Was it some kind of purposeful distraction? What business had Dracula really been referring to that would occupy them for the next three days, and why was the Coliseum hosting an event a day earlier than Xylo had thought?
And what about this prison Xylo had mentioned—the Menagerie? Was there a way to release the captive shifters? I needed to take care of myself before turning this into a rescue mission.
Were the two men doing something nefarious that they didn’t want me knowing about? Most definitely, but what was it?
I stewed over that and my godfather’s role in all of this, playing out every theory I could think of. It all came back to what he had to gain and what he wanted.
Primarily, Dracula probably wanted the barrier taken down so he could finally enjoy the luxury of take-out meals again.
But what had he wanted with Roland? He’d said he needed a vampire. Was he looking for a protégé of some kind?
And Samael’s comment about why he had really agreed to serve my mother and become my godfather—but then how much rage he had shown in front of Dracula when she was mentioned. Talk about bipolar.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with a logical explanation that checked all the boxes, and nothing came close to enlightening me on the nagging sensation I felt. It was just the annoying buzzing of an insect in my ear.
I felt like a lion staring at a raw steak hanging just outside my cage. I wanted to burn this place to ash—all of it. Except I didn’t have the power to risk taking out minions and attracting unwanted attention. I needed to be surgical, hitting only my six targets. So I told myself I would take out all my pent-up aggression on those with the ruby amulets.
But I vowed I would return when it was all over, and I had my powers back. Because Castle Dracula needed the White Rose—a silent, invisible killer who slipped from shadow to shadow, never leaving a trace behind. Just a disturbing crime scene.
If I couldn’t create mayhem by leaving behind an overwhelming number of corpses everywhere I went or by setting off an Apocalyptic magnitude of architectural destruction, then I would have to kill them with fear—from the inside out.
I needed to get them talking to each other at the blood cooler about how old Jimmy had been eviscerated in the privacy of his own rooms while moisturizing his scales and filing his talons, and that any one of them could be next. Get them looking over their shoulders, staring at the shadows.
Show them Despair.
My Mask still wasn’t functioning in any useful way, but I’d been a monster slayer long before I’d gotten the Mask. I’d worked for the Vatican Shepherds, the Holy Hitmen. Even though I wasn’t the best little Catholic, I knew one thing for certain.
These motherfuckers needed Jesus.
So I decided I would be their personal concierge for their trip to the afterlife and the fields of judgment—of whichever pantheon they desired.
Chapter 18
Like Xylo had said, it had taken close to an hour to get to our next destination. The red glow of the moon washed over the garden, making it look like a murder scene. But I had to admit, it was beautiful. Flowers thick with buds—some blooming, some not—and lush vines and foliage crossed the cobblestone paths. A blanketed silence settled over the Eternal Garden like we were cut off from the rest of Dracula’s estate.
We had definitely climbed in elevation, so we might have the chance to see some spectacular views depending on where we went from here.
But sightseeing wasn’t a priority. I had only two priorities—getting the demon to squeal out any helpful information she might have and stealing Dracula’s Bane.
Which meant maintaining our course for the Observatory and the Infernal Armory, which were both on the far side of the huge Eternal Garden. To put it into perspective, the garden was probably the size of Central Park, or close enough as to make no difference.
For the most part, lush, dense trees formed a canopy overhead, but certain areas had been cultivated in order to allow unobstructed moonlight to hit the flowers. The winding, serpentine paths climbed up and down rolling hills, making the patches of wildflowers resemble splashes of dripping paint, and the place itself was a labyrinth of decisions.
From within our hiding place of a particularly tall section of wildflowers, Xylo gave me a look, silently asking if I was ready. I nodded and he slipped out of sight around the corner. He didn’t weigh much, which was a benefit when stalking, but his ill-fitted boots were not conducive to sneakiness.
