by Ana Calin
It makes me so angry my head swims. These men don’t know anything about us, yet they treat us like garbage. A burning need awakens in the pit of my stomach—the need to make them suffer. I want to make them fear every woman that crosses their path, assuming that she might wield dark powers instead of assuming she must be a hooker.
They keep pushing us forward as these thoughts spin in my head. They take us up to the first floor, where I see a table just like the one in the footage yesterday, but nobody is sitting there. When the two ruffians bring us to an iron door, I understand why—the Red Diaz know by now that Dracula is out to get them, so they took protective measures, no longer hanging around in the open at the club.
One of the tattooed beasts opens the door, and the other one hauls both Irina and me inside like ragdolls.
I squint until my eyes adjust to a cone-like light hanging from the ceiling over a table where men sit, reminding me of the card-playing mobsters from movies. A haze of smoke floats in the light, but this time it isn’t weed, it’s normal cigarettes, which already makes my nostrils burn and my eyes itch.
A shadow stands up from the table and appears to move farther to the back. As my eyes start adjusting I can make out the men sitting around the table, too—four of them. The guy who stood up from the middle must be the boss, his back broad and muscular in a tight black sweater; clearly he works out at the gym, his hair short and glossy. I think he’s pouring himself a drink.
“I know who you are, Mrs Basarab.” He turns, showing his face. He’s as coarse as the others, bearded, with a deep frown on his forehead. He must be so used to scowling that it made a permanent grimace on his face.
“You’re Vlad Dracula’s wife.”
Anger with Vlad squeezes my stomach again—how could he leave me, aware the entire underworld knows who I am? All his insistences of being around me all the fucking time, protecting me, all useless. Look at me now, surrounded by vampire brutes in a dark room.
“Don’t try to use your seductress pheromones on us, Miss Motovilova.” He switches focus to Irina. “It will only get you raped by—” He counts demonstratively, pointing at all the men in the room one at a time. “Six guys, myself not included, because I’m a gentleman.”
The scent Irina had begun to emanate now dies down.
“I’m Conrad the Sultan,” he introduces himself, plopping back into his seat and placing a hand on his knee with his elbow outward.
“The Sultan because of the girls, of course.” He motions towards a glass wall I now notice on the side. It must have a dark foil over it, because it’s shady, the images from the club playing on it like shadows on a wall.
I just can’t contain myself. “The Sultan, ai? Why don’t they call you simply the Pimp? Are you too much of a gentleman for that?”
The Sultan takes a sip from his drink, resting it on his knee instead of the table as if he wants to have it close at hand in order to throw it in my face.
“Your husband attacked fourteen Red Diaz vampires,” he gets to the point. “Four dead, ten of them following him out of the club like zombies after he bit them. Their throats were still torn, they hadn’t even gotten to heal when they started crawling after him like enslaved snails.”
I stare at him, raising an eyebrow, waiting for him to tell me more. Irina is keeping her cool by my side as well, not moving, as if she’s turned to stone. The woman has amazing power of self-control, no wonder Vlad used her as a spy for decades.
“I’m still waiting for your point, Conrad the Sultan.”
He grins.
“Please, Mrs Basarab, don’t play stupid. Your husband is going after the Red Diaz’ best men, either killing or enslaving them and, as you’ll understand, I don’t like that. I want to make it stop, and I believe you can help me.” He measures me up and down, noticing my curves. He bites his lower lip, and I know he’s already thinking of how it would feel to fuck me. Fury bubbles in my stomach.
For the first time in years, I feel that familiar ripple in my eyeballs—the blackness spreading to the whites.
“I don’t know why your husband has decided to target the Red Diaz,” the Sultan continues, his face now so lecherous I want to spit in it. “Some say it’s because we were made by the Devil’s Son, one of his rivals. So we’re technically not his vampires. Do you agree with that theory, or does he have other motives?”
