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.
Chapter 36
Lance shot into the sky, leaving a trail of clove-scented ozone behind him. Three long wing feathers drifted in the wet night air to land on the deck. John shook out his hands and blew on his skinned knuckles.
“I hate this part.” Death sat next to Valerie and patted her thigh with skeletal fingers. Her body shuddered at the odd warmth in her old friend’s hand.
Cautiously, she knelt and picked up one of the feathers. Her fingers didn’t burn as she ran them over the strong, soft vane.
Death’s hooded head lifted to watch them go.
“What do you hate?” she asked, her mind a numbed blank.
Death gestured to the cold sky. Rain spangled Valerie’s eyelashes, turning light into dancing prisms.
She blinked. It wasn’t the rain putting on the show.
Stars fell in glittering silver showers until they wrapped around the flying men. Each sparkling point resolved into a winged figure, some shaped like humans, some shaped like the most fantastical beasts. The susurration of millions of feathers drowned out the rain.
“My obnoxious brethren,” Death stated simply. “There’s a reason I spend all my time around humans.”
“Why are your wings black and his white? You are not Fallen.”
Death’s inhuman mouth smiled in the depths of its cowl, showing large teeth the color of black Tahitian pearls. The oddly charming expression sent a tiny frisson of amusement through her misery.
“Our wing colors denote our tasks, not our station.”
She could swear she heard, “Curious monkey,” as Death unleashed its own wings and effortlessly soared to meet the Host.
Valerie rubbed her aching breastbone. This beauty was Lance’s lost family welcoming him home.
She exhaled. How quickly she had found and lost love. Lucifer below, love sucked. Her mind churned to think of anything else besides how much she hurt.
John gathered her in his arms. “My petit chou,” he crooned in her ear as he rocked her back and forth like a colicky child. A sliver of consolation eased her desolation.
Like a test tube in a centrifuge, Lance whirled in space. Green fire seared away his crime of pride, leaving him a shell of what he had been.
Enormous, obsidian chunks of damnation fell away. Even bodiless, the process hurt, like surgery without anesthesia. Pride fell away, an ugly, sterile block of misery. Self-righteousness, pride’s child, followed. Fear clung on. Would he be able to regain his position?
A new certainty let him ignore the fear, and like a dying leaf, it floated into the sparkling darkness.
Yes, the firmament answered.
Out of the stars, musical voices twittered around him. “He’s been so good. Let’s give him a little hit,” one giggled.
“Oh, now that will be fun,” another sang. “Let’s see how he handles it.”
Something cool and calm poured between the fissures, filling the empty places within. Whatever it was, it ended the clinging to what Lance had known. Everything fell.
Chapter 37
“You made me,” her brother rasped into the ruins of the cabin. Radu’s voice sounded like it had been dragged from him with fishhooks. The boat reverberated with the raw emotion revealed by her brother’s deepest truth.
As always, he provided the ideal distraction. She focused on Radu’s petulant face and snorted in disbelief.
“You made yourself,” she snapped, letting her anger show in her teeth. “I was trapped and chained. You drank my blood, licked my sweat, tasted my tears. You forced the Change on Ilona. And you blame me?”
“You got everything.” Radu pounded on the floor, shouting over her.
Indignation trumped her self-pity. Dying or not, Valerie would defend herself. “The Ottomans loved you. You weren’t tortured. The world thinks you are a hero. I am hated.”
Radu’s bitter tone turned caustic. “All the attention, all the fame, that fucking book! Even the best girl. And all that time you couldn’t even fuck her properly.”
Once a boil was lanced, nothing stopped the flow.
“All anyone wants to do is talk about you. That’s all I ever hear. ‘Vlad this. Vlad that.’ ‘You stay here. Vlad will take care of it.’ On the battlefield, the soldiers all loved Vlad. ‘Vlad is so much better with swords. What’s wrong with you?’ ‘Radu, you’ll wear Vlad’s armor and be the decoy.’ All so you could sweep in and save the day.” Radu clapped his fist to his chest. “Everyone loved you. I was disposable.” His voice broke.
Valerie wept to see her beloved baby brother so devastated. “I loved you. You were the reason I fought so hard.”
“Liar.”
Now that just stung.
“You are my brother! If anyone found out about me, you would be a target for our enemies! I had to protect you.”
Radu shook his head, his gaze traveling over her blood-clad body. “You lie. How many people knew and laughed behind my back?”
“Only Mother and Father knew. I swear it on Ilona’s dust.”
“And why have you been killing our kind off?” Before she could answer, his face lit with sure understanding. “Ahh! It was the camps, wasn’t it? You always did prefer nice, straightforward death.” He shook his head.
