Blood Therapy (Kismet Knight, Ph.D., Vampire Psychologist) (43 page)

He lifted his head, stared at me with eyes that had gone dark, and collapsed us both onto the floor.

I kept singing, louder and louder, making up words and coughing as I gasped for deeper breaths now that my face was no longer pressed against the hideousness of what passed for his physical body.

He let go of me completely, curled into a fetal position with his head in my lap, and made bizarre, haunting sounds as he tried to sing along.

I didn’t know how long the reprieve would last. My body shook as the realization of how close I’d come to dying slammed into my brain, along with the fact that I’d probably have to keep on singing until Devereux could get away from Dracul’s thugs.

“Call me to you,” the same woman’s voice said.

I stopped singing. “What? Call who?”

“No, do not stop singing. Call me in your mind: Nettie.”

Nettie?

Picking up the song again, I thought,
Nettie, come to me
. What harm could it do? She’d saved me so far.

Coalescing in front of me was … me. Or a woman who looked very much like me, dressed in a long, full-skirted gray dress covered by an apron. She knelt down and said, “My Luke is not to blame. He was sick.” She pointed toward Dracul. “It was that devil who brought this about. I will take him now.”

“What do you mean? How can you take him? Aren’t you a ghost? Can ghosts do that?” Lucifer began to stir as soon as I stopped singing. Panicking, I quickly started up again.

Nettie gave a soft smile. It was weird, looking at my face on another body. “There are many levels of ghosts. You will learn in time. We must go now. I must free his soul.”

His soul? Do vampires really have souls?

“Wait! Why do we look so much alike?”

“I am your ancestor.”

What? Oh. My. God.

She stood and extended her hand toward Lucifer, who was still croaking out very unappealing sounds, and he gasped, then fell silent. A wispy outline of a nice-looking young male—body intact—floated up from the thing lying in my lap and offered his hand to Nettie. They vanished, and immediately, Lucifer’s body began to disintegrate.

Holy fuck. How the hell had that happened? Not that I was complaining.

I scrambled out from under the rotting corpse and glanced at Michael, who was sitting stunned in his chair, his eyes impossibly wide. Looking down at myself covered in slime and gore made my stomach churn. I took some deep breaths and thought for a few seconds about all the ways I could decontaminate myself before I noticed the room was silent. The fighting had stopped. Everyone was staring at me—even the behemoths holding Devereux.

Dracul moved with supernatural speed and stood over me. “What did you do?” Almost naked and dripping blood, he squatted down and studied my face. “How did you make him let go of you, and why did he die?” He poked at the bones and ash on the floor, then brought his narrowed eyes back to me. “He was a vampire. He could not die.”

Since nobody could see Nettie but me, and they probably hadn’t heard me singing to Lucifer, the entire incident must have looked inexplicable and strange—strange even for vampires.

Snake-fast, Dracul dragged me up, pressed my back against his chest, and hooked his arm around my neck. “Looks like I will have the pleasure of draining your woman after all, Devereux. You will die next, of course. In any event, I believe it is even more important that she be eliminated now because she appears to be a powerful witch, and I have never trusted witches.”

Devereux redoubled his efforts to escape, and the vampires holding him had to struggle to keep him restrained. “Do not give up, Kismet. I will find a way.”

I didn’t see how he was going to do that, but I hadn’t expected to survive Lucifer’s feeding frenzy, so I was willing to hope for another miracle.

“It was never my servant Lucifer, you know, Devereux.” Dracul tightened his grip on me, causing me to have difficulty breathing. “He was merely doing as I commanded. He wasn’t smart enough to kill all those people or arrange to work with your offspring Bryce without my help. I enhanced both Bryce’s and Lucifer’s abilities the night they trapped you in the magical circle, and I borrowed some of your own sorcery abilities to use against you.” He laughed. “You know how good I am at borrowing skills. The fools thought their own combined powers overcame you. Instead, it was my clever plan to either enlist you to my cause or get rid of you.”

He lifted my arm and bit down.

I screamed from the pain.

After a few sucks, he dropped my arm. “Just a taste of things to come, my dear. Humans really have only one purpose.”