In fact, he sounded like a lame horse that dreamt of becoming a professional tap dancer, despite obvious limitations and constructive criticism from concerned loved ones. So I gritted my teeth as I watched him clomp across the path to the flower garden on the opposite side.
I waited until the count of three, just like we’d agreed, and then rose.
I took one step before hurriedly crouching back down again as a woman suddenly appeared from around a blind corner on the path about a dozen yards away, moving in utter silence.
Damn it. I would have to wait. I saw Xylo slowly peeping up from the foliage on the other side of the path, probably wondering what was taking me so long. He noticed the woman—who was now almost directly between us, but luckily she was fidgeting with a basket tucked under her arm so she hadn’t noticed the two of us hiding in the bushes and flowers—and he very slowly, very intently, shook his head at me, emphatically telling me no in perfect silence. Since he didn’t typically show facial gestures—he’d told me it was hard to make his face move—I couldn’t surmise what he was trying to tell me not to do.
Not to wait? Not to be seen? Not to attack?
Because I had been considering a swift, brutal assassination the moment I saw the precious ruby amulet hanging around her delicate neck. It was a beautiful, priceless ruby set in white gold and dangling from a similar chain that was so fine it looked like spider silk coated in dew. The ruby was also surrounded by diamonds, making the amulet itself easily the diameter of a plum. I had no reference on what this meant, though, since I hadn’t seen any other necklaces yet. Were they all this flashy?
It rested invitingly against her pale bosom. She wore a green, low-cut silk gown that showed off more than the recommended daily dose of cleavage, but it wasn’t so much that it looked scandalous. She might have been my height, and she was barefoot, believe it or not—a stark contrast to her elegant dress that looked to be intended for a formal dinner or perhaps even a debutante ball rather than skipping about through gardens. I looked up at her face to see she was finished fiddling with her basket and that a faint, genuine smile split her cheeks as she took a deep inhale through her nose.
Then she began to hum in a melodic, lilting singsong, dancing back and forth across the path to pluck flowers from either side and gently tuck them into her woven basket. The glow of the crimson moon suddenly washed over her as she sashayed over to a section of the path that wasn’t blocked from the sky by the overhead trees. Her ruby amulet practically caught fire whenever she danced out of the shadows and into the moonlight, making her look like some mythical, Fae-like creature of joy and happiness.
One of the amulets. She was one of my potential targets. This jubilant, beautiful young woman picking flowers needed to die by my hand. I felt a flutter of fear dance across my heart, though. This slip of a woman had earned Dracula’s favor? Did that mean she had a particularly fine bouquet of blood that he favored, or was she much more dangerous than she appeared?
The beams of moonlight also made her fine skin appear to glow from within as if flushed with blood—which only served to highlight how pale she actually was. Shining a red light on a white canvas had a much more noticeable impact than shining a red light over a shade of pink.
She was stunning, her wavy dark hair bouncing off her shoulders as she sashayed and twirled, pivoted and skipped, her eyes actually closing for long stretches as she seemed to be imagining a dance partner twirling her up in a dizzying, cookie-cutter-romance, Hallmark Channel flick. I couldn’t ge
t a clear view of her face due to all her dancing and me hiding in the bushes, but I saw enough to notice it was long and thin, emphasizing her cheek bones.
She was definitely a ten on the beauty scale, that much was obvious. Closer examination would have only served to tack on extra decimal places to her score.
I peered through the flowers rather than lifting my head from my hiding spot, hoping Xylo had written words on a sign or something. But he was ducked out of sight, leaving me to fend for myself or to get better at Charades. Had he been trying to warn me that she wasn’t alone and to stay still?
Or maybe he had been warning me not to stay still and to instead run away to one of our rendezvous points—like he’d apparently done thirty seconds ago, leaving me behind.
I turned back to check on the woman only to find her staring directly at the patch of flowers concealing me, no longer dancing or humming. She stood in a shaded section of the path, as if trying to hide her features from me. And although it should have been impossible with me hidden from sight, it felt like she was staring directly into my eyes.
