Her body picked up the rhythm of the stream and waterfalls. She heard the music and her own body sang that song with nature. Trees added the drumbeat of branches in the wind as well as the softer, flowing music of the sap running in the veins through the variety of trees.
She felt free. Complete. Part of nature. Part of the wild, wonderful mountains and the dense forest below. Above her rose the higher, enshrouded peaks where she knew the monastery was located. Inside that sacred place were the ancients who had not yet left the world, but had no hope of finding lifemates. They could no longer afford to hunt and destroy the undead. Each kill brought them closer to becoming vampire. They weren’t safe around humans or any other temptation, and yet they could not walk into the sun and destroy themselves because it felt so wrong to them.
She felt them as well, although they were in the distance, felt the emotions they couldn’t feel. Despair. Loss of all hope. Sorrow. Pain not physical, but mental. The air groaned with those heavier emotions, but the ancient Carpathians couldn’t feel any of it themselves. She knew she had to find a way to ease those burdens, and her heart hurt for them. She had felt them before, but she hadn’t recognized when she’d first found the cave that she’d been feeling the emotions of the lost ancients in the monastery.
Teagan.
Andre’s voice wrapped her up in velvet. The raspy tone licked over her skin and the silk pushed deep inside. She would always love the way he said her name.
You cannot take on the burdens of the ancients. It is too much.
Actually, I think I can help. In the cave. She’d been sitting right on it. She had followed her tuning fork through the various chambers of the cave, looking for a stone to cure her grandmother of insanity, but her grandmother clearly wasn’t insane and didn’t need a stone. All along she’d felt that heavy burden, the weight of the ancient Carpathians, yet she hadn’t acknowledged it. Hadn’t known what it was.
When she’d sunk to the floor of the cave to meditate and open her mind, she had inadvertently connected with the stone she needed. It wasn’t her grandmother’s stone, but it was the one that would help ease the suffering of the ancients in the monastery. Elated, she nearly fell from the sky.
Do you really think you can ease the burden of an ancient? There was hope in Andre’s voice. My adopted brothers, Tomas, Matias and Lojos are skating very close to the edge of the insanity. If you could ease them, give them more time . . . Even if it is a few more years . . .
She had no idea what her stone would actually do, but she knew it would help—and she had to help those ancients in the monastery. That need had now become a compulsion. The stone was somewhere beneath the spot where she had chosen to meditate. She would have to dig carefully to find it, making certain not to destroy it in the hunt for it. Now, when she heard the cautious hope in Andre’s voice, she wanted to be able to help the ancients even more.
I think I can . . . She trailed off.
Her stomach lurched, a discordant note jarring the beautiful symphony of the mountains and forest. She took a careful look around, using the owl’s superior vision.
Andre. He is somewhere close by. Beneath us.
The moment she sent Andre the information, he acknowledged her. I do not feel him at all, Teagan. He is a master and is able to hide himself well. Your gift is incredible and will be an enormous aid to us.
She couldn’t help but feel a little glow at his words. This was far better than sitting on a tree branch, paralyzed and feeling useless. Andre made her feel important to him—always—in every capacity.
What does it feel like?
He was already slipping deeper into her mind, but she liked that he asked. It was a form of asking permission, even though she knew he needed to feel the discordant note for himself.
We’re moving away from him, she reported, as the jarring note became fainter.
Circle back around. I need to hear it. You tune yourself to that note and when it is strongest, we can follow the trail, Andre said.
The two owls rose higher, turning in a slow circle, moving up into the higher elevations. She could see the mountain rising up above the dense forest of trees. The canopy swayed, drawing her attention back to the leaves, silver against the backdrop of the evening sky. The night was staining the sky a darker blue. A few brave stars sparkled above their heads, and the moon managed to make itself seen against the darker sky.
Shrouding the mountain peaks was a heavy mist that seemed impenetrable. Once again she felt the heavy burden of the monks pressing into her. They had their own music, but it was infinitely sad. Filled with despair and sorrow. Worse, although they radiated it, sending those notes of intense pain into the universe, they clearly weren’t aware of it.
Can you tune them out? Andre asked gently. You are taking on their sorrow, sivamet. They would not want that for you, for any woman. They honor women and have their entire lives. They are ancients without the other half of their souls and it is far too dangerous for them to continue looking. They are lost and they know it.
I can help them, Andre. Perhaps give them a few more months or years.
Perhaps, Teagan. You are a miracle so I have no doubt if anyone can do such a thing, it would be you, but not like this. Not taking on their burden.
She didn’t know how to tune them out. All that sadness slipping into nature’s joyous symphony. The notes weren’t at all unharmonious. In fact, they added to the richness of the music she heard. And then . . . there it was. Her stomach lurched and she felt a jarring, as if something vibrated wrong through her insides.