At least, if Samael hadn’t been lying about that as well.
Unless I wanted to meet the puppy who thought I was her favorite new chew toy. Despite telling me that he would call off Sanguina if I killed six of his residents, the caveat was that I had to time my breaking of the amulets to happen right before our dinner—or else Sanguina would kill me since he would be too busy to stop her.
I folded my arms across my chest. “It would be really convenient if you told me where the heart of your castle is. I need to pick something up really quick before dinner. It’s a stake knife, you see…”
Dracula chuckled. “Hilarious.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Hell-arious. But you won’t get the joke until I drive the point home. You’ll see. It’s all about the timing. But first, I’m going to make you tell me all about you secret club, the Masters.”
He stared at me for a long moment, and then let out a deep laugh, shaking his head as he glanced at Samael as if to ask if this was really happening. Samael just sighed and gave him a nod. Dracula turned back to me. “Even with all your powers, you wouldn’t stand a chance against me and my Beast. Her very thoughts have killed even the strongest of men. It was a game we played many times in our youth. I’ll even take you to see her in person after our dinner. You can physically meet her, you know. She is not just an unseen entity in the walls. She is alive…”
I suppressed a shudder, masking my fear with snark. “Only one way to find out, Johnny B. Suckit. Now, where is our dinner date?”
“Right here,” he said, holding out his arms. “I’ll have the Clock Tower toll…six times,” he said, chuckling at how clever he thought he was to match numbers together, “to give you a one-hour warning before it is time for our dinner. Tardiness is incredibly rude, after all.”
“Incredibly,” I said dryly, but all I could visualize was that purple vampire guy—the Count—from Sesame Street. Six, I give you six chimes! Ah, ah, ah!
Count Dracula dipped his head one last time and turned to leave, already talking to Samael over his shoulder. “Let us go celebrate your good service with some wine, shall we…”
Their conversation was cut off as the door closed behind them.
Chapter 8
The rest of the skeletons and blood slaves in the room simply left through side doors, leaving me entirely alone—which was about the strangest thing imaginable. How calmly everyone was acting.
I reached out to the table and dislodged my katana, staring at it in silence for a long time.
A human—even well-trained—stood very, very, long odds to find and kill six powerful monsters in only seventy-two hours. Especially when Dracula had hordes of monsters walking around as guards. I wasn’t simply dueling six monsters in a fair fight.
I was sneaking through their camp to assassinate six of their commanders before the rest of the army woke up and caught me. Even though Dracula wasn’t going to warn them about me, I was pretty sure they would come after me if they saw me sneaking around.
And I had to do it all without magic.
Considering the size of Castle Dracula, it wasn’t like they were all lined up for me. They could be anywhere. And could be anyone.
I still had the Mask of Despair in my pocket, but Samael hadn’t said anything about that. It was unlikely he would have forgotten such an obvious thing…so why had he not mentioned it? Maybe the Mark of the Beast was strong enough to block even that? He had burned me on the forehead—the same place where Despair was magically branded into my flesh. Had he broken my Horseman power somehow? I desperately wanted to check my pocket to make sure the Horseman Mask wasn’t destroyed, but I didn’t want to give away my only potential magic until I found a safe place to do so.
In a strange way, this was all a very anti-climactic turn of events from the all-out-brawl I had anticipated.
Yet it was also so much worse than I could have imagined.
I heard a sudden rattling sound beside me and instinctively swung my katana without looking. My blade easily decapitated the skeleton standing beside me. His head fell towards me and I caught it in my other hand by pure reflex.
It was the dude I had put in the red dress. The only reason I knew that was because he still wore his kinky pirate boots and the large red bandana, and all the other skeletons I’d seen were naked with weapons for limbs. His skull stared up at me from my hand. “Would you please stop knocking my head off?” he asked in probably the politest tone I’d ever heard.
