After all, sitting before me—one leg crossed over the other and casually drinking from a goblet filled with a crimson fluid so deep that it appeared almost black—was the man himself, the ex-prince of Wallachia, one of the most feared men in history, impaler extraordinaire, and present receptacle of, perhaps, the most powerful dark master of them all. Or not. From what I understood, it was a toss-up between him and Elizabeth. Two very powerful entities who also happened to be in love—and who also desperately wanted to be together again. The problem being, of course, that one entity was in Dracula, and the other was in me. And for them to be together again... well, that just wasn’t gonna happen. Not while I had any control of my body.

  “Samantha Moon,” he said genially, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  Dracula, admittedly, looked like hell. No surprise there. He’d been roused from a deep sleep only minutes earlier. How Elizabeth had managed to do so, while Dracula had been in his own catatonic state, I didn’t know. Perhaps Dracula, over time, had mastered awakening when need be. Perhaps he had an agreement with the entity within him to do, an entity named Cornelius.

  “I seek help... Your Highness,” I said, and for the life of me, I did not expect to hear those words come out of my mouth. Like, ever.

  “So formal,” he said, raising an eyebrow and standing effortlessly as I approached. He gestured to a chair across from him. Spanning us was a curved glass coffee table, upon which sat an array of dead flowers.

  “I—I’m not sure why I said it, to be honest.” Then it hit me: Had it been her? I didn’t know.

  That Dracula had been a monster during his reign went without saying. He’d killed and tortured and impaled and destroyed, and seemed to revel in it. At least, according to reports. I suspected he had made tough choices to control—that to rule with a heavy hand, and fear, was the order of the day. He had been a ruler, and a part of me—with a strong dose of Elizabeth thrown in for good measure—felt like he deserved the respect of his one-time office.

  The dark prince snapped his fingers and a female with a shining blue aura scuttled into the room, head bowed. She was topless, and wore only a short skirt. I noted the recent bite marks along her neck and back. Unlike the movies, these bite marks were more like bite tears. I suspected she had been bitten as recently as last night. No, not bitten... chewed upon, her skin broken open.

  “Another glass, and put on a shirt. We have a guest.”

  I sensed the haughtiness in his voice. The strength. The exhaustion, too. He wasn’t fully awake, but he was getting there. Mostly, I sensed his contempt for the woman. A very odd thrill surged through me.

  No. Surged through her... Elizabeth.

  Jesus, she was one whacked-out bitch.

  As the semi-naked woman reached the room’s threshold, it took all my willpower to say, “None for me, thanks.”

  Dracula’s head snapped around to me. He looked genuinely perplexed. “Are you sure, Samantha? You look famished.”

  His words weren’t a putdown, nor were they taken as one. Famished in my case meant I looked gaunt, thinner than usual. Perhaps I sported dark circles around my eyes, which, apparently, I sometimes did, according to Allison. Perhaps my hair hung languidly. Perhaps there was a noticeable lack of pep in my step. It was afternoon, after all. Hardly my brightest hour. I also suspected the prince had wanted to ply me with blood—human blood—which had proven to give Elizabeth more strength that I could readily handle. Enough strength, in fact, to potentially take me over completely. That would have suited Dracula just fine; in particular, it would have suited the entity within him, the entity who wanted Elizabeth, in every sense of the word.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.” And to change the crap out of the subject, I said, “Tell me, how did you end up here?”

  “In the monster’s castle?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, set his own goblet down. He sat back and folded his hands over one knee. “We take care of our own, Sam. Even when our own have done some very naughty things.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means this castle needed a lot of cleaning, purifying perhaps. Although Lichtenstein was a creepy bastard, I couldn’t let his castle fall into unsuspecting hands. There is still too much evidence here. We are still finding buried bodies.”

  That made some sense. He looked at me, waited. I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. A drop of blood would have been nice. Damn nice. Finally, I said, “I need your help.”

  He looked at me some more, then waved off the woman who’d just returned to the room, now wearing a bloody shirt. Apparently, I didn’t hide my disdain very well. Or at all.

