Carpathian 22 - Dark Predator

leave him. She had too much compassion in her, too much daring to disobey one as powerful as him.
    His compulsion fell against a mind he could barely understand. It wasn’t as if he found barriers—it was as though his techniques simply dissipated like smoke.
    She stripped her short, soft jacket from her body and threw it over his head, covering his face and eyes. He felt her take his wrist and begin to pull him across the wet pasture. In his wake the blades of grass turned brown. He heard the breath hiss from her lungs and knew her hand was burned, but she didn’t stop.
    For the first time in the long centuries a deep-seated rage coiled in his belly and smoldered there, that someone dared defy his direct order. She had no right. She knew better. No one ever defied him— certainly not a human, and definitely not a woman . And not one of his own servants from a family that had been given every protection and wealth beyond imagining.
    He had chosen death. He had prepared himself. Was content with his decision—embraced his choice. This was the worst kind of betrayal.
    You will regret your disobedience, he vowed.
    Marguarita ignored him—or didn’t hear him. He honestly didn’t know which, nor did he care. She would pay. Rocks dug into his back, and then the bump of wood as she managed to get him inside the stable. The sun stopped burning him alive, although the prickle of needles was still penetrating his skin.
    Deftly she rolled him into a tarp, not removing the jacket from his face. She even tucked his arms over his chest before rolling him. He felt like a helpless baby. The indignity of it, the wrongness of her actions awakened something monstrous in him. He pulled back like the wild animal he was, waiting for his moment—and there would be a moment. She had known the fear of a vampire ripping out her throat but it would be nothing compared to the terror of Zacarias De La Cruz extracting vengeance for her sins.
    She tried to hook the tarp to one of the horses, he knew by scent and by the drumming of hooves as the animal protested being in close proximity to him. He could have told her that no horse would allow his presence, but he held still, now just waiting the outcome of her mistake. The lack of horsepower didn’t deter her. He heard the sound of her footsteps and then she began to pull the tarp herself. He knew she was alone by the sound of her breath bursting from her lungs in several repeated small gasps.
    He found it significant that she didn’t call for help. One yell—okay, she couldn’t yell—but she must have a way to attract attention. The males working the ranch would come to her aid if she signaled them, but she must have known he would command them to allow his death—and they would obey. The fierce burning in his gut grew hotter, hot enough that for a few moments he thought he might have burned through his skin to his internal organs.
    He could see nothing at all, but he felt each bump of the rocks and the fierce blaze of the sun as she dragged him from the stable to the ranch house. The searing heat was astonishingly effective, driving out all sane thoughts until he wanted to scream with agony. It came on gradually, a slow charring that seeped through skin and tissue to bone.
    Zacarias tried to turn off the pain as he’d done for centuries, but the relentless burn of the sun was something he couldn’t compartmentalize as he had so many other wounds. Even with the tarp wrapped around him, he felt the piercing blaze like burning arrows dotting his body. The heat boiled his blood and flames licked at his insides. He couldn’t scream, or protest, or do anything but be dragged through the yard to what he presumed was the ranch house.
    Marguarita huffed hard as she took his full weight up the two stairs leading inside. The moment he was within the thick, cool walls, she dropped the harness and rushed across the room. He could hear her pull the thick drapes into place, covering the windows.
    You will suffer as no one else has ever suffered for your disobedience, he promised, thrusting the words into her brain.
    Again he had the impression of words falling through cracks, as if she couldn’t grasp what he’d said to her, but it didn’t matter. He waited while she carefully unrolled the tarp and when the edges fell open, he snapped his dark eyes open and locked his gaze with hers. A long slow hiss, a promise of brutal retaliation, escaped and there would be no mistaking his