Once Burned: A Night Prince Novel (16 page)

Chapter 28

A
fter more than an hour of flying, I thought I’d figured out the trick to it. Don’t look down: The icy wind was hell on my eyes. Keep both arms around Vlad: Not because he’d drop me, but because the warmth emanating from his body kept my hands from feeling like ice packs. Keep my legs around him for same reason. Pretend it was a roller-coaster ride: That helped with the fear when he made an unexpected roll or descent.

I figured out the most important tip when he finally set us on the ground: Don’t try to walk right away. My frazzled equilibrium made my legs feel like they were different lengths and I misjudged my steps. Had Vlad not righted me, I would’ve fallen face-first into the snow.

“Why didn’t we take the limo again?” I muttered.

He looped my scarf back around my neck. At some point during our flight, it had ended up halfway down my coat. “Because if someone’s watching the house, we don’t want them to follow us and see where we’re going.”

I finally looked around and my breath caught. Strategically placed lights illuminated the remains of an ancient castle, church, courtyard, and tower. Some of the structures looked fully restored, like the brick-based pale tower, but others had crumbled. Railed walkways and signs showed that these ruins were a tourist haunt, but the modern insertions looked out of place amidst the aged brick and stone. I could almost feel the ancient remains throb with the essence of thousands of memories, but I didn’t reach out. I stayed still, drinking in the beauty around me, the wind and noises from the nearby highway the only sounds aside from my fog-flumed breaths.

“The Royal Court of Targoviste.” Something lurked in Vlad’s tone that I couldn’t put a name to. “I never thought to return here, but this is where I buried Szilagyi’s remains.”

I stared at Vlad, thinking how
right
he looked in these surroundings. His lean, rough handsomeness, wind-whipped dark hair, and determined expression held as much barbaric splendor as the former medieval palace. In many ways, Vlad reminded me of these ruins; an untamed slice of the past amidst the veneer of modern civilization.

“This was where you lived when you were prince?”

He gave me a brief, jaded smile. “Not for long. My time as
voivode
was spent trying to keep Wallachia from falling prey to her enemies. It left little room for relaxing at court.”

Then he started walking toward the tower, hopping over a half-crumbled wall and holding out his hand to me.

I gave him a look as I ignored his hand and leapt over the wall with the same ease as him. “Former gymnast, remember?”

Another sardonic smile. “I do, but not because you told me. You never speak of your time before the accident.”

Walked right into that one
, I thought as I picked my way through the dilapidated courtyard. Earlier, he’d offered to answer any question I asked him. Too late, I realized that offer came with hooks. But if I was willing to do the asking, I couldn’t chicken out on answering when it was my turn.

“As a child, I was very good at gymnastics.” He’d already filched this from my mind, but it seemed he wanted to hear it the regular way. “So good that when I was thirteen, I won the chance to compete for a spot on the Olympic team. Problem was, at the same time, my dad got a change of duty station to Germany. He could go unaccompanied for one year, or take all of us with him for three years. If we went, I’d lose my coach, my training facility . . . basically my best shot at the team.”

We were at the perimeter of the tower now. Signs around it advertised in Romanian and English that inside was the “real” story of Vlad Dracul, complete with a picture that looked nothing like the man standing next to me. Vlad went around to the back of the tower, beckoning me to follow.

I did, tucking my hands into my coat. Even through my gloves, the cold was biting. Vlad knelt at the base of the tower, running his fingers along the faded bricks.

“Szilagyi’s sword struck here when he attempted to take my head off,” he said, indicating a crack that I hadn’t noticed until he tapped it. Then he rose, pivoted, and took six long strides in the opposite direction before kneeling again.

“And here is where I buried him.” He began clearing away the snow. I was about to ask why he hadn’t brought a shovel when he shoved his hands through the frozen earth with enough force to make the ground shudder.

Yeah, a shovel would be a little redundant.

I watched him dig with a sense of relief that ended when he said, “And then what?” in a tone that dared me not to answer.

