So they could gnaw on his bones for a few days.
Or weeks.
He had only been allowed to put himself back together after the werewolves had finished with their fun.
Xylo had felt no pain in this because his bones really were nigh indestructible. In my opinion, the punishments were to see just how far Dracula could go before Xylo—who hadn’t even been given a name—felt humiliation. Except Xylo couldn’t feel humiliation, so the punishments had kept getting more creative.
It was also a standing order that anyone—for any reason—could use him as their punching bag and he was not permitted to defend himself.
He had told me all of this in a toneless summary. He hadn’t sounded angry, judgmental, or even upset. It had been like listening to the weatherman on local cable.
It had been…disgusting.
And I had found myself beginning to personally hate Dracula rather than only looking at him as a bad monster who needed to be put down for the benefit of mankind.
Dracula was something much, much worse than a powerful monster or alleged member of the Masters.
He was a bully.
And if there was one type of person I couldn’t tolerate, it was a bully. Especially those bullies who consciously knew that what they were doing was cruel—unlike children who might not comprehend the true impact of their actions.
I’m talking the seasoned bullies.
They were the enemy of all that was good in the world.
I had kept my judgment to myself, knowing it might be too much for a soul like Xylo to comprehend. He wasn’t even remotely in touch with his feelings, and I was entirely certain that I didn’t want the first emotion he internalized to be hate.
So I had focused on encouraging him, complimenting him on every little thing—like how incredible his throwing accuracy was, how wicked cool his hood had looked on the bridge, and how I knew an incredible pair of leather-smiths who could design a pair of boots specifically fitted for his unique feet. Because as we had walked, I had heard his feet sliding back and forth inside his boots, making his steps louder and clunkier than necessary.
At first, my compliments had made him truly uncomfortable, as if I had been lying to him or that I might have been mocking him.
But since we were now bonded and somehow shared—or could at least sense—each other’s feelings, he had begun to silently watch me whenever I complimented him, trying to wrap his head around this strange woman who didn’t call him a failure at every turn. But he couldn’t deny I was speaking honestly, because he could feel my sincerity.
He hadn’t exaggerated his navigational skills or knowledge of the castle layout. He truly was better than any guide I had ever met. He not only knew the ins and outs; he knew the secret ins and outs. He also knew the schedules of when areas were likely busy and who lived where. In my opinion, he was the undying embodiment of the memory of the castle itself.
We’d spent almost an hour sneaking about in order to give me a general lay of this area of the castle because he had said it was oftentimes smarter to flee than it was to confront an enemy.
Which was why we currently sat like frogs on a log rather than confronting the amphibian patrols circling us.
This area—the Village—was laid out in such a way that backup was always incredibly close and ready to tighten a noose around any sudden alerts. It was where the residents often went to unwind or cut loose after their shifts, so causing problems here would be like riding into Compton and throwing a rock at one of the houses just to see what happened.
Xylo had strongly emphasized that if we set off an alarm here and saw one or two additional guards pop up—even if we knew we could take the two new guards down—it was often a sleight of hand to give the fifty other guards circling the perimeter, just out of sight, time to box you in.
Long story short, Xylo told me that if we were seen, we should flee and regroup. And since he was a lifelong survivor of the bullies and thugs inhabiting Castle Dracula, I decided to trust his advice.
We already faced terrible odds trying to take out my targets. Because I was betting they had only earned Dracula’s ruby amulet by being truly terrible or truly powerful—probably both. It wasn’t like he handed them out to werewolves once they were potty-trained and learned not to piss on his rugs.
No. A gift from Dracula meant they had impressed him.
And having a better grasp on what kind of sadist Dracula was after hearing a handful of Xylo’s stories, my mind was already racing with the levels of cruelty required to earn a gold star from the Sultan of Suck.
Which meant the winners were likely very powerful.
And with the Mark of the Beast on my forehead, I was pretty much a Regular without any powers.
My only advantage was my newly strengthened skin and my new Skeletal Dundee and his bone boomerangs. His rib-arangs.
We had already spent about an hour in this single area of Castle Dracula. And that had just been for stealth reconnaissance—teaching me how not to trip over my own two feet and ruin my chances entirely.
And there was a whole lot more to the place than just this area.
So I told Xylo I was willing to do whatever he recommended if it gained us even the slightest of advantages. If he thought I needed to run, hide, and regroup upon being seen by enemies, then that is what I would do. It wouldn’t do us any good to also have armies of guards knowing exactly where we were because we hadn’t practiced stealth.
I’d paid close attention so I could remember where the servants’ stairs were—Xylo knew them so well because it was pretty much his usual circuit every day—corridors that weren’t often used, paths between buildings, bridges, and any other number of things.
Then Xylo had spent another hour demanding that I lead the way through a certain area he had just detailed for me—to teach it back to him and prove I had been paying attention. I’d gotten everything right but the extra set of stairs in the back of the building. That was the best we’d had time for.
All while avoiding the creepy patrol of these frogmen.
