As Sanguina continued to roll back the curtain on Castle Dracula, my mind began to race with endless possibilities.
Chapter 31
Between one step and the next, we were back in the Observatory. It was nothing like my Shadow Walking. It was like waking from a dream.
I had a lot to learn about our new relationship, as long as my brain didn’t melt trying to process it all. I had managed to dominate Sanguina, proving that I would never be the weaker partner—and I was beyond relieved to know that it had nothing to do with our relative level of mastery over the Silvers.
It was about mentality.
Owning the fastest car in the world meant nothing if you didn’t have the key to the ignition. As fast as Sanguina’s car was, she wasn’t old enough to drive. She never wanted to be old enough to drive. She wanted a big sister to drive her around all the time. She wanted to lend her power out. In exchange for getting her sustenance and never being left alone.
It was kind of sad, really. Like an orphan.
She was stuck here on this strange planet, surrounded by humans who were too fragile to survive playing games with her. Leaving her with no other friends or family to turn to.
I grimaced at my poor analogy. Sanguina definitely wasn’t as naive as a child. Not after some of the things she’d just told me. It wasn’t that she was evil, but that her sense of right and wrong was so vastly different from ours that it made her seem evil.
Murder was bad, right?
What about when you stomped on that cockroach for daring to take a walk across your kitchen floor? Or when you stomped on it again just to be sure. Or when you flushed the potentially still breathing cockroach down the toilet. That was murder and torture, too, depending on your perspective.
That was Sanguina’s mentality. She was just stomping on cockroaches.
But there was a type of innocence about her.
So maybe it was best to say I was her guardian. I’d have to spend more time thinking on it, but I had more pressing matters to consider at the moment.
Xylo handed me my shotguns. He’d already given me back my Silver katana, and I had tucked it into a loop on my new pants.
“You remember the plan?” I asked him, scanning the room for any sign of Dracula. He should have been here by now. If he didn’t show, we’d have to go hunt him down ourselves. Since I now had all my powers back, I no longer had any fear of walking down the center of the street in full view of Dracula’s army.
Hell, I kind of felt like a walk. I would skip down the street, and even whistle showtunes as loud as humanly possible as I hurled fireballs and bolts of lightning at anything that moved—at all the little cockroaches.
But it would waste precious time.
“Yes. I’m ready,” he murmured.
I let out an annoyed huff, not seeing Dracula. “Then I guess—”
And he suddenly entered the room in a shifting cloud of crimson mist. He froze, hovering in place for a moment before solidifying into the handsome man we’d last seen in the Feast Hall.
He stared at me, looking bewildered.
Probably because I still had the Silver tears and crescent moon on my forehead, and my eyes were still glowing, molten chrome.
So Dracula was having a situational crisis. Here I was, obviously having retrieved some of my powers—powers he hadn’t even known about in the first place—yet he knew his Beast was awake.
That was why he’d come to this exact spot. Sanguina had traveled back from that other world to join them, letting them know they had a problem to deal with in the Observatory—essentially tossing up her Beast Signal over Castle Dracula.
Oh, and Dracula was astutely aware of the empty chains across the room, and the obvious fact that the resident crocodile demon who had lived here for the past one hundred years was nowhere in sight. That was probably very concerning to him since she apparently knew all the secrets of this fucked up place.
I was pretty sure they were the same secrets Sanguina had just told me.
Xylo took an aggressive step forward, standing between me and Dracula. “Get ready, Master. One or both of us is going to fuck you,” he promised, the black shadows in his eye-sockets flickering wildly.
Okay. That hadn’t been part of our plan. Xylo was going off script. Play it cool, Xylo, I thought to myself, hoping he would read my mind. His definition of the F-bomb was getting looser by the hour. I really should have done a better job of explaining it to him.
Dracula’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then he burst out laughing, unable to help himself. “Well, that is an interesting tactic,” he finally said.
Xylo nodded, his bones quivering and clacking like a pissed off rattlesnake. Seeing the cause of his lifelong torment—and finally having found a modicum of confidence—was proving almost too much for him to handle.
