Carpathian 21 - Dark Peril

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