Curse of Dracula - Kathryn Ann Kingsley Page 0,113

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 throat. 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