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At first she was tense and stiff, but within moments, as the heat of his body seeped into the cold of hers, she went soft and pliant in his arms. He should have allowed her to step back away from him, but it was easier to maintain some semblance of control over her when he held her. In truth, his arms had become an iron cage and he wasn’t altogether certain if he was consciously or subconsciously holding her to him, but found he couldn’t drop his arms. He brushed his hand down the length of her hair.

Few modern women seemed to have long hair anymore. A long-ago memory surfaced as he buried his face in those silken strands. Women walking by in long dresses, chatting, vessels of water in their hands as they made their way back to camp. He had noted them because they seemed so happy. Three days later when he retraced his steps looking for where he’d lost the trail of the vampire, the same women lay in a torn and bloody heap in the mud, their eyes staring up at the red moon, their faces like wax, their hair in twisted dirty hanks.

Don’t. Marguarita suddenly wound her arms around him and held him to her.

The gesture was so unexpected and shocking he nearly stepped away from her. He had held her captive, but now, although she was far weaker than a male Carpathian, she seemed to have taken him over.

Please don’t remember. It hurts you. I know you say you don’t feel it, but you do. It washes through you and settles deep inside you. Just don’t remember anymore. Not right now.

He rubbed his chin on the top of her head. Strands of hair tangled with the heavy shadow on his jaw, almost as if her hair could weave them together. “Why are you so upset?”

You accept your own death so easily. You look forward to fighting a master vampire. You would have burned in the sun. You just act like nothing touches you, but it’s destroying you from the inside out. All those deaths. You think they don’t affect you, but they do. You see your own death, not because you fear becoming vampire, but you can’t live with the pain of who and what you are anymore. And you aren’t like you see yourself, not really.

Her fist clenched and she hit his chest in a small rhythmic drumming. He doubted she even knew what she was doing, or surely she wouldn’t dare to strike him. It was hardly more than a tap so he chose to ignore her indiscretion, puzzled by the things she said. He covered her fist with his palm and pressed until she became still.

“I do not feel, Marguarita, as much as I would like to. I have even lost my memories. These things you speak may have existed in another lifetime—long ago—but I no longer have recollection of them.”

That’s not true, Zacarias. I swear to you, it is not the truth. I am inside of you and I see the battles, the memories, and I feel the pain. The sorrow is so intense and overwhelming, unlike anything I have ever experienced—and I have lost both of my parents and know sorrow. I can’t make something like this up. I wouldn’t.

How could she feel his pain when he didn’t feel it? Was she simply projecting her own feelings onto him? The connection between them grew stronger each time they used it, but still, it would be impossible for her to feel what he did not.

“Show me,” he whispered against her ear. “Show me what you see in me.”

One minute he was Zacarias De La Cruz. Carpathian warrior. Hunter. Alone. He was ice inside. Brittle and cold. Glaciers moved in his veins. And then she poured into him like warm thick honey, filling up every empty space inside him. Finding every dark corner, every secret tear and rip inside his mind. That warm honey spread through the ice, finding every broken connection, building bridges, filling the holes, restoring broken connections.

Electricity sizzled, arced and snapped in his head. He felt her every breath. Inhaled with her. Her heart beat and it was inside his own chest. She was inside of him until everything he was, everything he was about was filled with Marguarita, filled with all that warmth. With her blinding light. The heat melted the ice encasing him, melted faster than any barricade he could throw up to stop it.

He blinked rapidly, feeling her holding him close, filling more and more spaces with herself until for the first time he was complete. He wasn’t alone. Stars burst in his head, opened like a primordial mix, rushing at him so fast at first he couldn’t grasp what he was seeing.

8

Zacarias’s brothers crouched among the rocks, shock on their faces. Riordan was little more than a newborn babe, but there was nothing young about his awareness or intellect. He stared with the same shock and horror at the approaching vampire as his older brothers. Above them, dark storm clouds churned in the sky, nearly obliterating all the stars, but the full moon shone bloodred, right through the towering, turbulent clouds.

Spread out, behind him. When I tell you to run, get out of here and do not look back, Zacarias commanded. You are responsible for Riordan, Manolito. Fall back with him. Nicolas and Rafael, protect them. All of you, get out of here.

We will help you, Rafael said, his voice shaking.

You cannot do this alone, Nicolas stated, sorrow dripping from each word.

Run, Zacarias. Run with us, Manolito pleaded.

Zacarias heard their protests, but when he gave an order, they knew to obey. Their mother lay dead, her body torn and bloody, crushed against the rocks. There was no time to mourn her or think of her as she was in life. His father had arrived too late to save her, but the vampire who had made the kill lay in strips beside her, the body literally torn apart. The sheer savagery shown in the killing should have warned Zacarias before his father turned around to face them, but still, those jagged teeth and red-crazed eyes were a shock.

His father’s hands were raised toward the mountains where the boulders were set so precariously. The ground shook. Zacarias hadn’t expected the attack on his brothers and he was that second too late in countering. He threw a shelter around the boys to protect them from the avalanche even as he raced into the attack. He knew his father hadn’t expected aggression and it was the only thing left to him. His father was far older, stronger, more experienced, but he was a newly made vampire and wouldn’t be used to the high the kill had given him.

His father was skilled in battle, a legendary hunter whose name was whispered in awe, but he’d taught those same skills to his oldest child. Zacarias was still considered young as a Carpathian, but he’d fought vampires and battles often. He’d already begun to lose his emotions, colors had long since faded from his vision and he wasn’t even close to the age when that should have happened.

He struck through his father’s insubstantial form, stumbling forward. The blow took him hard in the back and sent him flying forward into the pools of blood from his mother’s body. He skidded across the gore facedown, landing nearly on his mother’s head. Her lifeless eyes stared accusingly at him. He planted his hands to lever himself up only to find they were buried wrist-deep in her blood. His stomach lurched. His heart nearly stopped.

Zacarias!

With Nicolas’s warning filling his mind, he rolled, dissolving at the last moment, remembering that he could. His father’s fist slammed deep into the ground, right through his mother’s lifeless body.

Zacarias was shaken to the very core of his being, and he had to pull himself together if he was going to survive. And if he didn’t survive, neither would his brothers. He breathed away his mother’s blood covering his body and the sight of her eyes staring at him, accusing him of trying to kill his own father. Not his father. Vampire. The undead. An evil, foul creature who would destroy everything and everyone in its path. Even now, the very grass withered beneath its feet. It. Vampire. Not father. Not the man he loved and respected above all others.