by Jenn Bennett
“You’d have to really hate someone to go to all that trouble.”
“Oh, he hated, all right. He hated the Turks. And his own half brother, Radu. Really, anyone who challenged his power. His own people, even.”
“What you’re saying is that Vlad was no candidate for the Noble Peace Prize.”
“Nobel. Not noble.”
One side of his mouth curled like paper in flame. “I thought it was given to noble people.”
“Guess they won’t be giving it to you, then, huh?”
“Oof!” he said, clutching his chest. “One point awarded to Miss Theodora Fox.”
I smiled to myself. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. If I didn’t think too hard about Black Sunday or why he hadn’t written me back all these months, or how he’d turned me into an empty shell of a person with a giant Liberty Bell–size crack in my heart . . . Well, then, I supposed I could pretend none of it ever happened. We were simply friends, like we used to be when we were children. If he could ignore the elephant in the room, so could I. After all, we were always at our best when we were competing. This was just another sledding race down the hill in our backyard after Christmas dinner, or sneaking into Father’s office to see how many priceless antiquities and medieval regalia we could rearrange before the housekeeper found us.
I tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, adjusted my black beret, and crossed my arms on the edge of the table. “Say, you know those photographs of Mr. Rothwild’s bone ring that were stuck in Father’s journal?”
“Sure. What about them?”
“I studied them last night when I was trying to crack Father’s cipher. And I kept looking at his next-to-last journal entry, about how he found a ‘gruesome’ way to authenticate the real ring. Did he tell you what that was?”
Huck shook his head. “He kept most of the details to himself.”
Not surprising. “Well, both the photographs and that ‘gruesome’ comment led me to wonder why Mr. Rothwild hired Father in the first place.”
“Because Rothwild thinks his ring is fake.”
“Right. And that’s when I remembered the woodcut depiction of the ring in Batterman’s Field Guide to Legendary Objects.”
“Your evil mythological object catalog.”
“They’re not all evil or mythological. They are—” I shook my head. “Never mind. I’m just saying that I pulled out my Batterman’s last night to look at the woodcut. The illustration is crude, so it’s hard to tell, but there seems to be a symbol on the top of that ring—a dragon with its tail wrapped around its neck, forming a circle. Almost like an ouroboros.”
“A what-o-whatus?”
“A serpent eating its tail. I think it symbolizes eternal life, or cyclical time. Regardless, the bone ring in Father’s photographs—Mr. Rothwild’s ring—didn’t have a dragon on top. It was just a single band with some strange carvings. Don’t you think that’s strange? That Rothwild’s ring doesn’t at all look like the one in the woodcut?”
“Maybe the person who did the woodcut took a lot of artistic license. I wouldn’t believe everything in that book of yours.”
He waved a dismissive hand through the air, and I had the sudden urge to pick up my fork and stab that hand, but became distracted when something tickled my foot. I lifted the tablecloth to peer underneath and was startled to find a large husky-like dog with fur the color of freshly fallen snow and pointed ears, straining against a leash.
My first thought: why was there a dog in the restaurant car?
My second thought, when my gaze traveled up the leash to the hand that held it: this wasn’t the first time I’d seen this dog’s owner.
The dark-and-brooding Heathcliff from the hotel lobby back in Istanbul. Before I found Huck in my room, the bearded man in the long black coat who handed me the banknote . . .
“Please forgive my Lupu,” he said in a deep, rich Eastern European accent. “She is suspicious of strangers.”
“I’ve seen you before,” I said.
“Miss Fox, isn’t it?” he said, and then he canted his head apologetically. “I don’t mean to be rude. Please forgive me. I heard the concierge talking to you in the Pera Palace lobby when I . . .” He mimicked handing me money. “You remember.”
Oh, I remembered, all right. Why was this man here? Was it a coincidence? Any other time, I might have thought so, but after what had transpired since I’d last seen him? No. Something was very, very wrong about his being here.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” I said, schooling my features to appear bland while my heart thudded hard and fast beneath the cotton of my striped shirt. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“I am Mr. Sarkany,” he said. “Small world, yes? I was in Turkey on business.”
