Dark Carousel (Dark #30)(61)

You do realize it is impossible not to fall in love with you. He took his gaze from the screens and watched her face. The softness. The way she looked as if she might cry.
That’s how I feel about you.
Mary has a beautiful gift. She can sing Liv to sleep. If I could sing, sielamet, I would sing you to sleep, but I don’t have that gift.
He felt her smile, and it touched him somewhere deep inside. If it was possible to love a woman completely in such a short period of time, he was already there. He knew her intimately, inside and out, and she was everything he’d ever wanted.
Sleep now, my love. I will wake you in the soil so you can practice opening the earth and closing it over you.
I’m not certain I’m ready for that, Tariq, but I’ll try.
There it was again. One of a thousand reasons. It scared her to think about the soil closing over her head—a very human reaction—but she was willing to give it a try. For him. He saw that very clearly. But not just for him. She wanted to be independent, and she wanted to be able to take care of her children.
He added that to the already thousand reasons he’d fallen hard, and he sent her to sleep. He would wait until he was certain Liv had settled and didn’t need further aid. His greatest worry was that she would harm herself. He watched Donald and Mary slowly get up and slip out of Liv’s room, retreating back to their small cottage. They’d lived in their car so long that anything larger than the little cottage was daunting to them. They held hands all the way back to their home, strolling rather than hurrying. 
The camera system was thorough, allowing him to see every square inch of his compound. He’d designed the defense system himself, working with Josef, the young Carpathian he considered a genius. He’d never actually met Josef, but they communicated regularly via computer and cell phone. The boy had ideas, a really good grasp on modern technology and how it could help living and working right in the city the way Tariq did. He liked the kid and wished he’d relocate to San Diego and help him and the other hunters track down the women in the database for psychics.
Tired, he took one last look at Liv to assure himself she was all right and down for the day. She appeared to be sleeping soundly, and then, just as he started to shut down the system, he saw her body jerk. Hard. Like a seizure. She thrashed on the bed and then sat up, shaking her head over and over, wiping her face with her hands as if trying to remove something from her skin.
His first thought was to call on the older couple again to settle her, but when Liv got off the bed, he saw her movements were jerky. Like those of a marionette. Or as if she was fighting for freedom. He’d taken her blood. He had taken that of all the children. It allowed him to know their thoughts and whereabouts at all times. It kept them safe as well as keeping the other hunters, Emeline and Blaze safe.
Tariq touched her mind very gently, always careful to be respectful. No one liked their thoughts monitored, especially a child like Liv. The moment he touched her mind, he knew she was asleep, yet fighting an unseen demon. Chaos reigned. The need to get up and go somewhere was a compulsion. She didn’t know where she was supposed to go, but she wanted away from her brother and sisters because . . . A low growl slipped out of his mouth. She had been directed to kill her brother. Her hand had even curled around a kitchen knife earlier but then she’d managed to turn the blade toward her own stomach and instantly the compulsion was gone, to be replaced by a stronger one. She wasn’t to harm herself.
Vadim. That answered the question as to why Liv didn’t want to sleep and whether the master vampire could reach the child as he did Emeline. They thought since she was receiving Vadim’s voice through Emeline’s dreams that he couldn’t possibly give her commands. Liv had vague, uneasy memories of dreams of the master vampire during her waking hours. She didn’t realize he was directing her to do his bidding while she slept. She just knew she didn’t want to sleep.
Donald. Mary. Liv is up again and I believe she’s sleepwalking under Vadim’s direction. You’ll need to intercept and stop her immediately.
Liv was on the move, this time leaving the house and turning away from the front gate. She looked at it several times and nodded her head, but then turned toward the main house. Was Vadim’s army out there right now? Waiting for Liv to bring down the safeguards? She could invite them in, but she’d have to get through the invisible labyrinth of corridors, and he doubted she could do so. In any case, Mary and Donald would stop her if she got close.
He felt the stirring in his mind. Donald getting out of his comfortable chair. Calling to Mary, who was in the kitchen fixing them a bite to eat.