  “You don’t approve, Samantha Moon?”

  “Of course not. And you’re going to release her, safe and sound.”

  “Am I now?”

  “You will,” I said.

  “And what if I told you she was here of her own free will?”

  “I would say you’re full of shit.”

  I recalled my own inadvertent love slave. Russell Baker would have done anything for me. Anything. Even reduced himself to the role of household servant. But I hadn’t let that happen.

  “She satisfies my hunger, Samantha Moon.”

  “No, she satisfies the hunger of the bastard inside you,” I said. “You could get along with animal blood.”

  “Could I now?”

  I didn’t answer. The bewildered amusement in his eyes was completely devoid of anger or resentment. If anything, he was enjoying this exchange. And, if I wasn’t wrong—and I hoped like hell I was—he might have even been flirting with me. “Animal blood isn’t the same, Sam.”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  “If I release her, then I will be without a source of replenishment.”

  “Then replenish your ass on a coyote or two.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Sam, your naïveté is charming. Your code of honor is admirable. Your strength of will undeniable. Yes, I will release her, but he-that-is-within-me will demand another, and another. He needs to feed from the human source. Me, not so much. Quite frankly, I’m sick to death of blood.”

  Hearing Dracula himself tell me that he was sick to death of feeding on blood was so damn disarming that I took a moment to process the information. Finally, I said, “You would have killed her when you were done with her.”

  “Of course, Sam.”

  “You will release her, and you will do so tonight. And if you seek to be my friend, you will never kill again.”

  The cycle of killing had to end, and it had to end now, even if it meant waging an all-out war on Dracula.

  I waited. Elizabeth stirred within me. I sensed her agitation. She didn’t enjoy this sudden turn of events.

  Dracula said, “Never is a long time for a vampire, Sam.”

  I continued waiting.

  Finally, Dracula nodded and said, “For the sake of our budding friendship—and out of respect for an honorable woman who has proven herself to be, ah, rather dangerous—I will acquiesce to your wishes. For now, although I cannot promise forever.”

  I nodded. It was a decent compromise.

  “Very well, then,” he said, and summoned the woman again. After a minute or two of looking deep into her eyes—undoubtedly reaching deep into her psyche to find and release her true self—she stepped back and blinked. I suspected he’d also given her a handful of telepathic instructions, one being to not remember any of this. How long she’d been Dracula’s love slave, I didn’t know. Judging by the sheer amount of bite marks, I would say many months, maybe as long as Dracula had lived here in his new castle home.

  I asked who she was and where she would go, and Dracula said she was a local prostitute, without family, friends, or home, surely not to be missed by anyone. Still, I didn’t like the idea of sending her back out on the streets.

  “She would be psychic by now,” I said, thinking hard, “would she not?”

  “Undoubtedly so,” said Dracula, nodding. “Even if she’d only had a smattering of extrasensory talent, my feeding from her would have increased it considerably...”

  It would make her a powerful psychic, indeed. I said, “I’ll be back for her as soon as I can. I know someone who can help her, someone who can put her to work.”

  “Very well, Sam. I won’t feed from her again and… I’ll release her to you when you return. After, I assume, you get what you came for.”

  “Information,” I said. “And help.”

  As I spoke, my phone once again buzzed in my pocket. The third such call, but for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine breaking away from this conversation, this bizarre scene—and not with this girl’s very life hanging in the balance, and not in the presence of Dracula himself—to answer my cell phone.

  At present, he was chuckling and shaking his small head. Dracula was, for all intents and purposes, a small man. Having originated from the fifteenth century, at an age when men rarely reached six feet tall, I suspected Dracula stood only a few inches taller than me. No doubt, he had been of average height for his time. He continued shaking his head, his eyes flashing fire. “There are not a lot of people who would come into my home—my new castle home, no less—and demand I release my food source, and then, in the very next breath, ask for my help.”

  “What can I say, I’m a maverick.”

