Dracul (24 page)

So I have to look back there.

The weights on the ends of my chains are heavy, but in spite of the shackles I’m still stronger than a mere human. I grab each of the weights by the big loop where the chain connects to them, and I carry them like tiny dense suitcases, one in either hand, and I scurry around the pool to the waterfall.

Yes! From here I can see a big gap between the falling water and the rock formation. My next several steps are careful ones, because the ground is slightly wet from the spray of the falls, and my sparkly heels, though gorgeous, are nonetheless highly impractical for this part of my mission.

But more than that, I know Lombard and Drake are back here somewhere, and I’d prefer to see them before they see me.

Cautiously, I make my way forward behind the veil of falling water, and crane my head around the doorway to peek at what’s beyond.

There’s a room.

It’s sealed off with a sliding glass door, which only makes sense because there are a few very old-looking books in the room, and the humidity from the falls probably isn’t good for them.

In addition to the books, there are a ton of weapons. Swords hang on the walls. A huge display of crossbows is surrounded, not by arrows, but by long wooden spikes.

Stakes.

Of course, Lombard keeps his vampires in line by threatening to shoot them through the heart with wooden stakes.

But more than all those things, a display of syringes catches my attention, mostly because Lombard and Drake are standing next to them, arguing.

To my relief, neither of them is looking my way, nor do they appear to be holding syringes currently. While I can’t be one hundred percent positive, everything I’ve learned and heard and seen indicates the greenish liquid inside the syringes is the serum Eudora invented—the one that turns dragons into mere humans.

It reverses biological immortality.

Who knows what it might do to a creature that’s less immortal than a dragon?

I duck back out of sight of the doorway and weigh my next move.

I could go back to the table and pretend like I haven’t seen anything, maybe even put the spit back through the pig like nothing happened, and play dumb when Lombard asks me where his vampires went.

But what good would that do me, really?

No, I need to tell Felix and Constantine what I’ve seen. Maybe there’s even a way I can help them escape.

Once again, I tiptoe around the pool, this time headed back toward the table. I stop to wash my hands in the pool (even though I didn’t touch them, I did just kill two vampires, and anyway, I always like to wash my hands before I eat). I pause at the table just long enough to grab a couple more bites to eat and stuff a bunch of pork into my purse (don’t judge—you would do the same thing in my shoes, you know you would). Then I grab the two improvised stakes I used to kill the first two vampires, and I hurry as quickly as I can in the direction the vampire guards took Constantine and Felix.

I’m about halfway down the first hallway, wondering where to go, when I hear angry shouting in the great room behind me.

Lombard. And Drake.

Carrying heavy weights and wooden stakes is tricky, but I scamper forward as fast as my aching feet can scramble, and make it around the corner of the hallway as the sound of running footsteps echoes down the hall behind me.

Once around the corner, I don’t know which way to go, and anyway I’m too encumbered to run very fast at all, so I stand flat against the blind corner of the wall, and try to catch my breath as the sound of running draws nearer.

At the last instant I leap around the corner, stakes at the ready, and plunge them into the first two vampires I see.

Unfortunately, there are more than two vampires, and Lombard and Drake were not at the front of the pack.

“How dare you?” Lombard seethes as two vampire guards evaporate at my feet. “You will pay for this!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lombard barks instructions to the remaining vampires, who drag me off down the hall. They’re not being nice about it, which does not bode well. We come around a corner and this time, instead of a long white hallway, we reach a section of solid gray rock with a door in the middle of it.

Lombard opens the door himself and the vampires throw me inside.

The door slams shut behind me with a thunderous clang, and I can hear the key scrape the inside of the lock as it seals me inside.

I’ve landed in a tangled pile of chains and weights, and I think I may have scraped my shin, besides bruising my knee and probably losing any chance I might have had of escaping and freeing the guys.

A cold hand touches my shoulder—the touch of a vampire. I know it too well by now.

“Rilla? Are you all right?” Constantine asks.

“I’m fine.” I leap up and hug him. His touch is cold, but still comforting, and I can hear his heartbeat through his shirt.

The room is dark—the only source of light comes from a small barred window in the door, which probably exists solely so our captors can check on us, not to lend us the comfort of its meager light.

But the light is a comfort, because with it I can see Constantine and Felix.

“Are you sure?” Constantine holds me tight. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Not really. We ate roast pig, and then I killed four of his vampires—”

“Four?” Felix asks. “How?”

“With the spit from the pig. I broke it in half and used each half twice. Speaking of pig.” I reluctantly pull away from Constantine’s embrace, and hand over the meat from my purse. “I brought you food. Take it. I’ve had plenty.”

The guys don’t protest, but eat ravenously, which tells me they were both probably as hungry as I was.