Ultimately, they’d boxed us into the cemetery—without knowing we were even there, thankfully—and I felt confident that even Xylo would have been forced into the same trap if he had been the one leading us.
Surely, he couldn’t have done better…
He smirked absently, probably reading my thoughts. Bastard.
“I did fine, Xylo,” I muttered.
He grinned, nodding reassuringly.
But entirely too fast to look genuine.
Chapter 15
I had rapidly come to the conclusion that without Xylo’s knowledge, I would have likely walked into a trap within the first hour. I also wouldn’t have had a personal shield and archer all rolled into one. And I would have been squishier without Xylo’s bond protecting my skin. I’d bought all of that at the very small price of two dozen installments of positive reinforcement whenever Xylo began to discredit himself or get too morose.
Somehow, he did this in such a way that it didn’t come across as needy. He sought no affection or attention. It was simply all that he’d been told his entire undead-life—like he was a record stuck on repeat to recite those self-defeating comments over and over again. Dracula had seen that Xylo was different, not very useful, and had decided his only benefit was as a servant.
And Dracula relished in constantly berating him for his failures and never honoring him for his virtues.
You could tell a lot about a person from how they treated those hierarchically beneath them. How a boss treated his employees, how a host treated the cooks, how a wealthy person treated those less fortunate, how a master treated a minion, and even how a pastor treated his congregation.
With one added caveat.
Not only how masters treated their minions in general, but how they treated them when no one was watching.
That was vital. Everyone acted better when they were being observed. Good press, right?
But character was
who you were in the dark when no one was there to tattle on you. Much like if you spied on toddlers playing together, you could hear all sorts of foreboding threats. If you don’t do this, I won’t be your best friend anymore…
Extortion and blackmail were learned at a very early age—it was the easiest way to get what you wanted, and as helpless as toddlers were in many ways, they were sharp enough to learn manipulation.
A more pious person would argue that this was proof of Original Sin.
Whether it was or wasn’t was above my pay-grade. Knowing the result was all that really mattered for my immediate survival. And I was pretty sure I would need to get my Sunday Dress dirty to survive the next few days. The Confessional Booth was going to be a real doozy next week.
I could just imagine the discussion with Father David.
I made a new friend and bonded his bones to my soul. Yeah, he’s undead, but I’m helping him build his self-confidence. That counts for something, right? How did I bond him? Oh, well I’m the sixth Horseman of the Apocalypse, of course. Hey, you’re not supposed to laugh. Right, where was I? Yes, I had to kill six people last weekend. Where? I went on vacation with my godfather. No, I’d never met my victims before I killed them. Total strangers, don’t worry. Why? Well, I wanted their jewelry.
I snapped myself out of the imagined scenario, focusing back on the matter at hand—at all the beautifully exciting confrontations that might result in my death over the next few days. About three seconds after considering a few nightmarish situations, I turned to look at Xylo instead.
His aged ivory bones drank in the crimson light of the moon and sky, making him look painted in blood—like he was a freshly de-skinned skeleton. He was nodding absently to himself, but I couldn’t pick up on his thoughts, even though he seemed to have no problem reading mine.
Unfair. Looking into his mind was like shouting into an empty warehouse. There was just nothing happening in there right now. He was literally sitting there not thinking about anything at all—not even consciously trying to think of nothing like when I meditated. Because he had no emotions. It was chilling. I wasn’t sure if that was just because he was a skeleton, but Dracula’s treatment of him hadn’t helped in the slightest.
Dracula wasn’t the only source of Xylo’s lack of self-confidence. I was pretty sure that it stemmed from not only being bad at all the things his friends were good at, but that he didn’t know why he wasn’t like everyone else. He was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer—the Before They Were Famous edition.
Since he couldn’t recall who he had been in his actual life, he didn’t have any insights into why he was the only unique skeleton. He even told me that he’d never shared what he was good at with Dracula—like how he could hit the wings off a fly with his ribs, his seemingly impeccable memory, and that he could put himself back together all by himself—fearing it might mean something else was wrong with him.
Which worked in our favor, now, but Xylo’s existence for the past…however long he’d been here had not been pleasant or even passively rewarding.
So, I’d broken the ice by explaining who I was, what I’d been through, and how I’d gotten here. I had also come clean about my butterfly charm—that it was a Horseman’s Mask. He hadn’t seemed remotely alarmed about me lugging around a Horseman’s Mask, probably because he had no memory of what exactly that meant since he couldn’t even remember his life from the real world. In fact, he actually seemed to open up quite a bit when I brought it up, looking excited about the topic—because he had a personal experience to relate it to—he’d bonded with it, after all. Even if his emotions were mostly nonexistent, when he’d picked up the Mask, he’d felt something all on his own for the first time in his conscious existence.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t understood what the alien sensation was at the time or what he was supposed to do with it. All that mattered was that he finally had a memory of an emotion, now.
