I was Vladislav Basarab Dracul, bartered by my father into hellish political imprisonment as a boy, then as a young man, fighting war after war to keep my country free, only to be betrayed by my nobles, the church, and even my own brother. Then I was abandoned by the vampire who sired me, widowed by a woman who'd shunned me for my deeds, and imprisoned again by Mihaly Szilagyi, a vampire who sought to rule Wallachia through me. Betrayal, pain, and death were my constant companions, yet I would not let them break me. I would use them to break my enemies instead.

"Leila!"

As if from a long way off, I heard Vlad's voice. Felt him grab me, but I couldn't see him. My vision had been replaced with red.

Vlad called my name again, but his voice became fainter. Soon I couldn't hear or feel him. Good. Couldn't he see that I was trying to sleep?

Something poured down my throat and consciousness returned. Through a red haze, I saw Vlad's face. Felt his strong arms around me while his wrist pressed to my mouth.

"Leila, can you hear me?" he asked, moving his wrist to allow me to answer.

I blinked, but the red didn't leave my vision. Then I handed him the object that was still clutched in my hand, dimly noting that it was an ancient-looking crown.

"You're wrong," I whispered. "I do love the real you."

If Vlad responded, I didn't hear it. A surge of dizziness followed by a blinding pain tore across my mind, and then I felt nothing at all.

Chapter 23

Ever been awake enough to hear snippets of what was going on around you, but too groggy to react to any of it? For what seemed like the next several hours, I remained in that strange, semiconscious state, hearing fragments of Gretchen's voice, my father's, Vlad's, and even Marty's. At one point, they got into a shouting match, but right when things became intelligible, I fell into oblivion again.

When I climbed back out, I was acutely aware of two things: the scent of blood and the sound of drums. Between the smell and the annoying buh-boom, buh-booms, there was no way I could sleep, which sucked because I was really tired. With great reluctance, I opened my eyes, seeing a bright, fuzzy whiteness with silver branches above me.

"Stop . . . drumming," I rasped.

Something dark filled my vision. It took several blinks before I realized it was Vlad's face. His stubble was thicker and his hair clumpy and stiff in places. I'd seen that same unkempt look on people after a night drinking, but it surprised me to see Vlad looking like he'd been on the losing end of a bout with tequila. And - sniff - HE was the one who smelled like blood? What had happened?

"Dad, Leila's awake!"

Gretchen's excited yell sliced through the air. The drums got louder, too, their beats overlapping as if more people had joined the band. I groaned, closing my eyes. Someone, please, make them stop!

"Both of you, leave," Vlad stated. "This is too much for her."

"She's my daughter, you leave," my father hollered.

That made me open my eyes. Hugh Dalton rarely raised his voice, and didn't anyone care that the damn band sounded like it had traded regular drums for steel ones?

"Go. Now," Vlad bit out, his eyes flashing green.

I would've argued about him using mind control on my family, except three more things became apparent. What I'd first thought were silver branches were tall IV poles, I was wearing new rubber gloves, and once my dad and Gretchen wordlessly left the room, the only drumming I heard came from inside my chest.

"What's going on?" I asked, wincing at how my voice boomed. "And why do you look like you rolled in the floor of a slaughterhouse?" I added, shocked that my attempt at whispering also came out so loud.

Vlad stared at me, his expression changing from the intractable one he'd leveled at my family to something I could only describe as affectionate rage.

"I'm covered in blood because you hemorrhaged to death in my arms and I haven't changed my clothes yet."

My mouth fell open. "I died?" I yelled.

The briefest smile flitted across his face. "You're not yelling. You've had so much of my blood that your senses are hyper-elevated. That's why you thought your heartbeat was a drum, and why your family's heartbeats sounded like more drums."

I glanced at the IV poles again. A bag with clear liquid hung from one of them, but the other had thick red liquid.

"You're still giving me your blood?" I asked/yelled.

"You only now came out of a coma" was his even reply.