I winced, both at the concept of holding his talking skull in my hand, and in slight guilt at my repeat offenses. The headless body of the skeleton walked up to me, bending at the waist in a silent request for me to return the merchandise.
I thought about it. The skeleton could obviously still talk without his body. Maybe I could use him for answers on where my guests lived, holding the skull hostage.
Which would mean carrying around a skull to have easy access to answers. Like my own personal assistant—Siri.
Skulli.
I realized I was internally humming the X-Files theme song in my head and snapped out of it.
Finally, I shook my head. Lugging around a talking skull was just really freaking strange, and I didn’t have a bag or anything to carry it so it would only get in my way during a fight. Or it would say something at the worst possible moment, like while I was trying to stealthily assassinate one of my targets.
“You’re thinking about keeping my skull, aren’t you?” he asked, gloomily.
I shook my head a little too quickly. “No. Of course not. That would be creepy.”
Somehow, he managed a doubtful look by raising a ridge-bone over his eye—the same place an eyebrow would be on a human face. Or I could have just imagined it. “You were considering it,” he muttered unhappily.
“No. Really. It’s not like you could help me or anything—”
“I could help immensely. I know the castle like the back of my hand.”
“But you won’t, of course. You work for Drac—”
“My Master has given me to you. I am yours.”
“Oh! You’re the guide!” I blurted, having forgotten about Dracula’s mention of giving me one. He wobbled in my hands—a nodding gesture. I stared down at him for a few moments, wondering how I felt about having Dracula’s henchman lurking around me for the next three days. “Then I could just plop your head back on and you can point me in the right direction, so I wouldn’t need to keep your skull. If I had been considering it, of course.”
“There is every chance I would betray you or attack you when you let your guard down. I am a dastardly fiend.”
I dropped the skull on the floor, preparing to stomp on him. “I knew it! Not so tough now, are we?” I crowed.
“That was a joke,” he said dejectedly, staring up at me. “I am no danger. I haven’t even earned the right to arm myself.” I hesitated, lowering my boot with a frown. His skull hopped back upright somehow, and he swiveled to direct his gaze at the boots and bandana skeleton body still waiting patiently beside me. “My arms. I haven’t earned the right to sharpen them to blades, let alone to dip them in the Eternal Metal.”
I stared at the skeleton’s arms, shaking my head. He hadn’t earned the right to sharpen his appendages into blades or to dip them into molten metal. The right.
“I am even less of a threat than you at the moment. We will probably both die in obscure, horrifying torment. Master Dracula obviously had no further use for me. I should have been armed fifty years ago. I am quite incompetent in combat.”
I frowned in disbelief. “You’re also one hell of a motivational speaker.”
He shook his head. “No. I am quite uninspiring.”
Jesus. I’d found Eeyore’s skull. “You’re telling me that your only value is your mind. Your head, essentially.”
He nodded. “What little ingenuity I have is nullified by my severe incompetence in close combat—unlike my brothers. I am bluntly honest, but my memory is quite good. Perhaps
that is why I’m useless in combat. Brains over brawn. Many of my kind cannot even speak, let alone think. They just obey and fight.”
Wow. He was really selling himself. “Alright. I’ll just decapitate you if you cause problems. And I’ll hide your head somewhere weird.”
“Of course. I can show you some excellently strange places.”
Yeah. This guy was going with me. I bent down to scoop him up. As I was shoving his skull back onto his vertebrae with a cringeworthy, crackling sound, I decided the gesture was intimate enough to require some kind of dialogue. “Don’t you need one of the blood slaves to put yourself back together?”
The skeletons I had fought had needed magic to reanimate.
His skull snapped back into place with a faint pop and flare of sparks that didn’t cause any burn damage despite plastering the back of my hand.
He jerked his neck and it spun in a full circle, accompanied by what sounded like a string of firecrackers. He finally let out a dusty sigh and returned my gaze. “I have never needed help to reanimate. I guess that is something I’m good at. Dying. Or not dying, technically.”
