Midnight's Daughter

Page 43

I reached the top to find myself facing a heavy oak door. It was cracked slightly, pouring a line of orange fire-light over the stones. I edged forward cautiously and nudged the door open with my foot. The room inside was large, but more cozy than the vast dimensions of the rest of the castle, and was perfectly circular. I peered around and realized two things: I was alone and I wasn’t likely to stay that way for long. The lit candles told me that much; no one bothered to light an unoccupied room, especially if the means to do so, like most other supplies, had to be dragged sixteen miles up a mountain. Someone was expected. I just hoped it was the right someone, since I really didn’t feel like wading through half the guards to get to him.
The room was full of booty. Several dozen plush prayer rugs brightened the walls, helping to insulate the cold stone. Many of the silver and gold vessels scattered about had Arabic words enameled onto them, the carpet was a Persian in blues and burgundies and the shiny brass lamp that hung from the ceiling didn’t look local. A sudden wave of exhaustion made the exotic colors run together, and I swayed slightly as the last of my adrenaline was used up. I hurt everywhere, but that was nothing new. What undid me was the sight of a real bed dressed with a pile of lovely furs and blankets, so high that they made a mound. I walked toward it unconsciously, my head spinning from pain and wonder.
I must have made it, because I fell onto something soft and squashy that my dazed senses identified as a feather mattress. The impact hurt my bruised ribs, to the point that I think I passed out for a minute. When I came around, I discovered that my first impression had been wrong: I wasn’t alone.
I was slumped over a body that was seeping a crimson stain onto what had been clean white sheets. It didn’t have a pulse, but that didn’t worry me. His kind never did unless trying to pass for human.
My heart was beating so hard in my chest that I thought it might shatter a rib. I noticed irrelevantly that the blood was ruining his clothes. His dazzlingly white tunic had been embroidered at the sleeves and around the slit collar in bright red and gold, but darker patches now marred the pattern in several places. I couldn’t tell how bad the wounds were, because although he was in bed, he hadn’t bothered to divest himself of his fur cloak. It was so silky that my hands completely disappeared in it. I stroked it softly, unable to believe my luck.
I stared down at my victim, and slowly undid the rag holding a sharpened wooden sliver around my waist. He didn’t move, not even to open his eyes. I told myself to get it done, but I hesitated. I’d never killed a sleeping vampire. Their daytime resting places were too hard to find to make it worth the effort; I caught them animated and bent on mayhem, not lying around wounded and helpless. This was so different from the fight to the death I’d envisioned that I simply sat there a moment, staring at him. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected.
His face had the same expressive eyebrows and long, dark lashes he’d passed on to me, but with strong, masculine features underneath that made them look quite different. He was very good-looking, but except for shadowy depressions in his cheeks, he was as white as bone. He looked ill, which was absurd, since vampires don’t get sick. Of course, the blood might explain it; the coverlet beneath him was virtually soaked with it. I had an awful idea: had someone beaten me to it? Had someone else stolen my revenge, while I struggled not to fall off that damned wall?
My hands started shaking and I couldn’t seem to stop them, and my breathing was shallow and uneven. I sat back down on the bed until the room stopped swimming, then started to pull off the remains of his ruined shirt. The wounds underneath were deep, with a few showing bone, but none looked to be in the right area for a heart blow. So why didn’t he wake up?
I told myself that a dead vampire was a dead vampire, no matter how he got that way. I got a better grip on my stake and decided to stop worrying about who had attacked him in such a half-assed way and just get it done. I positioned my makeshift weapon over the heart, but again I hesitated. I wanted him awake for this, aware enough to know who was about to end his miserable life and why. It shouldn’t happen like this, without him even waking up. Somehow, it seemed almost obscene.
“Are you going to kill me or wait for me to die of old age?” I jumped at the sudden question, and the hand that had been lying so utterly still and limp a second ago caught my wrist. I struggled, but found that I couldn’t move. I stared at my arm as it hung there in the air, the strength that had never before failed me suddenly useless. “It will be a long wait, I assure you.”
Bright amber eyes looked me over as he easily rose to a sitting position, his other arm grabbing me by the neck like an errant puppy. He smiled, showing fully extended fangs. “You had your chance. Now it is my turn.”
I fought and thrashed against the iron hold, but it was no use—I couldn’t move. I screamed, as much in rage as in fear, and the hold tightened, tearing more cries from my throat. A hand clamped over my mouth and I bit it. Someone swore, and it was in French, not a language I’d have expected under the circumstances. It brought me back to myself slightly. I opened my eyes to find Louis-Cesare bending over me, worry clearly visible in his blue eyes. Déjà vu.
