Prince 0f Blood (Dracula's Bloodline Book 3)

by Ana Calin

  “Get a grip on yourself, Lucian, or I’m going to hurt you.”

  “You won’t unless you want another war with your brother. He created us, not you. We’re under his protection.”

  “My dad?” I whisper.

  “You won’t lay a hand on the girl if you don’t want my brother to slit your throat himself. Rux is his adoptive daughter.”

  The Abbot freezes, and Vlad moves just a little to the side to allow him to look at me. But he’s still close enough to protect me if the Abbot decides to attack.

  The Abbot’s flaming eyes still glow at me, but the rays of shadow radiating from him seem to dampen, even the pressure in the room seems to fade.

  “Say what?” he whispers.

  “I was going to explain,” Vlad says calmly, but I can sense him tense, ready to take the Abbot down if he makes a wrong move. I wonder how fast the monk could move from behind his desk, as I wonder what in the hell kind of a creature he is, turning so maddeningly ugly.

  “Ruxandra Len,” Vlad continues, “is the daughter of Radek and Juliet Len. Former Radek Basarab and Juliet Jochs.”

  “You’re playing with me,” the Abbot whispers in fascination, his ugliness retreating, sinking back into a layer of fine, clear skin, pretty lips and clear green eyes, like a fox’s.

  “All Rux’s female ancestors have lived horrible existences, from Nazi orphanages to abusive families whom they ended up abusing in the end. The demon—” He makes turning moves with his broad hand as he thinks of a way to explain, “let’s say it ‘kicked in’ when the abuse was too great. It gave the girls powers, powers that Rux had as well when her adoptive parents found her. She was dark and very powerful, but all that darkness was draining her, killing her, so Radek and Juliet decided to disconnect her from the source—from the demon. Still, he returned when she became interested in boys and boys in her, and stalked her either like a jealous lover, or, now that I think about it more, like a possessive father.”

  “Like a father indeed,” the Abbot whispers, staring at me. He walks closer, eyes on me like I’ve turned from a wicked temptress unworthy of stepping inside these holy walls into some fairy.

  “So you are descendant from Lady Ruxandra and the monk the demon possessed inside these very walls in order to mate with her. And then you were adopted by my maker—Radek Basarab.”

  “Your maker?” I repeat, my lips dry, shock clogging my throat.

  “Your dad used to be a monster just like me,” he replies, studying my face. “They called him the Prince of Midnight. He was of unparalleled beauty, able to lure any woman, but at night he turned into a horrible beast. Something like what you saw me become just seconds ago. Only that he could infect others with his curse as well. Most of his victims didn’t survive, in truth. Those who did turned into, well, into what you just saw. Every monk in here is a survivor of your father’s curse, and his servant, a soldier of his army, always at his command. We are bound to him, and our allegiance can’t be broken.”

  “But—” My head spins, and I put a hand to my temple. In only a matter of weeks, the whole world as I thought I knew it turned upside down. I learned my stalker is a demon, Dracula is real and he can turn into fucking mist, and now this?

  “If the Prince of Midnight decided to raise you as his daughter,” the Abbot says, “then he must have seen something special in you.”

  “I suppose he saw a little girl in need of love,” I whisper. “I’m still in need of love, which is why I’m going to fight this demon. With your help or without it.”

  Vlad’s reaction to my saying I’m still in need of love isn’t lost on me. He tensed by my side, large and muscular in his black sweater and jeans, smelling of leather and man, and all the love I crave.

  “Oh, I’m afraid we have no choice but to help you, Ruxandra Len,” the Abbot murmurs. “Like I said, we owe your father allegiance. We serve his family.”

  Rux

  A FEW HOURS LATER, after a ritual bath at the bottom of a freezing medieval well, I’m waiting for the special mass to begin. The Abbot agreed not only to allow us to read from the book, but also to assist us. He gathered his monks and offered a supporting crew of holy incantation mutterers that could turn into demon fighters, if needed.

