Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

done this many, many
     times already.”
    “You’re a good man, too, Dax. You’re so worried about everyone else that you don’t
     take yourself into consideration,” she protested. “I love that you want to shield
     all of us, but I’m just saying, I wish I could do the same for you.”
    “But you do,” he assured, bending his head down to brush his lips back and forth across
     hers like a soft whisper. “That’s what you don’t understand. You wipe out every bad
     place I’ve ever been. I see only you when you’re with me. Loving you is the easy part,
     Riley, and when I’m with you, everything else disappears. Just wait for me here. Don’t
     put your hands in the ground; you know he’s gone. Just sit quietly and wait for me.”
    “I’ll stay here and wait,” she promised. “I’ll stay in sight of you at all times.
     I don’t feel that horrible dread that signals he has a terrible trap for us. I think
     you’ll be getting the worst of this one.”
    “At the first hint of trouble, if you, even for a moment, feel something isn’t right,”
     he said, “reach for me. I’ll be close.”
    Riley flashed a small smile meant to be reassuring. “I’m really not all that brave,
     Dax. I’ll be yelling at the top of my lungs for you as well as screaming in my head.”
    “Do you have the weapon Jubal gave you?”
    She nodded. “I keep it ready at all times. It might not kill Mitro, but it might slow
     him down and for certain it would slow down the creatures he creates.”
    “He won’t make a try for you himself unless he’s cornered, or if he finds himself
     with a certain opportunity, otherwise, he’s too cunning for that. He’ll let someone
     else do the killing, and that’s what worries me the most. He was trapped in the volcano
     and he managed to delay your mother and then get others to kill her for him. He can
     do the same to you. You can’t trust anything, not animal, insect, bird or even man.”
    “Dax.” She raised her hand to his face and traced his jaw. “If you’re trying to scare
     me, you don’t have to. I’m terrified. I’m not the heroine type.”
    He couldn’t stop the small smile and shake of his head. “You really don’t see yourself
     at all, do you? Fear has nothing to do with courage, and you have more than your share
     of courage.”
    She shook her head and tipped her head up to kiss him briefly on the mouth. There
     was nothing sexual in her kiss at all, just a warmth of companionship, a trust that
     squeezed his heart hard. “Be safe,” she murmured.
    Dax turned away from her abruptly. It was getting much harder to give her the room
     she needed. He’d been so long without anyone and the threads binding them were getting
     tighter so that needs and wants became the same. Hunger for her was growing with each
     passing hour he spent in her company. He had set out to coax her to fall in love with
     him, spending time in her mind, an intimacy difficult to resist, but he found he was
     the one falling off that cliff.
    Long strides took him back to where Jubal and Gary were waiting. “This one is going
     to be bad,” he advised. “I’ll go in first and try to find any traps Mitro left behind.
     You two stay just at the edge of the tree line. Don’t step into the clearing. There’s
     no way of knowing what will trip any ambush he’s set.”
    “We’ll have to find them before we leave this place,” Jubal said. “Otherwise someone
     innocent could come along and be injured or killed.”
    Dax nodded grimly and shifted into mist and streamed into the clearing beside the
     river. The cabin was very small, no more than a single room with a small covered porch
     that had been up on stilts. Now it was tipped on one side, blackened and burned. Nothing
     was left of the house but three half walls, a mere husk surrounding a smoldering ruin.
     The roof had been constructed of tree branches and leaves as many of the huts were
     when natives were on the move. This one had been built hastily and there was little
     there to say anyone had lived there long. He moved around the cabin carefully, testing
     the air for any sign of Mitro’s inevitable traps.
    Dax found the body a hundred feet from the burnt-out ruins. She’d been young. He knelt
     beside her for a few moments, waving away the insects and touching her hair briefly
     in a salute to her. She’d had courage. She’d been pregnant, and she’d tried to protect
     her unborn child. He shook his head and