“I take a piece of those I kill. And a piece of his curse was enough to do this, it seems.” I have freed you from your eternity. I have taken this burden from you. She looked back at Vlad. Walking to the side of the bed, she pulled the sheets up over him and sat at his side. She stroked through his hair, smoothing it out, and gently shut his eyes. She leaned down to kiss him.
She let her soul touch the cold body beneath her lips and tried to find him. Tried to find…anything.
But nothing called back to her.
This deathless world is mine now.
“This is all—I don’t know how I am to react to this.” Zadok leaned on the wall and threaded his fingers into his hair. He began rambling, speaking so quickly in French and English that they blurred together, and she struggled to understand him. “You have become him! My Master lies dead, his Lady is now my Mistress, and there is a hunter at our doors attempting to kill Walter and—”
“What did you say?” She looked up at the Frenchman. “What about Walter?”
Zadok shook his head as though she had caught on to the wrong part. “You have become him, Vlad is—the Master is dead—he can’t die. He cannot!” He slid to the floor. He sat there with his legs out in front of him, looking like a man who was told his wife had just died in childbirth.
He has lost his family. He has lost the only man he believed could never leave him.
“Zadok. I need you to focus. What did you say about Walter?”
“The boy. Eddie. He—” He stammered uselessly. “You are my Mistress.” He pulled in a breath, held it, then let out his words as a rush. “I can feel it, same way I could with him.” The poor vampire was shaking.
She looked down at Vlad, at the form that could be a corpse for all intents and purposes. And perhaps he was. There was no telling what she had done or what had transpired. There were only the facts left to examine. She reached out and stroked his hair, wishing for all the world that he would open his eyes.
I killed him. This is my fault. I do not get to mourn for what I’ve done.
“You are the Vampire Queen now, Maxine.”
She laughed sadly. The title sounded ridiculous. “Never say that again.”
“But you are.”
She leaned her head down onto Vlad’s unmoving chest. She felt so small. So weak. So tired. So alone. She wanted him to hold her. To tell her it was going to be all right. She knew it would not happen. “I can’t be. I don’t know how.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. I don’t know how any of this shit has come to pass. I don’t know what you did!” Zadok buried his head in his hands and rambled in French so quickly that she couldn’t understand him. With a hiss of air through his nose, he sprang to his feet. “Enough. Enough. I can mourn for him over a bottle of wine later. We need to go help Walter. I came in here to get you both out of bed, and instead I suppose you will have to do. You are our Mistress, and you will save that asshole. Do you hear me? I will not lose more of my family this day!”
“I hear you, cretin.” Pushing from the bed, she wiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks. As eager as she was to lie on that bed and never move again, she would not let Walter die because of her mistakes. Zadok was right—she had a duty to them. She had taken Dracula away from them. She looked down at the crimson staining her hands. “That is irritating.”
“You have much to learn,” Zadok grumbled. “That is the least of it. Come, get dressed, and do it quickly, unless you want to greet the hunter in a bathrobe.”
Nodding numbly, she went about the motions. There was something simple and comforting about getting dressed. It was normal. It was not the end of the world. She even let Zadok tug her corset laces tight. Quite admirably, he kept his hands to himself. His grief was likely to blame.
I have killed the Vampire King and taken his throne.
One last time before she left, Maxine sat on the edge of the bed. She kissed Vlad’s lips once more. She tried desperately to find some inkling of a soul within him and found nothing.
I can only pray you have found peace, my love.
He had wished to shed his burden. And she had taken it instead. She was not certain how she would ever be suited for such a role…but she did not have a choice. It was hers to bear until the end of time. But she had understood his need for resolution. He might not have found peace in her love, but he had found peace in the death she had given him.
And now death was never to come for her. The deal they had made was that they would both die. But he left to travel where she could never follow him. She had pushed him through that door, and it had slammed in her face. Hell did not wait for her—only a Hell of her own making now here on Earth.
How many thousands of years had it taken Vlad to become as he was? Cold, cruel, and devoid of compassion?
How many would it take for her to suffer the same fate?
Worry over your own immortality another time. Walter or Eddie is about to die. Save them first, then lose yourself to panic and grief if you must.
She wore black. It was only fitting. She was in mourning, and she would be so for the rest of time. She had taken Vlad’s curse, but he had taken her heart. She pulled on her black gloves and nodded to Zadok. He pushed open a large window by the wall, revealing the night sky and the city beyond.
“Time to learn how to fly, Maxine.” Zadok took her hand. “Be free. Will yourself to the skies. Dream of freedom, and it will be yours.”
She nodded and shut her eyes. She remembered what it was like to fly in Dracula’s embrace. It was there, like a muscle she had not known she had owned. She reached for it, touched it, and her body dissolved into a thousand smaller ones. The world dropped away from her. And through it all, she sensed Zadok there at her side, tangled up in her.
Like she had been with Vlad.
Soaring into the sky above, she basked in the beauty of the stars. Of the night. Of the crimson moon. This was her moon now too—she was no longer the prey. She was now the predator.
She could revel in it another time.
