“That you aren’t like him. That you’re genuine.”
She felt like she’d been slapped. Offended, shocked, worried, a whole tangle of things. “Val, what the hell–”
“I know your father. He’s the one keeping me prisoner these days.”
Mia…
Couldn’t process it.
It hit her like a wave. Over her head, all around her, filling her lungs. It didn’t feel like she took a breath for a full minute, and when she finally did, it was a gasp.
That coincidence, the one that had worried her weeks ago…it wasn’t a coincidence after all.
“Your father,” Val went on, tone resigned, heavy, “is the biologist in charge at the Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology. His drug isn’t a drug at all; it’s a serum he’s made out of vampire blood. My blood, and my brother’s. He bought me from my last captors, and then he finally found Vlad in Romania and dug him up. The drug works – on some people. But it isn’t a true turning, and without being turned, some of the recipients…well…it doesn’t go well. They die. Painfully.”
Mia opened her mouth and no sound came out.
He gave her a wry smile, gaze miserable. “I knew who you were the day we met. When you told me your last name. And now Talbot knows I’ve been visiting you. He’ll punish me, and he’s sending people here now to collect you. To take you to Virginia for treatment.”
“Val,” she said, helplessly, shaking now. “I don’t – how can you–”
“Shh.” He took a step closer. “It’s alright. It’s fine if you hate me, everyone does. Just one more thing. There’s something I want to try.” He lifted both hands. “I don’t know if it will work. I might not be strong enough. But I don’t think we’ll see each other again, and I want to show you. I want someone to know – I want you to know. I owe you that at least, I think. No one knows the real story. No one’s ever seen it. Not all of it.”
He gritted his teeth, bracing himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s – some of it is – well, I’m sorry. But I don’t think I’ve got the energy to skip over the bad parts. I don’t know how much you’ll see, or if I can…”
His past, she realized. He wanted to show her what had happened to him. The reason he was locked up, and starved; the reason her father was keeping him, manipulating him.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “Show me.”
He shut his eyes…and surged toward her.
Mia gasped. She saw a bright white flash, felt a powerful burst of coldness steal across her body.
And then…
Then…
9
A BOUQUET OF FLOWERS
Tîrgovişte, Capital of Wallachia
1439
“Vlad! Vlad, wait for me!” Val panted as his small legs worked and his arms pumped and he struggled to catch up to his older brother. Vlad was only four years his senior, but they were a dramatic four years for boys who were four and eight, and Vlad had always been sturdy and large for his age. Val, by contrast, was a pale, slow-growing, delicate thing. “No bigger than a bouquet of flowers,” Fenrir’s wife and mate, Helga, liked to say, smiling and ruffling his golden hair. Vlad hadn’t meant to run off and leave him, Val didn’t think, but his legs were so much longer, so much stronger. And now Val was alone as he rounded the corner and saw that Vlad was long gone.
He took a ragged breath and redoubled his efforts, soles of his boots slapping across the stone floor.
The scents of the palace household flowed through his sinuses, down into his lungs. He smelled his parents, and Father’s wife, who was Mircea’s mother; smelled his brothers, and the family wolves, their mates. Smelled the maids, and nurses, and Father’s human advisors; smelled fresh bread baking three floors down in the kitchen. And very near, just around the next corner, a scent and a sound – the steady thump of a heartbeat – he sensed–
“Got you!” Fenrir crowed, scooping Val up in both arms, tossing him into the air, so his head almost brushed the ceiling, and then catching him securely against his chest, held tight in his strong embrace.
Val shrieked in delight. Father could dismiss Fenrir as dumb and huge all he liked, but Val loved him. He was Val’s favorite wolf.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry, little prince?” Fenrir asked, still holding him. He began to walk in the direction Val had been heading, his much-longer strides eating up the distance.
“Vlad said I could go with him into the city. There’s going to be acrobats!” His stomach swooped excitedly at the thought.
“Oh, well, you won’t want to miss that,” Fenrir said, and lengthened his stride.
