Dark Slayer - Christine Feehan [65]
There is always a pattern to movement, she instructed. Animals are important to watch, even the smallest of them. Mice will scurry into the underbrush at the first sign of danger. They see shadows from above. All prey animals do, and their instincts are good. You do not have to be connected to them to use them as a warning system.
Razvan stopped drinking in the sheer beauty of his surroundings and began to pay attention to the things she pointed out. Ivory was the consummate warrior. When she left the lair, everything was all business. All survival. He needed to learn, and she was willing to instruct him.
He scanned the uneven terrain, seeing with new eyes.
Nature is your friend, your ally. Trees tell stories. Look at the area to the south. Just below the mountain near the small farm tucked into the shadow.
The grimness in her voice alerted him to trouble, but he couldn’t see anything but glistening snow and dazzling ice and a few bare limbs poking out of an otherwise snow-laden tree. A few tracks in the snow led from a small house to a barn and then around to the back where several smaller buildings housed animals, but he couldn’t see anything that might have alarmed her.
What am I looking for?
Something sat in that tree watching the house. It was no owl. If you look closely at the tracks, someone walked out of the house out toward the barn and then around toward the shelter. The strides increased in length and depth, which means they began running. Whatever it is, it is still there. I feel the energy.
Razvan inspected the naked tree branches and then tried to open his mind to the energy fields surrounding him. Information flooded in. As they approached the small farm, the air lost its crisp, fresh scent and began to feel and smell foul. Vampire. His hissed the word.
Tell me what it feels like to you. Reach out very lightly. Let your mind expand to encompass his but do not enter his.
Razvan knew that if his touch was too heavy the vampire would feel his presence and be alerted. If his victim still lived, there would be no hope. The undead would kill and consume as much blood as possible to ready himself for an attack.
Vampires like their blood adrenaline-laced, Ivory explained. They terrify the victims on purpose and keep them alive as long as possible. The blood is like a drug to them and they need the high continually. Can you feel the chaos in his mind?
He could. The vampire’s mind raced so fast it was like trying to board a runaway train. Even the sound was chaotic, as if the volume was turned up and down so that one moment noises roared and shrieked and then receded, only to start again.
He cannot keep the sound of the victim’s heart under control. He is too excited. This one has recently turned. I doubt if he had time to have been recruited by the league of vampires or by Xavier. Usually at this stage they are left alone because they are too dangerous to approach. They cannot handle the highs they feel.
Ivory circled the house. Two children inside. The vampire knows it, although the man tries to hide the information. His woman is in the barn. She thinks to fight for her man. She has armed herself with garlic, crosses and holy water, but has no real weapon other than farm tools.
There was admiration in Ivory’s voice. Razvan liked that about her. Her take on the world was very simplistic. A man and a woman fought together for their family, even against the worst kind of evil. Both knew they probably would die, but they hoped to take their attacker with them and give their children a chance to survive.
His first thought was to send Ivory to get the woman and her children to safety while he took on the vampire. He had no doubt that he could kill a vampire. He had a rudimentary knowledge of how