Dracula's Daughter

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Asia. 1634

Valentina felt like death.

Her throat was dry as a bone, her lips felt cracked and she was barely strong enough to open her eyelids.

The last thing she remembered was walking through the jungle, searching for the nearest village when-

Valentina's heart felt like it had come to life in her chest when she remembered what had happened.

Her eyelids flew open and she bolted upright, a cloud of dust billowing up around her.

Gazing down at the dress she wore, Valentina spotted the multiple tears in her chest area, her own blood dried into the fabric.

Her senses were slowly coming back to her as she looked around and saw that she was led inside a coffin, the lid lying on the ground beside her.

That's when she spotted the pile of silver knives that had been wrenched from her chest.

"Father," Valentina croaked as she remembered the way he flew down from the trees and surprised her.

Curling her fingers around the edge of the coffin, Valentina tried to stand but her legs crumpled beneath her; too weak to hold her weight.

Leaning against the side of the coffin, which had been her tomb for God knows how many years, Valentina closed her eyes and thought of why her father did this to her.

He kept betraying her. He kept sinking daggers into her chest and locking her away so that she would never leave him.

The last time, a curious villager had found her and removed the daggers.

But now . . . Valentina looked around but saw nobody within the vicinity.

She needed to leave, Valentina thought with urgency, she needed to leave before whoever it was came back for her.

Finding a small amount of strength, Valentina pushed herself to her feet and stumbled out of the coffin before crashing into a wall.

Trying to catch her breath, Valentina ran her fingers over the bloody scars that the daggers had left.

She needed to feed, Valentina thought, when she turned her head and gazed at a pile of clothes folded neatly by the bottom of her coffin.

Gritting against the pain of being locked up for decades, Valentina snatched the dark clothes from the ground and gazed upon the piece of parchment that was attached to the front.

It was the family crest of Count Christian Korzhakov.

* * *

Sinking her teeth into the neck of a young man she had snatched off the streets, Valentina tried to drown her thoughts in his blood.

But nothing was working.

The more blood she drank, the more she remembered the dream.

The pure fact that she had had a dream was baffling enough; she hadn't dream for nearly five hundred years.

But Valentina knew that it hadn't been a dream but rather a nightmare.

A nightmare conjured by the magic of Invidia.

This far away from her, Valentina could have almost believed she was free of her and her evil plan.

But Invidia knew one of Valentina's darkest secrets and she had to keep that from Christian. And the only way to do so was by giving Invidia exactly what she wanted.