Dracul

by Finley Aaron

  “You’re ready then?” Constantine asks once Felix and I are seated in the convertible. “On my last two visits, I have purposely acquainted myself with a little-used bathroom stall near the entrance to Machine D’or. If I teleport there at this hour, the casino will not yet be busy, and there is an excellent chance I can arrive without anyone seeing me appear.”

  “Ready.” Felix grins a bit too eagerly.

  “What’s our exit plan?” I ask.

  “That depends on a number of factors. If I am able to meet with Lombard, we may adapt our plans to spend time with him. Ultimately, though, this car needs to come back here, so the three of us can plan to meet here in the wee hours of the morning if we’re otherwise separated. If all else fails, I’ll see you back at my castle in Romania.”

  “Sounds perfect.” The thought of the abandoned castle makes me smile. Lombard’s chateau may be grander, but Constantine’s castle has always felt like home to me.

  I spend the next hour or two trying to enjoy the car ride. Felix is certainly enjoying it. I’m freezing cold at first, but then I discover a storage compartment with a blanket inside, so I bundle up while puzzling over why males, who tend to be warmer blooded anyway, get to wear coats to formal events, while females, who are inclined to freeze easily, are expected to wear flimsy fabrics and show lots of skin.

  It’s not even fair in summer, because the men overheat.

  The mystery remains a mystery and the sun sets, leaving the mountains bathed in darkness. We zip through the winding roads, and I catch glimpses of Monaco, glowing like a dragon’s eyes and reflecting off the Mediterranean. We show our passports to enter the tiny nation, and Felix finds the Machine D’or, which is a sparkling white-and-gold building shaped almost like a jukebox, nestled tight against a large mountain.

  “Is it just me, or does the building look like it’s part of the mountain?”

  “It’s built into the mountain,” Felix explains. “Constantine told me about it while you were asleep. They claim part of the mountain was dug away to make room for the casino, with the rocks taken to the sea to expand the land area of Monaco into the water.”

  “That would take a lot of rocks,” I speculate.

  “It all depends on how far they burrowed into the mountain. There’s no saying how far back that goes.”

  Felix stops and hands off the keys to the Veyron to a valet who, in what I’m learning is typical Monegasque fashion, manages to not look excited to drive it.

  Everyone is just too cool here, and I do my best not to feel like a back-country hick. Good posture helps, though in these heels I’m a foot taller than most everyone else. I sling the chain strap of my handbag over my shoulder with what I hope looks like sophistication.

  “Stop smiling,” I whisper to Felix. “It makes you stand out.”

  “Like we don’t already.” He shrugs off my correction.

  We find our way past the clanging anteroom of slot machines into the deeper regions of the casino. Constantine explained that the high rollers play deep back in the building, though now I’m wondering how far back into the building they go.

  What are we walking into?

  As a dragon, there aren’t many things I fear. Discovery, of course. Meat shortages. Not finishing my senior thesis. But most of the fears most people face—assault, fire, earthquakes, spiders—are things I can fly away from.

  But deep inside a mountain…

  There’s no escape.

  I feel a tad claustrophobic just thinking about it.

  “Cold?” Felix asks when I shiver.

  “I left the blanket in the car,” I remind him, unwilling to admit this gold-and-white building with its ludicrously-laden crystal chandeliers actually gives me the creeps.

  But it does.

  From long before recorded history, dragons have always favored caves in the mountains, both to live in and hide their gold. In fact, my dad’s castle is built into a mountain, with rooms tunneled deep below—a weapons storehouse, and below that, the treasury. I have never felt uncomfortable or creeped out by those subterranean rooms.

  This is different. I don’t know how far back these rooms go or what might be hiding there. It reminds me too much of last summer, when I took my sister to the Swiss Alps to help her rescue the dragon she loved from the evil dragon Hans Wexler, and some things happened there that made us wonder if maybe there was more going on under the mountain than we could see.

