Afterglow (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #2) (9 page)

Possible bad news. Vlad may not be dead.

“
Who are you texting?” Uta asked, as she looked for a fresh diaper for the fussing baby.

“
Her,” I replied.

“
The new woman you love?” Uta paused. “I saw the whole thing in your palm, so don’t try to deny that you love her.”

“
Yes.
Her
.”

“
You should tell her how you feel. Just in case tomorrow never comes.”

I looked up at the ceiling and squeezed my eyes shut. I nodded, opened my eyes and sent a second text, this time, in her preferred language:

Je t’aime.

Funny how my high school French for “I love you” came back to me when I least expected it.

Chapter Nine

As it turned out, it had been fortuitous to be seated next to Uta and her three children on several trains from Zürich to Transylvania. She knew her way across countries and navigated us through train stations like a professional travel agent. When we got to her neck of the woods, which was almost to the neck of the woods where I wanted to go, I got off at her stop, instead of mine, and we took a minibus together to Bran.

She didn’t even travel with a stroller. I couldn’t imagine how she could manage a one year old and twin three year olds. I carried two of the sleeping children, the heavier ones—and her luggage, too—from the bus stop to her small home above a butcher shop. She lived right off the main street in a town that looked like it was the setting of a cheesy Renaissance festival.

She wanted to just give it to me, but I bought something from her: her husband’s small electric motorbike, which was outfitted with studded snow tires. Best of all, it was silent and fully charged.

She fed me some sort of spicy meat stew that she pulled out of the freezer and stuck in the microwave. She let me use her laptop and even drew me a better map than the internet had of how to get to the ruins of Raven Citadel.

“
How do you know all of this about Vlad’s secret stronghold?” I asked.

“
I can’t tell you,” she said.

“
You know some vampire hunters.”

“
I suppose you do, too?”

“
I am one,” I admitted.

“
Well, there you go, sir. I know you. I know a vampire hunter.”

I nodded. “And you are married to Lucian.”

She nodded. “Him, also.”

“
Oh, my God. He was a hunter?”

“
Rand, I don’t want you to think that everyone in Transylvania is chasing after vampires, but…”

“
It comes with the territory, right?”

“
Yes. The tourism of the official Citadel brings much money to our area. But it also brings the paranormally curious, and the legitimate vampire hunters, like you.”

“
I find it ironic that Vlad still has a castle here. I mean, all this time and he could have gone somewhere else.” I shivered in front of her wood stove as she loaded it. “He could have gone somewhere warmer.”

“
Like Southern California?” Uta said.

I was startled. “Why do you mention that area?”

She pressed her lips together. “I saw your palm and you are a good man, so I’m going to trust you with something.”

“
Okay.”

“
When Lucian disappeared six months ago at the Raven Citadel, he and…some others were working on trying to connect the Transylvania vampires with some of them in Southern California.”

“
Are you kidding me? I need that intel! Badly!”

“
They have clans. And colonies. And societies. Even politics and territories, divided up for their blood mafia. There are the Transylvanian vampires, which are the oldest and strongest, except for the Romans.”

“
The Romans? Like Nero?”

“
You know of Nero?” she asked.

“
Yeah, and I want to take him down. Badly. You know all this to be true? About their highly evolved society?”

“
Yes, Rand. They are very organized and clever. Territorial. They are the gangsters of our time. They have parceled off the world; different vampire clans control each sector. The only place where they are not actively involved in killing humans is around New Zealand.”

“
New Zealand?”

“
An island off the coast is where a highly spiritual vampire named Josiah Reign, and a small group who back him, are trying to make peace treaties with the different factions. His group never bothers humans that I know of.”

“
Insightful intel. I am happy to know of these vampires who are not killers. When this battle is over tonight, I want to come back in the morning and see if we can put our information together, so I can catch the other vampires on my main hit list.”

“
I thought that was what you were doing tonight.”

“
Nero is far worse than Vlad, I’ve heard.”

She nodded.

“Do you know of a vampire named Delilah?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“All right. Thanks anyway.”

“
Why do you specifically want these three: Vlad, Nero and Delilah?”

“
I’d tell you, but it’s a long story and we’re losing daylight.”

She looked scared for me.

I checked my phone for messages. There was no text back from Ambra.
Nothing.
Not even a cell signal.

“
You should go, Rand. You need to slip into the ruins before they wake up at sunset.”

“
Thank you for the motorbike and the map.”

“
Just bring my husband back!”

“
I’ll try my best, Uta.”

“
I will light a candle for Kristen, too.”

“
Thank you for your help, your prayers, and your kindness.”

The three-year-old twins left their Disney movie on the DVD player and were now clinging to my legs. The baby was crawling on the floor and aiming to climb up my boots, which were stuffed with deadly weapons. I headed him off at the pass and put him in his high chair, buckling him in for extra security. His mother put several raisins on the high chair’s tray to keep him busy for a few minutes.

Uta cut thin slices of cheese and brown bread for the older children and poured them each a glass of milk, putting the food on plastic plates on their child-size table and handed a sippy cup of apple juice to the crooning yearling.