My every muscle tensed, hoping she was simply staring at a flower near my head. Maybe she had heard something and was looking in my direction to find out if it was a cause for concern. If I remained perfectly still…
“Why are you hiding, girl?” the woman spoke. Her voice sounded like her humming—a songbird heralding the rising sun in a Disney musical—light and lilting without sounding forced. Just a naturally perfect singing voice. My heart raced wildly, knowing I really had no other choice but to reveal myself—before she decided that I was, in fact, a threat, and killed me with whatever powers she had.
Or beat me over the head with her basket like when an opportunistic thief picked the wrong grandma to try mugging and got the ass-whooping of his life with her purse—which she had conveniently packed with cans of corn for her evening casserole—instead. The type of grandma who had woken up that morning with one fuck left to give, and that had been before she realized she was out of milk for her morning tea, forcing her to brave the city streets with her walker to pick some up at the convenience store three blocks away.
I slowly rose from my crouch, ready to run if she attacked. She didn’t. She just appraised me thoughtfully. I found that my gaze kept drifting to her amulet, probably making me look like a greedy street urchin since I was also still covered in filth from the reeds. I tried reaching out to the amulet with my mind, hoping I would be able to sense some form of power hidden within—maybe even my own.
And which one of my powers it might be.
I was either too far away, it held no power, or maybe I was not able to sense it on the magical spectrum—since I had no magical spectrum at the moment. It looked like the only way to find out if this was one of the right necklaces was to follow Dracula’s instructions—kill her and let the amulet drink her blood—and then shatter it in hopes that this twisted version of the Price is Right would give me my wizard’s magic first.
Xylo—who apparently hadn’t abandoned me—finally lifted his skull out of the foliage enough to reveal only his eye sockets—which looked about as panicked as I’d ever seen—but he suddenly dropped back beneath the foliage and I heard other voices approaching—more women—a moment later. The humming, dancing woman was suddenly directly in front of me, grabbing me by the hand and anxiously tugging me after her down the path, away from the voices. I was so surprised that I didn’t question it, and the next thing I knew, I was running along beside her through a trellised tunnel blanketed with the vines of aromatic purple flowers. If this local was scared of the women behind us, she probably had very good reason. Plus, I decided that I would rather fight one woman than multiple.
We burst out of the tunnel and ran down more cobbled paths, weaving back and forth like a snake as the ground suddenly descended so that we were running down a sizable hill, allowing us to gain some real momentum. We skirted a pond full of croaking frogs—which made my shoulders instinctively tense before realizing it was not a gathering of frogmen—jumped over a few benches here and there, and then circled a massive fountain featuring a nude mermaid bathing in the sun. Then the woman let go of my hand and veered off into the garden itself, leaving the path—and me—behind.
She tore through a wall of foliage ahead of her and I hesitated for a few seconds, listening for sounds of pursuit. But it sounded like we had lost them, so I took a deep breath, eyed the wall of foliage, and jumped through after her.
I skidded to a halt to find her standing before me, her hair a mess, her basket sitting on the ground by her feet, and her hands folded one over the other in front of her waist—hopefully a peaceful gesture. I finally got a clear look at her face and, although still beautiful, I realized she wasn’t as perfectly pretty as I’d first assumed. Or maybe that was just the leaves and twigs sticking out of her hair.
We stood on a secluded edge of the garden, and when I say edge, I mean that we were twenty feet away from a sheer drop of what looked to be well over a hundred feet. I couldn’t see the immediate base of the cliff from my viewpoint, but the distant landscape let me know we were higher than I would have preferred. High enough that it would be instant death if I fell from it. Dracula didn’t believe in safety railings either. Other than that, the area was grassy and featured a lone wooden bench and one giant, knotted, old tree clinging to the last section of earth near the edge of the cliff. That was pretty much it.
The crimson sky and moon, as always, cast everything in a ruby glow.