  But there’s no reason to allow those thoughts to distract me now. I’m on a mission.

  We wind our way through the rooms and halls until we find Constantine, already heating up a smoking hot blackjack table. He is all smooth sophistication, his heavy-lidded eyes focused on the game before him, his motions discreet, studied. I can almost imagine his mind whirring with numbers—the card count, his odds of winning, the total in his hand, how much he’ll take home if he wins this hand. He purses his lips thoughtfully before signaling that he wants another card.

  “Stop smiling.” Felix nudges my arm. “Or at least, don’t look at him with goo-goo eyes.”

  I fix my face into a scowl. “Let’s just find tables.”

  Felix and I each find a spot where we can watch Constantine without making it obvious we’re monitoring him. I have no doubt he knows we’re here, even if he hasn’t seen us, because he can smell my presence. As planned, he purposely hasn’t looked our way. Felix can also see me, and I can see him, but we’re playing different tables because, after all, even if it doesn’t work to root out Lombard or Drake, we can console ourselves by winning some money.

  While I’m never quite able to get so caught up in the game I forget Constantine is around, nonetheless, the time passes quickly. At one point, Constantine gives up on his table with a bored yawn and meanders over to the table where Felix has been playing.

  The action must be good over there, because they eventually draw a crowd, and even the too-cool Monegasques (or, perhaps more accurately, the tourists come to watch too-cool Monegasques) gasp and chatter about whatever Constantine is doing at the table, which I can’t really see because of the crowd.

  My hands are on my cards, but when I look up, a man in black (okay, nearly all the men are wearing black, but that’s about all I can see of him) has approached Constantine. He murmurs something into Constantine’s ear, and takes him by the arm.

  I glance at Felix with questions on my face.

  Felix gives me a look that says he’s not sure what’s up, but we need to follow them.

  I finish out my hand as the man in black leads Constantine away from the table.

  Felix and I meet up several paces behind Constantine and the man in black. We’re trying to look suave and casual, which isn’t that hard, because even the guy who’s dragging Constantine away is doing so at a leisurely pace with a pronounced air of indifference, probably in order to avoid drawing attention to what he’s up to, and alarming the other gamblers.

  He leads Constantine to a massive tapestry on the wall. It’s a reproduction of the famous scene of Saint George using his lance to slay the dragon. Or maybe it’s the original. In a place like this, who knows?

  The man in black tugs on one side of the tapestry, and it swings out from the wall, revealing a hidden door behind.

  Of course.

  The hidden door where they take the dragons to be slain.

  I can do symbolism.

  But what I can’t do is watch them take Constantine off inside the mountain to be slain, or whatever Saint George slaying the dragon is a symbol of…probably something bad, possibly involving lances.

  I squeeze Felix’s arm. “I’m going to follow them.”

  “I’m coming, too.”

  “One of us should stay out here, in case…”

  Felix shakes his head once, firmly. “I already got chastised for leaving you alone in Montana. If you’re going back there, I’m going, too.”

  Stubborn dragon. There’s no point arguing with him, and we need to hurry. Constantine’s ca
ptor is already typing in the security code for the door.

  Thanks to my dragon eyes, I’m able to see which buttons the man in black hits to make the door open, so once we’ve allowed them a few seconds after the door has closed behind them, Felix and I duck behind the tapestry, I punch the same buttons, and the door slides silently open.

  The hallway is completely, blindingly white.

  The man in black and Constantine are nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I give Felix a look that says now what?

  And he shoots me a glance that says they must be around that corner up there.

  We leap after them on near-silent tip-toes, and peek around the corner before following. I transfer my handbag strap over my head to my other shoulder, so I’m wearing it securely across my body, where I don’t have to worry about it slipping off when I run.

  We reach the end of the hall. There are hallways branching off in either direction, so it’s a good thing we didn’t wait too long to follow, or we might not have been able to follow.

