Deleted Scenes!

[delphine]

The shadow warrior spun around, sword flashing, cutting straight at Vikirnoff’s throat. He ducked and parried, sparks raining down as the metal edges collided with enormous force.

“Having a good time there, honey?” Natalya called out. “You’re looking a little slow. You’ve got a trio coming up on your right.” She folded her arms and tapped her foot as three more warriors rushed into the fray.

Vikirnoff went vertical, leaping into the air, kicking at one.

“Way cool, babycakes, I’m so impressed with that move. Very Jackie Chan!” She fanned herself. “My little heart is all aflutter.”

“Okay I’ve got the point, get in here and help me.” Virkinoff threw a dark scowl over his shoulder, ducked another sword coming at him, spinning to take him through the ranks of smoky warriors, his movements drawing them away from his lifemate.

Natalya clutched her side and batted her eyelashes. “I think I’m ovulating and this is the optimum time. Can we call a time out so you can do the dastardly deed and get me with child?”

One of the shadow warriors drove hard at Vikirnoff. The Carpathian raced up the side of the ice wall, flipped over, driving the blade of his sword across the warrior’s neck. It should have beheaded his opponent, but as the shadow warrior was already dead, his blade cut through air.

Natalya clapped her hands. “Hey! If you were shorter and green, we could call you Yoda. Didn’t he teach that move to Luke Skywalker?”

“Natalya,” Vikirnoff bit out through clenched teeth. “You aren’t funny. I’ve got five of these warriors coming at me and you’re just standing around.”

“But I’m looking pretty. You have to admit I look good standing here. And I’m cheering for you, babe.” Pom poms appeared in her hands and she was suddenly wearing a short skirt. She did a little demonstration for him. “Go Vik, go, destroy those bad boys.”

She stopped moving when one of the shadow warriors turned his head toward her. Movement always attracted them.

Vikirnoff fought through the ranks until he had placed his body between his lifemate and the warriors. His sword flashed in and out as he spun gracefully, dropped low, went high and kept a whirling movement impossible to anticipate. “Stop kidding around!”

“Are you going to go before the warrior’s counsel and tell them you think women should be allowed to fight? Cuz it looks like you could use a little help. But I could just stand here braiding my hair if you’d rather I sit this one out.”

O jelä peje terád – Sun scorch you, Natalya!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Did you just curse at me? I’m only following my man’s wishes.” She glared at him. “Like Donna Reed.”

“Sun scorch the warrior’s counsel. And sun scorch Donna Reed as well.”

“That’s so not nice when Donna Reed is your dream girl.”

“Warrior princess is my dream girl and she’d better get her spectacular ass in gear.” Vikirnoff parried two swords coming at him, spun and took the flat of a blade across his shoulder.

It rocked him, but he kept moving fast, getting out of the way by ducking low and sliding through the warrior’s ranks.

Natalya flinched, taking two steps toward Vikirnoff and then forcing herself to stop. “That looked like it hurt big time. I’d help out, but you know I might mess up the polish on my fingernails. It’s so pretty and pink.”

“I’m going to beat you when I get out of this.”

“I’m not sure you’re going to get out of this without some help, but unfortunately for you, I think I’m ovulating right now. We women have to stay home and be impregnated.”

“What’s it going to take?”

“Changing your position on women fighting, oh mighty dictator.” But she was already lifting her arms into the air, ready to take command of the shadow warriors. Because she wasn’t about to let them kill her man, even if he was an idiot.

Hear me now, dark ones, great warriors torn from your resting places, while I call on earth, wind, fire, water and spirit.

She expected the semitransparent warriors to halt and lower their swords, but they continued to battle Vikirnoff.

“Holy smoke, batman, they aren’t listening to me.” Natalya drew her sword and leapt into the fray, back to back with Vikirnoff. “I no longer have mage blood. We’re in a little trouble here.”

Vikirnoff glared at her over his shoulder. “You think?”

[delphine]

Lara shuddered as she crawled on her hands and knees through the twisting, narrowing ice tube that led from the interior of the cave to the outside world. At least she hoped it led outside, because there was nothing but death for her inside the cave. The ice creaked and groaned continuously, always alive, always on the move, never still, never silent. The cold seeped into her bones, even though she was regulating her body temperature.

