Carpathian 13 - Dark Destiny

comforting her, reassuring her as he had always done.
    "Destiny?" Mary Ann's voice shook her out of her reflection. "If the doctor is somehow involved in this… if he actually has done something to harm Helena and John Paul and Martin and Tim and Father Mulligan… and poor Blythe living in a hospital thinking she lost her mind… I could have prevented it. I could have brought charges against him. What if I could have stopped him?" She looked lost, sitting there on the floor with her large eyes and horror in her mind.
    "No! Mary Ann, what are you thinking?" Destiny gathered her close, hugged her hard in protest. "You know better than to think anything so ridiculous. How could you be responsible for something a madman chooses to do? We don't even know if this doctor has anything to do with what's happened. All the facts aren't in yet, but even if he is waving a magic wand and casting spells throughout the neighborhood, you cannot possibly be to blame."
    "You sound like me. That's all well and good in theory, but if I had brought charges against him, maybe he wouldn't have been able to touch any of my friends."
    "Or, more likely, he would have moved his deviant behavior somewhere else where no one would notice the difference in their friends. Don't you see, Mary Ann? This neighborhood and the people in it are so close, they don't readily accept that someone like John Paul who lovesHelena so very much would suddenly turn on her and try to hurt her. They don't accept that Martin would attack Father Mulligan. All of them began to watch one another and try to figure out what was going wrong."

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    "Please find out who is doing this and stop it, Destiny," Mary Ann pleaded.
    Destiny hugged her again. "I intend to do just that."

Chapter Seventeen
    Nicolae was waiting outside the office, his long, sinewy frame leaning negligently against the banister.
    Destiny paused to look at him. The breeze was coolly ruffling the long silk of his hair. The moon cast a silver beam across the angles and planes of his face, illuminating the sheer sensuality there. His body was hard and powerful, a dangerous blend of predator and seductive male. He turned his head and smiled at her, robbing her of breath just that easily.
    "You're very good-looking," she said judiciously, tilting her head to study his magnificent physique. "Are all Carpathians as good-looking as you?"
    His black eyebrows arched. "I do not think that is a safe subject for you." He held out his hand to her.
    Destiny studied it carefully, as if examining it for a trap. How in the world had she become so obsessed with him that the sight of his outstretched hand could send her heart somersaulting? Her fingers laced almost reluctantly with his. Up close, he would be able to feel the way he made her pulse elevate, the way her heart beat a little unsteadily. Her entire body ached for him if she ventured too close to his sheer magnetism. A humiliating fact, and one impossible to hide when he was touching her.
    "Silly woman," he said affectionately. "There is nothing at all to hide from a lifemate. There is never any need. I am in your mind as you are in mine."
    "Well, if you're in my mind, then you should be perfectly aware that I'm having a difficult time accepting our weird relationship."
    He brought their linked hands up to his mouth, his lips teasing the skin of her inner wrist. "You accept our weird relationship; you just are afraid to trust it. Or yourself. It makes you happy, and you do not trust that."
    She glared at him. "Have you been hanging out with Father Mulligan again? He's always handing out that two-cent advice of his."
    "He only charged you two cents? He made me fill his poor box," Nicolae said, straight-faced. "And he didn't offer a single word on marriage. He just said to have courage, whatever that meant."
    Destiny burst out laughing. "The old fraud, he probably said that on purpose just to make me crazy.
    Where's Vikirnoff?"
    Nicolae rugged on her hand until she began walking along the street with him. "He is out seeking information on the woman in the photograph. The healer is on his way, and my brother is determined to keep the cities free of vampires. We do not need Vikirnoff cluttering up the skies tonight. I have plans."
    The three little words set butterfly wings fluttering in the pit of her stomach. She had already been too long away from him. Desire shot through her, shaking her