Chapter 31
Newsflash. Knives hurt. Like Lucifer's claws plunged into her very flesh.
Silver knives?
Hurt worse.
Writhing in pain, Valerie sank into the frigid water. The toxic metal burned like acid crawling inside her body, preventing her healing ability from mending her shattered collarbone. Her body screamed at every movement as the silver rasped against the raw ends of her bones and muscle.
It wasn't just dumb luck Radu hit her. He'd always been a superior marksman. And she'd been stupid, thinking he'd listen to her warnings. Thinking that the danger to Lance's life had passed.
She had to save him.
Her blood gushed into the water as she sank to the bottom. She had to get the damned things out or she would die of silver poisoning in minutes.
And then what would happen to Lance?
She had to get those knives out now.
A wooden chopstick was trapped on the bottom of the lake. She plucked it from the current and shoved it between her teeth. Silver knives hurt, yes.
Getting silver out hurt even more.
The combined taste of pollution, her own blood, and silver nearly made her gag. At least she still had her driving gloves on. Her hands didn't burn as she grasped one handle.
She bit down on the stick at the feel of the cold metal exiting her fevered flesh. Try as she might, a bubbling groan escaped. Hot pain shot down her arm and through her chest. Long seconds passed as her hands slipped on blood, but finally she pulled the first blade out of her body.
One by one, three more daggers landed on the murky bottom.
Surfacing on the far side of the lake, she spit out the splintered chopstick. Now she had to find Lance.
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Pain.
Waking.
Lance rolled over with a grunt. Sticky blood pooled on the rocking deck below him.
“Yoummf okeh?” Chad's muffled whisper bounced in around Lance's scrambled brain.
“Chad?” Lance's neck hurt. His hand came back bright red. He'd been clawed but good.
“Fether?” Chad's gagged voice cracked.
Lance shoved a pillow from the bunk against his wound. The pressure brought him some respite.
He unzipped his saturated leather jacket. “Ugh.”
Blood poured out of his chest like water flowing from a hot spring. This was wrong. He should have healed any wounds by now.
Chad choked on sobs at the sight.
“I'm coming, Chad,” Lance wheezed. “Hold on.” He grabbed one end of the tape over Chad's mouth and yanked.
It was too much. Lance passed out.
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Where was her lover?
Valerie dragged herself to the other side of the shore. Sopping blood and water, she climbed up the rocky incline to the paved bicycle path. Radu would not escape her wrath. Not this time.
The silver's paralyzing grip was slowly and painfully shutting down her muscles. Her legs refused to move. Her legs buckled and she landed, face first, on the blacktop. Valerie threw her head back to the cloud-covered moon and snarled.
She clawed forward.
A bicyclist screeched to a halt. “Miss?”
A jogger stopped and reached for her arm. “You okay?”
Another six inches dragged underneath her broken body.
Lights and voices blurred into a spiral around her. “I've got a first-aid kit. You call the cops,” the bicyclist ordered the jogger.
Her nails dug into the cold pavement. Four more inches toward Lance. Damn these fitness-crazed Portland people, exercising in the early-evening dark and cold rain.
“She's a vampire!” The cyclist's voice seemed very far away.
Oh, give that one a biscuit. Three inches ground against her face. Gravel dug into her cheekbones. Her arms were numb.
“What are you doing?” asked the shocked jogger.
Fresh blood under her nose brought her eyelids up.
“Come on, here, smell it, that's a good girl.” A familiar voice and gentle hands guided her head toward a bleeding forearm.
As always, Valerie refused to die. Her tongue found the blood and she latched on. Hot apple-laced nourishment filled her mouth, even as her vision went dim.
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The top of John Janté's head nearly blew off as the woman sunk her fangs into his wrist.
The Internet was filled with fantastical descriptions of a vampire's bite, of the soaring, orgasmic pleasure, of the intimacy and beauty of this infinitely powerful being sucking for its very existence.
