Prince of the Damned

by Ana Calin

  It crosses my mind that Michael might really have felt attracted to me at the apartment in Sector 5, if Geneva is any standard. She has huge boobs and a big butt, I can tell even though she’s sitting. The shiny black dress hugs her body perfectly. The two girls on each side of her are long and skinny, though, like models, but I guess that was her preference, not Michael’s.

  The bleached-grin guy pushes Irina forward, ogling her with drool at his mouth.

  “I could give you a show with this one first,” he says, then he glances at me over his shoulder. “The other one can—”

  “I’m sure Mrs Basarab isn’t here to be entertained sexually,” Michael says, jumping down from the hearth gracefully, like a panther. He walks over, smiling down at me.

  “I’m pretty sure she is here for business.” He reaches under my chin. “Or is it because you want to finish what we started a few nights ago?”

  He bends close to my face. I’m aware of Irina’s staring, and I’m aware of Geneva Daniel’s interested gaze on us. The bastard with the bleached grin is watching, too, and I can sense he’s excited about a live sex show.

  “Have you thought about me while you were doing him?” Michael asks in my ear. I get the goose bumps, and a lump forms in my throat. This feels so sick.

  “No, to be honest.” I see the disappointment crossing his eyes. “I’m afraid I didn’t want you that way when we first met, and much less now, that I’ve seen your face.”

  “Am I such an unpleasant sight?”

  “Of course not.” My tone is actually nicer than I intended it to be. I feel kinship with him and, honestly, I feel bad for him that he feels attracted to me. “Just, I can’t be interested in you that way, I’m sorry.”

  Sadness washes over me as I stare into his face, knowing this young man has to die tonight, otherwise Gruia won’t free Vlad of the rabies. Or, even if we do find some way to free Vlad, the rest of the rabid vampires will either die of starvation, or maybe Gruia will turn Bucharest into a city The Walking Dead. It becomes clearer by the second—Michael the Devil’s Son won’t get out of this alive. If he does, it means that Vlad is lost. One of them must die. Unless...

  “No,” Michael calls, as if he just read the solution in my mind. He grabs my shoulder roughly, waves of strange energy washing all through my body. The world tilts, and I hit the ground as it turns upside down.

  Vertigo and nausea take over me, and a harsh wind sweeps over my face, throwing off my mask and messing up my hair.

  When I lift my head I find myself on what looks like an adobe floor, gazing outside through a chapped doorframe.

  I come back to my feet with difficulty. This seems to be the same hut, I mean it has the same shape and even the same furniture, but it all seems much older, original, as if I’ve really been transported to a different time.

  But soon I realize that Michael’s touch hasn’t sent me to a different time, it sent me to a different place—the mirror dimension, the flipside.

  The understanding comes with despair. I run out of the hut onto the porch, my hands gripping the chapped wooden banister. This hut being located on a light slope, I can overlook the rest of the Village Museum, and my breath stops.

  The place seems even more authentic on the flipside, as if I’ve travelled in time, to an abandoned village from hundreds of years ago.

  What the hell am I going to do now? Michael has thrown me here like in a prison. I can’t come out, and there’s no way I can get dad here to help me. No one knows I’m here, damn it, except maybe Irina, who’s—Fuck! She’s alone with Michael and Geneva!

  I run off the porch and throw myself onto the beaten path of earth that snakes in front of the hut, leading to the rest of the village. I don’t care if I have to get out of the Village Museum and search Bucharest on foot until I find someone or something that can help me. There were magic items on the flipside of Bran that assisted me two and a half years ago. Bucharest must be full of them, not to mention I read there must also be supernaturals that dwell only on the flipside.

  I run through the wind towards the exit, the gates standing open and abandoned at the end of the beaten path. My brain seems to slow down, looking for solutions. Bucharest is a city of endless possibilities in terms of occult and mysticism, it has a rich history in this sense. I’ve even heard there’s a secret tunnel that links the flipside of Bucharest with the flipside of London and Paris, which is why these three cities have a similar undercurrent of gothic mystique.

