Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  Vlad turned and went to sit on the edge of the big four-poster bed. His feet didn’t quite touch the ground, so he rested his heels on the edge of the bedframe instead.

  Something in Cicero had changed since Vlad had accepted his offer. He projected calmness now, his expression soft and kind as he moved to sit beside Vlad. Close, but not crowding.

  Vlad realized, to his surprise and embarrassment, that his palms were sweating. He wiped them on the legs of his pants. His voice came out rough, and he’d never felt so keenly like a boy playing at being a man.

  “I know how this works. But…I’ve never done it. Obviously.”

  Cicero huffed a soft laugh, his smile fond. “It’s alright; it won’t be hard. You start – offer me your wrist. I’ll go under first. Then.” He reached to pull his hair over one shoulder, exposing his throat on the near side. “Come find me.”

  Vlad wet his lips. “But what if – what if I can’t do it? Val’s the dream-walker, not me.”

  Cicero shook his head slightly. “You can. This is ancient, Vlad. This is how it’s supposed to be.” He reached to place a careful hand on the top of Vlad’s head, and it had an immediate grounding affect. Even with one eye, his gaze was quietly earnest. “I won’t let you get lost in the fog. Trust me on that.”

  “I do trust you.” One of the only ones he trusted now.

  Vlad brought his own wrist to his mouth and stared at it a moment, breath hitching. No going back after this. His fangs elongated in his mouth and he bit hard, punched through the skin.

  When he offered the bleeding wound, Cicero took his arm into two reverent hands and lifted it to his face. Breathed the scent in, once, deep, eyes closed, and fastened his mouth to the open vein.

  No one had ever fed from Vlad before, so he wasn’t anticipating the shock of it. A sensation like the prickling of his skin just before a thunderstorm. A wash of heat chased by cold, pleasurable little ripples.

  He lost himself to it, for a moment. Was this what George had felt, all those years ago in the chapel at Edirne? The drug-like calm?

  But no, a binding went both ways. He shook off his stupor.

  Cicero was still too thin, undoubtedly weak, but his pulse throbbed, strong and visible in the side of his throat, a tempting stretch of clean, unmarked skin. Living blood, so rare, a feast he always denied himself. And here, wolf blood, offered freely, out of loyalty and love.

  He couldn’t help the sound he made as he leaned in and bit, a low, pleased growl.

  Cicero responded, a muffled huff of breath, encouraging.

  And then the blood hit Vlad’s tongue.

  He drank. Velvet, lush; no wine had ever tasted so sweet. Necessary, too perfect to be illicit; the taste of it was right.

  At first he only drank, and for the first time in so, so long he felt whole. Cradled in the dark, a part of something bigger and stronger than himself.

  But then he found that he stood on an empty plain, stars bright above him in a moonless sky, a twilight fog swirling up from the ground, wrapping around him close as a blanket. A wolf stalked out of the shadows toward him, through the mist, a great shaggy brown beast with only one golden eye. He came up to Vlad, tongue out, tail wagging. Pressed his head into Vlad’s outstretched palm.

  Hello, old friend, Vlad thought. I promise I’ll be the best master I know how to be.

  A bright flash.

  He shut his eyes against it, and when he opened them he lay on his side on the bed, face still tucked into Cicero’s throat, blood in his mouth, and Cicero lay boneless half-atop him, warm and pliant.

  Vlad retracted his fangs and licked the wound closed, then carefully withdrew.

  Cicero lay with his eye half-closed, dazed, blood smeared on his lower lip. It was harder on the wolf; the wolf had to open his mind and let his master in, bind himself to another living being.

  Looking at him, Vlad was filled with peace. And with sorrow – he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death, or heartbreak, or sacrifice. He didn’t deserve it.

  He licked his own wound shut and got up on unsteady legs to walk to the ewer and basin.

  Cicero whimpered, empty hands opening and closing on the counterpane.

