Vlad loosened my grip enough to stare down at me. “My aura saved you.”
At my blank look, he went on. “You did notice that my clothes never burn when I call forth flames. My power recognizes anything contained within my aura as part of me and thus won’t consume it. Other fire travels right over my aura as if repelled by it, so I coated you in it to make the flames pass over you.”
I was so stunned that I couldn’t speak. He’d actually managed to make me fireproof? How long would it last?
His mouth twisted into a musing smile. “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. Perhaps it will wear off in as little as an hour, perhaps it will last weeks.”
It took me a few moments to process the subtext behind that statement because I was still overwhelmed by what had just happened.
“If you’ve never done this before, how did you know it would work?”
His expression changed into the arrogant one I knew so well. “Because it had to. I wasn’t about to let you die.”
I shook my head with a sort of bemused amazement. I’d worried that his ego might be the death of him, but as it turned out, it had saved my life. Of course he wouldn’t hesitate before trying something that had never been done before. He was Vlad Tepesh. How could he fail?
Another rumbling sound made me look upward toward what used to be Castle Poenari. A huge smoking hole was all that was left of the tower, and almost all of those imposing high walls had crumbled into the forest below. The structure I’d so recently thought of as a stone dragon now looked like a ragged skeleton.
“Oh, Vlad,” I said softly. “Your home. It’s . . . gone.”
His hands settled onto my shoulder, their heat searing through the layers of clothing I’d stolen from my now dead captors.
“It hasn’t been my home for centuries. I’m not sorry that it’s gone. Its place in my life is long over.”
Above the noise from the rock slides, trees falling, and other destructive sounds, I heard shouts. Vlad and I turned, and though I couldn’t see who it was in the distance, he smiled.
“Maximus, Shrapnel, and Martin seem to have survived the explosion. They must have gone out the tunnel.”
Then he looked at me and his smile faded. “Why did you wait to tell me about that?” Hints of anger colored his voice.
“Because you would’ve sent someone else to free them,” I replied, the topic helping me to regain my shattered composure. “I can’t do anything about the guards who were killed, but Maximus and Shrapnel were captured while protecting me, so it was only fair that I was the one to get them out. I didn’t even want Marty to come along, but he insisted.”
“Such a reckless, foolish risk,” he muttered, but when he brushed my hair, his touch was gentle despite his hardened tone.
I smiled, holding up my hand. “Reckless, maybe. Foolish, no. You were right. This is a formidable weapon.”
He clasped it, absorbing the current it contained without a flicker in his expression.
“Yes, but you are still only human.”
I laughed, the sound of it drowned out by the crunch of rocks as the mountain continued to shudder as though in the throes of birth pangs.
“So was Van Helsing, yet in every movie, he beat the vampire in the end. Never underestimate the power of humanity.”