Carpathian 06 - Dark Fire

speak with you if you are feeling up to it. I will clean the kitchen. The two of you will be more comfortable in the sleeping quarters."
    Tempest managed a small smile. "That's his nice way of ordering us out of here. Everyone calls me Rusti," she told Syndil, oddly without shame before this other wounded woman.
    As she slipped past Darius, he reached out to catch her hair and give a small tug. "Not everyone, honey."
    She sent him a quelling glance over her shoulder, forgetting for a moment her swollen eye and bruised mouth. "Everyone else" she corrected.
    Darius allowed her hair to slide through his fingers, savoring the contact with her, however slight it was.
    Tempest walked carefully, not wanting to jar her bruised ribs. Syndil gestured to the couch, and Tempest sank into the soft cushions. Syndil examined her face. "Did you allow Darius to heal you?" she inquired.
    Her voice was beautiful, satin soft, haunting and mysterious. Tempest knew immediately that she, too, was a creature like Darius. It was in her voice and eyes. But as hard as she tried, she could detect no evil in Syndil, just a quiet sadness.
    "Is Darius a doctor?" she asked.
    "Not exactly, but he is talented at healing others." She looked down at her hands. "I did not allow him to help me, and that hurt both of us more than I can say. Be stronger than I was. Allow him to do this for you."
    "Darius arrived before I was raped," Tempest said bluntly.
    Syndil's beautiful eyes filled with tears. "I am so glad. When Desari told me you had been attacked, I Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    thought…" She shook her head. "I am so glad." She touched a swollen bruise with a gentle fingertip. "But the man hurt you. He hit you."
    "It's far worse to be hurt on the inside," Tempest said, pulling the throw pillows around her as if fashioning them into walls to keep her safe.

Chapter Three
    Syndil stared at Tempest for a long moment. Then her breath escaped in a long, slow hiss. She sat down and leaned forward to try to read Tempest's expression. "It happened to you. Not this time, but sometime in your past. You know what it is like. The fear. The revulsion." Her eyes sparkled like black ice, like crushed jewels. "I scrubbed myself for three and half hours, and months later I still do not feel clean." She ran her hands up and down her arms, anguish reflected in her enormous eyes.
    Tempest glanced toward the kitchen to assure herself that Darius could not hear them. "You should get counseling. There are places, Syndil, people who can help you put your life back together again."
    "Is that what you did?"
    Tempest swallowed hard, feeling the familiar nausea that arose every time that particular door started to crack open. She shook her head, pressing a hand to her stomach.
    "I wasn't in a position to seek help. I was simply trying to survive." Once more she glanced toward the kitchen, then lowered her voice still further. "I never really knew either of my parents. My earliest memories are of a dirty room where I ate off the floor and watched grownups put needles in their arms, legs-every vein they could find. I didn't know which of the adults was my mother or father. Occasionally the authorities would scoop me up and dump me in foster homes, but mainly I lived on the streets. I learned to fight off drug dealers and pimps and every other man that happened by. It was a way of life, all I knew for several years."
    "That is when it happened to you?" Syndil asked, her eyes so filled with pain that Tempest wanted to gather her into her arms. At the same time she wanted to run, to never have to relive that particular time in her life again. She couldn't bear it, not on the heels of Harry's attack.
    "No, it might have been easier if it had been some sleazy drunk or junkie or even one of the pimps, but it was someone I trusted," Tempest confessed in a low voice, the words forced out of her by some bond between her and Syndil, a bond forged by a terrible trauma they both shared.
    "It was someone I loved and trusted, too," Syndil admitted softly. "As a result, I do not know how to trust anyone now. I feel as if he killed that part of me. I cannot perform in the band. I loved playing; the music has always been inside me, and now I cannot hear it. I feel dead without it. I cannot stand to be alone with any of the males I grew up with, men I have always loved as my family. I know they worry for me, but I cannot change what has