Read Online Dracula's Desires by Linda Mercury - Free Book Online Page B

Angels let him die, she’d empty Hell itself in vengeance.
    She gunned her black 1966 Shelby Mustang to the limit, burying the tachometer in the red. The tires howled as the car fishtailed against the gravel-laden highway cutting through the Swiss Alps. Cursing, she spun the steering wheel against the skid and roared between two honking tourist buses.
    â€œLucifer’s wormy teeth, I spit at thee.” She damned the slow-moving vehicles.
    The heavily forested mountains and charming villages blurred until the view out her window seemed an unending wall of green and stone. Lake Geneva was nothing but a long deep blue line below her. The powerful engine propelled her through the hairpin turns faster than a vampire could run. Her smaller weapons duffel sat on the passenger seat, an innocent black bag filled with high-powered destruction.
    Valerie opened her window and sniffed the mountain air. The kidnappers had a ten-minute head start, but there was the trail. John’s blood, apples, and more damn sulfur than she’d ever wanted in her life.
    If she never smelled sulfur again, she’d be a happy vampire.
    Hours passed. Empty bags of blood filled the Shelby’s backseat as Valerie tossed her discards over her shoulder. She brooked no delays and would reveal no weakness.
    Switzerland’s high mountains gave way to Germany’s woods. The steady thrum of the engine lulled the baby into quietness. Dark clouds crossed the skies like disease-bearing missiles. Seventy-year-old memories about the German countryside kept her company as she kept the pedal to the floor.
    She’d been driving full speed for nearly seven hours when she finally caught the sulfurous bastards outside a small town in central Germany.
    They had turned off the main road and were speeding toward what seemed to be a park.
    The Mustang nudged the blue sedan’s ruined bumper, forcing it into a three hundred and sixty-degree spin. She steered Ilona after the sedan, her left hand already pointing her handgun out of the window. A light press of her index finger, and her bullets shredded the kidnapper’s tires.
    The car spun to a stop outside the park.
    In a puff of wood smoke and lavender, the car vanished from sight.
    Valerie slammed on her brake pedal, barely avoiding a concrete sign.
    A sign that read MITTLEBAU - DORA CAMP .
    Fuck. Anyplace but this place. She slammed the palm of her hand against the steering wheel as she was forced to slow.
    She would find John and destroy whoever it was that had taken him. Their remains would litter the continent like fallout from a volcano. Everyone she’d desired had come to bad ends. She was not going to lose yet another love.

C HAPTER 14
    Castle Dracula
June 1446
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    I n spring, a young man’s fancy turns to love. Vlad Dracul III was no exception.
    The castle guards started taking off their shirts for drills. And none were as handsome or well built as Josef, the second in command.
    Young Vlad and Josef carried practice swords and armor to a private, sunny corner of tree-lined meadow.
    â€œToday’s lesson is to speed up your sword work. You are average now, but you must be superb in order to defend your land against the Ottomans.” Josef picked up one of the weighted wooden practice swords. “You must twist to compensate for your arm strength. Look.”
    Smooth as a snake, Josef demonstrated the stroke. Vlad shook his head. His wrists were not as strong as the other boys’, no matter how hard he trained.
    Josef smiled and cuffed the boy’s head, but far more gently than the elder Dracul would. “Don’t shake your head. You must do it.”
    The older soldier removed his practice armor and lifted his shirt. “Here. Move these muscles.” He pointed to the side of his abdomen and traced the movement through the skin. “Feel.”
    Vlad laid a trembling hand on Josef’s body, tracking the slide of muscle over hot, slick skin.