Now, yes, I needed to verify if I was a magic-born descendant of the ancient Ani-kutani, but I also felt ashamed that I had never explored my Cherokee roots before. My pale blue eyes and light skin caused most people to peg me as all Caucasian, but I wasn’t, and I had more than my poker-straight, thick black hair to show for it. A lot more, if the demon was right and all my incredible abilities were the direct result of my Cherokee heritage, too.
That’s why, although Vlad grumbled because it cost us the entire afternoon while we waited for her to fly in, I wasn’t going to be the only Dalton who went to the Eastern Band of Cherokees looking for answers. My sister’s heritage was here, too, and not just the possible trueborn-witch, descendant-of-the-Ani-kutani one.
“What is it with you and meeting in casinos?” were Gretchen’s first words when she walked into our room. Despite her long flight and the very early morning hour, my sister’s makeup was flawless and her hair still held artificial waves that made it look even fuller.
“This was the safest option,” I told her. “There’s so many people going in and out, we’re just more faces in a crowd.”
Gretchen looked around our pretty, two-room suite with mild disdain. “For the record, I like the villas at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas much more than this place.”
I rolled my eyes as I hugged her. “You hate being in Vlad’s version of protective custody, but you’ve obviously become accustomed to his fancy standards of living, huh?”
“Since I’m an inmate, at least the prisons should be nice,” she replied tartly. But she held on a few seconds longer than she usually did, even with getting zapped by my electricity. Her snarkiness was just for show, as usual. She’d missed me. She just didn’t know how to tell me that.
So I went first. “I’m so glad to see you,” I said when we finally let go. “I missed you.”
“You did?” she said with such surprise that it hurt. Had I really been that bad of a sister?
Yes, my inner voice suddenly roared. You’re an awful sister! You let Gretchen find you half dead in a tub full of blood from a suicide attempt when you were sixteen, and that’s just for starters!
I clenched my jaw hard enough to hear cartilage snap. I’d had that vocal, evil inner critic ever since I’d woken up from my accident. Lately, it had been a lot more silent, but it wasn’t totally gone. Maybe it never would be.
I can’t have more than one voice in my head at a time, I snapped back at it. Since I need to hear Mircea if he ever shows up again, YOU need to shut it! Then, mild version of schizophrenia back under control, I returned to Gretchen.
“Of course I missed you. If things weren’t still so crazy dangerous, we’d be seeing a lot more of each other.”
Her pretty features scrunched into a scowl, making her look younger than her twenty-three years. “Right, you’re still at war. Guess I should’ve known that your husband wouldn’t pick this place over his castle for a victory celebration. Can’t you hurry things along? I’d like to live my own life again sometime this century.” Then, with only slightly less of a scowl, Gretchen turned to Vlad. “Speaking of that, hiya, Drac-in-law.”
“Don’t call him that!” I said with a gasp.
“What?” she said in exasperation. “It’s not like ‘Drac’ is the other word. It’s just a nickname.”
“One you will never use again,” Vlad said in a deceptively smooth voice.
A snicker came from the suite next to ours. It was quiet at this predawn hour, with most of the hotel’s guests finally asleep in their rooms. That made it easier for a vampire to eavesdrop, if one wasn’t polite enough to mind his own business.
“Love it!” Ian called out. “Now I must meet the little chippie who called you Drac to your face.”
“Don’t,” I said loudly, but I wasn’t surprised when Ian appeared in our suite moments later.
“Hallo,” he said in a purr, looking Gretchen up and down in a way that raised my hackles. “What’s your name, sweeting?”
“Her name is No,” I said at once.
Gretchen stared at Ian, her mouth opening and closing while her blue eyes widened into almost comical proportions. Oh right. Ian’s looks were dazzling. Funny how easy it was for me to forget that with his annoying personality.
“Hiiiiii,” Gretchen finally breathed. “Don’t listen to my sister. For you, my name is Hell Yes.”
“Gretchen!” I snapped. “This guy is probably a petri dish for as-yet-to-be-discovered STDs.”
