Dracul

by Finley Aaron

  Once a table gets hot, the card counters have a couple of options. One, the player who was already at that table can vastly increase the size of his bets, and start winning some serious money.

  Sounds great, except if you go from playing measly bets and on-average losing to the house, to suddenly playing big bets and winning, the casino is going to think you’re counting cards. And if you do that all night long, all weekend long, you’re going to get yourself on their persona-non-grata list.

  The other option, which is the option Constantine needs me for, is that once a table gets hot, the player who was already at that table signals to the other player, who saunters over all casual like and starts playing big money.

  Since they didn’t switch over from small bets to big bets at that table, they’re less likely to raise any eyebrows.

  The catch—and it’s a big catch, the kind of catch that gets players blacklisted from casinos all the time—is that the signal between players has to be invisible.

  Not just discreet enough that the dealer won’t notice. Casinos have gotten way too smart for that. They up their game every time the card-counters up theirs.

  No, the casinos have security cameras everywhere, and if somebody starts winning big bucks, you can bet the people in back are going to be scouring their footage for anything that looks like a signal.

  Discreet signals aren’t good enough.

  Anything that can be captured by the camera is too obvious. The books list plenty of tricks players have used in the past—stacking their chips in different ways, flipping a necklace charm, scratching a nose, smoothing an eyebrow, flipping hair to part the other way—and for every trick that worked once or twice, there’s another card counter who can never go in that casino again.

  The phone in my pocket vibrates. The screen shows Constantine’s number, and I check the clock.

  Almost six.

  Technically, the library doesn’t like people talking on phones. Silent rules, and all that.

  But there are some study groups chatting not-so-quietly a few tables down from mine, so I duck around a stack of books and take the call at a whisper.

  “This is Rilla.”

  “Have you had time to look at the books?”

  “Yes. I have some questions.”

  “Can we discuss them over dinner? There is a restaurant not far from campus.” He names a place that happens to be one of my favorites, which serves thick steaks and doesn’t try to overcook them when I order mine rare.

  “I’m at the library now, but I can be there in ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes,” Constantine agrees. “I will meet you at the front door of the restaurant.”

  “See you there.” I toss my phone next to my wallet in the front pocket of my backpack and stuff the books back into the main compartment. This time, I put the straps over both shoulders instead of just one.

  Sure enough, it’s almost dark outside.

  In summer, the spacious campus is beautiful with its green lawns and leafy trees. But right now, in the deep midwinter, the trees jut skyward like giant skeletal hands, grasping at the moonlight. The brisk northern wind sends clouds swirling across the face of the moon, and footsteps crunch across old snow.

  I pause in the library doorway just long enough to get my bearings and plot my course. Then I set off at a brisk pace and try to ignore that feeling like someone is watching me.

  That’s not a real “feeling,” is it? Certainly it doesn’t encompass any of the traditional five senses—not sight or scent or touch. It’s more like paranoia, the kind that will probably follow me for days after the back-pack-snatching incident that shook me up yesterday.

  It was probably random.

  My backpack wasn’t even on my shoulder yet.

  I was an easy target then.

  I’m not now.

  And yet, I listen carefully to the crunch of feet on snow. All even-paced and distant. Nothing to be afraid of. Students coming and going, all perfectly innocent and perfectly normal.

  Frigid air enters my lungs, and I walk briskly as I blow out deep mouthfuls of steamy breath that look like smoke.

  Sometimes, I really miss being a dragon.

  Of course, I’m still a dragon, even when I look like a normal college girl. It’s just, sometimes, I miss being a dragon. Because when I’m a dragon, I don’t have to feel nearly so afraid.

  College girls are way lower on the food chain than dragons.

  So is that why I still have this feeling I just can’t shake, like somebody’s watching me?

  I glance around. There aren’t even very many students on this edge of campus, and those I can see have their heads ducked low inside their hoods as they hurry on their way to get out of the cold. I’m far from the library now, getting closer to the restaurant, but I still have to pass between those darkened buildings and the long row of evergreen trees strategically planted to block the snow from blowing onto the parking lots.

  The crunch of footsteps fades until I can hear only my own. There is no one around. I’m alone.

  I’m jerked suddenly backward by a firm tug on my backpack. I instinctively grab both straps at the shoulders, holding tight to the bag while I spin around, whipping my right boot toward my attacker’s head.

  My sole makes contact with a ski mask a good six feet off the ground. This dude is tall.

  My kick does not drop him.

  Seriously? That was a hard, direct kick.

  He doesn’t even waver, but lunges toward me, his gloved hands grabbing mine, trying to pry my grip off my backpack straps.

  The dude has a vise-like grip, never mind the gloves.

  Thankfully, I’ve been practicing various martial art forms my entire life, and a dozen hapkido evasive maneuvers spring to mind.

  Snapping forward at the waist, I simultaneously bend my knees and flick my arms out. It means briefly letting go of my backpack straps, but the combined force of my other movements should be enough to toss this guy flat on his back in the snow.

  Should.

  He grunts, rises maybe two feet off the ground, and grabs my backpack straps.

