The Forbidden Prince (Dracula's Bloodline Book 5) Read online

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  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction,

  the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to real persons or events is

  coincidental.

  Copyright April 2019 – Ana Calin

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Forbidden Prince (Dracula's Bloodline, #5)

  CHAPTER I – The Love Potion

  CHAPTER II - Old Enemies

  CHAPTER III – Lady and the Knight

  CHAPTER IV – The Secret

  CHAPTER V – Saving Isolde

  CHAPTER VI – Taking Her

  CHAPTER VII—The Plan

  CHAPTER VIII – The Mission

  CHAPTER IX – Runaway Lovers

  CHAPTER X – Meeting the Devil

  CHAPTER XI – May the Best Man Win

  CHAPTER XII – A Fight to the Death

  EPILOGUE – Happily Ever After

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Parting the curtains of a nearby house with his knotty fingers, The Wicked grins. He watches the old witch’s hut. He knows she’s waiting for DeKnight, vampire prince of blades and master assassin, to make his appearance.

  This is it. This will bring Dracula down and, with him, all of the vampire kind. A whole year has passed since The Wicked met his key person at the hotel in Bucharest, a whole year to set everything up, but it was well worth the wait. This time, his plan is flawless.

  CHAPTER I – The Love Potion

  Tristan

  TWIGS AND LEAVES CRUNCH under my boots as I head to the old witch’s hut in the woods.

  Her note said she awaited me tonight in great secrecy. That there was something I had to assess before Lord Dracula learned of it. I agreed. After all, I am his second in command, or, better said, his left hand. I usually deal with everything before it gets to him.

  The wooden door opens to an interior that reminds me of the Grimm fairy tale with the gingerbread house. That fairy tale, like vampires and shifters, has its roots in reality. The witch in that story was a cannibal witch, a nasty species that preceded necromancers. But Magda is a white sorceress. Steam and a strong flowery smell lead me to the kitchen, where I find her.

  The old woman’s silver hair is damp as she stirs hot liquid in a cauldron.

  “It’s a love potion,” she says, glancing at me. Her full cheeks are red from the effort, her sleeves rolled up.

  I walk closer, looking into the cauldron as I try to figure out by the smell what plants she’s using. The scent is pleasant, like roses and lilac, the heat steaming my face.

  “So it’s true. Women still use these.”

  “Only women with a witchy streak,” Madam Magda replies, the skin on her old forearm creasing from the effort of stirring.

  I grab the ladle from her hand. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you.”

  She drops into a chair, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist.

  “Too bad witch powers don’t come with extreme muscle strength, like yours.” She smiles. “Or the heartbreaking beauty of a prince. Or eternal youth.”

  I look down at her cookie-baking granny face. “Young or not, you can enslave any man’s heart with a love potion. That should count for something.”

  She laughs, the lighthearted humor reaching her eyes.

  “The potion isn’t for myself, as you must have imagined from the start.”

  I shrug, and keep stirring. “I’m not judging, Madam Magda. It’s not my place. How long does this have to brew?”

  She glances at the clock on the wall. “About another twenty minutes.”

  She relaxes back in her chair, studying me. “Tristan DeKnight, Dracula’s left hand. The cold assassin prince. The man who left his own order of the assassins to join the King of Vampires. I wonder what feelings drove you to make that decision.” She glances at my arms and hips, knowing I have blades strapped to them under the black suit. “Because some people say you don’t have any feelings. They say you can cut through living flesh and remain cold as an iceberg, even though for blade assassins killing is a very personal experience. How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t explain it at all.”

  She ponders for a few moments, then she gets up heavily and heads to the cupboard. “May I ask then, when was the last time you felt any emotion intensely, Master DeKnight?”

  “Is my ability to feel in any way relevant for the reason you asked me here?”

  Madam Magda glances at me, taking cookies and teacups out of the cupboard. “It is, because you’re stirring my love potion. Your energy flows into it while you’re at it, so I’m trying to understand you. Are you truly cold, or are you only very controlled?”

  I look down at the brew, noticing it’s becoming pasty. “After centuries of living as a vampire, many of us conclude that feelings are overrated. Less important than most people make them. Anyway, my strongest trigger has always been abuse of the innocent, that pokes at my sense of duty. I can get emotional about that, for example.”

  “So you see yourself as a protector of the innocent. But Lord Dracula wasn’t exactly innocent when he turned you into a vampire. He was vile. Yet you gave him your loyalty.”

  “Many misunderstand him. Lord Dracula may be known as one of the greatest villains in both history and myth, but he was never beastly with the weak. Even the humans he attacked and sucked dry, they were oppressors, tyrants, abusers.”

  “Oh yes? And what was vile about Ruxandra when he first decided to take her blood?”

  “In case Lady Rux never told you, when he first tried to take her blood he transformed into mist and gave her great pleasure. He was going to be gentle with her.”

  “Ah, yes, he would have gently taken her life.”

