“This was mailed to one of your people, like the last video,” Marty said, his hoarse voice catching on the next words. “I watched it on the way here. It’s definitely her.”

Vlad held out his hand, but the rest of his body stayed in that perfect, statuesque stillness. I looked at the envelope and the scarlet tears streaking Marty’s cheeks, then a chill of dread went through me. No. Don’t let it be that tape—

“You don’t want to see it,” Marty rasped, confirming my suspicions. “I wish I hadn’t. She’s still alive at the end. That’s all you need to—”

“Give it to me.” Four snarled words that made me recoil from the violence seething from them.

Mencheres didn’t wait for Marty’s response. An invisible force yanked the envelope out of Marty’s hand and floated it over to Vlad. Then Mencheres’s power propelled Marty out of the room. Once that manila envelope touched Vlad, he was a blur of motion, streaking over to the computer table. Then he put the DVD into the laptop and clicked “play.” Now I was praying that this was only a dream. Just in case it wasn’t, I began screaming at him with my thoughts.

Don’t watch it, Vlad! Listen to my voice instead. I know where I am, and all you need to do is listen so I can tell you—

Fire erupted from his hands when the screen filled with the image of me, naked and struggling so fiercely against my restraints that blood ran beneath my clamps. Then it showed Maximus’s naked ass as he walked toward me holding a bottle of lube and several strips of duct tape. I was so upset that Vlad was watching this; it took a few moments to realize that the recording had no sound, which surprised me until I remembered Maximus flicking a button before he took off his clothes. Smart, the sound could have been isolated and amplified until you could hear what he had been whispering to me, and I had no doubt that Szilagyi had watched this before sending it to Vlad.

No wonder Szilagyi hadn’t suspected a thing, I thought, feeling sick as I watched Maximus begin the mime of my rape. Maximus must have been a director in his former life, because he had an uncanny sense of camera angles. Not once did I glimpse the tape he’d applied to me or himself as he rocked and thrust against me as if out of control with lust. I tried to focus on Vlad instead of the graphic images, willing him to hear the words I kept mentally roaring at him.

It’s not real, it’s not real, stop watching it! Listen to me, I’m right here and I know where I am!

Either I really was dreaming or I wasn’t getting through, because not once did Vlad take his eyes off the screen. The video ended with Maximus leaving me manacled to the wall with his semen still coating me in pink smears. Vlad didn’t move and nothing changed in his granite expression, but the flames on his hands grew until they encompassed his entire body. Soon, I couldn’t see him beneath the layers of red, orange, and blue, and when fire kept pouring from him like water gushing out of a geyser, Mencheres rose.

“Vlad,” he began.

A wall of flames hurled the Egyptian vampire across the room. Mencheres didn’t try to talk to Vlad again. He ran, shouting in Romanian and English for everyone else to leave.

Over the next several minutes, I watched in agonized disbelief as the people who’d been working to repair the house ran from the rage-fueled inferno that continued to spill out of Vlad until it covered every inch of the castle. The ones that didn’t move fast enough were thrown to safety by Mencheres’s telekinesis, until it looked like the house was hurtling people away from it while writhing in its death throes. Even the napalm attack hadn’t been this destructive. In a shocking display of power, Vlad’s fire burned until nothing remained except him amidst a sea of flames, crumpled stone, and swirling embers.

Chapter 14

Despite Maximus’s repeated cajoling, Szilagyi refused to lift his ban on my starvation. After the “dream” that I strongly suspected was a psychic vision, I’d do anything to strengthen myself enough to make Vlad hear me the next time I was able to link to him. Anything.

Szilagyi had accomplished his goal of driving Vlad into a psychotic rage, since he burned down the house he’d lived in for centuries, not to mention almost killed dozens of his own people in the process. I didn’t know what Vlad would do next, and that terrified me. Since my “dream,” I hadn’t been able to reach him again. No great stretch to figure out why. Linking to people took a lot out of me, and with starvation continuing to deplete my strength, I was like a car that had run out of gas.

That’s why, when I heard Maximus negotiate a non-videoed “conjugal” visit, I knew it must really be a mask for him to sneak me some blood. I hated the thought of repeating the fake assault, but this was the only thing that Szilagyi had agreed to, so it was our only shot. I still wasn’t sure how Maximus would do it. Hide a tube of blood in his pants and pretend that the bulge was just him looking forward to Round Two?

“If you don’t want to be filmed this time, you strip out here and the door stays open and manned by a guard,” I heard Szilagyi order, and my spirits sank. Now what? “Not that I don’t trust you, Maximus,” Szilagyi went on in a friendlier tone, “but women can be very persuasive, especially when you’re in love with one of them.”

“Aww, I knew you were a romantic at heart,” Maximus replied flippantly, then the two of them shared a laugh as though they weren’t discussing an impending rape. Well, I wasn’t really about to be raped, but Szilagyi didn’t know that. Anger at my helplessness burned through me again, fueling my determination to get the blood any way I could. With it, I wouldn’t remain Szilagyi’s little torture trophy for much longer.