“I am no threat to you. I am an empath.” She did not fight the smile that brokered for freedom. “Unless you wish to be bored to death as I explain your current mood to you in excruciating detail.”
He grinned at her joke. “But they have come to you all the same. Why?”
She watched him for a moment. But she had offered to make this deal with him, and she wished him to trust her enough to speak the truth. “I give you this as a show of good faith. They want me to lead them to you and to sniff you out like a bloodhound using the brooch they gave me. It is through contact with that stone that I have brought us both here to this vision.”
“I see. And you would do what they ask of you?”
“You seek to kill thousands of innocent lives. Yes.”
“Hm. Very well.” Then…he vanished. Simply vanished from her view. His shadow remained, and it rushed under her as though it were now a sentient creature.
Before she could react, hands settled on her shoulders over her dress. She tried to yank away from him, but they held her firm.
“I agree to your terms, darling Maxine. And I find them very interesting indeed.” His voice was a whisper by her cheek, his breath cold against her skin.
Goosebumps raced over her, and as she felt him lean in closer to her, meaning perhaps to kiss her, she doubled her efforts to pull away. “No! You can’t!” She pushed hard, and he let her go. Turning to face him, she eagerly put several steps between them. “You can’t touch me.”
“Can’t?” He tilted his head slightly. “Interesting choice of words, my dear. I have heard ‘don’t’ a hundred thousand times. But can’t? What do you mean?” As if to challenge the concept, he took a step toward her and reached a hand toward her cheek, sharp nails and gray skin stark in contrast to the black fabric of his sleeve. “What magic protects you?”
She drew back. “None.”
“Then define ‘can’t.’” He stepped closer, meaning to press his palm to her cheek.
“Stop!” She backed away again, twice the distance he had closed. “I meant as I said. You can’t touch me. No one can.”
“Fascinating…” He lowered his hand. “Your gift. You read more than from objects, don’t you? If I were to touch you, you would be trapped in my memories?”
“It is far worse than that.”
“Explain.”
She paused. “And so begins our accord in full, vampire. I shall answer your questions, and you shall answer mine. Both of us have agreed to speak the truth.”
He smiled, a predatory thing. “Yes. We are agreed.”
“To touch me is…is to die. A slow and painful death of attrition.” When he did not speak, she continued. “I am an empath, yes, but by a different way around that most others might be. I hear the whispers of those around me on a far deeper level. When I touch someone—when they touch me—it is not their flesh that I endanger. It is their very soul.”
That eager excitement glimmered in his eyes again as he took a careful step toward her. “And you have killed in this fashion? How?”
“I…have torn a man’s soul from his body. He starved to death as a result.” She swallowed thickly at the memories that seemed to lift bile into her throat. For more than one reason. She shook her head. “Spare me from recounting the details. A conversation for another time, please.”
“As you wish. But I will ask for the tale soon. What you say you have done is impossible.” He took another slow step toward her. Not wishing to frighten her, it seemed. “You can hear not only my emotions but my soul, then?”
“Yes.”
“And what does it tell you? What can you feel from me, my darling empath?”
She hesitated, her eyes slipping out of focus as her attention drifted elsewhere. “Your soul does not whisper. It is the roar of ocean waves on the rocks of some distant shore. Some might be the babble of a stream or the rush of a river…I think you are far more than that.”
“Good. What else?” He took another slow, careful step as he approached her.
“I feel…hunger.”
“An easy guess. I am a vampire.”
“No. Not like a wolf. Although, yes, that is there, I hear something else. Something deeper. A hunger for—” She paused and blinked out of her awareness of him. She looked up at him, uncertain if she should finish.
“Go on. Please.”
“A hunger for life.”
He straightened his shoulders, taken aback by her words. He said nothing, his crimson eyes flickering between hers, as if trying to understand. After a moment, he finally broke the silence, his voice a low whisper. “I am dead and have been for a very long time.”
“You do not seek to be alive, though, do you? You hunger for that which such a state of being might bring.” She reached out carefully, unsure of what she was doing. She needed a clearer photograph. The portrait of the man that she was building was becoming more than simply a tyrant. She needed to understand him, although she was not quite sure why. She placed her gloved hand against his chest, over where his heart might be.
She felt nothing. No warmth. He was as cold as a stone wall. She knew if she pressed her ear to his chest, she would hear no beating from the organ that lay still in his breast. “I hear an emptiness as unfathomable as the depths of the ocean itself.”
“You were wrong, earlier. You are dangerous, Miss Parker. Very dangerous.” His voice was still a quiet whisper. When she looked up to him, she expected to see anger in his eyes. But what there was instead was grief. Grief, and hope, and the knowledge that it would surely die. The expression of a man who knew tragedy was to come and that it was unavoidable. “I should kill you now for the threat you bring me.”
Before she could move, he slung an arm around her waist and yanked her up against him, pressing her there. She gasped and struggled, but it was as though a bar of steel was around her. He was immovable. He would be far stronger than she was even if he were only a mortal man. As it stood, she was pathetically outmatched.