  I also suspected Dracula himself liked me. That Dracula the man was interested in Samantha Moon the woman. I should not have been titillated by this, but I was, and I hated myself for it.

  Poor Kingsley...

  No, not poor Kingsley. I’d done nothing wrong. And there was nothing wrong with getting a kick out of receiving what might or might not have been flirtations of a past prince and warlord. It was exciting, and I wasn’t going to feel bad for being excited.

  But I did feel bad, a little. I loved Kingsley and I never wanted to betray him. Not even for the great Dracula’s attentions and admiration.

  Oh, well, I thought.

  “I am being told through our mutual friends”—he meant the dark entities within us—“that you seek answers about the original Dark Prince. Satan himself.”

  I nodded. “She told you about him?”

  Dracula smiled from behind his goblet. His nose, I noted, was a little long and sharp for my taste. Okay, a lot long and sharp, but the strength he displayed in repose was palpable. I truly believed this man could move mountains. And armies, and change the course of history, vampire or not. “There are no secrets between us, Samantha Moon. Not when Elizabeth and Cornelius can meet in our mutual sleep.”

  “Meet where?”

  “Another plane, Sam. Another world, perhaps. I am not privy to the machinations of the dark masters.”

  “Have you not asked?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “And I was told to mind my own damn business, that I should be honored to be a receptacle for he who possesses me—that if not for him, I would have long since been dead, that he has given me eternal life, unheard-of gifts, and demanded very little of me, other than temporary use of my body when he sees fit.”

  “And am I speaking with him now?”

  “No, Sam. He watches from the shadows.”

  “Tell me,” I said after a moment. “What do you know of the devil?”

  “A strange fellow, Satan,” said Dracula, and I nearly laughed at the enormous understatement of his words, and the unlikelihood that I would have ever heard them in the first place. Dracula calling the devil a strange fellow.

  Somehow, I kept my cool, and said, “Perhaps the strangest.”

  “Well put, Sam. Yes, he has waged a war, of sorts, against the dark masters, for they have slipped beyond his reach, which, from my understanding, frustrates him to no end.”

  “He says he’s just fulfilling a role, a role created by mankind.”

  “Perhaps, but make no mistake, the devil delights in his work. His personal hells are a frightful thing to behold. Yes, I have spoken to him. A number of times, in fact. He has made offers to the entity within me, bargains, if you will. Bargains we have yet to take up. But I see you have made a deal with the devil. Tricky, that. And, really, his offer wasn’t much, was it?”

  “I could save two lives,” I said.

  “Yes, the lives of two humans. This is important to you, I see.”

  “Yes,” I said, although sometimes, when Elizabeth was fighting for control of me, or too near the surface as she was now, it didn’t seem so important. It seemed trivial. Humans seemed trivial. Like this little whore sitting across from us now...

  I swallowed, closed my eyes, and demanded that Elizabeth step back—or she would be locked up again, for a very long time. I sensed her slinking back, retreating begrudgingly.

  Dracula watched me curiously. At present, sitting here now in his living room, he did not have access to my current internal struggle with Elizabeth. Undoubtedly, when I slept tomorrow morning, Elizabeth and Cornelius would have a meeting of the minds, so to speak, in their netherworld outside time and space, and she would fill him in on just how much she had gotten to me. But for now, my secret hunger and weakness were known only by me... and Elizabeth.

  “Sam, would you like a snack? Something small?”

  I blinked, coming back to my senses. “Snack?”

  He raised his fingers to snap at the woman, thought better of it, gave me a lopsided grin, and stood. He left the room, then returned a minute later with a bowl full of... something.

  I leaned forward as he set it on the coffee table between us. It was filled with... I didn’t know just what. But one thing I did know, the inside of the bowl was moving, churning, roiling with spiny legs and wings.

  I felt suddenly sick—but also oddly fascinated. “Mosquitoes?”

  “But of course! They are such a delight.” He looked at my confused and, undoubtedly, repulsed expression. “Surely you’ve had them before?”