  “Shh, shh.” Vlad returned with a wet cloth and knelt on the bed again; gently wiped the blood from Cicero’s mouth and neck, dabbed the sweat that had gathered at his temples. He dropped the cloth to the rug, heedless of the wet patch it would leave, and settled back down, arms going around Cicero, pulling the larger body against his own, so the wolf’s face was tucked into the hollow of his throat, where his pulse and scent where strongest. Cicero’s fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, and he let out a deep, tired sigh, breath tickling at Vlad’s skin.

  I have a Familiar, he thought, and closed his eyes. He was asleep long before the candles guttered out.

  ~*~

  Vlad woke early the next morning, when the dawn was gray, incredibly well-rested, wolf fur tickling his nose. Cicero had shifted sometime during the night, and now lay curled up in a ball at Vlad’s head, his face tucked in close enough that hot wolf breath ruffled Vlad’s hair on each exhale.

  He cracked his good eye open when Vlad pushed up on an elbow.

  “It’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

  The wolf made a protesting sound, but happily flopped over into the warm patch Vlad left behind when he got to his feet.

  Silvery light filtered through the gap in the shutters as Vlad stretched and yawned his way to the basin, where he splashed his face with last night’s stale water. Chin and lashes dripping, he walked barefoot out into the hall, down across the cool stones to the window that waited at the far end, where a slender figure in a simple dress stood gazing out at the first rays of the sunrise.

  “Mother,” he greeted, propping his elbows on the window ledge.

  “You smell like a wolf.”

  “Hmm. Yes.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “Like the dead.” He sighed. “You were right.”

  “Of course I was.”

  “You don’t have to be smug about it.”

  “I’m going to be, though.”

  This particular window afforded a view of the gardens, the palace wall, and, beyond, a wedge of rolling pastureland that climbed up and up in hills shaped like the humped folds of a quilt, all of it silver and gilt-edged, light spanning the horizon in bold fingertips. The scene looked like something from a painting.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “That’s typically what people do when they gaze out of windows at sunrise.”

  “Where does your attitude come from? Your father was always such a sweet man.”

  “From you.”

  She snorted. “Unfortunately, you’re right.” She sighed. “I’ve been thinking about my place here.”

  In an instant, all his loose-limbed contentedness evaporated. He straightened. “What? Mother, you know that you–”

  She silenced him with a hand. She turned to him, and that was when he saw that her dress was – unconventional. The bodice was supported by a tightly-laced leather corset, worn on the outside, one designed to cover and support her breasts, rather than flaunt their curves. The skirt was split down the middle, revealing a man’s breeches and riding boots worn beneath. Bracers pretty enough to be decorative encased her wrists, but were certainly functional. Her hair was braided tight, out of the way.

  “With the exception of Cicero, Fenrir, and Helga, all of your men think your father was married to the princess. They don’t know who I am – nor who I am to you. For all my faults, I certainly don’t look my age.” Bitter smile. “They will think I am your lover.”

  His stomach turned, and he made a face.

  “They will. Rumors can’t hurt me – I’m only a mistress. Was only a mistress.”

  “Mother–”

  “No, listen. I loved your father dearly, but I was of little practical use to him. You are a man, and I respect that, but you are also short on men at the
moment.” She lifted her chin. “I am tired of being a pretty girl kept in a tower. I want to fight. I can fight. Let me serve you in that way.”

  He stared at her, helpless.

  Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to be left behind anymore, Vlad, locked up in my own skirts, weeping over my family. What good are an immortal’s powers if I never use them? Let me fight with you. Let me help you get Val back. Please.”

  What could he say? “They’ll know you’re a woman.”

  She smiled, grim. “Let them know. I’m not worried about that.”

  The sound reached both of them at the same time, faint, but growing closer, and they turned to the window. Nothing but a smudge against the coming dawn, a lone rider approached from the city, hoofbeats a sharp tattoo against the hard-packed ground of the road.

  “A messenger,” Eira said.

  Vlad drew himself upright and pushed his shoulders back. “Well, let’s see which coward finally decided to reply to me.” And he went to fetch his boots.

