Chapter One

Vlad Drăculea (Dracula) moved as black mist. He had no body, no weight, only speed—an unnatural force traveling faster than the wind. Faster than any modern mode of transportation could take him. This was something he normally reserved for short bursts because of how it taxed his system. Not something he used to move from one country to another.

Yet, he had.

Vlad had been at his estate in Essex when Jonathan Harker's frantic mental cry for help had hit him with such force that it had nearly brought him to his knees. It probably would have, had Vlad been standing. As it had been, he'd been feasting from the femoral artery of a very willing, very beautiful blonde woman and her equally as beautiful redheaded friend. The pair had approached him earlier in the week at a nightclub in London and then joined him on the journey to his estate.

Women were always doing things like that— coming on to him, wanting to be with him—stay with him. Their eyes would glaze over, pupils dilating with desire at his mere presence. It had been that way prior to his rebirth as a creature of the night. Prior to the introduction of the powers of persuasion and seduction that the merging with the demon had brought him.

If one believed the rumors, Vlad had been born of the dragon but sired by the devil. Those who spun tales of him claimed he had taken his first breath as something against nature, something evil.

Something dark.

Maybe they were right.

His had not been an easy life when he'd lived— before death came for him and real darkness claimed his soul. Before a demon was forced upon him, merging with him, transforming him into what he was now—a monster. The source of legends.

The Prince of Darkness himself.

Yet, the title could not make him travel faster. Could not assure he reached the source of his distress in time. Already he was too late to prevent the damage that had been done. He had to hope he wasn't too late to help at all. For all his powers, all his might, even Vlad had limits.

Had he been at his home in Romania, he would have been close. He could have headed off the issue before it became one. He'd have known that the man he saw as his best friend had betrayed him—had thrown his allegiance behind their maker.

A man they both despised.

A true monster in every sense of the word.

Dragos.

Vlad had known betrayal in his lifetime.

Deep betrayals.

Betrayals that cut far beyond the flesh.

It wasn't always enemies who held the blade.

Sometimes it was the ones you trusted most. The ones who fought at your side, shared your blood— called you brother.

How Lucian could ever assist the monster was beyond Vlad. When they'd been under the madman's thumb, forced to do his bidding and carry out his twisted schemes, they'd sworn to one another they'd find a way to stop him. While killing him had proved something of an issue, they had found a way to mystically confine him. It had taken the help of others, men who had come to end them.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

The line from The Tempest had never been truer than when Vlad had been forced to work alongside those who had come to destroy him. While the others had formed a group with the sole purpose of killing him, they'd had a change of heart when they'd seen true evil. When they'd met Dragos face- to-face.

The man's name was like acid upon the tongue. The threat of him being freed from the mystical prison Vlad and his accomplices had sealed him in would have been enough to assure a quick response.

Help them.

The raw emotion behind the mental plea from Jonathan Harker had been gut wrenching. At first, Vlad assumed his response to the request was merely a byproduct of his connection to Harker. After all, he'd given Harker his blood to aid in healing the man's mortal wounds. In doing so, he gave him the gift of a rebirth. A second chance at living. Yes, it came with consequences. Everything worth having always did.

Had Harker thanked him?

No.

Harker had spent nearly one hundred and fifty years holding a grudge.

It was hard for Vlad not to take it personally. The former solicitor had begun calling him Prince Dick-u- la rather than his name. Harker told anyone who would listen of his disdain for Vlad. He had even gone on to dedicate his life to hunting his own kind— aligning himself with Bram Van Helsing and the Van Helsing line of slayers.

Harker was basically an honorary Van Helsing— one of Bram's nearest and dearest friends. He was second only to Bram in the Van Helsing organization. Frankly, it was a slap in the face to Vlad. Another way for Harker and Bram to give Vlad the proverbial middle finger.

Yet, when Harker had needed help the most, he'd not reached out to the others like him—the ones who thumbed their noses at the gift Vlad had given them.

No.

Harker had connected with Vlad.

Help them.