“Stop, please—let me go—I—”
“No. I do not think I shall do anything of the sort.” He hovered his touch over her cheek. She turned her head away from him.
“Please, I—”
“Shush.” His fingers hovered over her cheek, close, but not touching her. If he were alive, she would have been able to feel the warmth from his hand. “You have come here a second time to find me. You knew it would be dangerous. You have done this because you seek to know me. You wish to understand me, don’t you? To what ends?”
“If I can learn more of who you are, I might be able to find a way to stop you.”
“I thought we promised not to lie to each other, Maxine.”
“I’m not—”
“Then it is a falsehood you tell yourself as well. You have thrown yourself into the maw of death, knowing I will spell your doom. But as you stand here, parlaying with the enemy…consider why. When you wake from this vision, find the true answer for your curiosity. I can see it plainly.”
“Then tell me.”
“No.” He smirked. “Such things are best discovered, not told. When you admit to yourself why you came here to speak to me, I will reward you.”
“With what?”
“A terrible secret I have never uttered to anyone in all my years.” He hovered his fingers along her throat, drifting over her. “Oh, my dear. I think I will have a great deal of fun unraveling you. Ah. There is one thing you should know. I cannot die. Not even from your unique curse.”
And with that, he touched her. His palm settled against her cheek, and she gasped. Instantly, she was shaking like a leaf. His touch was cold, but gentle. It felt unnatural, but she had nothing with which to compare it.
But he did not scream in agony. He did not collapse to the ground. He watched her, seemingly enthralled by her reaction. She clutched the fabric of his vest in desperation. If he had not been holding her up, her knees might have gone out. Her eyes were wide.
“You have never been touched
…have you?”
“No—Please, I…”
He shushed her quietly as he slipped his fingers into her hair, his thumb resting at the hollow of her ear as he cradled her head in his hand. He tilted her up to look at him.
It felt incredible. It felt wrong. It was overwhelming. She couldn’t do anything except feel him. His hand, his touch, his nails against her scalp. But then, there was what came with it. The feeling of dark wings spreading out against a night sky. The joy of the hunt. The beauty of the stars painted behind a crimson moon that followed him wherever he went. Beneath it was the taste of sand. The taste of an old sun, burning him.
Blood. Hunger. The joy of victory. The coldness of the grave.
Him.
“Precious girl…you can see it all, can’t you? Straight through to the dead heart that sits in a cage of bone.”
When his thumb began to track back and forth slowly along her skin, she whimpered. Her fingers tightened, clinging to him. She couldn’t form words. She was caught up in him, in satin, in velvet, in steel, and chains, in passion, and violence. He was all those things and more.
“How eager I am to meet you in person, my darling.” His voice rumbled in his chest, resonating through her. “And we will meet very soon. Then you will be mine.”
“No, I—”
“You have no say in this, I’m afraid.” He lowered his head to hers. All her thoughts froze. She tried to pull back from him, but his grasp in her hair tightened. “Lead the hunters to me. Light the torches, bring your weapons, and stop me if you can. You will fall. And when you do—when you kneel—it will be at my feet.” His lips ghosted over hers, and she felt him smile. “And what a glorious sight it shall be.”
And with that, he kissed her.
5
When Maxine awoke, lying flat on the carpet, it was several hours later. The sun was already setting. She knew she hadn’t been trapped in the vision for that long. She was exhausted, and she had a splitting headache. It had taken so much of a toll on her, she must have passed out.
She had not known what to expect. But now that she woke up feeling like she had been put through the wringer of a wash basin, she also wasn’t surprised. Picking herself up off the floor, she put the brooch back on the mantel—careful not to touch it with her bare hand—and went upstairs to change and crawl into bed. It was still early, and she had not eaten supper, but her head ached too badly for her to do anything else.
He had asked her why she wished to understand him and disagreed with her response. I only wish to know him so that I may stop him. But was it true? She thought so. But he seemed so certain she was lying that it gave her doubt. If she could discern her own motives, he said he would give her a prize. A “terrible secret” he had never said to anyone, he claimed.
Perhaps the secret to undoing him would be within those words.
When she slipped under the covers and her head met the pillow, she was almost instantly asleep. But not before she placed her fingers against her lips, recalling the brief sensation of a kiss. It had only lasted the barest second before it shattered with the rest of the memory. But it was enough.
It was the only kiss she had ever known.
And it was paid to her by a monster and a tyrant set to destroy her city and thousands of lives.
Nothing in life can ever be simple, can it?
Vlad pushed the lid of his coffin open and sat upright. Pressing a palm to his head, he let out a small grunt. He felt dizzy and out-of-sorts. Something he had not felt in a very long time. He could sense that the sun had finished its trek through the sky and his perpetual red moon had taken its place.
Fascinating child. Rare child. He smiled through his disorientation. He had never had his mind invaded before, not once, and he had expected to find the act infuriating. Perhaps it was the invader who made the act instead somehow charming and more than a little beguiling. He had wished it not to end.
Certainly not once he had tasted her, however brief that taste had been.