The layers of ice, white and blue, were difficult to see without the light from the sconces lighting her grandfather’s grandiose chambers. She had her father’s excellent night vision as a rule, but she was crying so hard, the tears blurred everything and fear compounded the shadowy figures that weren’t really there. With the biting cold, she could tell the tears were turning to ice on her face, freezing her skin

The cries of the dragons became muted, and she unconsciously strained to hear them. She didn’t want her aunts to die. She hesitated, thinking to go back to help them, but what could she do? Shaking, she huddled in the ice tube, frightened to go forward, terrified to go back.

The mountain trembled, shaking around her. For a moment her lungs seized, burning for air. She heard the cry of the dragon, a pain-filled shriek that rose through the caverns, and then the answer as the second dragon bellowed in anguish.

She covered her face with her hands. There was no going back now. The aunts hadn’t gotten away and Xavier was punishing them. His punishments were terrible. She had no idea what lay ahead in the outside world, no idea what to expect, but it had to be better than living the way she’d been living.
Her wrist throbbed and she rubbed it, forcing herself to look ahead, not behind her. She was terrified the sun would burn her as Xavier had always told her. The sun was a huge burning mass of magma, churning and terrible, waiting to set her on fire. She shuddered and began to crawl again.

Almost immediately she heard the whispers start. Voices. Muffled. Persistent. Ugly. Monsters will eat you. The sun will fry you. Your skin will melt off your bones.

She pushed herself to continue, to inch forward. She became aware of the cold seeping into her body, destroying her ability to think clearly and forced herself to try to regulate her body temperature. The further she got from the ice cave and Xavier, the more she realized her father must have been helping her maintain her body heat.

The climb to the surface was endless, her knees scraped and bloody by the time she reached the next level. The tube branched off in two directions. She had no idea which way to go. Above her head the mountain groaned and creaked with the pressure of the weight of the ice. All around her ice broke off and showered shards down on her. She sat in at the junction in the tunnel and tried to figure out which way to go. She couldn’t just sit there. Xavier would send something terrible after her. She was certain he already had.

Spider, spider my friend who is bright
Spider, spider, help me this night
I need direction, I’m in doubt
Spider, spider, show me the way out

Tiny ice spiders, lethal, with poisonous fangs, rushed from the cracks of ice, dropping down to console her. They fanned out, their silken, crystalline webs sparkling in the dark, catching light from a source she couldn’t see and dazzling her with displays of color as they rushed along the walls of the tunnel, spinning webs to show her the way along the left hand tube.

She heard scratching behind her and knew she was minutes from capture. Her heart beat too fast, slamming hard in her chest, her blood roaring like the sound of ice breaking in her ears.

Spider, spider, help me now
Remove the threat to me somehow.

An army of spiders broke off from the main body to rush behind her, spinning webs fast, building a barrier across the tunnel, thick and strong and glistening with poisonous threads.

Lara scrambled after the other spiders, following the dazzling silken threads along the walls. Without having to worry about what was ahead, or where she was going, she traveled faster, crawling at a rapid pace in time to the slamming beat of her heart. The tunnel angled down as it wound back and forth in various directions, taking her back toward the way she’d come and then abruptly swinging to the opposite direction. Openings broke off in every direction so that it was a labyrinth she knew she never would have been able to maneuver on her own. The spiders made it easy, lighting the way with their glittering threads.

Wind touched her face. Icy flakes of ice bit into her exposed skin. Shivering nonstop, her teeth chattering, she crawled until there was little flesh left on her knees or the palms of her hands. In front of her she saw light. At first she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but as she continued forward, more light spilled into the tunnel. The walls widened and the ceiling was much higher.

She stood up, her body aching, tears frozen on her skin. She ran, chanting.

Spider, spider, thanks to you all,
A debt to you, I will recall
Ask me when you have great need
Spider, spider, and I will heed

Lara picked up momentum, running faster and faster, frightened that now that she was so close, Xavier would find a way to stop her. The opening loomed before her and she ran toward it, never seeing the drop off. Her bare, bloody feet hit empty space and she fell with a thin, scared scream, dropping like a stone to the snow below.

She landed hard, the air driven from her lungs, her eyes widening in terror as a large animal reared up, legs slashing the air above her head. A man rushed around the animal, calming it with a gentle hand and looked down at her, terrified, bloody face. His expression changed to one of kindness and concern. As if she was a frightened animal, he bent slowly toward her and lifted her body into the warmth of his arms, crooning to her in a language she didn’t understand.

A woman appeared, dressed in a long skirt and she drew off her wrap and pressed it around Lara’s shivering body, speaking to her husband in the same language. He carried her back to the colorful wagon they were traveling in.

