She found her heart no longer torn in two. Her mind flicked to the point in time maybe only an hour away when he would have what he wished—what they both wished. When her silly dream became reality. The image of him over her, his heavy, broad frame against and inside hers, made heat pool dangerously in her body.
“Mind your thoughts Miss Parker, or I will not be able to wait, and our first real foray will be over that bench right there.” He pointed a sharp-nailed finger into the distance.
She swore loudly and colorfully in Romanian. “Damn you. Reading my thoughts is cheating!”
“Turnabout is fair play.” He laughed again at her side. “You rummage about inside my emotions and my memories. It is only fair I might pry into a few of yours. Don’t you think?”
“You find the most inconvenient moments to do so.”
“No, only the most embarrassing to comment upon.”
She growled.
He chuckled and squeezed her hand. “That was rude of me. But you are quite charming when you are perturbed.”
“Mmhm.”
He grinned. “You could make a sailor blush with your vehemence. You learned such things from the Roma?”
“The only words I managed to retain from them were swears.”
“Then I think you know roughly two-thirds of their language and could be considered fluent.” He made a face. “Lovely people. Creative in their invectives.”
“You lived there for a time, you said?”
“Yes. Several hundred years ago now. I have traveled about since then. Italy, Germany, most recently London. I tired of the old world, though. I wished to experience youth. So, I came here.”
“This country is hardly new, and you have picked the oldest city within it.”
He shot her an incredulous look, one eyebrow raised.
She realized her foolishness, and she chuckled. “Two hundred years is not new to those of us who live sixty if we are lucky.”
“If I have my way, you will live to see a thousand and more.”
She looked up at him curiously. “Do you mean to turn me?”
“Only if you wish it. I will not force it upon you. That is a sin against nature not even I would wish to commit.” Vlad frowned. “But I do not like the idea of losing you so soon.”
She glanced away to watch a few others across the street, walking arm in arm as they were, enjoying the evening air after the opera. So similar, and so disparate, from her situation. The couple were young lovers. She and Vlad were…something very different from that.
“I could not possibly mean enough to you, that you would wish me to be at your side for—” She squeaked in surprise and bit back a scream as he picked her up around the waist with both hands and planted her feet on the edge of a stone railing that marked the front edge of someone’s property, a good twelve inches up from the brick sidewalk.
“Stop. Enough of this. I will have no more of it. It ends now.” He was pointing at her face, lecturing her like she was a child.
She was twelve inches off the bricks, and for the first time she could stand eye-to-eye with him. Mostly. He still managed to be an inch taller. She laughed.
“I am tired of your—what? What is funny?” He narrowed his eyes, frustrated at her laughter.
“By God, you’re tall.” She kept laughing. “You poor bastard.”
“You have only realized this now?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, not in the slightest. I have but now measured the specifics. No wonder you defy fashion and do not wear a top hat. You would be a monolith.” She rested her hands on his shoulders over the fabric of his dark peacoat. “You must spend your days with a sore neck.”
His stern expression flickered into amusement. “I am accustomed to it. I do find this arrangement more convenient; I will admit.” His hands rested on her waist. “You are so very small.”
“I am of perfectly average frame. You are the anomalous one.”
“Then everyone is simply too short.”
“Is that why you turned Walter? Do you only pick out the spindly creatures so that you do not get a crick in your neck from glowering down at everyone?”
“I do not glower.”
“Oh, yes, you do. I am quite convinced you invented the expression.” She slipped closer to him, sliding an arm along his shoulder until it draped casually behind his neck. His dark hair was held back in a simple red silk ribbon, and she toyed idly with the end of the fabric. She pulled the glove of her other hand off between her teeth, drawing a low growl out of his throat at the action. Something darkened in his expression.
She slipped her fingers along his neck, feeling the muscles and the tendons there. The strength in him. The power that burned beneath her hand, though it was chill. He had no heartbeat.
Yet.
She wondered how quickly she could change that.
He growled again, louder than the first, and his hands at her waist tightened. “Do not tease me, Maxine. You will regret it later. I have every intention on being quite delicate with you this night. Do not tempt my control.”
“I find it fascinating that you of all people can find the strength to handle anything fragile.”
“I do not think you are, but I will treat your first night with the respect it deserves. I do intend on testing your resilience soon enough.”
She trailed her touch up to his cheek and let herself explore his features. Let herself truly examine him, now that she had made her choice. His eyes slipped shut at her embrace, and he seemed to lose himself in the experience, same as she.
She ran her thumb along the line of his lower lip, and before she could second-guess her impulse, she tipped her head forward and kissed him. She wanted to feel him. Taste him. She could no longer hide what she desired. She could no longer resist what she wanted and hide behind a mountain of should nots and maybes.
And in the wake of his fire, her doubts melted away. She felt his surprise at her kiss and felt as it faded. He wrapped an arm around her to pull her flush against him. His other hand cradled the back of her neck as he took her curious, exploring embrace and deepened it.