  ~*~

  “‘My dear Lord Dracula,’” Vlad read aloud for the room to hear. “‘Allow me first to offer my deep and sincere condolences on the loss of your father, and of your brother. They were men of scant honor, but doubtless you loved them.

  “‘If your letter is to be believed, then it would appear that you’ve taken control of the palace at Tîrgovişte. I commend your cunning and bravery; it is no mean feat, especially given that you are only a boy of seventeen. But I must inform you that, here and now, such foolishness ends. Being that I am of far superior arms and number, a trained veteran to your green youth, it would be extremely ill-advised for you to pursue the course on which you’ve set yourself.

  “‘You are hereby ordered to present yourself to me as soon as possible, so that you may explain your actions – this vile, ungentlemanly usurpation of power – and so that you may explain what you have done with the governor of Transylvania, His Grace John Hunyadi.’”

  The parchment quivered in his grip before he forced his hands to still. The study was silent save the call of birds beyond the open window, and the snapping of the fire on the grate.

  Cicero, teeth bared throughout the reading, went now blank-faced with surprise. “Your grace…did the letter not come from John Hunyadi?”

  “It’s signed by the Transylvanian vice-governor, Nicolae Ocna,” Vlad said, passing the letter to his Familiar.

  “Obviously, you can’t go to meet with him,” Eira said. “It’s a trap.”

  “Obviously,” Vlad echoed. “But what the hell’s happened to Hunyadi?” He looked at the surrounding faces in turn. “Do any of you know?”

  Fenrir shrugged. “I’ve been in the dungeon, lad.”

  Leave it to Fen not to lean on formality; it was refreshing, given all the titles thrown at him lately.

  “We’ve heard nothing here,” Eira said. She looked startled, disturbed.

  “The lad,” Fenrir said. “The messenger.”

  Vlad said, “Right.” He shouted toward the door, “Malik Bey!”

  The door opened and the janissary entered, polished and composed as ever. “Yes, your grace?”

  “Bring the boy. The messenger. I wish to question him.”

  Malik nodded and withdrew.

  Vlad listened to his footsteps retreat down the hall, and then said, “If Hunyadi is dead–”

  “He’s not,” Eira said. “He’s too clever for that.”

  “We only know that he’s stubborn and wicked,” Vlad said. “And a coward who manages to slip out of large-scale battles unharmed. His cleverness has not been tested.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” his mother warned, and he shot her a look. Don’t undermine me, Mother.

  She was, as expected, unimpressed.

  “If he is in fact missing,” Cicero said, passing the letter back, “we couldn’t know for how long. None of us were a part of Vladislav’s retinue.”

  “Yes, and thank God for that.”

  The wolf gave him a brief half-smile.

  Malik returned, a foot soldier in tow, one that pushed the messenger boy forward into the room ahead of him.

  Vlad had been surprised, at first, to find that the figure who’d galloped up to the gates bearing the vice-governor’s seal had been only about fourteen. But then he’d seen the logic behind it: Vlad had promised death…for quite a few men. Nicolae Ocna doubtless hoped he’d be less likely to kill a child.

  But it offered a boon for Vlad as well: a man might have lied or resisted questioning. This boy was already white-faced with terror, and Vlad hadn’t even spoke to him yet.

  “You may wait outside,” he informed the soldier, adopting an indolent posture in his chair, the sort of thing, he realized with disgust, that Mehmet would do. An elbow braced, his weight shifted. I don’t care about you, that pose said to others. Cruel princes slouched, did they not? “Malik, bring the boy forward.”

  The janissary clamped a hand on his shoulder and propelled him right up to the desk. The boy, Vlad noted, flicked glances to either side, looking at Cicero, at Fenrir, even at Eira, and the surface of the desk, but not straight at Vlad. He’d been told, then, of Vlad’s promised killings. Probably that he was insane, as well; princes didn’t just go around promising murder. Politics was a delicate art, one built upon lies and civility.

  “Boy,” Vlad said, and the boy in question jumped beneath Malik’s hand. “Who is your master?”

  His mouth opened, but no sound left it.

