by Darren Cage
“Satisfy yourself with her?”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Did you fuck her?”
“Stela, why would you think I would do something like that?”
“Because you aren’t exactly the most loyal of persons.”
“I’m not a person,” I growled, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her into the coffin with me. She struggled but not hard enough to break free from my hold.
“I’m fine with it now, but when we were together—”
“Were we?” I interrupted, but she ignored me.
“You slept with Catina and Andreea. Together even. I wasn’t enough for you.”
"That's not fair," I protested. "Love for a vampire is deeper than that of a human's. We aren't meant to only be with one person. Nothing we do is about one person. We can't just feed on a single man or woman or else he or she would die. We require more."
“And that brings me back to whether or not you fucked her.”
“I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“You just went on and on about how vampires need multiple lovers.”
“Three is my limit.”
Stela scowled and knocked my hand away from trying to cup her face. I wasn’t even trying to do anything overly sexual, but she still didn’t want me to touch her.
“How do you know you won’t find another pretty girl one day you want to bang? Just marry her too?” she asked.
“Where is all of this jealousy coming from?” I demanded. “I thought…”
“That since I’m married to you and willing to share you with the others—”
“And share yourself too,” I pointed out.
She avoided eye contact. “—that I can just forgive and forget what you did?”
“We never defined our relationship, never set boundaries,” I murmured.
This was it. This could very well be the turning point, where any sense of love she might feel for me could be morphed into hatred. I desperately did not want that to happen, but I would not risk compelling her to stay. Being with me was her choice. I wasn’t certain I could compel another vampire, but I wanted her to decide for herself if she would stay and be one of my brides or leave and be free of me and the others forever.
“I know, but…” She narrowed her eyes. “Everything with you is sexual.”
“That’s not strictly true,” I protested.
“No?” She lifted her eyebrows.
“Well, maybe a little,” I muttered, “but I swear I didn’t have sex with her.” I shifted uncomfortably, thinking about how I had witnessed Cecilia fucking her fiancé.
Stela just pursed her lips, clearly displeased, but there wasn’t anger in her eyes. Fear, maybe, and love.
“This isn’t about being jealous, is it?” I asked, pulling her close.
She resisted for only a moment before laying her head against my chest. “You were gone for over a day, and I was worried, so worried.”
“And I returned with a female. All I did was give her weapons and send her on her way to kill Van Helsing, only he killed her instead. He’ll be back to kill us all in retaliation.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Stela said.
“No? What are you then?” I asked.
She shifted on me ever so slightly, just enough to rub her pussy against my cock.
I growled. “I didn’t hear an answer.”
“No, but you felt one.”
My big hands gripped her neck and pulled her close. “I want to hear it from your beautiful lips and sexy tongue.”
“I’m horny,” she whispered before sucking and biting my lower lip. She lapped up my blood and then pushed back, yanking her dress over her head. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, and the sight of her naked breasts almost made my mouth water.
I shifted to sit up and took a nipple into my mouth. I suckled, making her squirm and then bit down. Blood rushed into my mouth, straight to my cock. Stela gasped, shifted her pussy against my hardened dick through my clothes a few moments before reaching down and undoing my trousers.
My stunning Stela loved to ride me, and she rode me hard. When I had enough of her blood, I leaned back, playing with her unbitten nipple with one hand, my other hand toying with her clit. Her first orgasm caused her entire body to shudder, and only through great self-control was I able to hold back and not come yet.
But then she cheated. She reached around behind her and gripped my balls. At the same time, she clenched her walls around my cock, and I couldn’t help but release my load.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” I groaned.
Stela laughed and kissed me. “You aren’t allowed to die again.”
“Then maybe we should talk to the others and make sure we have a game plan.”
“The only game plan you truly want to concern yourself with is one that involves sex.”
“Guilty.” I laughed and then grew serious. “But only after we kill Van Helsing.”
“We.” She pushed off me and climbed out of the coffin. “Are you sure you mean we and not you?”
“I don’t care who kills him as long as he’s dead.”
“A solid plan,” Catina said from the doorway.
Andreea pushed past her. She winked at Stela as she dressed.
I fixed my trousers and climbed out of the coffin. “Did you overhear—”
“If you’re asking if we heard that your plan to have Anton’s fiancée kill him, yes, we heard that,” Andreea said.
“A clever plan,” Catina said. “A shame it didn’t work out as designed.”
“And we also heard moaning and grunting and sex,” Andreea added.
“We thought about joining you two,” Catina started.
“But we were being mature and responsible.”
I grinned and shrugged, holding out my hands innocently. “One thing led to another and…”
“We need to be more careful if we’re going to all survive,” Andreea said more seriously. “I know you have magic, Dracula, and we might need that against Van Helsing.”
I loved hearing her call me that, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile. “We’re definitely going to have to use my magic. Van Helsing has studied magic himself.”
“No.” Andreea shook her head. “Not while we were together. Are you certain?”
“He had a ton of vials and potions, and he almost broke my compulsion over Cecilia,” I explained.