“Am not,” Ian replied, taking Gretchen’s hand and kissing it, which made her giggle uncontrollably. “I’m a vampire, so diseases can’t survive in me.”
“Ian.” Vlad sent out his aura in a concentrated burst that made Ian recoil as if he’d been struck. “No,” Vlad finished.
Gretchen turned around and glared at Vlad. He glared back, and he had over six centuries of battle-tested, don’t-even-think-about-it in his gaze. Very quickly, she dropped hers.
With a moue of disappointment, Ian released Gretchen’s hand. “Just as well, poppet. I eat sweet little mortals like you for breakfast, and I do mean that literally.”
Gretchen’s eyes widened again. Ian flashed a wicked smile at her, then the bedroom door opened once more and Marty bustled in, carrying so many suitcases piled on top of each other that they almost concealed his four-foot frame.
“Could you have packed any more clothes, Gretchen?” Marty grumbled, giving me an apologetic look as he dropped them onto the floor. “These bags are why she beat me to your hotel room.”
I bent at once to give Marty a hug, grinning as he squeezed me back hard enough to force an ooof from me. “Missed you, kid,” he murmured when he let me go.
I’d barely finished telling Marty I had missed him, too, when Ian said, “And who is this handsome lad?” in the same purring tone he’d used with Gretchen.
“Also someone you’re not getting lucky with,” I replied tartly. “Marty is my best friend, and he’s straight.”
Ian gave me an aggravated look. “Can’t shag your sister, can’t shag your friend, can’t shag you, can’t shag Vlad. If I wanted to be this sexless and miserable, I’d get married.”
“You’re not here for your own entertainment,” Vlad said in a curt tone.
Ian’s mouth curled down. “And well I know it. Damn Mencheres, forcing a promise from me that I can’t renege on.”
“Yeah, it’s truly tragic to have to honor your word,” I said, fighting another eye roll. “Cheer up, Ian,” I continued. “All we have on the agenda this afternoon is a trip to the Qualla Boundary. We shouldn’t need your magical expertise there, so you can stay here and find some poor soul to get nasty with.”
“If only,” Ian said with feeling. “But I have to—”
“That’s enough.”
The warning in Vlad’s voice startled me. “What’s going on?” I asked in a sharp tone.
“You dragged me out here for a field trip into our Cherokee past,” Gretchen said, sounding impatient. “I know it’s almost dawn and you’re still dealing with new vampire sunrise disease, but you can’t have forgotten that.”
I ignored her because I hadn’t been talking to Gretchen. Everyone else here knew that, especially the man I’d married.
“Vlad,” I said, drawing his name out for emphasis.
All at once, the air vibrated with barely contained energy. Those invisible pulses whipped against my skin like the sting of sand during a storm at the beach.
“I’m going away for a short time.” Vlad’s cool tone was so at odds with what I was feeling from his aura. Where was he going, and why wasn’t I going with him?
Then the answer hit me with the impact of a gunshot wound.
“No,” I whispered. Then louder, “No. You can’t. Samir is your friend. You can’t kill him, we’ll find another way!”
“Leila.” Vlad’s voice was utterly dispassionate. “Don’t bother arguing. It’s as good as done.”
Chapter 19
Before Vlad had
finished speaking, Marty and Ian rushed me. I was locked inside the grips of the two strong vampires before I could even get my gloves off.
“What did you say?” Gretchen demanded shrilly. “You’re going to kill Samir? Why?”
Vlad’s eyes lit up with green as he turned to Gretchen. “Be quiet. Sit down.”
Gretchen sat right on the floor without another word. I continued to struggle, but Marty had my legs trapped in a bear hug and Ian had my upper body mostly immobilized. Other emotions began to pour into my fury at being blindsided this way. The PTSD I’d been battling for months returned, and each new, futile struggle only fueled my irrational panic. Still, I struggled harder when Vlad walked to the door.
“Don’t do this, Vlad, please!”
He paused and looked at me. His eyes had bled back to their normal burnished color, and for a moment, I glimpsed profound sadness in them. Then they hardened like ice-encrusted copper. “I must.”