  “Madam Magda, you better have this discussion with Lady Rux, or Lord Dracula himself. All I can assure you of is that he never hurt an innocent person, not once in the two centuries I’ve been by his side, as his second in command.”

  “No, don’t get me wrong, Master DeKnight,” Magda says as she walks over, arranging small ornate plates on the table. “I’m way over this story, Lord Dracula and I have made peace, and I now see him in the best light. I wasn’t trying to understand Lord Dracula through this conversation, but you.” She wipes her old hands on her apron, and gives me a wise smile. “You’re the most mysterious of Dracula’s vampires, and now that I got you here, I thought I’d take the chance to know you better.” She motions with her hand to the potion. “Especially if you’re going to accept and do me the little favor I have to ask of you.”

  “And what is that little favor?”

  She picks wet rose petals from a chalice on the counter, and crushes them over the potion with expert fingers until they turn dark. I scoop some of the pasty liquid with the ladle, then tilt it, letting the potion drip back into the cauldron as I examine it.

  “I’m going to give you a name, Master DeKnight, the name of the person who commissioned this potion. But before I do, you have to swear you’ll keep it secret no matter what.”

  “I am the person Lord Dracula trusts most, after his wife and his brother,” I remind her. “I don’t usually keep things from him, un
less they’re truly unimportant, and it doesn’t make sense to bother him with them—or to bother myself. If I think the person’s name isn’t vital for Lord Dracula’s business, I’ll forget it as soon as you tell me.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t do.” She invites me to cookies and tea as she takes a seat across the table.

  I ignore the invitation, and keep stirring the brew. It goes from pasty to pastier. “Shouldn’t we add some more water or something to liquefy it?”

  “No. Just keep stirring until it decreases. But you can have a cookie, you know, or drink some tea while you’re slaving away at it,” she says warmly.

  “Like you said, I’m strong. I don’t feel any strain.” My eyes lock with hers for just a moment, enough to convey that I won’t be swayed. “Besides, I’m not here to get comfortable. I’d like to know why you summoned me, otherwise I’ll be on my way, if you don’t mind. I’m the head of Lord Dracula’s security, I can’t be gone for too long.”

  “Well, Prince Radek is visiting. He could take over security while you’re on this mission.”

  “This is the last time I’m asking you—what is the mission? Tell me, or, with all due respect, I’ll be out that door.”

  She breathes in and out, as if settling for a deal that’s less than what she wanted. “You remember Isolde Jochs, yes? Juliet’s sister?”

  I frown, singling out the memory of a blonde girl at Radek’s official wedding to Juliet three years ago, and then three days later at Lord Dracula’s wedding to Lady Rux.

  “I remember her from the weddings, but there were a lot of people present, and I was charged with security. I didn’t dwell on any particular person.”

  “Still, she was an important guest. The bride’s sister at the first wedding, and the bride’s adoptive aunt three days later. I’m sure you had her checked. You must remember something about her.”

  I go through the information in my head, disinterested. “Half American half German, born and raised in Berlin. She set up her own nursing home for the elderly in Berlin, but after the weddings three years ago she decided to set one up in Romania, because she felt people here needed it more.”

  Madam Magda keeps staring at me when I stop talking.

  “That’s it, you don’t know anything personal about her?”

  “I know that she was single at the time. Her closest friend and biggest influence was Lazarus, a vampire, who was on our side. I didn’t need to look deeper into her private life, Lazarus had that covered.”

  Magda sets her tea down on the table. “Yes, well, Isolde Jochs is no longer single. She got married a year ago.”

  I stop stirring, my eyes becoming slits.

  “In secret?”

  “Yes. And I’ll ask you to keep this information to yourself for the time being. Otherwise Isolde runs great risk. By the time her sister, brother-in-law, or even Lord Dracula gets to do anything to help her, she’ll be dead.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me start at the beginning then. The girl’s name is no longer Isolde Jochs, but Isolde Serpaint.”

  Ice rolls all over my body.

  “She married a serpent shifter,” I breathe in astonishment. “What the hell was she thinking? Serpent shifters are the vampires’ greatest enemies.”

  Madam Magda motions with her chin to the cauldron, reminding me to stir. I resume the movement of my arm, gripping tightly to the hot rim of the cauldron with the other hand. The heat from the cauldron has no effect on my vampire skin. The steam damps my face and hair, the scent of boiled roses now very strong.

  “She didn’t do it of her own accord,” Magda says. “The shifter forced her.”

  “How could anyone have forced her into anything? Come on, she had the Prince of Midnight and the Prince of Blood to protect her. Even her niece is a Mistress of Pain, don’t tell me—”

  Magda puts up her hand to temper me down. The tone of my voice and my face rarely ever change to express anger, but my eyes do tend to turn electric.

  “Mark Serpaint approached Isolde a year ago, and they were married within a few weeks. That’s what Isolde told me when she came in great secrecy to see me. She was scared, terrified. She didn’t have much time for details, she just told me only the love potion can get her out of this marriage.”

