Dark Peril (9 page)

“That is my food you are toying with,” he snapped and strode through the trees to put his body between Zacarias and the new threat.

He knows who I am,
Zacarias warned.
He would never openly challenge me if he did not have some nasty little surprise up his sleeve.

“You have no idea who this is,” Drago snarled. “He is a prize beyond compare.”

“I remember you from the old days,” Dominic prodded. “Drago, a whining, sniveling coward. You always disappeared in a battle.”

Drago smirked. “I managed to live another day while so many others fell.”

Dominic studied his enemy. Drago’s hand continued those precise strokes, down low, close to his hip, as if he might be petting a dog. His tone had a strange cadence, each word separate, almost as if he punctuated each with a stop after it. Dominic had seen many traps in his centuries of battling the vampire, but he was in new territory here.

He took another step closer to the undead in an effort to get into a position to close the gap quickly and finish the vampire before the trap could be sprung.

Drago shook his head. “You are one of us, sworn to the five
masters
. This is Zacarias De La Cruz, sworn enemy of our leaders. They will want him alive.”

Dominic shrugged. “You cannot take credit for my having found him.”

Zacarias flexed his shoulders, regarding them both with cool eyes. “I am not captured yet, nor do I think either one of you has the ability to defeat me in battle, alone or together, but you are welcome to try.”

Dominic sneered. “Hunter, stay quiet while I deal with this fool.” He allowed his gaze to sweep the surrounding forest, paying attention to the trees closest to them.

Drago had evidently traveled through the ground and entered the fig tree via the roots, emerging from the trunk when he thought it safe. If he was traveling with others—and from his confidence, Dominic was certain that he was—they could be using the trees to hide.

Stay away from the trees,
he cautioned Zacarias.

Zacarias must have had the same thought as Dominic, because he was already shifting position, trying to secure a spot where he could keep an eye on the surrounding trees. Dominic was grateful he had the hunter at his back. They might look like predator and prey, but they had battled together many times in the past, in the old days, hunting vampire and the enemies of both humans and Carpathians. There was no other he would have chosen to fight with him.

Drago’s fingers rose and fell over his invisible companion. “This hunter will be turned over to the
masters.
”

Dominic risked a glance at Zacarias. He was every inch the Carpathian hunter, broad shoulders, long flowing hair and eyes cool under fire, yet minutes earlier he had been an older man, bent over, fumbling with his cameras in the trees.
How did he know who you were?
Zacarias’s disguise had been faultless.

I have no idea.

“
I
am a
master
,” Dominic growled at Drago, staying in role as a braggart and bully, as so many of the undead were. “You cannot tell me what I must do with my prey. Stand away or you will meet the same fate as that fool who challenged me.”

Drago spat on the forest floor, and small parasites wiggled obscenely in the dried and decaying leaves. His eyes glowed a deep red, and he threw back his head and howled. A tree to the left of Dominic shivered. A large snake that was twisted around the branches lifted its head and slithered along the trunk, uncoiling its long body as it descended to the ground and slithered almost to Drago’s feet. Its long tongue tested the air and then flicked over the parasites before he rose, taking his hideous true form, to stand a few feet from his companion.

Drago’s fingers continued to stroke the air under his palm as the ground just behind Zacarias split open and spewed a third vampire. A fourth emerged from the twisted branches of the blackened fig tree that Drago had come from, and Dominic automatically put him down as the weakest link. His face was still half recognizable, the flesh still covering the shrinking bones. Dominic had encountered him when he was still a hunter, not even an ancient, yet he had been unable to control his desire for emotion and had obviously capitulated to the whisper of darkness. His name had been Robert, but Dominic thought of him as a worm.

Zacarias looked around at the four vampires surrounding them.
We could be in a little trouble here.

Dominic sent the impression of a smug smirk.
Just like in the old days. The way I like it.

You always were a little crazy. You love the battle.
Zacarias’s tone was wry.