In reality, it just hurt. He clenched his jaw even as he gathered her closer, protecting her from the soft rain. “Does anyone have a coat?” he asked against hope. “We need to warm her.” Her soaked clothes would give her pneumonia if he didn't move fast.
Someone whipped off a fleece jacket and tucked it around the two of them. “I didn't know that vampires needed that,” the jogger said.
That's right. Undead. Relief relaxed his shoulders. No problem with normal infections. In response to his mood change, her feeding softened. Once the initial snake-bite feel wore off, the pull of her mouth was not unpleasant. In fact, it was kind of sexy. Her red-stained lips puckered and sucked and a low moan escaped her mouth. For all the world, she sounded like she was enjoying a spectacular meal. How very flattering.
“Is she going to live?” the bicyclist asked.
“I think so.”
He'd known something was wrong the minute the two of them had disappeared down the street. The call stunk of deception, and if John had not frightened Lance off, then his friend would have thought of this.
John shook his head in self-disgust.
The jogger misunderstood his gesture. “Hey, she'll be okay. Let's see what's going on.” He pulled Valerie's jacket to the side and recoiled. “What the hell happened to her?”
Swollen, livid wounds decorated Valerie's chest. Hot red-purple lines of deadly contamination radiated around each hole, tracing the pattern of her veins. Through her skin, her collarbone sat at a strange angle.
“Silver, I think,” John answered.
The blood hit her system.
Like a flower closing in slow motion, the infection receded. Her clavicle shifted back into position. Her ribs curved properly again, and the red lines disappeared as they all watched.
“That's ... kind of gross,” the woman said, her voice fascinated.
John's stomach would have churned, but he felt quite peaceful. Perhaps it had to do with her hand gently caressing his left nipple. Tingles spread down his chest to his groin. All he wanted to do was get her someplace more private.
“She'll be all right now,” he told the crowd. “You can go.”
“How do you know so much about vampires?” the jogger challenged.
John's head wobbled back and forth. His neck felt so loose and comfortable. “Do any of you remember Josephine O'Neill Trudeau?”
“The famous hunter?” the teenager asked.
The vampiress seemingly didn't hear, but her foot twitched away from John. The woman was riddled with tells.
“She was my great-grandmother. I'm very well informed about vampire habits,” he reassured the teen. He pointed to the now-disappeared lines of infection. “Now that the silver is gone, she will heal.”
Oh, Nana,
John thought,
if you could see me now, saving the one who saved you.
“Have you lost too much blood?” the motherly woman with the umbrella asked.
“I am fine.” He smiled reassuringly.
Valerie detached from John's arm and gave a tired thumbs-up. “Thank you for your concern,” she told the people surrounding them. She blinked heavily and rubbed her eyes. The group finally dispersed as she scrambled to her feet.
John asked, “Did you ever meet my nana?”
“No.”
Her pupils constricted. This woman was a terrible liar. Encouraged, he chatted and held her still as she swayed back and forth.
“She said that Dracula himself taught her to kill vampires. He wanted a fair fight when she came for him. Too bad he died before she came for him.”
John could see her calculating the width of the river between themselves and a sailboat moored to the north. The current had carried her south, but not too far. “My great-grandmother was a very strong woman,” he continued conversationally as she knelt and started to draw a diagram in the mud.
“You telling me this for a reason?” she snapped. “I'm working.”
“Just that I have a familial weakness for strong, dangerous women.” He winked at her, just to see what would happen.
Her eyes widened before she narrowed them again.
“You should have a familial weakness for killing my kind.” Her gaze wandered around his face, flickering to the air around him.
“Oh, no. Nana knew the time for vengeance had passed.” John glanced at the river. “You'll need a take-off velocity ofâ”
“You can do that in your head?” she interrupted.
“Of course.”
“Show-off.” She picked John up and swung him onto her back.
How invigorating to be handled by someone so strong. “What are you doing, my
petit chou?
” John asked.
