I swallowed, clamping my lips shut. How did she know Samael had put the Beast to sleep but not know about me? I very carefully considered my response, playing out my clumsy footedness as shyness upon meeting a celebrity. “I heard there is no way to escape this place,” I said.
She nodded. “Truer than you know.”
“Where is Jonathan Harker?” I asked cautiously.
She looked up at me, her eyes hollow and empty. “I haven’t heard his name in centuries…” she whispered. “I miss him so much.” A tear rolled down her cheeks.
I winced guiltily, deciding to take a moment to gather my thoughts before blurting out a million questions.
“Why are you here? How are you here?” I finally asked, unable to formulate a theory of my own beyond magic.
Mina let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “The Beast lets no one leave. She carries a grudge well. Anyone who shows her disrespect suffers for eternity. Burning down this castle so long ago damned us all. It just comes back during the next full moon. She is hungry to keep everyone here—whether alive or dead, she does not care.” I thought about Xylo and nodded. That was…terrible.
“And what is your punishment?” I asked. “To live here forever?”
“I am the newest Bride of Dracula,” she whispered forlornly. “For better or worse.”
And it suddenly made sense why the three Brides of Dracula might be lurking about in the garden—and why Mina had fled. They had probably come to terrorize her somehow. Dracula had upgraded to a newer model car—Mina—but had selfishly kept the old models—the Weird Sisters—in the garage.
Mina cleared her throat, unclasping her hands. She had a sorrowful frown on her face—the resolve of a woman accepting her fate. “This is my burden. My cross to bear.” She appraised me thoughtfully. “What is your cross to bear, Callie Penrose? You look like a determined woman, and determined women usually have short fates. In fact, you even remind me of someone I once met,” she added, appraising me thoughtfully.
I hesitated, wondering how honest I should be. “I’ve just got one of those faces, I guess. Your husband gave me a job to do,” I finally admitted. “I’m just doing as he requested.”
Mina was entirely still for about five seconds. “Oh? And what job is that? My husband did not mention it when I saw him less than an hour ago. He did not mention you at all, in fact, Callie Penrose.”
The hair on the back of my neck began to rise at the chill in her tone—at the news that another woman secretly stood between her and her husband, even if it was a husband she did not particularly care for. Territory was territory.
“Well, to be honest, I was tricked into coming here by the same demon you mentioned earlier. The one who put the Beast to sleep.” In my mind, I was getting a very clear idea of what Xylo had meant by shaking his head at me. It had been no—to anything and everything involving Mina Harker.
Was this a kind of Stockholm Syndrome or had he brainwashed her in some way? Because I couldn’t accurately read which side of the fan club she was on—for or against Dracula.
“That demon?” Mina finally asked, pointing out over the cliff.
I frowned, not understanding. She walked over to the edge of the cliff, motioning for me to join her. I did so, my every muscle ready to keep my feet firmly planted in the earth if she tried anything funny.
I glanced down.
And down, and down, and down.
The Coliseum stood below us, telling me just how high Xylo and I had really climbed on our way to the Eternal Garden. It hadn’t seemed this high, but proof was proof. And like a Salvador Dali painting, I couldn’t understand how we had ended up with the Coliseum so close. That didn’t make any geographic sense.
But all those thoughts evaporated in a heartbeat.
Despite our elevation, I could see with perfect clarity that a man stood in the center of the Coliseum, and he was wounded and bloody. But the way he stood—so confident and determined…
It was Samael. My Godfather. No question.
And he was facing a behemoth of a creature that I wasn’t even sure how to classify. The arena was littered with tall, heaping mounds of other bodies from dozens of different types of monsters, and I realized that Samael had killed them all. That number of bodies had to mean that Samael had been inside the ring for hours upon hours.
As if the moment he’d left my sight, Dracula had thrown him in there.
Holy hell.
