There was no use telling him that she was not quite certain what was right or wrong anymore. The line between justice and injustice had become blurred of late. But it seemed to satisfy him enough that he shoved her back from him with the flat of a palm to her chest. She had to scramble to keep her footing.
“Go. Be his harlot. When I find him and whatever has become of you, I will make sure you watch him die.”
“Now who is the monster here?” Zadok sighed drearily. “Go, Maxine.”
She looked to Eddie and tried her best to smile. “Be safe, Eddie. I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “You too. Good luck.”
She turned her back to the two hunters and began to walk. It wasn’t even ten feet away when something rumbled in the ground. When she turned, she discovered a wall had appeared behind her. She took a step back and looked up at it in astonishment. This place truly was alive.
And it served Dracula.
She shivered at the cold mist that clung to the air around her. The city was deathly silent. She did not realize how comforting it was to have someone with her—even Zadok and the two hunters—until the exact moment she no longer had them.
Until she was alone.
A clock somewhere chimed one. She shut her eyes. Dracula would come for her at midnight. Until then…she knew not what else to do. He wanted her to witness this place that dwelled inside him.
And so…she walked.
14
Eddie scratched the back of his neck, his nerves on end. Alfonzo was pacing angrily around the middle of the street. The illusion of the foppish asshole vampire was still standing there, watching them with a smug smile. A giant wall had rumbled up out of the ground and cut them off from the empath. Whatever was going to happen to her, he prayed she would be all right. She didn’t deserve this shit.
“Your way is now opened. You may proceed.” The vampire bowed and extended an arm out to his side. “Oh! I nearly forgot.” He straightened. “You will find Master Dracula has taken up the city’s library as his new fortress. But dear, sweet, charming Bella is not there. She is in the North End, at the antique church that sits near the hill’s peak.”
“Why would you tell us this?” Eddie narrowed an eye. “Why would you help us?”
“Two reasons. One, I enjoy watching you idiots get yourselves killed. And two…I was told to.” He flashed a fiendish grin accented by pointed canines that were a little too long to be normal. “And with that, I bid you adieu for now. Ta!” He vanished in a swirl of smoke and was gone.
“Good. We know where we’re going now.” Alfonzo started walking.
“Al…I think the North End is that way.” Eddie pointed off in the other direction.
Alfonzo hung his head and sighed. “We need to stop him. If we stop him, she’ll be safe. If we go to her first, we might lose our chance.”
“What chance?” Eddie threw his hands up in frustration. “What the fuck chance do we have, Al? None! We’ve been up fate’s asshole this entire goddamn time. I’m not going to that library without her. I’m not.”
“Then go save her!” Alfonzo rounded on him, and Eddie backed up, afraid he might get punched in the head again. Being socked one by the older hunter was not a comfortable sensation in the slightest. “Go. I can kill him on my own.”
“Can you?”
“Yes.”
“How’re you so sure?”
“Because I have. Because I can’t give up.” Al shook his head and turned back to walk the direction he had been going.
“I need to save Bella. I…I love her.” Eddie knew it was childish, but he didn’t have a choice. If he knew he had left her there to rot, he’d never forgive himself.
“I know. Go. I don’t care.”
Eddie stood there for a long time and watched in silence as Alfonzo walked away and left him standing by himself in the center of the street.
He was alone. For about a second. It was a moment later that he heard a howl from the distance. The monsters were coming for them now.
He sighed and swore quietly. “Yup. Makes sense, I guess. Can’t make this easy, huh? Nope. Nope. Why not? Fuck you, Eddie, that’s why.” He checked the ammunition on his guns and adjusted the strap on his rifle. His rifle wouldn’t run out of bullets—enchanted and all—but his revolvers weren’t so lucky.
Cracking his neck, he walked in the opposite direction that Alfonzo had gone.
“I’m coming, Bella. God help me, I’m coming.”