“I wasn’t aware that my husband had vampire rivals; the only rivals I know of are the Lord of Serpents, a shifter, and an old foe, Gruia, who’s more than a vampire.” I begin to walk toward him as I speak. The two beasts that brought us in react immediately, grabbing me by my arms. My body flexes the moment they touch me, the instinct to hurt them burning its way from my heart to my feet. But all I do is smile.
“He probably didn’t mention his vampire rivals because he doesn’t take them seriously,” the Sultan says. “Your husband thinks himself untouchable.”
“He is untouchable.” There’s a calm in my voice that makes my own hairs stand on end on my arms. It’s the calm of the demon, a confidence in my powers that I haven’t felt since I was still Vlad’s secret lover. “He’s the King of Vampires, and now he’s also immune to silver and sunlight. There is truly nothing out there that can destroy him.”
The Sultan puts up a cool façade, but I can smell the chemistry of his body changing—something about me started to unsettle him. I can’t help sniffing the air, as if with every second that passes I’m growing more base, more animalistic. I can hear the Sultan swallow, even though it’s a faint sound.
“I assure you that my maker, the Devil’s Son, is at least as powerful as Dracula.” He juts out his bearded chin. “So I am not afraid of your husband, Mrs Basarab. And less so with you, his wife, in my power.”
“You think having me here will protect you from my husband?”
He gets up from the table, walking to me. He squares his shoulders, making himself broad, seeking to intimidate me.
“If you mean as much to him as rumour has it, hell yes.” He stops, facing me, his lecherous eyes all over my face. I lower my head—I don’t want to give him all the blackness just yet. I’m going to enjoy this.
The Sultan touches me under my chin with one finger, letting it slip down to my cleavage. “But now that I see you, I can think of other ways I can use you.”
“I suggest you don’t do that, if what you want is protection. Vlad will kill you.”
“Not if he finds my fangs ready to bite at your pretty white throat.” Evil imbues his voice, making it even thicker. Now that I’m looking down, he’s forgotten all about my eyes, giving in to both his basic and criminal instincts. The swell of my boobs might be helping, too. He lowers his face to my cheek, his beard smelling of alcohol and smoke, and sniffs the air around my head.
“Mhmmm, you smell good indeed. Did your blood completely regenerate after he sucked you dry?”
“Yes, but I fear it won’t have the same effect on you as it had on him, if that’s what you have in mind. I heard every vampire has his own Grail.” I keep my head down as I speak, feigning fear, the anticipation of what I’m going to do to him bubbling up inside of me. God, I’m loving the prickling in my stomach.
“Yes, but trying to bite Dracula’s Grail is the supreme test to see if one is truly related to Lord Dracula by venom or blood.”
“Don’t you dare do that,” Irina warns, making my head snap to her. She lunges at the Sultan, but one of the beasts holds her back.
“Irina, please,” I say calmly, putting up my hand. Her eyes meet mine, and her jaw drops, her face seemingly melting. She noticed the blackness.
“Let him try,” I say with a grin behind my words. “In the end, that’s one thing I would like to know as well—whether he is bound to my husband or not.”
“B-but, but,” Irina blabbers, but that’s all I get to hear before the Sultan grabs me roughly by my waist, and pushes his hand into my hair, tugging back hard. I close my eyes to avoid him seeing them up close.
I shiver, feigning terror, my eyes scrunched shut. But even so I can sense my surroundings, like I can sense everybody in here as bundles of energy. The Sultan opens his jaws, his bone-like fangs elongating, a bad smell misting out of his mouth—I remember that, even though all vampires get good looks, their soul is imprinted on their faces, and their smell is imbued with it. The Old Priest happened to be terribly ugly on the inside, while this guy is downright rotten, and he’s reeking of it.
I let him bring his teeth to my neck, but the moment before he pushes them to pierce my skin, I flex the dark power that has mounted inside of me.
The Sultan’s breath hitches. He pushes me away like I sting him, causing me to fall back into the arms of the beast behind me. He grabs his stomach and bends down from his waist—he’s in pain.
