“What do you mean, where? Back to life. Back to reality.”
“Vampire Dave’s probably still right there on waiting for us. And there’s nothing left for us in Paris.”
“Perhaps nothing for you. But for me, there is my life. And Cami. We need to find her.”
I searched the darkness, twisting my entire body to do so since my neck was broken and fairly useless. One place we could go would be back to my house in good old America. But there wasn’t much we could do there, other than regroup. I put the idea in the back of my mind, in case nothing better came along. Then I saw it—a thin, gossamer trail of light, leading from Sofi’s hand out into the empty space.
“I don’t think Cami’s in Paris anymore…” I said absently. “But I think I know how to find her.”
“Where? Where is she? Let’s go now and save her! We must before it is too late.”
“It’s not as simple as that, Sofi. I don’t know exactly where she is, but I do think I’ve found a trail that will lead us much closer to her. You see that?” I asked, pointing to the thread of light. “That’s coming from the amulet. And I think it’s a kind of ghost trail. A remnant of the paths taken previously by whoever held the thing… and I’ll bet dollars to donuts the last person to use it was your good old boy, Donal.”
“We follow the trail, and we find where he went.”
I nodded and continued, “Something like this… this amulet. It’s not normal to be able to cut a hole in one reality and into another. I suspect when we reach the end of the trail, or at least the place we’re trying to find, there will be something there. A marker… a scar.”
“So, what are we waiting for? I want to be back alive.” Sofi slung her bag over her shoulder and turned to swim away. “This place… it is cold, and it is dead. I do not want to be here any longer.”
I didn’t want to keep her here any longer than necessary either, especially since I had no idea what kind of effect being here while alive could have on someone. We followed the thread, she swimming through the inky goo of Eitherspace, me flopping and twitching my way along like the mangled blog of goo I was. Eventually, she had enough of my spastic movement, latched her free hand onto my shirt, and dragged me along behind her.
I have to admit, it was kind of sweet.
By the time we reached the end of the thread, it was impossible to tell how far we’d traveled. Could have been ten feet, could have been ten miles. Didn’t really matter. What did matter was I was right: there was a kind of scar there, where the thread ended. A kind of shimmery jagged edge of light trying to break through the darkness. This had to be the last place he’d gone through, and I was about to take us back out, when I realized it wouldn’t help.
“We are here. How do we get out?” She reached for the scar with the amulet, and it began to glow and throb, cracks slowly spreading out from its center as it threatened to burst.
“Put it away!” I shouted. “This isn’t the right door!”
She pulled the amulet back, and the throbbing subsided.
“This would only take us back into the catacombs. That’s the last place he used it. I’m sure of it. He was using the catacombs as a home base, I think. A place to bleed the bodies of the people he captured… then he’d take his bounty to its final destination via another trip through Eitherspace.”
“But we did not find Cami there. Or your Nancy.”
“I know… I know.” I tried to shake my head but with a broken neck I just kind of jiggled. “But it doesn’t matter. We need to find the door attached to this door.”
Sofi and I both stared together at the crack in space, and with a sinking feeling, realized there were literally thousands of additional filaments of light sprouting off in all directions.
“I think you are right about it being his base. See how many paths he has taken,” said Sofi.
“I see them. Give me a minute to think.” How I wished I could find a bar in this place. “Sofi, hold the amulet close to the crack. But do not let it touch.”
She moved the amulet closer again, this time much more slowly than before. As she approached, the crack began to grow and tremble, but something else happened I hadn’t noticed … so did the strings. The closer the amulet came to the threads of light, the brighter they became, with some much more brilliant than the others.
“I think Eitherspace can heal,” I said, my eyes darting from one thread of light to the next. “Don’t ask me how, but that’s what it looks like. See the thread we followed? How it’s brighter than all the others? I think it’s marking the most recent wound—the one that’s healed the least. We need to find the next brightest thread. That will take us to the next doorway.”
“Won’t that take us back to where he captured your Nancy?”
“No. Like you said, Nancy and Cami weren’t there. He took them somewhere else. We follow the right thread, and I think we find where he took them.”
“But Phoenix, there are more threads than I can count. And they all look the same.”
“They’re not the same,” I snapped. “You need to find the brightest one. I’m not able to move around very well right now, in my… condition… so, just look. And don’t let the amulet touch the crack.”
Sofi crept closer to the fissure of light, careful not to bring the amulet too near. Her fingers danced across the various trails, which quivered at her touch like ripples of light on an astral pond.
“I think I found it,” she said. “But I am not certain.”
“How certain are you? On a scale of one to ten.”
“I am… I am a seven.”
Seven would have to be good enough.
Chapter Eighteen
Turned out, seven was more than good enough. It was perfect. When we reached the end of Sofi’s thread, all it took was for her to touch the amulet to the fading scar in Eitherspace and drag it along the wound to tear it open again. After that, it was as simple as passing through the opening, and we were back in the real world, where I was fully alive with all my parts back where they belonged.