While they’re eating, I tell them about everything I saw behind the waterfall, especially the books. “They’ve got to be important—at least one of them, I’m nearly positive, is Melita Thorne’s translation of
The Life of Vlad Dracula
. Lombard said Eudora stole it, and she still has a thing for him, so she gave it to him because she thought it would earn her favor with him.”

I’m about to explain to Constantine that Eudora is Lombard’s ex-wife, and about the Hans Wexler pseudonym, but Constantine assures me, “Felix told me of Eudora and the trouble she has caused your family over the years. It makes sense that one of the books in that room would be Melita’s translation that Eudora stole. One of the other books may be
The Book of the Wisdom of the Magi
, which my brother stole from the sultan.”

“Your brother
stole
the book?” I’m pretty sure this is new information. “How did he get away with that? Surely the sultan would have figured out who took it and sent an army after him.”

“He did not take it when he was released from prison, but teleported there years later. He was quite upset about the Fall of Constantinople, and hoped the contents of the book would help him get his revenge.”

“What are the contents of the book?” Felix asks.

“I only know the parts Vlad told to me. I have never read the book myself. Vlad left it to his son.”

“The demon?” I clarify.

“Yes. And he, doubtless, left it to Lazaro.”

“Doubtless,” I agree. This bit of news only confirms my suspicions that the man arguing with Lombard was Lazaro Drake.

But even that news does me precious little good as long as I’m in chains.

“We need to get our hands on those books,” Felix insists.

“Sure,” I agree. “But first we have to get out of this cell. These walls appear to be solid rock.” I press one palm against the cold stone. “What is that, granite? It’s got to be several feet thick, even at its narrowest point. We may be stronger than ordinary humans, but we can’t break through solid rock.”

“I thought we’d use the door,” Felix suggests. “Or perhaps, you could open the door for us.” There’s a tone in his voice that says he’s up to something.

“How?” I turn away from the wall and walk toward my brother, my chains rattling with my every movement.

Felix lifts his sleeve cuff to reveal something shiny and yellow at his wrist, just peeking out from under the magnetized cuff. “Shh!” He shushes me before I can announce out loud what it is.

“Gold,” I whisper. “Where did you—your rings? You brought them? That’s insanely dangerous. If Lombard or Drake sees—,”

“Your brother may have been foolish to bring them,” Constantine admits, lifting his cuffs to reveal similar adornment under his shackles. “But these are our ticket out of here. We were just discussing who should change into a dragon to ram the door down. If either of us change, we’ll ruin our clothes or, at the very least, have to change in and out of them in order to walk out of the casino, but changing would take too long and the vampire guards are sure to catch up to us. But with your dress—”

“No way. I’d split the seams for sure.”

But Constantine is adamant. “I commissioned that dress precisely so you could change without destroying it. Just slip your arms through the sleeves and pull the top down to your waist. Then all you have to do is pull it up again when you change back.”

“That’s not immodest or anything,” I protest, even though I suspect his idea will probably work. The dress is made of stretchy material, so the waist will grow with my dragon waist, which anyway is tiny compared to the rest of my dragon self. And I never got around to fixing the split slit at the leg, so it still goes nearly to my hip.

“We won’t look,” Felix promises. For the first time, I realize what he’s been working on the whole time we’ve been talking. He has a couple of rings on a flat part of the floor, and he’s flattening them with a chunk of rock. Among its many appealing properties, gold is highly malleable and can be flattened crazy thin (you’ve heard of gold leaf, right—super-flat gold?), so a couple of rings can be spread into a sheet large enough to encircle my wrist without breaking.

It’s not the most perfect gold bracelet I’ve ever seen, but at the same time, I’ve never been so glad to see one.

Felix curls the sheet into a cylinder shape and slips it into the narrow space between my wrist and the shackle.

Then he pounds flat his last couple of rings while I review our plan in a whisper.

“So, I’m going to turn into a dragon and break the door down, and then we’re all going to run out of here and try to find our way back through the maze of hallways to the casino?”

“It
is
a maze,” Constantine agrees. “But I was paying careful attention when they brought me through. Between the three of us, we ought to be able to find our way.”

“You realize the vampire guards are sure to chase us. I only killed four of them. Who knows how many he has—way more than four, I’m sure.”

“We could stop at the room behind the waterfall and get weapons,” Felix suggests as he works on the last cuff. “You said there were stakes and swords there. Besides, I think we should take the books. At the very least, we need to know what Lombard knows.”

“The room was sealed off with a glass door. We may not be able to get in,” I caution him. His suggestion worries me, not just because of the time we would lose in the detour, but because I’m not sure I want him to have those books. The quest for gold has made Lombard into a soulless monster.

I don’t want my brother to end up like him.

