Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

his body reach for it, every organ, all muscle and tissue, each cell.
    I will always return to you—always, but I can only be who I am, Marguarita. I want to be gentle for you. I want to give you all the things you deserve. I will always expect you to follow my lead . . .
    Her eyebrow shot up. With her free hand she smoothed back his hair. Do you think I am unaware of this about you? I want who you are, Zacarias, but I expect you to follow the vows you swore to me. I want to be cherished. I want you to have in mind my happiness when you make your decisions. And you have to know I will always be me. I will make up my own mind when I feel you are wrong.
    He glanced up at her face, a smile in his eyes. I cannot conceive of being wrong. Well—there was that one time . . .
    Her laughter spilled into his mind. One? I’m going to let that go because after this battle you might just be a little out of your mind.
    He swiped his tongue across the cut on her wrist. “Cesaro comes. He will give you blood and you will have to take it, Marguarita. I need to go.”
    Her breath caught in her throat. Go? I don’t understand. Go where? You have to go to ground and heal is what you have to do and I can be with you.
    “I must hunt Ruslan.”
    She shook her head adamantly. No. You can’t do that, not tonight. It’s almost dawn and you could be caught out in the sun.
    “You saw my memories of Dominic and his woman sharing their blood with me.”
    Yes, but I also saw him warn you that you have to be cautious, to test your limits. You haven’t done that and you said yourself, the stronger the darkness, the less a Carpathian can take the sun. Don’t do this, Zacarias. For me. Don’t do this.
    He reached out and very gently caressed her long sweep of hair. “This particular vampire is a master unlike any other. I would not get this chance again in another ten thousand years. I am asking you to not ask this of me. Right at this moment, I would give you anything you want—even this, Marguarita. But I need you not to make this request.”
    She closed her eyes tightly. For a moment she felt she couldn’t breathe. She had to let him go. He couldn’t be anything but what he was—a hunter. She would be asking him to be something he was not. See that you come back to me in one piece.
    Zacarias stood, his clothing in bloody tatters. Lacerations and wounds crisscrossed his body. The bloody cloth fell from his belly, but the wound was closed. He flexed his muscles. “You will take Cesaro’s blood from his wrist. He will guard you while I am gone.”
    Framing her face with his hands, Zacarias leaned down to kiss her upturned mouth. She clung for a moment, uncaring that Cesaro was watching them. Reluctantly, Zacarias put her aside and took to the air. The moment he was away from her, he dismissed her from his mind, pushing her out, trusting her to stay out. There could only be one chance at this. Ruslan Malinov was too dangerous of an adversary to allow him to escape.
    Zacarias caught the scent of the vampire’s foul stench and he followed, using the droplets as a guide. He had spent centuries patrolling up and down the Amazon crossing borders and going from country to country. He knew every cave, every place a vampire might choose as a resting place. He knew where his enemy would most likely go. More than that, Marguarita was correct in saying the darkness in him allowed him to think like the undead.
    Ruslan would want to get as far from Zacarias as possible, but he would want to be able to feed as easily as possible. There were very few towns and ranches in the area near caves. Zacarias knew every one of them. He was convinced Ruslan would choose the most inaccessible, a mere crack in the rock allowing a shapeshifter to flatten his body enough to slide inside that narrow, steep tunnel leading down to the very bowels of the earth. Ruslan would guard it well as only a master vampire could do, so either Zacarias arrived ahead of him—before dawn and secreted himself inside to wait—or it could take hours to unravel the safeguards and he could get caught in the sun.
    Ruslan had a head start on Zacarias, but he was cunning and he would know his blood was in the wind and a hunter like Zacarias would scent it as well as any wolf. He would use false trails, backtrack, every trick he had ever learned to hide his true destination from the Carpathian and that would take time. Ruslan would try to use the sun against a hunter, only going to