Mitro was intelligent-far smarter than Danutdaxton would ever be-and the prince should have seen that. All of them should have seen it. Mitro had been wronged so many times. They'd all been jealous of him-especially his brothers. They had said he was ill, that his heart was black, just because he didn't make clean emotionless kills as the Judge did. Mitro enjoyed watching the damned suffer. They deserved it. They'd been condemned, so why shouldn't he have a little fun after he took the time and effort to hunt them down? What business was it of anyone how he dispatched an enemy?
And humans were fodder. Food. Their women were fair game. He felt when he stared into their eyes and took their bodies without their permission while their men watched in horror. So helpless. Like children. Like the animals he ran across and spent hours torturing. The suffering, watching the life leave their eyes, it was all exhilarating. The prince and his brothers didn't want to admit they had the same nature. They weren't supposed to be civilized. The prince wanted to "tame" them, to subdue their natural predatory instincts.
Mitro had tried hard to make the prince understand the harm he was doing to their people. The men lost emotion because their true natures were suppressed. If he could feel without his lifemate, the woman who would cripple him, force him into a mold, take away the very essence of who he was, then so could the other hunters. The women hobbled them-turned them into rabbits when they were meant to be at the top of the food chain.
His brothers tried to stop him from advising the prince, cowards every one of them. They knew he was right, but they feared banishment and loss of status if the sniveling prince disagreed with him. Mitro had been unafraid. He knew he was right. He had the brains and the strength to do what had to be done. He could have anything he wanted, not live restrained by the dictates of a man without any vision.
But now-at last-things would be different. Arabejila was dead, and he would soon be free to rule the earth, as he should have done from the beginning. He floated, rising slowly, careful to exert no energy, knowing any disturbance would draw the hunter to him. He reminded himself how close he was, he just needed to do this right, move so slow, drift with rising gases toward the barrier and reach that very thin wall. He had to time it perfectly. Already he could feel the hunter on the move. He hadn't died then, but Mitro had known all along it wouldn't be that easy.
His heart jolted hard, sending an electrical charge through his body. The current robbed him of breath but gave him a deep satisfaction. He could feel what others could not. He had changed-evolved-to a higher purpose. His imprisonment had only made him stronger and more determined. He would escape and elude Danutdaxton. Without Arabejila to track him, the hunter had lost his edge.
Mitro's veins throbbed and burned; after all these years of suppressing his need for blood, the craving was more powerful than ever, and with it, the yearning to see that horror and revulsion, that terrible fear as he held life or death over his victim. He always chose the strongest of the warriors to kill, deliberately torturing them so the others would see how useless fighting him was. He could turn whole villages against one another. They would sacrifice their children to him when he demanded it. Their young daughters. Their firstborn sons.
He fed on terror. Fear was every bit as important as blood to him. He needed it the way he needed sustenance-delicious, delicious terror. The more he thought of people trembling before him, begging for their lives, the stronger the compulsion became. He'd been too long without food and he craved the fear-inspired adrenaline in his victim's blood when he drank.
He flexed his muscles as he continued to rise toward the barrier keeping him from the top of the volcano where he needed to be when it finally blew. Without Arabejila calming it, the explosion would be catastrophic, flattening and killing everything for miles. His plan was in place, and nothing would stop him now. Not some silly woman and not the Carpathian hunter. He would be free, and he would reign supreme!
The wind rushed down the mountain while towering black clouds chased to the top of the atmosphere, churning and boiling with a dark, ominous anger. Lightning forked across the sky, whips of sizzling electrical currents, snapping and crackling with a kind of rage. Beneath her hands, Riley felt the rising volcanic gases and with those noxious fumes, something else-something horrifyingly evil. These men had come with her and she led them into certain danger. If they remained where they were, and she couldn't slow the blast or redirect it, all of them would die.
"Miguel, you have to take the others and get out of here now," she ordered, already grabbing her mother's pack. "The volcano is going to blow. I can feel the pressure building in the earth."
More than that, she could feel the spreading triumph of evil running below the surface. If she hadn't fully believed the things her mother had told her before, she certainly did now. The malevolence was so acute, her stomach lurched. This was the source that had focused on murdering her mother. The porters were pawns, just as the insects and monkeys had been. Glee and triumph poured from the ground.
