Authors: Linda Mercury

Dracula's Secret (20 page)

BOOK: Dracula's Secret

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Chapter 33

“Do you know what I want, Father?”

Lance tensed against the tape that held his wrists and elbows behind his back. His chest wounds broke open. His shoulders screamed at the stretch. Defeated by the limits of the human body, he slumped back against the hull in the main salon of the sailboat. Chad burrowed underneath a chair, curling himself into a tiny, unnoticeable ball.

Radu Tepes leaned his buttocks against the backgammon table and crossed his ankles. Unhurriedly, he reached into his inner jacket pocket.

Chad whimpered.

Radu gave a smug smile and pulled out a cigar.

Aromatic smoke filled the cabin as Radu posed and puffed. The vampire intended to project the image of a king lounging on a throne. Instead, Tepes looked like a preening, overconfident jerk. Lance curled his upper lip into a sneer of disgust.

In response, the vampire blew a smoke ring into Lance's face. He refused to look away. Radu would lose this test of wills. It was a small consolation, but it was all Lance had left.

Radu broke first. With one hand, he pulled Chad out from his hidey-hole. The boy hung limply in Radu's grip, gone beyond terror into white-faced, sweating shock.

Sharp white teeth descended toward Chad's carotid artery. Radu dragged the sharp tips across the trembling skin, taunting Lance with his helplessness.

Radu touched Chad's ear with his tongue and sighed as though he tasted of exquisite wine.

“Please don't,” Chad whispered.

“Hush, child,” the potential president murmured. “I want my people to have the power humans deny us.” He dipped his fangs into Chad. Two red dots bubbled to the surface. The vampire licked them, the crimson obscene on his mouth.

“Supposedly, we are citizens. We obey the laws we agreed to. We submitted to taxation and mortal administration of government. And in return, we are underpaid. Undereducated. Unable to defend ourselves against the predations of your kind. Refused legal protection. No matter the crime, we are the first accused.”

Never breaking eye contact with Lance, Radu took another sip from Chad.

“I was going to kill you outright, Father.” Radu's tone turned the honorific into a slur. “But instead, I'll turn you. You will obey me while I remake the world.” The vampire dropped Chad on the table and approached Lance.

Lance kicked against his bonds but only managed to knock himself over to the floor. Being bitten would be a disaster. He'd never attain his redemption. He'd never die. No more rides on the Wheel for him to save his soul. Anger fueled his head slam into Radu's nose.

Tepes didn't even blink as his nose knitted back into shape.

“Pathetic.” Radu held Lance's chin in an unbreakable grip and forced him to expose his neck.

“Hmmm. I thought your lover would have marked you. Not as bad-ass as she thinks she is. Don't worry. This won't hurt a bit.”

Sulfur made Lance's stomach flip in disgust. Radu lacked Valerie's clean rosemary smell. He closed his eyes against his doom.

An ear-splitting roar burst the glass in the portholes.

“Lucifer!” Radu jerked back from Lance's throat.

Shards sprayed the room as Valerie, naked and dripping, materialized from the shadows. What miracle had saved her? Lance's chest leapt in astonishment, then fear. Valerie's face was as cold-as-bone. Hollow cheeks turned her sensual face into a death's head. This was unstoppable blood lust.

Her enormous fangs plunged into the other vampire's neck. This was not the civilized, erotic feeding portrayed in movies. She glutted on Radu like a rabid bear tearing a village apart. Tepes kicked and punched with skill and speed, but nothing shook her off his neck. Radu's blood ran down her chin and dressed her bare breasts.

“Valerie!” Lance cried out from under his tape. His lover would drain Radu if she didn't stop. Lance alone had to stop this bloodbath. Chad was passed out on the table. He flopped closer an inch at a time.

Under her mouth, Radu turned an ugly shade of ashen gray and slumped bonelessly to the floor. Valerie did not miss a single swallow as she lay down, pinning him underneath her. Radu's hand flopped futilely between the two of them.

But pushing her off was not his plan. A telescoping silver baton punched through Valerie's hip with a sickening crunch. Valerie screamed. She screamed until her voice broke. Her limbs jerked uncontrollably like a lizard dying on a skewer. Her spasms forced her off Radu and onto her back. Her hands lit on fire as she tugged on the base of the baton.

The spike rammed its way diagonally from her collarbone through her body. Her flesh charred black and repulsive green smoke filled the room. Blood spouted obscenely to the ceiling, covering everyone in gouts of fresh crimson. Sick to his stomach, Lance struggled harder. She'd never screamed in pain before.