“Release her, Dracul. We can discuss your plan. Perhaps you can persuade me yet,” Devereux said.

With a wild whoop, Dracul threw me down to the floor and easily pinned me there. I barely had the energy left to fight.

“Excellent try, Devereux. I believe that ship, as they say, has sailed.”

“But, Dragon, why was Lucifer so focused on Kismet? Was that your doing, too?”

Devereux’s trying to keep Dracul talking.
Brilliant man. Dracul loves to brag. But I’m not sure what we’re buying time for.

As expected, Dracul didn’t disappoint. “Oh yes! I expanded Lucifer’s memory of his wife who looked like your mate so he would become more obsessed with her. It was a marvelous coincidence. He’d found the good doctor’s photo in an advertisement for her new vampire counseling practice and was already stalking her. That incredible opportunity fell right into my lap.” He licked my neck where Lucifer had fed. “The addled fool kept forgetting he knew where your woman could be found. Instead, he attacked anyone who vaguely resembled her. He left scores of dead therapists—and humans he mistakenly
thought
were therapists—across the country.” He laughed, exerting more pressure on my lungs with each guffaw. “Of course, I also had assignments for him, like killing the reporter and the vampires holding Olivia’s mate, just to confuse everyone. And sometimes Lucifer would find his beloved, only to switch to another personality and forget why he wanted her. What an entertaining few months it’s been!”

Oh my God!
My mind spun. It was Dracul all along! No wonder Lucifer’s powers appeared extra-supernatural and he seemed to be everywhere. My heart pounded and my stomach muscles contracted. I feared I would lose control of my bladder. And I knew with certainty that Dracul really did intend to kill me.

“Well, as enjoyable as this evening has been, I really need to finish up and move to another location. I fear this one has been compromised. Say good-bye to your playmate, Devereux. You should have cooperated.”

Without further pause, he struck, sinking his fangs into my neck with such fury that I screamed, pushing against him until he gathered my hands into one of his and held me fast. His other hand was fisted in my hair, holding my head off the ground for his dining pleasure. His sucking hurt, as if he took great enjoyment in giving me as much pain as possible. I began to feel light-headed, my vision clouding as I saw Devereux struggling to break free of the iron grips of his captors. He bellowed words in his strange language.

As Dracul drank, my eyes became heavy and my bones dissolved. I’d almost drifted away when the sound of feet pounding up the stairs startled me, and I jerked back to consciousness.

With a grunt, Dracul lifted his face from my neck, blood dripping from his chin. His red eyes blazed. “What the hell?” He unceremoniously dropped my head onto the floor with a thud and leaped to his feet.

I was able to turn my head just enough to see what all the stomping and screaming was about. If I hadn’t recognized Alan’s white T-shirt and his unintentionally spiky hair, I’d have thought I was hallucinating. I gathered all that remained of my energy and managed to use my body weight to flip myself onto my side. The wound on my neck throbbed.

“No!” Dracul howled, his voice sounding more like the demon in
The Exorcist.

A herd of vampires clambered up the stairs and fanned out into the room. They jumped on Dracul’s servants, which freed Devereux to lunge for Dracul.

“What took so long?” Devereux yelled at Alan. “I read in your mind that you were going for help. Didn’t my security receive the command I sent?”

“No,” Alan said, bobbing and weaving to stay out of the way of the hissing and flailing vampires as he pulled me out of the center of the room and back to the corner where Michael was bouncing in his chair, still trying to free himself. Alan propped me up against the wall. I could feel the blood dripping down my chest from the wounds in my neck. “I guess it was part of the magical protection deal: no vampires could pop in and no mental messages could go out. I was going to use my cell, but it was dead, so I had to run from house to house until I could find someone I could badger and convince to let me use their phone. I finally got through to the Crypt and told security to come. They had to enter through the front door. The rest is history.”

Dracul slashed what looked like claws across Devereux’s face. “You have gained nothing bringing them here. None of you will get out alive.”

I figured that was a true statement if you didn’t count Alan and me, and maybe Michael, since the rest were already dead anyway. The jury was still out on the survival chances for us humans.

