Dracula Unleashed (2 page)

At three o'clock in the morning, the doorways of the Old Town neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, were as dark as an open mouth. The buildings with their Old West–style false fronts loomed over the narrow street, an urban mountain pass with sheer cliff walls that hid a myriad of hiding places. Every corner held the promise of violence.

Chad Trask, former leader of the area's largest gang of idle rich kids, stiffened as a trickle of icy sensation moved along his hairline.

The ten young did not walk unobserved. Hungry creatures hid in those shadows.

The blood in his veins pumped hot and fast. His breath sped up. The tiny prickle grew into the unshakeable knowledge that they were being tracked. After the events of last Halloween, he knew more than the average human about being hunted.

His friends were walking into a trap. Just as the smooth sides of the pitcher plant enticed flies into the digestive soup at the bottom, the silence and seeming quietness lured them into deadly carelessness.

He interjected a warning. “Guys, we have to go.”

“Shut up, Trask.”

Andrew, Chad's former second, didn't even glance at the low man on the totem pole. His attention was solely on the yellow and black giant snake that was wrapped around the bronze center column of the Skidmore Fountain. The serpent's body was thicker than Chad's torso. Its blunt, triangular head was longer than a barstool.

The snake's pink and black tongue lapped at the water in the top basin, its green slit-pupiled eyes watching Andrew. Its body slithered around the main bowl of water, coiling and uncoiling as though it knew what the group planned.

“Let's show what we think of demon freaks in our town.” Andrew giggled. He rolled forward on his toes, sadistic anticipation clear in the tight line of his body.

Chad turned up the collar of his jacket, disgusted with himself, but unable to stop the inevitable progression from taunting to throwing garbage to greater violence. Even when Andrew lit a cigarette.

“Hold it down, boys,” the former second ordered. “Let's light this bastard up.”

The group hesitated at the command. Killing a paranormal creature was against international law. That meant war.

A real war.

“No body, no crime,” he reminded them. “Do it. What's one more dead demon?”

Chad's stomach twisted. Bile flooded his mouth. He couldn't do this. He knew fear and pain from his encounters last winter. He would not visit it upon another being.

As the other boys closed in, the snake hissed. Chad swore he heard words.

“Did it just call us potato chips?” Andrew's eyebrows rose in indignation.

Derisive laughter echoed through the tension.

As one, the gang whirled to face the speakers.

Two men dressed in identical shiny black clothing stood in the middle of the street. Each had a highly unnatural white stripe starting at their left temple and sweeping to the back of their heads. Heavy gel ensured that not a hair strayed out of their carefully arranged coiffures. They were dressed head to toe in black PVC, buckles, and chains. Long, white fangs glittered in their smiles.

The men looked like skunks auditioning for a slick futuristic movie. The gang tittered. They jiggled from foot to foot. Andrew ran a finger under the collar of his T-shirt.

Now they remembered meeting a vampire before.

Chad's ass tightened. He knew what kind of people moved as silently as hunting tigers and possessed those white, white teeth.

They looked like predators who had gone hungry for a very long time.

The one on the left murmured something to the other. Both laughed out loud. The one on the right licked his lips and cracked his knuckles.

“Outta the way, freaks,” Andrew demanded, working a pair of brass knuckles onto his right hand.

Chad had no idea what the two vampires were saying, but the way they looked at his friends' necks was all too familiar. He shoved his way toward the front of his former friends.

“We really don't want to do this,” Chad murmured in Andrew's ear.

“Shut up, Trask.” The words were accompanied by a casual elbow to the kidneys.

Chad skittered away, his breath catching from the pain. Once he was safely behind the rest of his now-endangered friends, he hung his head and pinched the fold of skin between his eyebrows. He belonged to quite possibly the stupidest bunch of people in the world.

Too bad none of his crew had learned a damn thing from their first experience with a vampire last November. Was it possible they had forgotten about the dark woman who had schooled them in manners with a few choice words and supernatural strength?

“Did you hear me, you weirdos? Hand over your wallets and you don't get hurt.”

Ever since his problems of last winter, Chad had haunted the library in search of information. Humans had a very low chance of surviving a vampire attack. Knowing himself to be a coward, he shuffled toward an alley.

