by Elena May
Myra and Sissi had alternated following Thomas around but had seen nothing suspicious about his comings and goings. The upside was that he had not visited the prisoner until now, so if he was keeping Tristan hidden somewhere, at least for now, the vampire had been left alone. But Thomas had to make a move in the next hour, before Franka spoke to Zack, or all would be for nothing.
Zack looked up at Thomas. “Tommy, would you please go to the healing wing and check on Andre? Come back to report to us.” He stood up. “The rest of you, please follow me to the Headquarters.”
Myra’s blood drained from her face and her eyes locked with Sissi’s. The red-haired girl was pale as a sheet. They had both been summoned to the Headquarters, while Thomas would roam free, under no one’s supervision. What if he used the time to go to Tristan and they missed it?
Shaking, she stood up from her place and took her water glass. There would be a lot of talking, and her throat felt parched just from the thought of it. She needed to catch Franka alone and explain her suspicions. But would Franka believe her?
But as they reached the Headquarters and opened the door, all thoughts of Franka left Myra’s mind. Zack’s high chair, which normally stood facing the table and the door, was now turned the opposite way. That was definitely unusual. She had never seen this arrangement before, and it unsettled her.
“Who moved my chair?” Zack said, his voice impatient.
The chair creaked as it rotated over the stone floor, and only then did they see that it was occupied. The glass fell from Myra’s listless fingers and shattered on the rock, a myriad of small glass pieces flying everywhere. And then, the silence was so deep that a feather falling on the ground would have produced a deafening thud.
“What is everyone staring at?” the intruder asked casually. “Have you never seen a vampire before?”
The silence that followed was even deeper. Myra felt as if the sound of her own breathing could awaken a sleeping giant. Everyone else seemed to have stopped breathing altogether.
“They have,” Myra said at last, her voice shaking. “But they’ve never seen a Prince.”
Chapter Seventeen
Friends and Foes
“Some of them have.” Vlad stood up from Zack’s high chair and winked at Lidia. “I trust my patient is recovering?”
Myra’s heart rose to her throat. Prince Vladimir is in the Resistance’s Headquarters. All the separate worlds she had lived in were now colliding, leaving collapsing ruins.
“How dare you come here?” Zack spat. “You’ll never leave this place alive.”
The Resistance reacted quickly. Zack had barely finished speaking when several wooden bolts flew in the Prince’s direction. Vlad twisted around, letting them all fly past him without even scratching his clothes. All but one.
Vlad raised his hand and caught the projectile midair. Before anyone could blink, he turned around, throwing the bolt back. Sean, the Warrior who had fired the bolt, fell to his knees with a cry, clutching at his shoulder. His other hand still held his crossbow, and he made a feeble attempt to lift it.
“I would put that down if I were you,” the vampire said. “It is not a toy for little boys. You’re alive only because I chose so. Don’t give me a reason to change my mind.”
At Zack’s nod, three Warriors lunged at Vlad, swords raised. The vampire grabbed the wrist of the first attacker and yanked the sword out of his hand. He raised it just in time to block a blow from above and twisted around, disarming his third attacker with a powerful swing. He ducked to avoid another blow from the only remaining armed Warrior, and as he stood up, he kicked his opponent in the chest, sending him flying backwards and gasping for air.
The vampire turned around to face them, a sword in each hand. “Why, thank you,” he said. “I hadn’t thought to bring a weapon, so it was thoughtful of you to provide these.”
He twirled the swords to deflect more wooden bolts, his blades moving so fast they became a blur, serving him better than any shield. Vlad sighed dramatically. “Honestly, if you would just stop playing soldier for a moment, you’d notice I come in peace. If I wanted to harm you, you all would have been dead by now.”
“Zack, listen to him,” Myra cried. “He says he comes in peace.”
“What the hell?” Zack cried. “How did he come here in the first place? You.” He stared at Myra. “You betrayed us. You brought him here, just like you freed the prisoner.”
“Oh, please,” Vlad said. “Myra didn’t free Tristan.”