“Any other helpful qualities?” I asked, trying not to sigh.
“I am remarkably cowardly.”
I sighed, giving up. “Alright. What’s your name?”
“Master Dracula doesn’t name us. He uses his sheer will to command us.”
I thought about it. When he’d struck the piano, he’d kind of slid down the keys like his bones were playing a xylophone. I kept my face blank as I looked up at him. “How about Xylo?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t get the reference. Xylo-bone.
He thought about it. “Xylo…” he mused, scratching at his chin. “I like this name very much. Can I truly keep it?”
I nodded slowly, his words making me feel guilty for how I had chosen it. “Um. That’s what you generally do with names, yeah.”
He lowered his gaze, repeating it a few times under his breath.
Perfect. Xylo-bone the Undying and the White Rose. Lookout Dracula.
“We should probably leave this area,” he urged. “Patrols are more numerous here. Follow me,” he said.
He led me towards a different door than the one Dracula and Samael had taken. I let him go first, not wanting to risk him setting me up for a trap.
Nothing happened, other than he led me into a much cozier hallway, almost like they angled towards the private living quarters of the place. Xylo led me down the hall in utter silence. We took three more doors and several additional turns in continued sheer quiet. I realized that if so many of his brothers couldn’t talk, he probably wasn’t used to conversation.
Xylo was naturally a mute. I’d have to break the ice.
“So, Xylo, you like balloons?” I asked, thinking of something happy.
He continued walking but managed to turn his head entirely backwards to look at me. “They are delightful. I found one once, but a werewolf popped it and kicked me down a well. It took me a few years to get back out. I lost the balloon down there.”
I nodded wearily, not sure how to reply to that level of bullying. Maybe silence was preferable. Much better than talking to Eeyore.
Chapter 9
The wind whipped at my hair, screaming and wailing all around me like the sounds of every soul that had ever been born here—and by born, I meant left their mortal restraints behind to decompose in the very soil of this cursed place where Dracula feasted on the poor, hapless creatures and bound their souls to his eternal service.
I’d told Xylo I needed a space far away from everything—somewhere I could somewhat peaceably gather my thoughts. Knowing I was currently in a house full of monsters, I would have been perfectly fine with knowing that the figurative torture and mutilation of innocents was happening two rooms away, rather than only one. Honestly, I hadn’t expected him to know of anything even remotely resembling a suitable place.
Then he’d brought me up to the fucking roof of one of the towers. And it had a connecting bridge to another even taller tower. He’d assured me that the other tower was incredibly dangerous, but that it was locked with powerful magic and that hardly anyone ever used it.
Not entirely reassuring, but better than nothing.
I was hesitant to trust the skeleton as a result of his prior affiliations with Dracula, but something about the harmless, emo skeleton was kind of endearing—like having a stray puppy. And I had kicked his ass several times already when he’d shown me no signs of physical aggression. I’d just been reacting on the basic assumption that anyone here was an enemy, which was just common sense. Except he was nothing like his weaponized brothers. He was probably the mellowest being I’d ever met. He just didn’t care about anything or anyone strongly enough to want to fight for it—even Dracula. For better or for worse, I would use him—and keep a close eye on him for any sign of betrayal.
I sat down on the stone railing of the bridge, directly in the center of the two towers, dangling my feet over the abyss. I pulled out my silver butterfly charm—a magically concealed form for my Horseman Mask—and held it in my fist, doing nothing with it other than establishing direct contact with it. That was important to me.
The bridge reminded of another I’d once visited. It had also hung over a vast, seemingly eternal space and either end had held dangers for puny little humans who thought they could play with vastly superior beings.
I’d fought Samael there. He’d killed Cain. The only reason Cain had been brought back to life was due to us both passing the test from Solomon’s Temple.
Regardless, I was experiencing some deep feelings right about now. I had already been in a dark place, having just come off a fight with Roland where I’d fully intended to kill him, only to find out that we had all been pawns in a game orchestrated by beings much stronger than any of us—namely, Samael and his associates.
