by Ana Calin
“Take me to their house, Victoria. This boy, Sedan, he knew things, and he had some items the magic of which can prove especially powerful here, on the flipside.”
“Nothing more powerful than what we have.” She motions to herself and then to me. “Look at me, look at you. Do you honestly think the likes of us could have any use for the trinkets of a gypsy?”
“I do believe his items might prove useful for those trying to end our demon lord. What if there’s something in there that Dracula could use? Sedan talked about demon-banishing potions and objects, and I got the feeling Dracula held him in special regard.” A lie, but it serves my purpose now.
Victoria’s face changes as she ponders. Her chin seems to grow even longer, her thin lips pursed. There’s a ghostly cry in the distance at the castle, like a crow circling the highest spire. It gives me the chills, even though I thought nothing could scare me anymore. I swear this place looks like an outpost of hell, I’ve never seen anything like it, except maybe on Deviant Art.
“All right, but we need to hurry.”
Lord Dracula
I LAND ON MY FEET, but my knees buckle, forcing me down with a hand on the ground like Batman.
“Fuck, Radek, is it like this every time?”
“There are other ways to do it,” he says. “But until I understand everything that happened, Vlad, I won’t miss a chance to make you feel like shit.”
There’s shuffling somewhere close, and I’m stunned to discover it comes from Tristan, who’s also picking himself up from the ground. I look up to see a dark, ghostly version of Bran, wind blowing through my hair, the castle presiding like a black fortress of evil from its rocky base.
“I’ll be damned,” I whisper.
“Impressive, isn’t,” Radek says, turning to the castle.
I have seen civilization grow and settle, then stumble and strive for balance, I’ve watched humanity mutate, all happening before my eyes like a mass of jelly changing shape. But this is indeed new, a dark fairy tale land. The flipside of Bran. The flipside of Transylvania.
“Beware,” Radek says, turning to Tristan and me. “Things function differently on this side of reality.” A piping sound comes from the distance. Radek stops, listening hard. “I’ll be damned.”
Distant screams rip through the strange sounds the air makes here, like movement under water. Both Radek and Tristan spin and take a fighting position, their eyes narrowing.
“What the hell was that? Crows?” Tristan says.
“No,” Radek whispers, his eyes searching the sky. “An evil spirit, seeping into this dimension from the underworld.”
Despair stings my heart. “The demon! It must already have Ruxandra.”
I move forward, pulling a dagger from my sidearm, ready to fight whatever crosses my path and tries to stand in my way. But Radek’s hand slaps over my chest, keeping me back.
“That blade isn’t going to help you in this version of reality, big brother. This is a world of spirits.”
“Come on, Radek, you and I have seen many wars. We both know there’s a way to fight anything, anywhere.”
Following Radek’s focused gaze in the distance, I see the shadows flying around the highest castle tower that looks like a black spire. They turn into a whirlwind around it, then they stop, and for a moment I feel their attention on us.
“It seems they’re studying us,” I say quietly, my eyes fixed on the shadows. My face bones start to protrude, my fangs elongate, my knuckles grow and my fingers turn into claws. I’m ready to fight.
“That is the demon, Radek,” I tell him quietly. “It’s his energy, he’s taking some kind of shape.”
“But we still can’t fucking touch him,” Tristan says. I have never heard him swear before.
“I can’t activate the midnight monster around it either,” Radek puts in. “With demons and other supernaturals there’s a chance they’ll only grow stronger.”
“Then there’s really no way to fucking fight these things,” comes Tristan’s second-ever curse. His claws have shot out, the tips of his fangs glistening in the eternal dusk of the flipside.
The shadows come down on us hard, with the power of whirling winds, flashing between the three of us.
“Radek,” I call, my voice lost in the whirling wind. It all turns deafening, the windy shadows scraping my skin. I flex to harden my muscles and my skin, soon becoming as rigid as a block of rock rooted in the ground. I could withstand the shadows’ attacks for an eternity, but I need to find a way to fight back.
