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.
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.
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.
Zacarias felt the familiar coldness sweep through him, the chill he’d noticed early, even as a young boy, but now it was a glacier consuming him, pouring into his body, icing his veins. When other boys were carefree, running and playing, he had been quietly observing ways to kill, to battle, to outwit. His senses were acute, his reflexes faster. He had soaked up information, worked on concealing himself even from his parents. He had practiced over and over his ability to sneak up on others and observe them for hours without being seen. He had known even then that he was different, that the cold seeping into his veins 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.
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
