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
The wind shifted back toward Ruslan, a swift change, giving him no time to gloat. The sky around the vampire darkened as thousands of tiny biting flies swarmed over and into Ruslan. Every rotting hole provided an entrance, his mouth, eyes and nostrils. Illusions didn’t matter, they saw only rotting flesh.
Like tiny missiles they torpedoed deep into Ruslan’s body, breeding as they went, depositing larvae and reproducing at a rapid rate. The flies multiplied even as they attacked. Ruslan tore at his chest, sharp nails slashing his face open, giving Zacarias the necessary time to study the vine growing through his leg.
It was a simple enough trap, utilizing what was already in place. The plants were dead, as were the leaves and vegetation lying on the forest floor. In order to breathe life into them, Ruslan had to put some small part of himself into those dead plants. The leaves on the forest floor continued to feed the vines, so that they bored through skin and muscle driving deeper still until they emerged on the other side.
Zacarias let go of his physical self in order for his spirit to enter his body. The vines winding their way through his body, stabbing and spearing through flesh and bone moved toward one thing—the small light of his spirit in him. Granted, without Marguarita, that light was small, but it was there, keeping his honor. The tiny bugs consuming his insides were also sustained by that light. Zacarias took a deep breath and let go of life. All life. He stopped his heart for a moment, refused to allow air through his lungs. The plant loosened immediately, but when he forced his body to work again, the bugs continued to feast.
Zacarias was mostly darkness. Shadows and stains, tainted in a way few if any other hunters were. That darkness was the very thing that allowed him to ignore such wounds, such excruciating pain. He was already part of that world. His father had been legendary with amazing skills in battle, but he was the only Carpathian Zacarias knew of who carried shadows within his soul—until his son had been born.
Now, deliberately, Zacarias reached for those shadows—embraced them—let himself lose all light, drawing on the darkness that seemed to make up so much of him for aid. The moment all light within him was extinguished, the bugs began to die. The shadows were too dark to keep them alive. The plant lost its ability to continue growing, and with an already loosened hold on him, Zacarias was able to sheer off the outer woven branches, leaving the vines still inside his body.
There had to be a source for bringing the dead leaves and vines to life. Zacarias was a hunter and he scented the undead immediately, a small slice of Ruslan giving life to his creation. Ruslan couldn’t sustain being in two places at one time, not while fighting off the attack of tiny flies. It took only moments to slay that dark force and take control of the vine within his body. Ignoring Ruslan’s scream of fury and promises of retaliation, Zacarias changed the molecules of the remaining plant, reshaping, absorbing, utilizing the thick vines inside him to replace the muscle and tissue lost. He could do nothing about the blood loss, but anything natural and of the earth was within his ability to manipulate.
The moment his body was healed, he attacked without hesitation, a blur of motion, speeding across the distance between the vampire and himself, closing fast. Ruslan shrieked and rushed toward him. Thunder cracked. Shook the earth. Lightning sizzled across the sky in great whips as the two crashed together.
Zacarias drove deep with his fist, piercing the rotted chest. Acid blood poured over him, burning through skin to bone. He hit something solid, abruptly stopping his attack, preventing him from reaching the blackened heart. The jar rode up his arm, and a burning vise fused around his arm sending waves of pain he cut off. The tiny stinging flies took to the air in a black swarm, closing around both vampire and hunter. It was difficult not to breathe them into his lungs. Talons tore at his chest, carving out great chunks of skin and muscle.
Zacarias dissolved, allowing the wind to take him away from Ruslan, giving himself time to temporarily heal injuries and to keep as much blood as possible from leaking onto the ground. Ruslan licked at his fingers, his tongue long and obscenely thick, forked like a serpent’s. His face no longer wore his mask of beauty. The real vampire was revealed.
Zacarias had seen his share of rotting corpses, but nothing equaled Ruslan Malinov. Flesh peeled off of him. Worms crawled through gaping holes in his flesh. His mouth was more of a gaping hole, without lips, his eyes sunken. Every living thing shrunk from him, grass withering, ferns and moss going muddy brown. Even the insects scurried away. Only the black flies persisted, feasting on the rotting flesh and depositing as many eggs as possible in the blackened organs.
“You really have let yourself go, old friend,” Zacarias observed. “I think your arm is about to fall off.”
Ruslan roared, the threat rumbling through the forest, shaking the trees. He raised his arms, up and down, palms pointed to the sky. All around Zacarias the leaves rustled, came to life, whirling and flying with the chaos Ruslan created. It was impossible to see through the whipping leaves as they stacked and formed one creature after another.
He extended his arms and closed his eyes, removing the distraction of thousands of leaves coming alive around him. He reached with his other senses to find the threat within the moving debris. The figures surrounded the entire area, forming a loose ring and adding numbers inside the circle until the forest was populated with great
