by K. T. Tomb
What had happened to him?
The voices grew louder and now she saw men carrying lanterns. One of them, yes, one of them was even carrying a butterfly net... and scanning the airspace above him. What use was a butterfly net inside of a cave? Could it be possible? Had he caught Andrik using the net and was even now looking for her? But how could such a man know where to look?
Unless, she thought, he wasn’t a man.
The instant her echolocation detected a side tunnel, she took it, banking hard to the right and plunging into an even darker, danker passageway. The voices receded behind her as she continued along the byway. A light ahead intrigued her, and so she continued on, picking up speed, plunging this way and that, avoiding the rocky protrusions that seemed to appear as if out of thin air. Luckily, she possessed the skills and instincts to fly safely through. She did just that, at one point grazing another bat, which she had not seen coming. Thank God the other bat had seen her.
As the light drew closer, she slowed. She considered her options and decided to go for it. She was, after all, a woman of action. Steeling herself for the unexpected, she swooped just under what appeared to be a hand-carved entryway, and circled a high, shadowy ceiling. What she saw below her was almost too amazing to comprehend.
There was Andrik, tied with heavy ropes to a chair bolted to the rock floor.
Andrik?
Here?
She made two more circular passes, staying in the shadows, but Andrik was clearly alone, although, she was certain, she heard the same voices coming down this secondary corridor. The very group she had hoped to bypass had, in turn, followed her into the same tunnel.
She dropped down, and as she began to swoop up again, she transformed into her MI form. A neat skill she had only recently mastered.
“Nora?” he said, blinking. Indeed, he had been in a half daze. She immediately saw why. His face was bloodied. He’d taken a beating, although his vampiric disposition had caused the wounds to already begin healing. “How on earth did you find me?”
“Do you really think I have time to explain?” she said, examining his wounds. Superficial only, although he might have been missing a tooth or two.
“I guess not. Untie me and let’s get out of here.”
Nora tried the knots on his wrists. “Like steel cables. I can’t break them. I need a saw.” She scanned the room for anything that could help her through the ropes.
“You’ll have to chew through the ropes then,” he suggested.
“You mean as the fox or the wolf? I have only mastered the fox.”
“You’re going to have to transform into a rat.”
“No!” she snapped. There had to be another way.
“Nora, you have no choice. We have no choice.”
“I’m not going to transform into a rat.”
“Nora, please. You’re wasting time arguing. I can hear them coming.”
So could she. “Fine. But you’re going to owe me big.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “Maybe let’s discuss that after you free me?”
With a disgusted expression on her face, Nora summoned the image of the rat—the easiest of the mammals to transmorph into; indeed, she had no trouble at all, and soon found her face just inches from the dirt-covered stone floor.
Immediately, she went to work on the thick ropes, but just as she had started, someone rushed into the room, snatched her up by the tail, and held her inches before his face.
“And what do we have here?” he asked, grinning broadly.
Chapter Thirty
After Nora left, Miko lay back down on the hotel room bed where he’d enjoyed so many hours of pure bliss with the most beautiful woman he’d ever lain with. The thought of it, combined with his state of pure ease, put him instantly back to sleep. The remainder of the night passed and most of the following day before he sat up on the bed, stretched and checked the parlor clock on the wall. Dusk was a couple more hours away.
Miko went to the desk by the window, took out pen and paper, and drew out a map of what he had discovered along the supply end of the chain. There was an accumulation of arms and troops, slowly trickling into the towns along the Prout. The movements had been slow, and it was likely that no one would have noticed them.
He wondered if those small groups would actually begin to trickle up the river as well. Maybe a massive, sudden movement of troops rushing across the Dobrudzha wasn’t how the Russians were going to move on Silistra. With small, nearly undetectable movements, they could import arms and munitions within 10 miles of the strong point and then spring their surprise. In order to do that, the cavern the colonel had told him about would have to be large enough to house a decent-sized army.
“I need to go to Lake Bugeac and see for myself,” he muttered.
At dusk, Miko started up the river heading south along the border of Wallachia in the form of an owl. As he flew, he worked on the puzzle, which was finally beginning to take shape. Being able to capture and question the Russian colonel had been an enormous boost. However, there was a part of the colonel’s story that still bothered him. How were the Russians able to work within Ottoman borders? The colonel had said that there was a powerful man at the cache and he was the one who protected it from being discovered by the Ottomans. Who could breach the iron-clad security of the Ottomans and maintain protection against being discovered for an extended period of time? It had to be someone who wouldn’t be suspected; someone who could blend in.
As he flew, his mind drew a blank. He passed through clouds and a light rain. He caught a jet stream and sailed through the heavens like a dark angel. When the answer finally struck him, Miko nearly fell out of the sky. He balanced himself and dipped lower. After all, he was nearing his destination.