“We’re going to need the weapons to escape,” Constantine argues. “If we can break out of this cell, we can break through the glass door. It’s worth the time it will take. But most importantly, I want the two of you to get out of here. If necessary, I will hold off the vampires—they are less of a threat to me, since I already am one. I don’t fear their blood or their bite. But the two of you…” Constantine swallows back emotion. “You need to get out alive.”

As he’s talking, I realize something even more important, something I can’t speak aloud, not here, where there’s a chance Lombard or one of his spies might hear.

Felix
has
to escape.

Even if I get left behind, Felix has to get out of there. It’s my fault he’s tangled up in this mess in the first place, since I got scared and called my dad for help.

I’m not going to endanger my brother further, nor am I going to allow for the possibility that Lombard might learn the remaining secrets to making gold from Felix.

But since I can’t say all that, I tell him, “If you get your hands on those books, get them out of here. Don’t wait for me or for Constantine—just get them out of here.”

“I’ll do my best,” Felix promises. He’s finished pounding the gold flat, and curls it into a cuff shape, slipping it under my other shackle. “Are you ready?”

I lift my purse strap over my head so my handbag is no longer worn across my body, where my swelling dragon form would surely burst the strap. Now it hangs from my shoulder like a traditional purse. It’s not as secure there, but it’s the best I can do. Anyway, there aren’t a great lot of important things in there, only my passport and ID, besides the usual purse contents.

“Are you two ready?” I ask, taking my shoes off because they’re not going to survive my feet turning into dragon feet, and it’s easier if I don’t have to bust out of them.

Felix pats his waist band. “I have my passport in the compartment of my undershorts, so even if I have to change into a dragon, I won’t lose anything important.”

“I’m ready, too,” Constantine confirms. “My suggestion with the door is to crack the hinges. They’re its weakest point.”

“Good plan.” I survey the door a moment before slipping my arms back through the off-the-shoulder sleeves of my dress. “You two stand back.”

Felix and Constantine take cover in the corner furthest from the door. My back to them, I slip the top of my dress down as I change into dragon form. Then I grab the weights by their chains and hurl them at the hinges, one after the other, with all my dragon strength.

The steel door dents at both hinges, but it’s still standing in its frame. I whip the weights at the hinges again, following them up with a heaving spin that sends my spiked tail slamming into the door.

The steel slab gives way, leaning, ajar, halfway into the hallway.

I grab the top of my dress and pull it back into place as I turn human. “That worked,” I gasp.

“The guards are probably already on their way. Let’s go.” Constantine grabs my hand and leaps through the door.

“The shackles.” I freeze and look down at my wrists. Though my swelling dragon form stretched the shackles, it also pressed the gold tight against them. They’re bigger, but they didn’t break.

“Can you slip your hands through?” Felix asks, tugging on one cuff.

“Ouch! I don’t know.”

“Let’s just go.” Constantine reaches back through the doorway, plucks me up by my waist, and pulls me through the gap into the hallway. “We can’t risk breaking her hands—she’ll need them to fight.”

Felix agrees and picks up the weights on the end of my chains, carrying them for me as he clambers through the doorway and runs down the hall beside me.

Constantine goes first, which is the most dangerous place to be, since that means he’ll encounter any attackers first. When he reaches the place where I impaled the last two vampires, he picks up the two pieces of wooden spit.

We sprint into the great room, which is currently being watched by two guards, one at either end of the room. Constantine impales the nearest one, while the one at the opposite end of the room runs away down a hall, either to sound the alarm, or just because he doesn’t want to get impaled.

They may be undead, but they’re not stupid.

We circle around the pool. I’m running barefoot, which is actually easier than running in strappy heels.

There’s another vampire guard standing in front of the glass doorway. Constantine uses the other wooden stake on him as the sound of running footsteps thunders up each branching hallway ahead of more approaching guards.

“Sounds like there are lots of them,” I observe.

“Cover your eyes!” Felix shouts over me as he tosses the weights on the ends of my chains through the glass door.

Constantine all but hugs me to protect me from the splintering glass. Then he spins around, leaps into the secret room, and scoops up an arm-full of stakes.

Felix grabs swords, and hands me two. “I know you say it’s messier,” he admits to Constantine as he darts back through the shard-filled doorway, over the pile of clothes from the guard who has already turned to dust, toward the oncoming vampires. “But it’s also faster, and I don’t have near your aim.” He punctuates the end of his sentence with a slicing motion that decapitates the first guard to reach us.

I’m trying to get back through the doorway with my weights when Constantine leaps past me, lunging at vampires one stake at a time, eliminating them so quickly their screams turn to dust in the air.

I get about halfway around the pool when a vampire slips through the fighting fray to reach me.

Though I’ve been trained with swords since I was a child, and under nearly any other circumstances I’m deft with them, the chains and shackles make every move cumbersome. I swing a sword toward the vampire’s neck, but the chains hold my arm back, and the blow deflects off his jacket.