“I fucked all three of your wives, and now I will fuck you,” he snarled.
Sweet Jesus.
Dracula’s face went slack, and my heart dropped into my stomach.
Damn it, Xylo. No more teaching him curse words without making him promise to take a vocabulary test before using them out in the world. He was no longer using a loose definition of the word; he was just applying it to any negative emotion he felt towards a person.
“You ungrateful little shit,” Dracula seethed. “I knew you weren’t worth the trouble when I acquired you, no matter what she said—”
“And what did I say, dear?” Mina Harker asked in a cool tone, sauntering into the room with a small pet fox, of all things, tucked under her arm. It was sleeping peacefully.
Dracula spun, looking alarmed. “Oh, there you are, Mina. I hope all is well?”
She gave him a very dry look. “No more games, husband. You’ve been avoiding me all day. And I’ve heard the most disturbing news,” she said with barely restrained fury, her voice dripping with venom.
I kept my face blank, staring at Mina Harker for the second time today. “I missed you in the Gardens.”
She nodded, rewarding me with a brief, amused grin before turning back to her husband, even before she replied. “You missed me twice, technically.” Then her eyes widened, and her gaze jerked back to mine, noticing my fancy warpaint. The fox let out a muffled, sleepy yip at the sudden motion but didn’t bother waking.
I smiled back at her through my teeth, understanding her meaning. Firstly, when she’d pulled her switcheroo and quickly possessed a similar-looking vampire to use as a mouthpiece, and secondly when I’d stabbed that mouthpiece through the heart in self-defense when Mina had turned her into a kamikaze pilot before relinquishing her control.
“Third time’s the charm, I guess,” I admitted, shrugging. “And isn’t the Eternal Metal awesome for facepaint? Sorry we blew a hole through the roof of your Armory…Mr. and Mrs. Harker,” I said.
They both froze, turning to stare at me incredulously. Then their eyes shot to where Lily—the unnamed demon—should have been imprisoned. The demon that they had locked up for the secrets she knew. They wrongly assumed Lily had spilled the beans on their true identities—Jonathan and Mina Harker.
And I could tell their minds were racing with what other secrets might have been spilled. They had no idea.
I grinned. “You can’t trust anyone these days, am I right? We had a little chat before I let her go. She has a lot of pent-up aggression to make up for after one hundred years of imprisonment. But I’m pretty sure she’s anxious to talk to you two, personally.”
They shared a long, silent look, and then Jonathan gritted his teeth. “Sanguina will destroy you. She will rip your soul from your body and tear it to shreds. You have no idea what you’ve done—”
I backhanded him across the jaw so fast and hard that he stumbled. When he recovered—blindingly fast—and made a move to bite me, he took six inches of Solomon’s shotgun down his throat instead. His eyes widened incredulously as he made muffled sounds around the barrel of starstone justice. I hefted the other shotgun up against my shoulder in a
casual, devil-may-care gesture. “What’s it taste like, Jonny?” He glared back at me and I laughed. “I found these relics just lying around in a closet. You guys ever seen the aftermath of starstone buckshot from point-blank range?”
They were both deathly silent.
I leaned closer to Jonathan and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you want to?”
He shook his head anxiously and gave me another muffled response. I frowned in disappointment. “Maybe later, then.” I pulled the shotgun out of his mouth, so that it was no longer tickling his tonsils, and lowered it to hang by my side.
Unsurprisingly, they were speechless, obviously recognizing my mother’s old shotguns.
“I’ve gotta admit. I’m mighty curious how loud they will be…” I trailed off, still staring down at them.
Jonathan regained some of his backbone since he no longer had a mouthful of gun barrel. Or he was frantically trying to seize an opportunity. “Destroy them, Sanguina!” he snarled viciously.
I nudged Xylo excitedly. “Look out! Here comes trouble.”
The skeleton snorted, folding his arms and yawning.
Seconds stretched by, and still nothing happened. I looked up to see the panicked looks on both of their faces.