  “We don’t stand a very good chance, though,” he tells Vlad as we wait for it to begin at the church entrance. I’m sitting on a wooden stool, freezing under the flimsy black cape that covers me from neck to toes, my hair up in a bun. My sinuses begin to swell from the draught, the ache showing in my face, which earns me worried glances from Vlad. But the Abbot is too tense with this whole thing to even notice my discomfort.

  “We can’t fight something we can’t see,” he says, his eyes sweeping over the monks still trickling in, taking their seats in the wooden pews. “Stories of old say the demon was nothing but shadow. When we transform into what your father made us—Black Monks, that’s what we’re called—we spew black curses at our targets. Once the curse hits, their bodies begin rotting alive, and they either die or become like us. But this demon doesn’t have a body that can rot.”

  I shudder, wanting to know more about the black curses, but the Abbot turns swiftly to Vlad. It seems an idea has just hit him. “I can’t believe it only comes to me now. Are you and Prince Radek on each other’s good side again? How come you’re helping his adoptive daughter?”

  “It’s a long story,” Vlad says, and places both of his large hands on my shoulders, squeezing with reassurance. I focus on my breathing, trying to calm down, which is easier now with his protective touch on me.

  The Abbot stares at him, his pretty face becoming serious under the hood as he seems to realize something.

  “My God,” he whispers. “Lord Dracula, are you in love? With your brother’s adopted daughter?”

  I swear the sky has just fallen down on me. I turn my head to look up at Vlad, who’s standing behind me in a black cape, his wolfish eyes glinting from under his hood at the Abbot.

  “I owe her my help, Lucian.”

  The Abbot narrows his eyes in suspicion. “Why?”

  I hold my breath. I don’t want him to owe me, I want him to love me. I bite my cheeks on the inside, my fists clenching in my lap under the cape.

  “She suffered because of a curse that’s followed her bloodline. And that’s something that my first wife caused, which is my fault at the core—I showed her the Hidden World, and she wanted to become part of it, powerful and dark. I refused to turn her into a monster, so she found a way to turn herself. But what she did had consequences, like I said. She pulled her innocent descendants into the darkness after her. Rux is the pure manifestation of karma to me, my chance to pay my dues.”

  The response disappoints me, and I look down to hide it. I can sense the Abbot’s still suspicious gaze, and I know he isn’t entirely convinced. But I know Vlad is telling the truth. Holding on to the theory that Vlad might be in love with me would be just wishful thinking that will do me more ill than good.

  The church bells suddenly echo against the medieval stone, drilling into my eardrums and making me wince, filling the majestic old building. The Abbot looks up to the bell tower, then back at us.

  “The monks are ready. Lady Ruxandra, you are the first woman to ever be allowed to enter the sacred altar of the Northern Monastery—your ancestor did it in secrecy, without permission, which gave the ritual an illicit opening that it thrived on; we won’t repeat that mistake.”

  Vlad comes in front of me and holds out his broad hand. I look up at him, reading in his eyes that he’s ready to protect me. As I stare up at him, my heart beats harder.

  I’m in love with this man. Now, face to face with my destiny, maybe soon face to face with my death, I can admit it—I fell in love with him like a schoolgirl. A crush he’d never take seriously. But boy, to me it feels powerful, consuming. If this isn’t what love is supposed to feel like, if love is what those bored couples display with their long faces and unhappy drooping eyes in the ‘real worl
d’, then I don’t want it. I want this right here, I want Vlad and me walking down a stony medieval aisle towards an ancient altar, to be wed by the power of a demon.

  Last night I fell asleep in his arms by the fire with a smile on my face, dreaming of stepping into a church on dad’s arm, dressed in white, meeting Vlad in front of a luminous altar. Now I realize how childish that fantasy was. How could Vlad Dracula, one of history’s darkest characters, ever offer me the semblance of a life in the light? And how could my dad ever approve of my union with the king of vampires, who is basically my uncle?

  We walk up the steps towards the altar, and two hooded monks push the silver gates open. So much silver. I can feel its power begin to course through my veins, filling me like alcohol would on a drinking night.

