Mitro kept his movements slow and deliberate in spite of the urge to rush toward the thinning crust and push hard to get out. He had succeeded where so many others failed because he was patient and tenacious. They had made a terrible mistake, trapping him inside the volcano. They thought it a prison, a torture chamber, but he had grown into something else, something more. He found a treasure beyond price, and he had all the time in the world to plan his revenge-and his vengeance knew no bounds.
He still had to evade the hunter and get through the barrier Arabejila and her assassin had erected to keep him close to the center of the volcano. Over time he had tested that barrier, and over the past years he had thinned it in one place without the hunter noticing. He had been stealthy, staying away from the area for long periods of time and careful never to leave a trace behind. He had even worked at the safeguards in other places, determined this spot would be his true escape hatch should the others fail. This was his chance and he wouldn't risk losing it by giving away his position too soon.
Mitro couldn't chance another battle with the hunter. Just as he'd grown into something more, so had Danutdaxton-a relentless hunter he'd known since childhood. "The Judge," they called him. Even as a boy he'd been a serious warrior and everyone, including the prince, had made a big deal over him. Mitro had done his best to pretend to be his friend, but watching everyone grovel around him was truly sickening.
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.