Dark Storm (Dark #23)(46)
Author: Christine Feehan

"Eat, drink and rest for a few minutes, my new friends, but then we must get moving. Mitro, the vampire I was hunting, is free of his bondage, and it isn’t safe to remain here." He looked down at Ben, who had slumped over onto his bag. "He will be fine once he wakes. If you would be so kind as to prepare him food and water as well."

"You’re going to hunt the vampire." Gary made it a statement.

"He won’t expect me to have healed so quickly. He’ll need blood and a place to go to ground. If I’m lucky, I will be able to destroy him this night."

Gary glanced at the sky. "There’s not much in the way of night left."

Dax nodded. "I task you with watching over my lifemate." There was a small edge to his voice, the first of the night. "I will return tomorrow eve. See to it that she is well." He looked around. "You will need to find a place easier to protect. Mitro is capable of sending anything at you. He will know I will work to keep you safe, and above all else, he wants Riley dead. He believes her to be Arabejila. I’m certain of it."

"Just up ahead, there’s a small hollowed-out clearing," Jubal said. "I noticed it when we first hit the base of the mountain. It’s protected on three sides by boulders with a small stream on the other side. We can set up a tent there with netting for Riley."

Dax checked the location with a judicious eye and then added safeguards to keep out any threat. "I will return."

He took to the air with great reluctance, streaking away from them. He had little time. Mitro would hunt for blood before he went to ground, and he was in a rage. He would do as much damage as possible. Dax went back to the spot where the two dragons had fought. Blackened pools of acid stained the ground, and burned through any plant or tree that had been left standing on the side of the mountain close by.

The mountain was ravaged by the mud and fires. Still, everything seemed so different, new to his eyes. Even with the powdery ash settling on the trees and brush at the base of the mountain, and choking the air, he could still discern color, a gift from his lifemate. Blacks were vivid and bright. Whites and glimpses of green and brown sent a small frisson of joy through him in spite of his grim task. In a way he was grateful for the ash. The colors were so unique to him, so vivid and brilliant, they almost hurt his eyes.

He picked up the scent immediately. Mitro was gravely wounded and had no energy to waste on hiding from Dax. He would expect the hunter to go to ground near the humans, not chase after him.

Once more Dax took to the sky, using the form of an owl. The owl’s vision provided him with the ability to see so much more and its small body would barely be noticed. As it was, with the ash in the air, Dax was forced to send a wind in front of him to clear the skies enough to see anything unusual. Mitro wouldn’t have gotten far without blood. He crisscrossed the area patiently, widening his circle until the owl caught sight of something lying near the stream.

Immediately, Dax descended, the owl settling in a tree above and to the right of the scattered objects below. A heaviness in his chest, along with the knots in his stomach forewarned him. There were two bodies, both had tried to run, and had died hard, screaming in fright. Their eyes remained wide open, mouths still forming their last cries, both throats shredded. Bright ribbons of blood streaked their bodies. Mitro had always been a messy eater.

Inside the body of the owl, Dax sighed. He had known Mitro would find blood; he was too cunning not to. The rain forest was a big place, and there were few humans anywhere near the mountain, yet unerringly, Mitro had been drawn to them.

Dax shifted into mist and drifted down to study the two bodies. Both appeared to be native to the forest, although dressed in the same way as Gary and Jubal. A machete lay inches from one of the bodies, its blade stained dark. He moved over the second body, and found what he expected. Blood had seeped from under the body where he’d been cut multiple times by the machete. That was just like Mitro, forcing someone to hack up a friend or loved one for the vampire’s amusement.

Mitro was definitely up to his old tricks. He hadn’t been an hour or so out of his prison and he was already killing and torturing. Sorrow pressed down on him, an unexpected emotion. So many lost years attempting to destroy a depraved, vile creature, and failing time and again. Having to look upon the aftermath of the undead’s path of destruction over and over was far more wearing than he’d realized. Now, with his ability to feel, Dax was weighed down by every single one of those lives lost over the centuries.

At once he felt a stirring, a brushing of souls. His. The Old One’s. Hers. His heart leapt. The burden of destroying Mitro was his, but he wasn’t alone. Ours, the Old One corrected.

A soft whisper stroked a caress in his mind. Ours, Riley’s voice echoed.

Dax was not alone. He would find Mitro and destroy him, that was his bound duty, but this time, he would have something of his own to fight for. The owl spread its wings and took off as dawn was about to break. He was grateful for the ash, obscuring the gathering light. He’d been deep inside a mountain for so long that even deep within the owl’s body, that shrouded, first light hurt his skin and pierced his eyes.

He hurried back to his woman. Palafertiilam. Lifemate.

Chapter 10

"Dreams are the angels’ way of showing us what is on the other side," Riley’s grandmother had told her when Riley was just a child. If that was true, then heaven was a warm and sultry place, considering the dream Riley had just had.

The dream had been so wonderful, in fact, she was loath to leave it. She clung to sleep, to the wispy remnants of that dream, filled with soft caresses and strong hands, until the clamor of voices around her grew too loud to ignore.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she sat up, frowning and disoriented, to find herself in what looked like her own tent. Light shining in through green fabric revealed a neat and ordered space that for the first time since its purchase was now also perfectly clean-with no hint of the dirt or the smell of wet canvas that had clung to it throughout the trip through the jungle. She was still fully dressed, although her boots were sitting beside her pack and her jacket had been neatly folded and put on top as well.

She could hear people moving about and talking outside the tent, and judging by the number of voices, her small party must have met up with other survivors. She sat up abruptly, hope blossoming. Or maybe everything that had happened since heading up the river had all been one horrible, bizarre nightmare.

Before she got her hopes up too far, however, the tent zipper came undone, and the panel fell back to reveal an outside world covered in a thick blanket of gray volcanic ash with more still falling from the sky. Not a dream then.