  Only this euphoria is empowering instead of draining, and the more it grows, the stronger I feel.

  “I remember, Vlad,” I whisper, falling into a trance. “I remember something from when I was very little. I lived in a big but shabby house in a forest. People spoke a strange language around me.” A flash of Dalton’s medieval book written in old German flashes in my mind. “They spoke German. I understand German.”

  “Do you understand my language as I speak to you now?” Vlad says softly, slowly, his voice becoming deep and dark, settling inside my body. I realize he speaks Romanian, and I understand it. I nod. I don’t want to talk too much for fear of losing this sensation I have inside—a sensation of power, and therefore of security.

  “You remember the house in Germany, yes?” Vlad continues softly.

  I nod.

  “Do you remember where you were before you came to that house? You don’t have to speak if it’s draining. I can feel the answer inside your mind.”

  I lean my head back, relaxing into the trance. Yes, I can feel him inside my mind, being one with me just like he was while I rode here on a cloud of mist made of his body. I go backwards down the line of events, to a time before that house, I remember the day I was born. My mother, she doesn’t look happy. Her eyes, as black as mine, are the eyes of a child, a scared one. I look at her bloody thighs—they are the thin, bony legs of a girl. She must have had me at a very young age. I hear the words rape and pedophile whispered around me.

  If I’d discovered this in a wakeful state, then it would have hurt me deeply. But in this state of floating consciousness I just observe.

  And before that? I feel Vlad’s soul nudge. His soul, it’s right here, ready to become part of mine. I can feel its texture, thick like marshes, dark and dangerous like quicksand. If it grabs my ankles, it’ll suck me in completely.

  Before that, Rux?

  I feel a pull towards the quicksand of his soul. I walk into it like I’d walk inside a rippling dark mirror whose waves swallow me and transport me past the day I was born, further down my bloodline. To a girl so deformed she couldn’t show her face in the world. Her mother, a woman with eyes as black as mine, leans in to her, both looking inside the mirror from which I observe them. “You’re here for a divine purpose,” the mother whispers. The deformed child, her face hills of battered flesh, isn’t so sure. She only wants to die. The mother agrees—but not before the job is done.

  And before that? I slide deeper down my bloodline, to my great-great-grandmother Adara inside the orphanage that turns out to be an extermination camp for Jewish children. She’s inside the gas chamber, staring horrified at the rusty showerheads above them, copper piping crisscrossing the ceiling. They know, all of them have heard stories about the gas chamber, and now they gather at the sealed doors, small and naked, crying and calling for their mommas.

  The pain is so great I crouch down on the floor. I can now feel Vlad’s powerful arms around me, enveloping my body like armor against the evil memory. Evil. Evil is what seeped into Adara’s veins as she watched those children choke to death, heaving and rasping for their mommas while their souls left their bodies. Evil was what caused this. And she would fight evil with evil. That moment she decided she would torment the leader Nazis’s entire bloodline until it, too, would be extinguished in misery. That was the moment when the demon—I feel him, what’s his name?—kicked in.

  And before that? Vlad’s soul nudges.

  I take what feels like a deep breath, steeling myself, and go deeper down the generations. But the more Vlad helps me, the more the quicksand of his soul merges with me, its force carrying me through strings of his DNA instead of mine.

  I feel him hanging between two metal poles on a dais, in the middle of a village. Leather straps coil around his wrists, his knees almost reaching the dais. He’s no longer on his feet, because he’s unconscious. His head is hanging forward, sweaty strands of hair plastered to his forehead and sculptured cheeks. On his back, streams of dark blood flow from ditches of open flesh, red muscle pulsing painfully.

  This hurts so much that I hear myself scream, bringing myself out of the trance. Vlad keeps talking to me. I don’t know what he says, but his warm voice helps me out of this dark pit like strong helping hands.

  “Open your eyes,” he encourages softly. When I do I’m standing in front of an altar table, chalices, crucifixes and chains over it, one big silver book in front of me. There are finely crafted gargoyles and serpents coiling on the cover. My consciousness is back inside my body, inside the altar at the Northern Monastery.

