“Son. We meet again under more pleasant circumstances, I hope.”
Zacarias frowned. What was Ruslan playing at? Testing him to see if he had emotions? If he had a lifemate? Every other De La Cruz brother had found his lifemate. Ruslan would hate them all the more for that. He believed himself superior to all of them—so why shouldn’t he have the women? Zacarias and his family were unworthy of such things.
“I thought more of you, Ruslan. This is a tired trick. Show yourself and be done with it.” For the first time he realized that not feeling emotion without Marguarita locked to him could be more than a curse. Ruslan could not endanger what he did not know of.
Zacarias waved his hand with a true casualness, as if that perfect image of his father didn’t bother him at all—and in truth—he felt nothing at all at the sight of the man who had been his childhood hero. His wave removed the illusion and revealed Ruslan’s true form. For one second he stood stripped of civility, his body rotted through with a thousand maggots crawling through him. His face was pitted with holes, his eyes sunken and his teeth blackened and serrated, pointed like ice picks sticking up through his gums.
In the time it took Zacarias to blink, that image changed as if it had never been. Ruslan stood before him as he had all those centuries ago. Young. Virile. His face without lines, almost beautiful rather than handsome. Zacarias looked rugged and older in comparison, lines etched into his face and a few scars intersecting here and there.
“I see your vanity has not changed at all,” Zacarias greeted. “You did so love your pretty face. I suppose that is half the reason you chose to become vampire.”
Ruslan brushed back his long length of hair. “At least you still know pretty from ugly. I have long kept tabs on you, old friend. You refuse to join us and you refuse to die. In all the centuries you have never stayed in one place more than a single night or at best two. Yet here you remain.” He swept his arm toward the hacienda and the wind changed course, following his direction, taking with it dozens of small fireballs to rain down across the pastures and structures.
Zacarias sent the rain in a fast deluge, putting out the small fires immediately. He flexed his shoulders, now burned through to bone with a thousand brands from the acid rain and the small, pebble-sized fireballs Ruslan was now using against the ranch.
“We can do this all night, but surely you did not think I would be impressed by such childish games? I play them with your puppets, but they are not really worthy of my attention. I thought at last I might have an opponent of merit.”
“You do not heal your wounds.”
Had there been a hint of eagerness in Ruslan’s tone? Zacarias shrugged again. “I do not feel such things, so how necessary is it really?” He observed Ruslan closely, watching the vampire’s nostrils flaring and his tongue continually licking at his lips. “Does the scent of my blood bother you?”
Ruslan shook his head. Shook it again. Much like a twitch he couldn’t stop. The licking of his lips continued compulsively. “No more than the scent of any blood I consume. You have not fed this night. I offer my blood.”
“How very gentlemanly of you.” Zacarias gave a short, mock bow. “What do you want, Ruslan? I grow weary of your games. Have you come for deliverance? Justice? I’ll be more than happy to send you from this earth if that is what you wish.”
“Justice is a good word to use for a betrayer of friendship. Of brotherhood. You turned on us and made an alliance with that brat of a prince. He is worse than his father before him.” Ruslan spat a mouthful of wriggling white worms.
Zacarias shrugged. “What is it then?”
“I had long thought to have you join our ranks, but you never came. Then you sent me such an insult, destroying my army to the last puppet.”
“They were merely pawns you sent to test me. You expected me to kill them. Cannon fodder, Ruslan, nothing more. Your silly plot to kill the prince didn’t work. You had to know testing it on me would prove that to be so.”
“You were never supposed to be there.” Ruslan’s voice rose to a higher note. His beautiful mask slipped a little. The trees shivered as he shrieked out his rising anger. He could barely contain his rage, his fingers curling into tight fists. “You never spend time with your brothers. You never stay in one place. Why? Why would you change your pattern after so many centuries? Did you do so just to irk me?”
“You flatter yourself, Ruslan. I do not give as much thought to you as you give me credit for. I am a hunter—nothing more and nothing less.”
All the while he spoke, Zacarias didn’t allow himself to focus wholly on Ruslan. The vampire had traps just waiting to be sprung. He noticed every detail, including the rising wind. It was subtle, but the grass bent just that little bit more toward him. The leaves fluttered and spun, a strange grayish when they had been a dull, muddy greenish-brown.
The wind teased the ground around his feet, stirring the leaves and vegetation on the forest floor. Strangler vines shivered. Flowers winding up tree trunks lost petals. To Zacarias they looked like white-gray ash falling to the forest floor.
“You have not told me why you stayed here, old friend,” Ruslan coaxed. “It is odd behavior for you.”
Zacarias shrugged his shoulders, loosening his muscles. “A bit of an injury, but nothing for you to worry about. Plenty of ready sustenance while I recouped. Have no worries, I am in top condition now.”
Ruslan clucked his tongue. “That was not what was reported to me. My men have much to answer for. I was told your injuries are still quite severe.”
“Do not believe such tales. I would not want you to worry, Ruslan, about your old friend. I am quite capable of bringing justice to every undead who walks this earth.”
Flames leaped to life in Ruslan’s eyes. He grimaced and once again that handsome mask slipped revealing blackened, serrated teeth and muddy receding gums. His fingers twitched, and then closed once more into a tight fist.
The wind tugged harder at the debris on the forest floor. Zacarias felt a jab of pain, which he instantly stemmed as something large went through his leg. Glancing down he saw creeper vines rising and writhing together, coiling around and through his leg, starting at his foot and ankle. They grew together, and through his flesh, driving like spears to weave in and out of his leg, making him a part of the new plant.
The vines were covered in moss resembling scales with little hooks. Every scale had snapped up as the thing snaked up and through his leg, hooking into his flesh. He attempted to shift and found his leg was held fast, as the vines growing through his leg locked him in place.
Immediately he knew something alive was being injected into him, tiny bodies running beneath his skin, boring into muscle and tissue, digging deeper still. He ignored the sensation. More than likely the object was to weaken him, bleed him, until he was unable to effectively fight Ruslan while the vine literally held him in place, making him part of its structure.
The master vampire was too experienced to directly challenge him in hand-to-hand combat. He would trade blows from a distance and continue his battle plan of nipping at Zacarias, taking bites out of him until he was certain the hunter was unable to defend himself. Only then would he move in for the kill.
The strategy had one flaw. Zacarias was a single-minded hunter. His body meant nothing to him. Only the kill mattered and he would kill Ruslan Malinov. Nothing else in that moment could concern him. Ignoring the vine winding up his leg, now almost to his thigh, he raised his own hands toward the rain forest and called his own weapon.