“With your dog?” I said, glancing at the animal.
He made a wry noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I take her everywhere. She makes quite the impression, no?”
His big white dog sniffed my hand, which I immediately jerked away, and for the first time I realized that the hound was missing an eye. It had been sewn up at one time or another, I supposed, because there was only fur there now and nothing but the indication of an old scar.
“Do not worry,” Mr. Sarkany said, his voice edged with dark humor as he reached down to scratch the dog behind the ear, where I noticed small, red designs had been stitched into the dog’s collar. No, not designs: symbols. Strange ones that I couldn’t identify, not without getting closer to the animal—something I certainly wasn’t going to do. “She only bites when provoked or challenged. Lupu’s mother was a Carpathian wolf. Give her a target’s scent, and she’ll run through hell itself to chase down her prey.”
Wolf. Target. Prey. Nothing menacing about that. No, sir.
I flicked a look toward Huck. His face was positively frozen. It suddenly struck me why. . . .
I thought I saw a wolf following me.
A primitive part of my brain wanted to either bolt out of my chair or call someone for help. But another part of me, a part that was trying to manage the feeling of petrification that had taken hold of both my limbs and thoughts, told me to pretend that everything was normal. Just until it was safe to excuse myself. I didn’t know if that was the right thing to do, but it was the only thing I could do.
“I assume that since you are on this train, your business in Turkey has also concluded,” Mr. Sarkany noted, sparing a glance at Huck, who was sitting so straight and rigid in his chair, he looked as if Vlad Dracula himself had impaled him. “And I see you’ve picked up a traveling companion. Is this your protector?”
“Perhaps I am,” Huck said in a voice that was as dry and flat as a burned field. Under the table, the toe of Huck’s boot urgently prodded my Mary Janes. “I need to talk to you,” he murmured as his serious gaze connected with mine. Then he added, “In private.”
“Yes . . . ,” I agreed, glancing from him to Mr. Sarkany to the wolf dog.
“Now,” Huck said, voice stony and insistent. He pushed himself up from his seat and held his hand out to me, encouraging me to follow. Insisting.
The wolf dog let out a single bark—one that was so loud, I flinched. My heart pounded erratically inside my chest, as if it were a malfunctioning machine.
Mr. Sarkany said something low and indecipherable to the hound, and it quieted, retreating behind his master’s legs. “I’m afraid Lupu sees you as a threat, boy,” the man told Huck. “Why do you think that is?”
“Not sure, brother,” Huck said in a low voice, giving the man a dark look. “Perhaps she knows I don’t much like big dogs.”
The man’s mouth twisted. He ignored Huck and turned his attention back to me. “Forgive my rudeness, but I overheard some of your conversation just now. Vlad Țepeș. Quite a dark and complicated subject for two young travelers.”
My blood ran cold. Huck and I shared a look, both of us alarmed.
At that moment, a crash diverted Mr. Sarkany’s attention to t
he front of the restaurant car, where a solitary diner sat near the entrance to the kitchen and a server was apologizing for dropping a tray of dishes.
Seizing my chance, I grabbed my handbag and attempted to slip past the man and his dog. “If you could excuse us,” I mumbled, but the aisle was narrow, and Mr. Sarkany made no effort to let me pass. For a confusing moment it felt as if he were blocking me. He said something I couldn’t understand under his breath. It sounded like a command. Panicking, I twisted my body, held up my arms as armor, and forcefully pushed my way through.
“Pardon me, sir!” I said sharply, giving him the nastiest look I could muster.
“My apologies.” The man acted as if nothing in the world were wrong. He only bowed his head briefly and added, “We will have plenty of time later to chat over the river crossing. We’re all stuck together, aren’t we?”