  Vlad is right behind me, offering me the support of his body that seems a wall of strength that I can lean on. His broad hands are under my elbows, supporting my moves as my hands move slowly over the cover. The silver gives me that exquisite sensation it always gives me when I have so much of it this close. It’s pure pleasure.

  The monks’ incantations make for an entrancing background as gargoyles begin moving, the silver snakes slithering under my hands.

  “I remember killing the Bloody Maries,” I whisper, but Vlad doesn’t react.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I did not understand you, milady,” he says in Romanian.

  Then I must be speaking another language. An idea comes to me. All I need to do is move my hand over the book’s silver cover for the cover to follow my move. I can feel the magnetic power radiating from my palm, and it feels as natural as using my hand normally.

  As I expected, I understand the title—I understand the demon language. Born of Time.

  Further pages reveal stories of the mythological past when the world had been created. Behold. The devil claims he was created at the same time as God—only that he claims to have been born of the good as well.

  “There is primordial good,” I whisper in a trance, in this strange language that feels natural to me. “But there is no primordial evil. Long before God created Eve from the rib of Adam, Lucifer caught life from the rib of God.”

  A sensation of sacrilege cuts through my stomach. I struggle to rip myself away.

  The darkness in my head whirls around one spot of light, one name. I have the demon’s elusive name. But instead of me gaining power over him, it’s him who’s got me in his claws. This is wrong. We came here to banish him, but he turned the tables—he’s using my body, my newly reopened channels to funnel himself into the world.

  I slam the book shut.

  “Help me,” I whisper, clinging to Vlad, but it’s too late.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Lord Dracula

  RUX’S EYES CLING TO mine full of pain and despair. The demon’s dark power has taken hold of her like a vampire sinking its teeth into her life vein.

  Darkness begins spreading into the altar from the back wall, a tunnel extending to swallow the entire church. The monks’ incantations turn louder, from strained humming to hissing, to shouting. Black bolts of curses shoot by my ears, wheezing through the air, but they fade into the blackness as if they’re absorbed into another world.

  I place myself in front of Rux, shielding her behind me, my fangs elongating, my fingernails growing into claws.

  “Who are you hoping to slash with those?” the Abbot
says, appearing by my side in his monster form, all wounded flesh, blisters and pus. “The creature doesn’t have a body for you to hurt. We thought he’d take the shape of a man, like he did when he seduced Lady Ruxandra the first time, but fuck it, he’s coming as evil energy!”

  He grimaces in growing pain, which helps put energy into his curses, and spits out a cloud of blackness into the dark.

  But the demon only grows.

  “The monks can’t fight it,” he growls.

  Rux faints behind me, her body turning mellow and leaning on my back. I turn around and scoop her up, falling to my knees with her and cupping her head to protect her at my chest.

  “I won’t let this creature get you,” I whisper in her ear. I’m not sure how I’m going to keep that promise, but I’m determined to do it or die trying.

  But right now I can only shield her with my body, looking out through the altar doors at the monks inside the nave, running around in their ugly forms and trying to fight this bodiless monster.

  They scurry around, avoiding the rivers of darkness that snake among them, spitting curses at the demon energy, which only makes it grow. My protective feeling for Rux extends to them—I can’t let them die for having helped us. These creatures were my opponents for a long time before the truce with Radek, but now they agreed to put themselves in danger for what they thought was the greater good. They are my responsibility.

  “Lucian,” I call over the monks’ shouting and the buzzing coming from inside the darkness, which resembles clouds of wasps filling the church. “Protect Rux.”

  The darkness seems to avoid this spot where Rux, Lucian and I are. It’s flowing passed us towards the rest of the church like a river around rocks.

  I spring up to my feet with the fainted Rux in my arms, giving her over to Lucian, then I spin around to face the tunnel of darkness. I walk toward it, with no idea what I’m going to do except that I’ll go as deep as I have to until I find some kind of core.