Retta seethed. “A pox on both his testicles.”
Francesca laughed at that. “That’s harsh.”
“Yes, it is. But he deserves a lot worse. Bastard.”
“May I help you with your bags?”
Retta jumped at the deep, thickly accented voice that appeared suddenly. Where the hell had he come from? Turning around, she met the gaze of a handsome man in his late twenties who stood just in front of her. A man who looked enough like Francesca to be her brother – right down to the dark chestnut hair and strikingly blue eyes. “Are you with the hotel?”
“Yes, my lady. My name is Andrei and I will be here to serve you in any manner you wish.”
Francesca laughed, but Retta had a sneaking suspicion that his double entendre wasn’t from trying to speak a different language. He knew what he was offering. “Thank you, Andrei,” she said coldly as she handed him her bag. “We just need to check in.”
“As you wish… madame?”
“She’s a madame, I’m a miss,” Francesca said, handing him her suitcase as well.
“I knew I should have left you in Chicago,” Retta mumbled as Francesca winked at the handsome Romanian. Yet she wasn’t flirting with him, which for Francesca was a first.
“I am sure you will both enjoy your stays here at Hotel…” – he paused for effect before he rolled the next word with true Romanian flare – “Dracula. We are having a special tonight. Staked steak with a tart raspberry sauce and minced-garlic mashed potatoes for keeping away those evil vampires.” There was a devilish gleam in his eyes that Retta didn’t find charming or amusing.
Rather, it just pissed her off.
“I imagine the garlic will keep away much more than vampires, eh, Andrei?” she asked sarcastically.
He didn’t speak as he led them up the stairs to the hotel’s doors. There was a stereotypical winged vampire head on each door that opened into the blood-red lobby. There were pictures of different Hollywood depictions of Dracula everywhere, along with sketchings and paintings of Retta’s father.
And her “favorite” was the golden cup in a case with the plaque that declared it to be the cup her father had set out in the central square of Tîrgovişte. He’d proclaimed his lands so free of crime that he’d put it there to tempt thieves. Terrified of him, none had ever dared to touch it. It’d stayed in the square all throughout his reign.
Right next to that was what appeared to be a stake with dried blood on it and a plaque that said it was the one her father had used to skewer a monk for lying to him. Bile rose in her throat.
“Ever feel like you’ve walked into a nightmare?” Retta asked Francesca.
“Oh, c’mon. Enjoy it.”
Yeah, right. The only thing she would enjoy was kicking Velkan’s balls so hard that they came out of his nostrils. Hmmm… maybe she was her father’s daughter after all. For once she understood her father’s deep need to torture his enemies.
Andrei led them across the lobby. “Would you like tickets for tonight’s tour?”
Retta spoke without thinking. “Like another hole in my head.”
He frowned at her.
“That’s American slang for ‘no thank you,’ ” Francesca said quickly.
“Strange. When I was in New York it was slang for ‘no fucking way.’ ”
“You were in New York? When?” Francesca asked in a stunned tone.
“A year ago. It was… interesting.”
Something strange passed between them.
Retta shook her head. “It must have been quite the culture shock for you.”
“It took a little getting used to, but I enjoyed it there.”
“What made you come back?” Retta asked.
His gaze bored into hers as if he knew who and what she was. “Once Transylvania is in your blood, it never leaves you.”
Retta disregarded that. “Tell me, Andrei. Do you know a Viktor Petcu?”
He arched one handsome brow. “And why would you wish to speak to him?”
“I’m an old friend.”
“I somehow doubt that, since I know all of his old friends and I would have remembered a woman so beautiful in his past.”
Someone tsked.
Retta turned toward the counter to find a woman moving to stand before the old-fashioned ledger that was there. Appearing around the age of forty, she was dressed in the traditional Romanian peasant blouse and loose skirt. Tall and quite striking, she was someone Retta hadn’t seen in over five hundred years.
Surely it couldn’t be…
“It is not Viktor she wants, Andrei,” the woman said, indicating Retta with a tilt of her chin. “She is here for Prince Velkan.”
“Raluca?” Retta breathed as she stared in shock at the woman.
She bowed to her. “It is good to have you home again, Princess. Welcome.”
