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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 2019 – Ana Calin

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Prince of the Damned (Dracula's Bloodline, #4)

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  Immune to silver and sunlight, Vlad Dracula is now invincible. So how do you destroy him?

  The Wicked grins dangerously from under his hood, his eyes on the Bran Castle in the night, its lights low and peaceful. Even the forest around the castle smells of Happily Ever After. But the time for revenge has come, and The Wicked has a plan. Vlad Dracula will fall.

  CHAPTER I

  Lord Dracula

  I can’t get enough of this picture. Rux lying in our bed, asleep, her naked body wrapped in the satin sheets, her shiny black hair spread over the pillow. Moonlight shines through the gothic window, caressing the full shape of her breasts and hips. I can’t keep my hands from doing the same under the satin, her thighs filling my palms.

  I bend over her, kissing her lips gently, but I have to pull back fast. The scent of her blood, her pulsing jugular, it’s harder to resist every day.

  I throw off the satin cover and flash naked to the window, pushing it open, and breathing in the spring night air, trying to still my thirst.

  “Lover,” Rux whispers behind me. I close my eyes tightly—I still love the sound of that word from her mouth, even two years after our wedding. But I don’t trust myself to surrender to passion in this state, I might hurt her.

  “Go back to sleep, Rux.”

  “Not without my husband by my side.”

  “Please.” I glance at her over my shoulder, forcing a smile. “You need to rest, I don’t. Just relax, I’ll be back with you soon.”

  But she gets out of bed, the wooden floor creaking lightly under her feet as she walks over. The spring breeze flares the white curtains. I’d love to turn around and see what the touch of cool air is doing to her snow-white skin, but I hold back. The sight of her would be too hard to bear right now, the need for blood paired with the yearning for her body could overwhelm me, making me lose my head. I white knuckle the lower part of the window frame, leaning a bit outside, looking down the tower into the inner courtyard.

  Rux’s small hand touches the scars on my back, making me stiffen.

  “You’ve been aloof for weeks,” she says, her voice sweet. “Is it something I’ve done?”

  “No. No, it’s just....” Damn it. I’m so happy with her, why can’t it be enough? Why does this damn thirst have to fuck with me like this?

  Her hand slips downward, caressing my hip, and sliding to my already hard manhood, wrapping around it. She sighs, her breath touching my back, sending thrills through my skin. But it also intensifies the red hotness in my throat.

  “Rux, no.” My voice comes out thick as I push her hand away and move to the vanity table, picking up my pants from the back of her chair.

  “What is happening Vlad?” she demands, her palms slapping her thighs. I look at her again, a vision of femininity in the moonlight. Saliva pools in my mouth when my eyes fall to those large breasts, contrasting with her small waist and wide hips. My jaw clenches as I pull my pants on, struggling with the need to devour her right now.

  “Is it—” She pauses and looks down with her hands on her hips, her hair falling in black spirals down to her waist. “Is it another woman?”

  “Another woman,” I breathe in shock. “Another woman? Ruxandra, I hadn’t wanted a woman in ages until I met you, what makes you think it would happen now, after I became your husband?”

  “I don’t know, Vlad, probably the fact that you’re not fucking me anymore? I mean—” Her cheeks turn red with repressed fury. “It happens so rarely. Look at you.” She motions to my manhood, which is obviously engorged, even through my pants. “You want to, but you keep away, almost as if you’re saving yourself for someone else.”

  I’m trying to save you from me, I snarl inside my head, but I swallow down the words.

  “It’s the thirst, Rux,” I say low, approaching her, with only my pants on and my torso naked. She eyes me like she could eat me alive, which is understandable, considering the little amount of sex we’ve had these past few months. We were like sex addicts before the thirst became unbearable.

  “It’s worse by the day,” I admit, taking her hands in mine. “You know that sensation when you have a craving for something, but you don’t know for what, and you can’t stop the craving because of that?”

  She looks up into my face with those big, ink-black eyes that give most humans the chills, but I find so sexy.

  “That’s how I’ve been feeling lately, and it’s not getting any better. I’m afraid if we make love, I’ll lose my mind and bite you.”

  “Then do it,” she whispers, rising on the tips of her toes and inviting me for a kiss. I can’t resist and bend my head, but the moment my mouth touches hers my entire body flexes with need, both good and bad. I want her like crazy, her body as much as her blood.

  “Rux, please.” I pull away, turning my back to her and heading to the wardrobe. “I wouldn’t be able to stop, and it can still kill you.”

  “You did it once, and look at me—I’m still alive.”

  “That was different, and you know it. Much different.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says after a pause, trying to hide the annoyance in her voice. “You pay private clinics all over the world for blood, people sell it to you, you’re not starving. Why is this happening?”

  “Sold blood isn’t exactly nutritious for me. I crave the blood of the powerful, the daring, even the supernatural, and often the vicious. Before, I had warriors and killers for sustenance, I used to hunt them down and subdue them. Now, it’s like living on a fucking diet.” There’s more repressed violence in that confession than I’d been meaning to show.

