Dracula Unleashed Read Free Page A

discovery of a new world?
    She took a pitcher of blood in one hand, a cold can of soda in the other, and shoved the appliance’s door closed with her elbow. The condensation on the can of cola chilled her sweating palms. Summer in Geneva could be shockingly hot and humid for a place surrounded by icy mountains. She smiled. This beverage would be delicious.
    Valerie rounded the divider between the kitchen and the living room. She shook her head in mock awe at the youngest Dracul’s prowess this afternoon. The floor shone with dropped silverware.
    The game had gone like this: Valerie handed Minerva a spoon. Minerva dropped the spoon. Valerie handed Minerva a fork. Minerva dropped the fork. Valerie did not pick any of it up.
    She was familiar with intestine-strewn battlefields, not domesticity. The best she could do was shovel the clinking lot into the dishwasher and push Clean.
    Fortunately, her little family owned a lot of forks. Somewhere between the small treasures she had carried, John’s collection, and what Lance had retained from his human life, they were well supplied with more droppables than the average household.
    â€œHere.” She placed the last salad fork on the table in front of Minerva. “Go to town, kid.” She set down her pitcher and can. Her wet hands left pinkish smears of bloody sweat.
    Her mouth watering in anticipation of her cool treat, Valerie poured her dinner.
    The two fluids mixed together in a swirl of red and black.
    Red and black. The colors of Mina Harker’s blood on the hood of Valerie’s ruined car.
    Valerie squeezed her eyes closed.
    No, she would not remember. She refused to remember. The glass did not tremble in her hand as the vampiress deliberately sipped her drink. Think it through. Apply the coldblooded ruthlessness she was famous for.
    Valerie swallowed. Old anger flushed her normally room-temperature body.
    It all came back to that book.
    That fucking book.
    According to Bram Stoker, Mina, a virtuous Victorian miss, had been seduced by a vampire named Dracula. He had bitten her three times, creating a mental connection that had led to his death.
    The reality had been somewhat different.
    The 1965 Shelby Mustang slammed into Mina Harker’s torso. The woman screamed as the speeding car broke her spine and splayed her halfway across the hood. She lay perfectly centered between the two stripes, Valerie dimly noticed through the pain of her own injuries.
    Radu, her little brother, had fallen for Mina the moment he caught her wood-smoke and lavender scent in the dirty London air. Radu pursued Mina for the same reasons Vlad had avoided her.
    She was the reborn soul of Ilona, Vlad Dracula’s wife. The woman both brothers loved.
    Valerie jammed the accelerator until she crashed into the concrete wall of the impound lot’s main building, pinning the already cooling corpse against the crumbling cement. Mina’s once-white Victorian dressing gown dripped with the waste of violent death. The fabric had spread over the once-mint condition Mustang, highlighting the ruin of the last memorial left of a long-lost love.
    Just as Radu had captured and turned Ilona, he stalked and bit Mina. Unlike Ilona, though, Radu did not turn Mina. When she proved to be less fiery in this incarnation, he left her thrice-bitten, near immortal, and with unknown powers.
    The dead woman’s glassy eyes filled with blood, her lavender and wood-smoke scent overwhelmed with the mouthwatering, nose-puckering copper scent of hemoglobin. The Mustang’s engine whined to its own final death.
    Vlad had refused to let her memory ease. He kept her diamonds in his ears. Every vehicle he had owned, he named for her.
    Mina Harker was at peace.
    Vampires didn’t need to breathe, but she sucked in oxygen, letting its intoxication ease the discomfort of her injured body.
    Mina had gone mad from the centuries after Radu’s bites. Last spring, Lucifer and his Fallen Angels chose to