1
Vlad Tepes Dracula stood atop a building in the city of Boston, the barely born and fledgling city of the new nation that had made such a noise upon its arrival. The youth was reflected in the optimistic industry and mindsets of those who lived here.
Humans were meant to build. To aspire. To reach for the sun.
And he had taken it away from them. Snatched it from the sky and pitched the city into the night.
He reached his arms out at his sides and felt his darkness stretch. He would devour the very metropolis like he would take a life. His nightmare, now released, would spread through the Earth and air like a plague.
He had tried to warn Maxine. He had tried to warn the hunters themselves. But no one ever listened. No one could fathom what it was that dwelled inside his soul.
I am not a vampire. I am far more, and far worse, than that. Within me beats the black heart of all that would splinter bone and pick their teeth with the remains.
I am the river spring from which flows all cruelty on this Earth.
And it was cruelty that made me.
He wondered if those who cursed him so long ago could have even fathomed what they had wrought upon the living. Their faces were lost to him, as were the details of the event itself. He understood only in vague terms as to the why, the when, and the how it had all come to pass. It did not matter. It did not change the simple fact that he was death incarnate.
Yet never allowed to die.
He could bestow that gift upon others, and he did it with both joy and disgust. It mattered not—it did not change the hunger that boiled over in him. The hunger that could change the world around him to the whim of his dark dreams.
The crimson moon had usurped the sun, and with it came his creatures. Demons and monsters he had created over the course of his long “life.” Beasts of warped and mutilated forms that put the ghouls to shame for their lack of creativity.
And the city would know such pain because of the actions of hunters who sought to save it. The actions of one hunter in particular.
Alfonzo Van Helsing had come for revenge. It blinded him to the deal that any sane man would have taken. Any man whose mind was not clouded by hatred would have seen it a bargain to spare the life of a city in return for a single mortal woman.
A woman who wanted to be at his side.
That was…until he soaked the ground in blood. Now, all bets were off.
He watched in idle fascination as a few of his creatures tackled a man on his horse on the street below. The monsters took both rider and steed to the ground. They screamed in agony as teeth tore into flesh and began to rend them asunder without any care for their suffering.
He supposed that was not true. His creatures cared very much for the suffering of their victims—they enjoyed it greatly.
As for himself?
Watching the gore play out beneath him?
He felt nothing at all.
Death came to the city of Boston on crimson wings. The sun had been plucked from the sky and replaced by a moon the color of blood, shrouding the city in its unnatural light.
But that was not what horrified her the most. It was that the sounds of birds, once happily chirping in the trees or soaring on summer air…had been replaced by screams. The sounds of mortal souls caught in terror and pain joined with a chorus of inhuman howls that joyfully called out their bloody victories.
Death had come on crimson wings, and it had a name—Vlad Tepes Dracula.
But Maxine suspected she remained largely to blame.
She pressed her back to the wall of her living room, shivering uncontrollably. A bone-deep chill had taken the summer breeze from the air and was already quickly seeping into her home like a poison. She could feel it beneath the surface of the ground and sense it all around her. A curse had been unleashed. A plague she had thought she had understood. But oh, she had been very wrong. The vampire had asked her if she could eat her steak and kill the cow. If she could face down the hypocrisy of her ignorance and still embrace him.
She thought she had known the answer. And now she knew had been mistaken.
Fear was consuming the city. Fear and the lust for blood, and it crawled over her like swarming insects. Her empathic gift was overrun by it.
How often in her life had she been accused of being cold and austere? Too many to count. It was not because she wished to be such—it was simply because there was no other way for her to survive. But tuning out all her own emotions, all that dwelled within her heart, she could ignore that of those around them.
It was the only way to keep from drowning in the tide. Always around her, like the very air itself, thrummed the emotions of humanity. Every ounce of lust, of joy, of love. Every speck of agony, of grief, of hatred and loss. It was always around her.
She pushed it all away to keep herself sane. To keep herself whole. To keep from sinking to the bottom of that sea and becoming consumed by it all.
But now a storm had come to her shores. A terrible nor’easter that battered at her windows. She could not fight nature. And nature had come with the singular intent of tearing her shutters free and forcing her into the waves.
Death.
Pain.
Fear.
Suffering.
Agony.
She could feel in her heart what it was like to watch a loved one be torn to pieces. She knew it because someone nearby was experiencing it in that very moment. When she shut her eyes, teeth were sinking into her flesh. Sharp, dagger-like things crunching through bone like she was made of nothing more than twigs.
Maxine twitched as she felt claws tear out her throat. She put her hands to her own throat to ensure that it had not truly happened. But she could almost—almost—feel the wet blood pour through her fingers as cackling, broken-faced monsters devoured her alive.
Limbs were being torn from bodies with wet-sounding pops. Heads were taken from shoulders. Eyes from their sockets. Again and again, more and more, agony flooded into her. Her city was dying, and she was on a sinking raft in a sea of blood.
She was struggling to keep her breathing even, but it felt too quick and shallow.
She loved the creature who caused this. Or she thought she had.
Now all she knew was a primal panic that triggered something in her deep and intrinsic to her species—run, survive, escape. But there was nowhere she could go. She was trapped. Both by the Vampire King who had unleashed his wrath, and by the chain that bound her wrists and kept her tethered. A prisoner to the three people responsible for dragging her into this mess in the first place.
The vampire hunters.
They were ignoring her, arguing and shouting at each other. Alfonzo was pacing around the room. Bella was sitting with her head in her hands, and Eddie looked as though he was attempting to pull out his own hair. Their anxiety did nothing to ease her own overwhelmed emotions.
She wanted to sink to the ground and weep. She wanted to cower and hide. But she was trembling. Her legs itched with the need to run from the wolf in the shadows. But where could she go? Where could she hide, even if she could free herself from her chains and escape the three hunters?
I am naïve. I am a fool. I thought I could see the whole of him. I thought I understood what he was. Now, how many will come to pay the price for my idiocy? I let him in. I let him get close. Looking down at her bare hands, they were shaking like the rest of her.
“This is your fault!” Eddie was still shouting at Alfonzo. “You should’ve given him Maxine. Even if he was lying, it was worth the chance that he wasn’t. You didn’t tell me he could take out the sun!”