The city was silent, save for the sound of Maxine’s heels on the cobblestones. She could sense creatures in the shadows, watching her, but she couldn’t see them. She could only feel their eyes on her. Their curiosity. But none came close nor ventured up to her.
None dared.
She wasn’t quite sure if it was the threat of Dracula’s wrath that kept them at bay, or if it was her own strange and inconvenient manner of self-defense that she had in her touch. It was likely both. She tucked her hands into her pockets. She was glad to be free of the weight of the iron links around her wrists, though. She was happy for that much.
The city changed around her, finally breaking out of its repetitive pattern of the same buildings looping over and over again like a zoetrope. Now, the horrors were new and fascinating once more. The twisted buildings and bizarre adaptations of a city she once called home were eerie, but there was a strange grace to them.
“So, you’re the one who’s caused all the fuss.”
Maxine stopped and turned. A woman was sitting on a fence nearby—perched too perfectly on the thin rail to be human. Her ghastly pale skin and unnatural green eyes were another clear indication of what she was.
By God, she was beautiful. Perhaps one of the most stunning people she had ever seen in her life. Chestnut hair curled around her face in perfect waves. Maxine blinked, a little shy about herself as she looked at someone who she knew could have stopped streets—or toppled cities. “Hello.”
The woman smiled. It wasn’t an entirely friendly expression. “And he’s left you out here now for what reason, precisely? The hunters are gone and have abandoned you as he said they would. What is his foolish game this time?”
“He said he would come for me at midnight. I think he would like to give me one more chance to see his handiwork.” She glanced to a pile of bodies that lay stacked up by one wall. Judging by the smears of blood on the pavement, they had been placed there to clear the street. But by whom, she was not certain. Likely the vampires. She had not seen a single other living human since Dracula had taken the sun away. She gestured to the corpses. “Such a talent as it is.”
The woman laughed. “I do love those with dry humor.” She slipped from the railing and walked up to her, her emerald dress chosen to match her eyes, no doubt. “I am Elizabeth.” She held out a white-silk gloved hand.
“You must go through a great deal of those.” Maxine motioned to the woman’s hand before taking it with her own in greeting. “White must be terrible for vampires to maintain.”
The woman laughed again, and this time it was more genuine than the first. “Indeed. Oh, indeed. Come. Let me walk with you for a time. I would like to know my new sister.”
“Sister?”
Maxine could do little but go along for the ride as Elizabeth hooked her arm and began to stroll up the street with her like they were two childhood friends on a promenade in a park. As though the death around them were nothing more than daisies and poppies sprouting from the earth on a spring day.
“I suppose if I were to be literal, you might be my new aunt.” Elizabeth smiled wickedly and laughed at Maxine’s look of abject disgust. “I do not mean it literally! I prefer to refer to those around me like family. It annoys Walter to no end. I think it disgusts him a little.”
“You are a bit insane, aren’t you?” Maxine surmised.
“Indeed. I’m sure I am. I think we all are, to a certain point. After living long enough, I’m not sure we have much choice.”
“How old are you, E
lizabeth?”
“I was born in 1590. I am only three hundred and some-odd years old, believe it or not.”
“Only?”
“Zadok is older than I. And Walter is nearly a thousand years old. And no one can quite fathom how old Dracula might be—not even him.”
Maxine looked off thoughtfully. “There was sand, and sun, and stone…I think he calls his origin from Egypt or Babylon.” She tried to hold on to the memory she had pulled from the mind of the vampire. But it was fleeting like the smoke of a candle drifting through her fingers. She shut her eyes and considered the imagery. But she could see a statue, carved from stone and adorned in gold. It had the head of a jackal upon the shoulders of a man. “No. It was Egypt.”
“Oh, my…you are what Zadok has said.” Elizabeth let out a breath. “Well. I’ll be certain not to touch you, then, hum? The last thing I need is for you to tear my soul to smithereens.”
“It seems to me that there is a direct correlation to the age of the soul and my likelihood to accidentally destroy them. I managed to touch Zadok without harming him.”
