The Countess stripped her clothes with little pomp and circumstance the second she joined him in the room.
"What are you doing?" he questioned,
averting his gaze—but that was needlessly generous.
This demon had no modesty, nor did she deserve privacy from his scrutinizing eyes. After a second, he turned back to face her, finding her naked and rifling through the
closet.
"Oh, look! There are old bath robes and a few appliances in here."
Alaric let out a noncommittal grunt as he watched her. The Countess's long black hair hung down her back, stopping somewhere between her shoulder blades.
It looked smooth and clean, completely devoid of the grease of sweat that mere mortals suffered through each day.
Beneath that, he made out two dimples above her round and shapely rump.
Her skin was like polished porcelain, so smooth and utterly flawless that he almost went breathless as his eyes roamed the length of her figure. It was the stuff of every man's dreams—a vision of feminine elegance in the extreme.
If a poet saw this scene, he would spend the rest of his life doing nothing but reliving it through verse. If a painter held her lithe and supple form in his gaze, he would spend years trying and failing to capture its
magnificence.
Even Alaric Voss had to admit that the Countess was beautiful. Her beauty was one pillar of her evil wiles, arguably one of the most valuable weapons in her war chest.
It was but a portion of the package that made her such a devastating weapon, but it was a lethal one nonetheless. Without
even resorting to her ungodly powers, she could seduce the holiest of paragons with just a crooked smile.
With a mere wink, even Alaric feared his heart might flutter. He was only a mortal after all, his blood as red as any man's.
"I can feel you staring, Voss," the vampire teased. She adjusted her posture, shifting her weight onto one hip. Alaric helplessly followed the movement of her buttocks before shaking its effect off.
"Of course I stare. You are my enemy. I am not yet secure in the idea of sharing a living space with the Widow of Wallachia." He walked to the bathroom, leaving her sifting through the closet curiously, but she turned
her head.
He felt her peripheral vision, those red eyes half-gazing at him the whole way. "I doubt I will ever grow used to it."
She chuckled musically at that. "I wonder," she teased. "Maybe we'll be surprised with what we can get used to."
"I think not," he replied, staring at the sink.
"Let me see…" His hand fumbled with the valve, turning it, and like a miracle, water spouted from the faucet. It was clear and clean—some of the purest water he'd seen in months.
"Incredible! Just as I saw in the portal."
"Running water indoors?" Vladira commented as she posed saucily while
pulling something from the closet.
It was a bathrobe, provided by the inn, that apparently was never withdrawn from the room when it went out of commission.
"What horrors will they think of next?"
Alaric laughed. "I always found it amusing that such a mundane thing as running water can be fatal to a vampire."
Vladira apparently did not find it amusing, as she ground her bare foot into the carpet and made an irritated sound before regaining her haughty tone.
"Nothing is fatal to me," she corrected as she tried the robe on.
Alaric watched out of the corner of his eye, nodding at the snug fit.
"Decapitation, a stake through the heart—Hell, even going for a swim during the day in a river of running holy water filled with garlic, it would only put me out for a century at most. And then I'd be back to make meals of your—" Her liptwitched, like the word she was about to say died in her mouth with a bitter taste.
"Meals of my what?" Alaric inclined his head as he turned around and faced her. She had also turned. Her eyes, glowing red, seemed to pierce him like a spike.
"My descendants? My children? Is that what you were going to say?"
"Hmmph!" She punctuated that with a whine a surprisingly feminine sound and spun back around. "You will not have any descendants."
"Because you will kill me, is that it?" he asked, chuckling. "What if I slay you first, fiend of damnation?"
"No, I—" Vladira stopped herself. She let out a sigh and flipped her hair back, peeking at him over her shoulder. "Enough of this meaningless banter. You will never take a human woman for your wife. Nor will one ever bear you children. I swear it."
"Oh, so the Voss line ends with me, then? Is that what you're saying? Ha! I had a cousin in Brussels. With any luck, he'll have persisted once we vanished. Maybe, to this day, Vosss are slaying creatures of the night such as yourself."
"That's—that's not what I meant," she said, her bottom lip jutting out. "You—you—"
Alaric held his hand up, a look of disgust making his bronzed face pallid.
"Cease your nonsense. I will not entertain your threats any longer."
She nodded slowly, as though in apology, which startled him as he lay back on the bed. It was creaky, but comfortable compared to the fare he was used to. This world had indeed come far in many ways.
"I spoke with the innkeeper madam," Vladira went on after a pause between them.
"She agreed to give me the job starting this weekend, off the books. That way, I won't need to worry about the fact that I can't get an ID card. But I can still help you get yours!" She quickly added, whipping her head to face him.
"So you'll watch the front desk on weekends for some money," Alaric muttered, fists balling at the immoral nature of this arrangement,
"And we're staying here for free. That should cut down our costs for now, at least. All we need is enough for food. In the meantime, we save up what we can and —and—"
"And what?" Vladira giggled, tilting her head playfully as she licked her lips. "What's the master plan, monster slayer?"
Alaric's lips tugged downward, frowning. "I suppose we look for ways to return to your castle to finish our battle."
Vladira rolled her eyes. "That ship has sailed. As a master of magic, I assure you, there is no way back. My castle must have vanished when I did, and there's no way to return to our era. We are stuck here—going forward in time is one thing, but back?"
Alaric glowered and drooped his shoulders as the words rang true. His father once said the same in his occult lessons.
Vladira held up a hand to quell his worry.
"However, I do believe that the effect tying our fates together can be dispelled in time. We could banish it sooner rather than later if I can amass a collection of tools and ingredients."
"What kind of tools and ingredients?" Alaric murmured suspiciously, his brows turned inward and stern. He tried not to show weakness in front of her, though his head reeled at the revelation of being cut off from his previous life forever.
He leaned back against the cheap head board, his arms folded behind his neck. "And to what end would you perform your magic?"
Vladira narrowed her gaze at him, then flashed the whites of her eyes as she rolled them back.
"Your suspicion is noted, slayer. Various herbs, eye of newt, wing of bat that sort of thing to start. A cauldron would be nice, as well as a crystal ball. A mortar and pestle, some incense I'll have to make a list."
"I didn't realize the so-called Bride of Satan was little more than a common witch."
"Oh, I assure you, Voss, Darling, there's nothing common about me." With that, she spun and opened up her bathrobe, granting him a brief but eye-popping view before closing it again.
She erupted into a fit of giggles, even going so far as to cover her mouth with her elbow and snort.
Alaric's eyes and something else bulged in spite of himself. Dammit, he lamented in his head, why does she have to be this cute?
He felt his cheeks burn from the sight he'd just been blessed with, and even worse, he
knew she could hear his quickened heart beat if she tried to.
The Countess eyed him in the mirror like a cat holding a rat by the tail.
She swished her hand after she finished securing her hair into a ponytail using only her hair itself. "With access to my magic, I could achieve a lot, for your information," she said, though she sounded a bit quieter all of a sudden.
"If we manage to acquire a place contractually licensed to us by deed or rental agreement, I could remake it in my image much like the castle you fought your way through to find me. And, with some time, I
believe I could cancel the effect binding us together."
"How much time?" Alaric asked as he arched a curious, manly brow at her.
She shrugged. "It's hard to say. Perhaps one year?"
He frowned. "Longer than I'd like, but certainly beats an eternity of this Hell."
"Right," Vladira said, sulking slightly.