Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!
“The bond between Aajav and I is a most sacred thing, and not for the likes of you to speak of. Do you understand?” The mortal didn’t respond, so he gave her a shake. “Answer!” Still she did not reply, and Qarakh squeezed tighter. She was his ghoul, and by Tengri, she would obey him!
“Answer!”
A sound cut through the roaring in his ears then: a harsh crack like a tree limb being snapped in two.
The next sound he heard was the Beast’s mad laughter… then silence.
He looked at the woman and frowned, confused, as if only just seeing her for the first time. Her head lolled to one side like a rag doll’s, and her bulging eyes were wide and unseeing, the whites streaked red. Her skin of her face was almost black now, and her tongue, swollen and purple, protruded from her mouth like a fat slug.
Qarakh released his grip and the woman fell onto the bed, limp and lifeless.
What are you waiting for? Drink!
Qarakh did nothing.
What do you care if she’s dead? She was nothing more than cattle to you, as are all mortals. You didn’t even know her name. Now drink, before her blood spoils and goes to waste!
Qarakh started forward, fangs bared, but then he stopped. “Her name was Pavla,” he said. He expected the Beast to respond, but his inner voice was silent for a change. He felt a sudden heaviness in his limbs, and he knew it was more than drowsiness from having just fed. The sun had risen.
He crawled to the middle of the ger and moved aside one of the red mats to expose a bare patch of earth.
He should’ve known better. The Beast could only be denied for so long before it had to feed. And it needed more than mere blood. It needed pain and death and carnage. Most of all, it needed to prove its dominance over its host body, to humiliate the Cainite so foolish as to believe that he could ever be its master. He knew that some called him Qarakh the Untamed, but the only truly untamed thing about him was the Beast that was his eternal companion through the endless nights.
He scooted onto the patch of earth and concentrated. As he sank into the ground where he would slumber during the daylight hours, he vowed that he would never forget the hard lesson the Beast had taught him this night—just as he had vowed many times before.
Deverra stood before a large pine tree at the edge of the tribe’s immediate territory. She drew a sharp nail across her palm and vitae welled forth, mixing with the tree sap already in her hand. The Telyav priestess stirred the mixture with a finger, then brought it to her mouth and lapped it up. She didn’t need to look at the lightening sky to sense the coming dawn. She felt it as a heat in her veins, as if her blood were on the verge of boiling. She swallowed the blood-sap, closed her eyes and calmly recited an invocation. Then, just as the first light of dawn broke over the horizon, she stepped toward the tree trunk and melted into the wood.
Safely encased within the pine, Deverra would sleep until sunset. But though she felt languor washing over her, the peace of slumber proved elusive. She continued to think about Qarakh and the conversation they’d had on their way back to the camp. The Mongol chieftain intended to hold kuriltai, a war council, after sundown.
It was the “war” part of the council that worried her. She had full confidence in Qarakh himself. Despite his relative youth, he was a mighty Cainite and as strong a leader as she had known. He’d also gathered an inner circle of seasoned warriors from across the northern fringes of Christianity and beyond, but the rest of his tribe was a rag-tag collection of Cainites, ghouls and thralls. They trained in the arts of war and were not without skill, but it had been a hard fight last year against the Livonian and German crusaders and the vampires in their midst. If this boy-faced prince was whom she feared it was… well, they would be no match for him.
A high priestess with so little faith, she chided herself. Qarakh had only arrived in Livonia a few years ago, but she had been born here and had spent the majority of her long unlife here. She had forged a bond with the spirit of this land, with Telyavel, the guardian of the dead and maker of things. As long as the flame of that bond burned, as long as she and the others in her extended coven were willing to make the necessary sacrifices, then there remained hope. Deverra had helped the young Mongol found his tribe here with that bond to the spirit and people of the land at its core, and she would not surrender to despair now.
The boy prince was coming. The only question was how they would face him.
At last, sun-sleep finally came for her, and her consciousness slipped into the darkness that was Cainite slumber. She had two last thoughts before oblivion claimed her for the day. First, she would not inform the other Telyavs about Alexander—not before consulting the man she had sworn allegiance to as her khan. And second, she wondered what Qarakh’s vitae would taste like.
Sweet, she decided. And burning hot…
Then she thought no more.
Qarakh slumbered and remembered. A night years ago, when a rough whisper cut through his sleep.
“Qarakh…”
He ignored the voice, rolled onto his side, and pulled the
