Dark Lycan (53 page)

“You tried talking to them about Dimitri?” Josef asked.

Skyler nodded. “I knew something was wrong, that Dimitri was troubled, the last time we talked. He left abruptly for the Carpathian Mountains a few weeks ago and then he was in a terrible battle. I felt him slipping away from me. He was so far away and I almost couldn’t reach him. By the time I did, he was nearly gone. I could feel his life force fading.” She looked up at him. “You remember that night? I called you to come and help me.”

“You were in the college library and fortunately I’d come to visit you, so I wasn’t far away,” Josef said.“But you didn’t tell me what happened. Only that Dimitri needed you. You were wiped out.”

The memory of that night shook her. Dimitri had been badly wounded. Mortally wounded. She was far from him, studying in the college library—so mundane—the distance dimming their connection. She’d reached for him, knowing he was in trouble and it was his brother she found. When she touched Dimitri, he had grown so cold, ice cold. She shivered, the coldness still in her bones. Sometimes she didn’t think she’d ever get it out.

“His brother was there, fighting for him, following after his fading light and trying to bring him back. I called to Dimitri and begged him not to leave me. I did my best, even across such a great distance, to help his brother bring him back to the land of the living. I just couldn’t let him go.”

She caught her lower lip between her teeth, biting down hard. Even now her heart ached. She pressed her palm tightly over the pain. “I can’t lose him, Josef. He has always been there for me, as long as I’ve needed him, any way that I’ve needed him. It’s my turn now. I won’t let him down. I’m going to find him and I’m going to help him escape.”

“Before, when he was dying, you could reach him,” Josef ventured carefully, knowing full well he was walking through a minefield. “Why do you think you can’t now?”

“I know what you’re getting at, Josef,” she snapped. “And it isn’t true. Dimitri is alive. I know he’s alive.”

Josef nodded. “I hear you, Sky, but that doesn’t answer my question. Maybe we’d better figure out why you can’t reach him when the two of you have always been able to communicate telepathically. You’re extraordinarily powerful. More so than some Carpathians. Many of us can’t cover the kinds of distances you’ve been able to. So what’s different now?”

She frowned at him. Josef was incredibly brilliant, and even if she didn’t want to hear it, she needed to listen to him. He had a point. She’d been able to cross great distances to connect with Dimitri—and he with her. She had known when he was in trouble, when he had fought in a battle with a rogue pack and took the brunt of the attack in order to give his brother the opportunity to destroy a very dangerous vampire/wolf cross.

She had felt Dimitri’s pain, so terrible she could barely breathe. Right there, in the college library, she had nearly fallen to the floor, with that flash of pain that wasn’t hers. She had followed that trail back to him unerringly despite his fading light. Over the years of talking telepathically, the connection between them had grown strong and she found him even as his life force was fading away, traveling to another realm. If she could do that, Josef was right, why couldn’t she find him now? It didn’t make sense—and she should have figured that out on her own.

“You’re too close to the problem,” Josef said, proving he was so tuned in to her he could practically read her thoughts.

“I don’t like it when I’m not thinking straight,” Skyler said. “He needs me to be one hundred percent on this.”

“I think it’s called love, Sky, as much as I don’t want to admit you could love anyone but me.” Josef winked at her.

“Something’s really wrong, Josef. I know it is. How could I find him when he was already technically dead, but I can’t do it now?”

“Perhaps he’s unconscious,” he ventured.

She shook her head. “I thought of that. I could still find him. I know I could. There’s something about our connection. It’s so strong, I can follow him anywhere. I could touch him when he was underground, rejuvenating in the soil.”

Josef’s eyes widened. “No way, Sky. No one can do that. We stop our hearts and lungs and we can’t move. That’s our most vulnerable time. How could he be aware?”

“I don’t know, but whenever I reach for him, day or night, he’s always been there for me. Always. I can’t remember a single time that I couldn’t find him. Mother Earth always sang to me, a vibration I could feel, and I would know where he was.”

“Did you tell Gabriel and Francesca you could do that? Could you do it with them? With me?”

Skyler paced across the floor, looking once more at her watch a little impatiently. “I never thought to tell anyone, not even Dimitri, the how of it. But no, I never tried to wake anyone else. Francesca and Gabriel get very little time alone together these days, so I never considered waking them. It seemed natural to turn to Dimitri. I knew that he needed me as much as I needed him.”

“All this time I thought you were afraid of a relationship with him,” Josef said.

Skyler’s smile held little humor. “I was never afraid of a relationship with him. How could I be? We have a wonderful relationship. He treats me like I’m the greatest, most desirable woman in the world. He’s intelligent, we can talk about anything together for hours. He’s kind and gentle. He’s everything a woman could want in a partner.”

“I’m hearing a ‘but’ in there.”

“I am not certain I can be the lifemate he truly deserves. I’m great at the emotional relationship and the intellectual relationship, but I have no idea if I can ever be what he needs physically. That’s an entirely different matter.”

Josef shook his head. “Skyler, don’t get all psycho about that. It will happen when it’s supposed to. Dimitri will never want another woman. Not ever. He’ll give you all the time you need.”

“I know. I do. Dimitri would never push me and he never has. It isn’t him that’s worried. I just get anxious thinking about it. I want to be the best lifemate possible to him and my mind just can’t go to a physical relationship yet.”

