Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

earning the family loyalty and good will. She had made the De La Cruz family one of the most beloved in the region. Her generosity—okay, it was their money, but she was the one making the effort.
    She stood cautiously, forcing her weak legs to work. Without warning the ground rolled, throwing Marguarita to her knees. Instantly ants swarmed over her boots and hands. She suppressed a small cry, knowing Zacarias wasn’t dead after all. Why had she been so ridiculous? He had returned to the hacienda and discovered her gone. She leaped to her feet and began to run aimlessly, a stupid, careless mistake.
    Giant moths fluttered around her, drawn by her light as she ran. Bats wheeled and dipped catching the insects her lamp revealed. Large eyes stared at her for a moment just feet from her, then the animal leaped onto the trunk of a tree and raced to higher branches. A snake coiled above her and lifted its head.
    The ground rolled again and thunder crashed. For a moment she could barely breathe, once again the frozen prey a monster had cornered. The wind rushed through the trees, bending the smaller ones over until they formed arches. Marguarita took shelter in the root cage of the large kapok tree trying to force herself to think—not panic. Clutching the roots, she glared into the forest.
    She had been right to believe him vampire. The insects boiled out of the ground and rushed down the trunks of trees at his bidding. Poisonous snakes slithered through wet vegetation and leeches crawled over leaves in an effort to reach her. Everything she’d ever known about vampires came back to her—along with the memory of the one attacking her.
    She shuddered, the need to curl up in a ball and hide nearly overwhelming her. She could still smell his fetid breath, see his rotting flesh, and the ugly, twisted claws he had for fingernails. His eyes had gone completely red as they stared at her, trying to rip the information of Zacarias’s whereabouts from her mind. She’d concentrated on keeping her mind blank, the shields strong, refusing to give up the eldest of the De La Cruz family.
    The vampire had murdered her father and he would kill her—she knew that with a certainty—but she also knew Zacarias or one of his brothers would hunt the vampire down and destroy him. He would never kill again. She had held out even when the horrible creature had shown her his razor-sharp teeth and threatened to tear her flesh out and eat it in front of her. She shuddered remembering his red eyes and his breath. That horrible smell of decaying flesh.
    Marguarita sat up straighter. As scared as she’d been by Zacarias, he hadn’t been the same. There was no terrible rotting smell. Didn’t vampires rot from the inside? He had frightened her—no— terrified her. She touched the mark he’d made, rubbing it with the pad of her finger. The attack hadn’t been the same. He hadn’t felt evil. Or vampire. He’d felt like a dangerous, scary predator, but not evil.
    The revelation shocked her. Zacarias was a wild animal, a feral creature that hunted and killed for survival. He was no vampire, not that it mattered. She wasn’t going back to the hacienda. Not as long as he was around. She feared few creatures, but Zacarias was an altogether different proposition. The mark he’d left on her throbbed, burning a little, reminding her that no animal in the rain forest was as unpredictable or as violent.
    The way he’d come at her, so purposeful, his face an expressionless mask, his mouth set in a cruel, unrelenting line, his eyes flat and cold and without mercy. Her mouth went dry and her heart began to pound again. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, frozen in place like cornered prey. That was exactly how she felt—his prey. She knew he had deliberately frightened her. She’d tried to connect with him in the way she did wild things, and for a moment she thought he’d responded, but then he was worse than ever. He was dangerous, but no vampire.
    She had to make it to shelter and determine her next move, and that meant finding the marks on the trees Julio had carved to show the way. She had to backtrack and make her way to the point where they usually pulled the canoe from the water.
    She waited for the ferocious wind to die down a little and she pushed herself to her feet to step cautiously away from the shelter of the tree. The branches overhead groaned and creaked and she looked up. Bats hung from every limb, and darted around the