It was a warm, bright summer day, and though the windows were set at sparse intervals, all the shutters were flung wide to let in the heat, and the corridor swelled with light, the stones the color of toasted bread, warm even through the soles of Val’s boots – when he’d been walking, anyway. Now, carried securely in Fenrir’s arms, he had a rare, high view of the tapestries on the walls; a glimpse out the windows, as they passed, of the bailey, and the moat, and the red tiled rooftops of Tîrgovişte spreading out down the hill, a wide stretch of packed humanity, the hustle and bustle of commerce and busy commoners, all the way to the jagged peaks that stood ink-blank against the horizon.
The capital city of his father’s principality may have been the only home he could remember, but he still found it irrepressibly lovely.
“Are you done with your lessons for the day?” Fenrir asked as they reached the stairwell and started down.
“Um, well…” Val fidgeted. He didn’t want to lie. So he said, “Mostly.” His tutor had ended their lesson. After the fifth time he asked if Val was feeling well – “Radu, are you well?” and that name, his father’s picked name for him, had set him into a fresh batch of wriggling in his chair – the tutor had sighed and said, “Clearly, you’re distracted today. Go on. I saw your brother walk past the doorway three times already.”
Val hadn’t wasted any time after that.
But though he had waited at first, loitering outside the study where Val had been attending to his Greek and Latin lessons, Vlad hadn’t been able to wait anymore, far outdistancing him.
Sometimes it wasn’t much fun being the youngest.
At the bottom of the spiral staircase, Val and Fenrir encountered Father’s preferred wolf, Cicero, named for the Roman orator, in company with his packmate, Caesar, and Val’s oldest brother, Mircea.
Father’s wolves had been with him, according to Mother, for centuries. Loyal Familiars who served as confidants, generals, political advisors, and, even, friends. They’d been Dacian, originally, bearing Dacian names. Father had renamed them for Roman notables, and he’d taught them all the languages he knew, given them access to the finest tutors and books, so that they could be of greater use to him. They were unfailingly loyal. They took the protection of the heir, though Mircea was half-human, very seriously.
Too seriously, in Val’s opinion. They rarely smiled, and Mircea rarely did so either in their company.
“Mircea!” he called. “Vlad’s taking me to see the acrobats. Come with us!”
Mircea smiled the warm, but regretful smile that had become the only one he exercised. Val thought he had vague memories of his oldest brother when they still lived in Sighișoara, before the palace, before father was officially sanctioned as prince. A toddler’s fuzzy memories, snatches of sounds, and colors, but he remembered Mircea laughing, and leaping, and being a child. He was the heir now, officially, and all he ever did was train and study.
“I’m afraid I can’t, Radu.”
Val frowned at the name.
“But I’m sure you’ll have more fun without me.” He rolled his eyes, first to the left and then to the right, indicating his wolf escort.
Fenrir broke out in a hearty chuckle.
Cicero and Caesar shared a glance over top of the heir’s head.
But Val frowned. “We’ll miss you.” And he already did, a tug of regret in his gut. Vlad’s friends wer
e never unkind to him…but they weren’t outright welcoming either. Not like Mircea, who always went out of his way to ensure Val felt included, asking for his opinion, even though he probably hadn’t earned the right to give it.
“Send my regards,” Mircea said, reaching up to pat Val fondly on the cheek. “Have fun. Be careful with my favorite brother, Fen!” he called as he and his wolf escort retreated toward the stairs.
“No worries on that, your grace,” Fenrir assured, and off they went again.
They caught up with Vlad in Mother’s garden, on the hedge-lined path that led past the stables toward the gate. Vlad had come to a stop, kicking at stray pebbles, impatient as he waited. He glanced up with a nod that seemed to say finally when they appeared, Val riding on Fenrir’s shoulders by that point. Two human men-at-arms waited a few paces away, arms folded, relaxed and awaiting their little prince’s orders. This was their into-the-city escort, Val knew.
“What kept you?” Vlad asked.
You were too fast, Val thought. But that was something a baby would say. So he said, “We ran into Mircea. He said he can’t come.”