“Be mine, Maxine.” She heard his thoughts echo inside her mind. It was not a request. It was a command. It was a need that burned in him. There were no lies within him. Nothing to betray any plot or any scheme to use and betray her. There was only a void, an emptiness, that he urgently demanded she fill. It called to her. It drew her close. It was what had sung to her like a siren the moment they had met. “Be mine. Come with me.”
She had never once been needed by anyone in her life. Her heart soared. Even if this was only temporary. Even if her life was short, or his need was fleeting, it did not matter. Yes, vampire. I shall.
His grasp on her tightened as he heard her silent reply. His tongue flicked against her lips, asking for entry, and she granted it. He took her greedily, claiming her as his own. And she sank into him, wishing for nothing but more.
If this was to be how she died—at his hands, in his arms—then she could think of no better way. If she died his prey, she would do so with a smile. It was only when her head began to spin that she urged him away with a press of her hand.
He broke the kiss with a primal, irritated, and impatient snarl.
“One of us needs to breathe,” she reminded him.
“Overrated.” He grunted and leaned in to kiss her again. She was still reeling from the last one, and she urged him once more to give her a moment. Unhappily, he obliged. “Tell me that you love me, Miss Parker.”
“What?” She blinked, astonished.
“I wish to hear you say the words. Tell me that you can see into my very core, straight through to the whole of me, and that you love what you have found. That you love this foolish cretin, this gargoyle, this monster, this cannonball of a soul you hold in in your hands.”
She could not help but laugh quietly at his reuse of her bad metaphor. She put her palm to his cheek, and he leaned into her touch. His skin was not as cold as it was
before. His heart had begun to beat. “That is what you wish from me. You wish for someone to see you for what you really are—all of you, not merely a facet—and declare you worthy of love.”
“Maxine.” His voice was little more than a whisper. Something shone in his eyes. For a moment, she worried he might shed tears. “Please…”
She intended to answer him with a kiss. To press herself to him, to whisper that he should take her away to some dark place where they could become what they needed in the other. She would whisper to him in his embrace yes. How she could, even in this moment, hear his answering call.
Odd as they may be.
Tragic as they might become.
God forgive her.
She loved him.
But she never had the chance to tell him.
The ground rushed up to meet her. Grass and dirt stung her hands. It was a second later that she heard the rumble of gunfire in the distance.
“Vampire!”
She recognized Alfonzo’s voice, coated in anger.
The hunters had come.
23
Vlad pushed Maxine to the ground. The marksman was a careful shot, but he could not risk it. He felt the bullet tear through his shoulder. A second burst through his neck before he let his body take the shape of bats and fill the air.
The wounds burned, revealing the presence of magic in the lead that punctured him.
Wrath. That was the word for what he felt. He would destroy these humans. Tear them to pieces. For taking from him that which he had desired for so long—so very long—at the very second he was to receive it.
Knives, flying through the air, propelled by a psychic force, skewered several of the large black bats that filled the air. Bullets took out several more. He did not care. He had only one goal—kill them. Kill them all.
Somewhere beneath his anger, he knew he was at a serious disadvantage. Like the warlord he was, he surveyed the battlefield and found his own position sorely lacking. He ticked off a list as to why he found himself in an unfavorable position. The hunters smelled of magic, and the Helsing man was skilled. Vlad was already wounded. He had been caught off guard. Maxine forced him to lower his defenses, and he had been utterly distracted by her.
Cursing himself for his foolishness, he swarmed high up into the sky. The young blonde huntress was helping Maxine—his Maxine—to her feet.
And therein was the reason he would not retreat, despite it being very much in his interest to do so. He was immortal, he was eternal, but he was not unstoppable. The tactician in him screamed at him to take to higher ground. To seek another way around the front lines that was presented to him in the form of three very capable fighters who wished to see him defeated.
But he could not.
They had something he needed.
Redemption—as much as he would ever have—in the form of a beautiful young woman.
You belong to me!
The barbarian in him overcame the tactician. Rage overcame reason. Beast overcame man. He would not let them take what was his.
Diving low, he struck.
“Maxine, are you all right?” A hand took her by the upper arm and helped her up to her feet. She turned to see Bella standing there, watching her with concern etched on her face.
Why was the girl worried for her? It took her half a beat to remember that, to them, Vlad was the enemy. Rightfully so, they believed her to be his prisoner. They did not know she had chosen to take his hand.
To them, he was a monster trying to destroy the world. To them, he was a demon who had stolen her away.
It was far more complicated than that. But not from their point of view.
“I—I’m fine, thank you,” she finally managed to answer. She was still stunned and reeling from what had happened. One moment she had been about to kiss the King of Vampires, to tell him that she loved him, and another moment she had been face-down in the grass, with the boom of rifle fire echoing through the street.
“You belong to me!”
The words echoed inside her head, impossibly loud and not her own. She winced and placed her hand to her temple. She did not realize Vlad could holler inside her mind. It was disconcerting at best. But they were linked together in ways she did not yet fully understand. Her blood was inside his veins, and more than once she had touched her soul to his and rummaged about inside his memories. Such things were bound to leave ties.