“Was it his idea, or yours?”
“His, believe me. Do you think I would willingly fish around in that madman’s head? I ran the risk of having to carry a piece of him inside me for the rest of time. Hardly anything I would seek willingly.”
Elizabeth smiled, and the hungry expression in her features faded. It was a real smile that she paid Maxine this time. “Touché, sister. Touché. Whatever did you find in there? I expect a bunch of abandoned sex toys and dust.”
Maxine laughed despite her better instincts. The woman had a clever wit about her. “No. I’m sure there is some of that. What I found was more tragedy than I would have expected. I suppose that is the way of everyone who seems a monster at first blush—there is always more lurking beneath the surface.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am not sure I should be telling you of his history. It is personal.”
“Come, now, what’s the sanctity of his past to you? He is nothing but a fiend. Besides…we are to be friends, are we not?” She nudged Maxine in the side gently. “What did you find?”
“He seeks to fill his bed because he does not know how else to matter to someone. He seeks to calm a fear of abandonment.” She eyed Elizabeth curiously. “I think you refer to the others, myself included, as kin for the same reason. To feel as though you belong.”
“Clever. Very clever. I won’t deny it.” Elizabeth shrugged a shoulder idly. “I serve Master Dracula not because I swear fealty to him. I barely even respect the distractible tyrant. I serve him to be around others. Being as we are is…very cold, Miss Parker. Very cold and very lonely. Most of the terrible things our kind is prone to do are out of the desperate need to fill that void.”
“Such is what I am coming to learn.”
“Save for Walter. I think that frozen bastard enjoys being the way he is.”
Maxine smiled, honestly enjoying the conversation with the lady vampire. “No. He simply wants for peace and quiet. He cares not how he gets it. He tires of being responsible for everyone else’s madness. Perhaps if Dracula and the rest of you were not always devolving into destroying whole cities or playing games with humans like they were children’s toys, he would not glower as much as he does.”
Elizabeth hugged Maxine’s arm to her chest with another laugh. “Oh, I adore you, Maxine! To think of how much fun it will be to gossip with someone who knows what goes on inside the heads of those around her.”
“I am not a psychic. I do not read thoughts. Only emotions.”
“Good, then you hear past even the lies that someone speaks to themselves. Even better.”
“I suppose.”
They walked in silence for a moment among the ruin of the city. Now she could see creatures atop rooves, crawling along the slate and copper on all fours or on their canted back legs. They looked like demons, and they were watching them both. “Do they mean me harm?”
“Yes and no. Some mean any living thing harm. But you? You are an exception. Dracula has made it very clear that anyone who comes near to you with any ill intent will have their insides rearranged and suffer a long and painful death. And the rest? The more sentient types?” She hummed thoughtfully to herself. “No. No, I do not think they do.”
“Why not?”
“Now having met you, I think I come to know why Dracula is so obsessed with you as he would turn down this wonderful new chance at paradise.” She gestured with her palm up in a wide arc at the city around her. “We have the opportunity to farm a great deal of cattle for ourselves, and he would throw it all away for you. But if you can see into the center of all of us, I can see why. I do not agree, mind you. But I understand.”
“What do you think he should do?”
“Snatch you up, take your mind and body until you profess your undying love for him in every breath, and give us the empire we vampires truly deserve.”
“Well…I will give you credit for your bluntness.”
“You did ask.” Elizabeth smiled dryly.
“My mistake.”
“You are a smart woman. There is a sharp intelligence that burns behind those beautiful eyes of yours. I would hate to see them grow glassy and empty. I am sure he feels the same. No, he wants to win you of his own accord, sister.”
“He has gone about it in a superbly backward fashion.” Maxine shook her head. “Abducting me and destroying this city in hopes I might still love him when all is said and done? It’s nonsense.”
