I prayed silently to whatever Gods there might’ve been that the ears of Damokles’s spies only heard so much. If he knew of the mark Morina had placed upon me, things would be bad. Very bad, indeed.
But apparently, he knew very little.
“How did you essscape, cousssin?”
Morina stepped aside to reveal me. She brushed the arched curve of my wing. “I have my ways. You should know that.”
And so, our plan began to play out in earnest as Morina swung into motion. She told the story believably, so believably that had she told it to me, I too would’ve fallen for it.
She spoke of Iliaria with distaste, making it sound as though she truly sought his aid in her mission of vengeance. One by the one, the Dracule around us relaxed. Even Damokles leaned back as he listened.
“Well, cousin?” Morina asked him. “What say you?”
Damokles curled a finger and a Dracule covered in smoky fur stepped forward. “Yesss, massster?”
“Alahard,” he said. “Find my cousssin and her pet a room.”
“My king, do you think it wise?” The woman who stood beside Damokles said it quietly, but not so we couldn’t hear it. Damokles’s ears flattened back against his skull as he glared at her. She lowered her gaze. “I meant no disrespect, your lordship.”
“Hold your tongue,” he growled in threat. “Our arrangement can be a temporary thing, vampire.”
She stepped away from him but turned her attention to us, her murky green eyes flashing with anger.
Alahard obeyed his king’s orders and escorted us from Damokles’s makeshift throne room.
In spite of his initial distrust, Damokles welcomed Morina and me into the kingdom he had established for himself. Morina advised me against wandering about on my own, and I found myself relying on skills I’d acquired both among the Rosso Lussuria vampires and under Iliaria’s guidance. I stayed close to Morina’s side at all times, shadowing her as inconspicuously as I could. To my surprise, my endeavors to remain unnoticed were successful. The Dracule often spoke freely to Morina, and a great many of them paid no mind to my presence, either because they truly believed I was just her pet or because they really didn’t care who I was to begin with.
Two days after our arrival, Alahard returned with a summons from Damokles. If Damokles had any spies among the clans assembled at the White Lady’s castle, they weren’t very good ones. It became apparent in their conversation that he truly didn’t know how Morina had gotten free.
“What do you know of the vampiresss?” he asked, his head tilting toward her.
“They’re gathering against you.”
Damokles chuckled, the sound odd and drumming in his chest. “Asss I sssussspected. Good.”
I was tempted to ask why it was such a good thing, but kept my yap closed. The last thing I wanted was for Damokles to begin focusing his attention on me.
“I have sssomething to ssshow you, cousssin. Sssomething I think you will find very pleasssing.”
“I wait with bated breath,” she replied in a snarky tone.
Damokles showed no irritation at Morina’s sarcasm. If anything, it seemed as though the bitterness in her attitude was expected and the norm between them. Damokles led us through a rectangular room and down a flight of stone steps.
He pushed open the door at the base of the stairs. The room beyond was set aglow by a single burning torch that he took from its place on the wall and held aloft in one of his clawed hands. I fought to mask my rising sense of unease, continuing to keep my head low as I followed the Dracule more deeply into the room beyond.
Damokles stopped in the center of the hall and raised his torch so that the light fell on the cell blocks around us. Beyond the crisscross of metal bars, my mind slowly began to take in the reality around me.
“Behold, cousssin,” he hissed boastfully, “my conquessstsss.”
Morina walked a circle around him as she peered into the holding cells. I followed her with my gaze, reminding myself that Damokles was with us and not to let any expression pass through my features or my body. Dracule or no, the slightest uncomfortable twitch of an ear could give away my discomfort and potentially expose us both.
A hundred or so vampires were imprisoned beyond the bars like dogs in a kennel. Their bodies were hunched and slack, their eyes glazed and empty. What had he done to them?
Morina’s face was a hard mask, though the corner of her mouth curled in a secret smile. The expression sent a shiver through my bones.
“Well done, cousin, but might I ask what you intend to do with a bunch of starved vampires?”