He considered the implications. With the two parts drawn together, the complete picture was laid out before him. Unfortunately, it also exposed Olena’s betrayal as well. She had been involved and she had used him. By protecting her, he only made it easier for the ruse to be complete. As a rule, old world MIs and new order MIs didn’t associate together. But Olena, an old world vampire, had drawn him in and kept him blind. She’d often talked about how things were in the past and spoke of how she wished to go back there. At times, her stories had even drawn him into a sleepy Utopian dream of those days of greater glory.
He cursed himself for not having seen it before. The political crisis in the Balkans was not over who would protect Christians in the Holy Land, nor about trade routes and warm water ports; those tactical goals were just the pawns in a much larger game. The real struggle was the old world MIs rising up to restore themselves to their former glory. Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Dobrudzha and Bulgaria together would form the Bulgarian Empire, which had been taken away from them by the Ottomans.
Five hundred years ago.
Though following the river put him in a direct line to Lake Bugeac, Miko detoured to Bucharest. If he was right, they were walking right into a trap; indeed, Nora and Andrik probably already had, and they were going to need some help to escape it.
Unless Miko missed his guess, Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, was back.
***
“I’m sorry,” Nora said, distraught. “If I hadn’t been so silly and argued about turning into a rat, I might have set you free in time and we could have flown out of here.”
“I don’t think that would have made any difference,” Andrik responded. “We’re dealing with something bigger than the two of us can handle. I think they’re everywhere.”
“Who is everywhere?”
“The vampires.”
Andrik had remained tied to the bolted chair, as her nibbling had done little to disturb his bonds. Nora, back in her human form, now lay on her side, hog-tied, her hands bound to her ankles in a most uncomfortable position. She did her best not to show her discomfort. Talking helped her forget the pain in her joints. Worse, the rope was threaded with silver, which removed any chance of turning into a fox or owl... or e
ven a rat.
“You mean, there are more?” she asked. She knew the creature who had snatched her up by her rat tail had been an MI. It was only later, after she had transmorphed and been bound, that Andrik had explained the vampire had been old world.
“There were three of them who took me down,” Andrik responded.
“Are you saying there are more than three, then?”
“I think the bats that we saw coming and going are more than mere bats,” he replied. “I flew in with some of them. They must have recognized me as an outsider and alerted the vampire in charge, who eventually captured me.”
“Why do you suspect they’re old world MIs?”
“I felt his... power. It’s difficult to describe. It sort of emanated from him. Unlike anything I’d felt before. The other two were not quite as powerful, but I felt it from them too. That sort of power only comes from centuries of experience. Nora, if I’m not mistaken, we’re in a lair of many hundreds of them.”
And here she had only a month of experience, and Andrik barely a year. Hundreds of old world vampires? Surely, she and Andrik were doomed. “What do we do?”
“When you were working in Limehouse, you were fairly successful, no?” Andrik asked.
The question had taken her by surprise. She blinked. “No more than others. Where are you going with this, Andrik?”
“One of us needs to escape and go to the nearest telegraph machine to reach out for some help,” he said. “Maybe one of us who is trained in the art of seduction.”
“I wasn’t trained, Andrik. I was paid.”
“Then it is true.”
“What is true?” she asked, growing increasingly annoyed.
“You have no idea just how beautiful and extraordinary you are.”
“Oh, please.”
“Why do you think men have thrown themselves at you? Why do you think men are willing to kill for you?”
“Because they’re desperate horny dogs.”
Andrik chuckled lightly. “True enough. But there is another reason, and that reason is you, Nora.”
***
It had taken some convincing by Andrik to help her to understand that she was something of an exotic beauty. Although she still wasn’t buying what he was selling. Yes, she had heard all her life that she was beautiful... and since when did she ever believe anything that came from the mouths of men... or jealous women, for that matter?
She did not have regular access to mirrors, and she rarely looked at herself. Truth was, she cared little for how she looked. Yes, it had been her experience that men tended to act like idiots in her presence, and many more had become controlling and threatening... but wasn’t that the way of all men with all women?
“No,” Andrik had said. “Not by a long shot. You are not like other women.”
Here she had rolled her eyes, and he had pointed to the example of Edwin Burberry and speculated that her murderous ex-client hadn’t been the only one who had been obsessed with her, suggesting that her appeal had even penetrated through the ice-cold exterior of Alfred Covington.
“Let me remind you, there are no vampire captors presently hanging around our cell. My charms are being wasted on you.”
“Never wasted, and give it a minute,” he said, grinning. “The man in charge will be back, and then you can work your magic.”
“I’m glad you’re confident in that. I have my doubts.”
“Trust me, Nora,” Andrik countered. “Anyone who has been around you for a few seconds and received an eyeful of that coppery hair won’t stay away long.”
She rolled her eyes, still not convinced, but willing to do whatever it took to help them out of this mess. Hell, she’d done far worse for just a little money. To her surprise, only a few minutes had passed before the very man who had grabbed her up by her rat tail stepped through the doorway, eyes fixed on her. Immediately, she saw within them a deep desire for her. But hadn’t she seen the same look in hundreds of men before? She had, of course. But wasn’t it the same look all women in her profession—her previous profession—garnered from men? Didn’t all men act like idiots? Especially when it came to sex?
