by Gayla Twist
The kitchen was extravagant by any standards. It was huge, with tons of counter space, and filled with every food preparation gadget imaginable. Given the undeads’ limited diet, it seemed like a waste of money, but that never seemed to stop a vampire from slapping down a credit card.
I had no time to waste shaking my head over squandered money. I had to get to the dungeon and wait for Rebecca’s signal. I found the door at the back of the kitchen easily enough, and began cautiously descending the spiral staircase. What was Rebecca going to do to the security staff at the castle? And how long would I have to wait?
The staircase was pitch black, but that was no longer a problem for me. I did detect a dim light below. And as I descended, the light gradually grew a little brighter. That’s how I was able to distinguish where the staircase ended and halt my progress before stumbling into the dungeon.
A few steps from the bottom, while I was still concealed by the turning of the staircase, I stopped and listened. I could hear two male voices.
“Three flashes means the north tower. It’s two flashes for the front gate,” a male voice said.
“I’m telling you, three flashes is for the front gate,” another male voice insisted.
And then I heard Jessie say, “Maybe one of you should go to the tower and the other should go to the gate. That way, at least one of you is in the right place. And the other can catch up, if it turns out to be wrong.”
“You need to shut up,” the second voice told him. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“But actually, it’s not a bad idea,” the first voice said.
“Alright, fine. Let’s do it,” the second voice said, sounding peevish. “It’s not like this dude is going anywhere.”
“Okay,” the first man agreed. “I’ll take the north tower, you go to the gate.”
As soon as I was confident that both men had left the dungeon, I finished descending the stairs.
“Aurora! What are you doing here?” Jessie called in a loud whisper. “I’ve been praying that you were a hundred miles away.” My handsome husband was behind bars in an ancient-looking prison cell. His face had already healed, but his torn clothes and ruffled hair showed that he had been in a brawl. I was so glad that Rebecca had warned me that the corroded bars were actually silver or I would have already been burned as I raced over to stand in front of him.
“We can both be a hundred miles away, if you know of a way to unlock this door,” I told him.
Frustrated, Jessie ran his fingers through his hair several times. “Aurora, you don’t understand. Lord Vagnar set this whole thing up. It was just a ploy so he can…” Jessie’s words faded as he struggled to find a delicate way to explain things to me.
“I know,” I told him. “Vagnar’s got some creepy desire to bang me on my wedding night. It’s that medieval thing that probably never really happened. I got it.”
“Then why are you still here?” he asked, reaching forward to grab one of the bars and then quickly changing his mind.
“Because you’re still here,” I said. “I can’t just abandon you to save myself, now can I?”
“Yes, but…” Jessie stammered. “Vagnar intends to… He wants to…”
“Jessie, where are the keys to your cell?” I asked, interrupting him. It was touching that my groom didn’t want some sleazy vampire touching me, but he was wasting time talking about it. We could discuss the whole ridiculous situation once we were far away from Lord Vagnar and his perverted fan club.
“I think one of the guards took the keys with him,” Jessie told me, “but I’m not sure.”
I scanned the room. It looked like a classic dungeon in an Errol Flynn movie. With that in mind, I was convinced that the keys would be on a big metal ring, hanging off a peg on the wall. I began to search, first by scanning the wall the furthest away from the cell and then moving closer.
“Aurora,” Jessie said, sounding anxious. “You need to just get out of here. I’ll be fine. My mother and Braxton will figure something out.”
“What do the keys look like?” I asked, ignoring what he had just said. “Are they on a big ring? Because I’m picturing a big ring.”
“No, they’re on a leather strap. But that doesn’t matter because you’re leaving right now.”
“Leather strap,” I repeated to myself. And then the keys instantly materialized. Five keys being held together with a leather strap were sitting on a small table littered with trash and empty coffee mugs. They were in plain sight, but I just hadn’t noticed them because I was too busy looking for a metal ring.
Snatching up the keys, I exclaimed, “Found them!”
“Shhh…” Jessie shushed me. “I think someone’s coming.”
Now that he mentioned it, I could hear approaching footsteps in the long hallway that led to the dungeon. I darted over to Jessie’s cell and tried to shove a key in the lock. It didn’t fit. “Which one is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But you’d better get out of here because the guards are coming back.”
“So just use your influence,” I said, fumbling with the second key on the strap. They were all those big skeleton keys and they looked almost identical to my eyes.
“I’ve already tried,” Jessie said. “Vagnar’s hired guards that are remarkably resistant to vampire influence. They’re even better than you when you were mortal.”
“Damn!” I cursed under my breath when the second key didn’t work. “So I’ll fight them,” I said as I moved onto the third key. “I do have vampire strength, you know.”
“And they have silver spray and wooden stakes.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. Still, I wasn’t leaving without Jessie. I fumbled for the third key.
“So you need to go,” Jessie insisted. “Now.”
I ignored him, jamming the key in the lock, even though the footsteps were getting closer.
“Aurora,” Jessie said, shoving his hand between the bars and grabbing my wrist. His skin grazed the metal and immediately began to sizzle. “It’s going to be alright,” he told me. “I’m going to be alright. But you need to go.”