There was no way this would end well.

Another rush of the foreign language.

“Speak English, you assholes.” Andrew rushed the two men, his fist swinging in great shining circles toward their heads.

“No!” Chad shouted, but he was drowned out by his friend's sudden screams.

It happened so fast, like everything did with killers. One second, his friend had been charging like a rhinoceros. The next, he hung limp in a vampire's hands, his neck pulled to the side, the tendons tight and quivering under the strain.

Bright fangs flashed in the streetlight's glare. The vampire's black and white head bent over Andrew's throat. His gaze taunting, he stuck out a long pink tongue, shockingly pale and healthy looking next to vampiric pallor. Deliberately, he licked the thin skin where Andrew's pulse beat.

Chad swiveled his head side to side, desperate for someone, anyone to appear. The street was completely empty. No cops, no homeless people, no random late dog-walker, not even a drunken partygoer in sight. The snake grinned, its eyes showing malicious glee at their danger. It casually unwound from its fountain perch, blocking off the gang's escape to the back.

They were so screwed. Panic and bile filled Chad's esophagus. Swallowing down the vile acid, he took a deep breath.

There was only one thing to do.

He opened his mouth to scream for help when his friends responded the only way they knew how.

They rushed the vampires, screaming meaningless insults.

“Freaks!”

“This is a human town!”

“You're going to die for this!”

Oh, shit.

As they surged forward, Chad dove to the side and rolled into the mouth of an alley. Even there, the blood splattered his face and clothes. He couldn't outrun them, but better to retreat than advance to certain death. The snake took no notice of him as it undulated into the fray.

His friends would have called him a coward if they weren't getting slaughtered. He ran as fast as he ever had, his legs burning. He kept to the lighted areas, never looking back.

His breath came in short, painful puffs, but his gang's screams had stopped.

Hell, that was not a good thing.

Portland burst open in blood and hatred as the next world war erupted.

 

“Mom, watch this. Mom. Mom. MOM!”
Minerva Josephine Victoria Janté chanted her demands for attention in Valerie Tate's mind. It was a chant that had gone on. And on.

All. Day. Long.

Some mothers took tranquilizers. Others posted on the Internet. Valerie's own mother had been known to “entertain” good-looking junior soldiers. Whereas Valerie herself craved the perfect combination of sweet and salty, caffeine, and nutrition: blood and cola.

How else was a vampire supposed to deal with the highly advanced psychic powers her child had? Half-angel and half-vampire, Minerva had powers no one expected from one so young.

“Let me guess. You are going to drop something,” she called from the kitchen.

The baby huffed an indignant breath. Valerie dug her back teeth into her left cheek. No smiling while her child was pouting, even though her daughter's Cupid's bow mouth would be pursed like she was spitting out something foul. Such a sour expression on her angelic face.

A familiar clatter told Valerie that Minerva had dropped yet another utensil. Was that her fiftieth or sixtieth of the day? Really, how long could one vampire watch her flatware fall to the floor and treat it like it was the discovery of a new world?

She took a pitcher of blood in one hand, a cold can of soda in the other, and shoved the appliance's door closed with her elbow. The condensation on the can of cola chilled her sweating palms. Summer in Geneva could be shockingly hot and humid for a place surrounded by icy mountains. She smiled. This beverage would be delicious.

Valerie rounded the divider between the kitchen and the living room. She shook her head in mock awe at the youngest Dracul's prowess this afternoon. The floor shone with dropped silverware.

The game had gone like this: Valerie handed Minerva a spoon. Minerva dropped the spoon. Valerie handed Minerva a fork. Minerva dropped the fork. Valerie did not pick any of it up.

She was familiar with intestine-strewn battlefields, not domesticity. The best she could do was shovel the clinking lot into the dishwasher and push Clean.

Fortunately, her little family owned a lot of forks. Somewhere between the small treasures she had carried, John's collection, and what Lance had retained from his human life, they were well supplied with more droppables than the average household.

“Here.” She placed the last salad fork on the table in front of Minerva. “Go to town, kid.” She set down her pitcher and can. Her wet hands left pinkish smears of bloody sweat.

Her mouth watering in anticipation of her cool treat, Valerie poured her dinner.

The two fluids mixed together in a swirl of red and black.