I'd died and been in a coma? Could this day get any worse?

"How long?" I asked, lowering my voice as much as possible.

He sat back in his chair, tapping the armrest while his gaze went from burnished copper to bright emerald.

"In a coma? Three days. Dead? Six minutes, forty seconds."

I didn't need super senses to hear the leashed fury in his voice, or to guess the reason behind it.

"Vlad - "

"Don't."

The single word reverberated in what I now realized looked like a very messy hospital room. A defibrillator with char marks was in the corner, hypodermic needles were strewn on the counter, and a darkened EKG machine was on its side by the door.

"The next time you're tempted to overuse your powers, remember this," he went on in that same steely tone. "I will bring you back by any means necessary, so if you value your humanity, don't do that again."

Then he rose, giving me a glimpse of the rest of his blood-smeared, wrinkled, and decidedly smelly outfit before leaning down and caressing my cheek.

"As for why you did it," he said, voice lower and throatier, "we'll discuss that once you've recovered. Another day of blood and bed rest should suffice. Now, I have business to attend to and you have another visitor."

Marty appeared in the doorway, his expression both relieved and sheepish.

"Hey, kid."

Vlad dropped his hand, leaving without another word. I wanted him to stay, but he probably wanted to shower and change clothes, not that I could blame him. Besides, I had someone to hug . . . and demand an explanation from.

"Come here, Marty," I said, and hoped it was my supersonic hearing that made it sound like I hollered it at him.

A lump rose in my throat as he approached. I'd never thought to see his stocky, four-foot frame or bushy black hair again, and when he used Vlad's chair so he could lean over and hug me, I couldn't stop a flow of tears.

"Missed you, kid," he murmured, swiping at my wet cheek. "And could you quit with the near-death experiences?"

"You should talk," I retorted, sniffing. "What happened? I saw the trailer. No one could have survived that."

He gave my shoulder a last pat before disentangling himself from my IV tubes and sitting back.

"You're right, but I wasn't in it when the gas line blew. After our last act, I was walking back to the trailer with Dawn. Then I saw this woman across the parking lot, all by herself, just wolfing down a tub of ice cream - "

I started to laugh even amidst a pang of sorrow over Dawn. Marty's love of sugar-flavored blood was well-known to me.

"So your sweet tooth - or fang - saved your life." My laughter faded and I couldn't keep the hurt from my voice when I asked, "Why didn't you look for me after the blast? I kept yelling for you but you didn't come. Only Maximus did."

He let out a sigh. "I knew you were in The Hammer's trailer because I saw you enter it. Then the explosion . . ."

His features tightened. "Everything within a fifty-yard radius was obliterated. Even at twice that distance, the woman I drank from was hurt. I knew it would've killed you but I tried to get to you anyway. The heat melted my skin before I could reach The Hammer's trailer, so I had to turn back. Then all the screams . . . people were trapped in their RVs or running while on fire. I couldn't save you, but I tried to save as many of them as I could. After ambulances took away the worst of the injured, I left. I couldn't stand to stay and watch them dig out your body."

His voice cracked at the last word. I took his hand, glad my new gloves allowed me to do that without shocking him. "And then you called Vlad," I finished, piecing it together.

Marty let out a grunt. "He didn't take the news well. Made me find out where they were transporting the bodies and then jumped on his jet. I told him there wouldn't be enough left of you to raise, but he wouldn't listen."

"Raise?" I repeated before comprehension dawned. Ghouls were made by having a person drink vampire blood, then killing that person and switching their heart with a ghoul's heart. Since I was on a regular diet of vampire blood and Vlad knew I was fireproof at the time, he'd know such a transformation was possible, if the explosion hadn't ripped me limb from limb -

That's what he was doing at the morgue when I dream-linked to him! He hadn't wanted to see my body to grieve or gloat, as I'd thought. He'd gone there to bring me back.

"Raise you into a ghoul," Marty said, not knowing I'd figured it out. He shrugged. "You'd look the same, but every so often, you'd need to eat the other, other white meat."

