Dark horizon | By : maryl Category: A through F > Dark Series Views: 1429 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dark series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
Title: Dark horizon
Author: Lady Snowblossom
Rating: M
Note: I am not Christine Feehan (wish I was) I don't have a lifemate (hmm, a Carpathian of my own. Do I really want a man that I would be having titanic battles of will with? Have to think about that one.) The only thing I own is this story and its characters. So, I found them first, so you can't have them!
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A cold December wind blew flurries of snow around trees that raised blackened arms to a leaden gray sky as if beseeching God to have mercy on them and send the coming storm somewhere else.
Inside her workshop, Elita Kite ignored the wolf like howl of the wind to concentrate on the red glowing metal lying on her anvil, she had to get this blade done and in the mail in the next three days to have it in Canada in time for Christmas. And for the millionth time, she cursed the car accident that had her housebound for a week costing her valuable time.
"Idiot," She reached out and picked up the hammer lying on the table next to the forge; her irritated monologue hissing between clenched teeth as she poised to make her first blow. "Driving to fast for the conditions! Don't know the roads! Dumb shit should have stayed in Florida!"
A loud thump on the side of the old oak shed interrupted her and instinctively she turned her head toward the sound; as she did so her eyes lit on her late grandfather's hand carved hickory cane. The crack of the limb on the shed wall reminded her of how the old man would whack the wall, when she failed to do as he directed.
A fond smile curved her lips as she recalled how he demanded she give her full attention to the work.
"lita, girl, if you don't pay attention, then the magic won't work and you'll have a weak blade. And a weak blade is a bad blade, and this family don't sell no bad blades!" His calm old voice filled her mind and she laughed softly. "Sorry, Pawpaw, I just got caught up for a moment, but I'm all right now." She promised the ghost in her mind.
She looked down at the cherry red metal and began to sing.
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Yuriy Yaslov hid behind a fallen tree and shook snow from his fur. The snow had been falling ever since he'd risen and he had taken the form of a wolf to cope with it. He was weary and not just from fighting the weather conditions. No, his was a weariness of the soul. A tiring of a bleak, endless existence that, if it weren't for his two brothers; he would have ended long ago.
Yuriy! Are you alright? Should I come to you? His brother Sergi's quiet voice drew him from his somber thoughts and he answered the query. No, my brother, I'm fine. I have no need at the moment.
I sense the darkness growing within you, Yuriy. Perhaps, we should answer our prince's call and go home. Once there, I'm sure we can learn more about these human women, who can become lifemates. Sergi's voice held a hint of the wistfulness that he could once feel. Sergi was the youngest of the Yaslov brothers and could still remember how it felt to have emotions.
Home. He would like to walk the mountains again, before he greeted the dawn. Perhaps, we should, but I do not hold out any hope of finding my lifemate, Sergi. In any case, we could not go until Jasha joins us.
Our prince calls.Sergi stated again, calmly. I will contact Jasha and tell him to leave Canada and meet us . . . Sergi broke off and Yuriy stiffened as both hunters felt the touch of evil at the same time.
I come with all speed. Sergi sent, even as Yuriy began to scan trying to sense where the evil one was. The younger hunter closed his mind, but Yuriy could sense that his little brother had taken wing to come to his aid.
Knowing his brother would find him: Yuriy leapt over the fallen tree and began to seek out the vampire.
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Her breath catching in her throat, Elita's voice faltered, she tried to pick up the thread of the song, but it was like something was blocking her voice. Looking around for the source of the uneasy feeling she had in the pit of her stomach, she opened her mind-reached out and touched . . .
Evil. Pure unadulterated evil. An evil that her grandfather had told her of when she was a small child, because she bore the mark of the hunter, and she needed to be prepared to fight that evil whenever she found it.
Her family had fought the evil ones for generations. And after her mother, along with her siblings had been born without the mark, her grandfather had worried that the line would die out. So, he had begged the Great One to send a new hunter and she had been born to his youngest daughter exactly nine months later. As soon as her mother had seen the red wave pattern over her left kidney, she had called her father and told him, “your warrior is here.”
For years the old man taught her how to open her mind to see the world others couldn’t. He drew deep on the old magic of his Navajo and Cherokee blood and taught her how to do it as well. And his most valuable gift had been the songs that made their blades stronger and sharper than anyone else’s and they also shaped the special arrowheads for the arrows in her quiver.
Dropping the hammer and partially shaped metal, she turned and raced toward the door of the shed and threw the latch. Turning from the door, she snapped off the lights and using only the glow of her furnace to see by, hurried over to her desk to open the top drawer and retrieve her favorite blade, which she slipped into the band of her jeans. Then, she retreated into the shadow of the far wall; where, leaning against the wall her recurve bow with its quiver of special arrows - waited.