One of the vampires closest to the bars of a cell near me raised her head with an effort. The shackles behind her clinked as she shifted her position lightly. Her desolate gaze met and held mine behind strands of straw-like hair.
“Aaah, but there’sss more, dear cousssin. Thessse are only the vampiresss that refusssed me when I took their queen. There are othersss that have been ussseful.”
Damokles breezed past me and waved the torch near the vampire staring at me. He hissed, “Ssstupid ssswine!” and she sank back further into the cell, turning her face and shielding it in the curve of her shoulder from the embers. Her attire was tattered and torn as if she’d at one point been in a physical fight, and though she had healed, her clothing had not.
My muscles twitched with the urge to intervene, to stand between Damokles and the vampire he verbally abused.
I thought of Renata and a hollow feeling gripped my heart. My lady, I thought, as I crawled away from Damokles and closer to Morina, this threat is indeed greater than we thought.
I wished that somehow, somewhere, Renata could still hear me. Knowing she couldn’t, not while I was a Dracule, I hung my head in dismay.
Damokles kicked the bars and the metal rattled. A few cells down, someone screamed, sharp and startled. It hurt to hear it.
Damokles chuckled again. Morina’s hand touched my head and I flinched. With Damokles’s back turned to us, she shook her head lightly. I knew something must’ve showed in my posture and I steeled myself. I raised my head and refused to look away, refused to show anything, most especially how much I loathed Damokles. My ears slicked back against my skull of their own accord.
“You ssseee?” he asked Morina as a smile stretched unnervingly across his feline face. “It isss only a matter of time until they break. Then they will be of ussse to me.”
Damokles made his way to the far end of the cellblock. He rapped on the door and a Draculian guard from the other side opened it to admit him.
I descended cautiously to find two other guardsmen posted at the bottom of the stairwell. The walls faced us in an octagonal pattern. It reminded me almost of the Elders’ chambers in the Sotto, if it hadn’t been for the heavy metal doors and the small barred windows. The place was very much a prison.
“Here,” Damokles hissed again and motioned with a flourish. “My greatessst trophiesss.”
He seemed quite to enjoy bragging, and Morina indulged him effortlessly. She walked the perimeter of the room with her head held high. I stayed put, waiting for her instructions like any good pet.
“Hmm,” she murmured, “seems as though you’ve already done most of the hard work, Damokles. How can I be of service to you, cousin?”
“There are more,” he said, no longer boasting and prideful. “I need more.”
“For what?”
“Ssso glad you asked.” He moved closer to her and his voice dropped an octave. “How would you like to rule with me, cousssin? How would you like to sssee the beginning of a new era and the fall of that ssshe-bitch’sss mother?”
The smile Morina gave unsettled me in its wicked sincerity. She fingered the patch over her eye almost idly, as if it bothered her. The gesture drew Damokles’s attention to it.
Morina said fiercely, “I’d love to.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if she actually meant it and hoped silently that she would not betray me. She turned her attention
to me, then, and held out her hand. “Would you like to see, little pet? Would you like to see what has befallen those nasty vampires?”
I took the hand she offered and rose to my feet. Morina steered me by the elbow as she gave me the opportunity to gaze through the narrow windows.
Each cell we passed, I tried to school my face, to prepare myself for what I might see, though I had my back to Damokles. Each cell was dark but not dark enough to conceal the lifeless figures shackled along the walls.
Part of me prayed I wouldn’t find Renata in such a state, strung up and left like an empty vessel, Damokles’s precious trophy queen chained to a wall.
Anger flared in me.
Morina’s hands moved intimately on my body, sliding through my fur and cradling my hips as she guided me to the door in the middle. Her lips brushed my ear as she whispered, “What do you think, pet?”
I gazed through the slit and into the cell beyond. On one wall, I made out the figure of a man chained at wrists and ankles. The shadow of his head lolled forward as if he were unconscious. On the other, another figure was bound. I tried to look away when Morina pressed the tips of her fingers into my skin, and I knew with a sinking feeling that there was something she wanted me to see.