As Alan, Michael, and I watched, yet more vampires stormed into the room and within minutes, Devereux’s forces had Dracul’s restrained. They waited in a circle around the two master vampires who continued to slash, bite, and jab at each other.

“You have changed, Dragon. When Mina was alive you did not have such rigid ideas about humans. If she had not died—”

Dracul lunged at Devereux again, as he had the first time Mina’s name was mentioned. “I told you not to say her name. She did not
die
. I killed the ungrateful bitch. I offered her immortality, to live forever, with me. I would have given her
everything
. But she turned me down—rejected
me
—for a miserable
human
male. I could not allow her to cast me aside.”

“So that is why you want to exterminate humans? Because of your love for Mina?”

Dracul screamed and pressed his hands to the sides of his head.

He was truly mad.

“I did not love the whore.”

“You lie, Dragon. I was there. I know better.”

The two powerful vampires were so evenly matched, I didn’t see how Devereux could overcome Dracul and end this nightmare.

Then I remembered the unexpected arrival of Lucifer’s Nettie and wondered if I might be able to summon another ghost. What good was it to have my weird abilities if they couldn’t help in an emergency? If I could summon her, maybe Dracul would be distracted, and Devereux would have the edge he needed to win. Of course, I didn’t know what I was going to do about the fact that Dracul probably wouldn’t be able to see her.

I repeated, over and over in my mind,
Mina Harker, come to me. Mina Harker, come to me. …

A form shimmered in front of me: a woman with brown hair pulled back in a bun wearing a floor-length black dress with a full skirt and a high neckline. She stared at me with wide green eyes as if she didn’t know what to make of her arrival.

Shit! It worked!

“Are you Mina Harker?” Just like all the times I’d used the Ouija board, I never knew for sure who would show up.

“Yes. Where am I?” Her voice quivered.

“Who are you talking to?” Alan asked.

Now that I had her here, I didn’t know what to say to her. Dracul
had
killed her, after all, and now I was asking her to try to attract his attention again. I doubted if she’d be receptive to the idea. But I had to convince her to help. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have summoned you if it hadn’t been an emergency.” I braced myself for a negative reaction. “Dracul is here.”

Instead of the fearful or angry outburst I expected, she lit up with joy. “Where is he?”

I pointed behind her.

She turned and ran to him, saying his name.

Dracul paused for a second in battle, just long enough to give Devereux the opportunity to slam in a head-cracking kick. “Who called my name?”

Damn. Could he hear her? That was more than I’d hoped for.

“Mina?” I wheezed and crumpled farther down the wall. Taking as deep a breath as I could, I struggled to sit up straighter, trying to retain the little bit of strength I still had. “Can you let him see you?”

“Yes.”

She stepped between the two fighters, and Dracul’s eyes went wide. “Mina!”

In that moment, Devereux reached through the apparition, knifed his fingers into Dracul’s chest, and pulled out his heart, which he crushed in his hand. Then he reached over, twisted off the famous vampire’s head, and threw it against the wall, where it exploded, sending blood and brain matter oozing onto the floor. The rest of the Prince of Darkness’s body crumbled into bone and ash.

Everything went deathly still. In the silence that followed, I saw Dracul’s wispy soul form take shape as Mina grasped his hand. She paused and turned to me long enough to smile before they disappeared.

Suddenly Devereux was there. He knelt down next to me, leaned over, and laved the painful place on my neck to stop the bleeding. “You need blood, but you will be all right. I will take you home now. It is all over.”

He lifted me into his arms. My head flopped against his shoulder, my neck muscles no longer reporting for duty.

“Transport Alan and Olivia to the Crypt,” Devereux said to a couple of the waiting vampires, and they untied Olivia, lifted her from the bed, then carried her out of the bordello bedroom. Alan followed them.

“Free him.” Devereux pointed to Michael, and another vampire hurried over and tore away the tape.

Michael jumped up from the chair, ripped the tape off his mouth, and fell at Devereux’s feet. “Oh my God—what a horrible experience! Master—please take me with you. Don’t leave me here!”

“Come.” Devereux tugged Michael to his feet and drew him close. I must have shut my eyes because the next thing I knew, we were in Devereux’s private rooms under the Crypt.