The plea had fueled Vlad's journey from the Carfax estate in Essex to Romania. Something that by plane would have taken two hours, but by way of mist, it had taken Vlad roughly thirty minutes.

He knew he was pushing too hard, burning through too much power—too much of his energy. That didn't matter. His concern wasn't for himself or for Harker even. It was for the young women Harker had shown Vlad in his mind.

A matching pair.

Twins. In their late teens or early twenties. Too young for Vlad's tastes when it came to bed partners, but beautiful all the same. They had long dark hair— one wore hers down, the other wore hers in a tight ponytail, showing off her classic cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. That twin's image was frozen in his mind—locked there like a snapshot. Of the two, the one with the ponytail had caused a visceral reaction in him. It had felt as if Vlad had been kicked in the gut when he'd seen her image in his mind and felt the raw emotion behind Harker's plea.

It had been the sight of her in Harker's visions that had left Vlad holding back the sarcastic quips he was so known for. Her who had made him shut his mouth and mind to listen to Harker's pleas—to share in what Harker was being shown. Her who had left Vlad reaching frantically out for his second-in- command—his most trusted of friends—on their shared mental pathway, desperate for Lucian to assist, only to find he had been part of whatever was harming the young women—whatever nefarious plot had left the women in the devil's den. In the very cave that Vlad and the others had locked Dragos in all those years ago.

Lucian had tried to argue, tried to take a stand, saying he could not serve two masters any longer.

Vlad had always thought the wolf-shifter was happy to be with him rather than Dragos. What Dragos had done to Lucian when he'd been the wolf 's master had been horrific. Vlad had witnessed some of it firsthand and had been present when Dragos had commanded Lucian to commit unspeakable acts. Acts that haunted the shifter to this very day.

It was part of why Vlad had risen against Dragos, despite the man being his maker. Vlad had reached a breaking point. A point when he could not and would not carry out another of the madman's tasks. He'd taken a stand. Drawn a line in the sand centuries before needing to align with Van Helsing and the others.

He'd faced off against the master vampire and had won, something no one—Vlad included—saw coming. He'd beaten the master vampire at his own game, leaving him no choice but to tuck tail and run. Vlad had taken over Dragos's affairs, bringing them under his own, merging interests. That included bringing Lucian under his control.

Lucian, the Dark One, as so many called him, was not a wolf-shifter who could be left to rule himself. For one, he was not merely a wolf. He, like Harker, was a blending of both vampire and wolf- shifter. Something against the natural order, even for supernaturals. The bloodlust was in Lucian and Harker, rooted in their very core, and they, like every vampire, required a strong master. Someone able to lead them through the haze the bloodlust could bring on. Someone to keep them from slaughtering the world.

Harker had thrown his allegiance behind Bram, siding with him, leaning on Bram to help him through the darkness and the blood haze whenever it struck. Bram was to Harker as Vlad was to Lucian. Lucian had trusted Vlad to see him through it all, to help him stay the course and prevent him from harming those he did not wish to harm.

They had been friends for centuries.

Yes, Lucian's wolf rebelled often, wanting to be its own boss. Its own master. Vlad understood more than most. Vlad could not only shift into mist, but he could become a wolf as well as a number of other animals. Something said to have come from his questionable birth—his spawning from Satan.

Dark magik eased around him that was not of his doing. It was a power he'd sensed more than once in his long life. While Vlad had yet to ever meet its owner, she was legendary. Mythology books spoke of her with caution, calling her the mother of the forest. She was friend or foe depending on one's motives when it came to the forest and nature itself.

Vlad had co-existed in the Romanian forests for centuries with the old hag, sensing her presence from time to time but never meeting her outright. If the legends were to be believed, she was powerful and deadly. She wasn't known for concerning herself with matters unrelated to her. It made Vlad wonder, at least momentarily, if she had a stake in what was happening.

Chapter Two

AS VLAD CONTINUED MOVING through the trees, his thoughts returned to the young woman from Harker's visions. The one with the ponytail. The one who was frozen in Vlad's mind. There was something about her. Something he couldn't put his finger on.