The sound of screeching bats grew louder as the black cloud of flapping wings dove low, meaning to attack them. Bella lifted her hands, and daggers swarmed around the two of them like a shield.
Maxine gasped and drew closer to her, eyes wide. She had never seen anything like it. She had seen Bella demonstrate her power in a far more limited sense, but a swirling wall of knives was another matter entirely.
The bats were forced to abandon their attack. Still, the echo of gunfire continued. One after another. With each boom, a bat dropped from the sky, landing on the bricks or the cobblestone with a wet thump, blood pooling around their small forms.
Then there was Alfonzo. Standing in the center of the street, a long blade at his side. It was glowing. Honest-to-God glowing. The steel shone a brilliant white, casting shadows around him and glinting off the pools of crimson on the stones.
“Face me, monster!” Alfonzo shouted up at the swarming bats.
The bats coalesced into the vampire. He stood, a towering and terrifying sight. With another boom of a rifle, something hit some strange kind of wall that sparked and glowed with crimson lightning near him. He had magic of his own. Of course, he does.
You are the one ill-suited for this kind of thing. They are warriors. They have done this dance before. Maxine wanted to shrink away into the shadows, to hide from what was about to come. But the swirling wall of daggers posed her as much harm as it might the vampire. She was forced to stay by Bella.
Who, bless her heart, was holding Maxine’s hand tightly in hers as if she were in need of consolation. As if to promise that all was now well, and she was no longer in danger.
They were “saving her,” after all.
Vlad’s expression was both a hard and stoic mask and one of pure unadulterated hatred. But he was bleeding from the chest. Several bullet wounds shone as wet spots against black clothing. He was already wounded.
Three against one. He may be a demigod, but she did not like those odds.
It was in that sudden, jarring moment that she realized she wanted him to win. The hunters had never been anything but kind to her—friendly with her—in a way she was not often shown. She did not wish them harm. She wanted neither party to come to blows. “Stop this. All of you.”
No one heeded her words. No one even glanced at her.
“You die here and now, monster.” Alfonzo lifted his sword and held it aloft with both hands, readying for a fight.
“We shall see.” Vlad sneered. “Many of yours have come and gone, Helsing. Many of yours lie dead in the ground from my hands.”
“And many of mine have sent you to the grave.”
“To what ends? I always return.”
“And we will always be here to stop you.”
Vlad laughed. A cold, cruel sound. Empty of the mirth and the amusement she had heard before. This was who he was to others—this was the creature they fought. A tyrant, a fiend, and a demon. “No. You will not. I will outlive your ilk. I will outlive all. I will be the last to stand upon this wretched Earth when humans have lain it all to waste. When your plague has destroyed all the creatures of this place, and you have consumed it all in your fathomless greed, I shall stand alone in the ashes. So come, hunter, and try your will against mine. You will fall.”
“We shall see!” Alfonzo ran at Vlad, sword raised.
The daggers around her shifted and changed direction like minnows in a pond. Bella jumped forward, taking her weapons with her, and joined the fray.
Eddie appeared, shouldering his long rifle, and pulled two revolvers from holsters at his sides. He open
ed fire.
Three against one.
Vlad was left to defend himself against a sword, against daggers, and against bullets.
And he was going to lose.
Shadows spread out from the vampire, and he fought with magic the likes of which she had never even imagined. He was faster than the hunters. Alfonzo was bleeding from slashes that had been paid to him by Vlad’s sharp claws or lashing swipes of glowing red something that seemed to come from nowhere at all. It was not quite fire. It was not quite glass. It was not quite lightning. It was power itself, cutting through the air and clashing against steel and sending the hunters staggering back. And the moment that the arcs of crimson appeared in the air it was gone again.
I am not suited for this new world in which I find myself.
Despite his strength, the vampire was forced to play defense against the three who did not let up from their assault.
It was in one ill-timed step that Alfonzo took his opening and drove his sword deep through Vlad’s midsection. He hissed in pain, and his lips pulled back from long, vicious fangs as he snarled down at Alfonzo. His hand gripped the blade in his stomach.
Alfonzo yanked the blade back, tearing open the vampire and sending blood pouring down around his feet. Vlad fell to one knee.
“Now, you die, vampire.” Alfonzo raised his sword, clearly meaning to lop off his enemy’s head.
“No!”
She had not realized she had shouted. She had not realized she had moved until she was standing between Vlad and Alfonzo. But there she found herself, rather inexplicably, her hand on the vampire’s shoulder behind her, the other held up in front of her, as if that alone could stop Alfonzo’s swing.
The vampire hunter paused, looking at her wild-eyed from shock. “Maxine, what are you doing?”
“Stop this. Stop all of this!”
“He must die. We have to stop him. He means to destroy this city and all who live here. Including you!” Alfonzo shouted back. “Get out of my way.”
She hesitated. “No.”
The hunter looked crestfallen. “You are corrupted by him. You have fallen to him.”
Heart of Dracula Page 25