“Noise?”
“The city is loud. It…is wearing on me. I’m sorry.” She ran her hand over her face.
“Nothing to be sorry about, ma’am. None of this is your fault.” Eddie sighed. “I know you say different. But I’m not going to blame you for not destroying him even if you had the chance.”
“Why not? Alfonzo seems eager enough to do so.”
“He’s had it rough. He doesn’t mean to be so, well, mean.” Eddie shifted to half-sit on the window frame, peering through the blinds as he searched for trouble. “He’s only doing what he thinks he needs to.”
“But why don’t you fault me for not destroying Dracula?”
“I don’t want to wish death on anybody. Not even him. You didn’t know he was going to do this. Fuck, we didn’t even know he was going to do this. Sorry about my language.”
“It bothers me none. Honestly, it doesn’t. And, yes, I knew. At the very least I had a suspicion.”
“But it isn’t the same. I don’t believe in killing people because they might do something.”
“I agree. But now that it has come to pass, it has to end.”
“Will you help us, then? Really?”
She nodded. “I have to do whatever I can. So many are dead. So many more will die. I cannot let that happen if I can stop him.” She looked up as Bella walked into the room carrying a tray of food. She was starving. Bella handed her a plate of fruit, cheese, and bread, and she had to stop herself from annihilating it. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Alfonzo returned and began unhooking his belts and putting his weapons down on the table. “We will stop here for a few hours to rest. I’ll take first watch. Eddie, second. Bella, third. We all stay in this room.”
Oh, thank God. She did not question why she was not on the list of those to watch out for demons. She was still not to be trusted in his eyes, and she could not blame him. She knew there was nothing she could do to win it back.
The room was quiet as they ate. She finally gave in to her exhaustion and lay down on the sofa, pulling a pillow under her head. There was enough furniture in the drawing room for them each to have somewhere to sleep, but the floor would have been the same to her.
Sleep came for her quickly.
Her dreams were not empty.
She was suddenly standing on a balcony, overlooking a vast forest and mountain range. It had snowed recently. The moon was full and crimson and cast the white surfaces in brilliant hues of reds and maroons. The air was cold, and even in her vision her breath turned to mist around her. It was breathtaking.
A hand settled on her shoulder, and she jolted at the contact. Whirling, she was not surprised at who she saw standing there, towering over her. She knew his face this time. He was looking down at her with a tired and beleaguered kind of acceptance. His breath did not fog as hers did. He had no warmth of his own. He was dead, after all.
She took a step back from him, wary and unsure.
Wordlessly, he turned from her and walked inside through a large, ornate door. The architecture reminded her of his throne room—twisted and terrible, filled with screaming faces and mortals being consumed and taken by monsters. It was not merely decoration; it was a warning. A promise to all those who saw it. This is the fate that awaits you if you stay here.
But now she knew she could never leave. She would be dead either when Alfonzo saw fit to kill her or the vampire would take her life. There was no surviving this ordeal; it was only a matter of when and how it happened.
Death was inevitable.
And so was her going inside.
It was freezing, and she shivered. Vision or not, dream or not, she wasn’t going to suffer in the cold out of childish spite. She walked inside and shut the door behind her. He was standing by the fireplace, a poker in his hand, nudging at the fresh log atop the stack. It was comfortably warm in the room, that kind of soothing heat that only came from a fire.
“I will ask you but the once,” she began after it was clear he was not going to start the conversation. “And only once. Stop this insanity now.”
“I will end it in time. Once my armies have been fed. Once the lust for blood has been quenched, and I have all that I have come for. I will take it all back into myself and retreat to some distant shore as I have done before, and as I will do again. Humans shall retake this city and will whisper of the legends of the time the skies went black and darkness came for them. In time, it will be nothing but a myth. Explained away by some terrible plague.”
“Vlad…please. You have done enough to prove to me that I was a fool. No more need die.” She walked slowly across the carpeted floor to approach him, keeping her distance. Not that it would do her any good. He could move faster than she could see, and this was his home. He was the master here.
“You think I have torched this land for your sake?” He sneered. “Do not flatter yourself. You wander my world because I wish you to see who I truly am, but the destruction I have wrought was in the workings long before I knew you. I have been in this city for two years.”
“What?”
“I have lain in wait. I have seeped into every pore, every water work, every shadow of this city. My creatures were a warning to the wise to escape before I unleashed the rest. Did I delay a few days when I met you? Yes. Would I have taken up my armies and departed if the hunters returned you to me? Yes. But they did not, and here we are.” He placed the poker back in the rack with the others and leaned his hand on the mantel, watching the flickering flames as they sputtered and gained purchase on the untouched lumber.
“And what is to become of me?”
“That is for you to decide.”
“How so?”
“Will you still love me in the end, or will you come to despise me instead? Will you look at me in disgust as you did just now upon the balcony?”
“I…” She began to argue, then stopped. He was right. She went to make excuses, to tell him how many he had killed, but it was futile. He knew. And they paled in comparison to all the suffering that lay in his wake. He was a wrathful god. “Then…kill me. Do not make me endure this.”
“No. You will not die until I allow it.”
“Then I will have Alfonzo—” She gasped in shock as her back met the wall. He had slammed her there, and pain bloomed across her shoulders. She could not pay it much heed, for his hand was around her throat, threatening to squeeze. It tightened but did not cut off her air.
“Do not dare speak those words!” His voice was a snarl as he glared down at her. “You belong to me. You live by my grace, and you will die by my mercy, not his.”
She placed her hand to his wrist and felt his tepid skin. She didn’t try to pull away. Even in a vision, it was as though he were really there. “I can destroy you,” she whispered.
“Then do it, little empath. My Lady of Souls. Do it. Tear me from my cage and thrust me unto the void.” He bared his teeth, fangs extended. “Deem me unworthy of this world and your love and do what no one else has ever managed to accomplish. Free me from my curse.”
She hesitated. “Please. I don’t want to do this.”
“Decide, Maxine. The choice is yours. This is the fork in the road before you. The point of no return approaches. Kill me…or obey me.”