“
Do you want more food, Rand?”

“
No, the stew was delicious. Thank you. I am full.”

I followed her into the pantry when she went to get small red apples for the older children. I shut the door behind myself, so the children would not hear and asked her, “What were you doing in Zürich?” I asked her. “Tell me.”

Her eyebrows went up and she looked uncomfortable. “After months of trying to find Lucian myself, but realizing I can’t fight the dark forces, a friend of a friend got me an audience.”

“
Audience? With the Pope?”

“
Of course not. I went to Zürich to ask the Illuminati to help me rescue Lucian. They laughed at me like I was insane when I told them that vampires had him.”

“
Those bastards! Sorry, Uta.”

“
No, no, don’t say sorry. After they threw me out, I lit a candle in the nearest Eastern Orthodox church and I asked God, ‘please send me someone brave and true to help Lucian.’ And then, I got on the train and you did, too. You sat right next to us. You know the rest of the miracle.”

“
I’m not a miracle. I’m just me. Wow, the Illuminati. You met them!”

“
I was not very impressed,” she said.

“
Me neither, only by reputation—they should have listened to your plea for help.”

“
You listened. That is enough.”

“
You put too much faith in me, but I’ll do my best to find Lucian.” I opened the pantry door and we went back into the tiny kitchen.

I tried to think if there was any way that it could have been contrived by humans that Uta and her children had been seated next to me in the train. With all of my detours to get tickets, cash, food and supplies, I came to this verbal conclusion and told her:

“Your faith is remarkable.”

“
Everyone needs to believe in something greater than ourselves,” she replied.

“
Play with us! Play with us!” the twins clamored at my knees. I was amazed at their English but apparently, many people were multilingual, even small children. Probably due to American Disney videos.

“
I can’t play right now, children,” I said to them and they pouted a bit.

I opened my backpack and took off my heavy pullover sweater and put on my flak jacket. Then the sweater went back on over it. I checked my weapons in the bathroom and used the toilet while I was in there.

I washed my hands and face and dried them on the worn, but clean towels. I looked like a wild man, with my dyed dark hair dirty and tangled, and the whites of my eyes bloodshot, contrasting with the blue of my irises. I looked like a nightmare had just awakened me. I drank frigid water from the faucet and exited the bathroom.

“
It’s time,” I said apologetically.

Uta looked crushed but excited.

“Uncle Rand has to say goodbye now, children,” Uta said. There were fearful tears in her eyes. For me, and for her husband, whose fate she didn’t know.

When they each lifted their little faces expectantly, I got choked up and bent down—I pressed my lips to the children’s warm apple-red cheeks, and took my leave of the cozy rooms above the closed butcher shop.

It was official. If I didn’t bring back their daddy, I should just go directly to hell.

Chapter Ten

I wasn’t convinced that urgent prayer and lighting a candle had brought Uta and me together on a train. I smelled a rat. But a good rat. My guess was that someone in the Brotherhood of the Blade or the Sisterhood of the Scythe had something to do with this connection of me and Uta. Or maybe even Gabby? Yeah, Gabby. She had apparently been so clever at vampire espionage that she should get a posthumous medal from us. In fact, I was going to suggest it to Lucas.

Anyway, I hoped that these guys were not really involved: the Illuminati. I didn’t even want those guys to know I
existed
. I was scared for Uta that they knew she did. I hoped to hell that she had lied to me about being in Zürich to see the Illuminati and that maybe Gabby had somehow set this up for Uta to sit by me on the train, and baited me by mentioning the name of the place, just before she died, since she knew I would go right there and look for Kristen. Yeah, that made way more sense than any of the other b.s.—like the hokey palm reading—that I was supposed to believe about how Uta connected with me.

As I sped along almost silently on the narrow dirt roads and across frozen fields and through forests, I reminded myself that I had never looked a gift horse in the mouth. And I sure wasn’t about to start doing it now.

Lucian’s electric motorbike with the studded off-road snow tires was an unexpected boon. I couldn’t even imagine how I would have gotten to the Raven Citadel ruins by dark if I had been on foot. It was a long way from the last bus stop, through deep snow. The map was also insanely helpful. Uta had even known where the cameras and motion sensors were on the property. And where the fences were. She had even written the Romanian words and some phonetic translations for me, of the names of streets and roads. She would have made a great espionage agent.

When I saw how accurate Uta’s map was, and her hand-drawn description of the ruins, I knew that she had been here before. Many times. I wondered how she had gotten this far. Perhaps before the children came into the world she had been a vampire hunter with Lucian. She just knew way too much for a sausage maker and mother of three.

On page two of the maps, she had drawn for me a floor plan of the dungeon area, which was at the lowest part of the ruins and was the likeliest place for me to find captives. According to Uta’s drawing, offices, kitchens, and a weapons armory was on the ground floor. The third floor of the small ruined castle contained bedchambers, bathrooms and some sort of workrooms where she was not sure what they did there, but guessed that it was something significant.

In the fading afternoon light and with my small flashlight, I pulled over to memorize the schematics and then carefully put the papers away in my backpack.