Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Your father was,” she said, in a soft voice. “Romulus isn’t a god – only the son of one. I think you can kill him.” But there was a note of hesitance there.

  “Mother?” he prompted.

  She sighed, and sent him a look that was almost pleading. “I hate him. More than anyone, you know I do. But we know no one like him. No one else with this power.”

  With a lurch, he realized what she was suggesting. “You want to keep him.”

  “Preserve him,” she corrected. “And I don’t want to. But I wonder if his strength” – she gestured to the head Cicero held – “is something we could learn from. You’re only one more generation removed from Mars than him, Vlad. It’s worth trying to figure out the secrets in his blood.”

  “Where has my vengeful, Viking mother gone?”

  “Nowhere,” she said, lifting her chin in a challenge. “But she’s tired of fighting, and she’s grown wiser, in her old age.” Softer: “I’ve lost too much, Vlad. Remus, and Val–” She bit her lip until it turned white. “I understand the violence in you, my son, because it lives in me, too. But I think maybe this is a time when mercy is the wiser choice.”

  “Mercy,” he echoed. That was her name, after all. His merciful mother. “Sometimes death is a mercy.”

  “I agree. Is it one he deserves?”

  He felt his brows go up. “Perhaps a mercy for the rest of us, so we can live without the threat of him.”

  She nodded. “I’ll leave it up to you, then.”

  Vlad looked down at the body again, still but warm, its skin still flush with life. He’d never seen anything like this.

  Was it worth something?

  Worth keeping?

  He searched his heart for some scrap of love. This was his blood relative; his father’s twin. And a figure of legend as well, even among humans.

  But there was no love. Only pragmatism.

  He lifted his head to search out Cicero’s gaze, and found his wolf watching him, unjudging, curious.

  He nodded. “I won’t keep him here.”

  “No,” Eira agreed. “Put him away to sleep. And hide him. Bury him deep.”

  “Yes. Very deep.”

  ~*~

  The stood over the body, still, when a sharp rap sounded at the throne room doors; they creaked open a moment later to admit a guard whose face had gone pale with shock. “You grace,” he gasped, bracing a hand against the heavy wood. “Your uncle brought men with him – only two. The advisors he mentioned.”

  “Yes?” Vlad said, impatient.

  “You should – forgive me, your grace, but you should come see for yourself.”

  Eira stayed with the body, and Fen beside her; Vlad didn’t think he could have moved her with any urging. He, Cicero, and Malik went to see these advisors.

  Two cloaked and hooded men waited in the courtyard, at the foot of the wide stone stairs that led up to the palace’s entryway. They weaved a little on their feet, shoulders tipping to the side, the front, the back. Subtle movements, that might have just been the wind tugging at their clothes – but was not.

  The wind blew their scent into Vlad’s face: vampire. But the faint hint of blood that usually accompanied his own kind was deepened, darkened. A rusty, rancid smell.

  Cicero growled immediately, a low, constant rumble.

  Three palace guards stood in a loose ring around the strange vamps, swords drawn. They darted worried glances toward Vlad, who waved them back.

  He still held his own sword, and brandished it as he approached. “Your master is dead,” he said, bluntly, voice echoing off the stone façade of the palace. “Show your faces. Hand over any weapons you carry.”

  They didn’t move.

  He growled at them. “Show yourselves, or I’ll cut you down where you stand.”

  Slowly, both heads lifted, hoods slipping back a fraction.

  Vlad had seen his uncle’s body do something truly astounding only minutes before, but he wasn’t ready for the sight that greeted him. Two different faces, one dark, and one pale, but the same expression. The same gaze.

  Eyes bright with fever, glassy, unfocused, sunk deep in shadowed sockets, the whites etched with red veins. Mouths half-open, slack, fangs showing. No awareness; no spark of life or intellect.

  Together, they began to growl: a breathy, hissing sound, without the usual depth and threat.

  “What are they?” Malik asked, and his voice shook.

  They moved together, a sudden lunge.

  Vlad cut the first down, and his guards closed in on the other. It batted them away, snatched one’s sword, heedless of the way it cut its hand, its blood running thick and black…like that of something already dead.

