by Elena May
Sissi raised her head, blue eyes shimmering under the torchlight. “I do not fear death.”
Myra’s eyes scanned the cellar, trying to pierce the darkness in the far corners the torch could not reach. Is there a bucket I can throw up in? Sissi was spouting weird phrases like she was in some ridiculous romanticized historical novel.
“Indeed?” The Prince tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “What do you fear, then?”
Sissi looked away, chewing at her bottom lip. That way, the torch illuminated only half of her face, so that one half was pale and glowing and the other was dark and shadowed. She looked like two different people merged into one. “I’m afraid of my peers finding out who I really am. I’m afraid they’d think I’m a monster.”
Vlad’s eyes softened, and his lips curled into a sad smile. “And this is perhaps the sole regard in which you are unlike Tristan. Tell me, Sissi, if you were a vampire, would you have preferred to live in the human world as it once was, or in the eternal night of today?”
“The night belongs to vampires,” Sissi said. “The day belongs to humankind.”
“Well put,” the Prince said. “Then tell me, my girl, have you ever seen the sun?”
“I have,” Sissi said. “While I was traveling here, I came across the forest you keep sunlit during the day.”
“And what did you think? Did you enjoy it?”
Sissi wrapped her arms around herself and turned away from him, her back to the torch. The flame shone behind her, casting an orange halo around her fiery braids. “Very much,” Sissi said.
Vladimir smiled. “Then I will let you enjoy it a bit longer. You are young and have your life ahead of you. I will give the sun back to your kind. I will let you know it better. And, in a few years, if you still desire it, I will turn you.”
Sissi gasped and clasped her hands in front of her. She took a step towards him, shivering. “But I don’t want to wait for years. I’m ready! Please, Your Highness, I wish to be a part of your world!”
“But you already are,” the Prince said. “You do not need to be a vampire to be a part of my world, and neither does being one guarantee you a place in it. Most vampires, even those I have sired myself, are not a part of my world. But Myra is.” He raised an eyebrow. “Even though she is mad at me right now.”
Myra glared at him. She tried to take a deep breath, but the air was so stuffy, she feared it would make her choke. Her eyes darted to the door—she ached to open it and ventilate the small room, but their conversation was not fit for anyone else’s ears.
“You played me like some game piece.” The sound of her own voice surprised her. She had expected she would shout, but it was quiet, even, and cold. “How long have you been planning to destroy the Wizard?”
He took a step closer to her. The light caught in his black hair, and it shone with a steely bluish tinge. “Since long before you were born.”
Myra felt the world spin and the stone floor crumble beneath her, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle breaking off and falling into a dark chasm. Nothing made sense. Everything she had ever believed in had been a charade. “I don’t understand.”
He shrugged. “What is there to understand? The Old World belonged to me. I went everywhere I wanted to go, did everything I wanted to do, took everything I wanted to take. But then, it was no longer enough. I disliked where this world was going and wanted to take control before everything I had ever loved was gone forever.”
He started pacing back and forth in front of the torch. The light slid over his dark hair and cape and caught at his ruby ring, red and shimmering as fresh blood.
“In spite of a promise I had made to someone much wiser than I, I decided it was time for me to take over this world. To rule, but this time openly, not hiding in the shadows. Only, it was not the world of men now. I was ruling over an empty house, over the ashes of what once was. The world I wished to conquer was gone now; I had destroyed it in the process.”
Myra stared at him, her arms wrapped around herself and her face set in a deep frown. A wave of cold fury washed over her heart. “You could have thought this through before destroying everything and killing millions.”
He stopped pacing and turned towards her. “Perhaps. But things were more complicated than you imagine, and my decision to take over the world was never rash. It was centuries in the making.”
“And now you wish to undo it?” said Sissi.
He nodded. “I came to this decision decades ago, but I needed warriors to back me up. Then I learned about your Resistance movement from a human we had captured and interrogated. This happened long ago, but contacting you was not straightforward. First of all, I knew you would have no reason to trust me…”
“You don’t say,” Myra murmured.
“And so, I had to find a way to get close to you,” he went on. “To gain your trust. But that was the least of my problems. The true challenge was contacting you without any other vampires finding out. As soon as we learned of your existence, my people were scared. Every once in a while, you managed to capture one of ours, and the captives never came back.”
His long fingers straightened his vest’s lapel, and he smiled, shifting his gaze from Sissi to Myra. “Don’t give yourselves too much credit. Most of my people are spoiled cowards who have never needed to fight and fear for their lives. They saw no reason why we shouldn’t destroy you at the first opportunity. We captured more Resistance members, and my people insisted on questioning them. I ordered all wild humans brought to me, under the pretext that I wished to feed on wild blood. In truth, I wanted to gain their trust and find a way to contact the Resistance.”
“But you wanted to drink me,” Myra said. “You only spared me because you learned I could write.”
“That is what I wanted everyone to believe,” Vlad said. “Your writing skills were a benefit, but I would have spared you even if you had never sung that Little Bird song.”
