Dark Peril (8 page)

“She is mine.”

Zacarias’s eyes flickered. “I should have known it would be Solange. The woman is as cunning and as wild as the cats in the rain forest. For all that, Dominic, she is a woman worth the world and a worthy match for a warrior such as yourself. She has seen far too much horror and slaughter. She lives only for battle. I fear she will not retreat from this fight. She will need care, Dominic. All the more reason for me to take your place.”

“It was my decision to ingest the blood and make my way into the enemy camp,” Dominic replied. “This is my battle, Zacarias. It was my choice and I have no honorable option but to see this burden through to the end.”

“Your lifemate may feel differently.”

“If she is my true lifemate, she will understand that I can do no other than continue on this course. I would not expect another, no matter how generous the offer, to take my place. It would be a disservice both to him and to his lifemate. You cannot fail your own woman, Zacarias, by giving her up too soon.”

A faint smile touched Zacarias’s mouth, but it failed to soften his rugged features or reach the cool steel of his eyes. “I failed her a long time ago, my friend. I cannot change. I cannot be what this century dictates is proper, nor do I want to. I cannot demand a woman live within my rules.” He shrugged. “I came to terms with this long ago.”

“Perhaps she would choose to do so, given her free will.”

“My point. What free will would she have with me? You and I both know she would have none.”

“You cannot know until it happens,” Dominic said. “The world changes. You feel nothing now, but should a woman restore your emotions . . .”

“I would hold her too tightly. I am too old, Dominic, too set in my ways. My demands would be absolute.”

“Then your lifemate would have to be an extraordinary woman who will find her way in dealing with you,” Dominic predicted. “Do not be so eager to throw away hope just yet. Lifemates are destined, Zacarias. We do not just find them anywhere. There is only one to complete us, and while I do not believe it is always easy, I do believe the binding can only take place with the one who is the other half of our soul.”

Zacarias shrugged, unconvinced. Without further preamble, he ripped his wrist with his teeth and held out the offering to Dominic. “You will need strong blood to do this thing, my brother. Take what I freely offer. I will come at your call and sustain you throughout this trial.”

Dominic raised the wrist to his mouth and drank, the rush of strong, ancient blood hitting like a fireball, rushing through his system to soak into infected organs. The parasites reacted with a frenzy of stabbing pain. He could feel them in his veins, crawling under his skin, ripping and clawing at his gut. He closed the wound on Zacarias’s wrist and immediately pushed as many of the parasites through his pores as possible, bleeding them off to keep the damage to his system as minimal as possible.

Zacarias regarded the wigging mutations with interest. “Riordan told me of such things. This is how they identify the ones who work with the Malinovs?”

Dominic raised his hand to call down the lightning, incinerating the vile creatures. “Yes. I must keep them inside of me and they multiply very fast. Gregori first brought these to our attention when he found them in Destiny, Nicolae’s lifemate. Gary, a human male who works closely with him, compared those parasites with the ones I have since ingested and found the newer ones to be far stronger. He is not certain what that means, only that Xavier mutated them further. I think they drive those who host them to insanity. They whisper continually . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes met Zacarias’s.

“When I was close to the jaguar, the voices ceased. The parasites stopped moving within me, almost as if they were afraid, as if they were hiding.”

“From what?” Zacarias asked. “Your woman?”

“If they fear a female, they could not have infected Destiny,” Dominic pointed out.

“Perhaps, with Solange close, the pain simply was easier to ignore.”

Dominic shook his head. Zacarias’s eyebrow shot up. “While I appreciate your current disguise as a vampire, parasites wiggling near your eye are a bit much.”

Dominic flicked the offending creature off and watched it incinerate. Lightning forked overhead and the trees shivered.

“They are drawing closer, Zacarias.”

Zacarias regarded him with his cool eyes. “Did you think I have traveled all this way to run when the enemy approaches? I will stay here and play my part as the researcher bent on installing these night cameras to catch sight of the elusive jaguar. I even have a proper permit for my work and credentials. I have found it is a good lure for the evil ones.”

“Are your brothers close?”