Vlad snorted. “When does he ever? Come on.”
The men-at-arms made to fall in.
“I’ll take them,” Fenrir said, setting Val down on his feet beside his brother.
One of the guards shrugged, but Val thought he looked relieved.
The afternoon stretched out before them as they walked through the gates, across the bridge, and headed down the motte’s slope toward the city proper, a glorious, too-warm, high-summer day filled with the thrum and call of humanity, the sun a bright discus overhead. Val held a bit of his brother’s sleeve pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and felt a not-unpleasant prickling of sweat beneath his clothes, cool drops gathering at the back of his neck under his hair, sliding down between his shoulder blades. He loved the heat; though his fair skin would flush, and if left too long in the sun without a hat, or a cup of water, or a stolen bit of shade he was wont to faint, he liked the way summer made everything feel so alive. Winter was a dead season; not without its charms – Mother’s soothing voice as she read to them, the crackle of logs, the scent of wine, and pipe smoke, and the raucous shouts of wolf laughter and conversation. But winter was all indoors, shut up against the snow, and his hands cracked and bled in the dry air. Summer, though, summer was ripe, and unrushed, and all the green things thrived.
Val breathed deep through his nose, and he could smell everything, scents tripping over one another in their haste to be identified. As the city swallowed them, Val could smell the hundreds and hundreds of scent markers of human commoners; the vegetables and freshly-butchered meats on offering in the market stalls; tobacco smoke; fresh flowers; sweat and offal; and best of all, the competing savory and sweet flavors of the vendor food being hawked with enthusiastic shouts.
Fenrir drew some looks, in part for his size, in part for his mass of curly red hair, but mostly because he wore the finely-tailored red tunic, breeches, and knee-boots of the princely household. It was probably Fenrir that Vlad’s friends spotted first, a moment before a skinny arm shot through the crowd.
“Vlad!” Marcus shouted, shouldering his way between bodies, dragging Nicolae along behind him. “There you are. Finally! We’ll have to hurry, they’ve already started – oh,” he said, voice falling flat at the end when he spotted Val.
Val pinched Vlad’s sleeve tighter, gathered it in his whole hand, squeezed until his knuckles went white.
Marcus – ten and tall for his age, broad-shouldered and already starting to resemble the man he would become – turned to look over his shoulder at Nicolae, who made a helpless sort of gesture in response. Marcus turned back, looking at Vlad – just at Vlad. “You brought your brother?”
Two days ago, Vlad had dumped a handful of fireplace ashes down the back of Val’s shirt – and caught a single blow from Father’s riding crop across the backs of his thighs for the effort. But that was nothing new; he would stick wet fingers in Val’s ears, and muss his hair on purpose, and had blamed mud tracked on the rug on Val. “Brother things,” Mother would say with a shake of her head.
But here now, in front of his friends, Vlad drew himself up like a bristling cat, stuck out his chin, puffed up his chest, and said, “So what if I did?”
Marcus and Nicolae exchanged another look, one Val had no hope of interpreting.
“Alright,” Nicolae said. “Follow us.”
Fenrir was able to bull his way through the crowd, the four boys following along in his wake. The tight press of bodies around them, the overwhelming headiness of so much scent at once, tightened a sensation almost like panic in Val’s belly. He held the back of Fenrir’s tunic with one hand, Vlad’s sleeve with the other. Vlad shot him a dark look, like he thought he was acting like a baby, but didn’t shake him off.
“I hear there’s women in this troupe,” Marcus said with a laugh. “From the Far East. And they’re naked.”
Nicolae chuckled.
Vlad said, “You’re lying.”
“It’s just what I heard!”
“What you hoped, you mean,” Nicolae said, and then Vlad laughed.
“You’ll see,” Marcus grumbled. “They’ll be naked, and then you’ll have to cover little Baby Radu’s eyes.”
That name.
Val faltered a step…but then Vlad took his hand from his sleeve, slid it into his own, their fingers laced. Vlad’s palms were callused and tough from riding and training. Only eight, but he could gallop bareback, down a hare with a bow from horseback, and wield a short sword meant for a much older boy.