Because I hadn’t severed Dracula’s tie to Sanguina yet, they thought they were still in control. Except…Sanguina wasn’t answering her phone.
“While we’re waiting for Sanguina to come exsanguinate me,” I began, “why did you two agree to it? After killing the real Dracula, I mean. Did you think you two would fare any better than he did? That you would be better vampires? That your hearts might be pure enough to withstand the curse from the Beast where the real Dracula had been too weak?”
Because that was exactly how it had played out, according to Sanguina. Bonding Sanguina had turned the original Dracula into a vampire. Years later, when the Beast had seen her host fail, she had thought that rather than bringing Dracula back to life, maybe Mina—who had been bitten by Dracula—might be a stronger host for her. More compatible.
They flinched as if I’d slapped them. Mina looked sick to her stomach.
“And why do you let this dingleberry play at being Dracula when it’s really your job, Mina?” I asked, jerking a chin at Jonathan. “Do you have no dignity? No pride?”
Jonathan stammered furiously, his face turning purple. “This is absurd. Of course I’m the real—”
He cut off as I leveled the shotgun one-handed on his face, not bothering to even make eye-contact with him. If he sneezed, he would headbutt the barrel. “Be silent. The women are talking.”
Mina looked like a fish out of water, opening and closing her mouth wordlessly. She also shook her pet fox anxiously, as if none of us could see her doing it.
I smirked. “Oh, fine. Let’s just get that part out of the way, shall we? False hope is only going to make this conversation drag on longer than it needs to.” I turned to the fox, smiling animatedly. “Wakey, wakey, Sanguina,” I cooed.
The fox lifted her head, yawning in that adorable way that only tiny little Beasts could pull off after a nap. When she opened her eye-sockets, they were just divots of melted chrome, just like I had seen when I’d confronted her in that strange world. Seeing her now all cuddled up and sleepy, I was doubly glad I hadn’t had to physically fight her.
No matter how evil or powerful the fox might be, how could you live with yourself after physically fighting a spitting image of Copper’s best friend, Tod from the Fox and the Hound movie? That story had wrecked me as a child. I knew I wouldn’t have been able to put Tod in a chokehold or anything like that. Let the world burn instead.
Tod was the shit.
Sanguina hopped out of Mina’s arms and obediently trotted over to me, her bushy tail sashaying back and forth before she settled down on her haunches at my feet.
“Good girl,” I murmured. Then I turned back to Mina, who looked ready to make a run for it. “I really wouldn’t, Mina. It would be a shame for Sanguina to get your guts all over her fur or for me to test out my mother’s other boomstick on your deceitful little face.” She flinched, her wide, terrified eyes latching onto mine. “Does Jonathan look like he’s having very much fun right now?” I asked dryly.
“How?” she whispered incredulously. “I’m still bonded to the Beast,” she argued, staring down at the fox. “I can feel it.”
Sanguina panted openly, making it look like she was laughing.
Silly little fox.
“Good point,” I said thoughtfully. I closed my eyes and called up my Silvers vision. Almost immediately, I saw the blood bond connecting Mina to Sanguina—just like I had first seen while questioning Sanguina in that other world.
Without fanfare, I formed my Silvers like a guillotine and sliced through it, severing Mina’s ties to Sanguina. I’d needed it intact up until now, so as not to make the two vampires suspicious and have them flee to god knows where.
Mina choked, gasping audibly. I opened my eyes to see her own eyes bulging as she clawed at her pretty little face—the vampiric powers given to her a hundred years ago suddenly ripped away.
I glanced at Jonathan and gave him a casual shrug. “Give her a minute. Probably hurts like hell. You should take this time to really smell the roses.” He stared at me from over the barrel of my shotgun, his eyes wide and panicked, having no idea how to react to such a drastic change of events. He wasn’t mentally equipped to handle it.
The bully had just gotten popped in the mouth in front of his gang and the rest of the school, and this was the moment of silence where all the other kids stared on as the bully reached a hand to wipe a smear of blood from his lips, and a strange watery substance from his eyes, as he debated whether or not he wanted to have a cry.