I rest my eyes on the Sultan, the grin extending on my face. The beast behind lets me go in an instant—he must have looked from the side and seen that I’ve changed. I can feel it—the blood has completely drained from my face, leaving it snow-white, and the intense black has spread, making my eyes as black as midnight without a trace of white.
In front of me, the Sultan is bucking from the terrible pain I’m causing him.
“You say you want protection from my husband. But the problem is, who will protect you from me?”
“What the hell is this, Rux?” Irina shrieks from behind me. I can smell the chemistry of her body changing, too—she’s panicking.
“I’m just checking how much of a man the Sultan is, how much pain he can take,” I say over my shoulder, my eyes on him. He’s on his knees now, throwing his head back, his face screwed up in pain, and he finally cries out.
The men from the table hiss and bare their teeth, preparing to attack me. Irina takes a fighting stance by my side, leaning forward, her claws and her fangs growing. I tilt my head to the side, knowing it looks a bit unnatural, like in those movies with possessed people. Power courses through my veins, making me aware of what I can do—I can sense their organs as if they were my own, just the way I could sense objects in the past. It’s like I’m a nanoparticle inside their bodies, able to fix things or wreak havoc.
I find the right triggers in an instant, and cause all their muscles to pull, making the men stretch and growl, then cry and squeak like girls. I laugh, genuinely amused.
“Just look at them. The big bad pimps, no less squeaky than their hookers.”
Irina remains standing in the middle of it all, staring around with an open mouth. “What the hell, Rux?” she breathes.
I feel high with the power growing inside of me.
“I now have full control over your bodies,” I tell the men, stepping over the Sultan, who’s writhing in pain on the floor. I kick off my high heels, lift my dress, and caress his chest with my bare foot.
“You better do exactly as I tell you,” I say in what I know is a disturbingly calm voice, “if you don’t want that grimace of pain to be forever imprinted on your face.”
“What the fuck—” The sharp pain I send through his stomach prevents him from finishing the question. The other men writhe and grunt behind me, too.
I turn and start walking to them, but I address the Sultan.
“How did you know I was Dracula’s wife? I somehow doubt that it’s common knowledge among the vampires, even though Vlad always feared it was.” I lessen his pain, allowing him to answer. He doesn’t. I intensify the aches in the other men, causing them to groan and convulse on the floor.
“The longer you take to reply, the more your men will hurt. So unless you want your own people ripping your head off for doing this to them when I’m done, you better speak quickly.”
“The Devil’s Son,” the Sultan says, breathing heavily. “He told us, all of us.”
“All of you?”
“The club leaders. Like me, like the two men your husband attacked last night. He moves fast, very fast to take us all down, so the Devil’s Son called us in today. He knows your husband is after him, in the end.”
“The Devil’s Son must be a very special supernatural indeed, knowing so much. Get up.” I hoist myself onto his desk, crossing my legs and leaning back on my hands. I watch him get up to his feet heavily, his arms across his belly to guard from the pain.
“Sit.”
He looks around for a chair.
“On the floor, beneath me, where you belong,” I add.
He does as commanded, his eyes slipping over my body more than once in the process, simply because he’s unable to control it. I grin. I must admit, I love the sensation of having so much power over this scumbag, making him small and afraid and yet horny at the same time.
I surprise myself wanting to give him a boner, and leaving him to deal with it. So I lift my skirt over my knees, then uncross and cross my legs again, letting him glimpse my panties. I can feel one of the others behind me trying to get up and attack me from behind, like a hyena. I send a sharp pain like the stab of a knife through his gut in response, causing him to yelp, collapse and fart loudly. I laugh.
“Try not to stay around him, boys,” I tell the others, who I know stare at me in awe even though I have my back to them. “You might get shitty ideas. No pun intended.”
Only Irina laughs at the joke, joining me.
“So.” I return my attention to the Sultan, keeping the power inside all the other men’s bodies at the same time. “Where can I find the Devil’s Son?”