Myra felt as if someone had twisted a knife inside her guts. All this time, Vlad had used her to get to the Resistance. She had thought she had been strong and powerful, that she had changed her own fate and saved her own life by showing the Prince she could write. But it had always been a game, and she had always been a pawn.
“If you wanted me to trust you,” she said through clenched teeth, “why did you kill the boy when I finished my story?”
“I said I wished to gain your trust,” he said. “But I was never planning to do it by being all soft and cuddly. I was going to be who I was and hoped that you would learn to like what you saw. And if you did not, I could always wait for the next free human to come along. I was in no hurry. I could wait forever.”
Myra took a deep breath, shaking. “Did my writing ever mean anything you?”
“Oh, it did,” he said. “My final goal was to meet your people, but not a word I said to you was false. I did see potential in you, and I wanted you to finish my book. I still do.”
She hated this. He was a horrible, hate-worthy, bloodsucking monster, and all it took was for him to say a few kind words, and she would forget it all. “Are you the only vampire who wants to see the Wizard destroyed?” she asked, all of a sudden wishing to change the topic. “Have you told anyone else?”
“I have told Armida and Tristan, naturally,” he said. “I can trust no one else with this.”
Myra glanced at the door. The others were still in the Headquarters, but she could hear raised voices carried through walls and doors. They had to go back before Zack got suspicious, but she needed to understand Vlad’s point of view and determine if he really meant to do what he claimed. “And they also want this?”
“Of course they do. We went through the good times before the Nightfall together. They miss them as much as I do.”
“Perhaps you should stop assuming that what is best for you is necessarily best for them,” Myra said. “Have you taken the time to check whether they really want this or they simply agree because it’s what you want? If Armida agr
eed with your plan, why did she help me escape?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t put too much weight on that. Perhaps she didn’t think you would be the one to act as a bridge between our worlds. Getting that story was more important to her, and she knew as well as I that we had the luxury of waiting forever for the right human to come along.”
The Prince’s words did little to convince her. She remembered Armida’s visits to the dungeons and her talks with the guards. Perhaps the Prince was aware of that. Perhaps he had even been the one to ask her to do it to gather information. But Myra would not ask him. She had promised Armida that she would be on her side from now on, and if Vlad did not know about this, he would not learn it from her.
“You really think we can do this?” she said instead. “You believe we can destroy the Wizard?”
“Yes, we can,” Vlad said. “But not alone. Which is why we are going to seek Ila’s assistance.”
“Who is Ila?” Sissi asked.
“She is the only one who can help us in this,” he replied.
“So this Ila is a woman?” asked Myra.
Vlad smiled. “I understand your confusion. In Inuit, the name can be both male and female.”
“Yes, I certainly knew that, and that was the source of my confusion,” Myra snapped. “What I meant was, what is she?”
“She”—he paused dramatically—“is my archnemesis.”
“Oh,” Myra said. “I thought I was your archnemesis.”
The vampire burst into laughter, which he promptly quelled. “Forgive me. You were not serious, were you?”
“Apparently not,” she grumbled. “But why do you think your archnemesis would want to help you?”
His fingers flew to the sun-shaped golden pin that clasped his cape and he brushed it absentmindedly as he turned to look into the flame. “She will not want to help me per se,” he said. “But she would want to see the Wizard destroyed. After all, she has been trying to achieve this since the Nightfall.”
Myra’s eyes widened, and she scanned his face, looking for signs of deception. How come she knew nothing of this? “I thought we were the only surviving humans actively fighting you with some measure of success,” she said. “Wait till Zack hears this.”
“First,” he said, “I wouldn’t attribute any measure of success to your achievements. And second, Ila and her pals are vampires.”
That took her by surprise. “You mean, there are good vampires?”
“Oh, please.” He rolled his eyes. “Vampires who kill other vampires. In what universe is that good? But we are not here to get into philosophical debates over good and evil. Her hideout is far away, and we should get going. Come—I have parked nearby.”
“You mean you know where their hideout is and you haven’t taken them down?” Myra asked before something else struck her. “Parked? We are going by car? A real car?”
“Of course we are going by car. I told you it was far from here, and you are a slow rider. And you had better not let that goof of a commander of yours get in my way.”
Vlad walked to the door and unlocked it. The key screeched, long and wailing, and Myra extinguished the torch and followed the Prince and Sissi out of the room. Once she had stepped through the door, she finally took a deep breath—while still stuffy, the air felt like a clear breeze over a green meadow in comparison to inside the tiny cellar.
“What was that about?” Zack said sharply once the three reappeared in the Headquarters. “I will not be kept out of the loop any longer. I need to know of your plans… Your Highness, and where we figure in them.”
“Zack, we’re going to get allies,” Myra said. “I’ll tell you everything once we’re back. You have to trust me.”
“Trust you?” he cried. “Trusting you is all I have done recently, and look where it’s gotten us. The Prince of Darkness is walking freely in our midst, and none of us has the wits to kill him!”
Vlad cleared his throat. “I would hardly say it is Myra’s fault that none of you have the wits to kill me. Step aside, boy. Whether you like it or not, we are fighting on the same side. So you can either fight beside me, which right now consists of getting out of my way, or I could have you for breakfast and be done with it.”
