Read Dracula's Secret Online

Authors: Linda Mercury

Dracula's Secret (4 page)

Chapter 6
Valerie sprinted toward her final act of contrition, the very last duty of her redemption.
A quick leap over a crumbling ledge and she landed, sure-footed and determined, on the next building. Death was coming for Radu Tepes. This final execution would at last free her from her burdens.
After all her delays, she possessed only a three-minute window of opportunity for his assassination. A clever man and an even cleverer vampire, he'd surrounded himself with an enormous entourage of attorneys, assistants, and hero-worshipping interns.
Valerie was clever, too. Three minutes was more than enough time to do what she needed to do. She reached the roof of the scalloped white building in mere seconds, not even stopping to admire the Arts and Crafts styled architecture.
The rain stopped as she dropped onto the roof of the hotel, giving her a perfect view of her surroundings. Her tiny remnant of hope said it was a sign that her fortune favored her actions.
Reporters of all kinds surrounded the hotel where every VIP in the PNC world was staying. Police and private security swarmed the hotel, keeping the peace. Dropping her head like a bloodhound, she sorted through the confusion for Radu's scent, a distinctive blend of the sulfur of corruption with a hint of basil. Even her hardened stomach churned at the combination.
Sulfur for Radu betrayed all who came near him. Basil because he had once been great.
Following her meticulous plan, she spider-climbed down from the roof toward his sumptuous suite. When Radu entered the room, she would stake him. By the time his dust dropped, she would be long gone. She could disappear for once and for all.
His ashes would finish her duty to eliminate all those vampires who had collaborated with the Nazis. A lifetime ago for mortals, but to her, it felt like yesterday morning.
Despite Radu's claims to have been a part of the French Resistance during the Second World War, Valerie knew exactly what he'd been doing. Dracula had been head of Hitler's paranormal corps, and Radu had been his number one double agent. Dracula was already dead. Valerie knew that for a fact. She had arranged his death, and with her usual precision, guaranteed it had been seen by the world.
Excitement tightened her throat. This was it. With Radu's death, she would finally be free.
Minutes ticked by. The door remained locked.
Nothing happened.
The full black clouds gathered together and dumped buckets of water over the city.
She'd failed.
She had failed.
Red rage hazed over her vision.
Wet and angry, Valerie dug her nails into the wall. With this last kill, her redemption at long last would have been complete.
A crowd shouting Radu's name turned her head.
Below, the traitorous vampire stood before a white stretch limousine. Fans screamed as he waved to them. Radu held his arms out, palms flat, and with a pulsing motion, he quieted them.
“Father Soleil has made great strides toward equality for our paranormal citizens. I will join the vigil outside his shelter in a gesture of solidarity with his brave act.”
The crowd went insane. The wall under her nails shook with the noise.
Her lip curled in skeptical appraisal. Radu Tepes? Supporting someone else? Not possible.
Valerie shook the rain off her coat and watched the car nose into downtown traffic.
The only person Radu Tepes wanted in the press was himself. His vanity demanded that no one share his glory.
Swallowing her disappointment, she slithered her way along the roof, tracking the limo.
Logic cooled her anger. Radu was scrambling in Lance's wake. When he scrambled, he got sloppy. Sloppy meant she would get another chance.
All she had to do was wait for the younger Tepes to make a mistake. He would fail at whatever he was hastily planning. After all, she knew Dracula's brother better than anyone else.
Radu was her brother.
Valerie was Dracula.
Since her birth, she had been raised a man. She had dressed like a man, fought like a man, loved as a man, and taken revenge as a man. Earned unending notoriety as a man. For centuries, she had hidden her body, kept her secrets close, closer than even her wife and brothers.
Every action in Vlad's life had been in the name of order, chastity, stability, regulation. Everything from war against the Ottomans to enforcing her rule of law in Transylvania to supporting Napoleon and Hitler stemmed from her drive to bend the world to her vision of peace.
Vlad Tepes, the Impaler. Dracula. Valerie Tate. Once her brother was dust, her past would no longer control her.
Chapter 7
Berlin
April 1945
 
