peeling to get at those precious drops of blood. The sounds were horrendous, shrieking cries of agony, desperate whimpers of hunger and need that resounded through the night. The horses in the stables reacted, kicking and stomping, in a frenzied attempt to escape the sound. The cattle in the distant fields came to their feet, nearly all at the same time as though an electric charge had run through the herd.
In the distance, Zacarias heard the
The cattle were going to stampede. The vampire would realize instantly that the people in the helicopter worked for the De La Cruz family. The ranchers would pour out of their homes in spite of the order to remain inside, their instincts to save the herd overriding the command. More bait for the vampire—he would expect Zacarias to protect them.
Zacarias reached for the turbulent cloud the vampire had spun to use as a trap, rolling and spinning in the sky. It was heavy with moisture, spinning larger and growing into a lumbering tower, a dark malevolent funnel of spinning rage. Zacarias opened the floodgates, allowing the trapped drops to pour down over the field and extinguish all the flames. The black smoke mixed with gray vapor, growing dense and churning with the wild wind until the air was thick with smoke, dust and debris.
He streaked through the haze toward the helicopter, cursing as he did so. The vampire surely would attack the craft first. It was far easier being a Carpathian warrior uncaring of anything but killing his enemy. Protecting humans added a huge risk factor and his mind kept turning resolutely toward the reason. He shut it down fast and hard, but a knot began to grow in the pit of his belly.
He slipped into the helicopter right behind Julio.
As soon as he’d pushed the warning into Julio’s mind, he was gone, throwing a protection ring around the craft. The strike came just as expected, a missile streaking through the air, leaving behind a trail of vapor. The projectile hit the protection ring and exploded. Lea, the helicopter pilot, screamed and banked sharply. She had not seen Zacarias, nor was she aware of the warning. Looking below, she couldn’t fail to see the thick smoke.
“Get us out of here, Lea,” Julio demanded.
“I’m trying,” she shouted back, although they both wore a radio.
The helicopter lurched as something exploded very close to them.
“Someone’s shooting at us,” she cried.
“No, it’s an explosion from the fire. Can you see?” Julio asked.
“The smoke is so thick,” Lea responded. “How can it be so thick everywhere?”
Zacarias could hear the humans’ frantic discussion as he followed the trajectory of the missile back to the origin. The vampire would have moved as fast as he’d delivered the attack, hoping to bring down the helicopter, but his moving left a trail. And Zacarias could follow any trail no matter how slight. He streaked across the exact vapor trail left by the missile, using the line of trajectory to scan below.
Above, caught in the smoke, the helicopter seemed to be in trouble. The vampire fed the smoke, pouring more into the sky and field so that it was dense, nearly impenetrable. Zacarias went after him. If he stayed and tried to help the two in the helicopter, the men rushing from their homes to get to the cattle would be in danger. He had to stop the undead.
The vampire had been very clever, hiding almost out in the open. Once straight overhead the hiding place, Zacarias could see where he had utilized the natural terrain as it dipped below the sloping fence line. Bushes were thin there, but he had managed to secrete himself in the sparse vegetation without touching a single leaf. The grass where he had stood was shrunken and a dull brown, some blades shivering, testifying to the fact that the undead had recently abandoned his hiding place.
The vampire moved under cover of the thick smoke, hastily changing his position, passing close to the vine- covered post on the outer fence. The leaves and tangle of shrubbery recoiled subtly. Zacarias followed that faint path. In the distance, he could hear the frightened bawling of the cattle and the sounds of men rushing to horses. The undead had a target. Stampeding the herd, bringing out many potential victims, would give him advantages.
Above Zacarias the helicopter lurched awkwardly as another projectile exploded against the protection ring. He soothed the wild wind, sending it out and away from the funnel cloud to disperse the smoke, giving the helicopter pilot a way to see an open spot to bring the metal bird to the ground safely.
Men poured from the houses, leaping onto the backs of horses, racing wildly toward the far fields where the cattle had been semisheltered by the gently rising slopes and tall shade trees. Zacarias streaked ahead of the vampire, throwing up a barrier so the undead hit it hard and bounced back, finding himself sitting in the middle of the burned field.
Zacarias materialized a distance from him. “I know you. You should have known better than to hunt me.”
The vampire picked himself up slowly, dusting off his clothes with meticulous care. He bowed low, and then stood straight and tall. “Who could resist pitting wits against the great and all powerful Zacarias De La Cruz? You are the thing of legends. Any who defeated you would be known for all time.”
“And you are just the man to manage it,” Zacarias said softly. He kept his voice pitched low, melodious even, a stark contrast to the vampire who had to work to modulate his voice. All the while he listened to sounds of the frantic men trying to calm the restless herd.
The buildup of electricity in the air told him the vampire would attempt to use a lightning whip to prod the cattle into stampeding. Zacarias waved a casual hand toward the sky countering the electrical charge. The air stilled, all clouds disappeared.
“An old trick,” the vampire said. “But you cannot protect them all from me.”
Insects burst from the ground, thousands of them, a plague of starving bugs, desperate for food. They took to the air, flying straight at Zacarias, the migration heading for the cattle, horses and men behind him. He seemed a small obstacle in their path.
Zacarias shrugged. He stood calmly, not moving as the insects approached him. “What does that matter to me? I have one purpose. One.”
He smiled as his wind shifted, picking up, driving away from him straight at the vampire. Blades of serrated saw grass speared through the air like a thousand knives. The insects tried to devour it in midair, the force of the wind blowing them backward along with the grass. The blades struck the vampire with such force they went through his body before he even realized they were concealed in the mass of insects. Hundreds of grass spears impaled him from his head to his feet. At once the insects covered him, desperate to feed at the wounds.
Zacarias materialized inches in front of the vampire, slamming his fist through bone and muscle, through the acid blood. Insects rained to the ground, dying as they touched the hideous unnatural blood of the undead.
“I destroy vampires,” Zacarias whispered, looking him straight in the eyes, his dispassionate gaze saying it all. “That is my one purpose.” He extracted the blackened, wizened heart and tossed it into the mass of wiggling, dying insects.
Lightning forked across the sky and slammed into the mountain of bodies, incinerating the heart as well as the insects. Zacarias stepped back calmly and allowed the body to fall so the white-hot energy bolt could incinerate the remains.
He stood for a moment, allowing the cool night air to take the stench of the undead from his nostrils before he turned to make certain the helicopter had landed safely. Julio ran across the open ground just in front of the hangar, Lea’s hand in his, both headed toward the stables, presumably to help with the herd.
In spite of the way the ground shook under the pounding hooves as the cattle began to run mindlessly, Zacarias’s gaze was pulled unerringly, even compulsively, to the hacienda. She was there. Marguarita. Huddled inside. Alone. He had ruthlessly abandoned her, and he would do it again and again, over and over. He ran his fingers through the mass of thick hair.
There were no lights on in the main house—the only structure still dark on the property. As soon as the alarm
