Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
They were lost to the world then as they went from slow and teasing to hard and fast until, with a shuddering cry, she came around him, taking him with her until they were both completely spent.
“Well,” Pandora said afterward, Victor’s fingers softly whispering up and down her spine as they both tested the craftsmanship of the desk, bodies cuddled close. “I think I need to leave early tonight. And then spend all night doing that all around our flat.”
“Our?” he asked, tentative but hopeful.
“Yep. But I already stole the best shelves. You’re just going to have to learn to live with that.”
“Mmhmm. Or sneak out in the morning when you’re sleeping to replace them with my books.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“OK. How about a compromise?”
“What kind?”
“On all the best eye-level shelves, we put the books we read together.”
“The spicy ones?” he asked, fingers slipping down her belly again.
“The spicier the better.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
Romania
“I think I owe Uncle Reginald an apology,” Pandora whispered to Victor as they stood in the center of a cobblestone path. Where, just five feet in front of them, a bat had transformed into a man.
“That’s … That’s not really … Dracula, is it?” Victor whispered back.
He certainly looked like the titular character, Pandora decided, as she admired the tall, ghostly-pale man with slicked-back black hair, coal-dark eyes, and a long purple-velvet-lined cape.
At Victor’s words, the man before them scoffed.
“It’s Drachmar. I don’t know why any of those pesky mortals can’t get that right. All the books, the telly shows, the movies. Drachmar. How difficult is that?”
Victor stared at him. “So you’re not—”
“I am he,” Drachmar said. “I am the one. The first. The infamous. The fearsome. The eternal.”
“And a man of so few words,” Victor said, lips curving up.
Drachmar’s eyes narrowed at that and Pandora was ready to step between them.
“Mortal, you will cower before me in fear.”
Those weren’t just words or a command, but a glamour.
Luckily for Victor, and unluckily for Drachmar, Pandora had been sure to return Victor’s protection necklace to him once they’d got back together.
“I’m not much of the cowering type,” Victor said, making Pandora have to force her lips into a straight line, not wanting to irritate their host. “So … this isn’t Bran Castle.”
That got a growl out of Drachmar.
“That,” he said, with a wave of his arm that made his cape fly out dramatically, pointing to the other side of the hill, “is Bran Castle. Yet another thing the storybooks get wrong. This,” he waved at the castle he stood before, “is my true castle. Built by the same bloody Saxons. But better. Not crumbling like in all those ridiculous books.”
Pandora and Victor shared a small smile.
“I’m sorry, Drachmar, but we were under the impression that the castle was open for guests. Had we known you were here, we never would have come.”
It hadn’t been Pandora’s first – or fiftieth – choice, in fact. But Victor had been intrigued by the idea of staying in the castle where so many of his fictional vampire stories took place. Even though Pandora had insisted time and again that Uncle Reginald was notorious for embellishing the truth. If not outright lying.
“It is yours,” Drachmar said with another wave of his long-boned hand. “I’m afraid I have to track down my familiar.”
“Renfield?” Victor asked.
“Raymond! Ray-mond. That is his name. You mortals.” Then, before anyone could say anything else, Drachmar shifted into a bat and flew off with an eerie shriek.
“How long until you can turn into a bat?” Victor asked, looking over at Pandora. She whacked him across the stomach. “Shall we?” He waved toward the front door.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Pandora said as they stepped into the castle. “But … ah, this was not it.” They both looked around, not sure what to think.
Sure, it was a castle. Stone walls. Long, sprawling rooms. Heavy drapery. Fireplaces large enough for families to live inside.
But it wasn’t the bones of the place that had their attention.
It was what Drachmar had decorated the space with that had them not quite believing their eyes.
Nearly every inch of the entire lower floor was full of TV and movie posters, thousands of books, even action figures and stuffed animals that were based on the character of Dracula.
“He’s his own fan club,” Pandora said with a little laugh.
“I’m kind of disappointed I already finished my thesis,” Victor said. “Because … this would have been an interesting twist. Looks like Reginald wasn’t lying, was he?”
“No,” Pandora said, running her fingers over the comically large fangs in a full-sized vampire replica she figured must have been from a movie set or museum at some point. “So now I’m wondering if the perch Vlad uses at my mum and dad’s house actually did belong to a king.”
And maybe he had talked about philosophy with a drunken Socrates. And had helped design the Notre Dame cathedral. And had been the one to make the famous Mona Lisa smile while Leonardo da Vinci had painted her.