Heart of Dracula

by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

  “I…I have not.” She tried to sound resolute in her words, but they were as uncertain as she was. “I cannot allow this.”

  “We may only have this one chance, Maxine. Please. Get out of my way. He has poisoned your mind. Let me end him, and I will save you. His plague will end. Can’t you see what he’s done to you?”

  “Maxine…go.” Vlad’s hand settled on hers. It was warm. His heart was beating. Bloodlust had spurred it on. But it was wet with blood. “You put yourself in danger. They will not understand. They will hurt you.”

  “We are not the monsters here, vampire,” Alfonzo spat.

  “Leave me, Maxine,” Vlad urged her, ignoring the hunter. “I will not see you harmed.”

  She turned to face him, exposing her back to Alfonzo. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop him if he tried to hurt her, anyway. What could she do, a foolish empath? Her power could do nothing in a fight. She placed her hand against his cheek. Go, vampire. I will not watch you die. Retreat.

  “I cannot leave you.” His words echoed silently in her head.

  Nor shall you. This is not a parting. It is a pause. Go.

  “Get out of my way, Maxine,” Alfonzo warned. “I will not ask again. He must die. Say goodbye, and back away.”

  Go, vampire. I cannot watch you die. I will not survive the grief. She paused and let herself say the words silently that she wished she could say aloud.

  I think I love you.

  His expression shifted. No longer the cold mask of hate, but one so full of emotion that it cracked her heart in half. He gazed up at her in hope, in adoration, in awe. As if she was some kind of angel come to Heaven to bless a wretch who had lived in darkness for so very long.

  It lasted for only a split second.

  Eddie raised his gun and pointed it at the back of Vlad’s head. He would hit her too if he fired. They paused only for her sake. They did not want to hurt her. She was grateful for that. It gave her the moment she needed.

  And the vampire vanished. He disappeared into his shadow, and she watched as it slipped along the floor and up the wall of a building and was gone.

  “Damn you!” Alfonzo grabbed her shoulder and yanked her around violently. “Damn you, Maxine! What have you done?”

  She shrank back from him. “I couldn’t let you—”

  “We may not have another chance. We could have stopped him and saved everyone.” Alfonzo stormed up to her. “He’s corrupted you. You’re his thrall now, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not, I—”

  She never got the chance to finish. Alfonzo balled up his fist, his leather glove creaking. With no other warning, the fist met her temple.

  His Master was in a rage.

  Walter was standing by the wall, his hands folded in front of him, head bowed. He made himself as much of an unappealing target for the elder vampire’s wrath as he could.

  And, oh, how he was wrathful.

  Dracula had entered the home and immediately destroyed two pieces of furniture and ripped Zadok’s arm clean off for having the audacity to ask what was the matter. Now, his King was sitting in a chair, his own fingers dug deep into the festering, burning wound in his chest, searching for the bullets that must have caused it. There was a deep gash in his stomach, but that had already mostly healed. It was the bullets that remained that were troublesome.

  Blessed silver, no doubt. Two had been put straight into his heart. Several more elsewhere, judging by the blood, although those had exited out the back and the wounds had already healed.

  It would have killed any lesser creature. As it was, Zadok was likely to be more the worse for wear come the morning than Dracula.

  Vlad wormed his fingers into the holes in his chest up to his knuckle. His lips were drawn back from his teeth as he snarled and hissed in pain. He wrenched something free, and between his fingers was held a silver bullet. Walter watched as the flesh that touched it blistered and burned. The elder vampire tossed the bullet into the fire with a loud snarl and went to find the second offensive item.

  “They took her,” he growled through clenched teeth.

  “I am sorry.”

  Vlad howled, a sound that was more inhuman than not, as he wrenched the second bullet from his chest and hurled the bloody thing into the flames. He stood from his chair, took two steps, and his knees gave out from under him.