  We wrangle and heave and wrestle, with neither party taking any advantage.

  For an instant, I’m tempted to take on full dragon form. I could swallow this guy in one bite. But other than the fact that taking on dragon form would mean shredding my clothes Hulk-style and leaving me mostly naked in the freezing winter—and of course the obvious problem that I might be seen in dragon form—I stay human because I don’t know who this guy is.

  He’s got to be one of two things. Either he’s human, in spite of his surprising resilience against my kick to the head, in which case I should not need to turn into a dragon, so why go to all the trouble and take the risk?

  Or, as events of late have hinted, though it would normally seem like an impossibility, he might be a vampire.

  In which case, I don’t want to eat him.

  I don’t want anywhere near his blood, so turning into a fanged, taloned creature would gain me nothing but increased risk to myself.

  Constantine has never explained why the blood is dangerous, but I’m going to respect his warning and not take any chances.

  Even as these possibilities flash through my thoughts, we’re both straining against the straps on my backpack, neither of us yielding any ground.

  The straps, however?

  The straps, which have survived many a flight in dragon form, not to mention hauling tons of books for me over the past eight years?

  Those supposedly indestructible straps?

  They’re showing their age.

  Or perhaps they’re up against a foe mightier than windstrain at hundreds of miles per hour.

  My attacker is slowly pulling the straps free of their buckles. I don’t know if he can get them completely apart, but all he really has to do is make them loose enough, and the bag will practically fall off my shoulders.

  Nobody seems to be around on this distant corner of campus at
this hour. Certainly no one appears to have noticed my plight. I could scream for help, but there are two factors that hold my cry deep in my throat.

  One, if I call for help, even if someone does come to my aid, there’s little chance they’ll be any better at fighting off this guy than I am. Most likely they’d just get hurt. I can’t stomach the thought of that.

  And two, if I cry for help and people come running to see what’s going on, even if they don’t intervene, they’ll be watching.

  They’ll be witnesses.

  I can’t turn into a dragon, not even a partial dragon, in front of witnesses.

  I try whipping a leg around to kick the guy again, but he’s in too close now. I can’t slip my arms free of his grasp without giving up my hold on the straps. My elbows seem to be useless, my attempt to head-butt him resulted in a horrid throbbing sensation in my own skull, and I don’t dare bite his hand if there’s any chance he has vampire blood pulsing through his veins.

  What else can I do?

  Slowly, painfully, the straps are pulling loose.

  He’s nearly got it.

  But I can’t let him have my bag. Never mind that my wallet and ID and tons of personal information are in there.

  My phone is in there.

  And on my phone, I have contact info for my parents and brothers and sisters. I mean, I keep their numbers memorized and everything, but they’re in my call and text history. They’re findable, callable, textable, maybe even trackable or meetable, if somebody wanted to impersonate me to get to them.

  Anybody who takes my phone could use it to find my siblings. And in the case of my sister Wren and my brother Ram, it would lead this crazy attacker dude to my baby niece and nephew, too.

  I don’t know who this guy is or what he’s after or why, but I can’t let him get that information. No way can I risk letting him get to the babies.

  Forget this slow dance. I start thrashing madly, flapping my elbows like chicken wings, knocking his head back and forth like a cross between a bobble-head doll and a ping-pong ball.

  The dude’s making a funny noise.

  Okay, an angry noise. Turns out, it’s not funny at all.

  He’s sort of… roaring? But kind of quiet like, and what is that other sound?

  That sound like fluttering, and screeching, and holy murder of crows, it’s a flock of birds!

  No, bats.

  Angry bats are careening toward my head from all directions.

  While I’m distracted, my attacker lets go of the bag with one hand and tries to unzip my coat.

  If he pulls my coat off, the backpack will go with it.

  That’s it. I have no choice.

  I blow a blast of fire that sends the cloud of bats screeching away from inches in front of my face. I turn my head to aim the flames at my attacker, but he just sort of leans away from the worst of it (he’s got the straps stretched far enough he can do that now, pulling several feet away from my face without letting go of my bag, though he at least lets go of my now-unzipped coat). And maybe his ski mask is fireproof, or something, because it doesn’t seem to melt or burn or anything.

  Fireproof vampires?

  My worst nightmares have nothing on this.

  At least now, the guy is in kicking range.

  I whip my left leg around in an outer crescent kick even as I pivot in that direction.

  The guy ducks, but I hit him with a series of inverted round kicks alternating intermittently with regular round kicks, which seem to both confuse him and give him a taste of my shoe leather.

  Is he seriously trying to bite my boot? It’s kind of hard to see with bats swooping around my head everywhere.

  “Creepo, you’ve got freakish taste,” I observe aloud, but he’s starting to lean in too close for me to kick him effectively again, so I follow up my words with another blast of fire, which is long overdue because the bats were getting way too close for my comfort. I don’t think any of them touched me, but I’m a tad distracted right now, so I can’t say for sure.