Then the man and his strange hound made their way down the aisle to the front of the dining car. Huck didn’t wait to see him reach it. He just grabbed my hand and pulled me in the opposite direction. His legs were long, and I struggled to keep up, but we exited the car—the whoosh of wind and wheels clacking loudly as we slid open the connecting doors to pass through—and entered the connecting sleeper.
Green scenery flew past the Pullman’s windows as Huck raced ahead to open our compartment. He practically shoved me inside and closed the door behind us, falling back against it when it was latched. For the first time since we’d boarded, the tiny space felt safe and welcoming, not prisonlike.
“Oh Christ,” Huck moaned, his chest rising and falling with labored breath. “Sarkany? What kind of name is Sarkany? You saw that man in the hotel lobby in Istanbul?”
“He handed me a banknote,” I said, patting my pockets. “He said I dropped it. Where did I put it?” Had I left it in the hotel back in Istanbul, or perhaps I put in my handbag . . . ?
“Are you listening to me?” Huck said, grabbing my shoulders to get my attention. “He’s one of the men who were trailing me when I was hiring a car in Tokat—the scary one who stuck to the shadows.”
“Are you certain?” I asked, my brain trying its best to rationalize something that was clearly not rational. “You said yourself that you didn’t get a good look at him, right?”
“Banshee,” he said, lowering his head to pin me with a somber look. “The bloody blackguard has a wolf.”
Yes, there was that. . . .
“He just happened to ‘overhear’ our conversation about Vlad Dracula?” Huck said, using aggressive air quotes to enunciate. “And did you not hear what he said about his beast being a tracker? He’s been following me—this is one of the people your father warned about in the letter.”
My gut had known something was wrong when the man handed me that banknote. Always listen to gut feelings. My mother would be disappointed that I’d ignored my instincts.
“Okay, okay. Let’s think about this,” I said, pacing across the small space of our compartment. I felt a little sick. “If he trailed you from Tokat, does that mean that the intruders who broke into my room are with him? He’s after the ring too? Or Father’s journal? And why? Who are these people?”
“It’s all connected somehow,” Huck said. “I don’t know how or why. I just know that your Mr. Sarkany and his bloody Carpathian wolf dog are not our friends. And if anything happens to you, your father is going to chop me into a hundred pieces and scatter them to the four winds. I had one duty, banshee. One single duty to get back into Fox’s good graces. And now I’ve screwed it all up by leading this man right to you, and we’re stuck here—don’t you see how serious that is? We’re in a rolling prison, stuck here with someone who may be dangerous. We’re worse off here than if we’d stayed in Istanbul.”
“All right, all right. Let me think.”
“Why is this happening? I’m such a thick eejit,” he mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut.
“If anyone’s to blame, it’s Father. Or me even—I saw the man in the lobby. I should have told you back in Istanbul. I just, I mean, with everything that happened . . . I forgot, I guess. But it’s too late to worry about that now. We just need to stay calm and figure out what we can do.” I pressed a palm against my stomach to steady my nerves. “We can’t go back out there.”
“Absolutely not,” Huck agreed. “What if he plans to take the journal by force? Likely he could. That beast of his looks as if got in a fight with a lion and won. How did they even allow it on the train?”
“No idea.”
“You still have the journal, right?”
I opened my handbag to check. “Still here.”
He exhaled heavily, relieved.
A knock sounded on the adjoining compartment door, causing us both to jump. But it was only the attendant. His muffled voice carried through the wall, informing our neighbor that the train was approaching the Danube River crossing. Once we stopped, we’d have to get on the ferry and wait for all the train’s luggage to be transferred. I glanced out our compartment’s small window to confirm, and an old brick building came into view. And then another. The train would be stopping any minute now.
“How big is the steamboat they use for the crossing?” I asked Huck. “Are we going to be forced to sit near Mr. Sarkany? Is he going to follow us all the way into Bucharest? Maybe he wants to hurt Father.”
“What if this man is the reason Fox left me instead of continuing on to Istanbul? What if he was trying to draw this Sarkany away from us?”
