by Finley Aaron
I’m trying to get back through the doorway with my weights when Constantine leaps past me, lunging at vampires one stake at a time, eliminating them so quickly their screams turn to dust in the air.
I get about halfway around the pool when a vampire slips through the fighting fray to reach me.
Though I’ve been trained with swords since I was a child, and under nearly any other circumstances I’m deft with them, the chains and shackles make every move cumbersome. I swing a sword toward the vampire’s neck, but the chains hold my arm back, and the blow deflects off his jacket.
Constantine spins around and impales him through the heart from behind. “Get out of here!”
Vampire guards swarm the room from every hallway. There’s no clear route of escape. I swing my left-hand sword at a vampire approaching from that side, and shout to Constantine, “How?”
Constantine looks up to the giant fan blades spinning in the dome above us. “Fly!”
My left sword is tangled in my chains, and the vampire on that side is coming closer. I shuffle backward until I feel cold rock behind me. Then I swing my right sword around, slicing off the approaching vampire’s head before my blade gets caught in the chain tangle with the other blade.
Maybe I should just fly away.
But Felix doesn’t even have the books yet and I don’t think he intends to leave without them. If I run away now, the guys could get recaptured and I wouldn’t even be there to help.
I can’t leave yet.
But I do need to get out of the reach of the vampires, because I am useless with the chains. My back is against the rock formation that covers the secret room—the same formation the waterfall spills down from. Its sides are rough and jutted, hewn with blunt tools or possibly intentionally crafted to form odd stair-like protrusions.
Whatever their provenance, they’re my escape route, at least to get beyond the reach of the vampires. I toss the chain weights on the highest ledges I can reach, then climb up after them.
Below me, the throng of vampires is thinning as Felix and Constantine turn them to dust. I focus on climbing, and soon reach the top of the mound. From here, I can see the river that feeds the falls. It’s coming from a tunnel that leads further back inside the mountain.
Maybe, if I follow it, I can find a way out.
I step into the river. The water is frigid, probably mountain runoff of melting snow, or maybe water from an icy-cold underground spring.
Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.
Perhaps I’d be better off escaping through the hallways as planned. Below me, there are far fewer vampires now. Constantine flings a stake like a dart, vaporizing yet another vampire.
But from my perch on the mountain, I can see what’s hidden from Constantine’s eyes by the cloud of vampire dust.
Lombard is running toward Constantine, syringe in hand.
He’s going to use the serum on him, and Constantine doesn’t even see him coming—he won’t see him, either, because another vampire has turned his attention the other direction.
Lombard is going to use the serum on Constantine, which will, in the best-case scenario, make him human.
Or, which seems more likely given the nature of the serum, it might easily kill him.
Clearly, given how quickly he’s running toward Constantine, Lombard can’t wait to find out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I have no choice.
I lunge off the mountain—or at least, I try to. The rocks are slippery under my feet, and the weights on my chains throw me off balance. I slip sideways in a spin and land on my belly in the water, as my combined forward momentum and the flow of the river push me off the edge of the waterfall.
Now I really have no choice.
As I fall, I slip the top of my dress down, simultaneously changing into a dragon. I get my wings just wide enough to glide toward Lombard.
He glances back, sees me soaring all wet and angry-eyed toward him, and he changes into dragon form as well.
Which actually works out great for me, because I fling the weights forward as I land on his back, and their momentum sends them whipping around, catching chains and locking weights against one another.
I’ve got a stranglehold around Lombard’s dragon neck, and I’m not going to waste it. I pull with all my dragon strength, and Lombard’s eyes go buggy.
Constantine has dispensed with the last vampire, and Felix is running toward the storeroom to get the books.
When Lombard changed to dragon form, his hands, like all dragon hands, grew. The bones get longer and the joints further apart, which is great if a dragon wants to use his talons as a weapon. If he wants to keep tight hold of a slender object—say, for example, a syringe—it’s much less practical.
Indeed, Lombard takes a swipe in Constantine’s direction, and while Constantine ducks back out of his reach, the syringe hits the rug where Lombard and I sat eating dinner less than an hour ago.
Constantine dives for the syringe.
Lombard breathes a blast of fire toward Constantine, but I pull back on the chains and his head tilts up, so his fire shoots, instead, toward the great fan in the dome above us.
It sizzles and the blades stutter, turning erratically now.
Below, I see Felix rounding the pool, old books tucked under one arm, raised sword in the other. He could try to fly out through the fan in the ceiling—it leads to some kind of ventilation system, hopefully a direct connection to the outside, though there’s no way to tell from here.
But Gane is running toward him. I swipe at Gane with my tail, but he’s too far away for me to reach. The two meet with a clash of swords.
Below me, Constantine has got the syringe, and he looks Lombard over like he’d love to stab it into him.
The trick is, dragon scales are bullet-proof and blade-proof and most certainly syringe-proof. There are only two places where a dragon is vulnerable to such a feeble weapon: the eyes and the inside of the mouth.