  Vlad pulled his sword from the open, sucking wound on the first creature’s neck, and spun to stab the other through the heart. The vampire fell with an ugly, gurgling sound, clawing at his face as he chased it to the ground and drew his dagger, scratching his cheeks and throat with long, ragged nails like claws.

  Cicero drew his falx and took both its arms.

  It screamed, loud, awful, wordless. A sound that held nothing of civilized language.

  “Gods,” Cicero murmured, awed, frightened.

  Vlad cut it open, and cracked the ribcage with his bare hands; black, clotted blood. It stank of putrefaction. The heart, when he ripped it free, was shriveled, blackened, barely beating.

  “It’s dead,” Cicero said. “Isn’t it? It has to be. It…”

  Vlad brought his thumb to his mouth, and flicked his tongue against it, tasting. He spat on the ground, afterward. “Not dead. Turned by my uncle. He sired this thing.”

  Silence a moment, wind snatching merrily at the flags hung above the door.

  And then it hit him.

  Romulus had turned these things; men made not into vampires, but into things without minds or souls. Immortality in exchange for…absence.

  Would this, then, happen to Mehmet?

  And if it did…what of Val?

  He hunted for the answer in his own mind all that night, as they burned the two corpses, but he could see no easy solution. Not now. He had to deal with Romulus first. And then, finally, it would be time to rescue his little brother.

  ~*~

  He left the next day, before dawn. He took Cicero, and Malik, and three trusted native Wallachian soldiers, his best mercenaries. He left Eira behind to sit the throne, her wolves at her sides.

  “When they ask, tell them I’m going to the Holy Land like all the other Crusaders.”

  But he didn’t go there, no. And only his party knew where he eventually lowered his decapitated uncle into a deep hole, and covered him with earth, and stone, and left him to gather moss.

  44

  DOWNFALL

  Decisiveness, Vlad had long since learned, was a trait often called for in kings and princes and sultans, but rarely ever admired. Smallfolk loved a brave leader…but his fellow leaders never did.

  Reckless, vicious, dangerous, without reason – these were the things said about him. Accusations he could see now in the eyes of the man who sat before him; who slowly rose, the silk of his robes of office rustling together.

  “Vlad,” Matthias Hunyadi, now Corvinus, said, tone that which he would use on a wayward child. “You know this isn’t something I wish to do, old friend. But you must see reason.”

  “Reason?” Vlad bristled. “You didn’t care about reason when you were all cowering inside your castles, letting me face Mehmet alone.” He looked at Matthias, and at Stephen, the traitor, standing with hands folded, and brow pinched in disapproval. “I sent the Conqueror running back to his lair to lick his wounds. Not you, not anyone else. You should be toasting me. And here you point lances at me instead.”

  He and Cicero stood alone, surrounded on all sides by Matthias’s men-at-arms, a ring of spear-points hemming them in. This was to have been a celebration, a meeting between friends. Instead, it was an ambush.

  Cicero growled, low and unmistakably lupi
ne. Several of the soldiers gaped, but they didn’t waver, or lower their weapons.

  Vlad put a hand on his arm, and the growl cut off.

  Matthias had noticed it, though, his head cocked to the side. “So the rumors are true, then. Stephen told me” – Stephen ducked his head – “but I didn’t quite believe. What are you, Vlad? What besides a warmonger?”

  “I am the only thing standing between you and something much, much worse than me,” he snarled in answer. When no one responded to this, he said, “Fine. If this is a lecture instead of a feast, I won’t prolong it.”

  He turned to go.

  The spears shifted in, closer, tighter.

  “Vlad,” Matthias said behind him, voice heavy with something like regret. “You’re not leaving. You’re under arrest.”

  ~*~

  A moment’s stirring was all the warning Vlad got before Cicero’s good eye flew open, and he tried to launch himself upright, hands lifting, fingers already trying to shift to wolf claws.

  Vlad was ready, pinning him down by the shoulders, keeping his head in his lap where it had been resting while he was unconscious. “Shh, it’s alright, it’s just me.”