Zack turned his burning glare towards the Prince. “And how would you know that?”
The vampire threw his swords to the ground, and they hit the stone with a clang. “I see you are very slow. Myra couldn’t have rescued Tristan because I was the one who did it. He is safe in the Palace, in case anyone is interested.”
Myra smiled in relief at those words, but there were so many questions still left unanswered. How had Vlad found them? How had he gone past the guards, apparently twice, and how had Tristan gotten out unseen? And what was Vlad doing here now?
“Now, if you are done with the baseless accusations,” the Prince said, “we can finally move on to business. I am recruiting fighters for my campaign to destroy the WeatherWizard. I thought some of you might be interested.”
What? Myra was glad she had dropped her glass already because she was certain she would have dropped it again. And again. And again. But seriously, what? What had Vlad just said?
“Would you…,” Zack started, his voice hoarse. “Would you care to repeat that?”
Vlad kicked the discarded blades to the side and walked to the wall, leaning his back against it and sweeping the room with his eyes. “I see you are deaf as well as slow. I said, I am going to destroy the WeatherWizard. But the task requires careful planning and many resources. I need fighters, and I thought you could provide some.”
“You… you want to recruit people to destroy the Wizard?” Zack choked. “Of all the absurd lies you could have spun! Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Now I do,” the vampire said calmly.
Zack bristled, and Myra reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Zack, please, calm down. If he wished to hurt us, he would have done so already.” She turned to Vlad. “Let’s say that’s true. The Wizard is yours. Why would you need our help?”
Vlad walked towards the other wall. “Many vampires like the new lifestyle. The majority of our kind who now walk the earth were turned during the Nightfall. They cannot imagine a life where they need to fear the sun and hide from humankind.”
“You have to destroy the Wizard in secret,” Myra said.
He nodded. “And I need your so-called Warriors to back me up in case something goes wrong.”
“But why destroy the Wizard?” asked Zack. “Do you want to give the world back to us, so humanity can thrive in peace, or do you want a return of the good old times, when you hunted humans like prey and drank them at will?”
“The latter,” Vlad said calmly.
Myra was used to such statements, but Zack’s jaw dropped, his eyes wide. “And why would we help you?”
“Because this is the only chance to restore your world you will ever get,” the vampire said. “Besides, once we are done, you will all have a fair chance to hunt me down and kill me.” He grinned. “If you believe you can.”
Suddenly, the smile disappeared from his face, and the Prince froze, staring at a single point. Myra followed his gaze and her heart skipped a beat. Oh no. No, no, no, please, no! If there was any chance for peace and cooperation between them, this would blow it apart.
There at the open door stood a tall figure with a shock of fiery-red hair against his pale, freckled face. Thomas had returned.
Chapter Eighteen
Penance
For a second, Vlad stood frozen, still as a statue. Then the spell broke, and he strode forward, fire in his eyes. In the blink of an eye, he was standing before Thomas. Resistance Warriors reached for their weapons, but before
anyone could react, the Prince grabbed Thomas by the throat and lifted him up in the air. The red-haired human yelped, his feet kicking helplessly high above the ground.
“Hey! Let him go!” Zack cried and lunged at the vampire, but with a single blow of his free hand, the Prince sent him flying in the air. Zack collided with the wall and slid down, half-sitting.
Thomas’s blood drained from his face, leaving it grey like ashes. He struggled to get some words past the barrier around his airways, but only pathetic whimpers escaped his blue lips. His eyes were wide as saucers and fixed on the vampire prince.
“You like to play with the whip, kid?” Vladimir said. His voice was so cold that Myra felt an icy tendril crawl down her spine and grab her heart. “You like toys for grown-ups that you shouldn’t have been permitted to touch? You think you can cause pain? You know nothing of pain, little boy. But if you wish, I can show you exactly what one can do with a whip. And I can teach you what true pain feels like.”