If so, it was a terrible failure of a plan. “I don’t like this.”
“You think I do?” Huck said.
I glanced around the room, frantic. I had no idea what to do. And then . . .
And then I did. “We need to escape the train,” I said.
“You’re damn right we do.”
“No,” I said. “I mean make a run for it. When it stops, we need to sneak out and leave. Run. Walk. Whatever. We take our chances out there,” I said, gesturing to the rolling landscape. “Father told you to keep these people away, yes?”
“You know he did,” Huck said miserably.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I damn sure don’t want to lead enemies straight to Father once we get to Bucharest. Because they are our enemies. That much I know. Better to ditch the man and his white wolf now.”
“You’re actually suggesting that we run away from the train? With no plan? No destination? Just run off into the fields? This isn’t the Pera Palace Hotel, banshee. That’s wilderness out there.”
“And a town—Ruse. Sure, it may be small, but we’re stopping at the Danube, a massive river. People have used it as a trade route for centuries. There must be more than one way across. Look out the window—we’re heading into civilization.”
“A few lonely brick buildings are not what I’d call civilization, banshee.”
“We’ll find a way to the Romanian side,” I assured him. “Then we’ll catch a bus or another train—something. It will be an adventure.”
He snorted a laugh. “Is that we’re calling it?”
“Look,” I said, frustrated. “All I know is that we’d be sitting ducks if we stayed here with that horrible man, and if we’re going to lose him, we need to do it before we get to customs, while everyone is getting off the train. Agreed?”
To my surprise and great relief, Huck didn’t need further convincing. He merely looked me in the eye, nodded firmly, and said, “Pack your things. Only what you can carry.” He turned his back to me and dragged both his canvas rucksack and my overnight satchel down from the luggage rack. “Here,” he said, tossing mine onto the bottom berth.
He opened the cabinet that hid our small sink and quickly dumped all the toiletries into his rucksack while I gathered necessities. A change of clothes. My Batterman’s Field Guide. I shoved everything into my satchel. Atop all this, I crammed my handbag and passport—and all the crumpled notes I’d made trying to crack Father’s code.
A loud noise rumbled from somewhere inside the train.
>
Then I felt it.
The train slowed considerably. My balance shifted, and a china cup on the foldout table near the berths clinked madly. Brakes squealed as we rolled up to a small, rural train platform. I couldn’t read the Cyrillic script on the Bulgarian sign, but a few English words appeared:
RUSE BORDER CHECKPOINT
That was our cue to disappear. It was now or never.
High on adrenaline, I slung the strap of my camera case around my neck as Huck slipped into his long charcoal-colored coat. He hoisted his rucksack’s straps over his shoulders to carry it on his back as a whistle blew, alerting the staff to open the doors. “We need to go, banshee. Try not to look guilty or conspicuous.”
Holy night, we were actually abandoning the train!
How terrifying. And exciting.
With my satchel in hand and my coat on my arm, I stepped into the corridor with Huck. We headed left, down the windowed corridor, past open compartments and passengers gathering their passports, skirting around attendants hauling luggage.
I took one last look behind us while the conductor unlatched the outer door. No sign of Mr. Sarkany or his white dog.
Yet as we descended the steps to the platform, I couldn’t help but think about the extraordinary effort this man had taken to follow Huck all the way across Turkey—and now into continental Europe. Surely not for a ring with mere historical value. Why not just contact my father and offer a larger sum of money or try to strike some sort of bargain? Father was well known in Europe. The medieval collector’s market was small and elite. Auction houses, estate agents, collectors, art appraisers . . . most of them knew my father’s name and reputation. So why the goons, threats, and stalking?
This convinced me that the ring was more than a piece of history—that my Batterman’s Field Guide was right and Vlad’s war ring was truly bewitched or cursed. An actual, real-live magic ring! Could that be possible? I believed it could, and a little thrill went through me just thinking about it.
A little worry too . . .