Elixir of Flesh
Page 35
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When Constanta was taken down into the vampire’s coven that previous night, she was, just like those before her, tossed through the door to the pen.
She toppled to the ground, and, just as with Nicoleta, the first person to introduce himself to Constanta was Dragomir, who asked for her name, told her his name and advised her, “Stay out of the way if you want to last.”
Constanta asked the grizzled, ugly man just as he was walking away, “Where am I?”
“You’re in the pen,” he explained, turning back to her with a wily grin, “Welcome to your new home for the rest of your life. And if you want that life to last, do what you’re told, and keep out of the way.”
Nicoleta and Crina were there beside Constanta right after him. After hearing the commotion of Constanta’s entrance, they rushed to go see the new arrival and bent down to help Constanta up.
“You don’t need to listen to him,” Nicoleta said to Constanta, before she asked her name.
“Don’t dare think you’ll be here for the rest of your life,” Crina added, her eyes narrow with defiance.
They took her to the dining hall to sit down. Nicoleta and Crina comforted Constanta while they explained the way things worked in the pen.
An hour or so later, after the two subsequent prisoners were thrown in and things were beginning to quiet down, a small uproar began to spread over a piece of paper that had been dropped into the pen by a small solitary vampire. Lina had, once again and with considerably more caution and circumspection, entered the barred room. But, instead of lingering, she simply dropped a piece of paper inside and left, hoping that it would find its way to its intended recipient.
The person who picked it up couldn’t read it and handed it off. It ended up in the hands of Dragomir, who scrutinized the lines on the page and openly declared that it was a confidential communiqué directly from the vampire leadership to himself and that he couldn’t divulge its contents.
Oana had to directly confront Dragomir and pry the letter out of his hand with Crina’s help, much to Dragomir’s annoyance and against the resistance of Dragomir’s bodyguards. She examined it and confirmed that it was, in fact, nothing like what Dragomir had claimed.
Oana walked into another room where Nicoleta and Crina were seated and dropped the letter into Nicoleta’s lap. Nicoleta looked up at Oana and asked, “What’s this?”
“Madalina left it,” Oana said.
Nicoleta opened the folded up piece of paper, which was a small scrap torn out of a book with letters inscribed on one side using some sort of ad hoc red ink. Nicoleta read the written words out loud to Oana, Crina and Constanta, “Nicoleta. You’ll see the sun again. I promise.”