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She stepped back, her heart pounding in fear. Grief welled up so sharply for a moment that she couldn’t breathe. Peter. Her first human friend in her entire twenty-three years. Dead because of her.
She regarded the gaunt stranger who had killed him.
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 Sava
“Good evening, Roberto. I see you have dined well.” The voice was pleasant, cultured, soothing, even hypnotic.
Sava
“ 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 ma
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, Sava
It wasmy 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. Sava
“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.”
“What you have done here is a crime against humanity. What you would do to my woman is crime against our people, our treasured women, and against me personally. Justice hasfollowed you to San Francisco, and the sentence our Prince Mikhail pronounced over you will be carried out. The blow you struck to my lifemate alone would earn you your fate.” Gregori never raised his voice, never lost his faint, taunting smile. Go, Sava
I won’t allow him to harm you when it is me he seeks.
Gregori’s soft laughter echoed in her head. There is no chance of that, mapetite. Now do as I say, and go.He wanted her gone before she witnessed his casual destruction of the abomination who dared to strike a woman. His woman. Sava
“I am going to kill you,” Roberto said loudly, blustering to pump up his courage.
“Then I can do no other than oblige you by letting you try,” Gregori replied pleasantly. His voice dropped an octave lower, became hypnotic. “You are slow, Roberto, slow and clumsy and far too incompetent to take on someone of my skill.” His smile was cruel and slightly mocking.
It was impossible to avoid listening to the cadence of Gregori’s voice. It worked its way into the brain and clouded the mind. Still, high and powerful from a fresh kill, filled with lust and the need to conquer, Roberto launched himself at Gregori.
Gregori simply was no longer there. He had thrust Sava
Gregori’s soft, taunting laughter sent chills down Sava
Sava
She looked at Peter, lifeless on the asphalt. He had been a great friend to her. She had loved him like a brother, and now he lay senselessly dead. Sava
Suddenly lightning sizzled and danced, a blue-white whip across the sky. An orange glow soon accompanied a crackle of flames. Sava