“May I eat Sir Stephen?” I asked with a sweet smile.

Vlad flicked his gaze toward me and gave me a slight smile. “No. I did not know of your brother back in England. This changes everything.” Vlad slid a letter across the table to me. “Your brother is concerned. He is worried for you and for your family. You must write him and tell him that the shadow of misfortune has fallen across your family.”

“You want me to tell him what you have done to us!” I gaped at him in surprise.

Vlad merely chuckled, shaking his head. “No, no, no, my impetuous one. I want you to write to your brother and tell him that as your family journeyed here a storm overtook your carriage and it was swept off the pass and into the river. Only you survived and were rescued by my people. They brought you back to my castle and I am nursing you back to health.”

I snorted in disgust at his tale. “You are such a bastard! You are not a hero of some false drama! I will not lie to my brother!”

“But you must. You shall continue to write to him and tell him of my great compassion for your well being. You will tell him that I am caring for you and that you are beginning to love me.”

I curled my fingers into tight little fists. “Never!”

“In time you will write to inform him that you have married me and that we are quite happy together.”

“Never!” I rose angrily to my feet, tears streaming down my face. “What duplicity is this you ask of me? I cannot do that. I will not be party to your deceit!”

Vlad rose up before me, dark, menacing, and cruel. “Yes, you will. You will do as I say, my dear Glynis.”

“I will not help you go to England and destroy what remains of my family!” I turned away from him, sobbing, furious, my body shaking with my emotions.

Vlad’s fingers dug into my hair and he dragged me against his body. He drew my face near to his and whispered in my ear, “Do not defy me.”

“Kill me! Kill me and write to my brother that we all perished!”

“Kill you? I will not kill you, Glynis. I will punish you as only I can punish you. I will make you suffer and beg for a death that will not come. If you do not obey me, I will torture you with a living death I have only granted one other. I loved her as I love you, but she betrayed me and I had to banish her from my home,” Vlad whispered in a low, terrifying voice.

“You do not love, you do not love,” I hissed at him. The veil of my tears warped his face as I tried to draw away from him, but he held me firmly against him.

“I do love. In my way, I do love. Even when I strike you down, I love you. I love your pain. I love your misery. I love your tears. I love your blood. I love your cries of torment as much as I love your moans of pleasure. And if you force me, I will love you even as I grant you a living death that will be your hell on this earth.”

“I will not obey! I will not give you my brother! I love him and he is all that I have left in this world!”

“I do not want his blood. I want his help. That is all.”

I shook my head in protest.

“You do not believe my threat?” Vlad stepped back, his fingers tangled in my hair, and thrust his hand downward, forcing me to my knees. Drawing back my head, he leaned over me and said. “Since you do not believe me, then I shall show you.” He flung me away, and I fell to the floor.

Panic ripped at me as I gazed up at him through the cascade of my hair. The tone in his voice was an echo of the night he had killed my family. What more could he do to me? I was certain I did not want to know.

He moved to stand over me with mirth and anger mixed in his eyes. He let out a growl that made me clutch at the floor in dread.

Astoundingly, his face seemed to expand outward, his eyes sinking beneath his brow as his nose and mouth elongated. He ripped his clothes from his body to reveal hair flowing down over his arms and legs, muscle and bone rippling beneath his skin. The vampire threw back his twisted face and howled as I shrank away at the horror of his transformation. His body bucked and he fell to his hands, his long nails growing dark and sharp. I scuttled back from him in terror as his face fully transformed into that of a wolf. Shaking off the remnants of his dark clothing, the wolf moved toward me, the gold dragon medallion swaying about his thick neck.

“What is this? What has happened?”

The wolf was enormous. It was a beast of nightmares with its glowing red eyes and feral presence. It was pure, ominous power incarnate.

It was Vlad’s voice that uttered forth in a guttural growl. “Climb onto my back.”

Trembling, I cowered before the great beast. I wanted to refuse him, but I found myself reluctantly crawling on my hands and knees to him. He growled low in his throat, flashing his long sharp teeth, and I flinched in fear.

Reluctantly, I crawled onto the back of the huge creature and grabbed up fistfuls of dark fur. I held on tightly as the wolf whirled about and carried me out of the library.

Clinging to the beast, I was carried down the corridors of the castle and out the great entrance into the night. As I huddled close to the back of the wolf, he ran swiftly over the ground, the world blurring. The wind tore at my hair and face as I pressed my check into the thick ruff of his neck. The journey was swift and surreal. I could hear the calls of other beasts of the night mingled with the breathing of the Vlad-wolf beneath me as my own tortured heart beat fearfully within my breast.

I raised my head briefly to see the snow-covered cypress trees rushing past me. The ground flowed swiftly beneath the huge paws of the wolf. Only the night sky remained still, the moon’s face hidden beneath a cloak of a million stars, for at last, after the great snowfall, the clouds had scattered and the stars once more ruled the night.

The lupine beast leaped over a low wall and into a graveyard, jarring me and forcing me to grip at its fur desperately as my body almost tumbled to the ground.

A white marble sepulcher rose majestically over the pale tombstones and the wolf padded toward it. Just before the entrance to the tomb, the Vlad-wolf stopped.

“Get off,” he growled.

