Read Online Moon Dragon by J. R. Rain - Free Book Online Page B

to talk to you.”
    “Perhaps I was loose with my speech.”
    I forced myself to look at my son. My warning bells had been ringing steadily, although not very loudly. There was danger here...but not immediate. I said, without looking at him, “You also presume that I care about what you like.”
    “And you don’t?”
    “I could give a fuck about what you like.”
    He threw back his head and laughed loudly. Except...except no one looked at him. No one but me.
    “I can see why Elizabeth was keen on you, Samantha Moon. You remind me so much of her. In fact, you look quite a bit like her.”
    I glanced at him. “Elizabeth?”
    “Don’t you know?” he asked, raising a single narrow eyebrow. His sharp elbows rested lightly on his equally sharp knees.
    “Know what?”
    “Ah, I see her son hasn’t yet shared her name with you.”
    The flames inside his pupil danced and wavered and sputtered as if a wind were rattling around inside his skull.
    “That’s her name...”
    “Indeed,” said the man.
    “Her name is Elizabeth...” I heard myself say. Hearing her name had a strange effect on me. It...humanized her. I wasn’t sure I wanted her humanized. I preferred to think of her as a demon. It was bad enough that I thought her son was kind of cute.
    “And a fine name it is.”
    The entity within me responded to her name, and came rushing to the surface of my thoughts, but I shut a mental lid on her before she got too far, or could take too much control.
    “And who are you?” I asked.
    But the man next to me seemed to guess what I was about to ask, for he was already standing and giving me a small bow. He tipped a non-existent hat, and said, in a rolling, sing-song voice, “Wladislaus Dragwlya, at your service.”
    Coming from him, coupled with his strange accent, the “W” sounded like a “V” to my ears.
    In fact, I was certain he had said... Vladislaus Dracula .
     

 
    Chapter Sixteen
     
    I caught myself rocking a little and breathing hard, although there was no damn good reason why I was breathing hard. It was a reaction, I knew. A reaction to yet the further absurdness that was my life. That had been my life for the past nine years.
    While I breathed and rocked and tried to process, the man continued to watch me sideways, sitting completely still. The fire behind his pupils seemed almost palpable, to radiate real heat. But I knew that was not true. Vampires were cold, were they not?
    My son took a short breather, although he barely seemed to breathe hard. Jacky, however, staggered away from the heavy bag. The poor guy literally didn’t know what had hit him. First me, then my son. He must have thought we were the freakiest of freaks.
    Not the freakiest, I thought. In fact, the original freak was sitting next to me now.
    Dracula.
    I forcibly calmed myself. After all, had I not met other vampires? Hell, I had encountered werewolves, angels and body-hopping demons. Wasn’t he just another...
    No, he wasn’t.
    He was fucking Dracula and, according to the Librarian, the original vampire. The first vampire. The oldest vampire.
    Jesus...
    “You seem upset, Samantha Moon.”
    “Wouldn’t you be?” I said. “If, you know, you just met you. Okay, that sounded lame.”
    He threw back his head and laughed easily. “Yes,” he finally said when the laughter subsided. “I suppose I would be upset, too, if, you know, I had just met me.”
    For the first time in a long time, I felt embarrassed, although my face didn’t burn with embarrassment. To do so would have implied that I radiated some degree of heat, which I didn’t. Not like the creature next to me.
    Confused, I shut my mouth and might have rocked a little. We lapsed into silence, although the thoughts in my head weren’t so silent. And the demon bitch inside me wasn’t helping either. She was clamoring to get out. It was all I could do to stamp her back down and throw up a mental wall, which was harder to do than it sounds, especially when you’ve