  Walter was there in an instant, supporting his weight and guiding him back to his chair. “Master, you are in no condition to—”

  “I will not let them touch her!” Vlad hissed loudly in pain and collapsed into the chair, his hand pressed against the holes in his chest.

  “You know not where they have taken her.”

  “I can sense her. I will find her.”

  “If they wished her dead, they would have shot her already. For now, she is likely safe.”

  “Safe?” he snarled. “Do not dare speak to me of what you—” He broke off in pain again, grunted, and tilted his head back to the chair, his eyes squeezing tight.

  Walter sighed. “Take some hours to rest and heal before you go to fetch her. As you are now, you cannot succeed.”

  “These wounds will not kill me.”

  “Yet they nearly succeeded.”

  “I was distracted.”

  “These are not normal mortals, Master. You know this. We will win, and we will take her back, but you must be whole for us to do it. Anything less puts her at risk. While they may not kill her now, they may do so if you wage an assault.”

  That was what finally triggered reason in the enraged mind of the elder vampire. He sighed heavily, begrudgingly, and sank farther back against the tall chair. “Very well…Warn the others. Tomorrow, we find her. Tomorrow, we will wage our war.”

  Walter bowed at the waist, and in a swirl of mist, was gone.

  Tomorrow, it truly begins.

  24

  “Maxine.”

  A voice called to her in her dreams. Somewhere far away. He was always so close, so near, and now he could hear her like wolves howling in the wood. Or perhaps he was calling for her because she was lost amongst them.

  “Maxine!”

  He was too far away to reach her without her help. He could not come to her on his own. She could hide from him if she wished. She could stay in the darkness of the woods that he could not see and ignore his calls. But more than his voice called to her. She felt his worry. She felt his desperation. She stretched out her hand to him. Reached for his presence and touched it with her own.

  With the barest spark of contact, she was suddenly in his arms. She felt the fabric of his coat around her, smelling of roses. He held her tight. “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked up at him and saw his brow creased in concern. He tilted her head to one side, and suddenly his alabaster features flashed to a look of pure hatred. There must be a bruise on her temple. A low, terrible growl came from deep in his chest. Quietly, she tried to explain. “I think Alfonzo punched me.”

  “I will rend the flesh from their bones.” He was seething, and his hand was now hovering in the air near her, his sharp nails curled in like a claw. He clearly wished to hurt something and did not trust himself to touch her in his rage. His eyes, always crimson, were now consumed by it from lid to lid and seemed to nearly glow with their own light. His teeth were sharper, dangerous, animalistic. His humanity weakened as his anger grew. “How dare they—”

  Struggling to control himself, he bit it back and squared his shoulders. He shut his eyes, schooled himself, and when he reopened them, they were his normal deep red once more. Taking in a deep breath, he let it out slowly through his nose. “Forgive me. I do not wish you to see me this way.”

  Shockingly, his anger didn’t frighten her. It was terrifying, yes, but it was also fascinating. There was something beautiful about his wrath. Perhaps if it were pointed at her, she would think differently.

  She placed her head against his chest and pulled herself close to him in an embrace. He hes
itated, tense, before slipping his arms back around her to hold her. “What you wear on the outside is no less alarming than what humanity would hide within their hearts.”

  She felt his lips press against the top of her head. “I will find you. I will bring you home to me. I must take some time to mend the damage they paid me. But once I am well, I will destroy them.”

  “No. Please. Do not kill them. They mean well—they are trying to help me and save this city. They fear I have been corrupted by you. They do not understand.”

  “Poor, compassionate Maxine.” He sighed and tilted her head up to face him. “There is nothing you may say to them—no words you might conjure, no poetry you might speak—that will ever convince them you are of your own sound mind. Not even you, my little Sophocles, could pen the verse that might inspire them to peaceably release you.”

  “Then what will we do?”

