Evil permeated the very ground he slept in. Every breath he drew into his lungs brought the stench of malevolence deep into his body. Hunger crawled through him, clawing at his gut, pounding through every heartbeat, each pulse point. His fangs refused to retract. They had become permanent now, and with the edge of his tongue he could feel the slow lengthening of his canines. Sharp. Terrible. A heralding of the vile, foul abomination every male Carpathian feared, creeping relentlessly into his body and mind no matter how hard he tried to hold it back. Evil had an insidious way of creeping in at the very moment one was most vulnerable.
His world was one of absolute darkness, heat, and tremendous pressure. He’d been buried alive, trapped in the volcano for hundreds of years. Outside his prison, the world had changed and evolved, but he remained imprisoned in this eternal stasis, a mosquito trapped in an amber prison, if he was being poetic. But it was more like a hot lava bed of fire and stone and pure hell.
He searched his mind to remember his name—there had been so many. Names meant nothing in his world; they never had. His species was immortal and they moved from century to century, shedding identities and acquiring new ones, taking on the customs, languages, and names of those around them so they blended into whatever world they lived in. Once, so long ago, he’d had a birth name—the name his family had given him—but then so had the vile creature he’d chased across continents.
Of all the names he’d called himself over the centuries, Dax was the only one left from his ancient heritage, a small part of the original very long name he’d been given at birth. After tracking the vampire to this continent, he’d taken the name of a fierce warrior of the Chachapoyas people and had become one of them. Later, when the Incas arrived, easily overrunning the Chachapoyas whose numbers had already been decimated by the vampire, he’d shed his Chachapoya identity and assumed an Incan persona, learning their language and customs by reading the minds of the people. Then, like always, he’d become what he must to hunt his prey.
All bloodlines save one—the Dragonseekers—knew the horror, the tragedy, of watching family members succumb to the curse of their species. The more powerful the lineage, the quicker, deeper, and more potently they grew once a warrior made the choice to turn vampire. This vampire, the one Dax had hunted all these long centuries, was the epitome of evil. He came from an extremely powerful line—second in command to the prince of the Carpathian people.
Dax had known the ancient Carpathian warrior, as had all warriors in their community. And they’d all known the moment Mitro Daratrazanoff made the choice to turn wholly vampire. All his life, Mitro had carried power like a mantle of authority, but his ego had been wounded beyond repair when the prince had passed over Mitro and chosen one of Mitro’s younger brothers to serve as his second. Mitro’s hatred grew, as well as his vanity, until he wanted his entire family and the prince dead.
Driven mad by his hatred, he rejected his lifemate, Arabejila, a beautiful Carpathian woman with astonishing gifts, and in doing so he’d rejected the salvation she could have given him. That alone was a crime unheard of in their world, but Mitro compounded his sins by trying to kill her, to drain of her blood and life. Mitro had the insane idea that should he murder his lifemate as he made the transformation, he would be the most powerful of all vampires and could easily destroy his famous family and that of the prince.
Thinking he could betray and kill Arabejila while still Carpathian proved impossible. He took her blood, but the lifemate bond refused to allow him to use his other half as his entry to transform to pure evil. But he’d killed her mother and father and left Arabejila dying, bleeding out on the ground beside their dead bodies. Worse, her mother had been pregnant with another long-sought-after female child. Arabejila had dragged herself to her mother and cut open her belly to save the unborn infant.
Dax had arrived to find blood and death everywhere, his oldest friend and partner’s entire family savagely destroyed by Mitro Daratrazanoff. Arabejila and her mother were daughters of the earth, their female magick important to the entire Carpathian people. The unborn female child would carry that same gift, although she was several centuries younger than her only sister. Never before in the history of the Carpathian world had such a crime been committed. One Carpathian had deliberately killed two females and attempted to kill a third before he’d actually turned vampire. It had been murder—pure and simple. And once the blood-lust was on him, Mitro continued his killing spree across continents.
The infant was premature and Arabejila was near death. Dax had given both his blood to save them, tying them to him for all time, something few warriors ever did. The earth had reached for Arabejila, healing her so that she could make the journey with him quickly, her blood calling to that of her lifemate. They left her unnamed sister in the hands of another Carpathian couple and set out on the trail of Mitro. That trail led them from one killing field to another. Century after century, horrendous battles took place where both hunter and hunted nearly died time and again. Always Mitro managed to escape until they had at last trapped him here, in this volcano.
The plan had been Dax’s, but it was Arabejila who had lured Mitro to the mountain. Mitro couldn’t resist the call of his lifemate, no matter how hard he tried. Once Mitro was inside with Dax chasing him, Arabejila would call to the mountain to aid her in containing the vampire. She didn’t like the plan, because it meant Dax would end his days there, but she obliged with the promise that as she knew she wouldn’t be able to last long with her lifemate estranged, she would find a good human man among the remaining Tahuantinsuyu or Incas and have a child to carry on her work.
The stirring in his gut told him the vampire was on the move. The crust had grown thin, far too thin, and the pressure inside the volcano was appalling. The vampire’s triumph could be felt through the mountain. Over the last few centuries, after Arabejila had allowed herself to die, each succeeding ancestor had been more human than Carpathian. The women had come to the mountain and, as Arabejila had insisted, had even given birth there to ensure their connection with the earth. The binding had grown weaker over the last few years, not lasting as it should.
Three times the woman had come just in time… but not this time. Mitro’s vicious glee filled the volcano, his will pushing continually at the thinnest part of the crust. He sent out his evil, delaying the woman on her trip, finding weaker minds to entice to his bidding. Arabejila’s blood relation was in danger and she wouldn’t make it to the mountain in time to prevent Mitro’s escape.
Dax searched for the vampire throughout the vast network of chambers and caves. The entire mountain stank of evil, completely obscuring Mitro’s trail from the hunter. Throughout the long years, they’d each done their best to kill the other, but they were evenly matched and they’d only sustained horrendous wounds, recovering in the heated soil time and again, only to engage once again.
Mitro was avoiding all confrontations now, seeing his chance to escape. While they were locked in the remote mountain, the world had passed them by. Dax could only hope that the Carpathian hunters had grown strong and much more skilled than Mitro. Dax was starved and would need recovery time to take up the hunt. He had kept his muscles in shape and practiced his hunting skills to keep himself sane, but he feared his mind was half animal now, and that the invasive evil had crept into his very bones. It would take tremendous discipline, if he found actual substance, not to drain the donor dry.
He prepared himself for the inevitable, but sent a prayer to whatever gods might be, to mother earth herself, that the woman arrived in time.