  “To whom do you report? Are you the governor’s, or the vice-governor’s?”

  “I–I–I–” His gaze had fixed to Cicero, to the patch over his eye.

  Plainly, this would not work. The boy was frightened – but not properly. Not in a helpful way.

  Vlad thought of his little brother, dripping jewels on the garden path, little chin raised up as he clung to his last scraps of pride, pleading angrily. If you’d only behave. Val had not broken; Val had ten times this boy’s courage.

  The indolent prince could only inspire stuttering. Hadn’t he wanted to be savage anyway?

  Vlad drew himself upright in his chair, hands braced on the carved ends of its arms, spine straight, and looked down the long line of his nose, though, sitting, he was no taller than the boy. In his coldest, most commanding voice, he said, “Stop stuttering, you fool, and look at me.”

  The stuttering stopped.

  “Look at me if you wish to keep your eyes in your head.”

  Vlad heard Fenrir make the softest sound of protest in the back of his throat, but no one else said a word.

  The boy’s mouth shut with a click of his teeth, and his eyes came straight to Vlad’s face, and didn’t stray again. So pale, even his lips looked white; not just scared anymore, but terrified past the point of shaking. So scared that he’d decided obedience was the only way to come out alive.

  Just as Val had decided in Mehmet’s bed.

  No more posturing. Vlad said, simply, “If you wish to live, and retain all of your limbs, you will answer the questions I’m about to ask you quickly and honestly. Do not stutter, and do not lie to me.”

  He swallowed with obvious difficulty. “Yes, your grace.”

  “Who is your master?”

  “The vice governor. Nicolae Ocna, your grace.”

  “Where is the governor?”

  The boy began to tremble, but his gaze stayed fixed. “I don’t know, your grace. No one knows.”

  Vlad frowned. “He disappeared?”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  “When? Under what circumstances?”

  “He’d marched north, to meet the enemy. I don’t know everything; my master didn’t tell me. But I heard it said between the governors that it was expected to be a small skirmish. But his grace did not return, nor none of his men, and no message has been sent. That was a month ago.”

  Vlad lifted his brows, surprised. “And Nicolae thinks I’ve done something to Hunyadi?”

  “He believes so, yes.”r />
  Vlad found himself smirking. “And why is that?”

  “He said…” And here the boy hesitated.

  “Speak.”

  “He said – he said you were possessed of a rare evil. Beg pardon, your grace. He said you’d been tainted by the Turks, and that you were cunning and ruthless, like them. And that you’d want petty revenge.”

  Vlad linked his hands together in his lap, elbows still braced on the chair arms. “That’s what he said, eh?”

  “Yes, your grace.”

  Vlad gestured. “Take him away.”

  Malik asked a question with his brows, and Vlad shook his head. No, he wouldn’t have the boy killed; better to reuse him than to waste one of his own men on the errand back to Transylvania.

  Malik took the boy back to the door, handed him off to the soldier, but stayed in the room. Vlad decided to allow it.

  “This is fortuitous,” Vlad said. “Without his puppet master at the helm, Vladislav should be easily routed.”

  “But where did Hunyadi go?” Cicero wondered aloud. “An army can’t simply vanish into thin air.”

  “Ha,” Fenrir said. “Perhaps a strigă got them. There’s monsters in these mountains, you know.” He winked and laughed at his own joke.

  “It wasn’t the Ottomans,” Vlad said. “There would have been much celebration in Edirne, and a message would have been sent here.” He looked to Malik, and the janissary nodded in agreement.

  “The question then becomes,” Eira said, “who hates him more than you, Vlad?”

  ~*~

  Their answer came a week later, in the form of a letter signed by the Serbian prince George Brankovic.

  “His sons were at court,” Vlad said, tone mild with surprise. Stepan and Gregor; he remembered them clinging to Val’s sleeves, shuffling along slowly, white strips of linen bound around their heads to hide the ugly scars. “Just before Val and I arrived, they tried to send word to their father. The slave told on them, and Murat had their eyes burned out with hot pokers.”