I stared at the figure more intently then, studying the shadowy outline. Strands of hair hung in waves about her face and heartache and desperation gripped me. Renata.
She did not raise her head, either because she did not sense me there or because she was too weak to do so. I traced the curves of her figure over and over, trying to be sure that my mind was not playing tricks on me. And then Morina steered me to the next cell and the next, though I stared into them in a sort of detached daze.
“Hmm?” she prompted before releasing me. I sank back to all fours and kept my gaze on the black stone under my feet.
I nodded in false approval, hoping Damokles would not see through my façade.
“Doesss ssshe ssspeak, Morina?”
“Rarely, dear cousin.” She gripped my neck tightly. “But she approves, don’t you? The vampires were not very kind to her. They deserve what they get, don’t they?”
“Yesss.”
My response seemed satisfactory enough as Morina and Damokles began to converse in hushed voices as we ascended the stairs and left the dank prison behind us.
While they talked, I listened to their conversation, trying to follow along and only missing a few words here and there. I learned that Damokles planned on sending a party out to retrieve another clutch of vampires, another trophy queen. He had his sights set on a clan somewhere near a town known as Jasper. Carried away by my thoughts, I lost track of their conversation.
Somehow, I had to find a way to get past Damokles’s guardsmen. Becoming a guard was the only way I could think to get close to Renata without arousing suspicion.
I wondered what Iliaria would suggest and another idea dawned on me. I shook the thought away nearly as soon as it entered my mind. If I challenged one of his guardsmen, it would raise suspicion…or worse. I could get myself killed in the process.
How then was I to gain access to the cellblocks? The answer eluded me.
Damokles continued to give Morina a guided tour of his stronghold. There was a dark beauty to the place, a sort of gothic resonance that made it cold and yet strangely warm. Damokles boasted almost thoughtlessly, as if such boasting was merely reflex to him. Whether he trusted Morina or no, he was proud of the world he had made for himself.
And given his hatred of vampires, there were an awful lot of them mucking about. We passed several in the winding halls, going about whatever daily tasks Damokles and his henchmen had set for them. They kept their heads down until we had passed. A few of them looked up only when they thought our backs were turned, and I caught the same resounding hatred I felt echoed in their eyes. When they noticed me, many of them glared with the contempt of caged tigers.
They were vampires, Azrael’s gift given out of love and mercy, twisted and caged by Damokles, who had taken that gift and turned it into something it wasn’t meant to be.
I watched one of the vampires out of my peripheral; he was garbed foot to head in gray fur pelts and kept a careful watch on us as we passed. Damokles came to halt. “What are you ssstaring at?” he hissed.
The vampire replied in a language I didn’t understand. The dark halo of hair around his face and deep blue of his eyes put me in mind of Vasco, and his memory clawed at my heart. If only Vasco was here, I thought. He would know what to make of all this and what to do about it.
Damokles raised his hand as if to strike the vampire. The vampire stood unflinching as his features blazed with challenge. He did not care if Damokles struck him. In fact, he seemed to invite it.
Damokles followed through on his threat, striking the vampire across the cheek hard enough that his head whipped sharply to the side. I thought he would stop there, but he didn’t. Damokles continued to strike him until the vampire was on his knees. Damokles grabbed a handful of his dreadlocked black hair and kept beating him.
Morina casually cleared her throat. “Cousin?”
Damokles seemed to come back to himself for a moment as one of his ears swiveled in her direction. He flung the beaten vampire away and left him to fall in a crippled heap on the floor.
“Asss weak asss they are,” he hissed and returned to Morina’s side, “their defianccce continuesss.” A tremble of rage or disgust shuddered visibly through him, making his tail lash behind him like the angry end of a whip. “Ssshall we continue?”
“If it pleases you, cousin.”
They carried on down the hallway, and I remained where I was. Damokles did not turn to look at me, but Morina spared a glance.