“No,” I said, frantically wrenching the key in the lock. Still, it wouldn’t budge.
“Go!” he said, shoving me, the skin burning on his arms as they pressed against the silver bars.
“Who’s down there?” a voice called from the hallway.
Jessie had pushed me with such force that I stumbled backward. “But there’s only two keys left,” I said. “It’s has to be one of them.”
“Don’t you get it?” Jessie said. “I can’t stand the thought of him being with you; of Vagnar touching you… It’s driving me insane.”
“But…” I stammered.
“Please…” he said, his face tortured with the thought of whatever perversions Vagnar had planned for me.
“I’m coming down and I’ve got my spray out,” the guard called, still in the hallway. He was obviously reluctant for a confrontation. “Plus I’ve called for backup. So don’t even think about messing with me.”
The sound of pounding feet filled the hallway. More guards were coming. I thought I could handle one frightened guard, who obviously didn’t want to be there. But numerous guards would be a problem.
I flung the keys in Jessie’s direction and raced across the room toward the only tool cabinet. I didn’t have time to cringe over the thumbscrews and other weird torture devices. Instead I gave the whole thing a big shove and, sure enough, it rolled away from the wall, revealing a giant laundry chute of sorts, going up. The groundskeepers must have slid the holiday decorations down into the dungeon. It really wasn’t meant for climbing. I struggled for a moment before I remembered that I was a member of the undead. Gravity didn’t have the same control over me that it did when I was mortal.
I started trying to sort of float up to a heavy set of storm doors, but I wasn’t making good progress. At first I thought my dress was just too wide and I was stuck, but then I heard Jessie sho
ut, “Leave her alone!” That’s when I realized that the mortal guard had decided it was a good idea to grab me by the hem of my gown. He must have been holding on for dear life.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Let go!” I yelled down at him. My fingertips were just half a foot away from a handle on the storm door. I strained for it, hoping to pull myself free.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Miss,” the guard said. “Please come down. The others will be here in a moment and I wouldn’t like to spray you.”
“Well I wouldn’t like to kick you, so let go of my damn dress,” I yelled at him.
“Here they are now, Miss. You’d better come back in,” he informed me.
I could just see the legs and feet of a few uniformed men, as they tentatively crossed the room. “What’s going on?” one of them asked.
When the guard detaining me turned his head to update his co-workers, I gave him a mule-kick to the jaw. He immediately let go as he was propelled backward. I rocketed forward, grabbing the handles of the storm doors and giving them a mighty shove. They opened a few inches and then stopped. I could see a chain through the small crack, stretched between the doors. I was pretty sure there was a lock and chain around the outside handles to the storm doors.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” I cursed. Now what was I going to do?
“Hey there, girlie,” a new voice called up to me. “You’d better just come back down here. I’d hate to give a pretty little girl like you a taste of some silver spray.”
Having some mortal rent-a-cop speaking condescendingly to me wasn’t making my situation any less stressful. I glared down, trying to see around my skirt to identify the next man I was going to kick in the face.
“Nice legs, by the way,” the new guard said, and I felt a hand reach up my skirt to pat me on the thigh.
That’s how I knew where to strike. There was a sharp yelp and then some swearing. Then a new voice said, “Shit, she might have killed him.”
“Give her some spray. Let’s see how she likes to sizzle.”
There was a faint hissing sound and then a pain was shooting up my legs that was beyond excruciating. It was like someone had dumped burning embers on me. Fortunately, my skirt was so billowing that it afforded me some protection, but not nearly enough.
I heard someone say, “Squirt her again, Rod. Teach that undead bitch some respect.”
“Leave her alone!” I could hear Jessie yell.
“Shut up or you’ll get a taste of the same,” he was told. But then the attention was back on me. “Spray her, dude. Spray her.”
That’s when I somehow managed to harness my undead strength and burst through the storm doors. I was hurtling through space with small splashes of water hitting me in the face. It took several moments for me to realize it was raining. I had no idea where I was going or how I was going to conceal myself from the morning’s light.
One of the guards must have fired off another shot as I was escaping because the pain on my legs increased. Like an idiot, I reached down to try to swipe the colloidal silver away and my hands felt like they were going up in flames. And then my arms started burning, too. That’s when I realized that there was also silver spray on my gown. Of course there was. Why wouldn’t there be?
I was so distracted by the pain, and also being angry with myself, that I careened too close to a tree and one of the branches snagged my dress. Part of my brain was horrified at tearing such a beautiful work of art, but the rest of my brain knew that I had to shed the outer layers of the gown to get the liquid silver away from my skin.
I landed in a grassy field and began ripping at my skirt, stripping away layer after layer of delicate finery. It pained me to do so. I knew that there were probably examples of Charles Frederick Worth’s work in museums somewhere. But it didn’t hurt as much as if I’d been wearing my dream wedding dress; something that I’d chosen myself.