Red and black. The colors of Mina Harker's blood on the hood of Valerie's ruined car.

Valerie squeezed her eyes closed.

No, she would not remember. She
refused
to remember. The glass did not tremble in her hand as the vampiress deliberately sipped her drink. Think it through. Apply the coldblooded ruthlessness she was famous for.

Valerie swallowed. Old anger flushed her normally room-temperature body.

It all came back to that book.

That
fucking
book.

According to Bram Stoker, Mina, a virtuous Victorian miss, had been seduced by a vampire named Dracula. He had bitten her three times, creating a mental connection that had led to his death.

The reality had been somewhat different.

Radu, her little brother, had fallen for Mina the moment he caught her wood-smoke and lavender scent in the dirty London air. Radu pursued Mina for the same reasons Vlad had avoided her.

She was the reborn soul of Ilona, Vlad Dracula's wife. The woman both brothers loved.

Just as Radu had captured and turned Ilona, he stalked and bit Mina. Unlike Ilona, though, Radu did not turn Mina. When she proved to be less fiery in this incarnation, he left her thrice-bitten, near immortal, and with unknown powers.

Vlad had refused to let her memory ease. He kept her diamonds in his ears. Every vehicle he had owned, he named for her.

Mina had gone mad from the centuries after Radu's bites. Last spring, Lucifer and his Fallen Angels chose to manipulate her insanity to forward their own plans. Their interference backfired. Her powers nearly destroyed Valerie, Lance, John, and the Fallen.

A violent death had been the only way.

Valerie rubbed her eyes, trying to scrub the flashback from her memory. She had killed in numbers untold. Her name was synonymous with reckless murder. She had seen firsthand the horrors of the Nazi camps.

Why this death? Why this time? Why couldn't she stop remembering? It wasn't as if Ilona's soul hadn't died before. The first time Ilona died, Radu turned her into a vampire. Years later, Valerie killed her during Napoleon's failing campaign in Spain.

Valerie sat at the table next to Minerva's high chair. Valerie watched her drink swirl as she pushed the glass around in small circles. What in the name of Lucifer's hairy back was going on?

Maybe she was stressed. So much had happened in the last year. Lance Soliel's love and his angel blood had transformed her from a vampire into something with no name. The surprise of falling in love with John Janté and then bearing a child had cracked her wide open, leaving her adrift in unfamiliar emotional territory.

The muscles between Valerie's breasts would not relax, no matter how often her husbands rubbed them. The sun blared in through the curtains like a trumpet blast in Valerie's eyes. She could operate in direct sunlight since she had drunk from an angel, but the brightness fatigued her. The ceramic pitcher of blood cooled her forehead.

Misery held her in jagged iron jaws, twisting her thoughts until sleep was a dim memory.

Valerie's fingertips dug into the wooden tabletop. Her sharp fingernails cut another round of half-moons to join the collection she had been trying to hide with tablecloths. Soon, her husbands would discover the marks. What would she do then?

The last fork fell to the ground with a discordant crash. The high chair clunked. Minerva must have bounced in her seat.

“Come pick it up,”
the half-angel, half-vampire child demanded.

Valerie's eyes opened. Her fingers dug in harder. No one used that arrogant tone on Valerie. Not since her father had died. The strain of ignoring the memory, the sun, and her own hunger pushed her temper. Instead of giving in to her rising irritation, she took a deep, refreshing slurp of her drink. Easy. It wasn't Minerva's fault she sounded just like Valerie's centuries-dead father. A father who shaped Dracula into the war machine that had terrorized the world since the 1400s. The iron-hard muscles in her back twisted further.

Minerva slapped her little fist on the high chair's red plastic tray.
“Do as I say.”
Pure autocratic Dracul command laced the baby's mental voice.

Valerie's temper raged beyond reason or control. Blood hazed her vision. Her teeth grew, her body filled with supernatural power.

She banged her own fist on the table. With a great roar, she flung the back of her arm across the messy table. Empty plates and her half-full tumbler leaped into the air. Blood and cola washed across the floor like a tidal wave. Thin glass shattered against the floor, spraying the room with razor-sharp shards. Rough brown pottery smashed into the walls. A cut opened on Valerie's temple and more blood poured into her eyes.