And an eye, while normally a necessary body part, could be gouged out before the serum could enter the system, if a dragon found it preferable to go through life with one eye, rather than turning human.
That makes the inside of the mouth the best choice. In fact, when my mother turned Eudora human years ago, she shot a syringe of serum into Eudora’s open mouth—which is how I’m so familiar with a dragon’s points of vulnerability in this scenario.
But how do I communicate the optimum point of attack to Constantine? I can’t talk in dragon form, but Constantine has a proven track record of being able to read my face well.
My human face, at least.
But I don’t dare change into a human now. I can feel Lombard weakening, but I doubt I could bring him down with this stranglehold. His dragon neck is simply too strong for me to cut off his airway completely.
I catch Constantine’s attention, aim a pointed glance at Lombard’s head, open my mouth wide, and touch the roof of my mouth with my dragon tongue.
Understanding dawns across Constantine’s face, and he leaps into action. I expect him to run for the storeroom to fetch a crossbow to shoot the syringe, but instead, he jumps onto the table where the last of the roast pig is still on display, and he leaps toward Lombard’s face.
I’ve no doubt Lombard would love to continue breathing fire, but his oxygen is in short supply. His fire dies to nothing as Constantine uses his free hand to grab Lombard by the nostrils.
Lombard’s mouth is still wide open (I’m pulling back on the chains, so I don’t think he could close it if he tried, and anyway, he’s still trying to breathe fire even though he’s out of air), and Constantine plunges the syringe deep into Lombard’s open mouth.
I can feel the dragon form beneath me begin to shrink, and I pull tighter on the chains to keep Lombard from escaping.
Constantine whips his arm free and leaps back to the table, as I look around in search of Felix.
He’s fighting not just Gane, but also Drake. They each have a swor
d, but Felix only has the one, and it appears the vampires are getting the upper hand.
Since I can’t let go of the chains for fear of setting Lombard free, human though he may be, I spin sideways and fling Lombard crashing into Gane and Drake.
They both stumble sideways, and Felix is able to step free of the fighting.
Lombard has fallen to the floor and isn’t moving. In human form, in just his undershorts, he looks rather feeble.
Constantine had run for the storeroom and now bursts out, crossbow in hand. He only has a few stakes, but there are more all over the room from the vampires he’s already killed.
Gane and Drake have recovered their footing and are closing in on Felix again.
Constantine loads a stake into the crossbow and takes aim, but instead of shooting, he shouts, “Let him go.”
“Why should we?” Drake asks.
“The world needs more dragons.”
“Not males. They only get in the way.” As Drake argues, he stabs at Felix with his sword.
Felix dodges the blow, simultaneously blocking another from Gane. My brother could just change into dragon form, but if he does that, he’ll eliminate any chance of walking out through the casino. I don’t want him to have to play that card, not unless he absolutely has to.
What can I do? If I blow fire, I’ll injure Felix and destroy the books. If I leap into the fray, I’ll block Constantine’s shot with my enormous stake-proof dragon body.
I give Constantine a look that says just shoot, before they kill my brother.
Constantine fires the crossbow, which sinks a stake deep into Gane’s heart.
Which is great, and everything, because now my brother only has one enemy to fight. Except that Drake was clearly the better swordsman and thus the greater threat, and he was also positioned so that he’d have been easier for Constantine to hit.
Yet the precision with which Constantine shot the stake through Gane’s heart indicates he aimed at the lesser foe deliberately.
Why?
“Don’t you kill my son!” An unearthly voice pierces the cavern, and I turn to see a fiery red demon creature emerging from the river above the falls.
Vladislaus Dracula, the demon.
He’s real. He’s still alive.
He’s also like twenty feet tall and furious.
And I’m super glad I decided against following the river upstream, because it looks like that’s where he just came from.
Anyway, Dracula has answered my question. Constantine killed Gane, not Drake, because Drake is his nephew’s son (Drake’s father, Dracula the demon, being Constantine’s brother’s son via the dragon Hungarian princess).
He’s family.
Evil, bloodthirsty, vampire family…but still, he’s all the family Constantine has left. And since the original Vlad Dracula saved Constantine’s life when he exhumed him from his grave, I guess Constantine feels like he kind of owes these guys.
Even though, in my mind, he totally doesn’t.
Dracula’s arrival is distracting, pulling even Drake’s attention to the top of the waterfall. When I look back, I see that my brother has slipped out of the range of Drake’s sword.
Constantine looks at me with a slight tip of his head before he turns his attention back to Dracula. His glance was fleeting, but I know exactly what he was trying to say.
Run.
Now.
While we still have the chance. Right. Felix is still silently creeping toward the hallway. I’m not going to fit down the hallway in my current form, but I take a few bounding leaps toward it, change back into my human form, tug my dress more or less back into place, grab those heavy weights I’m still dragging around, and run down the hall.
Felix catches up to me as I round the first corner. “Which way?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Constantine was the one who paid attention. I think, maybe this way?” We take a branch that angles off to the left. “Look for stairs going up.”