Even as she snatched up her bow and quiver, spinning around to put the wall to her back; she could hear a scratching at the door and a desperate voice cried through the door. “Please let me in! I got lost in the woods and I saw the light in your building. I’ll freeze out here, if you don’t help me!” Along with the plea for aid, she felt a 'push' at her mind. As the plea continued, she threw up a mental shield, blocking the compulsion. Immediately from outside she heard an angry howl of rage through the closed door; followed by a savage blow that shook it.
As the door shuddered under a second blow, she calmly took a deep breath, notched an arrow and drew it - just as the lock gave way and the door opened to reveal a black emaciated shadow. "You picked the wrong door to break down, buster." She muttered and loosed her arrow.
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As he raced through the dense woods, Yuriy continued to scan for blank spaces, areas that would give away the presence of a trap or a vampire. His paws crunched twigs and small branches as he hurtled his heavy body along his chosen course, dodging windfall as he ran.
Overhead, the storm intensified as the wind picked up and the snow swirled in dense eddies despite the thickness of the woods. He stopped to scent the wind; the stench of evil was stronger, so he had to be getting nearer.
This storm is not natural Sergi commented, his voice louder in Yuriy’s mind. The vampire must be creating it.
Why? What purpose could this storm have? It’s not directed at me or you. Yuriy asked, as he studied the cloud patterns trying to determine where the point of origin was. Sergi’s voice was definitely getting louder, so he shifted and waited for the younger male to catch up.
Sergi had been barely two hundred to his four and Jasha’s six; when they had answered Vladimir’s call to go out into the world and battle their brother kin that had turned to protect their people and the humans that were so unheeding of the evil among them. And they had done so in various places around the world.
And for the last two hundred, the three of them had been in the United States and Canada. Jasha loved the Canadian wilderness and often retreated there, when he needed to rest from the darkness that grew in all hunters.
“To frighten, confuse. Perhaps to cover his tracks, who knows?” Yuriy gazed impassively at the male who suddenly appeared at his elbow. Like many Carpathian males, Sergi was tall, lithe and definitely lethal, but he still looked unfinished. While Yuriy and Jasha wore their hair long, Sergi preferred a shaggier look that made him look like he had just gotten out of bed. His dark eyes were too big for his face and his nose was slightly crooked.
“Someday little brother, you are going to do that to either Jasha or I and we will wind up killing you by mistake.” Yuriy reprimanded his sibling, who didn’t look impressed with his big brother act. Sergi shrugged carelessly.
“I knew that you would sense me and not strike.” He dismissed his brother’s concern. “I saw a light through the trees a little to the east, if a human is there . . .” He let his words trail off.
Yuriy nodded and shifted on the run, Sergi right behind him.
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As soon as her arrow hit its mark, Elita dove behind her forge and readied her second arrow. She glared in loathing at the grotesque creature that shrieked in pain, and staggered a step back; before straightening and grabbing the quarter inch thick shaft and snapping it like a twig. She barely suppressed a shudder as the parody of a man turned its head toward her and dropped the shaft to the floor.
“You will pay for that, woman.” The vampire walked toward her baring its dingy yellowed fangs at her as he did so. The vampire’s eyes blazed a baleful red and he reached out with hands that were thin and unkempt with four-inch nails. “I will enjoy killing you.” He sprayed salvia that hissed on the ground like acid as he snarled at her.
Elita faced him with unafraid eyes. “You better be quick then, Ugly. Because you don’t have much time.” She told him coolly, “you triggered an old shaman spell when you broke my arrow.” As she spoke, she edged back into the shadow of the forge, her bow steady in her hands.
The vampire sneered, “there is nothing a pathetic human could do to me. I am an ancient of my race and . . .” A faint itch raced along his nerves and he looked down at the tiny hole in his chest – a hole that should have been closed but wasn’t. Instead, it was growing. He jerked his eyes back up and snarled, “What have you done!”
“You did it to yourself.” Elita retorted, “now die like the worm you are!” She leapt backwards as the vampire lunged at her with hands extended. As the ugly thing snarled and spit curses at missing, she dropped her bow and snatched her blade from her waistband. As the vampire twisted to follow her, she flipped the blade by the end and threw it.
The vampire shrieked again, as the blade penetrated its chest wall. At the same time, the itch became a fiery blaze; the vampire wrenched the knife from his chest and began to beat at the flames that emerged from the hole in his chest. “Damn you,” he spat as his skin began to melt and he tried futilely to shift to mist and put the fire out. “Damn you.” he whispered as he sank to the floor and turned into a smoking pile of ash.
Elita was impassive as the vampire was incinerated right in front of her eyes. “Thank you, grandfather.” she whispered as she bent down to retrieve her bow, she heard a soft footstep and looked up to meet a pair of blacker than ink eyes framed by midnight blue hair and froze.
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Good? Bad? Indifferent?
For some reason it would take the code for putting words in italic, if someone could tell me how to fix it, I'd be grateful.
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