She touched Damokles’s arm to bring him to a halt before she strode back to me. She knelt and placed a hand beneath my chin to lift my gaze to hers. “Go back to our chambers and wait for me.”
“Yesss, my lady.”
I waited until they had rounded the corner at the end of the hall to turn back to the vampire. Surely, Morina didn’t really believe I was ready to lock myself away in a room and wait idly for her.
I had a better idea. I checked the length of the short hallway in which I stood, glancing down each of the three halls that branched off it to make sure no one was there.
I went to check on the unconscious vampire. He didn’t rouse when I stood beside him and so I nudged him with the back of my hand.
The vampire caught my wrist. I caught a flash of something in his hand before he raised it toward my midsection. I jerked my arm and rolled away from him.
I rolled onto my feet, kneeling with one hand on the cold stone beneath me. The vampire stood before me holding a makeshift knife made of stone in his right hand.
I drew my ears back. “Idiot!” I said in English, trying to keep my voice as low as I could make lest we be overheard. “I’m trying to help you!”
His jaw clenched as he glared at me. “Why would you help a vampire?” Thankfully, he kept his voice low and spoke clear enough English that I could understand him.
I thought of Damokles’s guardsmen and my aspirations to gain access to the dungeons. If there was a better plan than enlisting the aid of my brothers, I didn’t see it.
“I cannot talk long,” I said, listening intently in case someone approached. “But sssufficcce it to sssay, I want thisss hell no more than you do.” I inched toward him and he raised the knife in warning between us and I paused. “Will you help?”
“What trickery is this?”
“No, not trickery. Will you rissse and aid your kind in their time of need?” I asked. “You have three ssseconds to decccide.” I sank back, counting silently in my head. On the third second, the vampire nodded sharply. “Good.”
“What do you plan?” he asked.
I ignored his question, because I honestly hadn’t thought that far. I asked, instead, “Are there othersss among you that will aid usss?”
He nodded again, his brows k
nitted.
“Ssseek them, quietly,” I said.
Confused or not, the vampire agreed, and I slipped from the hallway in search of our room.
Time. A good, developed plan would take time to set into motion and unfold. Time I didn’t have.
The more conquests Damokles’s made, the closer he came to his goal of overthrowing the Draculian Empire. He planned on using the vampires to aid his cause.
Well, I planned on using them to aid mine. Cuinn, I thought with a slow smile, would be proud.
*
I made it back safely to our chambers and awaited Morina’s return. While I waited, I perched on the edge of the small bed and pondered my encounter with the vampire. I turned the tiny knob on the lamp beside the bed, giving the flame more wick to burn and sending a brighter light throughout the room. I still hadn’t figured out exactly what I would do with the vampires that agreed to help me. Would the vampire I had spoken with recruit them quietly? I certainly hoped so. Even more strongly, I hoped that he asked only those he trusted. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that none of the vampires had joined Damokles out of self-interest.
I rolled onto my back, careful of the wings stretched beneath me. What would Renata do? I repeated the question in my mind, as if the answer would come to me if I asked myself over and over. Renata. I exhaled loudly. I was so close to her and yet she was still beyond my reach. Every impulse and instinct in my heart told me to run to her.
But I couldn’t. I restrained myself because if I ran to her I would only expose myself, and any notion of a plan would be thrown out the window. Damokles’s guards would apprehend me, or worse. I had to play along with Morina’s game and my guise and hope that my reckless impulsivity in the hallway with the beaten vampire didn’t cost me dearly. I played the scene over and over in my mind, becoming nearly paranoid about it. Had someone been listening? Surely, Damokles had placed spies to keep watch on us, or did he trust Morina so completely?
As soon as I thought it, I knew better.
Damokles’s trusted his own brilliance to hold Morina to his plan. He was arrogant and the encounter with the vampire was just a childish temper tantrum. I stood and paced the room, trying to keep my mind distracted and my heels from itching with the urge to be closer to Renata.
Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel Page 31