The blue in her eyes ran from light to dark, leaving them looking like jewels. She had a faint dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks, so light he wondered if others even noticed them.

Vlad's first wife had freckles that were similar. He'd always enjoyed counting each of them, making her laugh as he did so with his tongue more often than not. He wanted to say she had been the love of his life, but he knew that wasn't true. He had cared greatly for her. And in his own way, he even loved her, but her passing did not break him. It didn't even harden him. He'd accepted it as part of life and carried on with what had to be done.

Years later, Vlad remarried, albeit briefly. The woman had been thrust upon him in a deal he could not refuse—such was the way of things back then. He'd seen to it that she was cared for and had all she could desire, but he did not bed her, despite what the history books wrote of him. And the history books were also wrong when they spoke of Vlad being a father. That was not something he'd had the gift of becoming when he'd been mortal, and in death, it was something that would never come to be.

Not unless he suddenly found his mate. The other half of his immortal soul—if legends were to be believed. He'd seen many a supernatural mating in his years and knew it could happen, he simply did not believe it could happen to him. He had hundreds of years under his belt. If he had a mate, he'd have crossed paths with her by now. He'd be mated.

He would be as he saw other supernatural males being when it came to their mates—obsessed and consumed by desire and the need to protect. Unable and unwilling to seek pleasures from the bed of others.

Unlike when he had been married for a second time. When he'd filled his nights with noble women and village maidens. It had been for the best. His second wife could not grow attached to that which she did not have, and within a year, he had gone from being a man to being a monster.

Had he cared anything for her, he might have gone looking for her after his conversion. Vlad might have found her, and he would not have had the control over his demon that he had now. He'd have been her end.

In a way, his indifference to her saved her life.

He took solace in that fact for the past six hundred years, finding a measure of comfort from the knowledge that if he did not love, he did not hurt when that love was torn from him. And if he did not love, then he could not be the one to destroy it when what lived within him was free.

That's why Vlad made a point of never getting too close to any woman.

He made no promises to the women that he bedded beyond giving them pleasure, the likes of which they'd never seen before. And he held up his end of the bargain. They got mind-blowing orgasms, and he got sex and blood.

Perfect.

He had very few friends who were women. That was by design. They were a weakness he could not afford. History claimed he was the cruelest to women —that he'd single them out and do horrific things to them in his living years as payback for sins like adultery or the like.

Lies.

Fiction spun forth by his enemies, both domestic and foreign. Words written by those who could not best him on the battlefield, sword to sword, so they chose to wield a pen. They wrote lies and partial truths, painting him as a monster far before he truly became one.

If anything, Vlad had always had a weakness for the opposite sex, putting their well-being before that of himself or the men he'd commanded. No one ever spoke of that in history lessons dedicated to his life. He'd know, he'd attended many universities over the years, listening in as a guest or even posing as a student. He knew what they thought of him.

The truths they held in high regard were as fictional as the novel penned partially in his honor long after he'd shed his mortal coil, becoming one with the darkness.

At least Stoker had made no bones about his work being fiction. What Stoker did not tell the masses was that the story had been born out of fact—not fiction. That it held grains of truth.

We do not have hairy palms, his demon's thoughts merged into his own.

For the demon, that had been a sticking point— one of many—when they'd read the novel upon its release. The demon had wanted to seek out Stoker, hold him from his toes, and drain him dry of all his blood.

Vlad had found Stoker's account of what had transpired amusing, having long ago gotten used to seeing himself portrayed inaccurately in text. Did he love being made out to be old and decrepit, with hairy palms, and barely getting by in his isolated castle high in the mountains of Transylvania? Not particularly, but in all honesty, it was better than being thought of for centuries as the Impaler.

As a brutal leader.

As a man who made countless victims out of anyone and everyone he could, women and children alike. The irony of his final act as a mortal man had been throwing himself in front of a young maiden whose name he had not even known. All he had known of her was she was innocent and expecting a child. The history books did not speak of it because they did not know.

