I have immediate need. Amelia must be transported to the safe room with my body. I will be inside her trying to keep Vadim from killing her.

He would have to leave his body behind, unprotected, but she didn’t have the time it would take to get her to the safe room.

He heard the soft echo of Emeline’s cry. No. No, don’t do this. The wrenching pain in her voice nearly shattered him. He sent as much emotion to her as possible, giving her his heart as he shed his body, leaving it vulnerable to Vadim’s mutations.

Amelia’s mind was the real battlefield. Vadim wanted her dead before they contained her. The sliver of evil commanded her lungs to cease breathing. Dragomir forced the air to continue in and out of her. He felt the anger as the master vampire realized he wasn’t alone in Amelia’s mind. The force of the undead’s rage, coiled and ugly, hit him hard. Waves of turbulent sound bounced through Amelia’s head, high-pitched, painful. Vadim tried to drive Dragomir out of the teen while he went after her heartbeat.

In the midst of the waves crashing into him, driving his spirit time and again away from Amelia’s lungs, Dragomir suddenly realized the frantic drumming of the girl’s heart had ceased. He immediately stimulated the heart, forcing it to beat and pump the precious blood through her body to her brain.

He was aware of Tariq there, carrying the body, moving fast, the healer and others surrounding him. Sandu was there, carrying his body with the ancients guarding him. They took them through the house where the children lived, rushing deeper into the walls where the safe rooms were built in. Each room was off a child’s room, and once they were inside, would be in the ground surrounded by safeguards where no one or their monsters could reach the children.

Amelia’s body was laid out on the bed. Dragomir’s body was on the floor beside the bed. Gary shed his body fast and entered the fray. Tell me. It was a demand, nothing less.

He is striking at her heart and lungs, desperate to kill her so he can get out. If you can take over keeping her alive, I will hunt him.

The poison he put in your body is lethal. You would have little time, but by shedding your body, it shut down your heart. The poison can’t spread.

That was one consolation, although Dragomir hadn’t given a thought to what was happening in his body from the knife cuts. He hadn’t had time. Is Liv alive?

Yes, Valentin and the others pulled her out of the lake. She is strong, that one. Valentin commanded she breathe underwater and she did. Without a single lesson.

Do you hear that, Amelia? Liv is alive. All the children survived. You cannot allow him to defeat you. There was no response, but Dragomir didn’t expect any.

The girl was in a comatose state. There was no fighting Vadim and winning. She was human. She was a teenager. She couldn’t process the kind of evil inside of her. He had deliberately allowed her to see him, to know that she was the one causing all the trouble, the one trying to kill Dragomir and Emeline. Vadim wanted her to want death. To seek it.

Gary was an ancient healer with the knowledge and experience of an entire line of healers. He was also a hunter with that same lineage pouring their experiences of battle into him. He was fast and he moved through the teen’s body, repairing each massive problem Vadim began. Aneurisms, strokes, lungs filling with fluid, Vadim tried them all, while the healer rushed to repair or stop the damage.

Dragomir was quiet, looking for a pattern in the attacks on Amelia. There always was a pattern. Always. No one could help it, and an ancient vampire such as Vadim least of all. He’d developed a huge sense of self-preservation over the centuries and he would keep to the things that had always worked for him. Vadim knew he had to kill the girl to free the sliver. However, if he didn’t kill her, they might not find the sliver in her and the Carpathians wouldn’t kill her – to them she was an innocent child. Why had Vadim outed her as the spy? Why would he do that?

Dragomir had already dimmed his spirit’s light in order to move through Amelia’s brain looking for that tiny little discolored spot that would be Vadim’s sliver embedded there. The vampire needed a base from which to conduct his attacks, which meant he must be in the brain. The sliver couldn’t move around. It would get lost in the bloodstream and be carried away too far from the brain to be of any use to Vadim.

Dragomir examined each portion of the brain with slow, meticulous care. Xavier, the high mage, had been the first to embed slivers of himself into others so he could see his enemies and fight from a distance. Vadim and Sergey both carried a sliver of the high mage in them, allowing them to use his spells when they needed them. None of the Carpathians were particularly adept at finding the slivers because, until now, Xavier had been the only one using such a forbidden technique.

Dragomir went through the entirety of Amelia’s brain and found nothing. There was no dark spot he could see. Nothing that seemed off to him. He had a moment of doubt. Was he wrong about where Vadim had to be to direct her heart and lungs to shut down? He had concentrated his efforts in the brain stem. He’d looked everywhere throughout the brain, but he had been certain Vadim would have chosen the brain stem for his sliver to reside.

The cerebrum controlled action. He’d had to control Amelia’s movements when he had taken on the lightning in the healing grounds, and again when she fought Dragomir underwater. He had just started to move around the brain toward the cerebrum when Amelia’s body convulsed. Nerve cells fired in massive bursts, lighting up areas of the brain as the electrical charges spasmed. Dragomir spun around to study the brain stem under the fiery glow of the electrical charges.

There it was. He was certain. The tiniest little curved splinter, barely discernable, lying in a shallow crevice of the cerebrum. Dragomir floated closer, keeping his light as dim as possible. The electrical charges sputtered and slowly died out as the seizure eased. Dragomir moved with infinite slowness, coming into position above Vadim’s sliver.

I think I’ve found him. Keep his attention centered on you, he said to the healer.

Gary responded by using the white-hot light of his spirit to build a shield around Amelia’s heart, effectively stopping Vadim from giving her a heart attack. The little spot wiggled just once, and then waves of rage and hatred burst through Amelia’s brain. Dragomir didn’t wait. He dropped right over the splinter and shed his spirit’s light on the dark, destructive piece of himself Vadim had placed in the teen.

At once the splinter began to smoke, to blister. It tried to escape by attempting to burrow, but that allowed Dragomir to get even closer, wholly incinerating the tail of the tiny sliver. Rage filled the brain, and Amelia’s body came up off the bed and was slammed back down. Once. Twice. Again and again. Tariq caught her and held her against the mattress. Dragomir was certain he heard Emeline sob.

The moment that small sound echoed through his mind, Vadim’s splinter erupted into a mass of cruelties. He sent agonized pain after pain through Amelia’s body. He knew he couldn’t save his splinter, and he wanted Emeline to suffer. So, he tortured Amelia, causing as much pain as possible to the teenager, all the while fighting to stay alive, skittering from one crevice to another, trying to get Dragomir to miss and burn the sensitive brain tissue instead of the splinter.

Emeline suddenly comprehended that Vadim was aware she was in Dragomir’s mind and he was punishing her through Amelia – that her presence had added to the horrors he visited on the teenager. She slipped further away, into the back of Dragomir’s mind, hoping to ease the girl’s suffering, although her lifemate could have told her it was too late. Vadim was going to hurt the child as much as possible in hopes of hurting the woman who cared for her.

Dragomir stayed distant from all of it. He had one job, and that was to destroy the splinter Vadim had placed in the girl. It couldn’t escape. He’d burned half of it but as long as there was anything left, it could cause harm. He followed that wiggling little thread relentlessly. Each time his light passed, white-hot and bright, over it more smoke and blisters arose. He could hear Vadim’s screams as the master vampire felt the death of that tiny piece of him. He would be diminished in power. The loss of that part of him was critical. Dragomir had already taken a piece of his heart. Now, this loss would further weaken him.