We’re not running terribly fast now, mostly because we’re checking every bend and branching path, and also because lugging these weights really slows me down.
We’re on our third turn and still no sign of any stairs when I hear what sounds like someone running toward us…in bare feet.
Felix shoots me a glance that asks who could that be?
“Lombard, maybe?” I whisper, as we duck around the next corner and flatten our backs against the wall. I hoist up one of my weights and communicate my intentions to Felix with a few pointed eyebrow twitches.
I can hear the runner drawing closer. As he approaches the corner, I hesitate. I don’t want to throw the weight at the wrong person.
But Lombard bursts into view, still in his undershorts, and since there’s no question this is the creepy guy who wanted to marry me against my will, I hurl the weight at his head and he drops to the floor almost as quickly as the iron weight.
“Now what?” I ask.
Felix shakes his head. “I don’t know how to find the way out of here. I don’t think we’re on the right path now, and if we get any more twisted around, we may not be able to find our way back to the cavern. I say we go back and fly through the fan in the ceiling.”
“We don’t know where it leads,” I remind him cautiously.
“We don’t know where any of these lead, either,” Felix notes. “The fan gets us closer to the surface than any other route. I say we take it.”
“Lombard’s fire messed it up—it was running slow, then fast. We’ll have to be careful, but we may have a better chance of making it through.”
“We’ll have to fly as fast as we can,” Felix agrees.
“Since you’ve got the books, I want you to go first. We can’t risk losing them, not after all we’ve been through to get them.”
“You should go first. You can carry the books,” Felix insists.
“I can’t carry them with these weights. It’s too much. You take them. I’ll be right behind you. Don’t worry about me—I might be a little slower because of the weights, but I’ll be right behind you.”
Felix looks unsure. “I don’t want to risk letting you get left behind.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” I promise. What I don’t tell Felix, is that part of the reason I want him to go first, is to make sure he gets out of here. It’s my fault he’s here at all—and I don’t want him lingering long enough to make sure I get out behind him, or he may lose his chance to make his escape. Instead, I add, “Fly out of here as fast as you can. I’ll give you a little room so I don’t risk flying into you. Head straight for Constantine’s castle. I’ll meet you there.”
“Got it.” He nods, his jaw set with determination.
I pat him on the shoulder as though to shove him on his way. “Go!”
We retrace our steps down the halls at a run. The moment we break through the doorway into the great room, Felix leaps forward, morphing into a dragon and bursting out of his tuxedo as he flies upward toward the fan. The blades are chugging, spinning fast, then stuttering.
He makes it through on a stutter.
Not that I have much time to stare after him.
Constantine is sword-fighting both Drake and Dracula, and even though Dracula has abandoned his demon form in favor of a bullishly-built human form, it’s not looking good for Constantine. He’s already got a cut on his forehead and a huge slice through his shirt. Though he has a sword in each hand, he can’t keep them at bay forever, and he’s already proven he doesn’t want to kill them.
They appear to have no such qualms about killing him.
I’ve got to help him, but I should respect his desire to let his relatives live.
That leaves only one thing.
I run to the secret room, leap the pile of glass in my bare feet, grab the last two syringes, tuck them in my purse, and run back out.
There’s a crossbow on the floor where Constantine dropped it after he killed Gane. I fit it with a syringe, carefully pop the rubber stopper off the tip, t
ake aim at Drake, and fire.
I’m so glad the syringes don’t have to go through the heart like stakes, because the syringe flies lower than I expected, and its tip sinks solidly into Drake’s left glute muscle.
Drake gasps, staggers backward, and then sort of withers to dust.
Hmm. Too much mortality for a fellow like Drake, I guess.
“Noooooo!” Dracula rages in that unearthly voice of his.
I’ll take that as my cue to leave. I morph into dragon form and launch myself toward the fan. The weights are seriously dragging me down, but I fling them upward, intending to send them through the fan ahead of me.
The blades stutter and spin faster. They catch the chains and wrap them tight, pulling me toward their slicing blades. For an instant, I’m sure I’m going to get chopped to bits, but then the fan chokes up on the chain, and the entire ceiling seems to shudder for a moment before the middle section of steel pulls loose with a screech of tearing metal, and the fan and everything attached to it careens toward the floor.
I fly backward to avoid being crushed. The strain on my wrists is enormous, but first the left chain and then the right snaps free, sending me hurling backward, well out of the range of the falling fan.
“You killed him! You killed my son!” Dracula rages from somewhere on the other side of the fan debris, which is smoking with a stench that’s none too pleasant.
For a second I’m afraid he’s going to stomp right over here and destroy me.
Constantine must have spotted the terror on my face, because he tosses me a sword.
But even as the sword flies through the air toward me, Dracula spins, scoops a stake from the floor, and plunges it into Constantine’s chest.
I leap forward, grab the sword out of the air, and bound over the fallen fan toward Dracula.
Constantine sinks backward and slumps to the floor, unmoving.