  I switch legs, taking care to keep my jeans away from the flames (note to self: maybe look into fire-proof pants—can’t let the enemy have every advantage). I whip a couple of kicks toward his face before I notice the bag and my coat are slipping from my shoulders.

  Between his strap-tugging and coat-unzipping, he’s got the straps loose enough to pry the bag free.

  I blow another furious blast at his face, but this time, as he ducks away, he takes my bag with him, ducking and rolling across the snow with the bag held tight to his chest.

  I lunge toward him, only to fall flat on my face on a sheet of wet ice.

  Oh no, I didn’t.

  I did.

  My fiery breath melted enough of the abundant snow that it puddled all around me, and is quickly freezing up again in the frigid winter evening, fanned by the wings of dozens of low-swooping bats.

  You know what? Come to think of it, I really don’t like bats.

  I scramble to my feet in time to see my attacker roll free of the ice, spring to his feet, and start running away with my backpack.

  Chapter Seven

  No, no, no, no, no!

  I can’t let him get away with everything in my bag.

  My wallet. My ID. The contact info on my phone that would lead him to every dragon I know, including the babies.

  Flameproof vampires cannot be allowed to find my niece and nephew.

  I don’t care who sees me.

  Thankfully, I long ago perfected the art of changing only parts of myself into dragon form. My coat is dangling loose on my arms, so I fling it off as my wings rip through my shirt and beat down once, launching me past the bats and after my bag.

  The guy has one arm through one backpack strap, and he’s trying to slip the other arm through the other strap as he runs.

  I swoop low, grab the bag, and lift off into the sky. I’m trying to get away with my bag, but the dude is dangling by one arm, looped through one strap. I shake him hard enough to rattle every bone in his body, but he doesn’t let go.

  Meanwhile, the longer I’m airborne and the higher I fly, the greater the chance I’ll be seen.

  Can’t risk that.

  These were great gloves while they lasted, but the claws are coming out.

  Five long talons sprout through the leather at my fingertips. I hold the bag tight in my left (normal) hand, and slash at the strap with my right (clawed) hand.

  But even as I do so, the man tugs the bag against his chest and rolls in the sky, so I manage only to slash open the front of my bag.

  I can see my phone and my wallet inside the slashed-open outer pocket. They’re all I really need. At this point, I’m ready to take what I can get.

  My talons retract instantly, and I grab the phone. The wallet is too bulky, and I fumble after it with my split gloves.

  We’re still in the air about eight feet off the ground when the dude wraps one arm tight around the backpack.

  It shifts in the sky. I’m trying to grab my wallet, but I don’t dare let go of my phone.

  And he’s gone.

  The guy is completely gone, disappeared out of thin air.

  My wings pull back into my shoulders, folding away to nothing as I land and look frantically around.

  What the?

  He just disappeared?

  I shake my head, which is still throbbing from that poor choice of a head butt. Ow.

  The good news is, I still have my phone in my hands.

  The bad news is, when my attacker disappeared, he took my bag with him.

  Was that why he was trying to put it on? Because he knew he could disappear with it? If so, I was only seconds away from losing everything, or at least every contact in my phone.

  The bats have fled. They didn’t disappear into thin air the same way my attacker did. Rather, they flew away in all directions, probably back to whatever warm hiding place they came from, although I do wonder…don’t bats have to hibernate to survive cold winters?


  When I was looking up about rabies, I came across several articles about white nose syndrome. I didn’t read any further once I found out it doesn’t affect humans, but I did learn it’s a fairly harmless fungus that grows on bats’ noses. It’s usually fatal, though, because it itches and wakes them up during hibernation when there’s nothing to eat, but since they’re not in hibernation stage anymore, they use up their stores of body fat too quickly and starve to death, or go out looking for food and freeze to death.

  Fungus or not, the bats the vampire called to help attack me are probably freezing and hungry right now.

  Okay, I know I said a minute ago that I really don’t like bats, but you know what else? I think that’s a mean trick, calling them out and then leaving them to die.

  I check the sky for any further sign of the bats or the dude who stole my backpack, but I don’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary as I walk back to where I dropped my coat.

  Thankfully, my coat was unharmed, and the zipper still zips smoothly. This is especially good since the back of my shirt got ripped out by my wings, and until the moment when I’m back inside my coat, I could feel the cold breeze hitting me through the gaps.

  My right glove is also noticeably mangled. From the smell of it, my jeans may have gotten singed in a few places, too, but they’re at least still intact.

  I’m also sore from all that kicking and landing on the ice and struggling with my attacker, so I move slowly as I head back up the sidewalk, late for my dinner rendezvous with Constantine.

  The sidewalk has been plowed, but there’s still enough snow here for me to see footprints. Of course, my attacker and I are not the only ones who have walked here, but his footprints should be on top. I squint at the ground and walk slowly, searching for any clue.

  “There you are!” A deep, slightly Eastern-European voice calls out to me. “I was starting to worry about you.”

  I look up as Constantine trots toward me.

  Sure, now he shows up. Why couldn’t he have gotten here a few minutes earlier and helped me out?

  At least he didn’t get here when I had my wings out. That would have been a tough one to explain.