Myra’s heart clenched, and she fisted her hands. Please, please, let this be all. Let Thomas get away with a scary lecture. She closed her eyes, struggling to breathe past the lump in her throat.
Thomas screamed.
Myra’s eyes snapped open. A rivulet of red slid down Thomas’s throat, right where the vampire’s long teeth had sunk into the flesh.
“You freak!” Zack cried and sprang up from his sitting position, grabbing a discarded dagger from the floor. Warriors joined him, armed with crossbows and swords.
Vlad raised his face from Thomas’s neck, thick dark blood dripping down his chin. He twisted left and right, like a possessed dancer, letting bolts fly harmlessly around him. Myra walked towards him, shaking. He could have used Thomas as a shield but had chosen not to. That was a good sign, right?
The vampire dropped Thomas to the ground and placed his foot on top of him. He turned around just as Lidia lunged at him, sword in hand. He grabbed her arm midair and twisted it until she screamed in pain. He pulled the blade out of her fingers and raised it to parry a blow aimed at him. And another. And another. At least a dozen Warriors had surrounded the Prince, but he moved around fast as a cat, his blade blocking every sword, his right foot never leaving Thomas’s back. He grabbed one Warrior and threw him backwards, the flying body knocking two more on the way. Before the human had fallen down, Vlad turned around and grabbed another attacker. Myra winced at the sound of breaking bones.
A circle of humans lay on the ground, nursing wounds. Broken weapons littered the floor around them. And in the middle of it all stood Prince Vladimir, his clothes and hair clean and unruffled, his face serene, his dark amber eyes surveying the scene and his foot planted firmly on top of Thomas’s back.
He knelt down, his long fingers entwining into the human’s fiery curls. Thomas gasped.
“Vlad, don’t! Please, stop!” Myra cried. “If you kill him, we’ll never help you.” She ran to him and placed a hand on his arm. “I promise you this—if he dies, none of us will ever work with you, and you stand no chance without us. Tristan wouldn’t want you to give up your dream,” she added softly. “Not for him.”
The Prince’s eyes fixed on her. Fire burned deep inside them, intense and consuming. He looked like he was about to say something but stopped, his lips curling into a lopsided grin. He raised one eyebrow and gave Myra a barely perceptible nod.
Vlad raised his palms and stepped back. Several Resistance members rushed to Thomas, producing makeshift bandages from their clothes and trying to staunch the bleeding.
Zack rose from the ground, massaging a bruised knee. He stared at the Prince, his eyes bright. “We will destroy the Wizard,” he said, his voice shaking. “But we will do it without you. We will destroy it, and we will destroy you and every remaining shred of your world.”
“Zack, please, don’t be rash,” Myra said. “I know he acted like a beast, but to be fair, Thomas abused the prisoner. The Prince’s reaction was understandable, but now his desire for vengeance has been satisfied.” She looked at Vlad and shuddered at the sight of Thomas’s blood still smeared across the vampire’s mouth. “Right, Your Highness?”
“Oh, go ahead and call him ‘Vlad’ like you just did,” Zack cried. “You seem to be best buddies now.”
“Buddies or not,” the vampire said, licking the blood from his lips slowly and appreciatively, “we are all allies now.”
“Never,” Zack said through gritted teeth. “Even if I didn’t find you repulsive and beastly, how can you seriously expect us to trust you? None of your actions make sense.”
Vlad threw a glance at Thomas, who lay on the ground shaking, his wounds bandaged. The Prince looked back at Zack, and his lips stretched into a blood-chilling grin. “My dear boy. Each one of my actions makes perfect sense.”
“You said you freed our prisoner,” Zack said. “But why go through all the trouble? You claim you want to destroy the Wizard, and that is exactly what we demanded in exchange for his freedom. You could have simply struck a deal with us.”
Vlad raised an eyebrow. “I rescued Tristan because I could. And I am going to destroy the Wizard because it is what I want, not because I am giving in to some terrorists’ demands.”
“Terrorists?” Zack’s voice was icy. “You call us terrorists?”
