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Dans un éclair de lucidité déconfit, je me souvins que Vlad pouvait entendre mes réflexions. Un courant s'immisça en lui, généré par ma gêne. Mais au lieu de faire semblant de ne pas avoir capté mes pensées, il esquissa un fin sourire.

— Cette fois-ci, ça m'a chatouillé. Si l'électrocution est ta méthode de flirt, permets-moi de te féliciter pour ton originalité.

— Ouais, bon, si je me souviens bien, les supplications n'ont pas beaucoup d'effet sur vous, répondis-je d'une voix aigre, plus embarrassée du tout.

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—Tu dois te tromper. Les seules images que je perçois, ce sont les tiennes, et elles ne m'apprennent rien de nouveau.

Ses yeux noisette brillèrent furtivement d'un éclat émeraude, puis il poussa un cri sonore qui me fit tressaillir.

— C'était vrai, elle est pas bidon !

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Any way you cut it, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or, more accurately, between a fang and a sharp place.

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“Run, Frankie, run!”

Vlad swiveled toward the sound just in time to see Marty barreling toward him as though he’d been fired from a cannon. I’d wondered why he hadn’t done anything when I was kidnapped, but he must have followed me and stayed hidden until he thought he had the best chance to rescue me. Problem was, this wasn’t it.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion instead of fast-forward this time. Vlad’s companion pulled out a silver knife and shoved me to the ground. Vlad made no attempt to avoid Marty’s assault, but kept his grip on the charred vampire and widened his stance as if daring Marty to take him down. It was dark, but I thought I saw Marty’s determined expression the instant before his body crashed into Vlad’s. As if trapped in a nightmare, I watched Vlad absorb the blow while remaining on his feet, his deadly freehand erupting in flames as he reached for my friend.

“No!” I screamed.

Instead of running like Marty commanded, I flung myself at Vlad. My right hand landed on his leg, desperation making those hated inner currents rocket from me and into him with far more power than normal. With my panic and the voltage I’d channeled from the light socket, Vlad should have been blown clear across the parking lot. Instead, he remained where he was, the only effect a shudder wracking him and the smell of ozone briefly overcoming the scent of smoke. That flaming hand snatched Marty up before I registered that he’d moved, and then Vlad’s dark head swung in my direction, bright emerald eyes meeting my shocked gaze.

“That,” he bit out, “was rude.”

The sight of him restraining two struggling vampires was the last thing I saw before my vision went gray. The parking lot and burning hotel vanished, replaced by towering trees and a twisting, ice-filled river.

I knelt by its rocky bank, my clothes soaked, but I paid no attention to the cold. I couldn’t feel anything beyond the pain that roared like an inferno through my veins, building until I threw my head back and howled at the overwhelming anguish.

The woman in my arms didn’t react. No breath stirred her lips, and her eyes continued to stare sightlessly ahead. I clutched her closer, more agony ripping through me as if it were my body that had been broken beyond repair instead of hers. For all my new power, I had never been more helpless. Death had stolen her away, and she would eternally remain beyond my reach.That knowledge made a new howl erupt from my throat, despair mixing with the grief that threatened to rend me apart. This was my doing. The river might have washed away all traces of her blood, but I would forever carry its stain on my hands.

“Hold them,” a curt voice directed. The woman, river, and forest vanished, replaced by billowing smoke and the Red Roof Inn parking lot. Marty was still alive, to my vast relief, though he looked like he’d gotten a good scorching. Vlad handed him and the other, far more charred vampire over to his friend. I was on the ground, kneeling, tears streaming down my cheeks from reliving Vlad’s darkest memory. To be honest, I’d expected a far more gruesome image after touching the fire starter, but what scarred his soul appeared to be loss, not murder. Once Marty and the other vampire were secured, Vlad knelt next to me. His hands were no longer engulfed with flames, but that might be because the fire truck had pulled up and that would draw too much attention. The wailing siren seemed to pierce my skull with its screech, but though vampires had better hearing, Vlad didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Stop crying,” he said shortly. “I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re so hysterical about.”

He thought I’d fallen sobbing to my knees because I was afraid to die? The lingering echoes from his anguish made my ironic snort come out more like a sniffle.

“Those tears were yours, not mine. Whoever she was, you were really broken up over her death.”

His brows drew together. He was close enough for me to notice that despite igniting several things—and people—he didn’t have so much as a charred speck on him.

“What nonsense is this?”

“Don’t tell him anything, Frankie,” Marty hissed.

I looked up at my friend, but Vlad’s cold voice snapped my attention back to him.

“Take them away, Shrapnel. I’ll catch up with you later.”

I stopped myself before touching Vlad in instinctive appeal. Electrocuting him again wouldn’t help my cause.

“Don’t kill him, he was only trying to protect me. That’s Marty, and he didn’t know that I, ah, called you. He probably thought you were with the crew that kidnapped me.”

Poor Marty. He’d followed Jackal and the others, biding his time until he thought the odds were better. How could he have known that Vlad was tougher than four other vampires combined? Of course, if Vlad had already made up his mind to kill Marty, my plea not to harm him would fall on deaf ears. He was capable of murder, but the memory I’d pulled after touching him made me hope there was more to Vlad than his tendency to torch people.

His features hardened. “What memory?”

Right, he had mind reading abilities. That made Marty’s urging not to tell Vlad what I’d seen pretty much moot.

“You and the dead woman by the river,” I replied. “I told you I pull images from people or things I touch. I saw her when I touched you, and I was crying because I felt everything you felt that day.”