Let us not forget…history was written by the victors, said his demon.

It knew the truth for it had been introduced to him shortly thereafter. It had been a part of him when the incident had been fresh in Vlad's mind. The demon had started the conversion process when Vlad was there, on a stone floor, lying in a pool of his own blood, desperately trying to stop those who had betrayed him from harming others.

It had been no use. The conversion had taken everything he had and when it was over, Vlad was left fighting for control of his own body, finding it was no longer his and his alone. He had been weak. Too weak to stand against the introduction of a demon into his body. Too weak to protect his people and his country.

Do not fool yourself, Vlad, the demon said, its tone sharp. You were not, nor have you ever been weak. Need I remind you, yours is not the first body I have been tethered to? It matters not what history says of you. We know the truth.

The demon's words were true but that did not lessen the dislike Vlad experienced knowing what was said about him. The part he hated most was that he supposedly was fine with harming children.

Never.

He would slaughter anyone who dared raise a hand to a child, be that child born of his enemy or not. He knew what it was like to be the child of the "enemy" and what happened when those who felt wronged were gifted the opportunity to exact revenge using innocent children in the process.

Vlad and his brother Radu had been taken hostage by the Ottoman Empire when Vlad had been barely eleven years old. Radu had only been seven at the time. Mircea, Vlad's eldest legitimate brother, had been spared only because he was needed to rule Wallachia. While only a few years separated Vlad and Mircea, he and Vlad had never been close.

And Vlad had nearly no relationship with his half-brother, also named Vlad, but often called Vlad the Monk. Times were different then and coming from a royal line meant there were certain expectations and burdens placed upon them at birth. They never really had a chance to be children. Boys were expected to be men far sooner than now, but even so, eleven and seven meant he and his brother had been children.

Not men.

Yet he and Radu had become unwilling pawns in a dangerous game that they had been too young to realize they were playing. Too young at first to realize they were entering a dangerous world with an evil man at the helm of it.

Yes, the Sultan who had taken them in exchange for their father's loyalty and obedience had seen to it the boys were educated and thought of as "guests" rather than prisoners, but there was no sugarcoating it. Vlad and Radu had not been free. And with the education they were provided came lessons Vlad dared not think upon all these years later.

To do so would ignite a rage in him the likes of which could not be tempered with any amount of blood shedding. He knew. He'd tried more than once to wash the memories from his mind by way of blood.

It never worked.

Vlad's experience had paled in comparison to Radu's. Vlad had been too old for the likes of the Sultan at the time—as twisted as they were. Radu had not. Had Vlad been stronger, older, and in command of his own armies at the time, he would have razed the area to the ground to protect his younger brother from what he'd been forced to endure.

Radu the Handsome.

The nickname still sickened Vlad to this day.

Vlad could still remember their journey to the Sultan's home. He'd kept Radu close to him all the way there, trying to reassure him that all would be well. Not to be afraid.

Hai, frățiorul meu curajos. Nu plânge—come, my brave little brother. Do not cry.

The words echoed in the nothingness that was Vlad's current form, a harsh reminder of the past— of the lies he'd spun upon that journey, never realizing the true horrors that awaited them or that he would not be able to protect his brother.

Fratele meu, dragonul—my brother, the dragon, Radu had said, his green eyes, which matched Vlad's, red- rimmed and filled with tears. Radu had been so young then.

So vulnerable.

So willing to believe Vlad, to trust that his big brother would protect him. That Vlad would keep him safe. And Vlad had been far too quick to promise to do as much. To promise to protect him always and that they would survive and be all the stronger for it.

But Vlad had failed on all fronts.

M-ai lăsat să cad… și acum tu, balaurul, nu mai varsă foc, ci doar sânge—You let me fall… and now you, the dragon, no longer spill fire—only blood.

The words echoed in his mind as fresh today as they had been when Radu had said them to Vlad nearly six hundred years ago.

The demon snarled within him. Betrayer.