And decided that he did, in fact, want to go see his mommy.
Shotguns were great at enunciating things. So educational and informative.
Chapter 32
I waited a few moments for Mina to regain her composure, not sure if she was only minutes away from disintegrating into a pile of ash as the stolen years of her extended life caught up with her. I felt no sympathy for Mina Harker.
She’d used a vampire puppet to try and kill me, first of all.
But Sanguina had also told me—in a calm, clinical recital—the long list of crimes Mina Harker had orchestrated over the years. She was no saint. She may have started out as a victim, but in some ways, she had become more terrible than the original Dracula, because she hadn’t been equipped, hadn’t had the defenses, to handle the corruption. She’d been too innocent by half.
Sanguina had been mistaken to think Mina might be a stronger host. She had been significantly weaker. The only reason she had defeated Dracula in the first place was because she’d had a gang of friends assisting her. Sanguina would have been better off reincarnating the original rather than trying to trade up.
Hindsight.
My real interest was with Jonathan anyway. Speaking with Mina was just to satisfy my own curiosity—and because I felt my mother would have wanted to know the full story.
“I asked you a question,” I reminded her. “I know the outcome, but I want to understand your motivations. Sanguina wasn’t able to share that part. Oh, and with your bond to Sanguina now severed, you’re on borrowed time. Consider this your chance to repent. Soon you’ll be living in a world of demons—lovely individuals like the one you held as a prisoner for a hundred years. I’m sure they will take much better care of you, though,” I said sarcastically. I paused, letting her imagination run wild for a few moments. “But if you give me a clear, unfiltered explanation now, I might be convinced to put in a good word for you. It won’t help much, but it’s better than nothing.”
Mina shuddered, lowering her chin in defeat. I noticed that the tips of her fingers had already turned gray, but I didn’t say anything as she began to speak.
“When we burned the Castle down and killed Dracula, we thought it was all over. But I never actually recov
ered from his bites. During the next full moon, she came to me,” Mina said, glancing briefly at Sanguina. “And she asked me to be her friend. She believed I might be a better…host…than Dracula had been. Realizing I couldn’t escape what he’d done to me, I agreed, hoping that Sanguina could help me manage it without becoming a monster. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t control it. Sanguina taught me the Omegabet, and that only made me worse. Darker. If I had known how it would change me over the years…” she shuddered.
I froze, my blood curdling at mention of the Omegabet. I shot an uncomfortable look at the cute little fox cleaning her paws at my feet—that this cute little fox knew the language of the end.
I’d already assumed the rest of Mina’s explanation, but to hear Sanguina had taught her the Omegabet…
Another thought came to me. When they had killed the original Dracula, the rest of the vampires in the world—like the Weird Sisters—hadn’t died, so the curse was everlasting, not tied to the top vampire.
That was unfortunate—being able to kill all vampires at once would be handy.
I turned to Jonathan, who was still staring down the barrel of my shotgun. “And when you found out Mina had become a vampire like Dracula, your love knew no bounds. You joined her,” I said, grimacing.
He nodded slowly—but only after a quick glance at Mina to silently ask how much he was allowed to say. I permitted it, even though I was the only one making the decisions in this room. He cleared his throat. “Mina didn’t want the attention of becoming the new Dracula, and she thought the fact that she was a woman would only draw the interest of more vampire hunters. Perhaps catch the attention of our old friend Van Helsing since he knew Mina had been bitten. So she decided to let me be the face of Dracula for all of our residents and, as far as the world was concerned, to let them continue thinking that the Harkers had succeeded in killing Dracula and destroying his castle. Good riddance.”
“None of the people living here had any idea that you were the real Dracula?” I asked incredulously. I also wondered how Van Helsing had never learned about this. Nate Temple was apparently friends with the guy, and he was supposed to be a real badass—nothing like Bram Stoker’s novel had depicted him.
Godless: Feathers and Fire Book 7 Page 20