Gunfire was ringing out in the stone streets, and she could hear metal clashing on metal. There was a fight raging, and she needed to stop it.
There would be no more suffering this night.
She decreed it.
27
Walter was furious.
While it was not uncommon that he was angry, very rarely did it ever creep outward. How many times had he suffered the advances of that insipid woman Elizabeth—thank goodness she was dead—and managed to keep from bashing her head into the plaster walls?
No. He was not a man of outbursts.
But this boy was frustrating.
He was only one child! But he was faster and far more intuitive than Walter had anticipated. Each movement of his blade was met with a bullet, nearly shooting the rapier out of his hand, or blocked with the side of a muzzle. The boy was also an exceptionally good shot. He seemed to have an intuitive sense of where Walter planned to appear.
Walter had to unleash his shadows. He did not like to fight with trickery. He did not like to use anything more than his own body to battle. But now the darkness began to leak in from the edges of the steps of the library, lashing out at the young hunter.
Edward would die.
Walter would not lose.
Finally, after far too long, he managed to knock the weapons from the boy’s hands after one of his shadows wrapped around Edward’s legs and yanked him clean off his feet. “Eddie,” as he preferred to be called, slammed painfully into the stones and groaned, holding his face. Walter kicked him over onto his back and held the point of his sword over the boy’s throat.
“Do it,” Eddie grunted. “Just do it.”
“Do you wish to pray to your god first?”
“Nah. I’m good. He knows I’m coming.” Eddie grinned lopsidedly.
Walter smiled back at him. “Well met, Edward Jenkin. Well met, indeed.” He raised his sword and moved to drive it down through the boy’s thro
at. He would make his death quick.
“No!”
Walter hesitated. He turned to look at whomever had shouted and froze. He blinked in confusion. “Miss Parker?” It was her. But…changed. Zadok was standing at her side and shot him a wide-eyed, panicked, and confounded expression as his only method of explanation.
Her eyes shone crimson like his—like Vlad’s. Her skin was pale. She was perfect, removed from all the slight failures of the mortal body that were swept away with the gift of vampirism. She was like them now; he could sense it.
But he could sense something more. Something he had only sensed in one other. Something that called to him like…she was the wellspring of a great and terrible curse that had touched them all. “H…how?” He approached her slowly in disbelief. He reached to touch her face, and she let it happen.
She was cold to the touch.
Something strange brushed up against him. Not physically, but spiritually. It was entirely too personal for his liking. He pulled back his hand abruptly. “I see you retain your empathic gifts.”
“So it seems.”
“Where is Master Dracula?”
“He is…he is inside. I do not know if he will ever rise again.”
Walter bowed his head. His Master was dead and gone. “What have you done, Miss Parker?” He swallowed something akin to bile and took a step back. “You destroyed him.”
“I…” She cringed as if he had slapped her. “Yes. And a piece of his soul became mine. Such is the reason I now have been poisoned by his curse.”
“And he is bereft of anything at all? He is dead?”
“I do not know. I believe so.” She was pleading with him, her crimson eyes looking for any compassion he might be able to spare. “Please, forgive me.”
He had the urge to strike her. To kill her for what she had done. She betrayed their Master—the man he claimed to love—and—his fury sputtered and failed. “Did he know what you planned to do?”
She nodded.
Walter ran a hand over his face, groaning loudly. “He embraced his death.”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Very well.”
“Can I get up yet?”
Maxine laughed, and Walter looked up to see her approaching the young hunter still lying on the ground. It was he who had spoken. She reached out to help him up, and he grasped her by the hand as she hefted him easily to his feet.
“Whoa!” he yelped at her sudden strength.
“Sorry. I fear I do not yet know what I am.” Maxine smiled sheepishly at him. “Are you all right, Eddie?”
“No, I’m shit, actually. Lost a finger to a bitch of a vampire, lost my friend to a bitch of an incubus, was about to lose my life to that big bitch over there”—Eddie gestured at Walter, who struggled not to reup his desire to smack him—“lost my mentor to the biggest bitch of them all, and now you’re…fuck, Maxine. What did you do?”
“I’ve been asked that question three times now, and three times I will say I fear I do not yet fully know.” Maxine looked down at her hands in confusion. “But there is one thing to be certain—this fight ends here, and it ends now.” She turned to Walter. “I do not ask you to serve me, Mr. Northway, or you, Mr. Lafitte. I do not ask it from anyone. But I intend to protect Eddie should you decide to continue this fight.”
Zadok and Walter looked at each other for a long moment. It was the Frenchman who spoke first, unsurprisingly. “I…know why you did it. And if he wanted to die as you say, then I shall respect my Master’s wishes. I will need more time to accept what has been done.”
“As do we all,” Maxine murmured.
“I’m not excited to find out what our new master vampire might do with powers untempered and untrained by time,” Zadok said with a mild shrug. “Nor do I wish particular ill on the boy. He killed Elizabeth. I think I owe him a favor.”
“That is one of the few times I think you have spoken logic.” Walter allowed his sword to vanish from his hand. He watched Miss Parker for a moment and remembered her kindness toward him. Her kindness toward all the creatures she met. “I will not serve you, Miss Parker. But I will seek to aid you, if that is enough.”