While the demon was not wrong, Vlad did not blame Radu for his choices in the end, for his alliances with their enemies. For betraying Vlad and being the reason Vlad died.

Radu had been young when they'd come under the banner of the enemy. Times were harsh. One did what one must in order to survive—to cope. At some point in it all, Radu had started to believe the rhetoric he was being spoon-fed. He bought into it and saw any who stood against it as wrong.

Vlad's hand came to his chest. To the area above his heart, where his own brother had run him through with a sword. Later, as Vlad was left to bleed out on the ground, darkness came on the wind. When it cleared, a man he did not know was there, telling him all would be well—not to fear death or his pending rebirth. The man then bit his wrist and shoved it to Vlad's mouth, giving him no choice but to ingest the blood.

The poison, he thought, lowering his gaze momentarily as he remembered his conversion—the agonizing pain, the confusion, the bloodlust. Dragos had made himself out to be Vlad's savior. He was anything but. He'd been as twisted as the Sultan.

Maybe more so.

And he'd wanted Vlad to never forget who had betrayed him. That was why he'd sat back and watched Vlad fighting through the conversion process, the wound in his chest healing ever so slowly.

Dragos had motioned to one of his human servants who had been a member of the opposing army. The man had come forward and poured clear liquid into the open wound, causing Vlad's skin to sizzle. A second later, flames actually shot out of the wound.

Water that had been anointed by a servant of God, said the demon with a hiss. He wanted a scar to remain.

And one had, serving as a constant reminder of his failures. Of how if he dared to love, dared to care, he was greeted with only pain. Only sorrow.

Vlad blamed his father for handing him and Radu over to the enemy to start with, and the enemy himself. And he blamed any and all who would exploit the weak for their own twisted gains.

That had been the start of Vlad's fierce need to protect those who could not protect themselves. Something history never spoke of. There were no recorded instances of it. Why would there be? Doing so would have made him look weak to his enemies, and that was not something he could have afforded them.

Not with war at his doorstep.

Not with a traitor as a father.

Vlad had done nothing to stop the rumors that spread like wildfire. In some ways, he'd encouraged them. Better they fear him and stay away than join in the already seemingly nonstop war that had become his life.

Had he impaled thousands?

Perhaps.

He had surely beheaded far more than he'd impaled. Was he called Vlad the Beheader? No. Many had died at the end of his sword. Did history refer to him as Vlad the Swordsman? Again. No.

Those he had impaled had not been good men— emphasis on men. Not women. And the technique was not his invention. It was something he'd been forced to bear witness to when held by the Ottoman Empire. He had simply taken their techniques and perfected them.

Basically, he'd invented a better mousetrap, and that hurt their feelings, so they began to whisper of his cruelty, of his madness. Back then, Vlad had welcomed it, knowing it kept many an army from daring to attack his lands. He had no idea he'd be "alive" some six hundred years later. Here to see what the future thought of him and how history painted him. Had he, maybe he would have taken measures to sprinkle truth among the rumors.

Hindsight was something indeed.

Now, all these years later, Vlad would gladly permit people to believe he was as Stoker wrote him, rather than live with what history saw his mortal life as being. In so many ways, Vlad the Impaler was a bigger monster than Dracula ever could be.

Do not grow soft on me, said his demon.

Often, Vlad wished he could face off with his demon, one on one. That he could stand before it on the battlefield, and they air their grievances as men. Not be stuck with one another, neither really able to best the other.

Master, hurry!

Katarina's voice filled Vlad's mind, spurring him onward. She and her sisters had answered his call for help when he'd learned Lucian had betrayed him. The Weird Sisters, as they liked to be called, had dropped everything and rushed to the cave's entrance, trying to assist the young women from Harker's visions.

The sisters were not known for being particularly caring. He could count on one hand the number of times in all his centuries that he'd seen them show an ounce of compassion or concern for anyone other than themselves.

Each of those times had been one hundred and fifty years ago, in this very forest, dealing with the same enemy who had harmed the twins Vlad was so desperate to get to.

Dragos.