Dracula Unleashed Read Free

choice words and supernatural strength?
    â€œDid you hear me, you weirdos? Hand over your wallets and you don’t get hurt.”
    Ever since his problems of last winter, Chad had haunted the library in search of information. Humans had a very low chance of surviving a vampire attack. Knowing himself to be a coward, he shuffled toward an alley.
    There was no way this would end well.
    Another rush of the foreign language.
    â€œSpeak English, you assholes.” Andrew rushed the two men, his fist swinging in great shining circles toward their heads.
    â€œNo!” Chad shouted, but he was drowned out by his friend’s sudden screams.
    It happened so fast, like everything did with killers. One second, his friend had been charging like a rhinoceros. The next, he hung limp in a vampire’s hands, his neck pulled to the side, the tendons tight and quivering under the strain.
    Bright fangs flashed in the streetlight’s glare. The vampire’s black and white head bent over Andrew’s throat. His gaze taunting, he stuck out a long pink tongue, shockingly pale and healthy looking next to vampiric pallor. Deliberately, he licked the thin skin where Andrew’s pulse beat.
    Chad swiveled his head side to side, desperate for someone, anyone to appear. The street was completely empty. No cops, no homeless people, no random late dog-walker, not even a drunken partygoer in sight. The snake grinned, its eyes showing malicious glee at their danger. It casually unwound from its fountain perch, blocking off the gang’s escape to the back.
    They were so screwed. Panic and bile filled Chad’s esophagus. Swallowing down the vile acid, he took a deep breath.
    There was only one thing to do.
    He opened his mouth to scream for help when his friends responded the only way they knew how.
    They rushed the vampires, screaming meaningless insults.
    â€œFreaks!”
    â€œThis is a human town!”
    â€œYou’re going to die for this!”
    Oh, shit.
    As they surged forward, Chad dove to the side and rolled into the mouth of an alley. Even there, the blood splattered his face and clothes. He couldn’t outrun them, but better to retreat than advance to certain death. The snake took no notice of him as it undulated into the fray.
    His friends would have called him a coward if they weren’t getting slaughtered. He ran as fast as he ever had, his legs burning. He kept to the lighted areas, never looking back.
    His breath came in short, painful puffs, but his gang’s screams had stopped.
    Hell, that was not a good thing.
    Portland burst open in blood and hatred as the next world war erupted.

CHAPTER 3
    3:00 p.m., Geneva, Switzerland
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    â€œMom, watch this. Mom. Mom. MOM!” Minerva Josephine Victoria Janté chanted her demands for attention in Valerie Tate’s mind. It was a chant that had gone on. And on.
    All. Day. Long.
    Some mothers took tranquilizers. Others posted on the Internet. Valerie’s own mother had been known to “entertain” good-looking junior soldiers. Whereas Valerie herself craved the perfect combination of sweet and salty, caffeine, and nutrition: blood and cola.
    How else was a vampire supposed to deal with the highly advanced psychic powers her child had? Half-angel and half-vampire, Minerva had powers no one expected from one so young.
    â€œLet me guess. You are going to drop something,” she called from the kitchen.
    The baby huffed an indignant breath. Valerie dug her back teeth into her left cheek. No smiling while her child was pouting, even though her daughter’s Cupid’s bow mouth would be pursed like she was spitting out something foul. Such a sour expression on her angelic face.
    â€œBut this is cool.”
    A familiar clatter told Valerie that Minerva had dropped yet another utensil. Was that her fiftieth or sixtieth of the day? Really, how long could one vampire watch her flatware fall to the floor and treat it like it was the