“It is more than I could ask. I would prefer friendship.” She smiled. “I am not one for keeping staff.”
“In you remains the only shred of a chance I have at a family who cannot leave me. Friendship it is.” Zadok bowed, joining into the accord. “This will be interesting indeed. At least you are far more attractive to the eyes than our previous Master.”
Walter kept himself from decking the Frenchman. Perhaps he would do so later. “What do you intend to do now, Miss Parker?”
She looked up at the moon overhead. “I think you should both go indoors.”
Without having to be warned twice, he let his body dissolve into bats and head to the sky. He would seek shelter inside. He did not know what meant to follow such strange events. He mourned the loss of his friend. He grieved for Dracula. He would cry in silence and solitude this evening and likely many more to come.
But he knew his friend had needed rest. And he hoped he had found it at long last.
“Maxine?”
She shushed Eddie. She wasn’t certain about what she was doing and needed to focus. It was as though she had been sat at a grand organ after taking a few lessons on a child’s piano. There were too many switches, levers, foot pedals, strings, pipes—she knew if she hit the wrong key, she might ruin everything.
Power like an ocean flowed beneath her fingertips. She could understand a little of why Vlad acted the way he did—as though the world around him consisted of only ants that now and then became interesting to him. That was what the world was to her now. Everything was…small.
She lifted her hand to the sky, gesturing to the red moon. She willed it to be free. She willed the city to be free. She commanded the cloud of miasma around her to be silent.
She held her breath—did she really even need to breathe now?—and watched as the moon slipped away and was replaced with the warm glow of the sun. She flinched and looked away. It had never been that painfully bright before. Right. Yes. That. “Ow.” She laughed.
With the shadow of crimson that slid away, so went the twisted nightmares. Blood still stained the streets. The dead were still that. No tragedy was reversed.
The past could not be changed.
But the future was not yet written. Fate was not sealed.
She looked to Eddie. “Vlad is…dead and gone. Do you seek to kill me instead, hunter?”
“You saved my life.” He sighed. “If I didn’t kill that piece of shit incubus or Bella—”
“What?”
He grunted. “I spared them. She seemed happy, and he loves her, and—” Eddie sighed heavily. “She loves him. I can’t fault them for that. For what they did to Al, sure, but…sounds like he got himself into that mess.”
“Alfonzo.” She cringed and shut her eyes. “I should go deal with him.”
“I’m coming.” She glanced up at him with a raised eyebrow. He coughed and cleared his throat. “I mean, I’d like to come with you, with all due respect, ma’am.”
She laughed. She supposed she really was a ma’am now. She nodded and reached out to take his hand. “Come. I think I know the way.”
Eddie hesitated but placed his hand in hers. She just folded into the nothingness and moved between places in the world. It was so easy now that she knew how it was done. Like a curtain being pulled back, it all made sense.
He, however, was of the same opinion that she was the first time she had experienced it. He doubled over and nearly retched as they reappeared in the stone corridor beneath the library. The curse from the city had lifted, but she kept this building under her control for the time being. There was business to attend to.
“I—oh—oh, my.” The Chainmaster. It came out to greet its visitor, and seeing her, dropped to its knees. “I serve you, my Mistress.”
“Free them all. All that can leave this place o
f their own will, you shall allow. Those who cannot be released are to be quickly and painlessly put out of their suffering. Leave Alfonzo. We are to tend to him. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mistress,” the demon purred. “Am I free as well?”
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
Its features creased in pain. “Master Dracula kept me here to punish me. I slighted him a long time ago, and he makes me serve. I miss my children. I wish to return to Hell. Do you wish to keep me imprisoned?”
There was always a context. There was always a reason behind the darkness. She shook her head. “You are free once you do as I ask.”
The demon picked up the edge of her dress and kissed it and quickly left to make good on her command.
“Demons are weird,” Eddie muttered.
“I find myself agreeing with you.” She motioned for him to follow her as she walked down the hallway. She found Alfonzo’s cell quickly and opened the door but paused before she went in. She looked over to Eddie, who had lost much of the color from his face at the odor of the place. Of the stench of suffering and death. “I am sorry for what you are about to see.”
“Walter told me what they…what they did.”
“It’s another thing to witness it.” She pushed open the door and walked inside. She heard Eddie follow her.
There, in the center of the floor, was what remained of Alfonzo Van Helsing. His limbs were stumps. His right arm was longer than the others, extending down to a wrist, but the hand was gone. The charred remains of a hand lay on a tray by his head, chewed on, and bile soaked it.
They had made him eat his own hand.
She cringed and looked away, putting her hand over her mouth. No. She would look this cruelty in the eyes, and she would understand it. This was what she would become if she was not careful. She would keep this as a reminder of the value of mercy. She forced herself to take in every detail of what had been done.
Eddie had to leave the room, and she heard him retching in the hallway. She did not blame him. She walked over to Alfonzo’s side and knelt in the blood. She did not care. The man was still alive. He was breathing, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
Curse of Dracula Page 27