I slid off the wolf and stood among the true dead. My hair swirled around my waist as I took a step forward, the snow encompassing my feet and making me shiver. Hugging myself tightly, I started as a long howl rent the air. I whirled about just as Vlad Dracula rose up before me clad only in his long auburn hair and gold medallion.

He reached out and took my arm roughly in his long fingers. Leaning toward me, I was repulsed to see that his teeth were still long and wolf-like. “Come with me and see the death I can grant you.”

Dismally, I allowed myself to be lead to the tomb. My eyes wandered up to the writing above the doorway.

“This is were my Erzsébet rests. The Countess Dolingen. She was my most favored Bride. She was from Gratz in Styria. That is what is written above the door.”

“Sought and found death in 1801,” I read softly.

“Though it was not the death she desired. She refused to obey me and finally drove me to punish her.” Vlad pointed at a great iron stake that was driven through the top of the tomb. “Come. You must see inside.”

Vlad pushed open the ornate bronze door into the tomb and entered. I timidly followed him for I sensed a power here; a fading power enfolded in a great sadness.

Vlad waved one hand and torches lining the walls sprang to life and the darkness fled to the corners of the marble tomb.

I could only gasp in horror.

Lying on a raised platform was a beautiful woman. The long iron stake came through the roof of the tomb and straight through the body of the woman and into stone beneath her. Her once fashionable red and gold dress was faded and worn. Pieces of the fine fabric skittered across the floor as I moved toward her. The smell of old dried blood permeated the air. I saw that a fresh body was curled up at the head of the platform.

She had an exquisitely sculptured face with high cheekbones and a vibrant red mouth. Her black hair was thick and glossy as it fell over the sides of her resting place to the floor. Thick, dark lashes threw shadows over her flushed cheeks and when I approached, that dark fringe sprang back to reveal eyes the color of amber.

“She’s alive!”

“Yes, my beloved Erzsébet,” Vlad answered. “She is alive.”

My hand reached out tentatively toward the stake, my fingers were quivering.

“My beloved wife, Erzsébet, I have come to see you,” Vlad said softly to the woman lying before us.

A harsh laughter filled the room as her lips parted to reveal long ivory fangs. “I wish not to see you, my damned husband.” The vampire moaned with pain and her hand reached out reflexively to grasp hold of the iron stake impaling her. I could see that any movement would cause her pain.

“I have brought my newest Bride. She is a lady from England. Lady Glynis Wright.”

Erzsébet’s gaze flicked toward me, then she laughed. “Another to drive mad?”

Vlad’s green eyes flashed red and his jaw set with anger. “She wishes for death to escape me as you once did. I brought her to show her the death I granted you.”

Her amber eyes looked toward me, and her sigh whispered into the shadows.

“Yes, another strong, beautiful woman for you to torture and defile. You live up to your name, husband.”

I reached out to her, my heart broken in the presence of her punishment. “Are you in great pain?”

The Countess of Dolingen began to laugh until she gasped in pain and her hands clung to the stake in agony.

“I am sorry! I am sorry! I did not mean to upset you,” I cried out, moving to comfort her.

Vlad flung me back from her and snarled, “Do not go near her! She is mad with the hunger. She will drain you dry!”

“Dracul! Dracul! I curse you! I curse you! May your plans never succeed. One day someone will slice off your head and impale it on a stake just as the Turks planned. A pity they raised the head of an imposter over Constantinople. I pray to see the night your head is raised up over any city. I live in agony only to see your death!”

“And yet I love you despite your curses,” Vlad hissed at her, then leaned down to kiss her red lips, hard and fiercely. Her drew back quickly, before her sharp teeth could clamp down on his lips.

Again, she cried out in pain, her hands holding tight to the iron stake. “I curse you, Vlad.”

“You made me trap you here, Erzsébet! This is what you did. Not I! You defied me and now you feast on peasants who wander into this mausoleum for shelter.” Vlad was clearly in a rage now and he kicked the rotting corpse into a corner. Snatching a torch off the wall, he set it ablaze and stood over it, watching it burn.

I stood back away from both of them, unsure of what to do. It was clear that a great love had been lost and now all that remained was hatred and yearning. Vlad whirled back around and glared at me.

“Look at her! Look at her! Dead and yet living. When will another peasant wander in here some stormy night so she can feast on him? Is this the fate you want?”

Erzsébet sobbed in her anguish, “You are a monster!”

“I am Dracula!”

I could stand no more. It was all far too horrible. I stepped toward the impaled vampire and cried out in despair, “Erzsébet, I swear to you I will free you. I swear it!”

Erzsébet turned her amber eyes toward me and tears fell onto the cold marble beneath her. “If you escape him, keep running. Do not let him destroy you as he has destroyed me. Do not let him destroy you!”

Vlad’s form blurred and suddenly he was over her, his hand covering hers on the stake. Staring down into her eyes, he whispered in a voice filled with dark passion, “One night you will beg me to be set free.”

Erzsébet’s only response was her laughter.

Furious, Vlad grabbed my hand and thrust me forward, out of the tomb. The torches fell cold and darkness returned to the Countess of Dolingen’s world. Her laughter followed us, taunting Vlad as he slammed shut the bronze door.