Page 61 of The Doctor and the Devil
“A family trait,” I offered.
A sad smile tugged at the corners of his lips. Thinner than Rafael’s lips, but the same shape.
Rafael. Hold on, Rafael.
“For a few years, we existed in bliss. We were living meagerly, but one of Marguerite’s sisters came to stay with us to help care for our daughter. Lucy. My little Lucy, sweet starlight of my life.”
He gasped out a painful sob, and a tear of blood spilled down his cheek.
“I should have seen it coming. Could have prevented it if I’d been smarter or faster. But it was an accident, my little Lucy biting her aunt. She nearly drained her—too young to know how to stop in the grip of a blood frenzy. When Marguerite found her sister, almost dead, and Lucy at her throat, she panicked.”
Pieces started to fall into place. “Marguerite turned her sister, rather than let her die.”
“It was forbidden,” Laszlo said. “It is forbidden for any of the Dracul family to turn another, except for our mates. It was a way to ensure the curse was contained to our family.”
“What happened to Lucy?”
“Marguerite’s sister did not take to the turning well. It was painful and messy. When she awoke as a vampire, it was…wrong.She was wrong—broken. I don’t know what happened, if it was because she was the first outside of our House to undergo the change, or perhaps because Marguerite was weak when she tried to turn her. Whatever it was…she awoke angry—and hungry. In her wrath, she killed Lucy and nearly killed Marguerite. She fled into the countryside before I returned home. I have not seen or heard from her since, but we looked. How we looked! After burying Lucy and caring for Marguerite during her recovery, my grief was too heavy for me to consider vengeance.”
My heart broke at Laszlo’s confession, for the loss of his daughter and the near loss of his mate—his wife. The blood plague hadn’t come to France because of a malicious, corrupt vampire nor his greedy, selfish wife—it had simply been an accident. A true tragedy, brought about by terror and confusion and grief. I felt sick.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, unacknowledged tears falling down my own cheeks. “I cannot fathom the depths of your loss.”
He nodded. “It does not get easier, even with time,” he said. “Time does not heal wounds, as they say. In my experience, time simply earns us more wounds so that we cannot focus on the pain of one for too long.”
“Time grants us perspective,” I said. “But that is all.”
Laszlo offered a half smile and opened his mouth to say something, but a distant crash echoed through the woods. He was up before I could blink, panic glittering in his eyes.
“It is Derais!” he hissed.
“They will stop at nothing, Laszlo. Even if you give me to them, you and Marguerite do not stand a chance. Then, they will come for every vampire in France. It will be genocide!”
Despair and anger warred in his expression.
“Please, Laszlo! I have spent my life trying to help your kind. Do not let my work be in vain. Do not let your brother pay for the shattered dream of your family—it was no more his fault than Lucy’s.”
He took the words like a blow, wincing as they landed.
“Dracul!” came Derais’s shouts. “Dracul, you better have my prize in your filthy claws, or I will remove your pretty wife’s head.”
Enraged, Laszlo roared into the night. The sound was horrifying and hellish, filled with anger and pain and torment.
“Run,” he commanded, the sound guttural and inhuman. His form began to shift, bones breaking and sinew snapping and skin ripping away from his body. For a moment, I stood there and watched, transfixed by the shapeshifting. In a heartbeat, he had finished, and I couldn’t help the scream that climbed its way up from the pit of my stomach.
Where Laszlo’s gaunt, sagging human form had stood now appeared a true monster from the lowest, most nightmarish circle of Hell. He looked like the devil himself, with spindly, garish sets of fangs—his eyes, black puddles of darkness that glowed with a faint red light. Massive bat wings sprouted from the upper body of a creature that was more demon than wolf, but similar to the creature that Rafael could become. A thick, scaly tail whipped around his powerful legs and long, razor sharp claws erupted from his fingers and toes.
Run,he said again, this time in my mind.
I didn’t need to be told again. I took off, weaving through the trees until I came to the low wall on the opposite side of the cemetery. I crouched behind a massive oak tree with the cemetery at my back. The moonlight dappled silver on the ground, and I heard Derais’s threatening shouts at Marguerite and Laszlo.
Given that he’d just shifted into an eight-foot-tall monster, Laszlo seemed to be healing more quickly than I’d expected. I didn’t know what he intended to do, but I wasn’t prepared to question it just yet.
Derais stormed into the clearing where Lazlo and I had been. He dragged Marguerite behind him and threw her to the ground—her head making a sickening crack against the fallen tree. Laszlo roared and rushed to her side. She struggled to rise and reached for him.
“You had her! You had her and you let her go!” Derais screamed. “You filthy beasts, we should have slaughtered you where we found you.”
Laszlo picked Marguerite up from the ground, shielding her with his enormous wings. I watched in horror as Derais slipped the pistol from his pocket and aimed at Laszlo’s back.