“Damn,” Andreea muttered. “He’s even more formidable than I thought. He’s always been obsessed with killing as many monsters as possible. Considering a great deal of them have magic themselves, it’s only fitting that he would want to fight fire with fire.”
“I can bolster our defenses with magic,” I said, “but I also want to delay Van Helsing as long as possible. We need to learn what exactly you all can do.”
“What we can do?” Catina asked, lifting her eyebrows.
“How are you going to delay Van Helsing?” Andreea asked.
I put a finger to my lips, closed my eyes, and held out my hands as I murmured an incantation in Latin. Herbs and potions helped with some magic, but other spells required only concentration of will and words of power.
“Pluit super terram. Caecum fulgur caelo. Vox obstrepit quodam toto. Ne cetum qui in quod saevire in procellas,” I repeated over and over.
The translation? Rains flood the earth. Lightning blind the sky. Thunder deafen all. Let the monster of storms rage on and on.
The splattering of thick raindrops against the stone castle sounded. If there were a window in this room, we surely would have seen the lightning, but the thunder rolled deep and loud, and I grinned
"He'll be hard-pressed to climb the hill now," I said smugly.
“How long can you maintain the storm?” Andreea asked.
“About a day or so, I think,” I said. “I’ve only done a few hours at a time before, but then I had been human.”
“Magic requires a lot of power and will,” she murmured.
&
nbsp; “Exactly so. Have you studied any?”
“Not directly. I only know what I observed from monsters.” She winced. “Creatures,” she amended.
“You what to know what we can do,” Stela said, getting the conversation back on track.
I nodded. “When I lost control, I discovered two things about myself. I could turn into a horde of bats, and afterward, I returned to the castle but traveled as fog.”
"You became the fog." Andreea gaped at me.
“I take it most vampires can’t travel that way.”
“Not at all,” she murmured, “but then again, you aren’t a typical vampire.”
“No. Magic played a role in my creation and, therefore, in all of your creations as well.”
“You want us to try to turn into bats,” Catina said blankly.
“Or whatever you can shift into,” I suggested.
“How did you change your form?” Stela asked.
“Through rage and heartache and bitterness,” I said.
“And you only did it the one time?” Andreea asked.
I nodded. She made a good point. If I were to use the bats against Van Helsing, I had better master being able to shift into them and back.
Focusing my rage on Van Helsing and my desire to want to kill him for daring to come after my brides, I could feel pain rippling through my body as I split apart, morphing into the bats. As the bats, I fluttered about the room, covering the ceiling before congealing back together to form myself once more.
“That was incredible!” Andreea said, clapping her hands.
“That’s one word for it,” Catina muttered.
“Try to turn into something else,” I suggested.
“Like what?”
“A wolf,” I said.
Simultaneously, Stela said, “A panther.”
“Why a panther?” Catina asked.
“Because you have the grace of a large feline.” Stela shrugged self-consciously.
Catina winked at her. “Okay. Emotions. Strong ones.”
She furrowed her brow, obviously trying hard. Stela was biting her lower lip, and Andreea seemed to be mulling something over in her mind. I could almost see the wheels churning.
It took hours and hours, but eventually, it came to light that I was the only one to have the ability to change into a fog. However, thankfully, my brides could all alter their forms. Andreea actually had two. First, she changed into a troll but basically a troll child. I supposed that was because of her affinity for that one troll she had befriended. Her heart was far too big for this world. Her other form was much more fearsome, that of a werewolf.
As for Catina, she did manage to pull off a panther, and Stela was right. The grace Catina’s panther displayed very much matched her normal grace.
Stela came the closest to turning into a bat. Instead, she could become a giant fiery bird.
The storm’s power began to wane, and my thirst grew. We all needed to bolster ourselves for the upcoming fight. Van Helsing might strike the moment the storm ended, and I couldn’t constantly fuel the storm, not if I wanted to have any strength left for the battle.
And that was precisely what happened. Before we could go out and round up some humans for us to drink, the storm ended, and immediately, Van Helsing was here.
It was time for round two.
Chapter Twenty-One
My hunches raised, and I exploded into my bats, but Van Helsing merely smiled, acting unnerved as he jumped down from the windowsill. How could that be? Had he faced other vampires with shapeshifting abilities? I supposed that was possible. Everyone knew there was an affinity for vampires and bats.
I wasn’t the only one to change form. Catina was her panther and Stela her massive bird. Her wings were on fire, and she looked like a wonderful terror.
Only Andreea remained human, and she eyed Van Helsing with a curious expression.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“You always disappointed me, Andreea,” he snapped. “Always and forever. I shouldn’t be surprised to see you turned into such a wretched, damned creature.”
“You never were capable of any kind of true emotion,” Andreea countered. “You only wanted to kill and kill and kill.”
“Who are you to judge considering you now drink and kill to survive?” he yelled.
“I don’t kill,” she said smoothly.
“Tell that to the hundreds of men, women, and children—”
“That wasn’t me.”