“I do not stay near them. Their happiness is all I have sought to secure, yet being near them is unsettling in ways I cannot say.” He flashed another humorless smile. “I irritate their lifemates with my demands. It seems I have not the right way of asking for their safety.”

Dominic laughed, uncaring that his vampire pointed teeth gleamed black and atrocious in the night. “I can imagine how you would sound to those women.”

Zacarias shrugged. “None of them should be allowed to do what they do. Even Rafael has gone soft.”

An army of ants swarmed up and over the fallen trunk just behind Zacarias. One moment the truck was covered in moss and fungus and the next a moving carpet of black and red poured over it. Dominic jerked Zacarias away from the trunk, throwing him behind him, an instinctive reaction to protect the other man. Even as he did so, he threw one hand up toward the sky, bringing down several forks of lightning.

The white light, hot and bright, slammed into the fallen tree. The ants burst into flame, snapping and sizzling, some leaping into the air, others crawling through the vegetation on the forest floor, breaking around Dominic’s booted feet to get to Zacarias.

Dominic’s breath hissed out between his teeth.
Vampire. He is coming at you.

Then surely I must hide behind you in cowardice.
There was nearly an edge of rough humor to Zacarias’s voice, as if he remembered irony and humor just barely.

Lightning followed the swarm of ants, several strikes, but the massive numbers spread out across the ground to surround Zacarias. The two warriors went back-to-back, sweeping the ground around them with fire to clear the debris.

“
Muonìak te avoisz te—
I command you to reveal yourself,” Dominic ordered, his voice low, but the tone one of absolute authority.

The ancient words used with the power of the ancient warrior carried every bit as much strength as the bolt of lightning.

The mass of insects undulated, a living carpet that began to reluctantly weave itself into a dark shadow creeping along the ground. Obviously trying to resist, the shadow transformed back and forth between insubstantial shadow and thousands of ants.

“
Veriak ot en Karpatiiak, muonìak te avoisz agbaainad és avoisz te ete kadiket
—by the blood of the prince I command you to take your true form and reveal yourself before the instruments of justice,” Dominic demanded.

A shrieking wail, much like nails on a chalkboard, reverberated through the trees. The forest responded with painful cries. Monkeys whimpered, tails tucked, heads down, hands over their ears.

The insubstantial shadow grew into an elongated body, the vampire’s arms stretched toward Zacarias, the fingers of his hands bony and gnarled, the nails sharp and slightly curled like claws. The vampire raised its head in defiance, revealing skin pulled tight over bone, worn thin in places, so that he appeared scraped raw, maggots pouring from the gaping holes. He spat at Dominic.

“Traitor. You are one of us. Share this fool.” The vampire dug his nails into the ground and dragged himself closer to Zacarias, his attention centered on the “human researcher.” He made growling noises as he spoke, his vocal cords rusty and strained. He sounded more animal than man. His bony knees dug deep into the dirt, and beneath his body the earth groaned and small ugly white maggots writhed and wiggled as he dropped them. His body was long rotted, indicating he had been a vampire for many years, possibly centuries, yet he was no
master
.

Dominic struck fast, as was his way. He had long ago given up bravado or talking. He was there for only one purpose—to destroy the undead. There was no reason to talk to them unless he was extracting information, and he knew there were more in the area. This one was too close to Zacarias and might carry tales.

He struck while the vampire was still crawling on his belly toward Zacarias, who remained utterly motionless, the perfect picture of a human man shocked by a nightmare come to life. Dominic’s fist slammed through the vampire’s back, ripping through muscles and bone, penetrating deep, reaching for the heart.

Vampire blood spewed over his hand and his arm, black and shiny in the dark of the forest. It burned through his skin. All the while the parasites inside Dominic shrieked and screamed helplessly in protest, stabbing his insides so he felt as if he’d swallowed glass. Hot fire closed around his wrist and arm, as the undead’s leeches tried to protect him, wrapping around Dominic’s flesh and chewing fast. Dominic pushed deeper, ignoring the pain.

Sensing the hunter was nearing his heart, the desperate vampire rolled fast, howling, his serrated teeth snapping at Dominic even while his other hand reached for Zacarias’s ankle. Dominic went to the ground beneath the rotting walking corpse, his hand unerringly shoving through attacking parasites even while those in his own body reacted with agitation, stabbing and clawing, tearing at his organs to control him.

