Carpathian 12 - Dark Melody

family in one evening, they would have killed both you and Lisa. They are hunting Cullen, whose only sin was to warn us. I did not feel particularly kindly toward these individuals."
    "You confronted them," she guessed. What was he not telling her? Surely he couldn't have faced two armed men alone and bested them. "Do you carry a gun?" She hated guns, those cold metallic instruments of death.
    His broad shoulders shrugged casually. "I do not need a gun to kill," he said honestly. "I do not need a gun for any reason whatsoever."
    She let her breath out slowly. "I'm glad to hear that."
    He knew Corinne said it because she didn't have any idea what he was. A predator, dangerous and powerful. He had no need of a gun; he commanded the earth, the sky. He could shower the land with fire or buckle the ground beneath their feet. His voice alone could rob others of their will. He was a Carpathian male, a hunter of the vampire, his strength enormous, his ability to shape-shift only one of his many gifts. His was a dying species, a race of men doomed to wander the earth endlessly in search of the light that complemented their darkness, the one woman who was the other half of them. Without that woman they lost their ability to feel, lost the ability to see in color, so that they inhabited a dark, shadow world with only memories of honor to keep them from choosing the way of the vampire.
    The insidious whisper of power was always with them, eating at them, calling to them, crouching in them, a dark beast filled with blood lust and the need to kill just to feel that momentary rush. As the centuries passed, the dark stain grew and spread, filling the males, until there was no hope, only the dark, dangerous hunger.
    For the first few centuries, Dayan had suppressed the beast with his music and the poetry he had loved, but his struggle had increased in the last two hundred years. "Very recently there has been a change in our lives. You know all the band members, right?"

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    "Desari, of course, your singer. Barack and Syndil and you." Corinne rubbed his arm, sensing his unhappiness.
    "And Darius, head of our family and bodyguard. The change was good for my brothers and sisters, not so good for me. First Julian arrived and claimed Desari as his lifemate. Then Darius found Tempest.
    Barack claimed Syndil, and I was left alone. I felt isolated, Corinne. I cannot explain how difficult it was.
    How alone I was." The sight of all of them so happy together had left him terribly alone. It had been a kind of hell without them all. They had been together during the centuries of their existence, yet he could no longer face them. The sight and sounds and smells of the mingling couples had made his loneliness even more intolerable.
    He was different. He was a danger to them, to the women as well as the men. He saw the wary way Syndil always looked at him. She had been attacked by one of their own, Savon, after Savon had turned vampire. Darius had destroyed the vampire, but it had been a close thing.
    Dayan knew the others worried about him, and it had disturbed him that he felt nothing at all. Just alone.
    Always and forever alone. He was not afraid of Darius and his power, as he should have been. He was Darius's second-in-command. Darius felt tremendous loyalty to him, and they had exchanged blood on more than one occasion when one or the other had been wounded. It enabled them to communicate privately; it also enabled them to track one another at will, no matter how great the distance.
    "You aren't alone, Dayan; never think that," Corinne whispered, aching for him. She heard the loneliness in his voice and she wanted desperately to comfort him. Dayan brought Corinne's fingers to his mouth once more, kissing them gently instead of crushing her to him as he wanted. She had changed his life for all time. He could return to his family now without worry, without the threat that he might turn vampire and have to be hunted and destroyed. He would never have to read in their minds their worry over him, sense their pity and sorrow, their fears. He could feel the love he held for them all, instead of just remembering it. Corinne had done that just by being in the world for him to find. All the long centuries had been worth the wait. All the loneliness, all the terrible emptiness.
    Corinne filled him with hope again. No one would be completely safe until she was bound to him, until