Mina cleared her throat, snapping me back to my own perilous situation. “Dracula does not like loose ends. The demon Samael completed some service for Dracula, but he also overreached by putting Sanguina to sleep. Behold the fate of a job well done in service to Dracula,” she said, her tone emotionless. “The demon has already broken the old record for highest consecutive kill-count, but not even his kind last forever. The stench of offal and stale blood from all the fallen warriors left to rot convinced me to take a break and visit the Eternal Gardens to instead inhale the perfume of life. They paused the fighting to give his opponents some water and food, but it looks like they are getting ready to resume.”
She turned to me, gauging my reaction.
And…I wasn’t entirely sure what to think. Did Samael deserve this?
Sure. No question. And not even for betraying me. He was a Greater Demon and had likely done enough in his past to earn this several times over.
But…fucking Dracula again, being the asshole he was, turning on everyone after their purpose had been served. I let out a tired sigh. “This has to stop, Mina. All of it.”
She nodded absently. “Good luck stopping all of them,” she said, pointing back down at the Coliseum.
I glanced down to notice that the place was packed to overflowing, which I hadn’t realized before since I had been so focused on Samael. But I did remember the cheers and shouts I’d heard coming from the Coliseum over the past few hours—and that Xylo had been surprised about the change in schedule.
Now I knew why. The newest gladiator was setting records.
But Samael was an agent of chaos and the double-cross. He had to have known Dracula would ultimately betray him—and would have had a plan to prevent it.
My heart skipped a beat at a sudden new thought.
Was I the plan?
Had Samael gone to every possible effort to make sure I didn’t get tossed into the ring with him—into a prison cell for Dracula to deal with later? Was that why he hadn’t mentioned my Horseman’s Mask when he took my other powers away? Had it been a show for Dracula? He’d told me that we all had our parts to play, whether we liked them or not.
Was my godfather still on Team Callie, or were we all on our own teams pitted against each other?
But as I began replaying his comments in my mind, I grew fairly certain that maybe Samael had set all of this up—for me to save him. Too bad he’d put on such a good show for Dracula that I had no idea—or ability with my powers taken away—about how to do that.
“Maybe I shouldn’t shatter all the necklaces,” I murmured, realizing too late that I’d spoken out loud.
Mina glanced over at me sharply. “Necklaces?” she asked.
Inwardly, I winced. It was too late to take back my words, though, so I pressed on, speaking carefully. “Dracula tasked me with acquiring and destroying them,” I admitted, indicating her amulet with my eyes and chin, but keeping my hands neutrally at my side so as not to appear threatening.
“The only way to acquire these is to—” She pursed her lips suddenly, narrowing her eyes in alarm. “He intends for you to kill us.”
I held up my hands. “Well…a little. Just six of you, though. He didn’t tell me to kill you, if that’s what you’re thinking. We get to pick which amulets we take and destroy. Total coincidence that I ran into you—”
“We?” she interrupted, her tone high-pitched and incredulous as she took a few steps back from me. “You’re not alone? How many assassins did that snake send?” she demanded. “Is he making a move for the Master’s Librar
y or the Infernal Armory?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, so shrugged very slowly. “Easy, Mina. I’m not your enemy. I was just trying to walk through the Garden when you showed up.”
“WHO ELSE?!” she demanded, her shoulders actually twitching spastically.
That’s when I heard a sudden roaring sound from back in the Garden.
We both spun as three women burst through the foliage, fleeing a flaming skeleton with a crimson hood over his head who was roaring at them like a demon, catching the entire hedge on fire behind him, and effectively blocking us off from escape.
“That guy,” I admitted, deciding honesty was the best medicine. “Look!” I said, pointing a thumb at him as he began to hurl fiery ribs at the three vampire wenches. “He doesn’t like the ex-wives either!”