“My trap worked,” Radu coughed. His throat was a ravaged mess. The flesh squirmed around the slashes, already filling in the damage. “Everyone knows he has a guardian angel,” he taunted.

“You thought I wouldn't be ready for you. I can't believe one so powerful would be so foolish. I daresay you are almost as strong as I am.” Radu gloated over Valerie as she writhed like a pinned bug.

A movement flickered in the corner of Lance's eye. John crawled through the galley door into the main cabin. What was he doing here?

John's entrance interrupted Lance's strategy to roll into Radu's feet. His longtime friend grabbed Chad by his hoodie and shook him awake.

“Shhhh,” he silenced the frightened young man. John pressed the Shelby's keys into Chad's hand and shoved him through the door. Chad slipped away, unseen by the preening Radu.

John winked at Lance and silently removed scissors from his back pocket. The heavy shears easily cut through the tape on Lance's elbows and wrists. He flexed his arms, bringing sensation back to his hands. Again, John reached behind him and magically produced a chef's knife.

“He's old and strong,” he whispered. “Go under the breastbone and up to his heart. Don't cut through his ribs.”

Radu removed a bowie knife from a forearm holster and laid it across Valerie's throat. “I don't care who you are. How does a beheading sound?”

John threw an empty Grey Goose bottle at Radu. The container hit him squarely between the eyes and slammed the vampire back a step. Lance kicked Radu right in the kidneys.

John hissed at him and stabbed the air with an imaginary knife. How could he explain to John that he couldn't kill Radu?

As Radu staggered under Lance's attack, Valerie lashed out with her free foot. Her strike hit him in the chest and Lance rolled Radu to the floor.

“Lucifer's fangs. Stay down, little brother,” Valerie growled as she struggled against her spike. “Lucifer help me, I'll impale you before the night is through.”

The room froze. The three men stared at the vampiress.

The spray of blood over her erased the difference between masculine and feminine. Lance compared the two undead.

The same high, slicing cheekbones. The same strong chin. The same tilt to the eyes. The same build. The same love of order and control and impalement. Clear as day, the resemblance between Radu and Valerie burned itself on Lance's eyes.

No.

No, no, no. It couldn't be true.

Dracula didn't die in Berlin.

But it was true. Knowledge flooded the cabin with a horrifying stillness.

Valerie sagged on her poisonous spike. “Fuck.”

Radu's dropped jaw shut with a click.

Bile rose in Lance's throat. How many lives had this woman ruined? Once again, he'd fallen for evil. He would save her only in order to give her over to the World Court. He would guarantee that she was made to pay for her thousands of crimes.

A splinter of sanity returned to Valerie's eyes. “Get out.” Her voice shook from the silver eating her from the inside. Only her age kept her alive at this point. “This is between my brother and me.” The unhealing holes in her body gaped at them.

John gave Lance a long, considering look. His hand curled around a piece of wood, holding it like a makeshift club.

“
Quelle surprise,
” he said into the dripping quiet. “The lady is not what she seems. Like all of us here.”

Lance's lip twitched at John's chastisement. His sins made hers look like a child swiping a penny from her mother. Shame followed hot on the heels of his previous self-righteous satisfaction.

He wobbled to Valerie. It was not his job to determine what was forgivable and what was not. His role was to serve, not rule. His shoulder blades itched at the thought.

She wouldn't be dying if he'd not panicked over John's honesty, if he had paid attention to the stress in Chad's voice in his phone call, if he'd listened when Valerie expressed her concerns. He owed her.

Chapter 34

Glenath Tempesta slapped out the drum line for “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” against her hospital bed railing as she researched how to stop Radu Tepes.

She polished her reading glasses and pursed her lips as she scrolled through her notes.

In between blood tests, a battery of scans, and a worrying diagnosis of severe anemia, she'd constructed an elegant, simple, and airtight trap for her tormentor. A private room went a long way toward helping her concentration. That and her roommates had complained about her drumming and never-ending phone conversations. Too bad they were such tight-asses.

All she needed was someone willing to testify against Radu Tepes. Anyone who had ever witnessed him being less than perfect was long missing. Even as she chatted to the new shift nurse, her brain chewed away on the problem. Tepes had no friends, acquaintances, or co-workers that predated 1969.

Except one.

Everything hung on what happened next. She picked up her phone and dialed the Governor Hotel. The moon broke between rain clouds and gilded her view of the hospital parking lot.