  They also form a mystic triangle, known among the newer supernaturals as the Bermuda Triangle of the Hidden World. I’ve discovered all this in Magda’s old bookstore, as well as in the occult libraries of London in the past two years. The depths of the Hidden World surpass human imagination, it opens an entire universe of knowledge that makes sense of the world.

  All in all, Bucharest must be a trove full of occult treasure, and I have to find something in this trove that will help me flip reality again to the side where I’m needed.

  But as I approach the gates something in the distance catches my attention. I slow down, narrowing my eyes on what looks like floating fabric, veils.

  Transparent veils, like those of a faerie, rays spreading in all directions and rippling high into the air. I didn’t see them from the hut because they seem transparent, mingling with the air and the wind.

  I think I make out the head of a woman in the centre of these rays, like the body of a butterfly between its wings. I hope she’s one of the mystical creatures I read of that dwell on the flipside of Bucharest, but something about her warns me to be careful.

  I tip toe hurriedly from hut to hut, peeking from behind them at her. When I’m close enough, my jaw drops.

  The veils that float up from her body hold a kind of bubble with the hologram of a man inside. I recognize the shape of Gruia in priestly clothes, just the way he presented himself at the graveyard.

  I get a better look at the woman’s face, my heart jolting when I recognize her. It’s Victoria, projecting Gruia onto the other side of reality.

  Lord Dracula

  A SHADOW APPEARS IN the distance, walking leisurely toward us. I activate night vision, sending more blood to my irises, my pupils constricting and sharpening, like the eyes of a cat. Rux loves my eyes in this shape.

  A knife cuts through my heart as I think of her—she’ll hate me for having confined her to her room at the hotel, but I’ll take that anytime over the anguish of having her exposed to this kind of danger. There’s too much of it that I have to face, and having her around would only be a distraction. I have to face Gruia and the Devil’s Son at the same time, not to mention that hell knows where Victoria could be, prepared to attack under some stone, like a viper.

  The shadow finally emerges from between the rows of trees, his face now becoming clearer. Dogs howl in the distance as my eyes rest on a mask that covers half his face from forehead to his nose. I narrow my eyes. I can only see his nose, lips, and chin, but he seems familiar.

  “You called my name,” he says, half relaxed, half sarcastic, as if he expected this. Hell, as if he actually planned it.

  I just stare at him, deciding how to do this. I’d prefer that he attacked me first, so I have a reason to go savage on him. Ever since I fell in love Rux I’ve had difficulty being brutal without good reason. But the Devil’s Son doesn’t attack, he just stands there, waiting for me to make the first move.

  “No better time than the present,” Gruia nudges me. The Devil’s Son’s eyes snap to him from behind the holes of his mask, his shoulders squaring as if he only acknowledged the ugly bastard’s presence now.

  “You are not alone, I see,” he says to me. “You must take me for an especially powerful opponent to have brought back up. I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Obviously, he’s been so focused on me, that he didn’t notice there was someone else hidden in the shadows. Seeming a dark hologram, Gruia can easily elude the eye. But right now he’s shimmering with anticipation, lick
ing his chapped lips, his eyes greedy for what’s going to happen. Something moves like snakes under his sleeves, which means he must be rubbing his wrists in expectation.

  I can’t help but wonder again—why does Gruia really want the Devil’s Son dead? How can he possibly benefit from that? Can’t be a secret command of the Serpent Lord. The Serpent Lord surely doesn’t want this guy’s dead body so he can research the chemistry of his superpowers, and use them for himself, because the Devil’s Son has been his right hand for many centuries. The Serpent Lord raised him as his own child. Had he wanted this poor devil dead, he would have killed him a long time ago.

  “So it’s true,” the Devil’s Son says to me after he’s thought a bit, eyes locked on Gruia. “You have been enslaved by a lesser vampire.”

  “I have,” I reply calmly. After six hundred years on Earth, I’m not easily provoked by smart talk. “He sent a rabid vampire to attack my wife, I bit the guy, got infected with the rabies. In order to free myself and the others from the poison, I have to give him your head.”