There’s a cry in the distance, and despair surges in my heart, making me start to move.
“Rux!”
It feels like moving through water as I slash at the shadows with the dagger. The blade cuts through the black veil, but it reforms. I slash at it with my claws. Again the shadow rips, but all it accomplishes is that I can take a few more strides down the road until it whirls around me again.
I need to get Rux, that’s all that matters, even if I have to fight for every step. I keep slashing and clawing, baring my fangs and hissing at the creature.
I want to growl at it to take material shape and face me in a fight, but I know it’s useless. Even if I killed the damn demon, it would turn into energy again, and attack me in the same way. I focus on finding Rux, determined to throw myself over her body and protect her from the attacks of this evil energy until another solution presents itself.
The shadows’ attack intensifies to the point where I can barely still draw a breath. It’s like riding a train with my face against the wind. For a human, this would be deadly, which makes me worry for Rux so much that I’m not thinking straight anymore.
Cutting through the shadow becomes hard, and it doesn’t bring much except the ability to move forward, following the cries. But soon I realize they aren’t Rux’s. I recognize Victoria’s desperate whining.
Rux
THE SHADOWS FLY SWIFTLY above our heads, the air whipping, stinging my face and messing up my hair.
“Shit, that was close.” I run a hand through my hair, but then I see Victoria’s worried face.
“Someone’s here,” she whispers, looking back.
“Vlad,” I breathe, craning my neck to look behind us. The shadows have filled the road so quickly, that they seem to form a sand storm. I narrow my eyes and hold a hand over my eyes to peer through it, but then Victoria’s witch-like hands materialize on my shoulders.
“You can’t trust Dracula,” she reminds me. “Remember what we talked about. As soon as he has the demon out of this world, he will suck all your blood from your body and drop you dead in a ditch. He’s a cruel bastard, a devil who slaughtered his way through history. I doubt he’d even give you the honor of a grave.”
“And yet he’s here, looking for me.”
Victoria shakes me. Her half white half dark hair seems to stand on end. “Don’t be an idiot! Of course he came as soon as he realized you were gone, this is his chance to destroy the demon, using you.”
“But how did he even make it to this dimension? You said you alone had the power to travel through dimensions, no one else in his army or entourage.”
Victoria’s eyes turn wider, and she looks to the army of whirling shadows.
“He must have found someone else.”
“Whom could he have found so quickly?”
“Come, we need to hurry,” she says. “I’ll take you to the gypsy clan’s place.”
Victoria starts ahead of me like a snake of smoke with the head of a woman. Of course she’s even more interested in taking me there now—she’s afraid Vlad would find the means to fight the demon among the gypsies’ magic items.
I follow her quickly down winding streets, among skeletal houses from which ghostly sounds and white steam comes forth.
“The houses of anguish and depression,” Victoria says. “Some of them have ghosts who refused to go into the light, and now exist on the flipside of Bran.”
I look at the castle as I hurry afte
r her on the path of beaten dirt. “Are there ghosts at the castle, too?”
“Once there were. But the Prince of Midnight and the Prince of Blood were creatures so dark even the ghosts feared them. They preferred to go into the light. For some of them, even hell might be better than the company of the midnight monster or the king of vampires.”
Victoria takes a turn into a small courtyard with one skeletal black tree in the center of it. The place seems a deserted labyrinthine cottage, hatched roof and wooden beams. Draught blows through the black curtains, their seams ripped like fangs.
Even the furniture seems to be the ghost of the pieces on the upside.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Victoria says tensely.
“Would you mind staying at the door?” I urge, ignoring her question. “Just make sure Vlad and whoever is with him don’t get to us.”
“Good idea.”
I walk deeper inside the maze-like house, relieved that I got Victoria off my back, searching each room quickly. I discover Sedan keeps his merchandise behind the house, in a small shed in the backyard.
