Dark Predator

the jungle, but she had no real choice. She had to keep ahead of him until dawn. Once the sun came up, she could make her way to the De La Cruz cabins and hopefully call in help. Zacarias would be away from the hacienda and everyone else would be safe. It all made perfect sense, but she had to get there fast and that meant running.

She picked up the pace, sprinting, needing to get to shelter. She didn’t want to be out in the open, even under the canopy. Where the trees were thick, there was little light and she had to use her headlamp, but it also meant there was little vegetation on the floor. Without light penetrating the canopy, it was difficult to grow much. Saplings had to wait for a tree to fall, providing a gap in the canopy, allowing the sunlight through.

She sent out a wave of energy ahead of her, trying to give the insects on the forest floor the heads-up that she was coming through. Hopefully they would clear the trail. Tiny colorful frogs leaped from branch to trunk, their sticky feet clinging to the surfaces as they followed her on her precarious journey.

She tried not to race, knowing she wouldn’t have the stamina. She had to set a grueling pace, but one she could continue for a long time. Hours. It was a long time before the sun came up. She sent out a call for aid, her plea strong enough to wake the animals resting in the canopy above her. Immediately answers came. Monkeys went on alert. Flocks of birds called to one another, all looking for a common enemy.

Centuries of leaves and branches concealed twisted roots that would easily trip her up, and her headlamp caught the animals creeping out of holes to sit on the roots, so that as she ran, she could choose a path with the least obstacles. She rounded a bend, winding her way around a thick tree trunk and a capibara stared at her, crouched directly in her way. She swerved to her right, the only possible direction and realized as she flashed by, that the animal had guided her away from a labyrinth of creeper vines that would surely have sent her sprawling.

She ran with more confidence then, dependent on the animals, feeling comforted by their presence, knowing they would raise the alarm the moment Zacarias came near. They would know he was close. They had to be as sensitive to his presence as the horses and cattle on the ranch. She should have known when all the animals on the ranch had acted so uneasy that evil walked with Zacarias De La Cruz.

Marguarita frowned as she ran. Her lungs began to burn and her legs ached. She swerved to avoid a series of termite mounds her lamp barely managed to pick up before she was on them. Why had she felt so compelled to save him? She couldn’t stop herself. Even when he’d demanded her compliance, she hadn’t been able to leave him in the sun. She wasn’t squeamish. She’d grown up on a working ranch and she did her share of work, no matter how difficult.

She ignored the stitch in her side and jumped over one of the many ribbons of water running downhill to feed into the river system. The ground was muddy as she slipped and slid her way up the slopes, sometimes clawing her way in the mud. All the while her mind continued to puzzle out her strange behavior. She’d been programmed since birth to obey a De La Cruz. It was life or death in their world and one wrong misstep could spell catastrophe for those living on the various ranches. They all knew the danger of vampires. Monsters were very real in their world.

A small sob escaped. Carpathians fed on the blood of humans, yet they didn’t kill. Vampires killed. She didn’t fully understand the thin line between them, but she knew it was thin and somehow she had pushed Zacarias over the edge. And what had his blood done to her?

She had awakened from the vampire attack with a torn throat, unable to talk, her world turned upside down, but all her other senses were heightened from the blood Zacarias had given her to save her life. Her sight was much better. She could actually spot insects in grass and see birds in the thickest branches of trees. She spotted tiny frogs and lizards hidden in the leaves and creeper vines. Her hearing was even more acute. Sometimes she thought she could hear the men talking out in the fields while they worked. Certainly she could hear the horses in the stable.

With that first blood he’d given her to save her life, she knew he had changed something in her. Her hair, always thick, had grown faster and more lustrous. Her skin had a sheen, almost a glow to it. Her lashes were thicker and longer, everything about her was just more. She noticed Julio stayed closer to her and the hacienda whenever the other men were near, and she was aware of them as men, instead of simply people she’d grown up with. She felt the weight of their eyes and at times was uncomfortable, afraid she was reading lecherous thoughts. None of that had ever happened before. And the changes weren’t all physical.

She shouldn’t be able to run so fast for such a distance even with animals guiding her on the trail. She used her headlamp less and less and was guided more by pure instinct. She could hear her heart beat and it had settled to a slow, steady rhythm. Her lungs had been burning for air, but the farther she ran, the more they began to work efficiently.

Her skin tingled when there were obstacles near her, much like radar warning her which direction to turn, where to place her feet, how to move and slip through the trees without a misstep. She might not be able to speak, but she certainly had acquired other much sharper senses and skills.

She’d been hearing the stream for some time. The rain had fed the water on the ground so that it ran downhill, taking the least line of resistance until it found its way to the narrow stream, deepening the dark water, swelling the ribbon until the banks were nearly overflowing. The waterfall in the distance sounded like continuous thunder and relief flooded her. That meant the water route was open and deep enough to take her downstream rapidly. If conditions were right, she could make it all the way to the Amazon. That would increase her chances of getting to the De La Cruz pastures before Zacarias discovered her. Marguarita increased her speed, running flat out to the falls.

4

The harpy eagle swooped through the canopy, ignoring the sloth, its favorite food, and circled back toward the hacienda, driven by some inner compulsion it couldn’t ignore. Deep inside the giant bird’s body, Zacarias sighed. He was no closer to the truth than he’d been when he set out. The threads binding him to the woman had grown stronger, not weaker, and he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

If he hadn’t known better, he would think it was possible she was his lifemate. He’d considered the idea, of course, but then discarded it almost immediately. If she’d been the one woman to complete his soul, he would see in colors and feel emotion. If it was emotion he was experiencing, he didn’t know enough about feelings to even identify them. Whatever was going on was a puzzle that had to be solved before he returned to his original plan of seeking the dawn. Marguarita Fernandez held great power. She was a potential threat to Carpathians and therefore had to be eliminated. It was that simple.

A piercing pain in the vicinity of his heart brought him up short. He actually looked down at the bird’s breast to see if it had been punctured by an arrow. His stomach lurched at the idea of killing her. O jela peje emnimet—sun scorch the woman, she had cast some spell. There was no other explanation for his physical response to the idea of her death. She had tied them together. Or her blood had. Blood was the very essence of life and hers was . . . extraordinary.

He wanted—no, needed—to touch her mind with his. Everything in him urged him to reach out to her, to know where she was, what she was doing. He refused to act on the need. He didn’t trust it any more than he trusted the way he had to see her, to touch her, to know she existed. Whatever spell had been cast was a powerful one and it had to be a trap.

He had control and discipline, several lifetimes to develop both and no woman, a human woman at that, could possibly destroy those traits in him. He would take his time, prove to both himself and to her that he was far too strong to be brought down by any spell. Before he killed her he would learn her secrets. Every last one of them. She would know what it meant to betray a De La Cruz and try to entrap one of them.

He had fought vampires and destroyed them, the foulest, most vile creatures imaginable; a small slip of a woman had no chance against him. He ignored the way his mind continually reached for hers. The way his blood heated at the thought of her. It wasn’t the spell so much as the fact that she actually intrigued him—something that hadn’t happened in a thousand years or more. That was all. Interest. Intrigue. Who could blame him when nothing had been a surprise to him—until her. The woman. Marguarita.