His eyes widen at me as if the question alone is a sacrilege.
“Did Dracula send you here?” he breathes. “Was this his plan all along? Getting to the Devil’s Son directly, without going through the rest of us?”
“I assure you, Sultan, Dracula wouldn’t need to send his wife to get information out of anyone. He can extract it perfectly well himself. But if you tell me, I might be able to persuade him to let you live. Because he’s just about to enter that door.”
“What?”
I lean my head back, closing my eyes. Along with the dark power, the connection between Vlad and me is back, I can feel his body just like the men here. He’s really close now. My breath is quicker, my flesh heating. I squirm with my legs crossed, moaning, hornier the closer I feel him.
“Now,” I sigh.
The door blasts open, and Vlad walks in.
Lord Dracula
“RUXANDRA,” I BREATHE, shocked. “You really are here.” I sensed her before, so strongly that it drove me to change targets and come here instead of the Red Diaz pub a few alleyways down.
I look at her, stricken. Here she is, my wife, sitting on a crook’s desk, her skirt up, her bare legs crossed. Her luxurious breasts swell out of her dress, and her face is white as snow, contrasting with her ink-black eyes. A claw slices through my heart—the black of the demon.
But her smile vanishes, and something shifts in her black eyes as if some monster just coiled around in them.
“Who are they, Vlad?” She jerks with her chin towards my right. Fuck, I wasn’t even aware until now. The red-headed vamp and her girlfriend are flanking me.
“I’m, I’m,” the red-headed vamp tries to respond, but she’s too shocked by Rux’s appearance, and probably by the rest of the scene—seven big vampires on the floor, doubled over in pain.
Rux gets off the desk and saunters to us, relaxed as if the army of rabid vampires behind me got nothing on her. The vampires hiss, some pushing against me to get inside, crazy for the Red Diaz’ blood, but I petrify in place, keeping them out like a wall. Rux stops in front of me. Something shifts in her eyes, and the vampires behind me fall to the floor, shrieking in pain. I look back at them, but then her scent envelops me. Now that she’s using her powers, the natural fragrance of her blood is so strong it’s intoxicating.
It fills the air, causing me to sniff at it
like a wolf. My fangs elongate, and I let out a hiss, turning to my wife. My heart is raging with all kinds of emotions, but the only one I actually recognize is jealousy. I’m maddeningly jealous that all these men have peered into her generous cleavage.
“I thought I’d go crazy when you left,” she says through her teeth, glaring up at me out of those demon-like eyes. “I was sick with heartache when you didn’t come to me last night, even though I called to you with all I had.” Her face turns stony. “And while I tortured myself like that, you were with them.”
She points to the two women flanking me, and sends them writhing in pain at my feet. The attack is particularly vicious on the red head. But I can’t deal with that now, I have to battle with this terrible need in my throat, this craving.
“Please, Rux,” I say gruffly. “Stay away from me.” I take a step back, but she follows.
“Why?”
“God, damn it, Ruxandra,” I growl, the walls shaking. “You have a superpower, and the venom compels me to take your blood.” The need to sink my fangs into her throat is overwhelming even as I speak.
Her eyes widen a little as if she just understood something, and looks back at the guy who seems to be the big boss here. I can smell all the present vampires’ blood, and I would normally want it really bad, but nothing can compete with the scent of Rux right now.
“Fuck, I want your blood even more than I did when we first met.” All my muscles tense, my fists clenching. I struggle to keep the vampire monster from coming to the surface, my claws from growing, my bones from protruding. But I’m losing the battle.
“Go, now!” I growl.
Rux does move away, but only to walk back to the guy in the middle of the room.
“Vlad Dracula, this is Conrad the Sultan. Conrad the Sultan, meet Dracula.”
The man shudders as she speaks. Her looks, her voice, everything about her is disturbing to him, no doubt. As for me, I don’t quite understand what’s going on with her. The demon can’t be back, we banished him, so it must be the power he left inside her. She is, in the end, his descendant in the flesh.