“Don't call me that,” she said absently as she shifted weight from foot to foot. “I am going to save Lance. You are going to run to my car and stay out of sight.”
“Of course,” he blithely lied. “Here goes everything.” John felt the powerful muscles in her back and buttocks strain as she sprinted toward the water. As she leaped across the river toward the sailboat, John rode her like the magnificent steed she was.
Chapter 32
Wrath thrummed hotly in her veins. Her fangs extended so far they hurt. Sliding her tongue over the tips didn't ease the pain. Only the sight of Lance unharmed, only his touch would cool these flames. Then she would kill her brother for daring to touch the human she protected. Nothing less than death would satisfy her.
She could see Radu through the oversized portholes in the cabin. The last of the love for the child who had ridden on her back fell away like sand on dry skin. Even his attempted destruction of her hadn't killed that affection.
The promises she made to herself crumbled like piecrust under the stress of her fury.
“How the hell are we going to get on the boat?” John's whisper broke her rage and brought her back to their hideout on the shore. The party in the Trask house continued as loud as ever.
Damnation. She'd forgotten that little detail.
“I don't know.”
“If we can get me on board unheard, I can invite you,” he offered.
“Let's try.”
She braced herself as he climbed on her back again. His body heat lit an uncomfortable fire of awareness in her nipples. Valerie bit her lip and began her silent spider crawl under the dock to the boat.
She would steal onto the boat, kill her brother, free Lance, and move on with her life, leaving this aberrant behavior behind. The thought had her clamping her jaw hard against the tearing sensation in her chest.
The overwhelming ocean of fury crashed down the fragile barriers of new teachings and new habits. Hundreds of years of taking what she wanted, of violence and anger and hatred and selfishness smashed everything she thought she had wanted for these brief days.
Death was her constant companion. And he had missed her.
Valerie would hunt her brother down. And when she found him, she would impale his still-writhing body on a telephone pole.
Dracula was back.
And she was taking no prisoners.
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Valerie and John reached the gangway for the yacht. They crawled to the topside and flattened themselves to the wet boards. Out of curiosity, she reached out to touch the invitation barrier.
And nearly overbalanced into the water. The barrier wasn't there.
“What the fuck?” John breathed in her ear. Time flashed before her eyes.
“You and yours are always welcome here, Mr. Tepes,”
said a man who could only be Chad's father.
Valerie shook her head. “Thank Lucifer that people are stupid. Go back to the car and wait.”
John nodded.
She kicked off her boots as she prepared to board the boat.
The rest of her clothes dropped and floated away. She would get in right under Radu's nose.
Legend told of vampires shape-shifting to mist, bats, or wolves. The truth, as always, was far more complicated.
The longer a vampire lived, the more powers she mastered. The most difficult, the most exhausting, the most deadly was shadow walking. A vampire could move anywhere, in any direction, across any distance, as long as a shadow lay there. Requiring perfect concentration and every ounce of physical strength, a vampire almost always died of starvation after the first attempt.
That was a very important almost.
Vampire lore told of two successes. A Chinese vampire in the twelfth century attempted the act first, defying all odds to reach his lover held captive in a horrible prison. Unfortunately, he went so mad with hunger that when he rematerialized, he drained her dry before recognizing her.
A Russian Jew vampire used it to escape the pogroms in the nineteenth century. More justly, she landed in a group of secret police.
Now there was a third.
Succeed or die.
Save the sun or let Radu extinguish all she held dear.
She liked the odds. Then she would gorge on Radu. Another vampire was the greatest feast of all.
Formlessness carried nothing. Janté floated next to her, his eyes half-closed and his mouth curving at her nudity. Unconcerned, she finally let her consciousness float away.
The darkness seeped into her. As she let go, every cell in her body disengaged. Her entire mass compressed and lengthened like hot iron under a hammer. Stretching so thin hurt badly, like being sliced open with ice. Only her willpower held her consciousness together.