My snort blew out a plume of white. “You want to dig up the past metaphorically and literally at the same time?”

His eyes glowed green through the veil of his hair as he glanced up at me. “Call me a multitasker.”

It wasn’t because he’d offered to tell me anything that I answered him. It was because he hadn’t shied away from his darkest sin when confronted with it, so how could keep refusing to talk about mine?

“I begged for him to take the one year unaccompanied, or to let me live with my aunt Brenda so I could still compete in the tryouts. Making the team was all I cared about, and I was so
mad
that my dad would let his job ruin everything.” Bitter sigh at how stupid I’d been. “My mother refused both options, said that nothing was more important than our family sticking together. That’s when I told her what I’d found a week before when I rummaged through my dad’s foot locker looking for camping gear.”

Vlad had dug more than three feet down, piles of earth he tossed aside dark smudges against the snow. As soon as I stopped speaking, he paused, that commanding stare leveled on me.

“For a smart man, he was dumb for leaving a crumpled-up letter from a woman he’d slept with at the bottom of his duffel bag,” I continued. “I told my mom about dad cheating—not because I thought she had a right to know, but as revenge on him for ruining my Olympics dream, and on her for refusing to let me stay at my aunt’s. That’s who I was. A pathologically narcissistic bitch.”

Vlad hadn’t resumed digging, but he still knelt in the snow, staring up at me with the oddest expression. It took me several seconds to realize what.
Sympathy
. No wonder I hadn’t recognized it. I’d never seen him show that emotion before.

Choked laugh. “
This
is what you finally feel pity over?”

“You were a spoiled child who did a cruel thing. You deserved to be beaten and confined to your room, but you didn’t deserve to lose everything.”

I swiped at the sudden wetness near my eyes. “Oh? I wanted to stay with my aunt, and I got my wish. My mom, sister, and I moved in with Aunt Brenda when she told my dad to go to Germany unaccompanied while she figured out what to do. Then a month later, tornados knocked a bunch of trees down in our neighborhood. Afterward, I heard a dog whining in the yard. It was so weird; the dog just sat there, tree limbs all around him. I didn’t see the downed power line. I went to clear the debris away . . . and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital.” Harsh sigh. “The doctors said I was lucky the shock knocked me across the yard. Otherwise, I’d have burned to a crisp while stuck to that power line. But what no one could explain was why my mother died from the leftover voltage in my body when she tried to help me, yet that same voltage didn’t kill me.”

“Why?” Vlad’s lips curled, his sympathetic expression gone. “Some things just are, Leila. You survived. She didn’t. Wondering why is as irrelevant as it is futile.”

After everything I’d experienced, I knew that to be true. Yet it didn’t make the pain of my mother’s death go away, let alone my guilt over how I’d ripped my family apart.

Vlad began digging again. Either he was impatient or the ground wasn’t as frozen farther down because his progress was faster.

“Again you’re being naive. Your father’s infidelity ripped your family apart. You were merely the messenger.”

I’d never told anyone this next part, and it took two tries before I could force the words past my newly tight throat.

“He wanted to work things out. He cheated on my mom, but he still loved her, and when she died . . . part of him blamed me so much that he avoided me. He never said that, but I saw it when I touched him.” My voice cracked. “It’s his worst sin.”

Vlad abandoned his digging and rose, but I held out a hand. “Don’t. Right now I need you to be cold. If you’re not, then I have to remember how much that hurt, and I don’t want to.”

The words were ragged, but I’d managed to stop the tears, at least. Vlad stared at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. At last he knelt and began digging again. A few minutes and a taller pile of dirt later, he let out a grunt and then pulled something long and whitish from the hole.

A bone.

“Right where you’re supposed to be,” Vlad muttered.

It did seem to be undeniable proof that Szilagyi couldn’t be the puppet master, but I came closer, holding out my hand.

“Let’s make sure.”

His brow arched, but he placed the bone in my right hand.

