She lay back in the snow, catching her breath, letting her body absorb the pain of her wounds. The one in her neck throbbed and burned and she knew she had to cleanse it immediately. She was impervious to the cold, as were all Carpathians. Her race was as old as time, nearly immortal, as she had discovered, to her horror, when the prince's son had betrayed her to the vampires for his own gain. She'd never known such agony, an endless battle deep in the earth as years went by and her body refused to die.

She must have made a sound, although she didn't hear herself. She thought her cry was silent, but the wolves pressed closer, trying to comfort her, and the natural pack behind the shield took up the cry. Looking up at the night sky, she let her wolves soothe her, their love and devotion a balm whenever she thought too much about her former life. Time was creeping forward. This time of day was as much an enemy as the vampire. She had to hurry to get to her lair, and there was still much to be done before dawn.

Ivory pressed her fingers to her burning eyes and forced her body to move. First, she removed the poison from the lesions in her flesh, where the vampire's poison-tipped claws had torn her open. The vampires who'd banned together used tiny wormlike parasites to identify one another, and those parasites infected any open wound. She had to push them through her pores fast, before they could take hold and require a much more in-depth healing. Again she brought down the lightning to kill them before mixing soil and saliva to pack her own wounds.

«Ready?» she asked her family, picking up her weapons and shoving the used arrows back into her pack. She never left a weapon or an arrow behind, careful that her formula didn't fall into the hands of the vampires, or worse: Xavier, her mortal enemy.