The rain was actually working in my favor. I stood with my arms away from my sides, letting the rain rinse the silver away. I closed my eyes and just stood there, allowing my body to heal. I knew I had to flee. I knew I had to find a safe place to stay, and then figure out a way to contact the Csorbos, and then formulate a plan to save Jessie, and then deal with the Bishops, and then…
It was all too much. I was trapped in a nightmare with no chance of waking up. I had no idea what to do, but knew I had to take action immediately. I had to do something. But what?
My hands and legs stopped burning. The rain had washed me clean and my body had quickly healed. I could feel the night and the rain and a gentle wind all around me, embracing me like a lover. Nature’s caress centered me and I was able to focus.
I wasn’t just some helpless damsel in distress. I had a brain and I needed to start using it. There was no more time to waste. I hadn’t flown that far from the castle and I knew the mortal guards would quickly alert non-mortals that I had escaped out the dungeon’s storm doors. They would be looking for me soon. I had to fly as fast and as far away from the castle as I possibly could. I would fly in one direction until I met the sunrise or I found a town, whichever came first. If I found a town, then I could orient myself. If the sun came up too soon, then I would dig a hole in the ground and bury myself until nightfall.
I had been so absorbed in communing with the night, calming myself, and coming up with a plan, that I hadn’t been paying attention to certain aspects of my surroundings, like the fact that there was mortal man hiding somewhere nearby, watching me.
I could smell him before I knew where he was concealing himself, but I knew without a doubt that he was there. “Hello?” I said, tentatively.
“Hello,” a man said, stepping out from behind a tree about thirty feet away from me. And then he said something in a language that I couldn’t understand, presumably Hungarian.
I mentally kicked myself for not being aware of his presence sooner. There I was, thinking I was a creature of the night and a mortal was able to sneak up to spy on me without me having noticed.
The man approached, smiling at me in that way men that do when they think a woman is vulnerable and there is an opportunity to take advantage of the situation. He kept talking, but I wasn’t picking up a word of it.
“Oh, great,” I grumbled to myself. Why was it that every time a woman was dealing with some kind of stress, some random dude had to show up and see if he could make her life more miserable? I loved Jessie, I loved Fred, and there were a few other males in my life that I cared about, but so many men were just plain creepy. It felt like a third of the males on the planet made it their sole mission in life just to give women a hard time.
My new friend drew closer, still smiling at me. He looked like some kind of country bumpkin in patched pants and a denim jacket that seriously needed to be laundered. Even though he was grinning at me, I could tell he had intentions that were unpleasant. If I had still been mortal, I would have been frightened. I suddenly realized that one of the giant benefits of being a vampire was that I never had to worry about being harassed by a mortal pervert ever again. There were still the undead perverts, of course — Lord Vagnar being at the top of the list — but the fellow standing before me posed no threat.
My stomach growled and I quickly remembered that I hadn’t been allowed to eat for several hours. I hated the idea of feeding off of any mortal and the man before me wasn’t exactly appetizing, but I also had to flee, and hide, and plan a jailbreak, and about a zillion other things, all of which were harder to do on an empty stomach.
The man spoke again while gesturing toward my dress. And then he broke into a very broad, lecherous grin. I understood by the way his eyes were glued to my body that what remained of my dress had been made somewhat transparent by the rain. It was cold out — the cold no longer bothered me, but I understood that it was cold — and I had to assume that my nipples were reacting to the cold in the same way that they had when I was a mortal.
I smiled back at the man, gesturing that he should come
closer. I tried to make my smile as natural as possible, under the circumstances, but I fully realized that I was a spider beckoning to a fly.
The man stepped forward, reaching out for my breasts with both hands. It shocked me. It seemed like a weird first move, even for a rapist. But it did bring him closer and I felt my fangs extending. I had no intention of draining the man; I would just drink a little bit and then try to influence him that nothing bad had happened. I was worse at influencing mortals than I was at flying, but I was doing my best to ignore that fact.
The man, who I was just starting to realize was a bit simple, clutch me in his arms like a greedy little boy. He began giggling with delight. I realized, a little sadly, that even my feeble influencing skills would work on him. I felt quite bad that I was going to take advantage of the poor fellow — even if he had every intention of taking advantage of me.
A voice came out of the dark. “So here’s where you’ve run off to.”
Chapter 23
Looking up, I saw a dozen vampires, all floating in the air, forming a ring around me.
“You didn’t have to go out for a bite,” Lord Vagnar said, landing on the grass and walking over to me. “We could have ordered in.”
The mortal let out a shriek when he saw all the people floating in the air. He blurted a few words and then took off running. Vagnar made eye contact with one of his cronies and nodded in the fleeing man’s direction. “Wipe his memory,” Vagnar commanded. Looking back at me, he added, “I don’t need the neighbors any more nervous than they already are. I hope you realize that your little stay in the Edwin Family’s crypt has made the locals quite skittish.”
I shivered with the thought of what had happened to the Edwin Family. I was on the verge of asking Lord Vagnar, but then decided that I didn’t want to know.
“What have you done to your dress?” Vagnar asked, looking me over. “Worth will be distraught, I’m sure. Plus,” he said, taking a step closer and smirking in my direction, “you’ve denied me the pleasure of tearing it off you.”