Jeaniene Frost - Once Burned

“Maximus!” I shouted, a hard knot forming in my stomach. Something was wrong. I just knew it. “Where’s Marty? I know you’re a vampire, so don’t pretend you can’t hear me!”

“I’m here, Frankie.”

The words came from directly behind me. I whirled and almost smacked into Maximus, but what filled me with relief was seeing my friend. Marty stood next to the blond vampire, a small, tired smile on his face.

“Glad you’re okay, kid—”

He didn’t finish the rest of his sentence because I grabbed him, crouching down so I could hug him. A shudder wracked him as my previous fear sent a current into him, but he tightened his arms and didn’t let me pull away. I might be almost twice Marty’s size, but he had ten times my strength.

“You really okay, Frankie?” Marty whispered against my ear.

“Fine,” I whispered back, surprised at the strain in his voice. “Didn’t you hear? I arrived at least two hours ago.”

He let me go, glancing up at Maximus. “I was busy.”

The edginess in his tone made me take a good at him. Marty wasn’t in the same charred clothes he’d worn the last time I saw him, but his new outfit didn’t look much better. Both his shirt and pants were splotched with suspicious dark stains, not to mention his shirt had a big, ragged hole in the middle of it . . .

I darted behind him before Marty could guess what I intended. By the time he spun around, I’d already seen the matching hole on the back of his shirt. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had caused the bloody entry and exit hole.

“What. The. Hell!” I spat.

Marty grabbed my arms. “Calm down. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” I shot back, waving at him as much as his grip would allow. “You’ve been stuck through the torso with a huge frigging pole! Where is Vlad? Did he know about this?”

Marty glanced at Maximus again, and fresh fury shot through me as the other vampire’s countenance became stony.

“He ordered it, didn’t he? Son of a bitch, he had you impaled! Why? To act out one of his crazy Dracula fantasies?”

“Shhh, he’ll hear you!” Marty gasped. His face paled, too, something I’d never seen before.

I was too pissed to worry about Vlad’s feelings. “I don’t care. It’s one thing to pretend with the name and the big Romanian castle, but this is insane —”

“For the love of God, shut up!” Marty interrupted.

“Good advice,” Maximus muttered.

I couldn’t believe Marty was more upset about me calling out Vlad for his sick role-playing than being speared like a fish. Maybe Vlad reacted violently to anyone questioning his fantasy. If so, he wasn’t just a little deluded, he was a madman—

“I can’t listen to this anymore,” an annoyed voice stated.

Marty’s face managed to drain of more color. Even if I hadn’t recognized Vlad’s voice, that alone would’ve told me who had come up behind me.

“Don’t hurt her, she didn’t mean anything by it,” Marty said at once, moving to stand between me and Vlad.

I wasn’t about to let him take more abuse, especially on my behalf, so I tried to angle myself in front of Marty. He kept sidestepping me with that damn vampiric speed until it looked like we were engaged in some sort of strange dance.

“Fine, I’ll talk to you like this,” I snapped to Vlad, Marty still in between us. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him, but you had him impaled . Tell me why I shouldn’t break our deal right now, and threatening me with death isn’t good enough. Been there, done that a thousand times, remember?” My lip curled. “Besides, you need me and we both know it.”

Vlad smiled with luxuriant coldness, coming closer. “Calling me a name I detest and accusing me of madness and lying. I’ve killed people for less, but you’re right. I do need you. So let’s settle the first two issues.”

Marty was suddenly gone. Vlad had thrown him aside before I’d even seen him move. A thud by the stone staircase told me where he’d ended up, but when I started to go to him, Vlad grasped my arm, his coppery green gaze boring into mine. My heart skipped a beat, but I didn’t flinch. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“What now?” I asked with open challenge.

His brow arched. “This,” he replied, and shoved a small, hard object into my right hand.

Images exploded across my mind, but unlike most impressions, they weren’t through the perspective of just one person. They came from multiple people.

First, I relived the memory of an older man being cornered by soldiers. They held him down, jeering, as one of them cut away all the skin on the man’s face before slitting his throat. The next memory was even more brutal—a burning hot coal used to put out a young man’s eyes before he was buried alive. The third was of an even younger man who bore a striking resemblance to Vlad being ambushed and then stabbed to death inside a church. The last was that young man’s murderer, pleading to no avail, as a dirty and blood-streaked Vlad shoved a long wooden pole through his midsection, then hoisted him aloft and sat watching the entire two days it took the man to die.

When reality at last replaced those grisly images, I found myself backed into a wall, Vlad’s grip on my arms the only thing holding me upright. His gaze was hooded, lean face utterly expressionless as he looked at me. Phantom pains still lingered in various parts of my body, but they faded until only a dull ache from clutching whatever Vlad had given me remained.

I opened my hand, glancing down to see a thick gold ring with a dragon emblazoned across the wide, flat stone—the same ring each of those men had been wearing when they were killed. It was so filled with the essences from its former owners’ murders that I half expected it to start dripping blood.

The deaths I’d been forced to relive had conveyed more than the horror of knowing what it felt like to have my face cut off, which had been a new one even for me. I’d also gotten a glimpse into the murdered men themselves. From that, I knew all but the last of them had been members of Vlad’s family, and now I also knew exactly who held me against the smooth stone wall.

Shock made my voice come out hoarse. “You’re Vladislav Basarab Dracul, former voivode of Wallachia, but over five hundred years ago, they used to call you Tepesh. The Impaler.”

Vlad didn’t blink. “They still do,” he replied in a caressingly lethal voice, and then released me.

I was glad my legs managed to hold me so I didn’t slump to the ground. Falling before Vlad’s feet would be cliché in the extreme, even if he was the real Vlad.

I glanced at Marty. He was still by the staircase, but he seemed okay. Maximus was there, too. From the other vampire’s grip on his shoulder, he’d been keeping Marty from interfering.

“Could you hear what I experienced from touching that ring?” I asked, unable to contain a shiver at the memory.

“Yes and no.” His lips twisted into a humorless smile. “When you utilize your power, your mind is locked behind an impenetrable wall. But when you’re finished, you think about what you saw, and I hear that.”

I tried to chase away any remaining thoughts of those murders, which was easier to do when I focused on Marty.

“Okay, now I know you’re not suffering under a delusion from too much role-playing.” The last of that trembling left my limbs and I took a step toward him, my voice sharpening. “It doesn’t excuse you from breaking your word not to harm Marty.”

Vlad folded his arms across his chest, drawing my attention to the dark stains on his shirt that smelled like one of Marty’s foul-tasting shakes.