Heart of Dracula

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  “Dracula has found the means to do so.”

  “He is rather unique in his own gifts.”

  “I have my own unique gifts that might allow me to play with you too, you know.”

  Suddenly, he was also standing at her back and to her side. There were three of him in the room. Startled, she went to stand, but he pressed her back down. The one across from her took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. He kissed her ungloved fingers slowly, one by one. There was no soul behind it. Only the sensation of it against her skin. The other one was nuzzling into her hair. It happened too fast for her to respond, and when she went to pull away, she found she couldn’t. He had her in his snare once more. His hypnotism had taken hold of her.

  “I take good care of my pets,” he purred darkly into her ear. “Spurn our Master and join me in my bed instead. I can be anyone and everyone you desire. I may not touch you with my own body…but you shall never know the difference, I vow it.”

  “Zadok.”

  A second voice. A sterner, colder one. Walter. At the interruption, Zadok snarled, baring his fangs and hissing at the other creature. But the illusion shattered, and there was only one of him once more, standing across the room, leaning against the counter and sulking. No. He was pouting.

  Zadok unloaded on the other man in French. “Damn you to the pits, Walter Northway. You rotten-dicked piece of trash! I could have had her if you hadn’t ruined it.”

  “I thought you were all immortal,” she responded to Zadok dryly in his own language. “I doubt it has rotted as you say. I would slap you if I had my gloves.”

  Zadok blinked at her, surprised. “You speak French, my dove?”

  “I was raised to be a lady, and I traveled with the Roma for many years. I learned several languages. So, I recommend you mark your words. And no, you cannot have me.”

  He laughed in enjoyment. “We shall see, my dove. We shall see.”

  “I apologize for whatever just transpired.” Walter moved to stand near her, looking down at her with an almost sympathetic air. Almost. She wondered if it brought him pain to show emotions.

  “It is quite all right. I do not think he can be helped.”

  “No. That is quite true.”

  “Such wonderful manners.” The Frenchman was still grinning like the proverbial cat who ate the canary. “I am jealous of the Master.”

  “You’ve made that quite clear.” She lifted the glass of juice and sipped it. It was very much required. She hadn’t realized how parched her throat was until that moment.

  Walter was smiling, if faintly, as he sat at the counter next to her. His expression faded a second later. “Are you well, Miss Parker?”

  “As can be expected. I am the prisoner of the King of Vampires. I do not know how I am supposed to react.”

  “You are attending the opera with him tonight.”

  It was a statement, not a question. “Would you have me reduced to hysterics instead?”

  “No. I am merely making an observation.”

  “He has made it quite clear that there is nothing I can do to escape my predicament. If he wishes me dead, he can have it. If he wishes me to go insane, it is in his ability. If he wishes me to attend the opera, so be it.” Her only chance of escape was to destroy his soul. But that thought brought her an insurmountable dismay. She did not wish the vampire dead, even for all his impositions upon her.

  A hand settled on her shoulder. She looked up to the red eyes of Walter, so very similar to the man who made him. But his, despite the fact he was a fraction of Vlad’s years, felt so much colder, so much harder than those of his sire.

  “Do not fret.”

  She forgot how obvious her emotions were on her face. She never had much cause to hide them. “How shall I not?”

  “It is clear you are attracted to him,” Zadok interjected. “What is the matter with that?”

  “I should not feel any such things.” She sipped the juice and continued to eat the fruit and the meat. She knew she would likely need whatever she could get to survive the night. “This is wrong.”

  “By whose standards?” Zadok chuckled. “Certainly not ours.”

  She glared at him again. “Yours is a low bar.”

  “Oh, woe is me.” He placed the back of his hand to his forehead and mimed fainting. “I have been dealt a terrible blow!”

  She glanced to Walter, who clearly shared her beleaguered annoyance with the other vampire’s antics. She wondered how the red-haired vampire had survived so long in his presence without going mad or killing Zadok.

  “If I might provide some advice.” Walter studiously ignored the childishness of his counterpart. “I think you would be better served to decide what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ upon your own opinions of him. Before you resort to anything dire, I recommend…thinking it through. He is a different kind of creature. What he has done—to take you—to him is no crime at all. Errant as that may be, it is simply who he is. He is from another time when such conquest was not a sin.”

  “He is a murderer.”

  Walter’s lips twinged in the barest attempt at a smile. “Aren’t we all?”

  “I would hope not to that degree.” She shot him a wry smile. “Although we have not talked for long.”

  Walter chuckled and bowed his head. “That is true. I fear I came to fetch you for that the carriage has come. I am to take you to the Opera House.”

  She stood from the stool, rather glad to be done with Zadok. “Good night, vampire.”

  “And you, pretty dove.” Zadok grinned and switched to French. She assumed that Walter did not speak it. “If the Master is too much of a brute for you, say the word and you will be at my side.”

  “He would disembowel you for the insult.” She rolled her eyes. “Do not tempt me to claim that I wish for such a thing for that reason alone. It will be a marked improvement for you to be without your intestines, I think.”

