Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

gave him an edge others didn’t have, he had known, but he had fought that knowledge.
    He reached for the cold this time, instead of working to stay ahead of it. He embraced the shadows within himself, allowed, for the first time, the darkness to take him. It settled over and into him, fitting like a glove, that pure predator being. He’d always known it was there waiting to take him. He had fought that path, desperate to stay whole, but he knew there was no other option if he was to survive and survival was essential to protect his brothers. He chose that being for himself in order to choose life for his brothers.
    He moved with the turbulent wind, sliding in behind the vampire in silence, gathering his strength, as stealthy as the most seasoned of hunters. The undead looked around and, not seeing or hearing any threat, spat on the ground and turned his attention to the four boys caught in the cage of rocks. He showed his teeth in an evil smirk.
    “He has left you to me. I will tear off the head of the little one and feed him to you, limb by precious limb, before I devour you alive.”
    Nicolas and Rafael stood, two young Carpathians, shoulder to shoulder in front of their younger siblings.
    Deliberately Zacarias sent a small rock rolling behind him. The vampire spun to face the sound, presenting a full-frontal target.
    Look away, Zacarias ordered his brothers. All of you, look away. Do not watch this! Nicolas, cover Riordan’s eyes. None of you witness this.
    With his heart in his throat, with tears burning a hole in his soul, he shifted, assuming his physical form with blurring speed, then drove his fist into his father’s chest, using every ounce of strength he possessed. He stood toe-to-toe, looking his father straight in the eye as he smashed through bone and muscle and grasped that beating organ. His father tore at his flesh, digging great chunks of skin and muscle from him, but Zacarias closed down all feelings of pain and all emotion so that he could save his brothers and his family’s honor.
    The sound was horrendous, a terrible sucking blended with his father’s scream of pure agony. The vampire hissed promises, begged and pleaded for his life, raged and snarled vows of vengeance and death on the children, promised to tear off his brothers’ heads and feed them to him. Spittle and acid burned over his skin as he dragged the heart from his father’s chest and flung it a distance away.
    His father grasped Zacarias’s forearms, staring at him with shocked, blood-filled eyes. “Son,” he whispered. “My son.”
    A silent scream welled up. It took every ounce of courage he possessed not to put his arms around that torn body and hold his father to him. Zacarias watched the man he loved most in the world teeter and fall, first to his knees in front of him and then fall facedown in the mud. He stepped back and called the lightning from the sky.
    He was more shaken than he knew. The first bolt of sizzling electricity missed the pulsating organ. The heart rolled, and landed in his mother’s blood. The sight was so loathsome, he steadied himself and sent the next bolt slamming directly into his father’s heart, incinerating it.
    Zacarias bent double, no longer able to block the excruciating pain, a sheer physical reaction he could no longer control. His scream of denial tore up from his churning belly through his shattered heart to break the blood vessels in his throat. He didn’t feel his wounds, some to the bone, or the acid burning through his skin left behind by the vampire blood, only the agony of his parents’ deaths, of the kill forced on him by fate, by destiny. Of the loss of all innocence, of being thrust into a role he’d been born for but did not want. He didn’t want to ever face the knowledge that all that darkness consumed him—remained inside of him.
    “Zacarias.” Nicolas was there, wrapping an arm around him, trying to pull him away from the scene of death.
    Zacarias stepped away from him, afraid of tainting his brother with the shadows that were now solidly a part of him. Grimly he incinerated the bodies of his mother and father, the vampire, before taking care of the acid on his skin.
    He turned to study the pale faces of his brothers. “None of you will ever think of this again. You will not dishonor our father or me with this memory, do you understand? Not ever. You will not think of it or speak of it again. Do your crying now, because when we walk away from here, it is