When we came through, we entered darkness, but not the same level of dark we’d left in Eitherspace. That’s the difference between darkness and a void of nothingness. Here in the real-world black isn’t really black—not if there’s any hint of light creeping into a space, like there was where we popped out. Still, the place we’d entered upon returning to the real world didn’t give up its secrets easily, so Sofi took out her cell phone and activated the flashlight, casting our location in a ghastly white glow. As the light revealed the space around us, I groaned, for it strongly resembled the catacombs where Sofi and I had first met—stone walls, stale air and the musty stink of wet death. A few more sweeps of the space, however, and I realized my mistake. This place was someplace new. Another place of death, yes … but one different than the one we’d visited beneath the streets of Paris.
“Follow me,” I commanded, as I took the phone from her hand. “The exit should be…” I licked my finger and held it in the air, feeling for the direction of airflow. “… down this way.”
As we crept through the gloom, my foot came down on something dry and brittle, which crunched beneath my feet like dry leaves. I knelt, felt for the floor, and found the broken wings and crumbled body of a desiccated parafairy. “He went through here, alright. Dropped this on the way.”
“What are those things?” She kicked at what was left of the creature. “Why do we keep finding them? I have never seen them before, and now they are everywhere.”
“They feed on the blood of the undead. But sometimes they’ll hitch a ride on the living. Donal spent enough time around vampires he must have picked some up.”
“They are disgusting,” she replied, before stamping her foot down on the tiny corpse and grinding it into the floor beneath her heel.
I couldn’t very well argue with that. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
We found ourselves at an ancient wooden door hung on large hinges to the stone wa
lls of our tomb. For that’s what it was, where we’d come through—a tomb, or perhaps a crypt (I never can tell the difference). With a heavy push, we shoved the doors open and stepped out into the moonlit night of a cemetery.
“I wonder where we are…” I said to myself. “Looks Christian. But old.”
Sofi snatched the phone back from my hand and studied her screen. “Ravadinovo. Bulgaria. It says so here on the map.”
“Bulgaria… Lots of vampires in Bulgaria. Guess it doesn’t surprise me.” I scanned the cemetery, searching for any sign of movement, but nothing moved aside from wind’s scattering of autumn leaves covering the ground. “That map of yours. I don’t suppose it tells you where to go next?”
“It is a bit of a walk, but there is a village nearby.”
A crackling of twigs sounded from behind me, and I spun to face it. A rabbit hopped away in the moonlight and wiggled its body into a burrow beneath a rotting stump. When I turned back to Sofi, she’d already started on her way out of the cemetery, and I hurried to catch up with her.
“Wait up, will you?”
“You are too slow, Phoenix. You must be quick, like me.”
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“Phoenix. It is night, I am a thousand miles from home, and I have not eaten since breakfast. Where do you think I am going?”
My stomach rumbled and spoke to me in a language only I could understand.
Roughly translated it said, “Shut your damn mouth, follow her, and feed me already.”
Chapter Nineteen
The town of Ravadinovo was as small as it appeared on Sofi’s phone map, and according to what we found on Wikipedia as we made the short journey, had less than a thousand full-time residents. Quaint in an old-world way, with a combination of paved and gravel roads, stone buildings built possibly centuries earlier, and surrounded in every direction by countryside and distant mountain ranges, the place sure seemed like a prime location for a secret vampire cult to set up camp.
We followed Sofi’s map into the heart of the village, straight to the only restaurant that had a website. Nothing fancy, just a kind of bar and grill type place where you’d imagine rustic travelers stopping by for a drink and a bite before venturing off to the castle to jam a few stakes into some undead hearts. Before entering the front doors, the smell of grilled meat danced through the air straight into our nostrils. As we strolled down the light-lined streets, I imaged a trail of ghostly aromas swirling through the air like in an old episode of Scooby-Doo, luring us into a treacherous, yet delicious trap.
We left the street, went under a stone archway, and up the path to the restaurant. Once inside, any earlier ideas the town was dead this evening disappeared as loud music and happy voices filled the air. Sofi and I took a seat at a table, an old slab of wood scarred with the memories of countless dinners and ales.
“You buying?” I asked. “My wallet got roasted, remember?”
Sofi signed, plopped the bag on the table and sorted through the contents. “If they take credit cards, yes. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my Bulgarian money.”
Within a few minutes, a young man in an apron came to our table. “Sziasztok!” he said, as he took the two of us in.
“Parlez-vous français ?”
“Oui, Madame,” he replied, with a gentle curtsy. “Un petit peu.”
“Fuck this shit,” I grumbled. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes, I do speak English. Much better than French. You are American?”
“Yeah, and a long way from home,” I replied. “Are you still serving food?”
“Yes, best food in Ravadinovo. What would you like? Our kebapche is first-class.”
Obviously, I had no idea what the hell a kebapche was. Or the slightest idea of what they ate in Bulgaria. I assumed some sort of goulash, but as long as it wasn’t freshly-drained blood of a virgin, my stomach didn’t care much.
“Yes, we will have two,” Sofi replied. “And a few beers.”
“Zagorka?”
“Peu importe. Comme vou voulez.”