While Liv stumbled toward the main house, he saw Emeline come out of her house and stand on her porch, looking around warily as she did each time she emerged. In the light of the sun, he could see how pale and gaunt she was. The trauma to her had taken its toll. She was a beautiful woman, by any standards, but there were dark circles under her eyes and she was so thin she shivered continuously as if she couldn’t regulate her body temperature.Tariq swore softly in his own language. He wasn’t Emeline’s lifemate, but he felt responsible for her. More, he admired and respected her as did Maksim, Blaze’s lifemate. He was going to have to intervene soon. No matter that Emeline had asked for time; she was wasting away right in front of them. As with Liv, he would have no choice with Emeline, either.
Liv disappeared into his home. He had no idea what she was planning to do and it made him uneasy that she moved through the hallway unerringly, as if she had a purpose now. She didn’t pause at Lourdes’s or Genevieve’s door, but continued on to the large kitchen.
Liv, wake up, honey. You’re sleepwalking. He was gentle, not wanting to startle her, but kitchen meant knives. If necessary he could muster up the strength to remove a weapon from her hand from the distance where he was, but it wouldn’t be easy.
She stumbled, but kept walking, right past the block of knives sitting on the counter, straight to the door of the basement. Now he was really uneasy. What could she possibly be up to? More importantly, what was Vadim up to?
Liv. He poured more strength into his command. Wake up now.
The sun was at its highest peak. He was at his weakest. He’d designed his security system to prevent intruders from harming the occupants of the compound. The safety nets he had for the children were mainly outside the houses.
Donald, she’s in my house, coming down to the basement. Be prepared for a battle and protect yourself if necessary. Have Mary use her voice to counteract Vadim, but you have to wake her up fully and then keep her awake.
Like Charlotte, he detested that he was helpless, lying in the healing earth while his child was in trouble and he couldn’t get to her. Already, he thought of Liv and the others as his children. His family. He needed to be the one to go to her and hold her safe in his arms when she was threatened.
He still didn’t understand how Vadim could get to the child in spite of the powerful safeguards woven around the compound. It should have been impossible for the vampire to get so completely to the child, so how . . . A memory came to him. In passing, Maksim had mentioned to him that Blaze and Emeline were very, very close and Emeline saw things in her dreams. She had dreamt of the tunnels running beneath the city and the vampires and monsters occupying that labyrinth. She’d shared the dreams with Blaze—literally.
Blaze didn’t have that gift—Emeline did—yet night after night, Blaze dreamt the same dream, running the tunnels to save the children, over and over until the two women had perfected their abilities in their dreams. Emeline had projected her dreams into Blaze without realizing she was doing so. She was close to Liv. Very close. Liv went to see her every evening. They already knew that Emeline had projected her dreams of Vadim to Liv, but she was awake on her porch. Was it possible that once Vadim had that path to Liv, he didn’t need Emeline to keep it and now he had complete access to the child? 
On the monitors he saw Donald and Mary stepping out of their little yard and heading across the compound toward the house, hand in hand as usual. He pushed a sense of urgency into them, wanting them to hurry. He had a bad feeling.
Liv went down the wide, wooden steps and turned away from where Charlotte and Tariq rested toward the large workroom where the unassembled carousel horses were along with all the tools and paints. She went right to the bundles that contained the horses and chariots that Vadim had placed his blood in.
Liv! Wake up! Get out of there. Don’t touch those horses. He gave the order, pushing command and compulsion into the child’s mind.
Still, it was too late. He knew it the moment he saw her enter the workroom. She rushed across the room straight to the cursed horses and chariots. Even as he gave her the commands she was already bending over the nearest horse, the one Charlotte had touched most recently, the one where Vadim’s blood had spewed a curse over every man, woman and child who had sat on it.
Liv gripped the horse’s neck and swung up into its saddle, her legs clutching the horse’s sides. The moment she was in the saddle, the thing rose into the air, coming alive, bucking and snorting, whirling around over the other horses and the chariots. Instantly, the horses sprang to life, the chariots exploding into action.