And you do not?
There was laughter in the question.

4

But then beyond hope, you came into my dream . . .
Your melody haunting, your gentle voice healing.
The soul of a poet, great heart of a warrior.
You gave all for your people. Let me give you feeling!

SOLANGE TO DOMINIC

W
hat had she done? Solange stood in the rain, hands covering her face, throat aching, her heart thundering in her chest. She’d told him every secret thing about her. She’d thought herself safe, that he wasn’t real. She had exposed her every weakness. Had the dreams been some kind of trick? She groaned and stroked a hand over her throat to try to ease the terrible pain. Her vocal cords felt shredded—just like her heart.

A Carpathian warrior. She had made him up. Built his image detail by detail—hadn’t she? She had known back then, when she first began to daydream, that she had given up all hope and was coming to the end of her days. Her warrior had been the only thing keeping her going through all the battles and all the horrific slaughters she had encountered. Brodrick the Terrible had been determined that he would purge every diluted strain of jaguar he could find. Only those who could shift were spared—male and female.

There was no way to stop the evil inside of her father. The sickness had begun hundreds of years earlier, treating the women like slaves, like breeders, the men following the suit of the royal family. They had been self-indulgent, depraved, craving the power and building upon it, encouraging the worst traits of their species rather than attempting to become something different. Brodrick
enjoyed
killing. He surrounded himself with men just like him.

The familiar rain felt like a seductive stranger, teasing her senses, running between the valley of her breasts and down her belly to the junction between her legs. Strangely aroused by the sensation, Solange lifted her face to the rain, capturing a few drops in her mouth, allowing it to run down her throat to ease the ache. There was no easing the ache between her legs.

Colors as bright as the sun swirled in front of her eyes, nearly blinding her. Every emotion was magnified a thousand times. Humiliation. Embarrassment. Sorrow. Rage. A terrible sexual hunger, raw and volatile, a craving she’d never experienced. The rain dripped from the tips of her breasts, now tight, blossoming into twin hard peaks. She looked down at her body, and tears burned behind her eyes.

This need, this craving, was stronger than any heat she’d ever experienced. It took her breath and stole her sanity. The passion didn’t just involve her body—every single part of her, heart and soul, seemed to have an overwhelming desire to be with him. Lifemates. She had seen the devotion her cousin Juliette’s lifemate had to her. He paid attention to the smallest thing, seemed completely focused on her every moment—and that kind of concentration would make Solange crazy. She’d been alone too long. She went weeks without seeing or talking to another person. How could she possibly be in a relationship? She didn’t know how. She didn’t know the first thing about sharing her life or—or
anything.

Panicked, she could barely breathe, her lungs burning for air. She could never go to him.
Never.
There was hardly a place on her body that wasn’t scarred. She had no smooth skin to offer, no soft side to the hard-edged woman who had become nothing more than a fighting machine. The dream woman had been an illusion. MaryAnn, Manolito’s lifemate, was as close to a friend as she had, and even MaryAnn had chided her for her wild hair and lack of femininity. She had pretended it didn’t matter that she wasn’t womanly, and it hadn’t then. But now—now that he was in her life, now that he had come, this man among men, this warrior who stood head and shoulders above the rest . . .

She moaned and pressed her fists into her eyes. She wasn’t a woman to cry. Or to crave a man. Or to need him. Yet somehow, over the course of the last few months, that had all changed.
She
had changed—driven to the brink of destruction by the endless horror of her chosen life. There had been no respite—but him. The Carpathian.
Her
Carpathian.

She inhaled sharply and silently admitted that she needed the Carpathian, even if it was just to share his last days. He would never flinch from what he perceived as his duty to his people any more than she would. This was a terrible mess and it came at the worst possible time. She had finally found Brodrick. She knew where he was, but she also knew he would never stay there long. And he usually traveled with his most violent soldiers.

