Carpathian 05 - Dark Challenge

not stop until he was certain he had connected with her, that his words had penetrated any barriers separating them and found their way to her soul.

Chapter Two
    The police were everywhere. Desari carefully sat up, dizzy and sick. She felt strange, different, as if something inside her had changed for all time. There was an odd, yawning emptiness, a void that had to be filled. Her brother and bodyguard, Darius, had his arm around her. He examined every inch of her with his ice cold black eyes. There was blood staining her dress, and her insides ached.
    "They shot me." She made it a statement.
    "I do not know how I failed to detect the danger to you in time." Darius looked gray and drained.
    Desari stroked his strong jaw. "You need to feed, brother. You have given me too much blood."
    Darius shook his head, then glanced surreptitiously toward the police. "I gave to Barack and Dayan.
    They were hit also. Six mortals, Desari, all wanted to kill you."
    "Barack and Dayan? Are they all right?" she demanded quickly, worry in her soft, dark eyes. She looked around frantically for the other two members of the band. She had been raised with the two men and loved them nearly as much as her own brother.
    He nodded. "I have sent them to ground. They will heal more quickly. I had little time for proper mending, but I did my best for them. The police were pouring into the bar. I made certain they could not see us. We have trouble though. It was not me who gave you blood. It was another. He was strong and powerful."
    Alarmed, Desari stared up at her brother. "Someone else gave me blood? You are certain? There is no mistake?"
    Darius shook his head. "I would not have reached you in time. You were already unconscious. You did not have time to shut down your heart and lungs as the others did, so you bled profusely. I examined you afterward, Desari. You would have died of your wounds. He saved your life."

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    She dragged up her knees and burrowed closer to him. "His blood is in me?" She sounded lost and forlorn, frightened.
    Darius swore eloquently. For centuries he had looked after his family. Desari, Syndil, Barack, Dayan, and Savon. The only others similar to their kind they had ever encountered had been the undead, the evil ones. This creature had slipped past him as a strange, cold wind that had pushed its way through the bar.
    Darius had been uneasy, worried; he had felt the presence of another, yet he had not caught the stench of evil. The undead. Vampire. He should have acted, he had been sidetracked by the vicious mortals emerging from the crowd.
    Why had Desari been suddenly targeted by these people? Had his family members somehow given themselves away? He knew that from time to time throughout history there had been eruptions of hysteria among humans, particularly in Europe, about vampires. And over the last seventy-five years a string of murders in Europe had been attributed to members of some secret society hunting down these alleged creatures of the night.
    Darius had purposely kept his family from that continent, not wanting to expose them to either these dangerous humans or to what could be the tainted blood of vampires. There was plenty of room in the world without going near Europe. His memories of his original homeland were vague and terrible.
    Marauders driving stakes through women and children still living, hanging them in the sun to die a death of excruciating pain. Beheadings, burnings, torture, and mutilation. If any of his race had survived, they had long ago turned vampire. If any other children had escaped as they had, they were probably better left unfound.
    "Darius?" Desari clutched at his shirt. "You did not answer me. Am I going to turn? Did he make me the undead?" Her beautiful voice quavered with fear.
    He circled her with one strong arm to comfort her, his face a hard, implacable mask of resolve. "Nothing is going to harm you, Desari. I would not allow it."
    "Can we remove his blood, replace it with yours?"
    "I sent myself into your body. I could find no evidence of evil. I do not know what he is, but I was able to mark him as he marked me." He lifted the arm he had clamped to his side. His palm came away from his belly coated in blood.
    Desari gasped and went to her knees. "Seal your own wounds now, Darius. You have already lost too much blood. You have to tend to yourself."
    "I am tired, Desari," he acknowledged softly.
    The