by Ana Calin
“Do you have to think about him now? I would rather you thought about me.”
He turns to look into my eyes, gravity filling his stare. “I’m afraid I’ll be thinking about you more than you like. Someday soon, you’ll wish that I stopped doing it.”
CHAPTER VII
Lord Dracula
I CAN’T STOP LOOKING at her as she eats her breakfast across from me at the inn, well, if you can call picking at a piece of toast eating. There she sits with her cheeks red, her eyes down as if she’s ashamed of me. Ashamed about what happened last night, mortified by my very presence.
I’d like to make it easier on her, smile and have a light hearted conversation, or even talk about one of the elephants in the room—us going to the monastery today—but I can’t. I stare at her without even blinking, hungry for the sight of her, for her every move, aware I must look like a depraved man. I don’t want to miss one thing she does, one shade of red in her cheeks, one breath that makes her chest rise.
I wonder if she has any idea how attractive she is to me in her black fitted sweater, and those tight jeans that hug her round, appetizing butt. Soon, I’m going to lick that butt, inside and out.
Poor Ruxandra Len, if only she knew she gave herself to an obsessed monster last night, one who will stalk her just like the demon, hell even more. I want to be her shadow every waking second. She slept in my arms, unaware that I stayed awake, watching her, worried about the feeling growing inside of me. The feared Prince of Blood reduced to a love sick puppy.
“Now that the illusion of beauty has dissipated, and you know the beast behind it,” I say after Otilia leaves two mugs of black tea on our table, unable to control myself. “Are you repulsed by me? Is that why you can’t look me in the face?”
She stares at me as if she can’t believe I just said that.
“Vlad, I still find you strikingly beautiful,” she says in a trembling voice. “I’m not ready to look you full in the face because of, you know, last night. In the end, I came on to you, really strong, and now that I’m myself again I wish the ground would split open and swallow me.” She motions with her head inconspicuously toward a boisterous group of students at the other table, four of them girls, giggling and staring at me with an open invitation. “I’m sure normal girls like that would never stoop as low as I did last night to get you to do them.”
I grab her hand over the table, startling her. With her rich blue-black hair tied behind her head in a ponytail, her heart-shaped face seems smaller and more delicate, not to mention that it exposes her anxiety.
“You didn’t stoop, Rux. What happened last night, it was—” How do I put this without scaring her off? “Very special to me. But to you, it was the first time, and first times aren’t always a woman’s favorite memory. If I disappointed you in any way, if I was too eager or too aggressive, please, tell me.” I lower my voice, hungry eyes fixed on her. “And allow me to make it up to you. Next time.”
She blushes harder, biting her lower lip and looking down at our hands over the table. She doesn’t try to pull away, but I wouldn’t let her anyway. I’ll never let her go. I just made a decision—after we defeat this demon, I won’t take her blood to become invincible. I’ll abandon all ambition of power in the Hidden World and the Surface World, and hide away with her forever. I’ll try to make things good with Radek and.... Why isn’t she answering me?
“Why don’t you say anything?”
“Last night meant the world to me,” she whispers shyly, looking everywhere except at me. “And I’m really happy you’re willing to have a next time. I was actually wondering where we stood now, you know.”
My heart beats the way hearts do when people are really close to something they want too badly. I swallow, wondering how the fuck I got in this situation, giddy and awkward and bothered like a schoolboy with a fucking crush.
“I know we made a deal in the beginning, regarding the demon,” I begin, thinking of the best way to put my proposition to her. “Now that we know how Ruxandra summoned it centuries ago, we also know what we have to do in order to replicate that. I could hypnotize you, and you’d access her knowledge in your DNA, remembering the demon language. You would remember his name, and I would use it to banish him forever. But—” My huge hands keep hers prisoner over the table.
“Under the circumstances, it’s an unnecessary danger.” I lean in over the table. “The demon cannot touch me, last night was proof enough, right? Why fight it if you don’t have to? I could be—” Hell, whatever you want me to be. “Your lover. I will make love to you every time you want me to, I’ll be your slave if it pleases you. Intimacy with a man is what you wanted, right? That’s why you wanted to find and banish the demon, even if it meant facing him. Now you have all that, you don’t need to expose yourself.”
She listens with big eyes, but then she frowns at me.
“Lover, yes? You want us to be lovers? Interesting term you choose. ‘Fiancé’, ‘concubine’ or even ‘girlfriend’ would carry too much weight for you?”
“You would like to be my fiancé?”
“I would like to be something that you take seriously. Not just some fuck buddy.”
“Rux, it’s not that I don’t want to. But fiancé means the prospect of marriage and I—” I’ve been through all of it already, three times, and it’s something I despise, but how do I tell her that?
“Sure, it would be too final, right? Tying your destiny to one woman.”
“You were the first woman I had intimacy with in a long time, I told you.”
“And that should be honor enough, right?”
What do I tell her? Intimacy with her meant the world to me as well, but fiancé? Marriage?
She shakes her head and holds up her hand, dismissing the subject. “Forget it. Just forget that I said anything.”
She gets up angrily.
