by Ana Calin
“But he hasn’t visited me in days, how can he influence—?”
“He doesn’t need to be around you for his poison to infiltrate your mind. Look at this place. How long has it been, Juliet, since you’ve found a way to the outside? A door that would lead elsewhere than where he wants you to go? Let me tell you something—if you don’t use this chance and leave this castle now, when he’s busy looking for other ways to feed, then you’ll never see the light of day again. Never!” Her eyes and tone darken. “Let me tell you something you would have never guessed, and no one will ever tell you—the Prince of Midnight manipulates this entire castle. You cannot get to any place where he doesn’t want you to.”
The words tear through my brain. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, you poor, stupid, innocent thing. You don’t even begin to understand who the Prince of Midnight really is, what he can do.”
“He manipulates space?” I breathe, struggling to wrap my mind around it.
“Space and other dimensions. He wields incredible power. Forget vampires, werewolves, and other sexy tropes of romance novels, Radek Basarab is a whole new level of badass, to put it this way.”
All this weighs on me like a boulder. I can literally feel my body sink into the chair, and the chair into the ground. Memories of the pictures I shot of him at the press conference return to mind, and the ghostly version of him that found its way into my phone. It’s like my brain is trying to make sense of all this through these connections.
“But how... I don’t understand.”
“Don’t even try to, it’s impossible for you to comprehend all of this. Like I said, there’s much more, but it would only freak you out. What you should be ready for, though, is to leave this place.”
“But... If he can manipulate space here, in this castle, he can do it everywhere.” The more I understand of this, the tighter panic grips me. My hands white-knuckle the chair arms.
Victoria shakes her head. “Relax. Radek manipulates space better than anywhere in this castle, because this is where the roots of his power lie. He can do it on foreign ground as well, but not as smoothly.”
“The roots of his power?”
“Roots that reach back to the night Vlad and Radek were initiated in the Order of the Dragon. I won’t get into the details of the initiation because I don’t know them—I don’t think anyone does, or people would be producing whole lines of monsters like Dracula and the Prince of Midnight, and normal humans would be wiped out in no time. But all of us, his servants, know that it happened beneath this castle, in the heart of the rock. The core and source of Radek’s power. No one knows exactly where it lies, because he shields it with a web of dimension-interlacing corridors.”
“Dimension-interlacing corridors,” I whisper, remembering how I banged against the glass door to the tunnel full of tourists. “That’s why they couldn’t see me. Because I was in a different dimension.”
Victoria nods, understanding what I’m talking about. Hell, of course she understands, she’s watched me wandering these corridors for months now, unwittingly sliding from one dimension into another.
“Dimensions,” I repeat. “How do those even work?”
A shadow slowly falls over the room, making Victoria uneasy. She glances left and right like she’s been caught doing something wrong. Pushing back her chair, she hurries over to me and takes my hand. Her clasp is cold, wet and too tight, as if she wants to crush my bones.
“Come. I’ll show you something.”
As she pulls me down a dark corridor that grows tighter and tighter as we advance, holding a small torch in front of her to light our way, she says, “You wanted to know what happened to the other women Radek used, didn’t you? I’ll show you what happened to them.”
Panic squeezes my chest. Do I really want to know?
We reach the dungeons. It feels like I’ve just walked onto a movie set, where the crew has set up vaulted ceilings and cavernous dungeons to match the real thing. I just can’t believe this is real life until the feel of cold water on my shoulder matches the sound of dripping.
A mouse scurries over my foot, making me yelp, brushing myself all over like a mad woman.
Victoria turns with a wild look on her face, pushing me into an alcove against the wall. “Shhhhh.” She petrifies with a finger in front of her mouth, listening hard.
After she’s made sure that nothing but further dripping and the sound of more squeaking mice fill the silence, she looks at me. I’m scratching my own arms, where my skin is all goose bumps from the sound of those little animals. I think they’ve even awakened me from the drugged state the Prince has put me in with his mesmerizing power. What in the world just happened? Just moments ago I was in a luxurious dining room in a castle, the next thing I know I creep inside medieval dungeons, with only sporadic torches to lead our way—When I yelled, Victoria dropped her torch into a puddle on the floor where it extinguished.
“I need you to stay very quiet,” Victoria says. “A strange thing happens when the prince is gone....” She inspects the ceiling, slowly and quietly like a spy. “The castle seems imbued with his power, as if it sees and feels in his place.”
“You think he might sense what we’re doing?” I whisper.
Victoria nods, and resumes sloshing through the puddles of cave water, pulling me after her and keeping us both close to the wall. “Let me show you who you’re in love with. Let me show you what that monster does with women like you after he’s finished with them.”
On our way, Victoria picks another small torch from one of the wall-fixtures. My heart hammers in anticipation as we approach a cell deep down one of the tunnels, where everything is even more obscure than where we’ve been before. I can’t see much, but there’s a slimy sound. My skin creases, thinking it can only be a pile of jelly-like creatures writhing entangled with each other.
“Here we are,” Victoria says ominously. She brings the torch closer to the grates, and my eyes widen in horror.
