“And what of the girl?”
Vlad smiled sadly. “Her fate is hers to write. Not mine. She has learned my kindness…now I shall have her learn my cruelty.”
Walter was silent for a long time. “You love her. Why put her through such agony?”
“Do you remember what you endured before I agreed to turn you?” It was only then that he looked at his second-in-command. Walter’s face was drawn tight and cold with the memory, but there was a flare of fresh pain in his red eyes. “And you understand now why I did it.”
“You test her mettle, then, to see if she is strong enough to survive you.” Walter grunted wearily and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “She may hate you for this.”
“It is likely. I will deserve it if she does. But I would have my hopes shatter and not atrophy. If she will loathe me, I would have her love die in a blaze of glory, not wither and fade as she comes to slowly be disgusted by my true nature.”
“Master, may I speak frankly?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think you are worthy of love?”
Vlad flinched. He paused for a very long time before responding, debating whether he should speak the truth. But if Walter was not trustworthy, no one was. “I am not sure.”
Walter let out a thoughtful hum. “So that is what this about.” He stepped to the edge of the building. “Very well. I will go along with this. I can only pray to the gods in Hell that at the end of this farce you find your answer once and for all.” He exploded into red bats, soared up into the sky, and was gone.
Vlad laughed.
The hunters had finished dispatching the monster they had found. Eddie had gone to Maxine’s side and was now shaking her shoulder, trying to rouse her. She jolted awake, thrashing in a panic. Eddie stroked her covered arm, trying to soothe her. Vlad watched as someone else gave her the comfort he wished he could provide.
His heart ached for what he was going to force her to suffer. But it was a path he must walk. He would not keep her sheltered from the truth of his soul and let her love only a facet as so many others had done. Like the cards in Maxine’s tarot deck, he chose to be whatever they wanted him to be. Oh, his former lovers would always say they knew him for what he was, but it was always a naïve lie.
It was a fate she had begun to share. But he would not spin that falsehood for her. After all, they had made an accord, hadn’t they?
She would be forced to see all of him firsthand.
Will you love me when all is said and done? Or am I beyond all salvation?
3
Eddie pressed a flask into her hand. Maxine unscrewed the top and took a sip. She didn’t even care what kind of alcohol it was. It didn’t matter. She screwed the cap back on and returned it to him, nodding once in thanks.
“I threw up the first time I saw a real fight,” Eddie said with a helpful smile.
“It wasn’t that.” She rubbed the back of her neck slowly, feeling the tightness in the muscles. “I don’t even think I saw much of it.”
“What’s wrong, then?” Bella was also standing nearby, her brow creased in concern.
“It’s the whole city.” Alfonzo’s tone was dark and flat. He was wiping the blood from his sword. “Isn’t it?”
She nodded as she pushed herself up to her feet with Eddie’s help. She was a little woozy and leaned back on the post for balance. The city was now quiet. The screams had died down, leaving only an eerie silence.
“You can feel all of it. The screams, the pain, the death. You can feel the monsters too, can’t you?” Alfonzo sheathed his sword into his holster. “Can you keep going?”
She nodded again weakly even though she felt sick at the idea. She didn’t have much of a choice. “I will be all right.” She would need to learn to swim in this new tide. “I was caught off guard.”
“Good.” Alfonzo was watching her, his expression stern. “Do you realize now what he is? What he really is?” He jerked his head to the street. Bella and Eddie took the cue, and they started walking.
“I think I am learning.” She pulled her coat tighter around herself as she followed them. Once more, she did it because she had no choice. Eddie was still holding the end of her chain. “Is this still necessary?” She lifted her hands to gesture at the links that joined her wrists. “I have nowhere I can run.”
“I’m sorry,” Alfonzo replied without looking at her. He was already scanning the streets, keeping an eye out. “I wish I could trust you, but you lost that chance when you sided with him.”
That was fair. This was a fate she had made for herself. Her decisions had led to this moment, and now she would suffer for it. They walked around the remains of the giant abomination that they had felled. The horror of it was another piece of the scenery of death that had been painted with such a broad brush around her. It was only another body in the mangled pile. Another victim of the corruption that had been unleashed.
And it seemed as though even the buildings themselves were not immune to the plague that Vlad had brought. Walls now twisted in at odd angles or stretched up farther than was natural. Windows and doors were bent out of proportion.
She knew this city well. They were only a few streets away from her home. But she had no inkling of an idea of where she was. Signs advertised roads she did not recognize. Part of it was still Boston, but part of it was somewhere else—somewhere older.
One of the old Roma in the camp she traveled with used to tell her stories of Bucharest, Prague, and the beautiful cities of Eastern Europe. How the stones used to create the structures were shaped differently than they were here. How they were rougher, more unevenly shaped, and how it gave the structures so much more character than in America.
America simply lacked the age, and was more interested in growing quickly than growing correctly.
The spires and the ironwork seemed somehow both ornate and worn smooth by time. Like a memory of a craftsman’s labor. She had never seen the streets of older places other than in paintings and galleries.
But this place felt old.
More than that…it linked together in odd and unusual ways. Two buildings that had seemingly nothing to do with each other blended together. It was unnatural. It was eerie. And it was disturbingly familiar. Not because she knew the buildings, but almost as though she could recognize the architect.
She wondered if she traced her fingers over the stones of the nearest building she would not see that throne room in her mind’s eye. If she would not hear the vampire’s words echoing through her mind.
If she might not feel his hand on hers, asking for her to dance.
It is not Dracula’s army that has been unleashed.
It is Dracula himself.
This was not her city any longer. Nor was it any other. It was a dream made manifest…a nightmare. His nightmare had come to share itself with the living and devour all that it could.
All this lived within him. All the monsters that stalked the shadows that she could sense watching them were somehow part of him. Creatures of a fiction he had composed. No—children of a god who had rewritten reality to suit him better.
This is what he is.
She paused to gawk in horror at the sight of several bodies impaled on a fencepost. Stacked on top of each other, one at a time, like meat on a skewer. Fresh blood dripped from them like rivulets on a fountain, and all she could feel was the fear that still echoed from their cooling corpses.