Dragomir reached for the vampire, using the common link between Carpathians. Your brother will be the one everyone must look to. You are defeated by a teenage human child. With the loss of this splinter, you lose power and all those following you will be aware of your diminished capacity.

He was poking the tiger, but he wanted the other vampires and especially Sergey Malinov to know Vadim wasn’t invincible. In the past, vampires were too vain and selfish to stick together. The Malinov brothers had been the ones to accomplish what no one had ever done – they’d formed their own army of vampires. Even other master vampires were talked into joining with the Malinovs. That was unheard-of and boded ill for the world.

The Carpathians were playing catch-up with the vampires. The Malinovs had put a plan in place centuries earlier and had the patience to carry it out. Vadim was a huge part of that. If Dragomir could discredit him and cause doubt among his followers, it would be all to the good.

Amelia’s body convulsed again, this time a long, violent seizure. The bursts of electricity aided Dragomir in finding Vadim’s sliver as it skittered up the brain, looking to slither into the bloodstream. He pinned it down with a concentrated flow of white-hot light, refusing to allow it to get away. Another section incinerated and dropped off, turning to ash. Vadim howled with pain and rage.

She will suffer as no one has ever suffered.

Dragomir didn’t respond to the threat, although he didn’t like the confidence in Vadim’s voice. By all reasoning, the master vampire should have left the area. There were too many hunters. He had to know that the hunters would do what they did best. They were going to track him and kill him. Not just him, but a good portion of his followers. Still, the vampire stayed. Whatever he needed from Emeline was so important that he refused to cut his losses and retreat. Vadim also had managed an attack on the compound when they all should have been safe.

This child won’t be able to take much more. Her body is going into shock, Gary warned. He fended off the attacks, but he couldn’t stop her body’s natural reactions.

Dragomir followed the last tiny segment of Vadim’s sliver. It was miniscule, but it was still dangerous. He didn’t dare allow it to escape his light. He just had to get close enough… The sliver tried to take refuge in a layer of neurons, desperate to conceal itself. He knew he had it then. He didn’t wait, but sent a burst of white-hot light straight into the tiny bit of matter, burning it until it was nothing but ash.

Thunder crashed across the sky, rolling through so strongly it shook the compound. Outside, the last of the mutated creatures converged on Emeline’s house, trying to find cracks to slip through. The birds went for the chimney. They flew into the windows over and over, pecking wildly to try to break the glass. The little gopher mutations covered the porch while the frogs attached themselves to the door and sides of the house.

Dragomir slipped out of Amelia’s body back into his own. Pain blasted through him. He looked down at his arm to see it blackened, blistered, the skin sloughing off.

Emeline gasped. Let me come to you.

It’s what he wants. You can’t leave the safety of the house until all the creatures have been dealt with. The children are safe. That’s what matters.

Not to me. You matter to me. I have to come to you.

Gary materialized beside him, swaying with weariness. Andor immediately extended his wrist to allow the healer to feed. “You have to shut down your heart and lungs. I’ve seen this poison, Dragomir. It is… difficult. The same as the poison used by Leon. Xavier created this, not Leon, and Sergey or Vadim must have accessed his memory of it. It will eat through muscle and bone if I don’t stop it. Shut down now.” There was a bite to Gary’s tone, as if he was weary of having to tell others what to do all the time – especially more than once.

Tariq dropped a hand on Dragomir’s shoulder. “Thank you for saving Amelia. I’ll take care of Emeline.”

“The house is covered with Vadim’s creatures. He’s up to something, Tariq. Amelia wasn’t his big gun. She was always expendable. He didn’t want to lose the sliver, but he was willing to give it up. You know he isn’t finished. He has something far worse in store for us. It’s already here. And how did he attack us? How did he get through the safeguards?”

“Dragomir.” Gary’s tone was a warning.

He wondered vaguely if the healer would try to force him to sleep before he could make Tariq and the others understand the danger was worse than ever to the compound and people residing in it.

Please do what he asks, Emeline whispered in his mind. Please, Dragomir. For me.

Women. They were a curse. He had duties. His honor demanded he aid Tariq and the others, but his woman… She broke his heart. How could he refuse her? Not when she was silently weeping and so scared. For him. She had Vadim’s mutated creatures trying to break down her doors and windows, trying to chew their way to her, but she was thinking only of him.

He looked up at Sandu. Sandu nodded. Dragomir did as Emeline asked and shut down his heart and lungs, allowing the healer to enter his body. Sandu followed on the pretense of learning about the poison. The brotherhood backed one another up at all times. They knew little about Gary. He was a dangerous hunter and a skilled healer, but there was death in his eyes and a layer of coldness only the ancients from the monastery recognized. He belonged with them, behind those high walls where they couldn’t do damage to others. He didn’t have the code inked into his back reminding him that they lived by honor. They lived for their people. They lived for the one. He needed that reminder.

Sandu watched as the healer tracked the path of the poison. It appeared a long, dark ribbon winding its way through Dragomir’s body, toward the heart. It was thick, like sludge, and it moved with infinite slowness. Everything it touched turned dark and discolored. The outside flesh was blackened and blistered, but inside, the dark muck burned deep trails along bone. When it touched a vein or artery, it burned through it, cauterizing the wound.

If you’re going to be in here with me, get to work. I have to repair the damage to his body, the veins, arteries and anything else this has touched. You destroy it.

Sandu stared at the healer’s white light. How did one stop that slow stream of death? It burned everything it touched, so it stood to reason that burning it would do no good.

How does one destroy it? I’ve never seen it before. He shared the image with those in the brotherhood.

You haven’t seen it because it was originally Xavier’s concoction. Sergey was always very interested in poisons and how they affected the body. If I had to guess which brother, Vadim or Sergey, accessed Xavier’s memories, I would say Sergey. This is a mixture of an ancient poison developed by the high mage. It is extremely dangerous, even to the one wielding it.

Yet he had the girl put it on the blade of a knife. The water didn’t damage it.

No, it wouldn’t. The poison is too thick. As he explained, the healer was working to repair the damage done to Dragomir’s veins. This poison is made in darkness. The spells cast over it are of darkness. The ingredients are those found only at night in the deepest part of the forest, in the darkest soil.

Sandu continued to share with the others everything the healer said. So, light kills darkness. That’s what you’re saying to me.

Gary didn’t bother to respond. Sandu positioned himself at the end of the stream where it hadn’t managed to spread yet. He shone the white-hot light of his spirit over the darkened sludge. The brown stream shuddered and then slowly shriveled everywhere the light touched it.

Can this be done outside his body, on the flesh that is being eaten away?

It is the only way to stop it. One must shed the body, become the spirit and destroy the stream that is slowly devouring Dragomir’s outside body.

Sandu made certain his brethren heard every word and was satisfied when Afanasiv began the work of healing Dragomir from the outside in. It took the three of them several hours and quite a bit of blood to stop the poison, destroy it and repair the damage. By the time they were finished, it was close to dawn.

The ancients returned Dragomir to Emeline’s house. Maksim and the triplets had destroyed Vadim’s creatures. Charlotte, Blaze and Genevieve settled the children down in their beds with the Waltons watching over them. Tariq and Ferro took Amelia back up to her room and made certain she was in a healing sleep.