He left without another word. Ian slapped a hand over my mouth when I yelled after him, and I bit down until blood ran.
“Wrong strategy,” Ian muttered. “I enjoy pain, so between biting me and the deliciously agonizing bolts of electricity your whole body is giving off, you’re making my entire morning.”
I stopped biting him. From the disappointed noise he made, he hadn’t been kidding. He also removed his hand from my mouth slowly, as if giving me the chance to bite him again. Great, I hadn’t stopped Vlad from leaving, so all my struggles had succeeding in doing was panicking me, making Ian happy, and hurting Marty. I was furious with them for the surprise ambush, but I didn’t want to truly hurt them.
Plus, if my voltage got too out of control, I might inadvertently kill one of them.
“Let me go,” I said, trying to power myself down so I no longer shot dangerous electricity out of every pore.
“Not yet,” Ian answered grimly. “Need a little help in here holding her,” he called out in a louder voice.
Moments later, I heard another metallic key card being used on our hotel room door. Good, Vlad had come back. He might think the matter was settled and Samir was as good as dead, but I hadn’t begun to give up this fight—
It wasn’t Vlad. Instead, a very tall, very blond vampire filled the doorframe. For a moment, all I did was stare, my emotions swinging like a pendulum.
I hadn’t seen Maximus since we killed Szilagyi and met Mircea in that underground, ancient Turkish prison. Maximus had saved our lives that day from a deadly self-destruct sequence that Szilagyi had set off, just like he’d saved my life before that from Szilagyi’s horrible napalm attack on Vlad’s castle. Those and many other brave deeds had more than made up for Maximus’s brief disloyalty to Vlad over me, and I considered him to be a very dear friend.
But . . .
I looked at Maximus, and a cold, creeping fear swept over me that was as irrational as it was unfair. It wasn’t Maximus’s fault that Szilagyi had treated me so brutally when I’d been his captive. Maximus had saved me from even worse torture while pretending to be Szilagyi’s ally, and I wouldn’t have been able to psychically transmit my location to Vlad if not for Maximus. Yet just looking at him made me feel a double onset of the same post-traumatic stress disorder I’d fought so hard to overcome, and when he came over to help hold me as Ian had requested, a flood of memories came back, trapping me in the same anxiety I’d felt last time I had been forcibly restrained.
The circle of men around me suddenly changed into the gray rock of an underground cell. Then their hands changed into metal clamps that bit into my wrists, arms, legs, and ankles. That wasn’t the worst part. Once again, I saw a cruel, platinum-haired vampire holding a curved knife with a partial loop on the handle. Szilagyi’s hired torturer smiled as he came nearer. I twisted until blood ran from every clamp restraining me, but I couldn’t get away . . .
Random snatches of dialog broke into the nightmare that held me in its merciless grip. They were faint compared to the echo of my own screams and the horrible memory of my flesh being sliced and ripped from my body, but I still heard them.
“Something’s wrong.”
“There goes the power.”
“Leila? Kid, you gotta stop that!”
“Where’s a bloody fire master when you need one?”
“Try letting her go, see if that helps.”
“No, it’s only getting worse.”
“She’s drawing in too much electricity!”
“Stand back, I’ll handle this. I said, stand back!”
Color suddenly exploded in my mind, shattering the memory and hurtling me into the present. I fell forward only to pull away with a gasp of pain. What had I just burned myself on?
The carpet, I realized. It was still smoldering despite the sprinklers in the hotel room shooting water in every direction. I shook my head, feeling as if I were waking up from a particularly bad hangover, then looked around in shock.
The power in the room was off, smoke and sprinkler water clogged the air, the carpet was burned in multiple places, and the ceiling looked as if a kid had set off fireworks that scorched their way half through it to the floor above us. Ian, Maximus, and Marty were all sopping wet, and their clothes had dozens of tiny burn holes in them.
And I didn’t know how any of this has happened.
“Where’s Gretchen?” I said, filled with a different kind of panic when I didn’t see her anywhere.
“She’s on the first floor waiting by the front desk,” Marty replied, tapping the side of his eye for emphasis. “I used these, so she won’t go anywhere else.”
