Fucking weirdos.
Castle Dracula wasn’t just a barracks for his vast and diverse army. It really was a home—a city. Remembering Nate Temple’s Beast, Falco, and the crazy assortment of ‘monsters’ who often resided there…
It wasn’t necessarily reassuring. Was Nate one bad day away from Falco becoming like this? Two bad days? Maybe that bad day had been weeks, months, or years ago, and no one knew it yet—perhaps not even Nate.
I dismissed the thought—knowing I couldn’t do anything about it if I died in the next three days.
So, as I assessed the monsters going about their figurative day—even though Dracula had said the place was perpetual night—I remembered Dracula telling me that he wasn’t notifying everyone that I was stalking the streets. No one was looking for me. If and when I raised enough hell, I was certain things would change, but for now, I had a semblance of safety.
If Dracula had wanted me dead, he could have simply locked me in the feast room and sent everyone to greet me. He could have also locked me up in a cell to imprison me.
Technically, thanks to the barrier around us that Samael had brought over from Kansas City, we were all prisoners here. None could leave until Dracula died.
Which meant I needed to find Dracula’s Bane—as Samael had called it—in the belly of the currently sleeping Beast. Did that mean the Keep?
I went over it in my head a hundred times, trying to find some hidden clue or hint that Samael might have dropped.
That this was all some act, like he had said.
But the way he had hit me in the face…
The way he had cut off my power…
The way he had spoken about my mother…
He could have earned an award for best actor.
But something about the quest the two bastards had given me just didn’t sit right. Another game rather than a direct confrontation. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a reason for them to go to such efforts unless either, or both, of them wanted something as a result of my quest.
I doubted the two men were discussing business. They were probably sitting in leather recliners, glad-handing each other about how incredibly clever they were. Maybe even having a double mani-pedi while they waited for our fateful dinner.
Despite Dracula’s reassurance that he didn’t intend to announce my arrival, that didn’t mean that if I ran across some monsters that they were going to let me walk by. They just wouldn’t be actively looking to maim and then murder me.
It also made me trust Xylo a little bit more. Dracula had no need to send a spy to befriend and betray me. That would ruin the fun of the trap he had already laid out. To watch his residents tear me limb from limb.
The way he had studied me across the table, though…
It was as if a part of him actually wanted me to succeed. That he wanted to face me. Because he was a recluse. Bored out of his mind hiding out in his castle. Everyone thought he was dead. He couldn’t just go out and terrorize cities anymore. Well, he could, but he couldn’t take credit for it. He secretly ran the world of vampires. Although impressive, it had a price.
Anonymity.
Right now he had a great board of directors in the Sanguine Council to handle all the day-to-day management. Dracula was the reclusive trust fund heir—and he was on house arrest.
One of the most feared, legendary creatures in human stories, and he couldn’t revel in his reputation. I could understand that frustration. It sounded cool, but after a few months of riding your tricycle around your castle in your undies with a bottle of tequila while practicing your evil laugh, you realized you were pretty goddamned bored.
So what did my quest gain him?
The monsters below went about their duties.
The wind laughed at me.
Xylo studied me in silence.
And I continued to wonder…
Chapter 10
The night sky hung overhead like an ominous blanket, seeming to somehow even dim the brilliance of the stars. The red moon added to the crimson haze in the air, but after spending the last few days in Kansas City, I’d apparently grown accustomed to Roland’s barrier.
The only difference here was that the big, bad Master Vampire of this city was secretly the big, bad Master Vampire of all Master Vampires, working behind the curtains like the vampire of Oz, and the city itself was the birthplace of countless legends and tales—even if the most notable had been sold as fiction thanks to Bram Stoker.
But…was it?
How accurate was that story? About Jonathan Harker coming to visit a wealthy nobleman at his personal estate, forced to stay within the castle for the duration of the meeting? Maybe that wasn’t so much fiction, but fact.
It didn’t really matter; I was just putting off what I was supposed to be doing here. I’d done plenty of that already, and I had nothing to show for it.
Well…
Other than giving myself time to hold the Mask in my fist.
Which had been the entire point of it all.
“Mind standing over by the door, Xylo? I don’t want the wind knocking you over the edge.”
He stared at me blankly. “The wind goes right through me.” He used his bone fingers to play a little ditty down his rib bones—literally tickling the ivories—and then held up his arms to prove that the wind had no effect on him. The only indication that it was windy was that the red bundle of fabric around his neck and shoulders that was both scarf and bandana whipped around, but he didn’t appear to notice it. I’d seen something similar when Dracula hit me with the power of his will—none of the skeletons had been affected in the slightest.
I sighed. “I need you to keep an eye out for trouble,” I said instead.
He stared back at me—and that drawn-out, eerie stillness from a walking, talking skeleton reminded me just how strange all of this really was. “Both of my eyes decayed long ago,” he finally said, poking a bony digit two-knuckles-deep into his ocular cavity.
My stomach made a strange wriggling sensation at the imagined organs that should have been inside. “I was trying to be polite. I just need some privacy and I want you to make sure no one disturbs me or sneaks up on us.”
He cocked his head, withdrawing his finger from his eye socket. “Polite? To me?” he asked, not seeming to understand. “How peculiar…” he said to himself, already turning to walk away from me. Was that because he didn’t understand what polite meant or because he didn’t know why I would bother being polite to him?
He stopped to stand before the supposedly dangerous, locked magical door that he’d told me hardly anyone ever used, and clenched his fists in an aggressive pantomime of menace. The only menacing thing about him was his scarf whipping in the wind, like he was some dead pirate king protecting his buried treasure. He’d already admitted he had zero combat ability, so it was comical to see him acting as if he would be able to stop one of the monsters if they happened to stumble onto the fiftieth floor of this specific tower for a smoke break on the bridge. We hadn’t seen anyone at all in the tower we had climbed, so I wasn’t too concerned about an attack. I’d also checked the nearby rooftops and spires for gargoyles, but the rooftops surrounding us were quiet and empty.
Xylo had been true to his word. It was a nice, quiet spot.
Having already tried—and failed—to tap into my powers back in the…