  Gruia’s eyes snap to me. I grin at him.

  “I don’t see why I should hide the truth,” I tell him. “If I am to finish the man, I might as well tell him why. It’s the least I can do.”

  “How noble of you,” the Devil’s Son mocks. “Then maybe I should respond in kind, and show the same sort of honesty in return.”

  He removes his mask, revealing his face fully to my eyes. My breath stops.

  “Michael,” I whisper, stricken. This can’t be real, this can’t be actually happening.

  Gruia bursts into laughter, and I understand fully why he wanted me to kill Michael, the Devil’s Son.

  “Your wife’s blood made you indestructible, Lord Dracula,” he explains unnecessarily. “Victoria, the Old Priest and I had been searching for a way to kill you for a long time, and it always turned out there was none. You had one single weakness, and that was your wife, but there weren’t many ways we could use that. Then the Old Priest came with the idea—” Though I’m not looking at him, my eyes locked on Michael, I know that he’s staring at the beautiful boy, too. “Your son. We’d force you to kill your own son, and you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself afterwards. That was the plan, and here we are. After this, you will find the way to kill yourself.” He laughs hard, louder, wilder, viler.

  My heart crumbles to pieces. My son. Gift of my second wife. I never expected that I could even get a woman pregnant back then. Vampires are immortal, so we have no need to reproduce. But when praying didn’t work, she turned to the gypsies for magic potions in order to become with child. Those potions and her faith got her this beautiful boy, only that the poor little creature came with a curse—he was half vampire, like me.

  I think I loved Michael. At least the way my heart soars right now tells me that I did. That I still do. But he was small, and vulnerable, and he depended on his mother completely. She took from him the emotional nourishment she couldn’t get from me, and I can’t even blame her for it. I was away all the time, and emotionally unavailable because of what had happened with Ruxandra. So she made of the boy a shield for her heart. Michael pretty much hated me from the first months of his life.

  I must say, he turned out to be very much like me despite the absence of my influence in his upbringing. When he grew up and went to war, making a career as an exquisite soldier, people started to call him Michael the Bad.

  We stare into each other’s eyes as Gruia laughs and laughs.

  “The Devil’s Son, Lord Dracula,” the bastard says, satisfaction filling his gruff, grisly voice. “The title should have actually made it obvious to you from the start—Vlad Dracula means Vlad the Devil. Michael is the Devil’s Son.”

  How literal.

  My heart somersaults. I look deep into the boy’s green eyes, his mother’s eyes. The painter that captured her likeness centuries ago was greatly talented, there’s a picture of her on the wall of the ballroom at Bran, so I kept seeing that green gaze. Rux used to stare at her for long moments before our wedding, asking me how come I never fell in love with such a woman. She thought those eyes could get any man to lose his mind, but I was already bound to her bloodline, ever since Ruxandra, my first wife, and Rux’s ancestor. I couldn’t fall in love with anyone else, no matter how beautiful or how striking.

  Michael takes a few steps toward me, opening his arms. He seems neutral, disinterested, relaxed, but I understand that is his form of spite. Hell, we haven’t seen each other since he was a small boy, I’m sure he must hate me.

  “Do what you have to do, Father.” His voice sounds so much like mine that my heart twists. “Or try to do it. But expect that I will fight back.”

  “Have you brought weapons?” Gruia inquires eagerly, licking his lips.

  Michael only glances at him with disdain. “Of course.”

  But he stands there in his black fitted suit that accents his athletic frame, his arms open, inviting me to attack. I don’t see signs of weapons, but they could be anywhere, under his shirt, his sidearm, or he could have daggers strapped to his calves under his slacks.

  “What kind of weapons could you even try to use against me, my son,” I whisper, not taking my eyes off of him. “I’ve become immune to silver and sunlight, there’s no metal that can cut me. There’s no wound that my body won’t heal, no element of nature that has anything on me anymore. But you can wound my heart.”