[delphine]

Lara stood at the top of the cliffs, her heart pounding hard. She looked across the expanse of rock at Nicolas, her heart in her throat.

“Are you certain you want to do this, Lara? I can do it for you,” Nicolas offered.

She shook her head. “Terry and Gerald were my friends, the closest thing I had to family really. I was passed around so much as a child, I had problems with the concept of trust and camaraderie. A team of expert cavers was formed in order to conduct a study in Greenland. I was looking for extremophiles for the University to study and both Terry and Gerald were part of a team studying global warming.”

Nicolas studied her drawn face. She needed this, whether he liked it or not.

“The conditions were extreme cold and very dangerous, the winds were terrible. Unlike Carpathians who can shift and float down a moulin, we have to go down on a thin rope, terrified the rope is going to ice up. When you do that with someone, when you rely on them for your life, they come to matter to you. Gerald and Terry were like me. Neither had anybody and we’d sit together, huddled in a tent, listening to that awful wind. Terry would tell the funniest stories.”

Feeling the heavy stone weighing her down, the sorrow and guilt pushing at her, Nicolas framed her face with his hands. “You didn’t do this, Lara.”

“I honestly didn’t think my childhood was real. It seemed such a hazy dream, but I kept searching and I kept taking them with me.”

“You can’t go into an ice cave alone,” he pointed out. “You need climbing partners.”

Lara looked down at the two urns, both containing ashes of her two friends. Nicolas’s explanation wouldn’t remove the guilt she felt, not for a long time—if ever. Both had suffered terribly before they’d died. When Terry had yanked the snake head from his ankle, he’d dumped an entire mass of parasites into his system. Gregori had fought long and hard to remove them and everyone thought he was okay, that he just needed rest. Gerald had gone back to his room to shower and no one had checked him. But she should have. She’d been preoccupied with her past rearing up and with Nicolas claiming her, changing her life for all time.

“There isn’t an excuse—not for any of us,” Lara said. “They were good men. Brave men. Both descended five hundred feet into rapidly changing caves in order to get what was needed for research. And both of them were so funny. I didn’t really know how to have fun until I met them.”

Nicolas caressed the top of her hair. “I’m glad the three of you found each other. You probably enhanced their lives as much as they did yours.” He wished he hadn’t been so jealous, his primitive side refusing to share her, not thinking to check on her friends. Mikhail was right in thinking they needed to enlist the aid of humans, widen their circle of trusted friends. His family had a symbiotic relationship with a human family and had for many centuries, yet they still didn’t trust others. If they were going to survive the coming war with Xavier, the Carpathian people were going to have to have allies.

“The blue and white stripes in the caves indicate age, the summers and winters, just like bands on a tree. As the years pass, the bands compress into these very thin lines. Gerald was obsessed with counting them,” she laughed softly remembering. “One time we were in this rapidly changing pit. We’d measured the walls and knew that the conditions were deteriorating much faster than we’d anticipated. Terry and I were like running for our lives. The walls were creaking and groaning and we were showered with ice shards. Terry was getting claustrophobia. And there was Gerald, calmly counting the bands, like we had all time in the world. Terry finally clipped a carabineer to his rig and jerked on it like a leash attached to a dog to get Gerald moving. I was laughing so hard I could barely make the climb.”

She rubbed her wrist, a habit she couldn’t seem to break. “The ice world is beautiful, with unbelievable color, but it’s so cold. Even waiting for the right conditions, huddling in a tent with the wind whipping around you and your hands so numb you can’t grip anything, just going to the bathroom is hazard. Ice explodes around you and it rains shards and slivers. You only have each other.”

Nicolas pulled her into his arms. “We will keep some of their ashes in our cave. They would like that. We can find a niche for them and you can have a memorial there, but let me do this with you. Instead of you shifting and trying to harness the urns on you, let me carry you through the skies. I’ll fly over the mountains they loved so much and if you want do scatter some of the ashes, you can, if not, we’ll give them a send off to the heavens.”

“Both always wanted to fly. They climbed so much, but both of them would spread their arms out sitting on a rope and pretend they were flying. I want to give them that.”

Nicolas nodded. “I’ll shift and you climb onto my back.”

He was already changing, feathers spreading across his body, his form morphing, wings dipping to allow her to climb on. Lara wiped at the tears on her face and picked up the urns. She couldn’t bring them back, but she could give them their dream.

[delphine]

Well, they are nice ones. I especially love the first one ... ;D