Dark Storm (Dark #23)(31)
Author: Christine Feehan

He struggled harder against the tight bonds. Arabejila had always had a connection to the earth, but it seemed stronger than ever. The moment she was forced to turn her attention elsewhere, he should have been able to break free, but the bindings held tight. He couldn’t move, couldn’t rise toward that barrier he’d worked so hard to thin.

He cursed Arabejila, cursed the fact that she alone had the ability to shake him up. He should have made certain she was dead. She was the reason the hunter had found him again and again over the centuries … She’d trapped him here. She’d kept him here. And now she was the only thing standing between him and his triumph. She was truly the bane of his life, and if he didn’t uncoil the chains she’d placed on him fast, he would be trapped for all time.

He renewed his efforts, concentrating on finding each strand binding him in his fiery prison. Arabejila had woven the spell tight, the earth itself adding to her weave. He had always found it utterly disgusting that all living plant life responded to her instead of him. He’d tried, in the earlier years, watching her walk through a field with flowers and plants springing up around her, to do the same, but the earth refused to speak to him. The rejection had been so total and so instantaneous, it had filled him with a loathing for all vegetation. He despised anything that would choose a weak woman over him.

Mitro had always considered Arabejila one-dimensional-good in every way. She didn’t know how to be anything else. He studied the binding weaves chaining him inside the volcano. Those weaves told him much about his adversary. Arabejila had evolved over the centuries, just as he had evolved, and he found her much changed and more powerful because of it. More, her weaves only told him she was a force to be reckoned with, not anything personal about her. She had left no emotion behind to aid him in defeating her.

That rankled. She was supposed to be pining away for him. Her weaves should have contained sorrow and that ridiculous, futile dash of hope she couldn’t suppress whenever they had come into contact in the past. No matter what he did, how depraved he’d become, she’d always clung to that tiny hope that she could "save" him. She’d never realized that he neither needed nor wanted to be saved. Stupid woman. He found it insulting that she thought she had the power to turn him into a cowering rabbit like the rest of his species.

Remembering those days, pure hatred welled up. He would destroy Arabejila in his time, but first he would have to escape. She would not defeat him, a stupid cow of a woman who thought she was special because she could make flowers grow.

The mountain jolted hard, and he felt a subtle difference almost immediately. Arabejila had turned her full attention away from him and the weaves binding him. He fought down the urge to struggle, to panic when the explosion could happen at any moment. He narrowed his concentration to one strand of his bonds. One at a time. He would have to break through that chain in order to escape.

Mitro tried to recall every detail he could about his recent encounter with Arabejila. He’d been shocked. Horrified even. He was so certain she was dead. She had not responded or spoken to him and he hadn’t searched her mind when he had the chance. He stayed very still, reaching out carefully. If he knew what words had bound him, he could undo the weaves quite easily. He just had to get inside her head. She was his lifemate. Her blood would answer his call, but his touch would have to be delicate.

He tamped down all anger, not an easy feat when Arabejila was to blame for everything that had gone wrong in his life and he was already plotting to kill her and everyone she might care about. His touch on the thick weaves was very careful, seeking a tie to her. His blood stirred, but remained cold. Silence. Emptiness. There was no contact at all. If he didn’t know better, he would say she was dead.

Puzzled, he changed tactics. The sense of urgency grew as the mountain rumbled and the gases spewed high. Below him, the gathering fiery storm threatened to break free. Abruptly he felt a difference, as if the weaves had loosened just that little bit as if she hadn’t quite set them before she turned her attention elsewhere. She’d been gripping him hard, and now, that death grip was gone.

Triumphant, he struck hard, slashing through the weaves. They held, stronger than he expected against his all-out assault. He exerted pressure on his bonds, fighting panic, afraid his struggles might attract the attention of the hunter. Danutdaxton had become something much more as well, there in the volcano, and eluding him was essential.

The bindings tightened once, but then unexpectedly dropped free. Exalted, Mitro rose quickly toward the barrier and the one spot he’d spent centuries thinning. It would take seconds to break through, and when the volcano erupted, he would go out the vent with the gases. Elation swept through him. Glee. Triumph. Nothing, no one, could stop him.

Dax streaked through the furious volcano, moving as only a dragon could through the lower chambers, upward, toward the barrier. He felt the subtle difference in the earth, a pouring of comfort, a soothing hand stroking the volcano, easing the rising catastrophic explosion that would have blown the top off the mountain and flattened everything for miles.

Arabejila? He sent his inquiry, but he was positive she had been long gone from the earth. He’d felt her passing. He’d felt the mourning of the mountain when she was gone. His blood should have called to hers had she been alive. Still, the feel of her, the welcoming, the power-it was all there. More so.

Silence greeted his call. Had Arabejila been close-and he knew someone was trying to soothe the volcano-their blood exchanges would have allowed him to reach out to her. They’d been friends long before Mitro’s betrayal, but their centuries of traveling together had deepened that friendship even further. Being around Arabejila had allowed him some emotion. She had been unique that way, providing solace to the warriors of their people-and Dax had practically been born a warrior. He had a gift for ferreting out evil. He could smell it, see it inside, and from the moment he’d met Mitro he’d seen inside to his rotten core.

The volcano whispered to him as he moved through the scalding chambers, told him of a woman, powerful, healing, a true daughter of the earth. Dax knew the moment she plunged her hands into the soil-the volcano responded with a flutter of activity. He felt the instant reaction, not only of the volcano, the soil, the very heart of the earth, but in his own blood. Familiar, yet unfamiliar. Arabejila, yet now-more. This woman was a force to be reckoned with. Where Arabejila was soft through and through, this woman had a core of heat and fire.

He continued to streak through the labyrinth of lava-formed tubes and hollowed caves, moving up toward the barrier. No doubt Mitro thought he could escape with the explosion of the volcano, right through that small space the vampire had worked centuries to thin. Dax had never let on he was aware of Mitro’s work.