“Then you know him quite well!” Elizabeth laughed again. The vampiress was wont to do that frequently. Now that it was not harsh and vindictive in quality, Maxine did not mind so much. “You must look at all the world like a game. To him, we are all but pawns on a board. He does not care if he loses this match or any other, for he must simply reset the game and try another. Indeed, sometimes I do think he enjoys losing. You have seen the expanse of his power. He could rule this world like a god if he wished it.”
“And why does he not?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Maxine went quiet for a moment and let out a long breath. She pondered the problem for a while. All the world was a game to him. A game he could never willingly stop playing. “I think he is curious if the hunters might be able to end him, once and for all. He told me once that he wishes for me to either kill him or obey him. I do not honestly believe he has a preference either way.”
“Walter said the same.” Elizabeth grunted. “Damn. I hoped he was spouting out of his asshole again. But it seems not. Maxine, I will be blunt—I have no desire to die. If you destroy him, it might end us all.”
“Or it might not.”
“I do not wish to take that chance.”
“I cannot promise anything, Elizabeth.” She looked out at the city, and could only imagine the survivors hiding in basements, or being torn out of their houses. “How many are dead?”
“A fourth of the city is now either our food or become like us.”
“Twenty thousand…” She blanched. She felt sick. She had to stop walking for a moment and pushed Elizabeth away from her gently so she could move to lean on the side of a building. “And what of the rest?” She was afraid to ask, but she knew she could not hide from what had come to pass. Their fate was her responsibility.
“They are either still cowering in holes or have been taken into our care.”
“Your ‘care?’”
“If we kill all of you, what will we eat?” Elizabeth smiled sweetly, sympathetically, as if she truly regretted her words. Maxine knew she wasn’t being sincere. There was an emptiness to the woman’s heart that troubled her.
“How compassionate,” Maxine muttered and shook her head. She was developing a headache.
“I am hardly that. But if you are in the mood for sympathy, I think I would like to take you to see a friend of mine.” Elizabeth motioned her to come back over to her. “They are not far.”
&
nbsp; “They?” She furrowed her brow as she allowed the vampiress to take her arm again and lead her down the street. “You said a friend, singular, then referred to them in the plural. Which is it?”
Elizabeth chuckled knowingly. “Both.”
Maxine raised an eyebrow at her.
“Oh, you’ll see.” Elizabeth squeezed her arm in a hug. “You’re going to be so much fun.”
If only Maxine could find the strength to believe that.
Bella wasn’t quite certain how long it had been since she had managed to climb out of bed for longer than twenty minutes. She could blame it on Mordecai and his impressive stamina and needs, but she knew she was equally at fault.
She had not once told him no. She had not once pushed him away. When she woke up from slumber to find them tangled together, with him firmly cuddled into her, it made her smile.
“I think perhaps we should come up for air soon,” he said through a yawn. “We can go rustle up a proper meal and it eat in the courtyard. I would say we could eat it in the sun, but, well…” He snickered. “The red moon’ll have to do.”
“I figured that this was my prison.”
“This is my room. And you aren’t my prisoner. You’re my ward until this mess is all settled.” He rolled over and stretched languidly. He really was quite feline in his movements. He had a contented, sated, broad smile on his face as he draped himself out as large as he could be.
There is no other reason a creature could be so beautiful and not be by design. But it wasn’t only his body she was beginning to enjoy. It was his goofy smile. It was his easy laughter and his playful sense of humor. It was all of him.
But a darkness still hung over her. “I am worried for Alfonzo and Eddie.”
“Mmh…Right.” He sighed and sat up. He stretched his shoulders again before turning to look at her. There was remorse in his eyes. “About that.”
“Oh, no…Please, no, tell me they aren’t dead.”
“Well, then, there’s good news?” Mordecai smiled sheepishly. “They aren’t dead, although they probably won’t survive this. Master Dracula does not forgive something like what Alfonzo did, and Eddie is probably on his way here to try to ‘save’ you.”
Curse of Dracula Page 13