  “I will bargain with them. I will tell them I will leave this city. I will take you and leave here with Walter and all the rest. Boston will be spared my wrath and my poison. We will go somewhere they can never find us. Perhaps the forests of the north, where the stretch of my illness will cause little damage.”

  “And what of your monsters? The wolves you seek to feed?”

  “They will whimper and whine about being denied their city of prey. Instead, they will harass the local wildlife and terrorize the native tribes. They will survive.” He furrowed his brow and, taking her hand, slipped her palm against his shirt and vest over his heart. “There is a great and terrible power that begs to be free within me, Maxine. I am a plague upon this land, make no mistake. I can contain it, and I will continue to do so if I must.”

  “Does it hurt you to keep it all…locked away?” She struggled to really understand what he was talking about.

  “Yes. Immensely. But it is a burden I have become accustomed to. From time to time, I take a city as I sought to do here. I stretch my wings, allow those nightmares that dwell within me to be free. I allow some hunter or another to stop me. I rest for a time, then it begins again.”

  “But you would break this cycle now? For what reason?”

  He smiled faintly. Warmth shone in his crimson eyes. “For you. Our time will be short enough.” He traced his fingers over her cheek. “I will shoulder the strain if it means I can savor the time we will have.”

  She turned her head and nuzzled into his touch. It still felt so strange to have someone touch her. Strange…but wonderful. Yes, she could happily spend the rest of her life like this.

  “Tell me…were you lying to me? Did you break our accord?”

  She looked up to him curiously. “What do you mean?” He did not answer her, but his expression said it all. The hope in his eyes. The need. The aching loneliness she felt pouring from him. She tried to turn her head to look away shyly, but his hand on her cheek prevented it.

  She had promised not to lie to him. She had also promised not to hide from him. Pulling in a small breath, she slowly let it out. “I love you, Vlad Tepes Dracula. All of you. Not a facet, but the whole.”

  He smiled dreamily, but there was sadness that stained the edges of his expression. A weariness. “For the fact that you believe what you say, I shall always treasure you and them. But you cannot yet mean them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You have not yet seen the worst of me. You will eat the steak, but you have not yet witnessed the murder of the cow. And if I were to give you the knife, would you be able to slit its throat, my compassionate, sympathetic, darling Maxine?”

  “I…”

  “You would not. You understand my horrors in theory. I wonder…will you approve them in practice?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the hunters do not return you to me, I will do what I must to have you back.” He traced his hand over her hair gently, smoothing over her waves. “You are mine, Maxine. It is as simple as that. And I will not let you go. I love you, Maxine.”

  She looked up at him in surprise. She didn’t know what to say. She had felt something buried deep in his heart, but she refused to name it and crush her own childish hopes.

  “Sinner, lover, tyrant, saint. I have been it all. I have more capacity, by benefit of all my years, for all the things that might make a man such a thing. Jealousy, anger, hatred, and yes…even love. While my heart may be cold in my chest, while I may be dead, I still feel.”

  “Yes. I know. Believe me, I know.” She placed her hand against his cheek, stroking her thumb over his tepid skin. “It is that which I see inside you that I love. Not the things you may do with it.”

  He leaned down and kissed her, slowly, tenderly. When he parted from her, he leaned his forehead against the top of her head. She felt the dream begin to fade. “Tomorrow, we shall see if you mean your words. For tomorrow, if the hunters do not listen to reason…I will destroy this city of yours and all who dwell within it. And we shall see if your sentiment holds true.”

  She reached for him, but something held her back. Something heavy and strange was around her wrists.

  She heard the sound of metal sliding on metal.

  Maxine awoke in chains.

  She was lying on a dirt floor. A pillow was under her head, and there was a blanket underneath her. She was still in her dress from the opera. When she looked down at her hands, she found them chained together with a foot of thick, iron links. Shackles were locked tightly around her wrists. A long, winding length of chain ran from one of her wrists and off across the dirt floor. It wound around a column, and a simple lock held two links together.

  She knew this place.

  It was her own basement, after all.