Val caught himself, letting his brother’s strong grip tow him along, and the name didn’t bother him so badly.
The crowd parted around Fenrir, at first because of the sheer spectacle of him, and then because they noted, sometimes with quiet gasps and exclamations, the two boys who trailed behind him. One dark and one light, hands clenched tight. One sallow and harsh like their father, one golden and slight as their mother.
Finally, they reached the edge of the throng, and the square where the acrobats had already begun their performance.
Vlad breathed a quiet, self-satisfied laugh. “I don’t see anyone naked, Marc.”
“Shut up.”
They settled into a familiar argument, Marcus’s insecurities playing off Vlad’s sureness, but Val wasn’t paying attention. He could only stare, open-mouthed, at the spectacle before him.
If not for his vampiric sense of smell, he wouldn’t have known whether the five lithe, androgynous humans leaping over one another were male or female. But he flagged two women, and three men, all of their faces painted, dramatic lines of kohl giving them cat’s eyes. They wore beaded and belled crimson costumes, gauzy and diaphanous, long sleeves swirling like flags as they lifted one another, and sprung into wild jumps and twists.
They moved like birds, like fairies. Like creatures who weren’t nailed down to the earth.
Free, he thought, unbidden. They looked free.
His hand tightened, a spasm flex of excitement.
And Vlad squeezed back.
~*~
His name.
It probably shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. To him, at least.
Mother had told them the story often, one of their frequent requests at bedtime, when the winter wind howled through the cracks in the shutters and they weren’t quite ready for her to blow out the candle and slip off to her own bed. The story of the tourney at which she’d first laid eyes on their father. When, tall and regal, head held high, shoulders squared, he’d ridden into the arena on a prancing chestnut destrier and captured her heart with a single wink. Vlad II, back from his apprenticeship…maybe not quite like anyone expected, though no one could have said what he was supposed to look like. Mother told them how, up in the stands, flanked by Fenrir and Helga, she’d leaned out over the rail to toss a favor into the sawdust: a heavy golden belt buckle that Father still wore every day.
&nb
sp; Mother had been a purebred vampire, and so had Father, and they’d scented it on one another, irrevocably drawn together right away. He’d reined his horse up right in front of her, smiled up at her from beneath his visor.
“What is the fair lady’s name?”
“I see no fair lady.” She’d smiled wide enough to flash her fangs. “But my name is Eira.”
Mother talked fondly and at length about that tourney, Father’s indomitable strength, skill, and horsemanship. He’d unseated every opponent at the joust. Conquered totally in the melee.
Mother told them what none of the cheering spectators had known that day, what Father had told her later, in the candlelit dark of a bedchamber amid warm, tousled sheets: that he wasn’t Vlad II, son of Mircea at all. That he was Remus, twin brother of Romulus, co-founder and one-time-heir of Rome. That he’d hidden from his brother for centuries, that he’d found a purpose and a calling here, in the shadow of the Carpathians, and that he wanted the chance to be the kind of benevolent and thoughtful ruler he’d been too callow to appreciate before.
Mother never talked about what happened after. About her Remus – her Vlad Dracul– having to marry the eldest daughter of Alexandru the Good, Prince of Moldavia. That Princess Cneajna had borne him a son, half-human. A political obligation, Father called it. Though he did love his half-human son, Mircea, named for his own pretend father. And most of all he loved Eira, his Viking shieldmaiden, who had eventually taken him back into her bed.
Eira birthed two purebred sons. The first she named Vladimir.
“It isn’t a Wallachian name,” Vlad chastised her gently.
“It’s not?”
“No, my love, it’s Russian.”
And so her Vladimir was renamed Vlad III by his father.
And everyone save their household wolves thought he was the son of Cneajna, who locked herself most often in her room with a book and a cup of wine, indifferent to the unfaithfulness of her husband.
So when Val was born, Eira brought his small face up to hers, and kissed his forehead, and said, “You will be my Valerian. My precious boy.”
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 9