  Constantine and his captor are just turning another corner, this one heading back the same way as the first hall, but instead of a hallway it’s apparently stairs, because they disappear downward by paces. The steps lead them, essentially, deeper into the mountain.

  How deep are we going to go?

  We have no choice but to follow. We can’t risk losing Constantine in the maze inside the mountain.

  We dart down a few more whitewashed hallways. I have to assume Constantine can sense that I’m near, but just as at the blackjack tables, he’s purposely not letting on or looking behind him or doing anything that might tip anyone off to the fact we’re back here.

  The halls echo with the sounds of Constantine’s and his captor’s footsteps, as well as distant water sounds, both rushing and trickling, which get noisier the further we travel into the mountain. I’m not sure where the sounds are coming from, but I’m grateful they exist, because they help to cover up any noise Felix and I make in our pursuit.

  We go around more corners and down more long flights of stairs, until I’m completely twisted around and convinced there’s no way I’m finding my way back to the door where we came in. Just as we’re about to round another corner, Constantine’s voice booms with unnecessary volume, “Jean Lombard, it has been too long!”

  I stop short and my brother nearly crashes into me.

  That was a close one. Another two steps and we might have been face-to-face with the dragon.

  “Mircea!” Sure, Lombard gets to call Constantine by his original name. “When they told me someone was robbing me blind, I did not even suspect it might be you.”

  So, Lombard is skilled at backhanded insults. I’d put a checkmark in the column for no-way-am-I-marrying-this-guy, but I need to keep an open mind. And we dragons have been known to be snarky at times, so it would be hypocritical of me to fault him. Really, I should be impressed by his skill.

  “Oh, that.” Constantine laughs. “I was just filling time in the hope I might run into you again. Tell me, how have you been?”

  Slowly, cautiously, we inch closer to the doorway until we can peer around to see.

  “I have been well. Quite well.”

  As Lombard answers, I glimpse a bit of the room where he’s standing.

  It’s enormous. Lombard must be fifty feet away from me, or more, and there’s even more room behind him, including an enormous waterfall (that explains the source of the water sounds). The room is decorated around the edges to look like a jungle or forest or something, with live trees and exotic flowers. There are even tall bushy plants near the doorway I’m peering around, which is super helpful for camouflaging me and Felix from Lombard’s line of sight.

  In the center of the room there’s a fine rug and several straight-backed leather sitting chairs, like something straight out of a high-end parlor, only it’s in the middle of the jungle waterfall room inside the mountain.

  Oh, and the ceiling is super way high up, the sides doming skyward beyond what I can see from the doorway. There’s no telling how high the ceiling goes…or how far below ground level we’ve traveled.

  But of everything in the room, Jean Lombard catches the majority of my attention. He’s as tall as Constantine, though more slender, with a thick shock of dark-brown hair and an enormous smile. His teeth are big and unnaturally white. He’s wearing a blue suit made of slightly shiny material. The suit is slim cut, its jacket a single-button number worn open. Even his tie is skinny. His shoes are super long and almost pointy, made of some kind of exotic leather like ostrich or alligator but not really either of those.

  They could be made of anything he’s killed and tanned.

  I’m not sure I want to know what.

  I take in all that at a glance, and Felix crouches low and peers past the plant leaves below me, while Lombard asks Constantine how he’s been.

  “I am so glad you asked that. Actually, I have run into some trouble surrounding a book—The Life of Vlad Dracula, the Impaler. It went missing from the British Museum—”

  But Constantine can’t finish talking, because Lombard is laughing a booming laugh that echoes up through the enormous room and its unfathomable ceiling.

  Lombard starts speaking French in between fits of laughter.

  “What’s he saying?” I whisper to Felix.

  “Oh, my dear, my dear, it is too ironic, the timing, I couldn’t have planned it better,” Felix translates. He’s whispering, too—not that there’s much chance of either of us being heard over the waterfall or Lombard’s laughter.