It’s really creepy, walking in my white robe down the dark, windy yard towards what looks like the tool shed of a serial killer like in movies.
Movies.... How long has it been since I’ve watched one? I realize with a pang of regret that I never will again....
The door makes a disturbing creak as I push it open. Sure enough, inside it’s cluttered with chalices and crucifixes, silver jewelry and glittery fabric. Indeed, even if everything he sells on the upside is worthless junk, he does present his stuff as valuable and magic, and on this side his merchandise actually is all that.
Had the situation been any different, I would abandon myself in fascination and slowly go through the items. But the decision I made depends on my moving fast, and not stopping to explore life and its beauties any further. For me, life was never beautiful, apart from the few years spent with Juliet and Radek, all because they had twisted my fate by saving me. My life was never supposed to be beautiful. I come from a long line of cursed children, who succumbed to their curse sooner or later.
The demon had them reproduce, and drove them to kill themselves before they could find a solution against him. I have no reason to believe it’ll be different with me. In the end, the bastard did try to kill me when I was child, giving me power, but sucking me dry of my life energy in return. He was burning me like a candle.
I discover a wooden box with holes the length of thick pencils, holding vials with different liquids. All must have their magic purposes, but one of them contains exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I’ve been moving fast through the items, even throwing things aside while I searched, but now that I have the substance in my hands the world seems to have stopped. I raise the vial into the light filtering through the small window above the shelves. It’s a very faint, greyish light, but it’s enough for the liquid metal to glint like silver oil inside of it.
This is it. This is what will end not only my own curse, but that of my entire bloodline. We were bred to die and, deep down, all of us knew it. It’s what caused the meanness in the first place—we had power, but we were sentenced to death. The demon merely used us to channel its power, killing the recipient before it was old enough to start resisting it. I wonder how he planned to get me pregnant as a ten year old, and if he planned to kill me in childbirth, like my mother before me.
I’m not sure what happened at the monastery, though. How the demon could have channeled itself into permanent existence. Could it have possessed me, and used my body to walk the Earth forever?
No matter what, for me there was always only one possible outcome—death. If the demon possesses my body, I’m dead. If it merely channels its power through me, I’m dead, too. A defiant grin stretches of its own accord across my face. If I am to die anyway, I’ll take the bastard with me.
I uncap the vial, and stare with reverence at the liquid one last time before I put the vial to my mouth. The oil-like metal pours down my throat, then crawling and spreading all through my body. Fuck, it hurts!
The vial falls to the floor and breaks, and then my knees hit the ground. The last thing I hear is the door flying off its hinges, and Victoria screaming in despair.
Lord Dracula
I SLASH MY WAY THROUGH the demon’s shadows, always just enough to move forward, but then a terrible scream pierces through the wind and makes me freeze in place.
The shadows straighten up as if someone stabbed them, and they strain against the pain. They twist like snakes, just like they did back at the Northern Monastery, but much more pain is involved. Radek and Tristan make it to my side, pushing their way through the rushing wind, shielding their faces with their arms, their jackets flapping behind them.
“What in the world is happening?” Tristan calls over the noise as he reaches my side, peering through the storm to the twisting, turning shadows that seem to be sucked towards the castle tower. Soon they are fully absorbed into one dot at the very tip of the spire, making a sound like an explosion in water, though deafening to the ears, pressure sending vibrations through our eardrums. The wind suddenly stops, then washes away with the force of a tsunami, throwing all three of us backwards.
Moment pass, the reverberations of the demon’s painful retreat still sending quivers through our organs.
We scramble up to our feet, looking around at a ghost town that seems to have just been swept over by an army of barbarians. A ghost town, laid to waste.
Another scream pierces the distance, desolate and hopeless. We run in its direction, following the sound to the gypsy clan’s house.
I flash through the labyrinthine place, throwing doors open and searching all rooms with a glance, until another scream leads me to the back door. I freeze in place as I see it—the tool shed open. The screaming has turned into whining, and it comes from there.