At once, echoes of the man’s agonizing last moments washed over me. He’d been burned to death, which I expected, but I didn’t see Vlad’s face through the flames. I saw the puppet master’s, his face haggard and gray-streaked hair much longer, but his features were unmistakable. Another jumble of images replaced those in rapid succession, showing a benign sin, long days spent farming the land, and small children playing by a mud-walled house. A name kept reverberating throughout the memories.
Josef
. This was all wrong.

When I clawed my way back to that fiery death again, I saw what I’d missed the first time in the jumble of pain and panic. The puppet master was wearing the ring I’d seen when he ordered my attack, only here, he was doing his own dirty work. The man buried here was named Josef, and he’d been burned to death by the same vampire who had recently tried to kill me.

Chapter 29

O
nce again, I found myself surrounded by vampires while trying to find a killer through the essence trail left from the man he’d murdered. But this time, I wasn’t being forced. Despite the late hour and being exhausted, I wanted to find this bastard now, not later. I would’ve started looking next to that grave except Vlad insisted that we return to his castle.

When I found the essence thread leading to Josef’s murderer, I followed it. The tapestry room with its large fireplace and exquisite wall coverings fell away, replaced by what looked like the inside of a cement box. With the all-gray colors of the room, for a second, I thought I’d stumbled upon a past memory. Then I saw the brown wooden door with thick black iron hinges. Color images, no haziness. That meant I was in the present. In the corner of the drab room, underneath a blanket-sized fur pelt, was the elusive puppet master, asleep.

Or, if my guess was correct, Josef’s murderer and the orchestrator of my kidnapping was Mihaly Szilagyi—the vampire Vlad thought he’d killed centuries ago.

“Got him,” I said out loud.

The vampire’s eyes snapped open, deep brown and piercing. Now that he was in color, I saw that the streaks in his hair were blond, not gray. The lines in his face also looked less pronounced, but maybe that was because he wasn’t scowling like the other times I’d seen him. His complexion was typical vampire pale, but his cheeks held a faint tinge of color. He must have fed recently. Marty had always looked flushed after a good meal.

“How unexpected,” the puppet master drawled with the same faint accent that Vlad had.

I glanced at the wooden door, but it was still closed. Prickles of fear danced up my spine.
Vlad would have told me if he was a mind reader
, I tried to reassure myself.

The vampire stretched as though waking up from a nap. “Much can change in three hundred years, my little psychic spy.”

Oh, crap!
“We have a problem,” I said out loud. “He’s like you, Vlad. He can hear me in his head.”

Vlad muttered a curse, but I seized upon the only defense I had. At once, I began to mentally blast the most annoying eighties song I could think of. The vampire winced.

“Stop that.”

I turned up the volume in my head instead.
Thank you, Bones!
“Mihaly Szilagyi,” I said aloud, “you’ve been found out in more ways than one.”

I was guessing, but thanks to that song blasting away in my mind, the vampire didn’t know that. He threw aside his blanket, revealing that he wore black sweat pants and a thick pullover sweater. Then he got up, a mocking smile on his lips.

“Capturing you has surely backfired on me. At least now I know how Vlad located you so quickly. I worried that I had a traitor in my midst, but your abilities are truly extraordinary.”

“So I’ve been told,” I replied, still mentally jamming out.

Another wince. “Must you keep thinking of that wretched song? It was unbearable even when it was new.”

“How’d you do it?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. “Survive Vlad? He normally leaves behind nothing more than a pile of ash.”

That made Szilagyi smile again. “We share the same sire. If Vlad thinks about it long enough, he’ll figure it out.”

“Can you tell where he is?” Vlad asked in a hiss.

“No,” I replied with a sudden burst of insight. “He must’ve known I’d come looking for him. That’s why he’s in the same windowless concrete room that I saw when he ordered my attack. There’s nothing in it but a big fur blanket, and even his clothes are so average; you can’t tell anything from them.”

