Drake Sisters 07 - Hidden Currents

aloud and checked the wolves one by one, assuring herself the vampire hadn’t harmed any of them.
    â€œAl right. Let’s get you fed before dawn. I have a ways to travel and the night’s fading,†she told the pack. Catching the alpha’s muzzle, she looked into his eyes. Find and drive prey to me and I’ll bring it down for you. Hurry, though. I don’t have much time.
    Although she talked to her own pack al the time and they understood her, it was easier with a wild pack to convey the order in images rather than in words. She added a sense of urgency at the same time. She needed to begin the trek back to her lair. Ordinarily she would fly, and each of her weapons was made of something natural that could shift with her, to transport her arsenal over long distances. But first she had to help the pack find food. She didn’t want to lose them over the winter, and another storm was coming in soon.
    The wolf pack melted away, once again fading into the forest to look for prey. She shouldered her crossbow and began walking through the wilderness in the direction of her home. She’d only make a few miles before the pack would flush something her way, but she would be that much closer to home—and to safety.
    She understood little about the modern way of life. She’d been buried beneath the ground for so long, the world was unrecognizable when she’d risen. She’d learned over time that the prince’s son, Mikhail, had replaced him as the ruler of the Carpathians, and his second in command, as always, was a Daratrazanoff. She knew little else of them, but even the Carpathian world had changed drastical y.
    There were so few of her species, the race nearing extinction. And who knew? Maybe it was for the best. Maybe their time was long past. So few women and children had been born over the last few centuries that the race was nearly wiped out. She wasn’t a part of that world any longer, no more than she was a part of the modern-day human world. She knew little of technology, other than from the books she read, and she had no concept of what it would be like to live in a house or vil age, town or—God forbid—a city.
    She quickened her steps and again glanced at the sky. She would give the wolf pack another twenty minutes to flush game before she took flight. As it was she was pushing her luck. She didn’t want to be caught out in the light of dawn. She’d spent so much of her life underground, she hadn’t developed the resistance to the sun as many of her kind had done, able to stay out in the early morning hours. The moment the sun began to rise she could feel the burn.
    Of course, it might have something to do with her skin taking so long to renew itself, scraped from her body as it had been until she was nothing but bones and a mass of raw tissue. Sometimes, when she first woke, she stil felt the blades going through bone and organs as they chopped her into little pieces and scattered her across the meadow, left to be eaten by the wolves. She remembered the sound of their rasping laughter as they carried out the orders given to them by her worst enemy—Xavier.
    The wind began to increase in strength and dark clouds drifted overhead, heralding the coming storm. She sought the haven of the trees and took refuge, closing her eyes to seek the wolf pack. They had discovered a doe, thin and drawn from the winter, hobbling a bit from an injury to her old body.
    Giving chase, the pack had taken turns, running her toward Ivory.
    She whispered softly, asking for the doe’s forgiveness, explaining the need to feed the pack as she lifted her weapon and waited. Minutes passed.
    Ice cracked with a loud snap, disturbing the silence. Hard breaths burst from lungs in a rapid puff of steam as the deer broke through the trees and ran ful out over the icy ground.
    Behind the doe, a wolf ran, silent, deadly, hungry, moving across the expanse of ice on large paws. Surrounding them, the pack came in from various angles, keeping the doe running straight toward Ivory. They’d hunted this way more than once, bringing the prey to her in desperate times.
    Not wanting the doe to suffer, Ivory waited until she had a kil shot before releasing her arrow and taking the animal down. Before the alpha could approach the carcass, snarling at the others to wait until he had his fil , she hurried to it and retrieved her arrow,