Her fangs clashed together inches from her infant daughter's nose.
“I'm in charge. Talk back to me and I'll kill you.”

Minerva burst into frightened tears. Instead of the normal saltwater drops, the child cried like a vampire. Tracks of blood ran down her baby-round cheeks. The shriek of her cries penetrated Valerie's miasma of fury.

She shuddered to a halt.

Her own father had said those exact words when she was a child. Now she was saying them to her innocent daughter.

Valerie sat down hard, the chair creaking beneath the pressure. Despite all the ways she had changed since meeting and unofficially marrying Lance and John, she remained, at her core, a heartless, soulless murderer from a family of killers. It would be so easy to destroy this fragile, unique life.

Thank all that lived that Minerva had not so much as a scrape on her.

Perhaps the Creator did have mercy.

Now that love had warmed her dead heart and taught her the meaning of fear, she would not be able to survive if she hurt her own child.

Tears raced down her face. Mother and daughter wept together. After several minutes, Valerie wiped at her own cheeks with the flat of her palm. She dabbed at Minerva's little face. Crimson smeared over both of them.

“Oh, hell. Baby, I'm so sorry.” She picked Minerva out of her high chair and held the crying toddler close. “Kid, I know shit about being a parent.”

Nothing like this happened when her partners were home.

Her husband John Janté had access to his own mother, as well as the dizzying array of books written for humans. Her other husband, Lance Soliel, the Angel of the Lost, had access to Divine Wisdom.

Valerie had two violent role models from the 1400s and no experience in caring for a child. She'd never given her blood, tears, and sweat to create a new vampire. The responsibility had been too great.

Lucifer's teeth, she'd never even owned a pet.

“Ah, darling.” She took a dropped butter knife in her hand and stared into the shiny steel. No reflection stared back at her. Instead, she ran her sharp thumbnail along the small scratches that marred the surface. Metal curled away from her nail and dropped on the already trashed floor.

Disgusted with herself, she flung the knife away. It landed, hilt deep, in one of John's Toulouse-Lautrec posters. A woman who peered coyly over her petticoats now sported a knife handle in the middle of her forehead.

A killing shot. Executed the way her father had taught her.

“Kid, you drew a bad hand when your soul chose me.”

Minerva's eyes widened at the spectacle.
“Good aim, Mom.”
She sounded impressed.

The tension between Valerie's eyebrows eased. Her kid was easily distracted. Maybe she wouldn't be ruined by her mom's temper tantrum.

The toddler reached her hand out toward the knife in the wall. She grunted. Small lines appeared between her feathery, dark eyebrows.

Valerie pressed her lips together, curious at Minerva's unusual vocalization and steady concentration. The baby chattered like crazy in her parents' head, but had not verbalized.

The knife pulled free from the wall. It lifted in the air and spun like a tornado. The sunlight reflected off the metal, throwing rainbows through the trashed room. With a
swoosh
, the knife flew.

The blade buried itself into a different Lautrec poster, this of a singing woman in a snake-patterned dress. Right into her open mouth.

“Whee!”
In a display of unusual coordination, she clapped her little hands in the glee of a good shot.

Valerie's tears dried in both pride and despair. Her daughter was as dark as her mother. Lance's angel blood did not negate the Dracul urge for violence and power. John's ability to guide Fallen Angels toward their true calling did not wash away Minerva's innate facility for death.

What could Valerie do? Should she punish her daughter, force her to bury this part of herself? Tell her that killing only begat more killing? Destroy her before she grew into an unstoppable monster like her mother and her uncle?

She took a deep breath. In the end, she said the only truth she had. “Good aim, kid.”

Her beautiful daughter grinned, her fangs bright and happy in her bloodstained face.

Perhaps they could both learn to control their drive toward carnage.

“Here.” She tossed a fork in a gentle arc toward Minerva. “Try again.”

 

 

Hours later, after her daughter slept and the sun set behind the Alps, Valerie wrapped her arms and legs around her husband John. He pressed the thick head of his penis deeper inside her vagina. Her internal muscles quivered, trying to take him all the way. The tanned skin around his green eyes narrowed as he grinned at her.

“Ahh,
chou,
” he purred in her ear. “You take me so well.”