Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

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