  Cicero’s eye darted wildly another moment, and then finally settled on Vlad’s face, and recognition dawned. He subsided with a gusty sigh. “What happened?”

  “Well, let’s see,” he said, dryly. “You flung yourself in front of me, and tried to attack an entire regiment of guards. Got stabbed. Got hit over the head. They were about to kill you before I surrendered us both. And now here we are, locked in a tower.”

  “What? No!” He lurched upright, swaying, and Vlad had to catch his shoulders to keep him from toppling over. He scanned their surroundings, frantic, panting.

  All told, it was a tower, yes, but a lavish one. The solar where they now sat was furnished with two four-poster beds, a long table and chairs, and a massive fireplace, flames crackling merrily. Wardrobes, and tables loaded with cups and pitchers and jars lined the walls. Fine tapestries, and heavy shutters could be used to seal the windows that now stood open, flooding the chamber with light slatted by the heavy silver bars anchored in the ledges.

  But Cicero twisted around to look at him with horror blooming across his face. “Vlad. Why did you surrender?”

  “Because they were going to kill you.”

  The wolf groaned and looked away. “You should have let them.”

  Vlad had stood, spear-tips pressed all down his back, pricking through his clothes, drawing blood. He could have fought them; could have survived the injury and blood loss. But he would have eventually passed out, and then need to be revived. Would Mother have come when she heard the news? Would she have been able to?

  And in the meantime, Cicero would be dead. And that was unconscionable.

  “No,” he said, and put his hand on Cicero’s shoulder. “I don’t regret it.”

  But he had no idea how they would get out of this place.

  ~*~

  Val couldn’t stop shaking.

  When a soldier took his mare by the bridle, he slid gratefully to the pebbled ground of the palace courtyard, and his knees nearly buckled. A cloudy day, rain rolling in from the west, and it cast his childhood home – the palace at Tîrgovişte – in a sinister light. Her towers and crenels stood proud, casting no shadows, the color of dirty teeth against the gray of the sky. He shivered, and attempted to look princely.

  Three weeks ago, Mehmet had come to Val’s bed in an unusually good mood. Val had paused in the act of unbraiding his hair, and really scrutinized the sultan. “What are you smiling about?”

  Mehmet had climbed up onto the bed, grinning with all his teeth, revealing the one in the back that was beginning to rot. Val had been so busy thinking that vampires shouldn’t have rotten teeth, and wondering what would fail Mehmet next, that he hadn’t heard him at first.

  Mehmet had sighed. “Are you listening? I said you’re going to be a prince.”

  “I already am a prince.” But his pulse had picked up, and worry had blossomed like a flower.

  “A prince with a throne. Your brother’s been deposed.”

  The story went like this: in the aftermath of Mehmet’s unprecedented retreat, the other lords of Eastern Europe had put their heads together and discussed what was to be done with Vlad. Because, fearless though his resistance had been, it had also been reckless. Vlad had killed hundreds of prisoners, those impaled along the roadside, in what had become known as his “forest.” To do such a thing, to execute so many, without a hostage negotiation, without consulting with anyone…smacked, some said, of dishonor. And now, in the wake of his defeat, Mehmet was far less reasonable than he had been, and less willing to allow his vassal states any sort of leeway.

  The choice, as the princes saw it, was simple: make peace with Mehmet, or face invasion and subjugation. What was Vlad’s pride, and Vlad’s throne, worth in the face of impending destruction?

  It was Matthias Corvinus, old John Hunyadi’s son, who’d invited Vlad to his castle, and sprung a trap upon him. But Stephen the Great had helped. All of Vlad’s allies had agreed to this imprisonment, and so now Vlad was shut up in a tower, like a princess in a children’s story.

  And Val was to be Prince of Wallachia in his stead. Mehmet’s faithful puppet.

  According to Corvinus, who’d already arranged a journey to Tîrgovişte to congratulate Val on his ascension, he held only two prisoners: Vlad, and his faithful servant, the one-eyed man named Cicero. Val found some comfort in knowing that his brother had his bonded wolf by his side. But it begged the question: where had Mother, and Fen, and Helga gone?