“Anthony O'Neill's room, please.”

Glenath pinched the bridge of her nose as the call transferred. This was just groovy.

Two stomach-churning hours later, hard knuckles rapped on her closed door. She smoothed her hair, adjusted the collar on her hospital gown, and called for him to enter.

“Thank you for meeting me, Anthony.”

Her husband bowed, his hand over his heart. “Hello.”

Always a gentleman, she thought. An old-fashioned gentleman who wore combat boots, a studded dog collar, and sported a new eyebrow piercing.

“Radu must hate that.” She nodded at the large gage curved barbell as she extended her hand for a shake.

“It's why I did it. Small rebellions are all that are left to me.” His eyes turned a luminous green as he studied her body under the thin hospital gown.

Her coochie twitched at that expression. Obviously, the magic was still there.
No time for that today,
she told herself sternly.

He nipped on her index finger. She licked her lips.

“Stop that. I have a plan.”

He sucked her fingertip for a moment, then set her hand back down on the bed.

“I always want to hear your plans, beautiful girl.”

“I can break his hold.”

Anthony dug a fang into his lower lip. The bond of a master over his child ran deep through mind and body. She'd refused to do it before. The process inevitably killed.

But her research had yielded sweet fruit. She'd found a loophole. One corner of her mouth curled in a smile both triumphant and rueful.

Radu Tepes would be ruined by morning.

Chapter 35

Satan's curled toenails, this was not Valerie's night. Silver clogged her throat and petrified her body for the second time in an hour. The poison burned like a thousand suns, eating her from the inside out. One's intestines were not supposed to feel this way. Not even a massive blood infusion would save her now. Dust was her destiny.

“Oh, no, you don't.” Lance hovered above her, fury heating his normally artic eyes.

This might be the last time she saw those eyes. Her hand merely trembled by her side when she tried to touch his bruised cheek. Her toes lost all sensation.

She had to tell him not to be afraid.

Her chest spasmed. So this was love. The exotic combination of desire, trust, and faith warmed her. Even though she was about to crumble to dust, her love would always be near him. His face furrowed into grim lines as he rolled up his sleeve and produced a chef's knife. “You're going to live.”

A little flutter of somethingâcould it be joy?âlightened her heart. He loved her. Peace replaced her centuries of wrath. Death was coming to claim her, but she finally knew love. It was worth it.

“God help me, Dracula, you've got some explaining to do.”

Her stomach sunk like cold lead. And that, then, was fear.

Fear that he didn't love her. Fear that he would betray her. Fear that her sins were so huge that he could never forgive her. Death would be welcome.

Before she could properly think, his blood poured into her mouth. Her tongue automatically flickered to drink the salty fluid. Damnation. She would live.

The blood filled her throat and she swallowed. Valerie blinked hazily as vast opalescent wings unfurled from Lance's back and wrapped around her.

Such beautiful wings.

Lance's blood burned her throat as she swallowed. Violent cramps torqued her body away from his arm. Smoke rose from her mouth as she rolled to her side. Her stomach spasmed as if Lucifer had dug his claws into her midsection. Weak as a new blade of grass, she curled around her mangled body.

Her flesh writhed as though octopi wrestled beneath her skin. Hot and cold spears ran through her body. Lance's angelic blood fought with massive silver poisoning, leaving her shuddering on the boat's blood-soiled deck.

“What have you done?” she croaked through her ruined voice.

“You are killing her!” John pulled Lance off and pushed him into the wall of the cabin.

Valerie's French was rusty, so she wasn't entirely sure what came next, but it had something to do with Lance's thoughtlessness and ended with “You incredible moron!”

She staggered to her hands and knees, intent on escape. Her stomach roiled and cramped, making her retch. If she were to die this way, she wanted to be alone. She checked the room. Radu was still out cold. Lance and John grappled in the crowded cabin. Lance burned like the sun, his earthly form overridden by celestial glory. John held his own, though, against one of the Fallen, his aura flaring like a volcano.

Valerie felt as naked and raw as though her skin had been flayed. Her secret betrayed, her love rejected, and her body infected by an angel's blood. What was going to happen to her? What would she become?

She twisted against the contagion in her veins, exhausted and weakened. The world darkened. A familiar set of black wings entered her vision. Death had finally arrived.

This night, her greatest fear revealed itself to her.

Love.

Love would destroy her.

BOOK: Dracula's Secret

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