“Rux, please,” I say between my teeth, low, trying to keep the argument from the gawking youngsters at the other table, but I guess it’s already too late for that.
“No, Vlad, it’s okay. I don’t want to force you into something you don’t want.” She looks down, clearly focusing on her breathing and trying to calm herself, then she looks up again, her gaze full of decision.
“We came here in order to find and rid ourselves of the demon. You took my—” She glances at the staring and eavesdropping group, censuring herself. “You took what you needed from me, and are now prepared. Your weaknesses have been removed for at least one day. Let us use the advantage.”
Lord Dracula
RUX STARES AT THE FOREST ahead of us, snow heavy on the fir branches, warping them.
“It’s so beautiful,” she murmurs. “And humbling.” She wraps the heavy coat tighter around herself, the mock-fur lining of the hood making her seem an ice queen. She’s so beautiful with her skin as white as the snow, her eyes as black as ink, and her hair gleaming blue-black in the light from the sun reflected in snow.
“Did you hear me?” Only now I realize she’s addressing me, as her voice pulls me back into the present and away from the memories of last night.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“How are we going to get up there?” She looks around, steam leaving her mouth. “There’s no stairs, no aerial, nothing.”
“No. The Northern Monastery has been a secret location for centuries. It wouldn’t have been able to stay hidden if people had built infrastructure here.” I look up at the rocky peak rising from the white fir woods that stretch up the mountain like a coat that covers it up to its rocky neck.
“But I don’t think they would have been able to build it if they wanted to,” I say, scanning the terrain. “Nature is wild in Transylvania. Some people would argue it’s as supernatural as the creatures that inhabit it.”
I turn and smile at her.
“Come on,” I invite, holding out my hand.
“What?”
“You can’t get up there on your own.” I can’t hide a smirk. “You need m
e for more than protection and hypnosis. You need me to carry you.”
“Carry me? All the way up there?”
“Don’t worry, Rux, I won’t be carrying you in the literal sense. And even if I were, you’re feather light to me.”
With a smirk, I start taking my clothes off—undo my boots, take off my pants, pull the sweater over my head.
“W—what are you doing?”
I take a moment to just stand in front of her, fully naked on the backdrop of the winter landscape. God, I love the way she eyes me up and down. I don’t know if it’s desire, but she sure as hell enjoys the show.
I fold my clothes and walk to her with them in one hand, boots in the other, the snow crunching under my naked feet. “Would you mind putting these in your backpack?”
“Vlad, what in the world are you doing stark naked in the snow?” she shrieks, steam leaving her mouth. Her eyebrows are crooked, one higher than the other as she stares at me in shock.
“The cold doesn’t bother me. I’m a supernatural, the king of vampires.” My smile turns cunning. I just love what’s going to happen now. “There are still many ways in which I can impress you.” I’m now so close that our bodies almost touch, me staring down at her stricken face. “Whatever you do, keep quiet. If you need to talk to me, whisper.”
I let my body begin to dissipate into mist. Rux stares with a falling jaw, her mouth fully open by the time I’ve turned into a big, thick cloud of fog that begins coiling around her.
She takes in air to scream, but a veil of fog floats over to her face, covering her mouth.
“Don’t,” I say, my voice coming out from all over the mist like the whisper of a ghost. Her mouth is covered, but her eyes are wide, black and terrified. “We don’t want the monks to hear you.”
Veils of thick fog coil around her, lifting her up and slowly starting to glide her through the forest. I can feel her breath through my entire body—an advantage of the mist is that I can feel her inside and out, all over my skin, like she and I are part of each other.
“My God, this is unbelievable,” she says as we glide among the trees like snow rolling upwards.
“This is it, I swear I can’t take any more of this supernatural crap. I mean, does the real world even fucking exist?” she says, looking around and taking in the landscape and the sensation of this ride, fascinated.
“It’s an illusion even greater than the Hidden World. If people discovered and learned how to use their hidden powers, magic could be every man’s and every woman’s tool.”
I pick up speed uphill, all too aware of Rux’s appetizing body practically wrapped inside of mine, and her breath merging with my own.
“How fast can you go?”
I grin wickedly but, of course, she can’t see it. “So fast you wouldn’t even know we were moving until you saw the monastery gates, but the speed would make you sick.”
I move just fast enough for her to enjoy the ride, now passing the trees so close that the friction of wind causes chunks of snow to fall off their branches. I can enjoy the exercise without getting tired, it’s one of the advantages to being a supernatural monster.
The rocky tip of the mountain soon comes into sight. We’re up above the bank of clouds, the cutting rock glinting in the sun. I place Rux on her feet gently, giving her time for a break and lunch while I slide my clothes back on and step into the sunlight for the first time in many, many hundreds of years.
The first ray touches my skin, but instead of searing, it feels warming and welcoming. I close my eyes, spreading out my arms. Yes. Her blood has cured me of the weakness temporarily. I look back at her, my eyes full of gratitude as I watch her nibble on a sandwich. She looks so pure and young and, like I told her yesterday, devastating.