Xuanwu—the Black Tortoise.
Qinglong—the Azure Dragon.
And the Unholy Trinity—as they’d called themselves—had apparently set all of that up as a favor to my mother. A promise they had made her to keep me safe in various ways—primarily, making Samael my Godfather and for us to come to Castle Dracula and bag-and-tag our first Master.
So, with Samael betraying me not even an hour into his alleged oath to fulfill my mother’s wishes, was this another game? Was it a joke? On whom? My mother, me, or Dracula?
Was Samael one of these Masters?
And why had Dracula reacted so strangely when I mentioned the Masters? Had he been surprised I knew about them, or surprised that I cared to know the answers in light of my own troubles?
That Dracula had figuratively made me the unlucky sap tasked with kicking out all the guests still crashing at his house from the party last night—before the parental units came back home.
My method was simple—exsanguination.
Except…it made absolutely no sense. Why task me with killing his infernal fraternity brothers? Those most loyal.
I realized that I could spend the next few years trying to decide who had lied, to whom, and when, but that ultimately it didn’t matter.
Rather than worrying about what anyone else thought—who they worked for, who they had promised what to—the only constant I could rely upon was what I was going to do about it.
What I wanted to do right now.
I needed to treat this as if everyone was working against me, and that if everyone but me ended up dead at the end…well, that was their fault for not filling me in on the details ahead of time. If they were on my side—really playing games against Dracula—then the only reason they wouldn’t tell me anything beforehand was because they trusted me enough to be myself and do what I did best.
Kill monsters who did anything more felonious than jaywalking.
I had been thrown into the deep end of the pool without my floaties. Treading water as I debated which person had thrown me into the pool wouldn’t help save me from drowning. Movement was life.
I would get answers a
fter I reached shore—when I confronted Dracula.
Dracula…Vlad Dracul…Count Dracula. The Dragon. Whatever his name or origin really was. And his Beast, Sanguina—the source of his power. The creature that controlled everything as far as the eye could see.
The Castle Keep—as Xylo had called it—was where Dracula actually lived, and where I had first met the bastard and lost all my powers. It was the heart of the royal structure—what everyone imagined a castle would look like. Just a metric giga-fuck-ton bigger, more sinister, and scarier.
We had escaped through dozens of hallways, tunnels, rooms, and about fifty-bajillion stairs to finally reach two of the outermost towers, giving me the first chance to look back and get a clear view of the place.
The Castle Keep branched out into numerous towers of dark gray—almost black—stone connected together by battlements, bridges, and…probably a bunch of other really cool names that equated to architectural or engineering porn.
Xylo had gone on at length describing them to me, but I had zoned out.
All I needed to know was that the Castle Keep was the figurative Pride Rock from The Lion King.
And everything within the surrounding ring of titanic, moss-covered walls was called Castle Dracula—his kingdom.
Kind of confusing, really.
Sitting on my bridge, I focused on everything but the Keep. I stared out at the beautiful, seductive nightmare of a landscape. As horrifying as the place was, it also felt like I was looking at one of the Ancient Wonders of the World. The architecture of everything was exquisite, embellished, ornate, and built on a scale that only should have been possible in a movie or video game. Never in the real world.
Yet here I was.
And seeing it up close from hundreds of feet overhead, rather than from the Courtyard, was breathtaking. Ironically, it served to bring all the nightmares to life.
I stared outwards, trying to familiarize myself with the general layout of the area in front of the Castle Keep. I saw a giant observatory, the Clocktower Dracula had mentioned, a stadium that reminded me of the famous Coliseum in Rome, what looked like a replica of the U.S. Capitol building, several gardens of statues that looked like chessboards from this elevation, gargantuan fountains, dozens of cemeteries, and a hilly sprawl of wooded and floral gardens with fog-covered ponds that might even rival Central Park in New York City.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 5