Dark Slayer(127)

A broken, anguished cry shattered the stillness. Help me! All healers to the cavern! We are losing them.

Gregori, the impervious. Gregori, the all-powerful. Ivory trembled to hear him so desperate, so frantic, and it was clear the others were equally as shaken. Gabrielle and Shea dropped their materials and bolted for the door.

Syndil started to follow, but Ivory grabbed her arm. "What is it? What's happening?" She knew. She didn't want to know. The outpour ing of grief gripped her heart, shredding it, and she knew she was feeling Gregori's emotions.

Tears had filled Syndil's eyes and begun to spill down her cheeks. "We're losing the babies. They cannot stop the birth."

"God help them." Ivory covered her mouth with one hand. Her knees were weak and rubbery and she leaned back into Razvan, gripping his arm to keep steady. They had come too late. Far too late. No matter what they learned now, they had not saved the fragile babies.

Vapor shimmered in the room and then Mikhail was there, his powerful presence filling the small space. "We have great need of you now, Ivory. They are slipping away. You are the last hope for my granddaughters."

"But I have never even tried it on soil, let alone a child," she protested, her stomach knotting. Razvan. She breathed his name as her talisman.

You will do this.

She shook her head. "Not on an infant. An untried spell. I will have to summon the dark magic in order to reverse what Xavier has wrought. Anything could go wrong."

Mikhail's face hardened. "It has already gone wrong. You must."

She forced down the lump threatening to block her throat, grateful for Razvan's supporting arm. "Mikhail . . ." She broke off, swallowing hard. "There's no guarantee this will work-or even that I will not harm them more. Xavier is a powerful adversary. So much could go wrong."

"You must do this if we have even a small chance of saving them." Mikhail was implacable. "Everyone believes you are our best hope. Gregori asks this of you."

Gregori. The man who had fearlessly gone after the four shadow fragments Xavier had placed in Razvan to allow his possession. Gregori hadn't flinched. But infants . . . Ivory shook her head, swallowed hard and sighed.

You will do this, Razvan repeated with complete confidence.

"So be it," she whispered, hoping Razvan's calm would rub off on her.

"Make whatever preparations you must, but hurry," Mikhail urged. Then he was gone.

"Razvan," Ivory said, her voice hoarse with grief and worry. "You know how evil Xavier's spells are. I cannot go into a sacred birthing chamber and call forth the darkness. Anything can happen." Even as she protested, she used magic for cleansing, rather than her ritual bath, as time was of the essence.

"Nothing you have ever accomplished has been easy, fel ku kuuluaak sivam belso-beloved-but you have done it. This is too important not to try."

She leaned into him for the briefest of moments and then, gripping his hand, rushed to the birthing cave. The swell of voices held heavy grief, swamping her senses. The crowd parted to allow her through, and her heart pounded. Ivory felt as if she couldn't breathe with so many Carpathians gathered around Gregori and his lifemate, pressing close, as if by their nearness they could in some way keep the babies from slipping away to the next life.

"Gregori! " Savannah screamed her lifemate's name as her body expelled the first tiny life into his hands. She panted heavily as she watched him breathing for their child. "Is she alive? I can't feel her, Gregori. Please tell me she lives." She buried her fist in the soil as another wave of pain ripped through her.

"I've got her," Gregori said, but his voice was distant. Filled with grief.

Razvan, I cannot bear to see them lose these children.

Francesca stepped close as Savannah's body shuddered again, her face rippling with pain. Francesca's hands guided the second baby into the world. At once her face went distant, as she, too, breathed for the infant.

You can do this, Ivory, Razvan whispered in her mind, his voice gentle as she stood before Gregori and Savannah and the tiny babies laboring for life. You were born for this moment.

I was born to slay vampires and destroy Xavier. Not for this. Never this.

Like everyone else, she was spellbound, watching Gregori, bloodred tears tracking down his face, holding his tiny daughter in his arms while Shea poured the small stores of soil that Ivory had brought with her into the incubator, on top of existing layers of soil Syndil had already cleansed in preparation for the birth of the twins.

The child in Gregori's hands was too small to live, much too fragile. Even from where she stood, Ivory could see Gregori breathed for her. His hands shook, that strong man, the knowledge that he, the greatest healer of their people, was helpless to save his own child.