  Rux doesn’t reply, but what could she say? She can’t possibly want to send me out to hunt people just so we can regain our passionate nights.

  After a moment I hear her sigh and start to speak, but a hard knock on the door interrupts her.

  “Milord,” Tristan’s muffled voice reaches us.

  “A moment.”

  Rux hurries to grab her satin nightgown from the bed, glancing at the clock. “Heaven’s sakes, it’s three in the morning.”

  When Rux is done tying the cordon around her waist, I open the door to an agitated Tristan. His usually rock hard, white face is livid, his blond eyebrows knitted together, his electric blue eyes intense.

  “Milord, you need to see this.”

  Lord Dracula

  WE WATCH FOOTAGE FROM the surveillance cameras at the university in Bucharest, where Rux is to speak at a conference tomorrow evening. I usually have the places where she gets invited to speak monitored ahead of the events, for obvious reasons—she’s Dracula’s wife, and there are those who would use that to their advantage. Which seem
s to be the case right now.

  “This guy here.” Tristan points to a hooded figure moving to the pulpit in the lecture hall where she’s scheduled to speak, working on it like some kind of secret agent in the night.

  “This is stupid,” the vampire Irina says, voicing my own thoughts. “There are ways to trick the cameras. Not to mention the university swarms with people during the day, so many students walking in and out of the lecture halls, why would someone plant something—or do whatever that guy is doing—in such an obvious manner?”

  Tristan nods. “I think whoever this person is, he wanted to be discovered on the footage. He wanted to draw attention.”

  I narrow my eyes at the hooded figure moving around the pulpit, thoughts connecting fast in my head.

  “I’ll watch it in detail until I get the—” Tristan offers, but I interrupt him, holding up my hand.

  “There’s no time, the conference is tomorrow evening.” I glance at Rux. “I’m coming to the lecture hall myself.”

  “But Vlad, you can’t actually come to the conference,” she says, squeezing my hand. “You haven’t shown your face in public in—” She realizes, “Never. You don’t know—”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not like I’ll step into the centre of the room with my face up in the limelight. I know how to be stealthy.”

  She eyes me up and down. “You’re not someone that doesn’t get noticed.”

  “I have my skills.”

  “Yes, the mist and all, but you won’t be able to float around as fog inside the conference room, will you?” A smile plays on her heart-shaped face. “And in your human form, well, look at you. You won’t be able to stay hidden in a crowd such as a full lecture hall at the university?”

  “Milord, if I may,” Tristan puts in, “I think Lady Rux is right. Everything about you draws attention and, even if you covered yourself....” He squares his shoulders and takes the stance of a respectful soldier. “Milord, no offence, but you’re very large. You cannot possibly go unnoticed, unless you own an invisibility cloak.”

  I stare hard at him for a few moments, making him uncomfortable for the fun of it, but then I can’t hold back anymore. I burst into whole-hearted laughter, genuinely enjoying myself. I slap Tristan’s shoulder.

  “Well, let’s see if Mr Potter can lend us one of his.”

  Lord Dracula

  THE LECTURE HALL IS full to the brim. It would be hard to react in time from the back if someone attacked Rux, so I’m in front. I mean, I could flash over from the back and save her, but not without drawing attention because of the speed, so I’m close to the pulpit. At the end of the front row.

  My ‘invisibility cloak’ consists of Irina and Tristan standing in front of me, separating me from the public. It doesn’t seem awkward, since many people are doing the same, crammed together and standing around, blocking other people’s field of vision. They’re all struggling for a chance to hear Rux better, see her better.

  I can’t blame them. She speaks well, her looks are compelling, and she touches on subjects that are of genuine importance—forbidden books, true facts that have slipped away from recorded history, ancient lore and books of ancient medicine, containing ground-breaking and secret information about the healing effects of certain plants.

  It’s a challenge for me, not getting distracted by Rux’s presence and her speech. I’m watching her between the shields of Tristan’s and Irina’s bodies, aware that I’m making her nervous, causing her to fidget a bit, but I can’t help myself. I’ve been watching her do research at Magda’s old bookstore, which has become her empire, and presenting her findings at different conferences around the world. She overwhelms me with her intelligence, and I feel so proud to claim her as my own. I promised her that soon, we’d be going on a journey to discover secret manuscripts that have been saved from the library of Alexandria, but that was back when I could still be around her without wanting to suck her dry all the time.

  “Before I tell you what this is, let me tell you what it is not,” Rux replies to a question from the hall when I notice a man pushing forward through the crowd in a sneaky way. His careful, slow, stalking movement draws my attention, even though I’m certain that’s not what he planned.

  “It’s not a conspiracy,” Rux continues as my eyes narrow on the guy, singling him out. My whole body tenses, ready to step in if he gets too close to her.

