Dark Lycan (Carpathian)

Fen swam through it to the entrance to the second room. Immediately he felt the resistance blocking him. He waved his hand and at once the safeguards symbols and code flowed in front of his vision, a little blurry at times and very fast. He unraveled them just as fast, but was far more careful going into the second chamber.

Abel slept here. It was dark and dank and snug, warm even, all the comforts of a cave. Fen looked around carefully. There was no one there, but he hadn’t expected Abel to make it easy for him. This was a cat and mouse game. He was the mouse, the bait to bring Abel out. He made his way slowly across the room. He hadn’t gone more than three steps when his warning radar shrieked at him. Screamed. Flashed. He wasn’t alone in the close confines of that room.

Abel dropped down on him from above, driving him to the floor of the lodge. The curved claws dug deep, tearing at him. The moment his body hit the floor, the walls of the room came alive, bats, clearly carnivorous, abandoning their resting place to join their master.

Feast. Feast my brothers, Abel commanded.

The bats dropped to the floor, coming from all directions, leaping on Fen and biting deep.



Dimitri surfaced, going straight out of the water, to see two of the elite hunters, Convel and Gunnolf, tangled up in the reeds. Clearly Zev had sent them scouting and the dead bodies in the lake had attracted them to the shore. They both had fallen into one of Abel’s traps. Thick vines burst from the reeds, wrapping the two Lycans up tightly in the stranglehold of an anaconda.

Cursing under his breath, Dimitri rocketed across the sky, dropping down behind the first Lycan, making certain not to touch any of the reeds. “Stop struggling. You’re only making it worse,” he advised.

Both Lycans, elite hunters, stopped moving instantly, although it had to have been difficult to obey when the vines continued to wrap them tighter, squeezing until their very bones were in danger of snapping.

Dimitri tried his sword, but the moment he touched the vines, others sprang up around him to try to cage him in. He could hear a quiet hum, the faintest of sounds, and knew the reeds and vines communicated with one another.

Although he didn’t move, Gunnolf began to make a sound of distress. Dimitri had run out of time. Using the strength and speed of the Guardian, he caught at the vines with his bare hands and yanked them away from the hunter, crushing the wood in his bare hands. The vines disintegrated into sawdust from the sheer strength he used. He pulled the hunter free and took him to a safer spot away from the reeds before going back for Convel.

The reeds had come alive, swaying and stretching, trying to find a target. Again, he dropped down fast from above, coming in behind Convel, grasping the thick vines, crushing them in his hands and snatching their prey from them to rise just as quickly into the air. It was his speed that saved them both. The vines shot up from all directions, but he had Convel safe and away. He set him down beside Gunnolf.

“Thanks,” Gunnolf said, holding out his hand. “You saved our lives.”

Dimitri was impatient to get back to Fen, but he gripped Gunnolf’s extended hand. Gunnolf slapped loops of silver around his wrist, a long chain like a leash attached. From behind him, loops of silver chain were flung over his head to drop around his body. The chain was pulled tight and agony shot through him. Before he could call out to Fen, something hard struck his head and everything went black.



“Let’s see what’s inside a hunter, my pets,” Abel said. Smiling, exposing his brown-stained teeth, he reached down in slow motion and deliberately ripped open Fen’s belly. The vampire/wolf took his time, wanting Fen to feel the pain as he eviscerated him. The bats uncovered the raw flesh where his missing skin should have been and tore into him.

“Eating people alive is what they do best and I so enjoy watching,” Abel taunted. “You weren’t quite as good as you thought, now were you?”

Fen felt a burst of pain that was not his own. That agony galvanized him into action as nothing else could. He was Carpathian before all else and he could shut off the pain from battle wounds. He’d done so for centuries. The silver was a different matter, but he could endure until something could be done.

“What happened to her, Abel?” Fen asked, forcing himself to lie quietly beneath the assault on his body. He stayed absolutely relaxed so Abel unintentionally relaxed as well. “Your lifemate? What happened to her?”

Abel went still. For one moment the malevolent lines disappeared from his face and he looked like the hunter Fen had known so long ago. The change in the Sange rau was fleeting, but it gave Fen that split second that he needed.