Zacarias eluded the searching hand of the vampire, melting away to reappear a few feet away, his cool eyes studying the sky and ground rather than the struggle between hunter and prey. A few yards away, sap ran like black blood, oozing from the trunk of a fig tree. The leaves shriveled and drops of the sap hit the ground in a slow drip, sizzling and burning a hole in the thick vegetation surrounding the tree. A small porcupine shot its quills into an erect position, scurrying away from the tree, dropping the fruit from its paws.

A monkey screamed and leapt, as if burned, from the lower branches to the next tree over. Several birds took flight and a snake lifted its head, forked tongue reaching toward the dark, seeping sap. Abruptly it uncoiled, reaching out for an interlocking branch from the neighboring tree. Frogs and lizards abandoned the branches, and insects made a mass exodus.

Zacarias moved closer, flowing over the ground, moving fast, reaching the tree just as the massive trunk broke open and expelled the foul creature poisoning it. At once the stench of rotting eggs mixed with decomposing flesh spewed into the still air. Leaves on the surrounding trees and shrubbery withered. Flowers closed petals and shrank away from the abomination.

“Drago, old friend. I see you have come to visit me,” Zacarias said gently. “Long have I issued you an invitation, but you refused. It is good that you finally have opted for justice. It is long overdue.”

Drago snarled, pulling back his lips in a snarl to reveal hideous teeth, pointed and black, stained with the blood of the many lives he had taken. He stroked the air beneath his hands, as if petting an invisible creature, his nails daggerlike, each stroke precise.

“Foolish upstarts. They are so busy fighting over the scrap of a meal, they failed to notice the prize they had.” When he spoke, Drago growled each word, just as precisely as the movements of his hand.

“But you did,” Zacarias said gently. His cool eyes continued to sweep their surroundings. Drago would never confront him so calmly unless he thought he had the advantage.

Behind them, Dominic was very aware of the second vampire on the scene, but around him, tentacles burst through the ground, running along the floor of the forest, seeking prey. He heaved the vampire off him, rolling on top, slamming the rotting face into the ground among the tentacles, even as his fist pushed through the mass of writhing parasites to get at the heart.

Tentacles immediately circled the vampire’s neck and skull; more pulled at his legs and arms in an attempt to drag him underground. Dominic’s fingertips reached the cold, withered heart. The undead shrieked and redoubled his efforts to throw Dominic off him. The absolute silence of the hunter was unnerving. The vampire had no idea whether Dominic was one of his fellow recruits for the
masters
, as his parasitic blood indicated, or whether he was a highly-skilled hunter, as his earlier commands indicated. Dominic had invoked the name of the prince, something no vampire would ever do.

Dominic’s fingers burrowed around the blackened organ, feeling more parasites wriggle against his palm as he enclosed the prize in his fist and began to extract it from the vampire’s body. The tentacles fought him for possession. Overhead, lightning forked in readiness. Thunder rolled ominously. The sound was horrendous, the sucking of the undead’s acid blood trying desperately to hold on to the heart, the high-pitched shrieking of the vampire and the wail of the parasites already spilling out of the body, abandoning their host.

The tentacles frantically jerked at the undead in an effort to draw him beneath the earth, out of Dominic’s reach, but Dominic rose, the heart in his fist, dripping parasites and acid onto the ground as he leapt away, commanding the lightning. The bolt slammed into the body before the tentacles could save it. He tossed the heart into the white-hot blaze and directed the energy across the blackened ground until every tentacle and every parasite was incinerated. His arm and hand burned, the flesh nearly eaten away down to the bone. He rinsed his flesh in the edges of the light to take off the blood and kill any remaining parasites that might have gotten on his skin.

Deep inside his body, in the veins and organs, the parasites rushed to hide from the blinding heat, giving him, for one moment, a reprieve from the constant agonizing torture. Never once did he allow his appearance to change from his vampire persona to that of a Carpathian hunter. Only when he was finished did he look up to meet Drago’s eyes. He snarled, pulling back thin lips to reveal serrated, bloodstained teeth, his growl a challenge.