She coughed and spit out blood. “I cannot let that horror go unavenged.”
“You cannot go unpunished for murdering us. It has always been forbidden!”
Valerie’s gaze locked onto Radu. He was her only family. He was the only one left who understood her. Everyone else was gone. Their parents, their wife, all the other Shadow Creatures who had walked the earth six hundred years ago—all were dead. The dead shaped the present. The living created the future.
John found a blanket under a chair and wrapped it around her. His affection melted her.
She wanted a different future than endless fighting.
Valerie reached out her blood-soaked hand. “You are my brother,” she said. “There is no more to say.”
The wrinkles around Radu’s eyes relaxed. His mouth, usually tight with pressure, bloomed into a smile of true joy, like all
the innocence and delight in the world had been laid at his feet to share with all.
“Vlad.” Radu closed his eyes, unheeding of the blood down his face. “Let me come home.”
Their fingertips touched.
The siblings clasped hands, their broken hearts showing in their faces.
“I could never kill you,” Valerie whispered into his ear. “I could never let you go. You were my reason for living.”
“Vlad.” Radu wiped the blood from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“The war changed me.”
“Let’s work together.” Radu clenched his sister’s hand tightly. “Come with me. Join the CCC. The world is almost ready.”
Her eyebrows pinched together. “Ready for what?”
“Ready for us to flourish,” Radu coaxed. “Humans say we cannot marry whom we want, that we are unfit for governance. Us! With hundreds of years of history behind us, they say we cannot bring justice? They have the nerve to say that we are monsters and unclean when their sins are more frightening than anything we could arrange.”
He held his bleeding hand to her mouth for her to lick. He smiled. Another vampire’s blood would heal her faster than anything. “You’d have to be announced as something other than Dracula. Perhaps as my niece?”
She shrugged. Who she was remained immaterial. She had to heal.
“We will bring proper order to things,” he whispered. “The mortals have made a terrible mess. We must rule them. Vlad. Let us work together. We were unstoppable before.”
Before.
Before.
Valerie remembered limp bodies lying in a clearing in Lyons. Little Josephine O’Neill dragged into horror by Radu’s carelessness. Dr. Mengele’s gruesome laboratory. How Radu took time and resources away from an already-losing war.
She never would have had to wear a brassiere. She could still have her moustache. She would have ruled Europe, then the world, but Radu had frittered away their opportunities.
Radu held her hand tightly, victory spreading over his features. The humans stared at her.
Radu hadn’t changed. But she had.
She had to choose.
Either be owned by her past, by whom and what she had once been. Or see where this new road led her. With Lance, she had no more secrets. No more mission. Radu’s sins were not for her to judge.
Dracula’s secret was no more. Her past no longer owned her.
This was liberation.
Chapter 38
A final whiff of cloves nailed her feet to the tilting boat.
One spot disengaged from the swirling mass above and dove for the earth.
The air whistled like an incoming buzz bomb as the speck hurtled closer and closer to earth. Soon, Valerie saw the tiny figure of Lance skimming through the air. The waves built to a wild chop. Valerie stumbled before she regained her footing.
Her solar plexus twitched at the sight of his clothing plastered to his defined torso. Desire didn’t care about sore ribs or even broken hearts. She would want him until she passed to dust.
The choppy water smoothed. The Host wheeled above them like crows after a battle—so thick she could see nothing else. Not the stars, the moon, or even the houses on the other side of the lake.
The Creatures defied description. Angels were not bound to a single physical form. A swirling shimmer of stardust coalesced into Lance. His huge and glorious white wings spanned the length of the yacht. He’d even kept the worn T-shirt and jeans. An enormous obsidian-bladed sword hung from his back. Soul-freezing blue eyes had been warmed with knowledge of infinite compassion. No sin was too great for his understanding.
His aura pierced her even more sharply than the first time she’d seen him. This time, Valerie let the tears flow unchecked.
Radu cupped his hands over his eyes. The gathering of the Handmaidens proved too painful for him. With a yelp, a black-furred dog ran into the night.
John wrapped a muscular arm around Valerie’s waist. Her skin shuddered as Lance hovered above them.
A drop of hope fed her love until it spread like an octopus in open water. No more playing it safe. He already knew all of her secrets. Time to risk declaring herself.
“I love you,” she said.
Lance embraced her. John flanked them until he placed his hand on her waist.
“I love you,” Lance answered.
John caressed her cheeks. “Chérie.”
The sun and the moon they were. The light needed the dark or all life would scorch beneath its glare.
John wrapped his arm around her waist and gently tugged. Slowly, Valerie let him draw her close. His warm body fit hers as neatly as pieces of rope being tied together. A subtle whiff of apples eased the tightness of surprise in her throat.