Mina glared at Xylo with unbridled hatred and what looked like stunned disbelief. “You! How dare he send you!” she screamed, apparently recognizing—and not approving of—my assistant. Then she turned to glare at me. “He will never succeed in this foolish game,” she snarled, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Xylo or Dracula. “I fear it’s time for me to go eat Callie Penrose.”
I stared back at her, not following her segue or sudden need for munchies.
That’s when I noticed her purposefully shifting her stance for better balance—and I suddenly recalled an old lesson that I’d learned in grade school.
That commas—and phonetic pauses—mattered.
It’s time for me to go eat, Callie Penrose was very different from it’s time for me to go eat Callie Penrose.
One was a polite excusal.
The other was both homicide and cannibalism.
Good thing I had nonverbal cues to really punctuate—heh—the difference.
Like the long black claws suddenly sprouting from Mina’s delicate fingertips and the fangs protruding from behind her plump lips as she dove for my face with a serious case of the nom-noms and obvious ill-intent.
I’ve always heard you should never meet your idols, heroes, or favorite celebrities. I’d just never heard it was because they might try to kill you and eat you.
Strangely enough, her face momentarily spasmed in mid-air, and when she recovered, her eyes looked surprised.
I guarantee they weren’t as surprised as mine. Had she had a mental break mid-attack?
The screams of rage and pain from Xylo battling the Brides of Dracula behind her were not my concern. I was too busy trying to draw my katana against the bipolar Mina-Pire to worry about Xylo. He was undying anyway.
I, on the other hand, was adorably squishy and needed to actively worry about keeping my blood on the inside.
In the chaos and rush of adrenaline, my English teacher’s parting lesson crossed my mind.
You may occasionally get away with poor punctuation and win some battles, but Grammar will always win the war.
Chapter 20
I managed to lift my blade and slap away Mina’s claws as I dodged to the side to avoid her tackle. She landed in a roll, spinning to face me, switching our places so that Xylo and his new harem of jealous housewives were now behind me. I couldn’t remain standing with my back to the potential new threats in case Xylo lost track of one of the Weird Sisters and she decided to jump in on our fight. So that left me one option.
The cliff.
I backed towards it, keeping the majority of my attention on Mina—obviously a god-damned vampire—as I tried to gauge the immediate danger from the new guests. I saw a woman hurled into the base of the large tree clinging to the edge of the cliff, embers and sparks flying everywhere, and all of them screaming, hissing, and roaring, before I refocused on my own little Bridezilla.
Mina raced at me in a blur, not as agile as I would have expected after a hundred years of practice. I was dangerously close to the ledge, though, so I couldn’t risk a prolonged dance. She looked both determined and disgusted, as if she was at war with herself.
What the hell was going on with her? Was Dracula making her do this? Puppeteering his own wife? As if I had needed more reasons to kill him.
She finally closed the distance, and I knew I only had a couple feet of room behind me before I would experience freefall without wings. She swiped at my face with her claws in a jab, before whipping out with her fangs to get a bite out of my neck.
Of course, my katana through her chest prevented all of this.
She’d been so focused on the goal that she hadn’t kept her guard up.
She coughed up blood, gasping as I yanked the blade free and kicked her in the stomach to get some distance. I felt disgusted with myself for kicking Mina—knowing that she hadn’t wanted to be used as Dracula’s puppet, and should have been on my side helping to take down her husband. But my life was more important than her feelings.
So I imagined it was my old English teacher, and this was my battle to win. I’d always wanted to do that to her for painting my papers in red ink.
I heard a terrible, horrifying scream near the tree, but I was too focused on Mina to look. Dracula’s newest bride crashed to the ground, clutching at her ruined chest—right over her heart. I wasn’t sure if that was enough to kill her or not—not with Dracula controlling her—but it was enough to give me a second to get clear of the ledge and finally glance over at the other fight near the tree.
I slowly lowered my katana, blinking a few times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
The screaming sound was coming from Xylo, but what really impressed me was that he was leaning backwards at a forty-five-degree angle, using some kind of sparking, fiery rope to string up two of the women and hang them over a large branch high up in the tree. Black smoke liberally poured out of his eyes, making me cringe.