He’d mentioned feeling echoes. I hadn’t wanted to press him on that yet, choosing to let him keep it to himself—to cherish his one emotion in private, perhaps even using it to build up his confidence in at least one steadfast absolute.
Even if it was Despair.
“Are you sure you want to go after the demon first?” he whispered suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts. It was the third time he’d asked the same question. “There should be three amulets in this area near the Village,” he suggested. “They are decidedly easier targets.”
I nodded. “I think the demon might have some answers for me, and you said if Dracula’s Bane is anywhere, it will be in the Infernal Armory near the Observatory,” I whispered back at him, checking to make sure the frogs hadn’t overheard us. Dracula had been concerned after Samael used the Mark of the Beast to lull the castle’s Beast to sleep—like perhaps he needed to make sure his pet demon never learned of it. The Mark of the Beast was a Biblical Revelations event as far as I knew—a curse inflicted upon those who would be roped into serving the Devil during the End Days.
I still didn’t really follow how in the world had that had worked to bond me with Sanguina, but maybe this demon would know.
Also, she was apparently an enemy of Samael, so she might know some dirt on him or be willing to tell me some of his weaknesses—which I really needed to know since I was planning on holding him closely as I pressed my katana into his windpipe. Slowly.
So with him and Dracula both having strong feelings about this mystery demon, I wanted to introduce myself before either of them decided to pay her a visit. Because despite what Samael said about only Greater Demons having the strength to power the Mark of the Beast, she might know some way to rid myself of it. Or…
I could always make a deal for power. I shuddered at the thought, putting it on the back-burner. The integrity of my soul was important to me, but my soul was about to go on extended family medical leave if I failed here—whether by dying or being roped into working for Dracula.
Desperate times.
Not yet, though.
I had a little bit of experience battling demons, and I still had the Seal of Solomon in my pocket—something I had completely forgotten about in the chaos from the bridge. It was a demon trap—as long as I could get it to work—as long as it hadn’t also been blocked from use by the Mark of the Beast. Even if brandishing the Seal of Solomon at the demon was just an empty threat, it was a pretty good one. Her fear of imprisonment might outweigh her current loyalty to Dracula.
Because here, she was probably treated like a queen and granted much respect or fear. Trading that in for an orange jumpsuit was a great big fall from grace, and not one she would likely choose to risk—unlike when she had originally chosen to fall from Heaven.
So yeah. I wanted to get to her first. Even if there were easier targets here. Because if Dracula or Samael paid her a visit before I did, I’d likely lose my only chance at obtaining helpful information. I wasn’t sure if she would know anything worthwhile, but it was worth the risk if she shared even the tiniest advantage that I could later exploit against Samael or Dracula. Killing her first would also send a crystal-clear message to my dear, dear Godfather.
Not even demons were safe from the White Rose.
Even though it no longer hurt, I was very cognizant of the Mark of the Beast on my forehead—but I very wisely chose not to try touching it again. Samael had said it was so much more than a bond of servitude, but I didn’t feel any bond or compulsion impacting my judgment.
Xylo nodded, but looked uneasy at my answer. Maybe he was scared of her. “Okay. To avoid heavily patrolled areas, we will need to take a shortcut through the Eternal Gardens,” he murmured in a dry whisper, deftly tracing a rough sketch on the ground without a moment’s hesitation, using rocks and twigs to quickly represent nearby points of interest. He’d shown me which main buildings to look out for so that even if I got lost—or we became separated—I would at least be able to avoid running into a guard-post or something. He’d also picked out rendezvous p
oints that even I would be able to later find. One of those was the Clocktower that could be seen from pretty much everywhere.
Each section of Castle Dracula was guarded by different types of monster. When I’d pressed, Xylo had told me there were even Yeti on the opposite side of the grounds, but most of Dracula’s guards were of the smaller more agile variety—werewolves, goblins, dwarves, gnomes, stregas, vampires, and creatures my size or smaller that relied upon numbers as opposed to one guard with boss-level power.
When it came to the actual monsters I would need to kill—those who wore the required amulet—Xylo had rattled off a handful of names, and I’d been both relieved and disappointed to find that I recognized none of them.
No Frankenstein or any of the stereotypical names that had slaughtered their way into so many movies and pop culture stories to become well-known by the world at large.
And…I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. I’d anticipated having to fight and kill well-known legends like Frankenstein or Medusa or someone equally notorious. But it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case. Which was very strange to me. We were talking about Dracula, and I didn’t recognize any of the locals who lived here?
Which was another reason why I wanted to visit the demon first. At least I had some basis of common ground with a demon and maybe I could use my experience in killing a few of her pals to goad her into giving up some helpful information on Samael or Dracula.
I glanced up to see the frogmen finally strolling far enough away for us to make our escape. I urgently turned back to Xylo, jerking my chin to let him know we would need to move soon before someone else came by.
He nodded absently but didn’t move, his eye-sockets scanning our surroundings warily. I was actually getting used to the whole skeleton thing. Even the smoky eyes.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 9