She glanced again at her watch. “Paul had better get here soon. Are you certain he got away without anyone being suspicious?”

“Yeah, he’s on his way. Only a few minutes out. You said Dimitri was alive. If he is, we’ll find him.”

Skyler let her breath out slowly. “I don’t like any of this. I detest the fact that the prince, along with everyone else, has abandoned him.”

Josef slung his arm around her and hugged her tight. The smile faded. “We’ll find him. We will.”

Skyler clung to him for a moment and then nodded, straightening her shoulders and stepping away from him. “I don’t like the only explanation I can think of for not being able to connect with him.”

“What is it?” Josef asked.

“He’s blocking me.” There was hurt in her voice. “He has to be. There’s no other explanation that makes sense.”

APPENDIX 1

Carpathian Healing Chants

To rightly understand Carpathian healing chants, background is required in several areas:

1. The Carpathian view on healing

2. The Lesser Healing Chant of the Carpathians

3. The Great Healing Chant of the Carpathians

4. Carpathian musical aesthetics

5. Lullaby

6. Song to Heal the Earth

7. Carpathian chanting technique

1. THE CARPATHIAN VIEW ON HEALING

The Carpathians are a nomadic people whose geographic origins can be traced back to at least as far as the Southern Ural Mountains (near the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan), on the border between Europe and Asia. (For this reason, modern-day linguists call their language “proto-Uralic,” without knowing that this is the language of the Carpathians.) Unlike most nomadic peoples, the wandering of the Carpathians was not due to the need to find new grazing lands as the seasons and climate shifted, or the search for better trade. Instead, the Carpathians’ movements were driven by a great purpose: to find a land that would have the right earth, a soil with the kind of richness that would greatly enhance their rejuvenative powers.

Over the centuries, they migrated westward (some six thousand years ago), until they at last found their perfect homeland—their
susu
—in the Carpathian Mountains, whose long arc cradled the lush plains of the kingdom of Hungary. (The kingdom of Hungary flourished for over a millennium—making Hungarian the dominant language of the Carpathian Basin—until the kingdom’s lands were split among several countries after World War I: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and modern Hungary.)

Other peoples from the Southern Urals (who shared the Carpathian language, but were not Carpathians) migrated in different directions. Some ended up in Finland, which accounts for why the modern Hungarian and Finnish languages are among the contemporary descendents of the ancient Carpathian language. Even though they are tied forever to their chosen Carpathian homeland, the wandering of the Carpathians continues as they search the world for the answers that will enable them to bear and raise their offspring without difficulty.

Because of their geographic origins, the Carpathian views on healing share much with the larger Eurasian shamanistic tradition. Probably the closest modern representative of that tradition is based in Tuva (and is referred to as “Tuvinian Shamanism”)—see the map on the previous page.

The Eurasian shamanistic tradition—from the Carpathians to the Siberian shamans—held that illness originated in the human soul, and only later manifested as various physical conditions. Therefore, shamanistic healing, while not neglecting the body, focused on the soul and its healing. The most profound illnesses were understood to be caused by “soul departure,” where all or some part of the sick person’s soul has wandered away from the body (into the nether realms), or has been captured or possessed by an evil spirit, or both.

The Carpathians belong to this greater Eurasian shamanistic tradition and share its viewpoints. While the Carpathians themselves did not succumb to illness, Carpathian healers understood that the most profound wounds were also accompanied by a similar “soul departure.”

Upon reaching the diagnosis of “soul departure,” the healer-shaman is then required to make a spiritual journey into the netherworlds to recover the soul. The shaman may have to overcome tremendous challenges along the way, particularly fighting the demon or vampire who has possessed his friend’s soul.

“Soul departure” doesn’t require a person to be unconscious (although that certainly can be the case as well). It was understood that a person could still appear to be conscious, even talk and interact with others, and yet be missing a part of their soul. The experienced healer or shaman would instantly see the problem nonetheless, in subtle signs that others might miss: the person’s attention wandering every now and then, a lessening in their enthusiasm about life, chronic depression, a diminishment in the brightness of their “aura,” and the like.

2. THE LESSER HEALING CHANT OF THE CARPATHIANS

Kepä Sarna Pus
(The Lesser Healing Chant)
is used for wounds that are merely physical in nature. The Carpathian healer leaves his body and enters the wounded Carpathian’s body to heal great mortal wounds from the inside out using pure energy. He proclaims, “I offer freely my life for your life,” as he gives his blood to the injured Carpathian. Because the Carpathians are of the earth and bound to the soil, they are healed by the soil of their homeland. Their saliva is also often used for its rejuvenative powers.

It is also very common for the Carpathian chants (both the Lesser and the Great) to be accompanied by the use of healing herbs, aromas from Carpathian candles and crystals. The crystals (when combined with the Carpathians’ empathic, psychic connection to the entire universe) are used to gather positive energy from their surroundings, which then is used to accelerate the healing. Caves are sometimes used as the setting for the healing.

The Lesser Healing Chant was used by Vikirnoff Von Shrieder and Colby Jansen to heal Rafael De La Cruz, whose heart had been ripped out by a vampire as described in
Dark Secret
.

Kepä Sarna Pus
(The Lesser Healing Chant)

The same chant is used for all physical wounds. “Sívadaba” [“into your heart”] would be changed to refer to whatever part of the body is wounded.

, nélkül sívdobbanás, nélkül fesztelen löyly.