A woman's scream pierced the hallway.
“In here! Over here!” Sergeant Andrei Okopnik yelled. The echo of the scream still vibrated the Reich Chancellery walls as the Soviet squad skidded to a halt in front of a heavy wooden door. The sergeant spared a quick glance over his shoulder as the men got into formation. The photography crew, lugging their bulky equipment, followed gamely after the soldiers through the dust and gunsmoke-filled air.
The largest corporal kicked the door off its hinges. Battle-hardened troops ran in. Rifles cocked, they covered every inch of the devastated room.
At one time, this space had been cozy. A small fire still crackled in the oversized fireplace and a perfectly faded red Persian carpet graced the cold floor. But now, the long overturned table and knocked-down bookshelves offered too many places for an enemy to hide.
The steady, quiet drip of blood warned the squad's war-weary nerves.
“Who's in here?” Okopnik barked.
A low gasp answered him first. Then a young woman with an old-fashioned cloche hat peeked from behind the table.
“Was?”
she whispered. “You speak German?”
He'd picked up some in their advance.
“Ein bisschen.”
A bit.
She grabbed one edge of the table. The soldiers tightened their grips on their weapons. Everyone watched her with narrowed eyes as she struggled to her feet. Unspeakable horrors had taught them even a pale woman alone could threaten an entire squad.
She stood. As the highest rank there, Andrei looked her over, missing nothing. The misbuttoned shirt, the skirt twisted to one side, her stockings hanging from a garter strap. Wobbling in her scuffed heels around the obstacle course of the room, the woman swallowed as she saw all the guns trained on her. Her gaze focused on the sergeant and sharpened at his uniform. Caution squeezed Andrei's shoulders. Something cunning lived behind those dark eyes.
“I killed one of the monsters.” Her hand steady, she pointed toward the table. Blood tattooed her arms and one side of her face.
“What's your name?”
“V-V-Valerie,” she whispered. “What will you do to me?”
Okopnik jerked his head at a private. The boy, with a cautious tread, flanked her to look where she pointed. His eyebrows rose.
“He's very dead,” the youngster reported.
Indicating the rest should watch the woman, Andrei walked over, his weapon at the ready.
A man's body sprawled on the faded carpet. Inhumanly long canine teeth stuck out from his mouth. Hands with clawlike yellowed nails clutched the fireplace poker shoved through his chest. Dracula's trademark enormous diamonds, three to each ear, sparkled amid the blood.
If a corpse could look surprised, it did.
“You did this?” he asked, cautiously admiring.
“Yes, just as you got here,” she answered, her voice shaking. “He vas going to bite me, drink my blooood,” she slurred her words into a mockery of cinema vampires. She pointed to a fallen desk nameplate with the name “Tepes” inscribed in bold brass.
“He was Dracula!” Her voice broke on the last word. She buried her face in her soiled hands. Blood smeared over her features.
The photography crew shoved through the door. They were in place and clicking madly as the body decomposed. One by one, flashbulbs exploded, making everyone blink and jump as the fragile glass crashed to the floor.
For what seemed the millionth time, Sergeant Okopnik watched the quick decay of a dead mythical creature. As different as they were, they all died the same.
First, the flesh collapsed, like a balloon losing air. The first time he saw this, he vomited. Now it was nothing. Next, the bones, still covered in skin, lost their rigid edges. Not until the skin peeled back, though, did the bones crumble completely, leaving only dust. Finally, the diamonds dropped to the floor, uncomfortably untouched by the wreckage.
This was the first complete decomposition the Allies managed to photograph from beginning to end. Finally, concrete proof that war hadn't driven the soldiers mad.
The sergeant motioned for his men to stand down as the cameras clicked around them. “Myths are true. Dogs with men's eyes, men with the eyes of bears, women with snakes for bodies. Such beasts are everywhere. But you knew that, didn't you? You worked here.”
“Yes. I was his secretary.” She tipped her chin at the remains. “I was a fool,” she whispered.
“But you fought bravely at the end,” the private chimed in. Admiration shone from his face. “How did you kill him?”
Her jaws worked for a moment. A blush ran under her pale skin. “He didn't expect me to fight back. He laughed when I picked up the poker. That made me angry.” She stumbled over her words. “It's all such a terrible blur.” Her lips trembled.
The sergeant nodded. “It's often like that. But you did what you had to do.” He gestured to two men. “Escort the vampire killer to the holding area.”
She flinched at the title.
One of her escorts patted her arm. “Don't worry. We will treat you well, little warrior.”
The admiring private sifted amongst the ashes. “Here.” He held the earrings out to her. “To the victor belong the spoils.”
She took the emperor's ransom in jewels in her stained hands and held them to her bosom. “Thank you.”
“You must go,” Sergeant Okopnik said. “It isn't safe here.”
Halfway out the door, she turned around and looked at her liberators. “Don't let them cover this up. Show everyone!” She yelled to the flashing camera. “Dracula is dead. And now the world knows it!”
 
