“You have enemies,” Frisi advised. “Powerful enemies.” He studied Benedek, obviously trying to place him.
Benedek wasn’t in the habit of talking with prey. He took a much more direct approach, simply killing them as quickly as possible. Vampires were deceivers. Cunning. There were no idle conversations with them to pass the time. If they gave information, it was only because they believed it served their purpose to do so. He knew Frisi was stalling to give his two pawns time to sneak up on the hunter.
“I believe you are the one with the powerful enemies,” Benedek contradicted. He kept his voice low, conversational. He had scar tissuefrom the long healing process when his throat had been cut. His voice wasn’t something he could always count on, so he rarely used it. Only when he was with his brethren from the monastery or when it was absolutely necessary.
Frisi looked around him warily. A few yards away, Elek and Odon emerged from where they had been hiding, separating to come at Benedek’s back from two different angles. Frisi visibly relaxed.
“Why would you think I am the one with enemies?” His red-rimmed eyes gleamed with satisfaction. The fingernails began to lengthen into curved talons that looked as if they were made of steel.
Benedek swept his hand toward the carnage of the vampire’s pack. As he did so, Dacso screamed in hatred, defiance and utter fear. Lightning streaked across the sky and then jumped toward the grove.
“I believe your right hand has just fallen,” he said. “You have gone from ten to three. Soon to be two, one worthless, as you well know. Why wouldn’t the one who sent you warn you we were ancients? Had they done so, you wouldn’t have come near us. They didn’t even tell you how many of us there are. I would say you were set up to be rid of you.”
Elek was already lagging behind, allowing Odon to take the lead on his side. Frisi hissed and clacked his nails together, allowing a long stream of poisonous breath to escape toward Benedek while at the same time reprimanding Elek. The master vampire’s eyes suddenly widened, and he called out a warning, but it was too late. A large wolf sprang out of the trees and hit Odon full in the chest, claws ripping through the chest wall, the long snout tearing through muscle to get to the heart.
“Do you see?” Benedek asked, his voice even lower, so if the master vampire wanted to hear, he would have to give the hunter his full attention. “What did you do that made you such a powerful enemy that they would send you to your doom?”
Elek should have crept up behind Benedek. That was the plan. He had stopped and was staring in fear and awe at the saber-tooth wolf. His mouth was wide open in a soundless scream of sheer terror. Drool ran down his chin as saliva flew from his mouth in long streams ofthick yellow-green poison. Tiny parasites wiggled in the strings and plopped to the ground each time the drool became long enough.
The master vampire looked at his pawn with disgust. He had given up watching the fight between Nicu and Odon as if he knew it was a foregone conclusion that Odon was doomed.
He waved his hand toward his remaining pawn. “This is what we have come to.”
Benedek shrugged and glided a step closer. “Your choice, Frisi. You took what you thought would be an easy hit and ran into five experienced ancients. You are already dead.”
“I have information to trade for my life.” Frisi’s voice turned sly.
“I do not trade information for the life of the undead.”
“Even when it involves your lifemate?” He indicated the wolf, now in the process of tearing apart Odon. “Or his? Or any of the others? You are traveling with a specific destination in mind. You will not reach that destination. The word has been sent to stop you.”
“What is the return to entice a master such as yourself? It must be huge for you to bother. You have never answered to anyone and yet you allow yourself to be used. It was your choice, Frisi,” he added to ensure the master vampire believed Benedek respected him.
Vampires were notoriously egotistical, particularly master vampires who wanted everyone around them to understand they were still living on earth due to their capabilities and clever, cunning wits. Flattery often got them talking, revealing things they wouldn’t ordinarily impart—especially to a hunter.
Benedek didn’t care about injuries to himself. Fighting a master vampire, it was inevitable to sustain wounds, but the thought didn’t cross his mind. Being injured, even severely, didn’t matter to him, despite knowing he had a lifemate. He couldn’t force himself to meet the dawn because he’d vowed to take down as many predators as possible. He didn’t renege on his vows or compromise his code. By stalling, he was giving Nicu time to defeat Odon and allowing Mataias, Tomas and Lojos to ensure that all the vampire underlings were destroyed.
