It is too dangerous. We should wait.

We have to do it now. He’s attacking her. If we don’t stop him he will win this battle in the end. We will successfully convert her with very little pain, but she will die. He put conviction in his voice. In his mind. He knew he spoke the truth. He was a good enough healer to get by, but not like Dragomir was reputed to be. Tariq would rather have waited for a Daratrazanoff, one of a line of legendary healers, but he had run out of time.

You hold your woman to you.

Unexpectedly it was Siv who intervened, a man much like Dragomir. He had also been in the monastery, a place where very ancient hunters retreated when all was lost to them. No memories. No emotion. No color. Not even the whisper of temptation. After centuries of hunting vampires, they believed it was cowardice to seek the dawn so they withdrew into the monastery to protect humans and Carpathians alike. Siv had left half a century before Dragomir, probably around the same time Val had left.

I will aid Dragomir while you hold her spirit in your hands.

The unexpected offer was humbling to Tariq. Like anyone else, he was uneasy in the presence of the three legendary hunters. Any male wearing the tattoo art of the monastery was unpredictable and extremely dangerous. He had welcomed them as hunters, as brethren, but he watched them closely.

I will add my strength to my brothers’. That was Val.

I will safeguard them and you while Maksim’s woman and the others shoulder her pain, Nicu said.

There it was. Solidarity. What it meant to be Carpathian. They were far from the mountains of their birth. Far from their prince and his power. Still, they stood together as they always had in times of trouble. Protecting their women and children.

I will hold in mind the safeguards woven around the splinter to cage it in. Take great care that he doesn’t attack one of you, Tariq cautioned.

Dragomir made a sound. A single note of disgust that spoke volumes. He had known the Malinov family – not Ruslan and his brothers, but their parents. Clearly he didn’t think much of them or the threat they presented, and that was what worried Tariq the most. If those from the monastery, locked away while the world had changed so drastically, while their enemies had changed, underestimated the danger, they could fall. Tariq knew they used the ancient method of sharing information to catch up on everything they had missed over the lost time. All Carpathians did so, but the intricacies of technology, of the sophisticated weapons man had developed, the monitoring systems, the dangers of cell phones and cameras, all would be difficult for an ancient to understand overnight.

All the while Tariq held Charlotte close, feeling the shudders and contortions of her body, holding her waning light to him beneath their blanket of mineral-rich soil. I am with you, sielamet. Do not try to stray too far from me. You will feel the others enter. The light will be powerful. They are coming to aid you, to remove all trace of Vadim from you. He didn’t want her to fear the others, and he knew it was a huge thing to her to get rid of any part of Vadim. Knowing that they were removing the shadow from her might help to keep her with him.

Her light had moved inches downward, journeying away from her body, bumping into the circle he’d created to contain her. I am with you, he whispered again. Softly. Intimately. Into her mind. Stay with me, Charlotte. With us. We need you. All of us.

Dragomir was so powerful that when he entered, pure spirit, it felt like an invasion. A takeover. More, his spirit wasn’t pure light as all healing spirit was. Tariq had never witnessed a spirit so ravaged. It was more streaks than solid. More ivory than white, and that ivory was stained and worn.

Siv entered next and like Dragomir’s, his presence was an intrusion of sheer dominance. His spirit was no longer white and solid, but a mix of silver streaks and white light.

Val was last to enter. His entry was slow and there was a brief flash of pain he couldn’t prevent the others from feeling as he shed his body to become spirit. Like those of the other two from the monastery, Val’s spirit was a different color than expected, more an antique gold, not in the least bright, but tarnished gold, with dark streaks running through the light.

Tariq had nothing to reference such spirits by, so again, he had to go with his gut and believe that all three were there to aid Charlotte before all else. He gathered her closer to him and felt the heat as they swept through her body, paying attention first to every organ, ensuring her body was accepting the conversion, and then speeding the process along.

The three lights, ivory, silver and gold, moved toward her rib cage and the barrier Tariq had constructed around Vadim’s splinter. Ivory took the center, facing the splinter fully, while gold went to the left and silver to the right. They studied the situation carefully as they began unweaving Tariq’s safeguards.

The splinters attack the red cells, Tariq reminded them. Charlotte had sent them the information on the common path, but he had found out before, when he was first examining the splinter’s destructive path.

He has made himself a killing worm traveling throughout the ages. I have seen this done by a mage, but no Carpathian has ever done so. Dragomir’s voice was mild, a deference to Charlotte’s failing body.

These vampires have mixed with mages. That was Siv. He, too, spoke softly, including Charlotte on the common path.

We grew up with Xavier’s father. He knew more than his son could ever know, Val said. His voice hitched just that little bit but enough for Tariq to know the out-of-body experience was costing him.

His name was Alycrome. As he reassured Charlotte, Dragomir and the other two hunters continued to take down the safeguards around the splinter. He had no problems teaching those of us who liked to learn. I sat at his knee when I was no more than four. I was but twenty when he showed us how to splinter off and send pieces of who we were into others.

Siv took over the instruction, murmuring all the while they spread healing light throughout Charlotte’s body and yet still kept patiently taking down the layered safeguards.

Alycrome told us no man had the right to take over another unless it was self-defense, survival, or saving the life of another. Putting a shadow of one’s self into another is a form of aggression. A strike to take over that person and render them a puppet to one’s will.

Tariq’s arms pulled Charlotte closer as she shuddered against him. He had wondered how Vadim kept the human psychics from being complete puppets, needing flesh and blood to survive, yet still kept them under his control. Splinters. Vadim was using splinters of himself, small shadowy leeches to slip into and feed on the host. Vadim could control thoughts subtly that way. The more inclined the host was to carry out orders, the easier it was for Vadim to take control. He was smart enough to offer each human in his army whatever that man desired most. Tariq sent the information to the others so they would know what they were facing in Vadim’s human army.