 
The devastated homes and forests of Germany ran wild with Allied forces and escaping Germans. Shadow Creatures ruled the ruins of Europe after sunset. Vlad Dracula himself, rather herself, emerged from the coffin-sized depression she had dug out from under an old farmhouse.
Pressing her lips together, Vlad forced herself into brassiere and skirt and blouse and waited until the resentment at the discomfort passed. Instead of binding her small breasts, she had to accentuate them.
I am a woman now
, she thought as she struggled with the straps of the bra.
My name is Valerie.
All those years of wanting to experience female life and this was what she got? Three days of being a woman in wartime taught her more than a mortal lifetime of being married. If she hadn't been a vampire, she would have been raped five times already. Valerie habitually smoothed her now-gone moustache. The prickly stubble under her fingers reminded her of yet another loss from this war. Damn. She needed a shave already.
She searched her clothing and the ground around her bed. No razor. Annoyed, she sat back on her knees. Lucifer's bloody knuckles, how many more things could happen?
Something pinched underneath her breasts. Valerie tugged at the unfamiliar band that dug into her back. How could women stand this hideous bondage? But she bowed to her choice. Her own survival beat any other concern.
Blood blisters had formed and scabbed over Dracula's feet in the first days after her escape from the advancing Russians. The unfamiliar high-heeled shoes rubbed and twisted her feet and ankles in torturous ways. By day, she hid from the sun in rubble. After three days of wandering more or less southwest, she still had no plan other than basic survival.
Vlad hated not having a plan.
Bullets whizzed over her head. She hit the ground, cursing under her breath. The whole point of dressing like a civilian was to live, not to get killed by trigger-happy humans.
A few German soldiers dressed in their tattered Wehrmacht Heer uniforms, passed through the wreckage. They weren't even soldiers. They were children, barely past eight winters, carrying rifles bigger than they were. Unseen in the unstable ruins, Valerie cocked her ears at their whispered conversation.
“There must be food somewhere.” The lightest of them scrambled over and under the bombed-out village. Cement dust and wood splinters hung in the air like deadly snowflakes, attacking the little militia's unprotected eyes and lungs. Their coughing and sneezing accompanied endless watering eyes. The debris groaned and creaked under their stumbling steps. But the determined children did not stop their scrounging. She wouldn't be surprised if they were caught in a collapse.
“We will not surrender.” The littlest spoke with fragile bravado.
The oldest nodded. “The Führer would want us to defend our homes.”
Vlad ground his—her—teeth as she crouched in the woods. Damn it. She would not fail her new identity. Despite being starved, orphaned, and homeless, they still believed. Why did they not see what she had seen?
Poor fools. Their Führer had betrayed them. The war had been lost when the idiot insisted on invading the Soviet Union.
What was the point of having the most experienced military minds in the world on your side if you didn't listen to them? She shook her head in remembered disgust. Any of the advisors with the intelligence of Lucifer's curly eyebrow hairs warned the Führer that campaigning in the wintertime was a suicide mission.
The children tossed wreckage aside, worsening the dust, until they were defeated by the fragility of their small bodies.
They moved on, leaving Valerie alone with her angry thoughts and her search for a razor. Disgust fueled her strength as she tossed rocks and building remains aside.
Vlad had been disgusted with the war even before the disastrous Operation Barbarossa. Dracula's high profile and carefully trained Shadow Corps had been used for cannon fodder, not for the infiltration and sabotage missions they were best suited for. Hitler's mythical military genius was all the excuse the High Command needed to override the expertise of the German army.
“War has changed since your day, old man,” so-called advisors retorted when Vlad demanded answers about food supply and fuel allocation.
“The Jewish-led Bolsheviks will fall quickly,” another answered when questioned about the wisdom of invading the Soviet Union in December.
Valerie tossed a solid oak table thirty feet to the side. She had been very happy to drain those two dry before faking her death.
Even the premise behind the invasion was flawed. Eliminate thirty million Russian natives in order to make space for the Germans? That idea never went well.
During the planning stage of the invasion, Vlad began to commit small treasons. He ordered his special forces to cooperate with the Allies. Hundreds defected to the British and Americans in order to help against the idiocy of this poorly run war. The fortunes of the North African and Italian campaigns turned on the strength of Dracula's forces changing sides. Under new orders, giant sharks and angry kraken destroyed Japanese warships and planes. Dracula's Shadow Corps quietly and stealthily used their might to change the face of Europe.
What happened to those troops next was anyone's guess.
Vlad's stomach growled. Obviously, dinner was next.
A man wearing a poorly fitted shirt and trousers wandered into her line of sight. Through the haze and the moonlight, she recognized him. Yet another of the lickspittles of the High Command.
She sprinted across the moonlit path and snatched him before he saw her.
Tucked in her hiding spot, she jabbed her fangs deep into his grimy neck. A far cry from her preferred luxury, but very satisfying.
Sucking her breakfast completely dry restored her skin to its previously smooth condition. His boots fit her well enough. And even better, he carried a razor.
Before, Vlad had always been grateful for his hirsute appearance. His Eastern European genes had blended to give him a beautiful black moustache. Nothing hid a woman like facial hair. But now?
Hundreds of posters with Dracula's face littered the ground and any standing walls. Anyone, even a woman, who resembled this visible symbol of the Reich would be staked before questions. Until the news spread of his
death,” her life depended on keeping her moustache under control.

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