you are, so that thing can’t get us, because evidently we aren’t leaving.”
The puppet continued to the very edge of the slope, looked down at them and roared again, its red eyes fixed on the three of them. For the first time, Lorraine felt a bond with the other two men. All three were human, a common denominator.
If they won’t leave, I’ll have to invite them in, Andor. I can’t let that thing get them.
You will not. Take a deep breath. Feel me breathing with you.
You’re under the freakin’ ground, Andor, you shouldn’t be breathing. She knew she sounded a little hysterical. She hadn’t been frantic when the vampires had attacked, why now? What about the puppet had her reeling so far out of control?
I’m not like this, Andor. You can count on me. But she was like that. She was exactly like that—nearing hysteria.
Sívamet. Breathe. You are holding your breath. It makes perfect sense. What is a vampire’s puppet? It used to be a human being. Two other human beings are standing in its way to acquire you. You are human, and more than anything, you have suffered the worst of traumas. The last thing you want to see is any human being torn to pieces.
Her heart thudded wildly. Her lungs burned. She gripped her gun to try to ground herself. Is that what that puppet will do? Tear them to pieces?
For the first time, Andor hesitated.
Tell m
e. She nearly screamed the two words in her mind. You have to tell me right now.
The puppet stepped off the slope. Not down, but off, as if it thought it could walk on air. It tumbled down, rolling, grunting, its arms flailing, legs working as if it might still be walking. When it got to the very bottom, it lay for a minute as if stunned, but its head was turned to face them and its red eyes stared without blinking straight at its prey.
It eats flesh, Lorraine. It craves it. If it gets to either of those men, you cannot watch. You must turn away.
“Herman, Adam, that thing eats people. Get out of here. You have to go. Right now, you have to go.”
Both men turned toward her and raced straight at her. Simultaneously, they hit the barrier and yelled, the sparks rising like tiny flames all around them as they bounced off. They fell to the ground, but scrambled up, looking toward the puppet. It had climbed to its feet and was lumbering toward them. It was slow, but it was steady and its intentions were very clear.
The closer it got to them, the easier it was to see details. The creature was horrifying. Lorraine could identify that it had once been a man. She could see him under the rotting flesh. His mouth was a ragged slash. His teeth were brown and there were stains on his chin and clothing. It looked to be a suit he had worn.
Herman suddenly stiffened. “Ethan? Oh my God, Adam. I think that’s Ethan.”
Even though Herman faced away from her and she couldn’t see his expression, she’d been trained to read body language, and he appeared to be genuinely shocked. He even took a step toward the hideous puppet and stretched one hand toward him.
Adam caught Herman’s arm and pushed it down. She caught a glimpse of Adam’s horrified expression. It was genuine. There was no faking that. Both men backed closer to the barrier.
Andor, I have to let them in.
Lorraine. Sívam és sielam. You are my heart and soul. You need to use your head, not your heart. Why would these men not run? At least run behind the barrier, or around to one side of it? Why would they wait right in front of you when moving would save their lives?
“Get around to the other side, out of his line of sight!” Lorraine all but screamed it. I don’t understand. What would be the purpose?