Dracula's Secret by Linda Mercury Read Free Book Online Page A

years, she helped the Allies clean the camps, moving from Mittlebau-Dora to Dachau to Sobibor. All over Germany and Poland she studied the wreckage of lives.
    The waste revolted her.
    All the labor and energy the guards and commanders had put into the camps could have been used on the fronts, perhaps preventing the Germans’ defeat. The tortured and the dead Jews could have been productive laborers instead of starved and ruined. Disgust ruled Valerie until a strange new emotion, pity, stirred her dead heart.
    In 1947, the UN formed Israel. It was a clear signal of what she had to do.
    Valerie lied on her application and joined the newly formed Israeli Army as a trainer. Safely hidden now in her new gender and identity, she hunted the vampires she’d made, destroyed every collaborator she’d used. One by one, they found themselves on the receiving end of her tools of the trade.
    The small new country was riddled with holy ground. She endured the endless pain and weakness as part of her penance. Through it all, Valerie vowed she would never allow these horrors to happen again.
    Because she planned to execute every murderer herself. Only then would she allow herself to experience life as a real woman.

Chapter 8
    Twenty-four whole hours had passed since Lance Soleil’s radical act and Radu Tepes still couldn’t wrest the media attention back to himself. He had a plan, though.
    If it hadn’t been for his dignity, he would have sprinted down the Governor Hotel’s luxuriously patterned carpeted hallway toward his private meeting room. Instead, he forced himself to advance like conquering royalty through the throngs of shouting press and onlookers.
    â€œHow do you feel about the Tualatin Mountain Homeless Shelter and its new, integrated services?” one asked louder than the others.
    â€œThis is wonderful news,” he replied. “I am now meeting with my staff to best decide how to support Father Soleil in his quest for greater social accountability.”
    As he reached for the suite’s doorknob, his gaze fell to a flake in his carefully buffed thumbnail. Quickly, he pulled a sleek platinum PDA out of his suit jacket’s inner pocket. A fast SCHEDULE MANICURE note on the screen and he secreted the device back before any mortals could see.
    â€œWould you ask Father Soleil to be your vice president when you throw your hat into the ring?”
    Excitement tightened his lungs. For the first time in his long life, he was poised to get exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it.
    â€œYou know that I don’t wear hats.” Radu gave the reporter a mysterious smile. “If you would be so kind as to excuse me now.”
    Radu threw open the heavy white painted wood door. Lucifer below, he loved the Governor Hotel. Of course he enjoyed the large, old-fashioned windows, perfect furnishings, and the lavish rooms.
    Mostly, he loved the quick service. Two minutes ago he’d asked for a private conference space, and now he had it. There was no way he could be seen having these conversations in his fabulously press-friendly terrace suite.
    When the news of Lance Soleil’s actions broke, Radu’s advisors, Joe Carter and Ben Trask, had suggested the CCC and the shelter work together to expand their mutual goals.
    Radu refused. He was tired of being Number Two, of being someone else’s partner. It was his turn.
    No showboating priest was going to steal his limelight. It merely meant he had to scramble to contain the situation. Radu didn’t like scrambling, but it was a necessary evil.
    He closed the door behind him and smiled at the solitary person waiting for him. The rest of his staff had orders not to show for another three minutes. He had a situation to exploit. Radu needed perfect deniability.
    Straightening his crisply ironed blue Oxford shirt, he faced his hand-picked supernatural. Roger Corbetti, his unofficial enforcer, sprawled in a chair. The big were-tiger had