I hoped she hadn’t lured me here for a quick kill. Without Xylo—and not knowing what this woman was capable of—I might just be out of my league.
Her head was cocked slightly, and she was studying me thoughtfully. In fact, she looked uncomfortable and slightly puzzled. I couldn’t blame her. She’d just found a mud-covered bitch with a sword hiding in her flower bed. “My name is Mina,” she said after a time.
My jaw dropped and I blinked dumbly, feeling slightly star-struck all of a sudden. “Mina…” I breathed. “Wilhelmina Harker?” I asked incredulously, recognizing the name from Bram Stoker’s novel.
Chapter 19
Mina Harker was the human that Dracula had tried turning into a vampire, cursing her with his blood. In the story, it was the action that had set everyone against him—proving that he really was a monster and not just some eccentric loner, and that he needed to be stopped.
The reason I was star-struck was because, in the story, Mina hadn’t been a bad guy. Dracula had tried to turn her but had ultimately failed. This woman hated Dracula. As did her husband, Jonathan Harker—for what Dracula had done to Mina.
They were the heroes of the story.
So…why was she here? Was I dealing with a potential ally? Maybe she would just give me her necklace.
She smiled, looking amused. “Yes. And you are?” she asked patiently.
I felt my cheeks flush. “Callie Penrose.”
Her smile stretched wider. “What a lovely name.”
“Who were they?” I asked, pointing back the way we had come. I hoped Xylo had tracked us, because this area was new to me and I wasn’t sure where to go next. We’d taken a lot of turns, and with the thick canopy overhead during our mad dash, I very easily could have gotten turned around. A quick glance out over the edge of the cliff didn’t show me any recognizable landmarks, which wasn’t a good sign.
Mina grimaced at my question. “They go by many names. The Vixens. The Sisters. The Brides of Dracula. The Weird Sisters. Whatever you choose to call them, they are three sadistic psychopaths. It is best to avoid them. They can do worse to you than kill you.” I nodded, not needing any elaboration. I’d heard all about those three, and silently wondered why they hadn’t been on Xylo’s list, or if they had just been some of the names he hadn’t mentioned since there were over forty potentials. “You look like a woman who does not want to be noticed,” Mina said, eyeing my filthy, swamp-stained clothes up and down, growing more comfortable with my presence.
I grunted. “I look like a woman who needs a week-long bath.”
Mina smiled, dipping her chin politely, too ladylike to verbally concur.
She hadn’t attacked me, so maybe my first necklace would be an easy acquisition. Except…Dracula had told me I needed to murder and exsanguinate the guests, not just take their jewelry. Did he really want me to murder Mina, though? Hadn’t he been obsessed with her? “What are you doing here?” I asked, shaking my head. In the stories, Mina and her fiancé, Jonathan, had defeated and killed Dracula, watching the castle burn.
Yet here I was. The novel had obviously taken liberties. I had met Dracula in his castle—not burned down in the slightest—and was now having a girl’s chat with Mina Freaking Harker. Then again, I knew the castle was a Beast, and even if Bram Stoker’s story had been true, a Beast would have the ability to survive a fire—or to easily recover.
Mina sighed, her eyes growing distant for a few moments. Then she turned to look out over the castle grounds beyond the ledge. “I never intended to stay, yet I was never able to leave. We thought we had won, that we had sent him back to hell where he belonged. We were so wrong. His Beast is everlasting,” she breathed in a barely audible whisper, shaking her head back and forth before staring down at her bare feet.
I shuddered to hear the fear in her voice. The fact that she became stuck here, stuck in her own personal nightmare from so long ago.
And now that nightmare defined her entire—immortal—existence. Dracula was a cruel son-of-a-bitch, no question.
“Luckily for you, the Beast is resting for the next few days. You should flee while you have the chance,” she told me somberly, “before someone puts you into the Menagerie or the Beast awakes. I imagine she will be hungry when she rises.”
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 11