  He laughed hard at her slight, and she knew her insult had only spurred him on.

  Walter sighed, clearly frustrated and tired of the whole thing, as they stepped out of the house and to the black carriage that was waiting for them. The same eyeless thing sat in the driver’s seat. She cringed and did her best not to look at him.

  Silently, the vampire offered her a hand into the carriage. She sat on the bench and watched as Walter sat across from her and shut the door behind him. A crack of the whip, and the carriage lurched into motion.

  “Dracula is your sire?” she asked after a long silence.

  “Yes.”

  He was not a talkative thing. “Does he do that frequently? Make others directly?”

  “No. Few can survive it. His curse is…strong.”

  “And therefore, so must you be.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Still, you suffer the likes of Zadok. And the impositions Dracula forces upon you.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Escorting me about. It is clear there are many other places you would rather be.”

  “You are preferable company to the Frenchman.” There was a ghost of a smile on his pale lips. It faded. “I do not dislike you, Miss Parker. I worry for what chaos you may portend.”

  “In that, we are agreed.”

  He took in a breath and exhaled it in a sigh. It was a show. He did not need to breathe. But old habits were likely hard to break. “Do you mean to harm him, my lady?”

  She looked out the window as the city traveled past. “No. I do not think I do. I struggle with what that makes of me. But if I were given the chance to hurt him”—and I have—“I do not think I could bring myself to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “I…wish to understand him. As much as anyone can.”

  “Then you are a gift, and I wish all this might resolve itself easily.” Walter was watching her curiously, his red eyes catching the light of the city lamps as they passed. “I wish him nothing but happiness and peace. He is my Master, he is my maker, but he is also my dear friend
. If you can bring him these things that he has never truly had…then I will do all I can to see it done.”

  What an oddly compassionate, frozen, disgruntled thing. She was not certain if his words were meant to comfort or threaten her. Was he swearing to protect her, or to ensure that she never escaped? Most likely both.

  Maxine looked out at the street on the other side of the window. At the people passing along, smiling and laughing, enjoying each other’s company. A happiness she had never known. One she had never had the chance to obtain. Until now.

  A morbid, shattered version if it, perhaps. And in the arms of the King of Vampires. A tyrant and a monster. But a lonely, hurting thing, whose heart bled even as he drank from others to refill it. A cold and cruel exterior surrounding a wound that had been paid to him long ago.

  After several more minutes in silence, the carriage rolled to a stop. Walter climbed out first and offered her his hand as she descended the stairs.

  Once she was on the street, he looked down at her dourly. “Do not intentionally bring him pain, Miss Parker. That is all I ask.”

  “I do not know as if I have much choice in anything I do.”

  “Ah, but you do. Enjoy the opera, my lady.” He climbed into the carriage and was gone.

  A figure caught her attention, standing amongst the crowd, who parted around him and gave him a wide berth. They could sense what he was—a shark in a school of fish.

  She let out a wavering breath.

  She did not know for certain what would happen this night, but the glint in his crimson eyes told her what she might expect. The shark had singled her out, and tonight, she would feel his teeth once more.

  Tonight, there would be no stopping him from having all that he wished to take.

  21

  Vlad bowed deeply, one arm folded in front of him. “My lady.”

  Maxine tried not to laugh. She shook her head. “I am not your lady, Vlad. I am your prisoner.” It was as much of a reminder for her as it was for him. She seemed to need it constantly, especially in his presence. It was so easy to forget around him. So easy to be swept up in how he made her feel.

  He straightened, and his expression was a stern one. “Is that how we are to begin our night?” It was clear he was disappointed. It almost made her regret her words.

  But her life was not a game.

  “I must seem so small to you. So brief.” She watched the couples pass them. No one glanced at her. She didn’t need to ask why. Dracula either had them all in his thrall or he was masking their presence. “I can understand why you would treat me like a toy.”

  “You are correct.” His hand touched her hair, stroking over it, gathering the end of her braid in his hand before he began to unwind it. “You are more fleeting to me than a flash of a firefly in the night. Barely will I even have registered that you exist before you are gone. Even if you were to wish for my eternal kiss, you will fade to dust before I can do little more than blink. All things drop away from me and are gone. You observed it as such, did you not? All to me is as sand within my grasp.”

  When his hand combed through her hair, her eyes slipped shut. Something about his touch was hypnotic, even without the aid of his literal supernatural ability. When he began again, his voice was a dark rumble that came from close beside her. “I am surprised, though, that you would fault me for this.”

  “I do not fault you for what you are.”

  “Ah, but you do. You bemoan the symptoms but say that you sympathize with the cause. Yes, I delight in my games. Their brief diversions are the only pleasures I have left in this world.” A touch of a finger tilted her head up to look at him. The feeling of him came over her like the surge of the tide. It was not nearly as alarming now as it had been before she realized she could swim. Bit by bit, embrace by embrace, the sensation of his soul against hers was becoming less disturbing. It was becoming—she could not find the right word for it. Comforting. Familiar.

  Enjoyable.