Szilagyi gave a concurring shrug. “I thought it possible that you could locate me through an object I’d touched. Why do you think I wanted to retrieve you so badly?”

“Or kill me,” I reminded him in a curt tone.

Another shrug. “Anyone who isn’t on my side is my enemy.” Then those deep brown eyes gleamed. “You could still be on my side, Frankie. With that clever defense you have against mind reading, Vlad need not even suspect. Lead him to the place of my choosing, and I will ensure that you never spend another day bouncing on trampolines for pennies.”

“Yeah, because I’ll be dead,” I scoffed. “Jackal was going to kill me as soon as my usefulness ran out. I’m supposed to believe you’ll be any dif-ferent?”

“Why would I kill someone with your priceless abilities if I can use you to my benefit?” he asked silkily.

“Ooh, a lifetime of captivity, sounds
nice
,” I mocked. “Thanks, but no.”

Szilagyi’s expression hardened into the merciless one I recognized from other people’s memories. “You believe that Vlad will let you go? Is he pretending to be kind? I’ve seen that act from him before, but only a fool falls for it.”

“I’m not getting anywhere with him,” I said to Vlad, ignoring Szilagyi’s taunt. “Do you have something you want me to relay before I go?”

“Yes.” Vlad’s voice was pleasant. “Tell him the next time I see him, I’ll rip off his head and make a new toilet out of it.”

“He hates you a lot,” I summarized to Szilagyi.

“Accept my offer while you still can,” the vampire replied.

I dropped the link, the confining gray room morphing into soaring ceilings with tapestries depicting various scenes of ancient life. Vlad’s fingers drummed on his armrest, the faint smell of smoke emanating from him. Behind him, Maximus was immobile, but Shrapnel paced in front of the fireplace.

“How is he even still alive?” he muttered.

I didn’t think the question was to me, but I answered it. “He was vague about the details. Said something about him and Vlad sharing a sire, and Vlad figuring it out if he thought about it long enough.”

Nothing but the crackling of flames for a few loaded moments. Then Vlad laughed, but it sounded far uglier than his usual half purr, half amused growl.

“He has Tenoch’s gift of degeneration.”

Comprehension dawned on everyone’s face except mine. “What’s that?”

Vlad’s fingers drummed against the armrest hard enough to produce tiny splinters.

“Tenoch, the vampire who turned me, had many powers. One of them was the ability to degenerate into a withered husk, mimicking the appearance of true death for a vampire. Szilagyi was also turned by Tenoch, but while I inherited Tenoch’s control over fire, Szilagyi must have inherited his gift of degeneration. That’s why I thought I’d burned him to death, but he wasn’t dead. The filthy usurper was faking it.”

Flying. Pyrokinesis. Degeneration. What other vampire powers would I learn were possible?

“What happened between you and Szilagyi?” I asked to distract myself from the scariness of undead abilities. “Three hundred years later, you’re still trying to kill each other.”

That scent of smoke coming from Vlad increased. “The first time I was imprisoned, I was a boy and the Ottomans were my captors. The second time, I was a vampire and my jailer was the king of Hungary, who was mesmerized into imprisoning me by his uncle, Mihaly Szilagyi. My human allies were unable to free me and as my vampire sire was dead, Szilagyi could do with me what he wished without repercussions from the vampire world. He intended to break me and rule Wallachia through me as he ruled Hungary through his nephew, but”—cold smile—“I would not break. Szilagyi would’ve killed me if not for Mencheres. He was Tenoch’s most powerful progeny and declared me to be under his protection despite my protests that I’d rather die than be subject to a filthy Turk, as I considered Mencheres at the time. But since Szilagyi was afraid of Mencheres, he kept me alive. Years later, as a condition of my freedom, I married the king of Hungary’s pregnant cousin and claimed the child as mine. Szilagyi pretended to want my help in overthrowing the Ottomans, so he had the king of Hungary assist me in reclaiming Wallachia’s throne, but he’d secretly allied with the sultan.”