Zack eyes burned. “If you think you can talk to me like this in my own Headquarters, you are—” His words were cut off when the vampire grabbed his arm and twisted it, and Zack fell to his knees with a cry of agony.
“That was unnecessary,” Myra cried, but Vlad ignored her and swept the hall with his eyes, his gaze intense.
“I do not have time for this. I want the Wizard destroyed, and so do you. So you’d better all move away and let me do this my way. I will come back with news from our other potential allies, and we will discuss the plans then.” He walked on, and Sissi and Myra followed.
“Myra, Sissi, wait,” Lidia cried. “You can’t mean you are going with him just like that. How can you know he will not imprison you again?”
Myra turned around, facing her companions. “Please, you have to trust me in this. I have talked to the Prince, and I believe he genuinely wants to destroy the Wizard. There may be others who might as well, and we have to find them.”
Zack rose from the floor and rubbed at his arm. “You know what? You can go with your precious bloodsucker and never come back for all I care. I’m done with this nonsense.”
Pain pierced Myra’s heart, and she wished to talk to him, to explain. But there was no time, and with a last look back, she followed the Prince.
Chapter Twenty
Enemies
Walking to the car took longer than the vampire had claimed, but once they finally reached it, Myra stopped in her tracks, her breath caught in her throat. The vehicle’s roof and doors shone like a polished drop of blood. It was narrow and low, barely reaching to her waist. Perhaps a sports car? She had no idea—she had only seen a few pictures, and never anything like this. Myra imagined herself years from now, telling the story to her grandkids. If they asked what kind of a car it had been, she would probably simply say “red.”
Vlad opened the back door and held Sissi’s hand. “Thank you, Your Highness,” the girl uttered as she got in, her voice shaking, and Myra rolled her eyes. In the past hour, Sissi had done little but stare at the Prince with a lovestruck puppy-dog look stamped on her face.
The Prince was about to close Sissi’s door, but she reached out and placed her hand against it, keeping it open. “How do you even have cars?”
“We cannot use hydrogen- or solar-powered cars, as you can imagine,” he said. “It is a very old gas car that I have modified to run on autogas. Still, our supplies are very limited, and only very important vampires, such as myself, ever get to drive.”
Sissi’s jaw dropped, and Myra rolled her eyes. She sat in the front seat and looked around. “I’ve read cars are supposed to have some kind of seat belts,” she said, yelping as Vlad started the engine and accelerated so fast her head stuck to the headrest.
“I removed them,” he said. “They disturbed my passengers.”
Myra watched the landscape fly past them through the window until it became blurry. She had the strange feeling that at any point, the car would separate itself from the ground and fly into the air. The cloudy sky stretched above them, a patchwork of white, grey, and black, letting only a hint of daylight pass through. “Aren’t you supposed to turn on the lights?”
“The bulbs burned out,” Vlad said. “I never bothered to replace them. Don’t worry, I can see in the dark.”
“That’s not the point,” Myra said, grabbing the edge of her seat and holding tight. “Other drivers should be able to see us, too. Not all of us are immortal.”
“There is no one to crash with,” he said. “Even if there were other drivers, they would be vampires and could see us.”
Bumps and holes covered the road. Vlad drove in a zigzagging trail to avoid them, but too often it was impossible, and the car jumped up and down. Why was it so difficult to repai
r the road?
“How is Tristan doing?” Myra asked.
The Prince scowled. “How do you think he is doing? You forgot to mention that maggot used him for whip practice.”
Sissi leaned forward. “But how did you get him out?” she asked. “We searched everywhere and found no traces.”
“It was disturbingly easy.” He looked at Myra. “I followed you and your people after you left the Palace. It’s not your fault—no one can hide their tracks from me. As for the spell, I am somewhat skilled in magic. It was simple to detect it and lift it once I knew what I was looking for. But worry not—I lifted the spell only for myself. Your Resistance is still safe from other vampires.”
Once I knew what I was looking for. Myra wanted to slap herself. Vlad had said it was not her fault, but in fact it had been. “You tricked me into telling you about the spell.”
The landscape changed around them, and the flat, stony desert gave way to high rocks.
“And you fell for it,” he said. “Why?”
Myra looked away. Up in the sky, strong winds carried a heavy black cloud, fast and angry. Somewhere, a raven screeched. “I never imagined there was a counterspell, or that you’d know how to perform it.”
“And so you learn a new lesson,” he said. “Always imagine every possibility and assume that your enemies are capable of everything.”
Myra raised an eyebrow. “Another one of your trademarked Chessboard Monologues? Should we go back to the Resistance and fetch you a chess set?”
He smiled. “Thank you, but I am quite finished.”
“But how did you get in unnoticed?” Sissi asked.
“That was the simplest part of all.” Vlad let go of the wheel and gestured with his hands in the air, and Myra grabbed her seat, shaking. “The guards at the Resistance only look back and forth, left and right. They never look down, and most of all, they never look up.”
“You crawled on the ceiling?” Sissi cried, and Vlad turned back to look at her.
Myra clenched her teeth. Was it so difficult to look at the road while driving?