“I am Vlad,” he said. He merely glanced sideways at Andrik, snarling his distaste for him and then turned his entire focus back on her. The man was short but roped with wiry muscles. He had a long face that seemed oddly familiar to her. Also, he spoke with an accent that she could not place. He bowed slightly. “I have done a great disservice to such an exquisite creature. I have come to ask your forgiveness, Miss…”
“Nora,” she responded, filling in her name for him. And chewed on the name Vlad. Where had she heard it before?
“Ah, Nora, it has music to it, yes?”
She saw his interest and lust, but she also saw something else... something she had often seen in the men who paid for her time and body. She saw the spark of something more. Something, she suspected, that went beyond lust. True, she had seen it and ignored it.
“I am not in a musical mood at the moment,” she countered, fixing a glare on him, deciding to test Andrik’s theory. If they were to escape from this place, she would need to be the one in charge. “This place has a foul odor and the accommodations leave a great deal to be desired.”
“I assure you,” he responded, still smiling, but with a hint of regret in his eyes, “I have come to remedy your current accommodations.”
“I am interested.”
“Then I would like to ask you to join me in my own chambers for a cocktail, if you will. Might I be permitted that small pleasure?”
“I suppose you can have anything you desire as long as you keep my hands and feet bound,” she retorted. “With full freedom, I might be inclined to slap your face.”
“You are a feisty one, aren’t you,” he chuckled.
“You have no idea,” she growled.
Instantly, she recognized the same look in his eyes that she’d seen in Edwin Burberry’s eyes, in Miko’s eyes, in the eyes of dozens of other men. It was the pleasure of an imagined conquest and a type of blindness that, until Andrik had pointed it out a few moments before, she had mostly ignored. Perhaps she could have some control over him, but only if she didn’t give in too easily. Her power was in being untouchable.
“Permit me to loosen your bonds,” he replied.
“That might be a very dangerous thing to do,” she snarled.
He chuckled. “I think I can handle you.” he returned.
He stepped over to her feet, squatted down and took his time with her binds, seemingly, admiring her legs and ankles.
“I suppose you’re just going to take from me what you want and cast me aside then?”
“Actually, I have plans for you, my dear.” He made quick work of the knot, helped her to her feet, then untied her hands. “You see, you haven’t scratched my eyes out yet. Perhaps you’re more bark than you are bite?”
“The night is still young,” she said.
“I hope, for our benefit, that it never ends,” he cooed. “Come, let’s get to know each other better.”
She felt a little guilty leaving Andrik behind. Luckily, she had caught his eye on the way out and he had given her a knowing nod, a nod that said it all: be careful... and get me the hell out of here.
She would try; indeed, their plan was working exactly the way Andrik had said it would—unless, of course, she lost her nerve or gave in too easily. She had used her body to stay alive before, and she would use it again. Plus, she knew the ways of men, did she not? Or so she had been told. Truth was, she knew what made them tick, what turned them on, and what made them obey like a well-trained dog. She’d been doing it her whole adult life, after all. Better, in fact, then she had realized.
Now, as she was being led down the long passageway, what Andrik had said began to make sense. The practice mission she’d been sent to carry out had been a mental exercise to build her confidence more than for exacting any sort of justice on Edwin Burberry. Alfred had taken advantage of the situation
to straighten out a crooked man, but that hadn’t been his ultimate goal.
They came to the end of the stone passageway and a heavy wooden door. Vlad pushed down the handle and waved her in. She swept past him, tempted to use every bit of her training and disarm the man through physical prowess, rather than sexual tension. She refrained, suspecting he was ready for just such a move.
Once inside, she found herself in a surprisingly large, ornate chamber that would make even Her Majesty envious. The old world décor would be beyond priceless, or so Nora suspected. Indeed, every single piece, including the golden goblets, set between golden candelabra on the ornately carved table maintained its original, perfect condition. An obsidian statue of a dragon curled around a lamppost sat just inside the doorway, mouth outstretched, fangs bared.
“Extraordinary,” she gasped. It was partly true and partly a concession to make him believe that he was winning thus far.
“All of these items are from the Bulgarian Empire. Many of them are spoils taken by Simeon the First as he rolled up the Byzantines. They are more than 800 years old. Please, sit.” He drew out one of the chairs in front of the table with the goblets and candelabra on it. As he eased her chair into position under the table, he pushed his nose into her hair and inhaled. His fingers traced along her lower jaw and drew a line down her delicate neck.
“You won’t live to 800 if you keep doing that,” she snapped.
“Pardon me,” he replied, withdrawing from her. “I am quite taken by your brilliant tresses.”
“You are only interested in my hair?” she asked. “Should I be offended?”