They were hunters. Egos weren’t involved. They destroyed vampires and predators as fast and as efficiently as possible. No one cared who had the most kills or how experienced the vampire. They got the job done as quickly as possible with the least amount of damage to themselves. It made sense, especially when traveling fast, to use all resources, including all of them going up against the most experienced fighter.
“I was promised Carpathian blood for me and every one of my followers.” Frisi hesitated and then a look of cunning came over his face. “Allow me to go and I will tell you the plans to kill the woman in the village you seek. The one who is lifemate to one of you. Give me your word of honor that I will be unharmed.”
Benedek’s answer was a full-on attack. He moved with blurring speed straight at Frisi, the assault so unexpected that the vampire was unprepared as Benedek hit him hard, driving forward, impaling the undead on his outstretched knife hand. Frisi shrieked his fear and hatred and then spat poisonous venom at Benedek’s face and neck. His hands went up, those sharp talons made of steel, raking Benedek’s neck to open wounds to allow the venom to enter his bloodstream.
Frisi screamed for Elek to join with him, to attack the Carpathian hunter from behind. Benedek didn’t glance to his left or right, or even care if the pawn would attack his back. His only goal was to destroy Frisi. His only thought was to kill him and send him to the other world, where someone else could judge his sins. That wasn’t his job. It wasn’t personal. It was a matter of justice.
He didn’t acknowledge the razor-sharp nails tearing his skin open. He didn’t feel as the vampire injected the venom into him. There was the rush that came with battle, a dark satisfied feeling that had crept up on him unawares several centuries earlier. That had been the beginning of the scars marking theinsideof his body. Thick scars that covered his heart and tried to vein across the darkness that was half his soul. The more often he killed in battle, the more those inevitable scars marked him as changing into something else, something potentially terrifying and deadly—more so than he was already.
Lightning forked across the sky and then slammed to earth, signaling the demise of Odon. They were down to Frisi and Elek. Elek hadn’t rushed to the aid of his master. He backed away rather than stalk Benedek from behind. The moment he saw Odon fall, he shifted, taking to the air in his effort to get away. He took the form of a small owl, his intention to fly quickly through the forest, his small shape allowing him to speed through the numerous branches.
A cat leapt at the owl, claws ripping through the head and breast so that black acid poured out of the lacerations. The cat was small, fierce and relentless, hooking nails into the owl so that they both plummeted to the ground. At the last moment, the cat shifted, and Nicu materialized. As Elek shifted in sheer desperation, Nicu stepped into him and took his heart. The battle was over in seconds, leaving the master vampire to fight on his own.
Benedek refused to withdraw his hand despite the vicious raking from Frisi’s steel talons. When he couldn’t dislodge Benedek or shake him in any way, the vampire changed tactics, leaning forward to tear at the hunter’s shoulder with spiked teeth. It was a move Benedek was very familiar with, and he changed the composition of his shoulder before the teeth sadistically bit down.
Frisi’s teeth clamped down hard on the diamond-hard shoulder and shattered, the spikes falling like pieces of blackened tacks from his mouth. Black acid poured from his mouth as he threw his head back and screamed for his pawns. His talons raked at the hunter’s arm, trying to saw it in two, hacking away, piercing the flesh and muscle to the bone as the fingers gripped his heart and began to pull it from his body.
The master vampire thrashed wildly, using his legs to climb Benedek’s body. Tomas materialized on the left, a sword in his hand. He swung the blade, removing the vampire’s head so that it hit the ground and rolled obscenely, coming to a halt against a rock. Lightning veined the sky in a multitude of crackling, white-hot whips.
Benedek tossed the withered heart into the air and stepped back, allowing Mataias to incinerate the heart, head and body of the vampire.