  “Forgive me, but when women commission love potions, it usually means that they want into a relationship, not out of it. Besides, when a serpent shifter takes a mate, he imprints on her. She’ll be his forever, there’s no way out of the union besides his or her death.”

  “What she cares about is that he doesn’t get intimate with her again, Master DeKnight. She’s terrified of sex with him.”

  I huff. “But when she accepted his proposal—”

  “I told you, there never was a proposal, there was only blackmail. He used something to force her, and I need you to find out what, because Isolde was too terrified to tell me. Her visit left me worried to death. Plus that—”

  She stops abruptly, as if she’s not sure whether to tell me the rest or not.

  “Don’t stop now,” I nudge. “If you want me to take on this mission, you can’t hold anything back.”

  She picks up her tea and sips, setting it down slowly on the table afterwards.

  “Isolde is a normal human, Master DeKnight, she doesn’t have the slightest chance of protecting herself against a supernatural. She asked to remain in the semi-shadow when she came to see me, pleading that I don’t turn on the lights.” Her eyes find mine. “I’m afraid he did terrible things to her.”

  Only our breath and the bubbles in the cauldron fill the silence for long moments. There’s no doubt in my head I need to take on this mission. Whatever secret the serpent is using to manipulate Isolde could become dangerous for the vampires. Not to mention that, as a relative of Lord Dracula, she is part of the vampire royal family, and I have to protect her.

  “And how exactly is the love potion supposed to keep the serpent from taking her again?”

  “Isolde wants her husband to fall for his serpent assistant. She was hoping they would be having an affair as it is, but they’re not. She wants his focus to shift from her to this woman, which is why this potion will make him extra passionate. After he drinks from it, he won’t be able to even breathe without that woman anymore, and he won’t touch Isolde again.” She looks gravely into my eyes. “Will you do it?”

  This is more serious than I thought. I nod.

  “Very well, then.” She gets up heavily, and makes to pick up the cauldron.

  I pick it up instead. “Where do you need it?”

  “To that sieve over there.”

  She has me sieve away most of the substance, keeping only the thickest essence from the bottom of the cauldron. She holds the vial-sized, pretty bottle in the light, frowning her thin silver eyebrows at it.

  “So much work for such a little amount,” I note.

  “Tell Isolde to be very careful,” Madam Magda says as she screws a small golden cap onto the bottle’s throttle. “No one else but her husband and his assistant can taste the smallest drop of this potion. It is very powerful, and it will make the people involved fall in love with each other madly, desperately, and irreversibly. If one falls for the wrong person, there’s no turning back. This whole affair could become deadly.”

  Tristan

  I TRAVEL DOWN TO THE South, to a coast town by the Black Sea that I never liked. There’s something deadly about this place. There are so many deaths by casualty or disease that I wonder how come I’m the only one to notice it. It’s as if the town were cursed. The sun bathes it in a pale, sickly light, crooks driving around in roaring Jaguars and Porsches, while the normal folk walk around haggard and hunched. I might call this town City of the Dying from now on.

  I slink down the streets, expertly avoiding the sunlight. I’ve been doing this for centuries, and I’m in as good as no danger at all, but then again, I didn’t like daytime as a human either. As an assassin, I always preferred
the dark.

  There’s the pub where Isolde asked me to meet her. She whispered the name fast on the phone, her breath hitting the mike. I could tell she was scared as hell. I tracked down her caller ID despite the restricted number shield, just in case. She’s a member of the vampire royal family, even though she’s not a vampire, and I have to protect her, no matter the circumstances, and no matter what I think of her.

  I enter the dingy place, called conveniently The Wreck. Crooks sit at tables in the semi-dark, eating lunch. Hunched over the tables towards each other, suspicious eyes darting around to ensure secrecy, they must be planning future contraband or pimping.

  They stare at me with aggressive faces as I take the table in the darkest corner, right by the door. I’m here an hour early to let time pass, allow the patrons to forget my presence before Isolde comes. I’m close enough to the door to take her hand and pull her to the table in the corner before anyone gets to see her.

  The crooks soon look away, but they keep talking about me for a while. They think they’re being discreet, of course, merely pointing to me with their eyes, but I can see their inflating chests, hands resting on their knees, knees pointed outwards, ready to attack and show who is boss.

  I order chicken wings to make it look like I’m actually having lunch, and keep to myself until a woman walks in. The first thing appearing in my field of vision is her perky backside, a long pencil skirt hugging it. I look up a long straight back to a head with a kerchief over it.

  Just as the crooks turn their heads to look at her, too, I grab her hand, making her turn.

  Blue melancholy eyes meet mine, curved eyelashes heavy with mascara moving up and down. She has a face so sweet and doll-like one could get diabetes just by looking at it.

  “You better sit down fast, if you don’t want anyone to notice you.”

  She glances around, the crooks’ eyes now finding her. I have to pull her hand, forcing her to drop into the chair across from me, her back to the crooks. Then the scent of her blood hits my senses—lily of the valley, but natural. This is no perfume, it’s the scent of her flesh, and it’s delicious. My throat goes dry.