Her jaw slack, Retta approached the woman slowly so that she could study her features. She looked only slightly older than she’d been when Retta had last seen her. Only then Raluca had been a servant in Retta’s father’s castle.
“How is this possible?”
The woman glanced to Andrei before she answered. “I am a Were-Hunter, Princess.”
Were-Hunter. They were akin to the vampires or Daimons her husband had been created to kill. The Daimons had once been mortals who’d run afoul of the Greek god Apollo. A group of them had assassinated the god’s mistress and child. As a result, Apollo had cursed them all to having to drink blood to live and for all of them to die at the tender age of twenty-seven. The only way for them to live longer was to steal human souls. Dark-Hunters had been created by Apollo’s sister Artemis to kill the Daimons and free the human souls before they died.
Several thousand years after that, an ancient king had unknowingly married one of their cursed race. When his wife had decayed on her twenty-seventh birthday, he’d realized that his beloved sons would meet their mother’s fate. To save them, he’d magically merged the souls of animals with their race until he’d found a way to save them. Thus, the Were-Hunters had been created. Able to bend the laws of physics and with highly developed psychic sense, the shape-shifters lived for centuries.
But it was rare for a Were-Hunter to be near a Dark-Hunter, never mind serve one. Since Dark-Hunters were created to kill their Daimon cousins, most Were-Hunters avoided them at all costs.
Most.
Retta looked over her shoulder to Francesca, who was now squirming uncomfortably. A bad feeling went through Retta as she realized that Francesca had befriended her just weeks after she’d fled Romania. They’d known each other almost fifteen years before Francesca had confided the truth of her existence to Retta.
Now she had a suspicion that sickened her.
“Lykos?” Retta asked Raluca. That was the Were-Hunter term for their wolf branch.
“Raluca is my mother,” Francesca said quietly. “Andrei and Viktor are my brothers – it’s why I never used a surname. I didn’t want you to realize I was one of the family.”
Retta couldn’t breathe as she stood there with her emotions in turmoil. Anger, hurt, betrayal. They were all there and they each wanted a turn at Raluca and Francesca, but most of all, they wanted Retta to beat her husband. “I see.”
“Please, Princess,” Raluca said, her bright blue eyes burning with intensity. “We’re only here to help you.”
“Then call me another cab and get me back to the airport ASAP.”
Francesca shook her head. “We can’t do that.”
Retta glared at her. “Fine then. I’ll do it myself.” As she moved toward the phone on the desk, Raluca pulled it away.
Retta saw the sympathy in Raluca’s eyes as she cradled the phone to her chest. “I’m truly sorry, but you can’t leave here, Princess.”
“Oh yes, hell I can and I am.” Retta started for the door, only to have Andrei block her path.
“You are in danger, Princess.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “Not me, buddy. But you are if you don’t move out of my way.”
Francesca took a step toward her. “Listen to him, Retta, please.”
She turned on Francesca with a hiss. “Don’t you dare start on me. I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“Bullshit! You lied to me. Deceived me. You knew how I felt about Velkan and yet you never once told me that you serve him.”
Francesca glared at her. “Yes, Retta. Prince Velkan sent me to watch over you because he was afraid for you to be alone. As you’ve said repeatedly over the centuries, you were young and naive. You spent the whole of your life behind a convent wall. The last thing he wanted was for you to be hurt again, so I was charged with your care. Is that really a crime after all we’ve been through together?”
“I didn’t need a babysitter. How could you play both sides of the fence when you knew how much I hated him?”
Those blue eyes singed her with sincerity. “I never played you. Okay, so I didn’t mention that he’d sent me to stay with you originally. So what? We are friends.”
“Uh-huh. Friends don’t lie to each other.”
“What lie?”
“You said you never met him.”
“She has never met him,” Raluca said quietly. “I am the one who sent my daughter after you at the prince’s request. She was the one closest to your area when you left here. But Francesca has never met His Highness. Not once.”
That made Retta feel better than she wanted to admit, but still it didn’t rectify any of this. They’d all deceived her and she was too tired to play this game anymore. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going home.”
Andrei blocked her way again. “You are home, Princess.”
“Like hell.” She feinted to the right, then rushed left, past him.
He caught her in his arms before she could make it to the door.