Vlad paused, a savage smile flitting across his face. “When it came time to war, the Church paid Hungary to join me in fighting the Turks. My armies went. Szilagyi convinced Hungary’s army to stay behind, but he never returned the money. Instead, he fabricated tales of my viciousness and spread them far and wide. My people suffered because of his lies and greed, and my reputation had been tarnished so badly that many allies abandoned me. When my brother ambushed me, I allowed my country to believe I’d been killed so that my son could rule. Then he was murdered shortly after he’d begun his reign. Two centuries later, I discovered Szilagyi had sent the assassin, and I trapped him at the Royal Court of Targoviste, where until today, I thought I’d burned him to death.”

I winced. There was bad blood, and then there were centuries old virulent hatred.

“Why would Szilagyi wait so long to come after you?” He clearly wasn’t the forgive-and-forget type.

Another smile that made me think of blood-coated knives instead of good humor. “After I believed him dead, I hunted down and exterminated every member of Szilagyi’s line, plus his friends and political allies. It
would
take centuries for him to build up enough support to mount a successful attack against me. If he came after me alone, he’d be slaughtered.”

Now that Szilagyi had finally made his move, neither he nor Vlad would stop until one of them was
really
dead this time.

“At least he can’t hear my thoughts when I link to him,” I said, trying to look on the bright side of this bleak situation.

Vlad’s gaze swung to me. “How?”

“Bones taught me that playing really annoying songs over and over in my head acted as a barrier against mind reading. I was supposed to use that on you, but then things changed.”

“Remind me to kill Bones next time I see him,” he bit off.

Being tricked by his enemy for so long had obviously pushed Vlad into new heights of rage. I didn’t think the blazing in the hearth was accidental, and he would shred that armrest into sawdust with his increasingly vicious tapping. All of this should have made me head quietly toward the door, but I stayed where I was, mulling these developments.

“Shrapnel, notify the guards to pick up Leila’s family and bring them here,” Vlad said, shocking me.

The massive bald vampire nodded and left. I gaped at Vlad. “My family? Why?”

“Szilagyi asked you to betray me. You refused,” he stated. “His next attempt to turn you to his side will involve taking the ones you love hostage. Hence, bring them here.”

“He can’t come after my family, he doesn’t even know my real name. He keeps calling me Frankie,” I sputtered.

Vlad’s look was jaded. “He’s already begun researching your identity. Even if your voltage meant you never used a credit card, everyone has a paper trail. That’s why I’ve had guards watching your father and sister since the day you arrived.”

“But how?
You
don’t even know my last name, let alone my family’s names!”

“Leila.” No emotion colored his voice. “Marty gave me your full name, your father’s name, your sister’s name, and their locations within ten minutes of my speaking to him.”

His words were like a punch to the stomach. Nausea rose, leaving a vile taste in my mouth. “You tortured it out of him.”

“No, I told him if he didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, I’d ask you next,” was his implacable reply.

I flashed back to Marty’s worried question when I’d first seen him.
You really okay, Frankie?
Vlad had used Marty’s love for me against him, making him believe any reticence on his part would result in me getting the same brutal treatment he had.

I didn’t need my psychic abilities to figure out why Vlad wanted to know all my family’s details, either. They were his insurance against me changing my mind about helping him. He would’ve used them against me just as ruthlessly as he’d used me against Marty. Rage mixed with the bile inside me. No wonder Vlad knew what move Szilagyi would make next. The two of them thought exactly alike.

Vlad would’ve heard every word of my mental accusation, but he said nothing, and his silence was damning confirmation. I got up, walked over to where he sat, and then slapped him across the face as hard as I could. Maximus looked like he was going to have a stroke, but nothing changed in Vlad’s expression except a bright red handprint that quickly faded.

I left the room without looking back, fury stiffening my spine, but my heart feeling like it had shattered within me. Marty had been right after all. The thought haunted me as I climbed the curving stone staircase. Once I’d finally reached my bedroom, I made sure to lock the door behind me.