A few minutes later the man came back with our drinks. “To new adventures,” I said, toasting to Sofi. She didn’t return the toast, but instead tipped back the beer and swallowed the entire glass in one drink.
“Whoah, whoah, take it easy,” I said. Unless she’d been sneaking snacks while I wasn’t paying attention, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast either. With no clue as to where we were, other than somewhere in goddamn Bulgaria, much less who we could trust or where we’d even sleep this night, the last thing I wanted to deal with was a drunk French twenty-something.
“No. I will not take it easy.” She slammed the glass on the table so hard I thought it would break. “Now that we are not running for our lives or in a cemetery or dead in some kind of black hell, I will enjoy myself. And you will tell me everything you know.”
Problem was, I didn’t have much to tell her. Not much she didn’t already know. And from the tears hiding behind her angry eyes, I really did want to have answers for her. To tell her we were hot on the trail and in a few more hours and she and her sister would be back home in Paris, like none of this had ever happened. But I couldn’t give her false promises. She had already proven too strong and too smart for those. All I could offer was truth.
“I… I think I’m in over my head here,” I answered, unable to meet her eye. “This is all way bigger than anything I’ve dealt with before.”
“I thought you were Phoenix Bones, Professional Monster Hunter.”
“Professional is a bit of a stretch. I’ve hunted monsters.” I paused to swallow another painkiller. “Plenty of them. But it’s always been one or two here or there. We’ve already come across dozens. And that guy who flew? That vamp up on Notre Dame? I sure as hell haven’t seen that before.”
“You have not seen the movies? I think he is maybe the king vampire. Perhaps that is why he can fly.”
I considered her theory. It was as sound as anything I’d come up with—even if she’d gotten all her ideas of vampires from the movies. I made a mental note to watch more of them whenever I finally made my way back home.
“I think we’re in the right place though. Or at least on the right track. What we need is to find someone who can help us out.”
“What we need is a place to sleep. I am so tired, Phoenix.”
The waiter came back with two steaming hot plates of a kind of minced meat sausage with French fries. The smell was divine, and I dug in before he left the table.
“Un autre biere,” Sofi said, handing him her empty glass. “And another for him too.”
As he left to grab us another round, Sofi reached across the table and took my glass. A few gulps later, and it was gone.
“You’re tired because you’re drinking too much,” I said.
“I am tired because we have traveled thousands of miles and I have seen you die twice already since I last slept.” She snatched the fresh glass from the waiter’s hand and addressed him. “Is there a place we can sleep? A hotel?” She took another drink and brushed him away. “Never mind. I will find it myself.”
I munched on my dinner, washing down each bite with a drink of my beer. I’d never had Bulgarian food before, but I made a mental note to have it again. This was way better than any goulash I’d ever had. Sofi scrolled through her phone, absently taking a bite here and there. Every once in a while, she’d squint, mumble something like punaise!, scrunch up her nose, and scroll again.
“I could not help but overhear your conversation.” A man in an official-looking uniform dragged a chair from the table across from us and pulled it up at the end of ours. “What brings you to Ravadinovo? Are you here for our castle?”
Castle? Hell yes, I’m here for the castle, I thought. If there’s one place that vampires can’t stay away from, it’s castles. Castles in Bulgaria. Jesus, Sofi was right—this was like a movie. My fingers twitched as I imagined a freshly carved stake in my hand.
“W
e are visiting. We were looking for…” play it cool, Phoenix “… a friend. A friend of ours might have been here.”
“A friend? In Ravadinovo? Maybe you were thinking of Sozopol? That is where the Americans go. Only here for our castle, but they never come into town.”
“I’m sorry, but you are who?” Sofi interjected.
“I am Aleks,” he replied, offering his hand. “I am… police.”
Immediately my mind began to race. Questions of papers and permits and how did you get here without a car sped through my mind. But I took another peek at him and his recently shaven baby face and concocted a quick story. It wasn’t much, but I prayed it would work.
“Yes, yes, we are here from Sozopol,” I answered. “We came to see your castle and were supposed to meet a friend here, but we didn’t find her… and we missed our ride back. I don’t suppose you know someplace we can stay the night?”
“Yes, my friend was supposed to be here,” added Sofi. “She came here days ago, but we have not found her.”
“Have you heard of any strange happenings here in town? Any crime?”
Aleks shook his head vigorously. “No, no, we are a peaceful village.”
“No… vampires?” Sofi asked.
I had to hand it to her, she went straight for the jugular when she needed to.
“Vampires?” the policeman laughed. “You tourists always with the vampires. Yes, we had vampires a long time ago. Or what people thought were vampires. But those were imaginations. We do not believe in that anymore.” He paused and leaned in, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Though now you bring it up, there have been some strange things happening lately.”
Now he had my interest. I took a sip of my beer and leaned in closer to hear what he had to say. “What kinds of strange things?”
“You will not tell the tourists in Sozopol?”
Sofi placed her hand on his shoulder and slid her beer across the table to him. “Your secret is safe with us.”
“Few days ago, farmer died. It is mystery, but I am told it was heart attack.”
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