He…was using my Horseman power somehow, and I hadn’t felt a thing. As I peered closer, I saw that his bone arms ended at the wrist, and that the two women were actually being choked out by his detached hands. The joints and ligaments connecting his wrist to his hands had elongated into a fiery rope of embers and sparks, looping over the overhead branch.
He had hellfire noose-hands. Jesus Christ.
He was hanging them. With his freaking hands. Like a twisted version of Ghost Rider and his fiery chains.
I saw ruby necklaces hanging from their necks and turned away with a resigned grimace. I wasn’t happy about how he was killing them, but if they wore those amulets, they were fair game. I’d just learned what trying to talk someone out of their necklace got me.
I was more concerned with how Xylo was using my Horseman powers when I couldn’t. And how Mina had recognized the supposed simpleton skeleton.
Mina was staring up at me, blood dripping from her mouth. “Thank you,” she whispered, sounding sincere. Her bloody hand shifted to the necklace and she yanked it off with a pained jerk. She opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes filmed over before she could say anything else.
I sighed. “We all die the same,” I whispered. “Pray you don’t come back as a skeleton.”
I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disgusted about killing Mina Harker—one of the main victims of Bram Stoker’s story.
I bent down to take the ruby necklace from her dead hands and dipped it into her blood, curling my lip distastefully. Nothing magical happened and I grunted, frowning down at it. I shoved it into my pocket without looking at it. It tingled faintly in my hand, and that was enough for me. We had made a lot of noise here and needed to flee before someone came to check it out.
Xylo released the two women right as I sheathed my sword and turned around, of course. They crashed to the ground bonelessly as Xylo’s hands whipped back up over the branch to reconnect with his wrists. He hurried over to their bodies and yanked off their necklaces. The third Sister suddenly stumbled clumsily to her feet from the base of the tree, eyes wide with panic at the sight of her dead sisters. Xylo didn’t hesitate, flinging his whip hand out to grab onto her necklace from a dozen paces away and yank it free. The vampire promp
tly leapt off the edge of the cliff, great, bat-like wings whipping out from her back as she swept them hard and fast in an effort to escape.
Xylo watched for a moment before calmly snapping off one of his ribs and flinging it at her with a casual flick of his wrist. The flaming rib tore a great hole through her wing, the fire incinerating the fleshy membrane like flash paper and she plummeted down to the ground.
She spiraled out of control with an ear-splitting shriek and fell to either her death or long-term intensive care, depending on a vampire’s healing ability.
Xylo paid no mind as he crouched over the other women. His rib whipped towards him, slamming back into place with a flare of sparks, but it obviously didn’t hurt him since he didn’t react in the slightest.
I began breathing faster, trying to ignore the sounds of outrage from the Coliseum below. What the hell were we going to do now, and why had Mina so suddenly gone crazy?
I made my way over to him in a swift jog, watching as he dipped the amulets into the blood. Well, two of them. The third had landed out of our reach, so we had an amulet, but no blood for it.
I gasped as the ruby pulsed with blinding light upon contact with the blood.
“Mine didn’t do that,” I said, feeling a sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach.
He turned to look at me, his face blank.
Then he turned to dip the other amulet into the blood before grimacing at the third, unbloodied amulet. Then he climbed to his feet and handed them over to me. “Show me,” he said, sounding exhausted.
I shoved the amulets into my other pocket and walked over to Mina, pointing down at her. “I dipped it in the blood, and nothing happened.”
Xylo was eerily silent, and the sounds of outrage from the Coliseum below rose in volume. They were not cheers. Judging by the trajectory, Sister Number Three had to have landed smack-dab in the center of the Coliseum.
Xylo cleared his throat uncomfortably. “That is not Mina Harker,” he finally said.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 12