Around her the air stilled. All noise ceased in the forest. Her jaguar froze, shoved close to her skin as if to protect her. The hair on her arms stood up and a frisson of fear slid down her spine. Insects poured over the ground, ants and beetles swarming, covering everything in their path. She saw them flowing like a black river over the fallen trunks, moving toward her. Overhead, the sky filled with bats, moving fast through the canopy, an ominous black cloud, dark portents of things to come.

The vampires had risen. She shifted quickly, letting the change take her. The undead would rise hungry and looking for prey. In her human form she would easily attract them. Her jaguar form could get into the canopy and wait until they passed.

Bats.
Her dream lover’s voice hissed the warning in her mind.
The undead are rising.

She was already back in the trees, the jaguar climbing into the crook of a branch, high up beneath an umbrella of thick leaves. She stayed very still.

They will be hungry. Shift and hide, get to safety. It is unsafe to communicate this way. Any surge in power will alert them.

Her tail twitched in annoyance. Did he think she wasn’t aware of what to do? She wasn’t stupid. Manolito and Riordan had taught her, Juliette and Jasmine how to kill a vampire should the need arise. Lately, in the last several weeks, their training had saved her life numerous times. She was a warrior first. Always. She didn’t take the chance of responding because she knew her Carpathian was right, and the undead might feel the surge in power it took to communicate telepathically. It probably could be done without them knowing, but she wasn’t experienced enough and Solange never took unnecessary chances.

She kept her head on her paws and pushed everything from her mind as the bats wheeled and dipped in the air, some consuming flying insects while others settled on the fruit in the trees. She could see others crawling along the ground in search of warm prey. She remained very still, even keeping the tip of her tail still until, slowly, the bats moved on to new territory. Only then did she rise and stretch with a cat’s languid manner.

She had a job. She’d set a trap and she knew Brodrick and his men would fall into it. They would never be expecting her to return. By now they would know she was wounded. They would think themselves safe from her. And Brodrick had formed an uneasy alliance with the vampires. The undead could control the minds of the jaguars with diluted blood and even pure blood, but certainly not a royal. As long as Brodrick got what he wanted from the vampires, he would continue to have a relationship with them. It was a pact made in hell as far as she was concerned. Brodrick was set on a path of destroying any jaguar unable to shift. The vampires had vowed to help him reach his goal so he was fine with helping them.

The huge laboratory built by the human society—a group of people dedicated to hunting and killing vampires—was used supposedly just for research, but she’d been inside and knew the building was used for much more nefarious purposes. Enemies were held and tortured there. Jaguar-women were often taken there to be used by Brodrick and his men. But the real purpose for the building was much more bizarre. She’d seen the banks of computers. Vampires didn’t have the ability to sit for hours at a computer compiling data, but both humans and jaguar-men could do so, and the vampires needed them to carry out the task of building a database of psychic women around the world for them.

Brodrick’s men seemed to handle most of the details, and she was certain they were compiling a hit list of people—particularly women—who carried the jaguar blood. She hadn’t been able to confirm that, but she often lay in the branches of the trees for hours watching over the facility—a terrible risk certainly, yet one she hoped would yield even a single piece of important information.

Certain now that the vampires had moved on through in search of blood, Solange began to make her way back toward the bluff overlooking the river where the woman, Annabelle, had thrown herself onto the rocks below rather than be recaptured by the men who hunted her. She tried to push the face of the desperate woman from her mind. Solange had shifted and called to her, exposed herself in order to stop her, but Annabelle had been so desperate, she refused to take a risk when the men began firing guns at Solange.

The jaguar shook its head. The dead often rose up to taunt her. Sometimes she thought she might drown in their screams, in the terrible cruelty done to them. Solange knew human trafficking had become a major problem in other places, but here, in her world, it had been going on for centuries, thanks to the leaders of her people. Women were objects, nothing more. Vessels and possessions. The men had such entitlement, believing themselves above all laws, even the laws of common decency. The women were put there simply to serve their brutish sexual needs and give them children.