Dark Predator (32 page)

Without warning he suddenly jerked her away from him by her hair. It hurt, her scalp tender, but it was more upsetting that he rejected her ministrations. His face was an expressionless mask, his eyes glittering almost red.

Ice poured in, glaciers of it, impenetrable barriers locking her out. She was rejected both physically and mentally. He had virtually thrown her away from him without telling her what she’d done wrong. Shocked and humiliated, she sank back on her heels, struggling not to cry.

13

Z
acarias dragged Marguarita to her feet, clothing her quickly in the garments he preferred, a long skirt and blouse covering the temptation of her body. His fingers closed over her upper arms like twin vises and he forced her to look into his eyes.

“You will do exactly as I tell you, Marguarita. You are my greatest vulnerability, the biggest liability to me. There can be nothing of you within me. No trace. No scent. Nothing. Once I withdraw, you cannot reach for me, no matter how long, or what occurs.” He gave her a little shake. “Do you understand me?”

She shook her head, tears swimming. It couldn’t matter to him. He couldn’t look at those tears and ache inside. There could be only ice and stone, no traces of this woman who had the potential of getting thousands of people, both Carpathian and human, killed. He could have no trace of her in him or on him. He needed to shed the scent of her beloved horses as well.

Marguarita blinked several times, shock and pain in her eyes. He’d put that there, but he couldn’t comfort her. He couldn’t be part of her. She was not yet Carpathian and she didn’t understand the way their world worked. She looked around her, as if coming out of a dream, dazed and confused. He couldn’t blame her, his entire body felt as if it had been going up in flames. He’d been very lucky he was so tuned to danger.

The horses reared and pawed the air, slashed at their stall doors and screamed a protest. Marguarita turned toward the horses, her face going pale.

Her breath caught in her throat.
Do you feel that? They’re afraid—but not of you. There’s something else, Zacarias, something deeper. There’s a thread, a tendril . . .

He reacted instantly, jerking Marguarita around to face him, half shaking her, his fingers biting into her shoulder like a vise. “Do not try to follow it. It is vampire. The undead has spread his tentacles out and is reaching for you even now through the very animals you love.”

I’ll sound the alarm and the boys will help fight.

“You will trigger the alarm that tells them to seek shelter. They would be in my way and witnessing a battle will only make them fear me more.”

The tears spilled over and fear shimmered in her enormous eyes.
Nothing can happen to you. They could help. I could help.

He gave her a little shake. “You will do as I tell you without question. I will take you to the house quickly.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her feet from the ground. “You will stay there until I come to get you, no matter how long that takes. Do not speak to me. Do not connect with me. I expect your obedience in this.”

He felt the urgency consuming him, the one that told him the battle was close. He had to weave safeguards over the houses and stables to prevent destruction of life and property, which vampires were prone to do just for fun. Most of all he had to banish every trace of Marguarita from his mind and body, from his heart and soul. There could be no hint of her where the enemy could catch even the faintest of scents.

He flew with dizzying speed, masking them as he took her into the house. He went right on through to the master bedroom; the walls were the thickest there and shoved her into a tight little alcove against the wall. “Do not move. If you do, Marguarita, there will be severe consequences.”

She drew up her knees, nodding, wrapping her arms around her knees to hold herself tight. Her face streaked with tears, but the fear in her eyes was all for him, not for what he might choose to punish her with if she disobeyed.

Zacarias couldn’t think about the taste of her breath, or how she felt pouring into his mind, he had to shut down completely and become empty, a warrior alone and without anything to lose. He turned his back on her and hurried out to weave his strongest safeguards over every building on the property. It took strength and stamina to hold such strong weaves in the face of the approaching vampires.

He inhaled the night. Three of them. Ruslan would not send his best on the first outright attack, but he would send seasoned vampires. They were coming from three directions, trying to box him in and pick the battlefield. Zacarias wanted them far away from his woman and everything she loved. He took to the air, streaking toward the far end of the De La Cruz ranch, where the rain forest met the clearing, where Ruslan had tried to infiltrate with his poisonous plant and set a trap to aid his advancing vampires.