I imagine how skinny she was thirteen years ago. I never saw her, but that’s how the vampires described her—small, her breastbone sticking out, ink-black eyes protruding from her skull, long hair like wet rags down her frame. She was scary even to them. Look at her now, all woman, disconnected from all that power she wielded, and that could have been a match even to Victoria. But it would have eventually killed her.
And that’s what I intended to do with her as well until not long ago—kill her; drain her of her precious blood. A good thing she didn’t ask why her blood particularly made me immune to silver and sunlight—she must think it’s just any human’s blood that gives me temporary relief from these weaknesses. How can I ever tell her what my original plan was? Fuck, she must never know, I couldn’t live with her hatred.
The gate of the monastery scrapes open. The black gothic building is still far up on the rocks, but the sound echoes against the stone.
“Come on.” I hurry to Rux, scooping her up before she can finish her food, then sliding her on my back. Her hands slide over my shoulders and clasp on my chest, my hand on both of them to keep her steady. I grab her thigh to help her wrap her legs around me as well.
“What are we doing? Why don’t we—”
“The monks can’t see the mist, if they do, they’ll pull the alarm. Hold on tight. We need to get in at the same time as the monks returning from the holy circle. The gate won’t open again until tomorrow, and there’s no other way inside the monastery.”
“Holy circle?” she shrieks. “What is that?”
“The monks circle the monastery three times every day, creating a ring of protection against evil.”
I run with her up the final patch of meadow, then crouch and push myself off the ground, jumping up on the rock like a feline, and using my hands and feet to climb. From behind, I must look like a demon with a backpack, crawling up towards the rocky mountaintop, towards the monastery entrance. The wind whips across my face, too sharp for Rux’s soft, all too human skin, making her hide her face in my hair.
I can’t believe this. My body reacts to her with lust even in this situation. I climb faster, finally jumping onto the windy plateau in front of the medieval monastery, the last hooded monks walking leisurely through the still open gates.
The monks see us and rush to close the gates, but it’s too late. We’re already through.
The monks retreat in fear, hunched under their sack-like garments.
“I come in peace,” I say, my voice filling the fortified inner courtyard.
“Lord Dracula, why the hell do you burst in here unannounced?” the Abbot calls as he makes his way to us through the lines of terrified monks. He stops in front of us, a young man with slightly girlish features that might even pass for pretty out in the world, but he’s much older than he looks. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?” He stops in his tracks, eyes bursting wide when he sees Rux peeking at him from behind me. “What in the world do you think you’re doing, bringing a woman to the Northern Monastery?”
I look at him from under my eyebrows. “The reason why I didn’t announce I was coming. You wouldn’t have let us in.”
“Wait a minute, he knows who you are?” Rux intervenes, looking from me to the Abbot. “You know who he is?”
The Abbot gives her a once-over like she’s a cockroach infesting his monastery with some nasty disease, then addresses me again.
“Have you completely lost your mind, Lord Dracula? Get the woman away from here, now.”
“Please, Lucian. I guarantee you’ll want to hear this.”
Rux
A WOODEN CHAIR IN THE corner of the Abbot’s medieval study is all the consideration I get. The Abbot hasn’t given me another glance since the gates, but as Vlad gives him a summary of our story, he starts glancing over.
Although it gets on my nerves big time that I have to put up with being treated like a dirty rag by a sexually frustrated medieval little shit, I’m willing to play the meek woman to ensure we get what we came here for.
Vlad comes to stand next to me after he tells him our story, putting a large hand on my shoulder, but not resting its entire weight on it. Since last night he’s been careful whenever he touches me as if he expect
s his very breath could hurt me.
The Abbot glances at my eyes, and I know it’s the blackness he’s inspecting.
“So she’s your late wife’s descendant. And she carries the same curse.”
“It would appear so.” Vlad tells him about the bad things happening to the boys who dated me. He omits the part about the two of us, and him being an exception to the rule. “I think, if she gets access to your altar, to the book, and if I hypnotize her, she could remember the demon language and get his name, therefore giving us the power to banish him once and for all.”
“Are you insane?” The Abbot shoots up from his chair, his frame casting a dark shadow across the room. I push myself against the back of my chair, causing it to bang against the wall.
“First, you bring a woman to the monastery, then it turns out she is the descendant of your dead first wife, a descendant of the child she produced with a monk who had been possessed by the demon. And now you tell me you want to replicate the ritual, causing it to happen again, calling that monster back into this world.”
“Banishing it from this world, Lucian,” Vlad replies, unfazed. But now I understand his presence by my side, his hand on my shoulder—he’s protecting me from whatever creature this Abbot is. “The demon has been here, lurking hidden in this world ever since Ruxandra. This is our chance to send it back to where it came from, and only this woman can do it. It will take the dangerous process of reading from the book, yes, but I will be here to oversee it and protect you, all of you, from the demon. But it has to happen tonight, because Rux’s blood can only keep me immune to silver and sunlight for a limited time.”
“I’ll tell you how we’ll banish the demon from our world,” the Abbot growls as his skin turns black and red like burnt flesh or like the surface of a wicked planet, craters breaking out into what looks like painful blisters. “We kill its descendant.”
“What in the world,” I breathe, but Vlad takes a step in front of me.