He suspected someone of her unique nature would not be able to withstand such direct and sudden contact. And what an unusual nature, indeed. He had never heard of someone who could touch their very soul to another’s.
Suddenly, he bemoaned having left his library tucked away. Soon, he would unleash his power, and with it would come all that he kept hidden. Then perhaps he would see what he could discover in his old tomes. Certainly, there must be some mention of someone with that kind of gift.
In his years, there was but one plague that remained a singular condition—one wretch that remained cursed without compare. Him. All others remained a derivative or a mutation at best.
Climbing from the coffin, he wavered on his feet before chuckling and steadying himself. I have never been swept off my feet by a woman before. And she has done it twice in one day. I wonder, my dear Maxine, if I have left you as perplexed and intrigued? I do very much hope so.
I will have you come to me in the end.
I think I will have you willingly kneel to me.
It wouldn’t be a hard task to seduce her. He smiled as he dressed, donning his usual garb, standing in the mirror to run a comb through his black strands. No, it would not be a hard task at all.
She was not innocent or naïve—indeed, she seemed remarkably intelligent. She impressed him with her capacity for rational thought and her shrewd navigation through a difficult conversation. He had done his best to keep her off balance. He had decided quite instantly that she was adorable when she was flustered.
No, it was not because she was a wallflower or an ignorant child that he would have her easily. It was for the simple fact that he, where apparently all else had failed, could touch her. By her own admission, she had never felt a hand against her own skin. And from the way she had trembled and shaken in his arms when he let his fingers caress her cheek, he believed her words. She had been so wonderfully frightened. And not only of him.
What a tragic thing to suffer. Especially for a beautiful child such as she. He had adored the way her chocolate eyes grew wide at the sight of him. The way her long dark waves tangled in his fingers, soft as silk.
To live a life alone…
He knew what it was like to love and suffer the agony of loss. But to never know the solace of another’s embrace was something not even he could fathom. He had never been shy with his desires toward others, nor had he ever been short on bedfellows, companions, or those who would share love with him for a time. The thought of being bereft of that sounded like the path to madness.
Her fear was delicious. She had begged him not to touch her for fear of harming him—he, who she had joined with others to kill! It was clear that she was a gentle thing. Kindhearted. The sympathy that had burned in her eyes when she had felt his soul had melted something in him that had been frozen solid for a long time.
Her words had cut him to the quick. He did not doubt her claim to hear the whispers of the souls around her. She had spoken to him the truth of his nature that he had never heard aloud. But it was not anger he felt at such a revelation that she had paid him.
It was hope.
She had felt the abyss that dwelled in him, and she had not turned away in revulsion. She had looked up at him with such compassion that he knew he must have her. The war—this city and his new empire—was now secondary among his goals.
You will be mine, Maxine Parker.
Bella impacted the wall hard. She caught most of the blow with her shoulder and grunted from the pain. The ghoul who had thrown here there had been intending to tear her to pieces. She would take the wall over its claws any day.
She pulled two more knives from their holsters on her legs and glared at the slavering, drooling monster. Its teeth were all worn sharp, looking like a fish’s maw more than the human it had one been. Its features were sunken and sallow. Skin hung loose on an empty frame.
Eyes that had once belonged to a person were now black from lid to lid, with only a single red dot in the center of each.
It knew nothing of compassion or humanity. It only knew hunger.
The creature jumped at her again, and she dug her heel against the wall, ready to meet it with her blades.
Bam.
Its head rocked to the side with the impact of the bullet that blew out its skull. It dropped to the ground, shrieked, and burst into flame. Bella stood and watched as the thing reduced to ash. She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. She didn’t know if it was sweat or blood on her, but she didn’t much care. She was probably just smearing it around. But it was starting to run into her eyebrows.
“You’re welcome,” Eddie said with a lopsided smile.
“I had it under control.” She smiled back at him. “But yes, thank you.”
“Are you two done?” Alfonzo called from the end of the alley. “Two ghouls, and it took you five minutes. You should be faster than that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie walked toward their leader, and Bella followed. She couldn’t help but chuckle at Alfonzo’s constant training. Even in the middle of a fight, he was always trying to teach them something. It was as charming as it was annoying sometimes.
Eddie popped open his revolver, plucked the empty shells from their holes, and replaced them with bullets from the pouch he kept on his hip. “What do you wanna do with their victim in there?”
“Are they still alive?” Alfonzo asked.
“Very much not.” Bella blanched. Ghouls were messy eaters. The person looked like they had been dismantled by a pack of coyotes.
“Then leave them.” Their de-facto leader sniffed dismissively. “We’re not in the business of hiding corpses.”
Eddie looked over his shoulder at the remains of the woman who had been the prey. At least, Bella assumed the person had been a woman. Only the tattered remains of a dress gave it away. The body was nearly unrecognizable. Her younger friend sighed and shook his head. “Eh. It just seems wrong to leave them like that.”
“Someone’ll find them in the morning. We have work to do. C’mon.” Alfonzo gestured a hand, and the three of them headed down the sidewalk.
Heart of Dracula Page 5