  His expression was still aristocratic and exacting, but something had grown softer in his crimson eyes. “Do not resent me for the games I play. That I toy with you is not meant to demean you. You are not, nor shall you ever be, little in my eyes.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say. He robbed her of her words once more. He stepped closer to her, and she could smell roses upon him. He slipped his hand to cradle her cheek, and she found herself leaning into his touch, searching for more of it. Of him.

  “If you wish to go, say the word.”

  She smiled faintly. “You will not let me leave without you at my side.”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “Therein lies my complaint.”

  “What is it you wish that I cannot grant you? What do you desire that you cannot have?” When she couldn’t answer, he smiled knowingly. “You bristle at the notion of being restricted, even though your chains know no boundaries. I will not force you to be my lover. I will not demand you lick my shoes. I will not ask you for a single thing you will not give me willingly. There is nothing in this world I will not grant you, should you ask for it.”

  “Except spare my city and the lives of the hunters.”

  He shut his eyes and sighed heavily. “Do you not see what an opportunity we share?”

  “I do. It is because I recognize what you are to me that I stand here. Attending this opera as you requested, at your side. That I come to spend a night with you…and I do it willingly. Walter did not need to drag me here.”

  “Yet you continue to request I spare this city.”

  “You said there was nothing I wished for that you would not give me. I was merely pointing out that you were false in your words.” She poked him in the chest once, feeling quite brave.

  He smiled, taking no offence at her gesture. Indeed, quite the opposite, it seemed. “On the topic of things that we have recently said…” He pulled her close to him.

  “Oh, no.”

  “You say you recognize what I am to you. Please, do tell. I am so deeply curious.”

  “I misspoke, same as you.”

  “No lies.” His voice was a low rumble as he playfully scolded her.

  “It is personal, then.” She tried to push away from him, but his hand snaked around her, holding her close. She would worry what the crowd might think, but the audience was blind to her and the vampire.

  “Even better. Speak.”

  When she didn’t, he paid her an arch of a dark eyebrow. She felt her face grow warm as she looked away from him. “You have me at a distinct disadvantage, vampire.”

  “How so?”

  “My condition has made my particularly vulnerable to your…methods of securing my attention.”

  He laughed, a mirthful, genuine sound. She decided she greatly enjoyed the way it resonated in her. “So bashful in your words. ‘Securing your attention.’ What you mean to say is that your inability to be touched by others makes you easy for me to seduce.” His fingers turned her back to look at him with a press against her cheek.

  Damn him and that exacting, arresting crimson gaze. “Yes. Very well. That is what I mean to say.”

  “You discount my skill in such regards, then? I am insulted.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “You are also rather adeptly avoiding my question. I asked you what I have become to you. Am I only an idle romp, then? A roll in the proverbial hay? How knavish.” He was scolding her playfully again. “You have an itch that you have never been able to scratch, and I am just the means of sating your need?”

  “I—No—”

  “Then, what? Correct my assumptions, lest I think you are simply here with me for what I can pay you between the sheets.”

  “Stop teasing me.” Her face felt as though it was on fire. She managed to look down and away from his smile.

  “Never. You are lovely when you blush, even more so when you find yourself cornered. You are beautiful when you are flustered.” He leaned down, and she felt the press of his lips as he placed a ki
ss to her hair. “Do you enjoy my company, Miss Parker?”

  No lies. She let out a long, defeated sigh. “Yes.”

  “Do you enjoy speaking with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you enjoy when I touch you?” His hand slipped to the base of her neck, and she shivered at the sensation of his fingers lacing into her hair. The points of his nails scraped against her skin, and she broke out once more in goosebumps.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “You know I do.”

  “Then go. You are free. Your chains are no longer mine. Walk from me now, take the closest horse and carriage, and head for the horizon. I will not follow you. Your chains are broken.”

  She looked up at him, shocked. He slid his other hand to gently cup her cheek, his thumb resting in the hollow of her chin below her lower lip. She had no words. She was too stunned.

  “Or…you may choose to stay. To attend the opera with me. To spend the evening in my embrace. But know that this is your one opportunity to leave me. I am a covetous creature. I do not surrender the things I desire. And I desire you very much, Miss Parker. As much as I enjoy this game you claim we play of prisoner and warden, it brings you undue strife, and I will not have you conflicted over your actions in my arms. Go. Be free of me. Return to your hunter friends and seek to end my goals here in this fledgling city, or flee. The choice is yours. I will not stop you. I release you.”

  He took a single step back, his touch slipping away. The sensation of his soul there against hers, of crimson velvet and black satin, of teeth, and wings, and gore, and passion, faded.

  But it did not vanish.

  He would always be there with her now.

  As a far deeper, far more wicked poison than any hypnotism or imprisonment he could levy against her.

  Damn you for showing me what I have been missing.

  “There are worse things to condemn me for, believe me.” Vlad smirked with a hint of sharp and too-long canines.

  She swore. Yes, right. He could hear her thoughts. Her blood was in his body. No one on the street registered her obscenity—as loud as it was—as they passed. She would go unnoticed by them, no matter what she did.