  Were they here, still?

  “Gather up the household,” Val said when the steward greeted him in the throne room. “I wish to inspect them, and introduce myself.”

  “At once, your grace.” The man spoke politely, and hurried to do as bid, but Val didn’t miss the contempt in his gaze. Val might be Vlad’s little brother, and a true Wallachian, but he had a reputation as a sultan’s bedwarmer. Vlad was the hero who’d turned away Mehmet, and Val was his pet.

  He would find no love here. Unless Mother…

  But he wouldn’t hope.

  A servant brought him a cup of wine, which he thanked him kindly for, trying to be warm, smiling; not that it mattered – the boy scurried away again. Val sighed, and took a sip, and contemplated his father’s, and most recently, brother’s throne.

  It was spare, straight-backed. Just a heavy chair, really, with a bit of gold embellishment at the edges. The seat itself was dark in the center, from the rubbing of backsides, a shallow little depression worn into the wood.

  He didn’t want to sit there. Not for anything.

  “Your grace?” The steward was back with the household.

  Val turned to inspect them. Cooks, maids, household guards, runners and page boys. But not his mother nor her wolves.

  The loss of them hit him like a blow. But he drew himself upright, pasted on a smile, and gave them his best, most solicitous welcome speech, thanking them in advance for their loyal service and hard work, sparing some words for Father and Vlad, offering condolences for the loss of previous masters.

  One of the cooks took one of the runner boys by the shoulder – her son, no doubt – and pulled him close to her skirt. Away from their new prince, most notorious for lying with a man.

  Val dismissed them with a barely held-together smile, and then dismissed the steward, who looked concerned to see him striding for the stairwell unattended. Let him be concerned; this was his palace now.

  He breathed deep, and caught the faint flickers of scent on his way up. A place where Vlad had pressed his hand, here; a corner where Cicero’s cloak had brushed, there. He detected Eira, and Helga, and Fenrir. But they were old scents, little more than memories.

  He went to her bedchamber, anyway, the one with the prime view of the gardens. The bed was there, neatly made, its drapes tied back to the posts. But any signs of habitation were gone.
Her jewelry box, her hairbrush, and bottles of imported scent; the wardrobe stood empty.

  His heart sank.

  The windows were open, letting in a fresh breeze, and the light falling through caught on something on the desk, small and bright. Val crossed the chamber slowly, and when he reached for the thing, his heart didn’t sink, but clench, tight and painful. It was his bell. Small, unremarkable, and dented, threaded onto a silver chain. Warm from the sun, he imagined it had been in her hand; that she’d placed it in his palm and folded his fingers around it, like she had when he was a boy.

  He put the chain around his neck, dropped the bell down beneath his shirt, and left the room. Nothing waited for him here.

  ~*~

  Val feasted Matthias Corvinus and his men in the throne room when they came.

  John Hunyadi’s son was a handsome man, with thick, glossy dark hair that fell to his shoulders, gently curling, a proud nose, strong jaw, and an easy, straight smile. He embraced Val like a brother, kissed him on both cheeks, and waved forward a pair of servants bearing a long, narrow box. Matthias flipped back the lid and revealed a blade, simple by design, strong, beautifully crafted. An efficient, high-quality weapon. A warrior’s weapon.

  “For you,” he said. “As a gesture of goodwill, and our new alliance.”

  Val took it slowly from its bed of velvet, surprised by the heft of it. He lifted it toward the light of the flickering chandeliers, peering down the length of it, and finding it perfectly straight.

  “I thank you for the gift,” he said, trying for awe, afraid he sounded as jaded as he felt. Gifts were never given freely.

  Matthias beamed. “A sword needs a name. What shall you call her?”

  He felt the tiny weight of the bell, resting against his breastbone. Thought of Mama, and her sweet smiles, and her sharp sword.

  “I think…I think I shall call it Mercy.”

  ~*~

  After the meal, Matthias wished to talk privately of alliances, so they repaired to the study.