  She sat up, confused and disoriented for a moment. And oh, how her head hurt! She placed her fingers to her temple and found she was still not wearing her gloves. She had taken them off before—oh. Now she remembered. Alfonzo and the hunters.

  She sighed.

  “Morning. Er. Afternoon, rather.”

  She looked up, surprised, and only then did she notice Eddie sitting by the wall in one of the chairs she had tucked away in the basement long ago. He was leaning against the stacked stone wall, the wood furniture up on its hind legs. On the table next to him was one of his revolvers intact, and the other disassembled. He was picking up a piece of the dismantled gun, piece by piece, and polishing it off with a cloth.

  She shuffled to sit more comfortably against the wall. She was shackled in her own basement. She assumed she was going nowhere anytime soon. “I’m surprised I’m not dead.”

  “We don’t want to hurt you, Maxine. We don’t want any of this. Alfonzo thinks if we kill the vampire, you’ll be freed of whatever spell he’s put you under. He’s done this before. Kept human…pets. Has he hypnotized you?”

  “Once. Briefly. Perhaps twice. That’s not what this is.”

  “Then it’s something worse.” Eddie put down one piece of his revolver and picked up another, cleaning it with the cloth. “We’ll fix it. I promise. You’re chained up for your own good. So you don’t run off.”

  They fell silent for many minutes. They hated Dracula. Yet the vampire seemed to not know them save by reputation. There must be a reason they would not listen to her. “What happened to you, Eddie?”

  “Hum?”

  “Nobody picks your life for fun and profit, I assume.”

  Eddie laughed, grinning. “No, ma’am.”

  She wanted to remind him not to call her that, but decided she was better giving up trying. “My father died from injuries he incurred in the Civil War before I was born. I never knew him. My stepfather tried to…he tried to hurt me. And when I tried to push him away, I tore his soul out of his body and destroyed it. That is why I cannot touch anyone or be touched. My mother—rightfully, perhaps—believed me to be a demon. She attempted to kill me. I ran. I joined up with the Roma and traveled with a circus for many years. And here I am.”

  Eddie watched her, wide-eyed. “I…um. Shit.”

  She
shrugged. “We all have reasons for being who we are. For making the decisions that led us to where we are now. I am merely trying to explain mine.”

  “I saw him touch you.”

  “He is…not as fragile as a mortal soul. I have, over the years and quite by accident, destroyed eleven souls. I have sent them to the void. Not to Heaven, or Hell, or whatever might exist—but to nowhere at all. With him, it is not the case.”

  “But it’s not only that, is it? You sympathize with him.”

  “I sympathize with everyone, Eddie.”

  “Even us? Alfonzo hit you. We’ve chained you up in your own home.”

  “Even you. Especially you. You are trying to save this city and everyone in it. To your own words, you’ve done this to protect me. I disagree, but I cannot fault you for doing what you feel is right.”

  Eddie nodded slowly. He moved on to cleaning the next part of his weapon. “My family died. All of them. My ma, pa, my little sister. She was eight. All of them. I…found them. Found what was left of them.”

  “From a vampire?”

  “I wish.” He paused for a long time. She could sense his grief from across the room. He was picturing that moment in his head as he talked, judging by his far-away look and the visceral tightness she could feel in the air around him. “The monster turned my sister. Turned an eight-year-old girl into one of them. She came home. Killed my parents. I…had been riding the property, checking on the fences. When I came back, it was too late. I saw her kneeling in our parents’ blood, licking it up from the floor, crying because it had gone cold. She was a rabid animal. Like a dog, chewing off its own leg in madness.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I do what you do with any rabid animal. I got my rifle. I put her down.”

  Maxine shut her eyes and lowered her head. “I am so sorry, Eddie.”

  “Thank you. It’s long over. It’s because of him that it happened. He’s the source of the poison. I’m not the only tragic story. I’m not the only victim.”

  “I know.”