Heart of Dracula - Kathryn Ann Kingsley Page 0,106

He did not care. He had only one goal—kill them. Kill them all.

Somewhere beneath his anger, he knew he was at a serious disadvantage. Like the warlord he was, he surveyed the battlefield and found his own position sorely lacking. He ticked off a list as to why he found himself in an unfavorable position. The hunters smelled of magic, and the Helsing man was skilled. Vlad was already wounded. He had been caught off guard. Maxine forced him to lower his defenses, and he had been utterly distracted by her.

Cursing himself for his foolishness, he swarmed high up into the sky. The young blonde huntress was helping Maxine—his Maxine—to her feet.

And therein was the reason he would not retreat, despite it being very much in his interest to do so. He was immortal, he was eternal, but he was not unstoppable. The tactician in him screamed at him to take to higher ground. To seek another way around the front lines that was presented to him in the form of three very capable fighters who wished to see him defeated.

But he could not.

They had something he needed.

Redemption—as much as he would ever have—in the form of a beautiful young woman.

You belong to me!

The barbarian in him overcame the tactician. Rage overcame reason. Beast overcame man. He would not let them take what was his.

Diving low, he struck.

“Maxine, are you all right?” A hand took her by the upper arm and helped her up to her feet. She turned to see Bella standing there, watching her with concern etched on her face.

Why was the girl worried for her? It took her half a beat to remember that, to them, Vlad was the enemy. Rightfully so, they believed her to be his prisoner. They did not know she had chosen to take his hand.

To them, he was a monster trying to destroy the world. To them, he was a demon who had stolen her away.

It was far more complicated than that. But not from their point of view.

“I—I’m fine, thank you,” she finally managed to answer. She was still stunned and reeling from what had happened. One moment she had been about to kiss the King of Vampires, to tell him that she loved him, and another moment she had been face-down in the grass, with the boom of rifle fire echoing through the street.

“You belong to me!”

The words echoed inside her head, impossibly loud and not her own. She winced and placed her hand to her temple. She did not realize Vlad could holler inside her mind. It was disconcerting at best. But they were linked together in ways she did not yet fully understand. Her blood was inside his veins, and more than once she had touched her soul to his and rummaged about inside his memories. Such things were bound to leave ties.

The sound of screeching bats grew louder as the black cloud of flapping wings dove low, meaning to attack them. Bella lifted her hands, and daggers swarmed around the two of them like a shield.

Maxine gasped and drew closer to her, eyes wide. She had never seen anything like it. She had seen Bella demonstrate her power in a far more limited sense, but a swirling wall of knives was another matter entirely.

The bats were forced to abandon their attack. Still, the echo of gunfire continued. One after another. With each boom, a bat dropped from the sky, landing on the bricks or the cobblestone with a wet thump, blood pooling around their small forms.

Then there was Alfonzo. Standing in the center of the street, a long blade at his side. It was glowing. Honest-to-God glowing. The steel shone a brilliant white, casting shadows around him and glinting off the pools of crimson on the stones.

“Face me, monster!” Alfonzo shouted up at the swarming bats.

The bats coalesced into the vampire. He stood, a towering and terrifying sight. With another boom of a rifle, something hit some strange kind of wall that sparked and glowed with crimson lightning near him. He had magic of his own. Of course, he does.

You are the one ill-suited for this kind of thing. They are warriors. They have done this dance before. Maxine wanted to shrink away into the shadows, to hide from what was about to come. But the swirling wall of daggers posed her as much harm as it might the vampire. She was forced to stay by Bella.

Who, bless her heart, was holding Maxine’s hand tightly in hers