“Well,” John said, unruffled as ever. “This makes moving even easier.”
“I do have work to do before I join you,” Lance replied, his voice not produced by vocal chords but by knowledge slotting into her brain. “I will find you.”
“I’m glad to see you finally learned your lesson,” John replied.
Lance enfolded them both with his strong arms. Heedless of her sore body, Valerie bent her neck until they all touched foreheads.
Chapter 39
“Breaking news from the Twelfth Annual Paranormal Citizens Conference. Glenath Tempesta is about to give a speech. Last seen on her way to the hospital after collapsing two days ago, the former archbishop was recently accused of conduct unbecoming of a High Church official. She has returned to the conference to give her rebuttal. And here she is now.”
Glenath swept past that nice Angela Block, Anthony following on her right side. His black trench coat brushed the reporter’s dress as they ascended the podium together. Glenath sat, grateful to hide her shaking knees. Her Berber jewelry shot disco lights over the room. Anthony stood behind the microphone.
Glenath dragged her gaze from his fine behind.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press. I have an addition to my previous statement.”
He leaned forward as the room hushed.
“I was in the French Resistance. On a July night in 1944, my mission was to drop weapons and food in a secret location for a cell of fighters stationed in Provence.
“But we were betrayed. And of the thirty who were supposed to collect the delivery, one survived the Nazi ambush. I saw who the double agent was.”
Only the click of camera shutters broke the stillness.
“Modern histories have made much of Radu Tepes’s heroic anti-Nazi activities in France. The truth is that he was there at the order of his brother, Dracula. Radu gave the Resistance a vampire of their own, earning our trust and feeding information back to Berlin.
“He turned me that night, rather than kill me, as punishment for surviving. I have been his thrall ever since, barely hanging on to any shred of who I was. The only time I’ve been myself was when I was with Glenath Tempesta. Today, she helped me break his hold for once and for all so I can tell the truth.”
Hands flew into the air like ravens in a storm. Shouts echoed from the ceiling. Another riot broke out at the conference.
Epilogue
“I am not pregnant.” Valerie set down her blood and Coke and glared at Glenath Tempesta and Anthony O’Neill. It had been a very productive and pleasant working dinner at Lance’s former house until Glenath had to barge in where she wasn’t wanted. Valerie crossed her arms over her sore breasts. The pressure on her tender nipples made her wince.
“We are here to discuss the shelter’s next move, not my personal life.”
Glenath and Anthony merely exchanged a knowing glance and continued to hold hands. How could they sit there at what was now Valerie’s table and smirk at her like that? It’s not like Valerie had had a personal life for the last three months.
Glenath gestured with her wineglass. “‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,’�
� the smart-ass little bishop quoted. Her thick silver bracelets clanged together as she toasted the sky. “Thank you, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
Considering it was her fifth glass of wine, Valerie was surprised Glenath didn’t slur more than she did.
Anthony snorted into his stein of lamb blood. Miraculously, no droplets splattered his face or his white T-shirt. Radu’s children were always ridiculously neat.
Glenath swapped her hazy gaze to him. “Thanks for the support, honey.” The woman had the nerve to sound affronted.
Valerie wrested the conversation back to the topic at hand. “Doyle was a twit. No matter. I am not having a baby.”
Glenath sat back in her chair, not the least bit intimidated by Valerie’s temper. She smoothed her paisley smock and shook her head. “No vampire has fed from an angel before. No one knows what you are anymore.”
Valerie internally winced. Trust Glenath to remind her of that painful fact. Lance never returned. John had to go back to Switzerland, even though he kept in constant contact. Despite her growing friendships with Glenath and Anthony, Valerie had been abandoned. She cracked her neck and finished drinking her dinner.
Pregnancy was inconceivable. Literally. “Vampires don’t ovulate,” Valerie stated flatly. “I’m a vampire. And that is final.”
A wave of blood and coke rolled up her esophagus to the back of her throat. Valerie pressed a hand to her stomach as she dashed to the bathroom. Lucifer below, bile was disgusting. She sat on the cool tile floor, trying to comprehend what was going on. Nausea had plagued her for two solid weeks. Her entire body was swollen and tense.
“Vampires don’t vomit, either,” Anthony said as he and Glenath crowded into the small room with her.
Obviously the boy had no sense of self-preservation. She bared her teeth. “Don’t push me, kid.”
He didn’t look the least bit intimated. “I’ll clear the table. You two figure this one out.” He shook his head and left the bathroom. Glenath watched his ass move under his jeans as he walked away. Yes, yes, it was a very nice ass, Valerie thought, but it wasn’t the ass she wanted.
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