CHAPTER X
Juliet
A pile it is indeed, but of women inside a cell. A group of women in rags, tangled hair over their faces, holding on to each other. They move around with twisted bodies like possessed creatures, but I can’t see any of their faces.
Victoria seems frozen in time, simply holding up her torch so that I can see, but not making another move. The only thing moving is this slimy ball of women tangling with each other like snakes, making hissing and piping sounds.
Exactly like with horror movies, I don’t want to see, but I can’t look away either. Curiosity pushes me closer and closer to the cell, hoping to get a glimpse of at least one face.
One of the women rips from the slimy ball and throws herself like a furious orangutan against the grate, banging hard against the iron. I scream and fall on my butt.
My heart hammers crazily against my ribcage. My eyes widen gradually as the woman trickles down along the grate, holding to two bars. Between them, I can see her face clearly, framed by dull black hair. It’s the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life.
Her skin is porous and reddish like the skin I’ve glimpsed around Radek’s eyes, her irises washed-out as if they’re one with her eyeballs. Her nose is caved in as if only the skeleton holes are left, and the lips...
She jerks forward and spits at me, black slime bolting straight to my face. Just a split second before it hits me, Victoria kicks me out of the way, and blocks the black slime with the handle of her torch. Wow, she wields it like she would a sword.
“Okay, you’ve seen enough,” she says, helping me up and dragging me in the direction opposite from the cell, towards a tunnel so dark it seems a black a hole. Panic engulfs me as I glance behind, feeling like there’s no escape—impenetrable darkness ahead, monster women behind.
“What the fuck was that?” I squeal, compulsively checking the darkness that closes in behind us as we head deeper inside the dark tunnel. Victoria’s torch becomes weaker and weaker, barely illuminating a few inch
es in front of us, as if we’re advancing through a black blizzard.
“You wanted to know, right?” she whispers breathlessly. “Would you have believed me if I’d only just told you he keeps all his former mistresses locked in an underground dungeon?”
A new feeling accompanies the horror that creased every inch of my skin—disgust. Radek is indeed a monster, inside and out.
“Did those women end up like this because they slept with him?”
“Yes. He drained them of youth and beauty. It’s what will happen to you as well if you stay within his power.”
“Fuck, that black thing she spat at me... what was it?”
“Foul body liquid. Those women are living corpses.”
“Sort of like zombies?”
“Sort of. But worse.”
“Hell, how do you know your way so well in this darkness?” Victoria keeps her grip firm on my elbow as she leads the way, which keeps me from freaking out completely, but I still feel like a thousand insects climb up my body. I can’t help scratching myself everywhere, barely refraining from screaming.
“Will you stop that?” Victoria says, her voice still hushed, but sharp.
I try to, but I can feel them prickling up my naked ankles. On some level I know it’s only in my head, but still. By the time I notice a faint light ahead of us I’m whimpering like a child, my chin trembling, tears of panic rolling down my face.
We emerge into an alcove that shows into the inner courtyard. It’s already night outside, dim lights casting the medieval well in the courtyard center in a pleasant orange glow. We’re still in the shadow, and the last few tourists strolling towards the exit don’t notice us at first. But when a soft breeze slips under my silk gown, I gasp loudly, drawing attention. Fresh air enwraps my entire body for the first time in longer than I remember, and the simmer of dark feelings inside turns to euphoria.
“Juliet, for Christ’s sakes.” Lazarus heads our way at a run, his French-student locks bouncing around his head. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” He stops right in front of me, placing soft hands on my shoulders, milky blue eyes searching my face with serious concern. “God, you look like shit.”
I blink up at him, his energy difficult to digest after so much darkness and the intoxicated state of mind that the prince induced on me. It’s like Lazarus is too bright to look at.
“Take her, hide her away,” Victoria urges him. “If the prince gets her she won’t leave this place again except in a coffin.”
Lazarus throws her a dark glance, like he despises her, but he doesn’t wait for her to say more. He slips an arm around me and makes to take me with him.
“Wait a second.” I draw back, freeing myself from his clasp. I turn to Victoria. “If Lazarus helps me now, he’d be running the same risk. I can’t expose him to Radek’s anger just like that.”
“It’s either this or back the way we came,” Victoria says between her teeth, eyes narrowed under her arched eyebrows. “If you don’t take this chance now, you’ll be the next he throws in there.” She points back to the tunnel, and implicitly towards the dungeon with the zombie women.
A shudder runs through me, but thankfully Lazarus keeps me steady.
He cups the sides of my head. “I’m not afraid of Prince Radek,” he says. I remember our talk in the courtyard before I went down to the Time Tunnel. If anyone can help me make sense of this madness, it’s him.
I nod, my body turning soft as Lazarus’ arm goes around my shoulder. Victoria grabs my arm, her small eyes fixing me.
“Whatever happens, you must never tell Radek what you saw. You can imagine what he’ll do if he finds out I showed you....” Her voice trails off.
I shake my head, realizing I’m trembling all over. “I’ll never betray you, no matter what.”
Only moments later, Lazarus guides me out the castle gate. In my mind, I keep telling myself that Radek is a monster. He’s the vilest creature that must have ever existed, and I have to run as far away from him as possible—and never look back.
