Dark Legend Page 0,134

attempt to deliver the killing blow momentarily. He was ready for it. He had tricks, illusions, so much power. He was fresh, without real injury, while the hunter had been weakened battling his lesser servants. The undead knew he had scored a terrible blow to the hunter and the creatures had drained precious blood from him, yet the hunter stood tall and straight with the black eyes of death.

Was that his voice whispering in his head? Where was it coming from? No Carpathian male had ever exchanged blood with him. He had no connection with anyone, yet he could hear that soft whisper calling him to his death. The words were clearer now. They spoke so gently of death. Of hopelessness. There was no hope. This hunter would take his life. He would die this night after surviving where others could not. "Who are you?" The vampire shrieked.

"Death," the beautiful voice whispered.

"I am Gabriel," Gabriel replied. He was leery of the firestorm raging in the skies, his every sense flaring out to locate the one initiating the blasts. Their creator was definitely one of much skill and power.

Lucian.

There was no spillage, nothing to tell where the power came from, it simply surrounded Gabriel and the vampire, a force of great destruction.

The vampire snarled, his sharp teeth stained from years of tainted blood. "You think to defeat me with clever tricks. No hunter has defeated me in centuries, but you, an unknown, presume to challenge me."

All at once Gabriel was weary. He had played out this same scene on so many battlefields, in so many countries, in so many centuries. It was always the same. The vampire was attempting to use his voice to weaken Gabriel's confidence.

Gabriel's head went up, his dark features hardening into an expressionless mask. "You know of me, ancient one. You do not want to know me, as I have been named legend by our people. You cannot defeat me. The battle is already won and justice has finally come to you."

There was a curious whisper brushing Gabriel's mind. A soft note of censure almost, yet not quite. Gabriel was not using his own voice to defeat the ancient killer as he should have been. He was tired from blood loss; the stench of death filled his mind and heart. He was tired of destroying his own people time and time again. He would do what was necessary, but he did not have to enjoy it.

The vampire suddenly covered his ears and began to wail in a high-pitched tone, attempting to drown out the insidious whispering of that velvet voice. There was a quality to that voice that insisted on being heard. It was sapping his strength, taking his power, removing his abilities. Shrieking his hatred and fear, the vampire played his last card, jerking his arms wide and calling his minions to the kill.

At once the mire erupted with hundreds of huge leeches, boiling out of the mud to swarm at Gabriel. Even as they did so, the air groaned with a sudden infestation of owls, a black cloud of bodies that dove, talons ex- tended, straight for the hunter. The vampire turned to make his escape and ran straight into the Carpathian. The hunter seemed to shimmer out of the air itself, his face a mask of granite.

The vampire looked down and saw his chest, wide open, his withered heart pulsing in the fist of the hunter. The man never changed expression, yet he seemed to be fading in and out, almost an illusion. Only his fist was all too real. The vampire screamed his hatred and defiance, lunging forward in an attempt to recover his stolen heart. He fell facedown in the muck of his own making, the leeches finding him immediately. They covered his body, filling the empty hole in his chest.

Gabriel had been forced to dissolve when the vampire sent his servants to attack. He had risen high above the ground, into the clouds themselves. Now he directed the electrically charged air in a thin whip along the ground to sear the leeches and fry the raptors right out of the sky. They rained on the earth, their blackened bodies plopping into the bog. He could see the vampire lying in the muck along with his minions and wondered for a moment what trick the undead thought to play. What good would it do to pretend death?

With his superior eyesight, Gabriel could see the vampire's heart several feet from his body, lying