A game of strategy then. Ruslan was a master at strategy and he would do his best to manipulate Zacarias into a trap. This attack would be the opening gambit to test his strength and resolve. He had stayed too long in one place so Ruslan would assume, since he hadn’t moved on, that Zacarias had been mortally wounded in the battle in Brazil. It would have been reported that there were droplets of blood in the air. Ruslan’s hounds would have followed that blood trail to Peru, to the De La Cruz hacienda. Ruslan would be thinking his recovery was slow and that he was vulnerable.

Zacarias was vulnerable, but not for the reasons Ruslan believed. He made certain that he removed all scent from his body, and all traces of her from his mind. Loneliness hit hard, nearly unbearable, now that he knew what it was like with her inside of him, filling him up. Without her connection to him, the world went gray and dull. Everywhere he looked, the vivid color was gone. The bright vibrant greens of the rain forest, the bursts of brilliant colors of flowers winding up the trunks of trees, even the hues on the lacy ferns all had disappeared to be replaced by a dreary gray.

Resolutely, he turned his mind away from Marguarita. It took a great deal of discipline to do so. Lifemates needed one another. Once those threads were woven, they were unbreakable, and his mind would forever seek to touch hers. Add to that the need to see in color, the ability to feel only when she was connected to him, and he felt tremendous need. Fortunately, he was an ancient warrior, and his priority above all else was Marguarita’s safety.

He turned his back on the human structures, homes that meant so much to them. He had never understood before. He was a nomad, continually moving for self-preservation, not even allowing his brothers to know his resting places or his secret lairs. He had dozens throughout South America, places he could retreat to and rest in when necessary, but now, he understood what a home was. Not the structure. Not the place. The woman.

He took to the sky, a thin stream of vapor, drifting with the slight breeze, riding the drafts, feeling his way, searching for the exact location of his enemy. In the distance, he could see a single black cloud churning madly, heading toward the pasture where the herd was bedded down for the night. Angry red ropes of lightning lit the edges of the black, turbulent cauldron.

He marked the cloud, but remained a distance from it. Ruslan would have coached his vampires. He would warn them of Zacarias’s personality. He was a fighter and unlike Ruslan, he didn’t hesitate to face his enemy. The master vampire would have told his pawns that Zacarias wouldn’t run, that in fact, he would go straight for trouble. The giant storm cloud, looking so very evil in the otherwise clear sky, was merely a calling card to draw him out—and a rather weak one at that.

He sent an illusion streaking toward the cloud, a mere replica of himself that was more air than substance, but he was embedded in that vague shape, just as a master was in all illusions. He felt the puppet of himself hit something unseen, something solid and sharp. His illusion shredded. Instantly he grew one long nail and tore a laceration in his wrist. He called a soft breeze and shook droplets of blood into the wind, sending it out over the battlefield he’d chosen, that smooth field where Ruslan had so carefully arranged a trap with his foul plant.

His blood was powerful. He was ancient Carpathian, unquestionably one of the most powerful hunters alive. The scent of his blood would draw the vampires like hounds. They would sniff those droplets and the power contained in a single drop of blood would be a prize to fight for. They would also transmit triumphantly to their master that Zacarias was indeed wounded and that they had scored the first coup with their simple trap. Ruslan would believe that Zacarias was still hurt, but he would know the ruse of a storm cloud had not drawn him out.

He hovered over the field, allowing the breeze to take more droplets of blood into the air and scatter them wide. It was a call that would be irresistible. A newly made vampire would have already crawled out of the bushes to try to find a precious bead and lap it up quickly before it was taken from him. The fact that there was no stirring right away told Zacarias that Ruslan had sent experienced fighters after him.

Instincts rose. The primal hunger for the fight. He lived for it. Knew the rush as intimately as he did the kill. He waited with endless patience born of a thousand such battles. It took seven minutes and the first of the three vampires showed himself. The brush just inside the rain forest nearest the fence withered, turned brown and shrunk away from the unnaturalness of the undead as he parted the long fronds and peered into the field.