My heart beats wildly. I close the distance at a run, but when I find my Ruxandra lying on the floor, her black hair spread around her, I petrify. Victoria is leaning over her in full human form, a messed-up witch, dressed in rags.
Victoria oozes despair. She’s lost all hope of having the demon channeled into the world and freeing herself from me, because my Rux, the demon’s portal, has killed herself by drinking mercury.
Victoria stops crying when she sees me, despair turning to panic in her face, causing her to jump to her feet and back away quickly. But I don’t have the will or energy to deal with her now, the claws of despair tearing at my heart. My lover’s heart-shaped face is dead-white, her eyes closed, her small full lips slightly parted.
She looks indeed like a corpse, streaks of quicksilver visible under her translucent skin like thin veins through which metal flows. Mercury, the only metal that can kill evil, is now coursing through her veins.
I drop to my knees by Rux’s side, the world coming to an end. I scoop her up, her body still flexible and warm, just like it was the last time she enjoyed my love, our bodies pressed tightly to each other.
Tears pool in my eyes for the first time in... Have I ever even cried before? I squeeze her at my chest, against my leather tunic. I would take it off so that I can feel her against my skin one last time, but that would mean putting her down while I undress, and I don’t want to be parted from her even for an instant.
I hear Victoria arguing and screaming behind me, probably cornered by Tristan or Radek, but nothing matters. I’m tired, exhausted, Rux’s suicide has just sucked away all of my will to live. Eternity doesn’t make sense without her, it’s just pointless.
I realize with a bang the purpose of my life all along was to cure her of her curse, kiss away her scars, pour love inside of her to replace the dark power of the demon. It was never she who was supposed to make me invincible, as Dracula’s Grail, I was meant to save her. But I’m too late.
I failed. No, I caused all this, I caused her suffering. If I hadn’t had Dalton bait her over here, she’d probably still
be alive, protected by the only people that have ever done her good, Radek and Juliet.
Radek. My brother. I hear him behind me, fighting a man with the voice of Gruia.
Gruia. While he crosses daggers with Radek, he blurts out he always hated ‘blue blood bastards’ like he and I. Gruia comes from a family of peasants, simple people who had been forced by their lord to offer Gruia as a year’s rent when he was only twelve; he’s made a subconscious life purpose of punishing the blue bloods for their cruelty to the weaker. Deep down, even he has a noble purpose in the world, and he yet has reason to stay alive.
But mine is dying in my arms.
I know when Radek activates the midnight monster on Gruia, and I know it is by accident. I also know when Victoria wraps herself around the screaming, terribly wounded Gruia and transports him away from here, as I know that Radek intends to follow. But he doesn’t. He decides to stay when he sees what I’m doing.
My fangs are an inch away from Rux’s jugular that now bubbles with mercury when he grabs my shoulder and turns me around. My arms flex around Rux, to keep her tightly at my chest.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he growls with the rage of a pain-crazed father. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much anguish in Radek’s face. “She’s dying, and you want to use her??”
“Radek,” I say gruffly, pain taking away my voice. “I’m not doing this for myself.”
Despite his attempts to stop me, I sink my fangs into Rux’s carotid, and suck hard to take out the mercury. The best thing about the cursed metal is that it goes for the supernatural’s veins, attempting to replace all the blood, which is why there’s a chance I can get all of it out of her body.
I resist Radek’s pulls and kicks, even though he breaks a few of my ribs. He causes me real pain, but I will gladly let him kill me. He stops hitting me at a certain point though, because Tristan understands what I’m doing and manages to get him to listen.
I don’t know how long it takes, but I know I’ve removed the last drop of Rux’s blood mixed with mercury. I’m still lying over her, my fangs deep inside her throat, and her cooling body motionless under me when I realize I don’t know if there’s any chance she’ll breathe again, especially without a drop of blood left in her body. But if there is a chance, I have to get off her.