“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare’s face blurred in and out. He looked like he was struggling to stay calm. He wasn’t struggling half as much as I was.
I’d met Mircea for the first time in a bar in Italy, around the turn of the seventeenth century, not in a castle in Romania. Especially that one. Cetatea Lui Negru Voda, the Citadel of the Black Ruler, was the real castle Dracula. It had originally been built in the fourteenth century, but Drac rebuilt and expanded it after he returned from his Turkish adventure. The Turks had let him go after learning of his father’s assassination and Mircea’s burial alive at the hands of the nobles of the town of Tirgoviste, who supported a rival family on the throne. They knew he’d stir up trouble as soon as he got home, giving the Wallachians something else to think about besides fighting them. And in that regard, Drac hadn’t disappointed.
He had decided that the only thing that would protect Romania from outside invaders and inner rebels was a show of strength. On Easter Sunday 1459, he started as he meant to go on. Drac invited the nobles of Tirgoviste to a lavish dinner party. Once there, they were arrested and forced to march fifty miles to the town of Poenari, located where the Carpathian foothills turn into real mountains. Those who survived the trek were put to work building him a fortress on a steep precipice overlooking the Arges River. The job continued for months, until their elaborate banquet attire rotted and fell off their bodies—then Drac ordered them to keep working naked. It was the harshest kind of physical labor, mixing mortar and lugging huge stones and timber up the steep mountainside. Many died of fatigue and illness, but some survived. Drac examined his new fortress, decided there was nothing major left to do and ordered the remaining workers impaled.
The castle had, not surprisingly, developed a bit of a reputation. It was said to be haunted by some of the thousands who had died there. Maybe that’s why, when tourists come all agog to see Dracula’s castle, they are taken to Bran Castle in Transylvania, even though the only connection with it Uncle ever had was to besiege it once. But it’s in good condition, while Poenari’s version is a hulking ruin, a great lump of stone and misery, with pieces regularly working loose from the grainy old mortar to drop onto careless-tourist heads.
And Bran doesn’t give people nightmares.
“Dorina! Are you all right?” Louis-Cesare shook me, and from his frantic tone, I had the impression that it wasn’t the first time he’d asked.
The problem was, I didn’t know the answer. I’d been under a lot of stress for a month, without Claire to help mitigate it, not to mention I’d almost died twice in one day. Even with my past experience, that could bring on a troubled night. It could be just a nightmare. But the images had seemed so real, much more detailed than my usual dreams. What if the spell had combined with the wine to dredge up something long buried?
But that didn’t make sense. I’d never been to Poenari, not in its heyday and not afterward. And if I’d never been there, it couldn’t be some residual effects of the spell. So why could I almost feel the rough texture of the stone under my fingertips? Was it a nightmare, or something more? And if it was more, how was I supposed to find out? I couldn’t very well use a flawed memory to search for gaps in the same memory.
Mircea, I thought blankly, what did you do?
“Dorina!”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully without thinking about it, and it wasn’t the right answer.
Louis-Cesare began fumbling around in the bedclothes. Hands slid over my body, looking for an injury. I quickly recalled that I wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of panties, having not had anything suitable for nightwear after Stinky ruined my tee. I realized when a drop of water hit my nose that Louis-Cesare wasn’t much better off. His hair was wet and the only article of clothing on that long body was a damp white bath towel draped loosely around his hips. I couldn’t understand why he’d been showering in the middle of the night, until I noticed a sliver of daylight peeking through a gap in the heavy curtains.
It was morning. Morning of the day I was going to get Claire back. I started to get up, only to have Louis-Cesare force me back down. “You will stay here until I have a physician called.”
“I’m okay—”
“Which explains why I have had to hold you down for the last five minutes to keep you from tearing at your own skin!”
“—and doctors can’t do anything more for me than you already did.”
“Dorina! You are ill!”
“Louis-Cesare! I’m a dhampir! I go crazy on a regular basis. Just one of the joys of being me.” I tried to rise again, only to find that I couldn’t. It was no longer sexy, I decided. “Let me the hell up!”
Louis-Cesare was suddenly attacked by a growling Stinky, who wrapped his stick arms and legs around the vamp’s head and held on for dear life, making a horrible screeching sound the whole time. “Don’t hurt him!” I yelled as Louis-Cesare reached for the little guy.