I’d put on my fucking Horseman’s Mask for the first time, for crying out loud. If I was being honest, I was a little miffed that I hadn’t heard Heavenly trumpets, an angelic chorus, or seen cherubic backup dancers frolicking across the Heavens. Even a drum solo would have sufficed. I’d hoped to have some epic entrance music for such a monumental moment.
Instead, the Horseman of Despair had donned her Mask for the first time in utter silence.
Thinking about it in those words, a small smile crept across my cheeks. It was…fitting, I guess.
As eager as I was to put the Mask on, storm out of the room, and go rip Dracula to shreds at his own party, I remained sitting on the divan. Dracula already knew we were here and he hadn’t sent an army after us. Instead, he’d tailored some evening clothes for us and invited us to dinner. I closed my eyes, and focused on the totem I used for meditation, centering myself.
Dracula wanted something from us.
I carefully considered my steps for the figurative dance ahead. There were a handful of different ways to approach it. We were obviously about to come face-to-face with Count Dracula—the world’s first vampire. The secret leader of the entire Sanguine Council.
He should have no idea of what had transpired in Kansas City, so what kind of opportunities and advantages did that give us? If anything, he’d know I was a wizard, but he wouldn’t know about my Horseman’s Mask. I also had a Greater Demon on my side, and I’d seen Samael flex before. He was probably the scariest monster I’d seen in person. Dracula was no chump, but I couldn’t imagine him being stronger than one of Heaven’s Mightiest Rejects and a Horseman.
I knew he also had his Beast, that he was a Master, and that he collected rare magical items, so I didn’t anticipate this being a simple, linear fight—which was why we had hoped to sneak in and assassinate him.
I spent a few more minutes going over any other pertinent information I could think of before I made my decision. I opened my eyes, feeling utterly calm. I scooped up the bottle of wine in one hand and the dress in the other before opening the door to the hallway.
Only to find a freaking skeleton waiting for me.
I gasped at the unexpected host, startled to realize that I was holding the wine bottle overhead—ready to react like someone had dared to switch off Jessie’s Girl in the middle of the chorus at my local bar back in Kansas City.
The skeleton didn’t react in the slightest. It just watched me. Without eyeballs, it was hard to tell, but those eye sockets were pointed my way. It didn’t advance or speak. In fact, the skeleton almost seemed sophisticated. Docile. Subservient. It was about an inch shorter than me and wore calf-high leather boots—folded back down at the top like those worn by pirates. Based on the boots, I took a gamble and decided he was male—since there was no skeletal equivalent to a man’s pride and joy, despite what many would have you believe.
A shredded red fabric hung down his chest, ending in a point over his sternum. It reminded me of a train robber’s bandana from the Wild West era, although the fabric was much longer, bunching up around the shoulders almost like a scarf.
His bones were the color of aged ivory, and they were pitted with dark stains. I blinked as I suddenly noticed that the ligaments connecting his bones together consisted of smoldering black and red embers that occasionally burped up an errant spark or two like a campfire. Luckily for him, they didn’t catch his scarf ablaze.
It made me think of the embers and sparks I had seen on the bridge connecting Kansas City to Castle Dracula—the place Pandora had been so terrified of. Samael had said the place went by many names—Purgatory, Neverwas, the Night Currents. And it looked like this pirate-train-robber had been born there.
Not seeing Samael, I side-stepped over to the door leading to his dressing room, keeping one eye on the skeleton to make sure he didn’t jump my bones.
Heh.
He just watched me patiently, slowly pivoting his neck. I don’t know if it would have been creepier to have him talk to me in a charming British accent or maintain his chosen silence. Seeing that Samael’s dressing room was empty, I cursed under my breath and glared at the skeleton dude.
“Where is my companion?”
He stared at me, his ligaments crackling softly, ever-burning. And then he shrugged.
“Speak or I walk,” I demanded. “And I’m keeping the wine.”
“You can’t leave,” the skeleton rasped dustily. “No one can leave.”
I narrowed my eyes. “First of all, I don’t think I like your tone. Second of all—” and without any warning, I cracked him across the jaw with the bottle of wine. His skull spun around 180 degrees with a rat-a-tat-tat sound. I was momentarily surprised that the bottle of wine hadn’t shattered. “Abracadabra,” I muttered.
The skeleton gasped dustily, lifting his bony hands to realign his skull. I used the opportunity to drape the red dress down over his head and outstretched arms. It was a struggle, but I managed to wrestle it on before sweeping his legs out from under him, knocking him down to the floor on his tailbone.
I shoved the bottle of wine into my jacket pocket and grabbed him by both boots. Then I began dragging him towards the sound of the piano. I back-kicked the doors open—glad they hadn’t needed to be pulled open or I might have embarrassed myself—and darted into the room, dragging the gasping skeleton behind me. The volume of the music let me know I’d found the right place, but I didn’t bother checking out the room.
I would only have one chance to make a first impression.
Instead of elegantly descending a set of steps before an adoring crowd in my exquisite red dress, I executed an Olympic skeleton throw in my ninja gear. I slowly began to spin, swinging the skeleton through the air in two complete rotations to build up some momentum. At the apex of my third turn—aiming directly for the piano—I released the poor skeleton’s boots, hurling him into the air. I crouched slightly to regain my balance, gripping the neck of the wine bottle as I watched the dress-clad skeleton sail across the room, emitting a dusty wheeze and a trail of sparks. Then I leaned back and pitched the bottle of wine at my target.
It struck him in the back of the head—pure luck—with a solid crack, and exploded in a shower of glass and wine. The blow was hard enough to knock his skull clean off his neck and up high into the air where it ricocheted off the wall and towards the ceiling.
But the body in the red dress…
Sailed straight into the man seated at the glossy black piano.
Or, it would have crashed into him if he hadn’t transformed into a cloud of red mist at the last possible second.
The skeleton slammed into the piano vertebrae first, sending several random bones whipping into the air. He tried using his hands to catch his balance, which resulted in an impressive, partial glissando as his frictionless fingers slid over the keys. But the virginal pianist’s grand debut ended prematurely when the open lid of the piano crashed down, pinning his upper body inside with a shower of sparks.
The ricocheting skull struck the lid of the piano and then bounced away towards the keyboard. The struggling, cross-dressing skeleton lashed out to try and catch it, but missed twice—hitting the keys instead—before his third and fourth attempt pinned the skull against the far corner—resulting in the famous dun-dun-dun-duuun jingle.