Tremors continued, the rain forest shivering constantly. Riley didn't wait to see if Miguel took her at her word-they all had to know an eruption was imminent. She began to run up the narrow trail leading up the mountain. She wouldn't make the entry to the cloud forest, but she'd get close enough. She glanced over her shoulder to see the men hesitating.
"Go now," she urged. "Run."
"Riley, it's too late," Gary called after her. He reached down and caught up her pack and raced after her. "You can't be on the mountain when it goes."
Riley didn't slow down or acknowledge his concern. If she couldn't ease the pressure in the volcano or redirect the blast, not even the archaeologist and his students would be safe. The explosion would be similar to a nuclear bomb going off, devastating everything for miles. She could hear Gary's boots pounding up the trail after her, and then those of a second man and a third. It didn't matter. She couldn't stop them. Each one had to make their choice at this point, and hers was to try to save everyone and make a last effort to keep whatever evil thing dwelled in the volcano trapped.
With every step she took she judged the shivering, trembling ground. How close? How much time? She had to make it as far as she could, yet still give herself time to connect with the volcano and perform the ritual. She would try to seal the evil within the mountain even as she calmed and directed the building volcanic eruption away from the travelers. She could only pray there were no other people on the other side of the mountain, because if she couldn't stop the blast, she'd try for a smaller eruption as far from them as possible.
The ground shook hard, the sound like a thunderclap, throwing her off balance. Gary's hand caught her arm to steady her and they ran together, Jubal right behind them. She wished they hadn't followed her, but a part of her was glad they had. She was fairly certain she wasn't going to make it off the mountain alive and their presence helped to give her determination and courage. She wasn't just fighting for herself. The next tremor, much stronger than the one before, lasted a long minute, warning her she had run out of time. She stopped abruptly and flung her mother's pack on the ground. "It has to be here. We're not where we need to be, but if we're lucky, I can do this."
"We can help," Gary said. "We've participated in a couple of rituals. Tell us what you need us to do."
Riley wasn't going to ask how they knew what to do when she barely knew herself. There just wasn't time, but if by some chance she managed to pull off a miracle, both men were going to answer a lot of questions. She yanked open her mother's pack and removed a small handheld broom made of bunched willow tied tightly together. Hastily she began to sweep out a circle large enough to hold herself and the three men. She moved counterclockwise, brushing the debris free while she whispered her prayer to the four elements, calling them to her as she worked.
Riley had seen her mother perform the ritual of holding the volcano many times, but now that it was her turn, there was so much she didn't know. She had to undo the strands of the evil power permeating the entire volcano and weave powerful strands of her own strong enough to keep the evil contained, holding it within its own constraints, and not allowing it to go free.
"Use the salt," she instructed Gary. "Follow the circle. Jubal, there's sage ..."
"Got it," Jubal said. He lit the sage and walked the circle three times, cleansing the area as he chanted softly under his breath.
"What the hell are you people doing?" Ben demanded. The ground shook continually, the tremors growing longer in duration and much stronger. "We have to get out of here."
"Try to catch up with Miguel and the others," Gary said without looking up. He continued to form the circle with the salt.
"No, whatever you're doing, I'll help," Ben said. "But this is insane."
"Can't you feel the evil?" Riley hissed. She could feel him now, real and powerful, coming at her in waves-his malicious triumph in the murder of her mother. He thought himself safe with her mother dead, and so far, he had no inkling she was on his trail.
"Keep working, Riley," Jubal said. "We'll explain as much as we can to Ben."
Riley was grateful. She had to shut out everything, even the terrible urgency of the moment. She had to find a complete calm and focus if she had any chance at all against so great an evil. She gestured to the men as she stood, inviting them inside the circle of protection just constructed. Even if she was defeated, hopefully she could make this small space safe enough to shield the others.
She walked the circle, envisioning the brightest light she could imagine, holding the black-handled, double-edged athame high. As the circle gained depth, Riley drew the quarters, setting the towers. She called to the elements. Air to the East. Fire to the South. Water to the West. Lastly, she whispered to the North, calling on Earth. Mother Earth. She forced her mind to concentrate on protections and block out the men moving around her.