  “Some conspiracy theories are real, no question, but not all of them. The majority of slips in history did not happen because someone wanted certain information suppressed—although that does happen occasionally—but history is a long, complex thing, and slips happen naturally.”

  It doesn’t seem to be the same guy from the footage. That one seemed smaller, but more robust, while this guy resembles a sick alien. He’s not only bald, but everything about his alien-like form seems to be hairless. It takes only a second for me to realize he’s a vampire, but not a normal one. He’s wearing a light grey suit, but he’s tense and a bit hunched over as if he’s either in pain, or he’s struggling with some tormenting need. Judging by his red-rimmed eyes, and his tightly screwed face, it must be either unbearable thirst, or hatred.

  I see his decision as he makes it—now close enough to the podium, he’s preparing to jump.

  My instincts take over. I push my hands between Tristan and Irina to move them aside, and launch myself at the aggressive vampire whose eyes are fixed viciously on Rux. He surely chose that side so that she wouldn’t notice him and foresee his moves.

  Before he gets to push himself off his feet and lunge at Rux, I’ve already flashed behind him, and pushed his head to the side. The veins in his throat swell and pulse, more of them than a human would have, rich with blood—nutritious blood, the blood of a supernatural.

  The warm craving in my throat intensifies. My upper lip curls over my teeth as my canines begin to elongate, turning sharp as blades, the bones of my face protruding. My knuckles and my claws grow and pierce the vampire’s skin.

  He lets out a whine before I slice his thick carotid with my fangs, his rich, supernatural blood swelling out and filling my mouth. By God, the pleasure of tasting such rich blood for the first time after two years of abstinence.... It’s inebriating, making me roll my eyes and moan as I drink.

  Tristan and Irina, as well as the other undercover vampires from my team have already flashed over, pretending to be trying to stop a fight, and shielding what is really happening from the now screaming crowd.

  “Milord, you have to stop, now,” Tristan urges. I’m aware I should have done this fast, and let them start the clean up in mere seconds after I’ve killed the bastard, but I just can’t. Only now, drinking my fill, I realize just how thirsty I was for truly nutritious blood.

  I pull my teeth out of his jugular and sink them right back in again, this time taking a large part of his throat muscles between my jaws, and tear hard. The vampire’s body falls limp to the floor. There’s no more blood in his body to create a pool, but the sight of his open throat with all the reddish muscles and jelly-like tissue could make a doctor sick.

  I look up, enjoying the sensation spreading through my veins and all through my body, the feeling of satiation and the surge of energy, until something else comes along. Something strange, accompanying that energy. An urge in the pit of my stomach. My whole body petrifies.

  I look at Rux, who stands frozen at the pulpit in her business dress, her ink-black eyes fixed on me. She looks horrified. I realize I’ve ripped the guy’s throat open right before her eyes, giving her a glimpse of my brutality, something I avoided ever since I met her. She was the only human in here who could see it, my vampire team made sure nobody else made it to an angle where anyone else could have gotten a clear view of this.

  The strange urge in my stomach now spreads back the way the satiation came, back through my veins towards my extremities. My hands go cold, and lightning seems to tear through my head. I need more blood, I need it like a madman. The rims of my eyes s
tart to burn, I can feel them reddening.

  “Vlad,” Rux whispers, and makes to step off the podium, to come to me. But the need is maddening, and I’m surely dangerous to her.

  I hold up my hand. “Don’t.”

  She reaches out to me, but I keep walking backwards. My eyes move from Tristan and Irina to the other vampires, all of them staring at me like I’ve lost my mind, or like my face is changing in some puzzling way. My eyes are irresistibly attracted to the veins pulsing in their throats. I can even hear the blood pounding through the small veins in their temples. Fuck. I crave vampire blood, not human blood, every cell in my body is screaming from it.

  “That bastard carried some virus,” I manage roughly, staring at the dead vampire’s body. Tristan moves toward me, but I stop him with a snarl. “Keep away!”

  He stops in his tracks, but still watches me intently until I reach the door. I glance at Rux, her face a beacon of light in this churning vortex of darkness that pulls me in relentlessly. But I can’t touch her, not without harming her.

  “Please,” I tell Tristan, barely still able to control myself. “Take care of her. Don’t leave her side for a moment, make sure either you or Irina are always around her.”

  The need becomes unbearable, almost choking me. Sweat breaks out all over my body, and I imagine I’m not looking any better than the vampire I’ve just drained—the tormenting need must be clear in my strained features as it was in his only moments ago.

  I push through the doors and rush out into the hallway. Luckily there aren’t many people here to see me storming with the face of a crazed animal down the university hallway. All Rux’s conferences take place after sundown because of my vampires’ sensitivity to sunlight. I know I’ve left a mess in that lecture hall, but I have to trust Tristan and Irina with the clean up. I don’t know what began changing in my body after I took that bastard’s blood, but I know I can’t be anywhere near vampires right now. I won’t be able to control my bloodlust.