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Je n'arrivais pas à décider ce qui était le plus insultant : qu'il me mette dans le même panier que les femmes qui lui « couraient après», ou qu'il soit à ce point persuadé que je ne demandais qu'à lui tomber dans les bras. J'observai la salle à manger avec son plafond de cathédrale, son lustre à la beauté barbare et sa vingtaine de sièges.

—Je comprends pourquoi tu as besoin d'une maison aussi grande, tu as besoin de place pour loger ta suffisance.

Il haussa les épaules.

—Je sais ce que je vaux, et ce n'est pas sans raison. Tu penses que je suis dangereux, et tu m'en veux à cause de Marty, mais je savais que tu me désirais avant même que tu aies ta vision.

—Tu es séduisant, et alors ? rétorquai-je en refusant de me laisser intimider par ce qu'il savait de mes pensées les plus intimes. Il y a beaucoup de mecs séduisants qui me plaisent. Si Chris Hemsworth était là, je lui sauterais dessus si vite que je le ferais exploser comme un pétard.

— Ce qui le tuerait, fit remarquer Vlad

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“Tell us” came in a chorus from the group. I shook my head, muttering, “It’ll embarrass you,” but I was swamped with more demands for proof.

I threw up my hands. “Fine, but I warned you. When you were twelve, you stole your little sister’s favorite Minnie Mouse DVD and beat off to it every night until your dad caught you and made you buy her a new one out of your allowance money.”

Stunned silence followed. Ben’s face went red.

“I don’t believe it,” he muttered, but that was soon drowned out by laughter and good-natured ribbings. I let it go on for another few moments and then cleared my throat.

“I bet the rest of you have some embarrassing sins, too, so give him a break or I’ll start copping feels.”

The teasing subsided to lingering grins and the occasional giggle. Ben shot me a grateful look. Hey, compared to the sins I’d seen from other people, his was steeped in innocence.

“When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Miss Piggy so I could marry Kermit the Frog,” I told Ben, winking. “Kermit. Talk about shameful.”

“Ouch. You shoulda kept that to yourself,” he said, giving my arm a friendly knock. The brief contact meant only a tiny bit of electricity sizzled into him, but he winced. Then he grinned.

“My sister used to rub her socks on the floor and then chase me. Reminds me of that.”

“She owed you for the stolen DVD,” I quipped.

“Like you said, I bought her a new one,” he replied, still grinning. “Hey, what’s wrong with your ear?”

“What?”

I reached up and felt something wet.

Ew, I’m still sweating like a pig, I thought, but when I looked at my hand, it was red. Sandra gasped. That was the last thing I heard before everything went hazy and the exercise bench reared up to hit me in the face.

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“Martin,” he said genially, “did you forget to tell me something very important about Leila?”

Silence, and then Marty’s guarded “I don’t know what it could have been—”

“Because she’s right here, blood staining her hair after it leaked from her ears when she fainted,” Vlad cut him off, his tone sharpening. “Does that stir your memory?”

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“I am so Googling “Vlad Dracul” once this is all over,” I stated. “Wikipedia knows more about his past than I do.”

Marty grunted. “You won’t like what you find.” Then his look became jaded. “Especially since you’re sleeping with him.”

My cheek heated but I didn’t glance away. “Szilagyi told you that?”

“No, my nose did. When we were in the trunk together, I could smell him on you even over the chloroform Rend dosed you with. They did, too. That’s probably why they didn’t believe that you’d really betrayed him.”

“They knew before,” I replied, shrugging. “I told Szilagyi that Vlad seduced me to further cement me to his side.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” Marty muttered.

I stiffened. “It should because it’s not true. Look, I don’t blame you for disliking Vlad. He impaled you and coerced you—both unforgivable. Still, there’s another side to him.”

“Sure,” Marty replied flatly. “The side that burns people to death.”

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Vlad stood in the center, flames coating his arms, holding up a large blackened hunk of... something.

Okay, so where are you?

I thought at him. That pastel decor sure wasn’t in any room of his house.The answer hit me even as he spoke. Everything was so trashed, I hadn’t recognized it right away.

“I’m at Tolvai’s.” Vlad shook the blackened hump he held a loft. “He was just telling me how stunned he was by the attack and how he had no idea where you, Maximus, or Shrapnel were.”

That charbroiled thing was Tolvai?

“Can you hold off on, ah, questioning him?” I said, out loud this time. “I’ve seen enough gross things for one day.”

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“I’ll consider this as a possible option for later, but for now, the answer is still no.”

“You promised,” I said angrily, ignoring the look of surprised approval Gretchen shot toward Vlad. “You said if I came up with a plan to rescue Marty that didn’t put your people in too much danger, you’d act on it. Well, here’s the plan!”

“It endangers you too much” was his implacable reply. “As my lover, you’re also considered one of my people.”

“But not as valuable,” I countered, a hurt I hadn’t known I carried causing me to say the next part. “You’ve admitted that you’ll never love me, so if something goes wrong, it’s not that hard for you to find another girlfriend. Marty does love me, and he’s the best friend I’ve got. I refuse to abandon him.”

Vlad’s eyes turned flat green and he stood so still that it made looking at him almost painful. Not a breath or twitch disturbed his beautiful, inflexible frame. Even his gaze didn’t waver by the slightest degree. No one alive could hold himself so immobile, and it was as if he showed me the unbridgeable distance between us with that icily rigid posture.

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