“So it was the other vampires here. Doesn’t matter ones of you are guilty. You all are going to die.”
It almost amused me that Andreea thought Van Helsing still had some humanity left in him, but he was beyond that now. He was a bundle of rage, and if he could, he would covert his body into bats just as I had.
For a moment but only a moment, I felt for him. I knew well what he was experiencing. He might not have been married to Cecilia, but he had loved her just the same, even if his degree of love seemed rather different from my own definition.
But he had already tried to kill me and mine, and that was unforgivable, just as he had to rule my compelling and forcing him to kill his fiancée as reprehensible and inexcusable.
We were at the most deadliest of impasses there could be, and Van Helsing would be the one to falter and die.
Van Helsing whipped out two blades, both curved, the weapons each having a separate spike toward the middle of the shaft. He bent his knees and slashed the air first with his right and then his left.
I wasn't intimidated in the slightest but the more I stared at the weapons, the more familiar they looked. How could that be? I had never seen them before. I was certain of it, and yet, a name came to mine.
Hunga mungas. African blades. Maybe it was because of my vampire vision, but I swore the blades glowed a faint purple color, and I knew they had either been blessed or else spelled.
This knowledge… Was I truly Count Dracula reborn? Was that possible? Yes, it seemed I had the same abilities as that mythological creature, but to be him in truth and not just in jest…
But that was something to consider another day. Van Helsing let out a roar.
Catina's panther jerked to the side to avoid the vampire hunter's attack and then leapt toward him, forcing him back.
I as my bats flew around to behind him. Van Helsing wouldn’t be able to escape this time.
Andreea finally transformed into her werewolf while Stela’s fiery bird shrieked and swooped straight for the vampire hunter.
Van Helsing stared her down without any sign of fear. Catina jumped at him from the side, and Stela had her claws out, her mouth open. Would she be able to breathe fire? That would be epic.
But Van Helsing used his hunga mungas to keep them both back. Neither could get close enough to him to actually attack him, and no fire burst out of Stela’s mouth even though I was certain she had tried to.
Enough. He wasn’t going to leave, and I was more than willing to end the arrogant vampire hunter myself.
But Van Helsing chuckled as he whirled around. He tossed one of the blades into the air. As it twisted in midair, he yanked out a net that was not ordinary in the slightest. It expanded and grew, stretching to capture every single one of my bats.
Muttering a curse, I changed into my fog to escape through the loose fibers of the net. Van Helsing's one blade had embedded itself into the ceiling. No matter, he already had out not one but two guns. I wasn't sure where the other hunga munga had gone, but he was firing round after round. Silver bullets burst out of the first one, and strange powders, colorful explosions, and strange smells came out of the second.
Magic once more.
I hadn’t as much time as I would have liked or anticipated, so my own access to magic was limited, unfortunately, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help to defend us. As the fog, I spun around and around, forming a funnel, capturing the contaminated air and shoving it out the till-open window.
“You think yourself
so smart,” Van Helsing said, dropping the magical gun and retrieving another one.
This one, he aimed straight at the panther. A huge burst of fire exploded.
Stela swooped over and absorbed the blast without any issues. With a guttural sound that sounded like a fire crackling, she flew straight at the vampire hunter, not even stopping when a silver bullet struck her straight in the chest.
Van Helsing dropped his weapons, rolled to the right, and brought his silver-braced forearms together as he righted himself on his knees. A silvery sheen covered him, a shield of some kind.
Stela slammed into him, but she bounced off with enough force that she slammed into the far wall of the room, denting it. Dazed, she remained down, and I rushed over to her side as her form shifted back to her vampire. She needed blood and now. Her body was visibly struggling to heal from her wounds, but we were all starving.
Andreea the werewolf came at Van Helsing next, claws out. She managed to get her claws beneath one of the braces on his arm, but he brought out a half-circle chakram and nearly sliced her throat.
No. The scent of blood filled the room. He had cut her, albeit superficially.
“Andreea, get Stela out of here,” I growled. “Catina and I have this.”
Andreea clutched her throat and staggered over to Stela, and the two fled the room.
Van Helsing straightened. His smile churned my stomach.
“I’ll hunt them down and kill them after I’m done with you two.”
“You haven’t even killed one of us yet,” I said, “and you won’t.”
“I haven’t even broken a sweat yet,” Van Helsing said, his lips twisting into a sneer. “I’ve killed almost a thousand vampires already. Four more will be easy.”
“As easy as it was finding your fiancée? Tell me, Van Helsing, how did it feel killing her?”
“You killed her, not me!” he roared, and he threw the chakram straight toward me.
The large metal disk flinted in the firelight as it cut through the air toward me. I plucked it out of the air and would’ve thrown it right back at him only Catina the panther jumped straight on top of Van Helsing, forcing him onto his back.
Immediately, I raced over, fangs out and ready to puncture his neck. I wouldn’t feed. I would rip out his carotid artery. He would bleed out in seconds, and I would love every moment of it.