The shimmering rainbow glittering in the white fog slowly took the shape of Aidan’s tall, powerful frame striding through the mist.
The vampire leaned over the trunk of the car, prepared to grab the sleeping child. He stopped abruptly, suddenly wary, his thin lips drawn back in a snarl, exposing long, yellowed fangs. His head undulated back and forth on a skinny, wrinkled neck like that of a reptile. His cold eyes suspiciously examined the trunk, then the blackened ground. He followed the trail of charred bits of flesh. A long, slow hiss of foul breath escaped his mouth, and his red-rimmed eyes swung to take in Aidan’s approach.
The vampire stepped back from the open trunk and the sleeping child. “You think to trap me with so cheap a trick, hunter?” he growled accusingly, a clicking sound accompanying his once beautiful voice, now putrefied by his decaying soul.
Aidan halted a short distance away. “We both know I have no need of tricks, dead one,” he said softly, his tone so pure it physically hurt the vampire’s ears. “That is more your style, using small children as pawns. You have fallen far, Diego. You were once a great man.” The voice had dropped an octave lower, and, despite his hatred of its purity, the vampire strained to hear the rippling notes.
“
Man,”
the vampire sneered. “Do not insult me by naming me such a weakling. You have been brainwashed by Mikhail. For centuries he has lied to us, made us sheep. He has driven our people into the ground, attempted to take our rightful power from us. Open your eyes, hunter. See what you do. You kill your own kind.”
“You are not my kind, Diego. You have chosen to debase and murder those less strong than you. Women. Children. Innocent humans. I am not like you.”
The vampire sucked in his breath, an audible sound of hatred. “It is easy for you to say so, when the scent of your woman clings to your every pore.”
“I am two centuries older than you. Even before my lifemate came and brought me light, I did not turn as you did to make my life easier,” Aidan said quietly. “Do not abdicate responsibility for your actions. It is not Mikhail or your lack of a lifemate that brought you so low. It was your choice to become what you are.”
The thin lips drew back, exposing receding gums stained with red. The white skin of Diego’s face was drawn tightly over his bones, giving him a skeletal appearance. He lifted a bony hand tipped with razor-sharp nails and pointed toward the open trunk. “You think you are too powerful for me to defeat, but I am not without my own powers.”
Aidan kept his fear for Joshua locked away in some deep, secret part of his soul. His face remained impassive, even serene. In his mind he felt Alexandria gasp as snakes began to swarm up over the car. Aidan didn’t move or speak, not even to reassure his lifemate. He was proud of her silence, of the fact that she remained as still and as trusting as ever.
If the vampire was creating an illusion, it was a perfect one. Aidan could actually detect life in the wriggling reptiles. They seemed real enough, although how the vampire could have called so many of them to him so quickly, Aidan didn’t know. He attempted to call to the snakes, to draw them away, but they were creatures of the vampire, completely enslaved. The first viper made its way into the trunk. Almost immediately several others fell in after it. Their hollow trunks were followed instantly by a hot sizzling, and the smell of cooking meat filled the air as snake after snake went to its death. Finally the vampire raised his hand, and the remaining snakes slithered back to the ground, curling around his ankles.
“What do you say we dispense with these childish games?” Aidan said. “Come to me, Diego, and remember the man you once were.” His voice was so compelling, so enthralling, so hypnotic, that the vampire nearly stepped forward.
Then Diego snarled, the sound harsh and ugly in contrast to Aidan’s voice. “I will kill you, then the boy, and take your woman.” His smile was grotesque. “She will suffer long and much for your sins.”
Aidan shrugged carelessly. “Should you do the impossible and defeat me, my lifemate will choose to follow me, and you will have no chance to get her in your hands. The child will be safe, because there is another hunter in this area, one far greater than myself. You cannot defeat me. No one can defeat him.” He said it complacently, with complete confidence.
The vampire screamed again, a hysterical fury that threatened to consume them both. “Gregori! How dare he come to this land? What gives him the right? That is a perfect example of Mikhail’s hypocrisy.” Then the voice turned appeasing, cunning. “Gregori is not like you, Aidan. You are a fair man. Morality rules your actions. Misguided your hunting may be, but nevertheless you do as you do because you think you must.” The vampire looked around and lowered his voice. “Gregori is a cold-blooded killer. He feels no remorse. I have heard tales, rumors, that others swear are true. The healer has killed illegally. Pretending to be the best of our people, he is the worst, and Mikhail sanctions this abomination.”
To an untrained ear, that insidious voice would have been beguiling, persuasive. But Aidan could see the gray skin shrunken over the skull. The dried blood beneath the long, yellowed fingernails. The receding gums and exaggerated fangs. Most of all he was very aware of the small, vulnerable boy in the trunk of a car, placed there as the instrument of the vampire’s revenge.
“You seek to buy yourself time, dead one. Why? What plan do you have that you would pretend to be my friend?” Even as Aidan spoke, the vipers hissed hideously and swarmed toward him, a slithering mass of writhing bodies.
As the snakes neared his feet, they changed shape, became women crawling toward him, obscenely sexual, hissing, their long, forked tongues flicking at him. Using the fog to cover his movements, Aidan reappeared behind the vampire. As Diego turned this way and that, Aidan struck, a swift, killing blow designed to end the conflict quickly. But at the last moment the vampire leapt away, and his creatures, half female, half snake, growled and spat venom at Aidan, scrambling toward him on their bellies and hands and knees.
Do not pay attention to his illusions. Never take your eyes off the vampire. He waits for your inattention.
Alexandria’s voice was soft and sweet in his mind, clearing away any cobwebs the illusionist was weaving to confuse him.
He is skilled, this one,
cara, he acknowledged.
Not skilled enough,
she responded with complete faith in him.
The women on the ground set up a wail, a low, keening, mournful whine that rose on the wind. Aidan smiled at the vampire with a lazy, self-confident smile. “You are trying to call Gregori to our little battle? You are much more foolish than I thought. Even I, who have nothing to fear, would not want to disturb Gregori’s solitude. With this racket, he is certain to join us.” His golden eyes slashed at the vampire, found the dull, dead gaze, and locked onto it, holding the other man in their molten depths. “I worked closely with Gregori for several years. Did you know that, Diego? What he does, he does coolly and efficiently. There is no other like him. Perhaps in your final moment you wish to test your meager skills against his greatness.”
The vampire’s bullet-shaped head was undulating again, the skull swinging back and forth rhythmically. He hissed a command, and the obscene creatures of his invention moaned and slunk away. Chanting, he waved a hand at them, and the wailing women slowly shape-shifted back to snakes. Ordinary, harmless garden snakes.
The vampire began to move in a slow, careful, sinister dance. He circled Aidan, the hard shells of the cockroaches crunching beneath his shoes. His head continued to move slowly back and forth, his fangs gleaming and dripping saliva. Aidan faced the vampire stoically, refusing to look at his dancing feet noisily crushing the insects or at the garden snake approaching from his left.