Lidia stood up from the ground, cradling her arm in one hand. “You say you freed the pretty vamp because you could,” she said. “But how? We have powerful defenses, and you claim to have broken through them with no one seeing you.”
Vlad flashed a grin at her. “An excellent question. And I will be happy to discuss this with you, as I found many gaps in your so-called ‘powerful defenses’ that you might want to fix. But that can wait—I have other business I must attend to first. All I wanted from this first meeting was to give you my offer.”
“An offer we can’t blindly accept,” Myra said. Her head swam. She had spent so long lost in an insane dream where humans and vampires could exist in peace. She had finally accepted this would never be and had chosen a side. But now her dream was coming back, and it terrified her. It was too perfect. Too easy. Too wrong.
“You must understand, this sounds crazy to us,” she continued. “We’ve lived our entire lives believing that destroying you was the key to destroying the Wizard, and now you come out of nowhere and offer us some deus ex machina solution to all our problems.”
“I can imagine why my help may seem like a godly intervention to you,” Vlad said, “but I am not serving you the Wizard’s destruction on a platter. It will not be straightforward, and we will need to fight for it.” He swept the room with his eyes. “And now, if you all would excuse me, I wish to speak to Myra alone.”
Zack’s jaw dropped almost to the floor. “There is no way in hell I am allowing that.”
“I was not asking for your permission,” the Prince said. “I wish to discuss my book, and I wish to do it privately. If it will ease your mind, I will take a single witness to testify that we are not conspiring.” He pointed at Lidia. “I will take you.”
“You will not go anywhere near her,” Zack barked.
“Ah, yes, you would prefer me to take someone I have not yet tasted. Reasonable. I have drunk this one’s blood, and it calls to me strongly.” His eyes fixed at one spot. “I will take her, then.”
Myra followed his gaze and froze. Sissi stood there, white as a sheet and not breathing. She had forgotten about Sissi in all the excitement, but now realized she should have paid closer attention. The red-haired girl looked like someone who had seen the otherworld. Her eyes were wide and gleaming with thousands of emotions, so open and honest, with nothing left to hide. She looked as if her soul was about to fly out of her pupils and lay itself bare for all to see.
Zack bristled. “I said—”
“It’s all right, Zack,” Sissi said, and to Myra’s shock, her voice was calm and smooth, although it sounded as if it came from faraway lands. “I will go. The bloodsucker is right—if we wish to destroy the Wizard
, we need to cooperate. I will do what I can on my part.”
Zack frowned. “Sissi, are you sure? You don’t have to do this.”
“I’m sure,” Sissi said. “I’m not afraid. Please, General, I want to help.”
Zack looked at the Prince. “Very well. But if anything happens to them, you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Of course not,” Vlad said, eyes twinkling. “We already saw how efficient you are at stopping me.”
Chapter Nineteen
Pawn
They walked into a small, unaired cellar, and Myra hurried to light a torch on the wall with her candle. Vlad closed the door behind them and turned the large iron key. It squeaked in the keyhole, high-pitched and grating.
Sissi collapsed on her knees on the hard stone floor. “Your Highness,” she breathed, head bowed down.
Prince Vladimir knelt down so that his face was level with hers. He held her hand and lifted it up, kissing it slowly, his eyes never leaving Sissi’s face. “My lady. You must be Sissi. Tristan has told me much about you. We owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Myra raised her eyebrows. Um… you owe me a bigger debt of gratitude.
“Your Highness,” Sissi whispered with a gasp. She looked about to faint, pale and wide-eyed. “You owe me nothing. I did only what I believed to be right. Only what my heart told me to do.”
Myra bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from bursting into laughter. That almost rivals the purpleness of Tristan’s prose.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “And yet, you do desire a gift from me to repay your kindness. You desire to be turned.”
Myra raised her palms up. “Vlad, don’t even think it. You’re not turning anyone.”
“Perhaps not,” he said and looked at Sissi. “It is no small matter, my child. To be turned means you have to die.” He stood up and pulled her up with him.