  I’m trying not to judge the guy for what comes off as a haughty attitude. Everybody likes a guy who can laugh, right?

  Even if he’s laughing in Constantine’s face?

  Okay, right now I’m not a big fan of Lombard. But I’m going to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s a dragon, and there are precious few of those in the world anymore. I do wish that he’d tell the man in black to let go of Constantine’s arm, at least. It still feels like Constantine is a prisoner and not a guest. The difference is not lost on me.

  Thankfully, Lombard eases up on the laughter and starts speaking English. “Everyone wants that book, don’t they? Who knew it would prove to be so special? When you told my man Gane that the girl didn’t have the book, he reported your claim to me, but I did not believe it to be true. Surely, I thought, you were just trying to throw us off the trail.”

  While Lombard tells his story, Felix pulls his phone out.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper.

  “Checking for a signal. There is none.”

  “We’re too deep in the mountain.” For a second, I meet my brother’s eyes, and I sense he shares my anxiety.

  Yes, Constantine said he doesn’t think Lombard’s a bad guy, or whatever. But Constantine’s brother was Vlad Dracula, the Impaler, and Constantine’s expressed a lot of sympathy for Vlad, which makes me think maybe Constantine exercises a lot more leniency than I do when deciding who’s a bad guy.

  I don’t know if we can trust Lombard, and that’s a problem, because right now we’re deep in his mountain with little hope of finding our way out and no way to call for help.

  Also, the man in black is still holding tight to Constantine’s arm.

  So I feel my wariness is justified.

  “At the same time,” Lombard continues, “I’m a man who likes to keep his bets covered, as we say in the business. So, while I continued to have my men pursue the girl, I also sent a team to look into the possibility that, as you claimed, someone may have taken the book before the girl even reached the library. It was a safe enough bet. I lose nothing by looking into it, even if the girl had the book all along. And if she didn’t, then perhaps I was wise to hedge my bets.”

  I’m watching Lombard as he talks, and I can’t help thinking he’s hedging more than one bet. I know I don’t have the book—not the English translation he’s looking for, nor Constantine�
�s original.

  But is it possible Lombard knows Constantine, aka Mircea, is really Bogdan Dobrescu, the author of the Viața?

  Or is he just having the man in black keep hold of Constantine because he’s no longer the gracious, generous host Constantine once knew?

  “And what did you find?” Constantine asks patiently.

  Lombard laughs again, but this time it’s not as booming a laugh. He speaks in French.

  Felix translates, “The jewel of the crown, my fair one.” He gives me a shrug that says he’s not sure what Lombard means by that, either.

  “I found that your girl, indeed, did not have the book,” Lombard switches back to English. “Someone visited the museum before she even arrived.”

  By this time, Lombard is starting to get on my nerves. He is taking forever to get to the point. Is he really just that full of himself? It’s almost as though he’s purposely wasting time, like maybe he’s stalling for a reason.

  My uneasiness level increases. I try to shoot Felix a glance to see if he’s picking up on the same vibes I’m getting, but he’s doing something with his phone. Maybe he’s still trying to find a signal? I don’t know. He has apps on there, but seriously, this is no time for games.

  “Someone did,” Constantine agrees. “But who?”

  “That is the greatest irony of all—the person who took the book is someone familiar to me. My ex-wife, in fact.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d been married.” Constantine sounds sincerely surprised. “Is she—”

  “A dragon?” Lombard finishes for him. “Oh yes, she was, at least while I was married to her. She was a brilliant dragon, actually. A scientist, you might call her today, though in years past she was known as a maga.”

  “Maga?” I whisper to Felix.

  “The feminine form of magus, which is the singular of magi.” He confirms my suspicion without looking up from his phone.

  Lombard is pacing now as he tells his story. “Sadly, it was her brilliance that became her undoing. She invented a serum that could turn a dragon into a mere human.”