I gestured at the destruction around us. “And, um . . . I’m guessing I’m somehow responsible for this?” I didn’t remember doing it, but what other explanation was there?
“Too bloody right,” Ian said instantly. “You started shooting electricity from your body as if you’d transformed into a living lightning bolt. Burned the shite out of us, the carpet, and the ceiling, and then you got truly destructive—”
“That’s enough,” Marty said curtly.
“Hardly,” Ian countered. “If she doesn’t know what she’s capable of, she can’t begin to control it. As I was saying, then you upped your electricity by siphoning more voltage from the power outlets. You didn’t even need to touch them—the currents streamed out and fed into you as if summoned. You kept doing that until you’d short-circuited the whole bloody hotel. After that, you were so amped up, no one could touch you without catching fire. Thought you were about to self-detonate and blow us all to hell, so I threw a reality spell at you. Thankfully, it snapped you out of whatever crazy trance you were in.”
I couldn’t begin to process what I was hearing. Yes, I’d siphoned electricity before, but only when I was touching a power outlet. Plus, it had only amped up my right hand, not my entire body. Had my abilities grown to where my hand wasn’t my only deadly weapon anymore? To hear Ian tell it, yes.
I wasn’t ready to deal with the ramifications of that, so I started with the last bit. “A reality spell? That’s an actual thing?”
Ian huffed. “Yes, and it’s something they should regularly cast in schools, but the vampire world isn’t the only place where magic is forbidden.”
Sprinkler water continued to soak the three of us. I ran a hand through my sopping hair to push it out of my face.
“Kid?” Marty said in a hesitant way. “You okay?”
I couldn’t stop my disbelieving laugh. “You mean aside from my husband running off to murder his good friend in order to save me? Or are you talking about my newfound ability to go nuclear on an electrical level if a bad case of PTSD sets in?”
“Both,” Marty said cautiously.
The sun had just come up; I could feel it in the sudden exhaustion that swept over me. But I sank to my knees from more than new-vampire-at-dawn weariness. Despite having enough power to short-circuit an entire hotel, I was helpless when it came to saving Vlad from doing something he would forever regret.
“I’m not n
early okay,” I mumbled.
“You need to be.” Maximus’s deep voice jerked my attention back to him. He stared at me, dark gray gaze penetrating. “I’m sorry my presence and this situation triggered such an episode, but you have to rise above the worst of your memories because we don’t have much time.”
“For what?” I asked, unable to stop the bitterness that crept into my tone. Vlad was probably on his private jet already, flying toward an innocent man who had no idea that the prince he’d served for almost five hundred years was coming to kill him. If this was tearing me up inside, it had to be killing Vlad. But he’d still do it because of me.
Maximus had once warned me that everything Vlad loved, he destroyed. If you asked me, Maximus had had it wrong. Before this was over, I might end up destroying Vlad.
“To stop whatever it is that Mircea’s captors are truly after,” Maximus said, his soft voice managing to land with the weight of a thousand bricks. “In blackmail, your first demand is usually a test. Once you know you can get the person to comply, you move forward with what you really want. If something as brutal as killing Samir is Vlad’s compliance test, you don’t want to find out what they’ll demand once they know they have Vlad the Impaler as their willing instrument.”
“Not willing,” I said instantly. “Forced.”
More guilt mixed with the stress, anger, and awful old memories that still simmered inside me. If not for me, Vlad could tell whoever this was to fuck off. Instead, he was about to betray not only a dear friend, but also his entire way of life. Vlad might be brutal to others, but he did whatever was necessary to keep his people safe. Everyone knew that. His line and his reputation had been built on it.
“I understand why you had a meltdown,” Maximus said in that same soft tone. “Becoming a vampire doesn’t mean you have superhuman emotional strength. Only superhuman physical strength, and sometimes, that isn’t the real power. But you are strong, Leila. And you’re right, Vlad is being forced. That’s why we need to find out everything we can about this supposed magic heritage of yours so we can get one step closer to freeing both of you.”