Behind Lazarus and me, the big wooden latch falls into the iron lock, sealing the castle venue for the night. Dracula’s castle stays behind us up on its rocky base, shrouded in veils of fog.
Victoria
I SHOULD HAVE LEFT Juliet Jochs prey to the black curse that other monster bitch spewed at her. But there would have been no way to explain her dead, blackened body to Radek. He would have known that I set her up, hell, he’d even discover that I’m keeping all of his former mistresses locked up in a remote dungeon inside the mountain. He would rip Gruia’s balls off for helping me with these bitches, too. Not that the primitive guard’s wellbeing concerns me very much, but his help comes in handy, and it would be a pity to lose it. As well as his long, hard cock.
Sure the wannabe angel Juliet Jochs won’t betray me no matter what. After all of the experience with Radek’s women, I’ve become a very good judge of character—she’s too compassionate for her own good. The ambition Juliet Jochs displayed as a journalist was not actually ambition, it was her hard-working nature that she adjusted to the demands of modern society in order to survive.
Hell, she must have been the best in her class back in school, a bespectacled girl with braces who clutched a pile of books to her chest. She must have been bullied too, but some older kids might have protected her because of her blond curls and rather sweet face.
Of course, she was also boring, lacked fire. She was never an interesting woman, mysterious, alluring, with sharp weapons of femininity ready to shoot out from under her sleeves, like I used to be before I sacrificed my youth and beauty to Prince Radek.
He took it all from me, then wanted to let me go with a good job, a house and a car in some comfortable Western country, like he offered all the women who fed him their youthful looks and vital energy. I refused, preferring to stay and serve him—admittedly, hoping to win his love. And what’s wrong with that? But he never yielded his black heart to me, even though I did everything to deserve it. I even endured watching him bring in other women, use them the way he used me for months, then set them free.
But I couldn’t let the bitches get out of here again, not after I had to watch how he fucked them in all the ways I wanted him to fuck me.
I had to punish these women for having felt his passion, as twisted and sick as it was. I would never feel him again, and that hurt like a knife in the chest every time I saw his beautiful face in the light of day. Deep down in the dungeons, without the light of day to replenish their vital tanks, the bitches followed the natural course that intimacy with Radek sets in motion—they become monsters similar to him. Of course, they’re only mild versions. The Prince of Midnight is a magnificent beast, unique in the world.
Holding up the torch, I walk hastily back to the main castle, to Juliet’s chambers. I gather some of her most private possessions to make it look like she took off, then head back to my own quarters. Closing the door as softly as I can in this place where everything creaks, I stack her stuff under a loose board under my bed, then step out of my dress and put on a silky night gown—I want to look just the way he likes it when he calls me to him.
He must have already sensed that something is wrong, so he’ll surely be back by morning.
Indeed, he returns in the small hours and roams the castle like a shadow, looking for her, growing desperate. When he realizes she’s gone, his cry tears through the walls, gut-wrenching. He’s calling out her name.
Radek
I’M HOWLING IN THE tower, a dagger in my chest where my heart should be. Victoria enters the tower at a run, a silk gown just like the gowns I used to have Juliet wear floating behind her, her naked feet slapping the floor.
She crashes to her knees by my side, hands on my shoulders.
“Where is she?” I demand, getting slowly to my feet, spanned under my sleek black suit like a feline ready to tear her up. “I left her in your care, how could she get away?”
She stands too, but retreats with p
alms up in defense. “She must have found a way out,” she blabbers, her face white with fear.
“You were away for many days,” she manages, “your connection to the castle must have loosened, and the girl found a way to the courtyard. She must have mingled with the tourists and sneaked out.” Her eyes dart left and right, as if she’s pondering whether to say the next thing or not.
“Talk,” I hiss.
“There was this boy I saw her talking to the last time she was out. Lazarus Raica. Maybe he helped her?”
My black heart screams inside of me. I thought it atrophied, but behold, the thing can still pump poison to my veins. I grin bitterly. Lazarus. Of course. I sent him to pick her up from the airport, back when I didn’t know what I’d come to feel for her. A thousand ideas whirl in my head as I walk to the window, gripping the sill with fingers that turn into claws, even though the sun starts rising. The horizon slowly turns from bloody to orange, but I can feel the porosity starting to crawl up my skin like popping blisters, transforming me into the midnight monster.
It fucking makes sense. I sent an attractive young man to pick her up, someone who does many jobs for me outside my castle. He’s not the only one, but he’s the most reliable. I actually kind of liked him. Now, I want to tear his jugular with my teeth, and watch the pain in his face while he dies in a pool of blood.
Sure they bonded with each other. He’s young, good-looking, cultivated and hard-working; she’s interesting and inquisitive by nature, with a lively intellect and a smart mouth that I.... Fuck, did I fall in love with her in some sick, twisted way?
I take my hand to my chest. My black heart pulses like a fresh wound. By all demons, I’ll give the traitor what she deserves. I strain to hate her, baring my teeth at the bloody horizon, then howling at it like an animal with a bullet in its back, but the hatred just won’t come. Maybe because, deep down, I know she doesn’t deserve it.