  “Yes. I could drive a stake through it,” he provokes.

  “You could probably kill a lesser vampire with a stake, but not me.” I’d usually throw this with contempt in the face of an opponent, but this is my son.

  “I have a special kind of stake, and it’s not material,” he says with an impish grin that sends a flash of him as a boy slicing through my brain. He was chasing other boys with a toy sword made of wood around the well in the inner courtyard at Bran. Always in the evening, because he was sensitive to sunlight. Still, he never attacked humans, he could act as one of them, even play with them.

  “My son, don’t do this,” I plead, surrender in my voice. I don’t want to fight my own son, this is sick. But Gruia cuts in with a scornful snort.

  “Son or not, Lord Dracula, I must remind you that his death—his decapitation to be exact—is the price for your freedom.” There’s so much evil and poison in the way he stresses those words that it fills me with hate and rage.

  I whip out the silver dagger from my side arm, and slice through his hologram image in a flash. But when the blade cuts through the hologram he laughs even harder, dismissing my red fury.

  Seems that Providence has been set on giving me more lessons these past few years than it has over six centuries. First Rux, now this. I would do anything for a solution, for a way to kill this bastard, Gruia, if only for the harm he wishes my child. This feeling that clenches around my heart like an anaconda, squeezing the blood out of it, it’s more than I can take.

  “That little wifey of yours,” Michael says, provoking me further. “She’s a little slut, isn’t she? Nothing like my mother, a noble lady with a noble soul who truly loved you.” He raises his chin, spiting me. “You saw with your own eyes how she offered that plump whore’s mouth to me. Hadn’t you walked in and knocked into us, she would have betrayed you.” He grins widely at the pain in my face. Though I know this story of Rux’s betrayal isn’t true, it still hurts like hell to imagine it.

  “Just one kiss, and my dark demonic power would have infiltrated her brain, changing her chemistry and releasing the right chemicals to make her fall in love with me like a whore on crack. She would have done anything I told her to.”

  I shake my head, sad that he should think he can manipulate me with this. “You don’t understand the nature of the relationship Rux and I have. There is no demon charm, and no chemistry that can change what she feels for me, and I for her.

  “I wanted to love your mother, Michael, I swear I did. But, from the very start, from my nineteenth year of life, I was bound t
o Ruxandra’s bloodline. I was destined to love Dracula’s Grail, and no woman could change that. Though I know I’ve made mistakes, and won’t deny any of them.”

  But Michael doesn’t care. He’s bursting with hurt and hatred, and he’s not even trying to mask it.

  “You will fight me, Vlad Dracula,” he grunts, hostility in his green eyes. “I’ve been waiting for this for far too long.” He glances at Gruia. “I didn’t visualize an ugly hologram in the picture but, to tell you the truth, I don’t fucking care.” His knuckles begin protruding, his fingernails transforming into claws. He’s turning into the same kind of monster as me.

  “The Serpent Lord kept telling me the time hadn’t come, it was never the right moment. But now you have come looking for me, you found a way for us to face each other.” He grins with so much satisfaction, licking his elongating, shiny fangs, that I know he’s been dreaming of this for a long time.

  “Michael, please don’t.”

  “If I don’t, you won’t either. But you will fight me in the end, Vlad Dracula, I promise you. If you don’t, your wife will die.”

  “Please, just leave Rux out of this. Kill me, but don’t go after her, it’s the only thing I ask.” I’m determined to let him kill me. I won’t fight my own son, my heart bleeds just from thinking of it.

  I stand in place, feet planted apart, waiting for him to hit me with whatever weapon he has ready. I expect the process to be long and painful, because I am invincible. Years ago, when I craved indestructibility, I would have never imagined there would come a time when I’d give anything just to be vulnerable again.

  “You seem tranquil, more or less,” Michael says with narrowing eyes when I fail to transform into a monster and fight him. “Probably because you think your slutty wife is safe at the hotel. But guess what. She came to finish what we started back at the apartment. She came for the kiss.”