Zacarias had seen this one before, only a few years earlier, or perhaps it was more—time passed now and meant nothing—but even then, before the Carpathian had turned, Zacarias had known he was already lost to honor. Zacarias had avoided him, as he did all Carpathians. He was a hunter, no friend to any of them. He didn’t want to know them before he killed them. This one was no more than five or six hundred years old and someone turning at that age was beneath even contempt. What could possibly drive a Carpathian who had not suffered the full ravages of time to turn away from honor?

The vampire raised his nose and sniffed the air, drawing the potent scent of ancient Carpathian blood into his lungs. His tongue flicked out greedily, his nostrils flared. He grimaced, showing the rotting, pointed teeth, already blackened and sharp. His name had been something to do with the forest—Forester, or something close. It mattered little. Before, Zacarias thought of him as
man of little honor
; now it was
man of no honor.

Zacarias allowed the breeze to cease, so that the air became very still, the potency of his blood-scent increasing. Man of no honor shrank back into the withering ferns, his head turning first one way, and then the other, a wary, animalistic gesture, before he again found the courage to stick his head out into the open.

Zacarias studied the battlefield. Nothing else moved. Not a single blade of grass, or the leaves on the trees. Two of Ruslan’s undead pawns had enough discipline to resist the call of such potent blood. They believed him wounded, but still, they were patient enough for him to show himself, and intelligent enough to use their more impatient partner as bait.

Zacarias recognized that his trap could easily become one for him. The ice chilled more, a blue glacier adding layers as the chess game progressed. This was his world. He understood it. He watched the man of no honor crawl from the shelter of the dense shrubbery, a mere shadow sliding across the field. In his wake, the light-hued grass turned a murky dull brown, creating a swath of destruction the vampire didn’t notice. He was so caught up in collecting the drops of blood on his tongue that he had forgotten how nature rebelled against such an unnatural being, creating a path that pointed straight to the undead.

The shadow stretched as the vampire slithered on his belly, lapping at the blades of grass, eager for the powerful rush giving him a dangerous high. Careful to keep every movement so small that it was impossible for the two hidden vampires to detect the stir of power, Zacarias sent a sudden massive wind shooting through the field of grass. At the same time, he edged the individual blades, turning them to vicious saw grass.

The vampire screamed and rolled over, holding his bleeding mouth as a thousand cuts streaked his blackened tongue and lips. Zacarias didn’t bother to look at his handiwork, he studied the ground and trees and even the sky. A shadow moved in the dark roots of a kapok tree, just the slightest of movements, but it was enough. Zacarias closed the laceration on his wrist and removed all scent of blood. He allowed the shifting winds to take him in the direction of the rain forest, right to that tall, imposing tree rising like a sentry above the canopy emerging into the night sky.

No bats clung to the roots. No birds rested in the branches. The leaves drooped and shivered. There was no telltale sap running down the trunk, no hint of tree cancer, just that vague movement he’d caught out of the corner of his eye. The wind had died down to a soft breeze and he let himself drift right into that large root cage. The foul stench told him he was close to his prey.

Once in the shelter of the spacious enclosure, he was painstakingly cautious to remain very still. The dirt floor had bat droppings and small fruits scattered over the dirt. He studied the root system. He could see where the undead had entered. As careful as he’d been not to touch the tree itself, he’d brushed against one of the thick fins reaching out over the forest floor, slightly blackening it. The blight on the root was faint, indicating the vampire was cunning and much more careful than most.

Zacarias knew he was in a small confined space with another predator, one evil and cunning, one willing to sacrifice his hunting companion to the hunter in order to kill a Carpathian. One wrong move and he was dead, yet there was no fear, no apprehension. He was in full warrior mode. He understood kill or be killed—and he didn’t make mistakes. He had endless patience. Sooner or later, this vampire would stir to check what was happening on the field. He would see his companion crawling through the saw grass, cutting his legs and belly. By now, man of no honor had had a taste of Zacarias’s powerful blood and the subtle compulsion would be working on him, growing his addiction until nothing mattered but another taste of that blood.