I was still reeling from this discovery. Had Vlad known as soon as he saw those bones that I was still alive? Or had he not realized it until he "heard" me spying on him? And the most important question: Why, if he cared enough to fly overseas and rush to a morgue to raise me from the dead, had he acted so indifferent when I left him?

" - look pale, Leila. I'm gonna go, let you get some rest."

That I heard, but whatever he said before had been lost.

"I slept for three days, you wouldn't think I'd be tired."

I was, though. Still, I had a few things to do first. "Can you find my dad and Gretchen? Vlad ordered them out, but I can handle their heartbeats now."

And their voices. I'd just remember that everything sounded like a shout at the moment.

"Sure." Then Marty cleared his throat. "You should know something. When you hemorrhaged so much your heart stopped, Vlad stuck IV lines in your arteries and flooded you with his blood. Then he broke the defibrillator shocking your heart back to life. If that didn't work, you were waking up undead, and there wasn't a thing your father could've done to stop him."

I closed my eyes. Was that the shouting match I'd heard in my semiconscious state? I will bring you back by any means necessary, Vlad had said, and apparently he meant it.

Which meant he cared far more than he'd admitted.

Was there hope for us after all?

Chapter 24

Dr. Natalia Romanov was Vlad's in-house physician, and unlike the other members of his staff, she couldn't have been nicer. When I jokingly asked if I was her first patient this year, thinking a doctor couldn't be called upon much in a mostly vampire house, Natalia replied that she monitored all of Vlad's humans to ensure they were healthy enough to feed from and assisted in tortures since she was an expert in neuromuscular manipulation.

Well, I'd asked.

After she left, my dad and Gretchen came back to see me. I apologized for Vlad putting the mind whammy on them, which mollified my father not at all. Gretchen, oddly enough, seemed more fascinated than angry.

"I didn't want to leave, but my legs took me right out of the room anyway. He could've made me do anything, couldn't he?"

"Yes," I said, hating the way my father's features tightened up as though he'd swallowed ground glass. Then he muttered something under his breath that, without my new super senses, I never would've heard.

"No, he doesn't use mind control on me. For one, all the vampire blood I drink makes me immune to it. For another, if he did, we wouldn't have broken up because he would've made me believe I was delighted with the way things were between us."

My father stared at me, suspicion replacing the disbelief in his expression. "That you heard me proves how dangerous this man is to you. He's changing you into something inhuman. Leaving him was the smartest decision you ever made."

Gretchen shrugged. "After seeing how he acted when she almost died, I'm starting to get why she's with him." Then her voice hardened. "And really, Leila. That's twice now."

I closed my eyes, guilt assailing me. Yes, this was the second time Gretchen had seen me teetering on the edge of death, but unlike my suicide attempt at sixteen, this had been an accident. Not that it made it less emotionally scarring. In many ways, that power line accident had put Gretchen through as much hell as it had me, only she didn't get the occasional perks.

"I'm sorry," I said, opening my eyes.

Another shrug as she acted like it didn't matter. "Have your boyfriend add therapy bills to my expense tab."

"You'll take nothing else from him, and he's not her boyfriend anymore."

My dad used his lieutenant colonel voice. It usually garnered instant obedience from Gretchen, but this time, it rolled right off her.

"I'm taking it, and if he's not her boyfriend, someone should tell him that. You saw how he freaked when she almost died. Then he wouldn't budge from her side until she woke up."

"Vlad stayed here the whole three days?" I was shocked.

She nodded. "Like one of his stone gargoyles."

My father gave Gretchen a look that, if she'd been anyone else, I'd swear was a prelude to him throwing a punch.

"That's enough," he ground out.

"No, it's not," I said sharply. "You have no right to shush her because you don't like the truth. Whatever problems Vlad and I have had, at worst he's been a loyal friend who's saved my life, yours, and Gretchen's more than once, so as Mom used to say, if you can't say anything nice . . ."