  “Er, no.”

  He roared with laughter and dipped his fingertips in the bowl... and extracted a handful of the critters. Then, with reckless abandon, tossed them in his mouth, one after another, as if they were living, squirming popcorn. As he chewed gleefully, he said, “Then let me fill you in on a secret, Sam. Mosquitoes make for very lively and delicious snack.”

  “Mosquitoes full of blood?” I said.

  “But of course. We have no use for the unfed kind! Think of them as a sort of variety pack.” He grinned and tossed another one in, chewed, grinned, spit out the remains in another, separate bowl. “Horse blood. Strong, sharp.” He tossed in another. “Bovine. Smooth, rich.” He tossed in another and another. “Deer, rabbit. Ah, human! I just love when I get the human ones! They say they’re good luck, you know.”

  I nearly asked who “they” were, but decided I probably already knew: vampires, of course. Instead, I said, “How... how did you manage to get a bowlful of recently-fed mosquitoes?”

  Dracula, with bits of mosquito stuck between his teeth, grinned. He spit the latest tiny body into the bowl and said, “It’s a handy skill to have, Sam, calling upon the animals of this world.”

  “Calling upon?”

  “Yes, of course. Our telepathic communication extends far beyond humans; don’t you know?”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Do you not call upon your dragon in another realm, another dimension, another world, no less?”

  “Well, yes...”

  “Do you think your dragon friend speaks English?”

  “Um...” I recalled Talos once stating that he found the correct words in my own thoughts, and used them. How he found them, and how he understood what they meant, I didn’t know.

  “Do you think I speak English to my own dragon? The answer is no. I speak medieval Romanian, my most comfortable of all tongues. The language of my ancestors, and the language of my internal dialogue. It is because telepathic communication is about energy and vibration and intent. It is the same for the creatures of our world, too.”

  “You communicate with the mosquitoes?” I asked, and tried like crazy not to laugh. Or, worse, snort.

  “Remember that part about intent, Sam? With enough intention and focus, your call will be heard.”

  I must have had a look on my face. Perhaps it was my pre-snort look because he stood and strode over to the nearest window and pushed it open. Hot air wafted in. He came back, sat across from me, closed his eyes. A moment later, I heard the hypersonic buzzing.

  A swarm of tiny dark shapes poured through the open window and into the sitting room. They swirled above the glass coffee table, forming a sort of black vortex. Had this been night, I would have seen their tiny, glowing bodies, too, as even the smallest of creatures sparked with a life force.

  Dracula raised a hand and gestured, a number of the creatures peeled away from the vortex and filled the bowl before us, pouring in as if from a container in the sky. When the bowl was near to overflowing, Dracula swiped his palm, and the remaining mosquitoes circled once more, dispersed, and headed back through the open window.

  Dracula reached over and fished out a plump one. “A freshly fed mosquito, as commanded by me. Here, try it. Hold out your hand.”

  Truth was, I could smell the fresh blood, coursing through all those tiny little spindly bodies. Sure, I might have missed the scent from one or two of them, but a bowlful of them was a different story. A bowlful might as well have been a bowl filled with fresh blood.

  And the smell of it was driving me crazy. I held out my hand and Dracula dropped a fluttering creature into my palm. Although it seemed perfectly fine, it did not fly away. Indeed, it seemed to be moving in circles on my hand, its wings flashing haphazardly.

  “It does not fly away,” I said, curious.

  “No, Sam. Nor will it. It is, quite frankly, waiting to be consumed.”

  I glanced at the woman sitting quietly in the chair, near the main archway into the room. Had she, too, been waiting to be consumed? Perhaps a part of her had been. But a deeper part of her had been trapped under the layers of suggestions, no doubt screaming to be heard.

  We are monsters, I thought. And the more I see, the more monstrous we are.

  The mosquito was fat from having recently fed. On what I didn’t know, but the longer I held it the more I knew I couldn’t resist. And, like eating a Tic-Tac, I popped it in my mouth.