There was a collective intake of breath around her. A stiffening of posture.
Her father frowned. “Mia, we can’t–”
“He came to see me. For weeks. Don’t try to pretend that wasn’t real. And that’s why I’m really here, isn’t it? It’s not about a cure; it’s about me consorting with your prisoner.”
The frown deepened into an outright scowl. “Prince Valerian is most dangerous. He’s manipulative, and ruthless.”
“Right, right.”
Dad started to respond, face a pinched red mess –
And a low, accented voice said, “Is this the girl my brother’s been talking to?”
A hard chill skittered up Mia’s spine.
She turned, already knowing who it was – Vlad, the name echoed like a death knell in the back of her mind. She envisioned him as a boy, sullen and sallow, like Val had shown her…
But the figure striding into the room was a man. Long, dark hair streaming down over broad shoulders. Contoured with sleek muscle; his clothes clung to him.
The cool, unknowable light in his eyes made her want to take a step back. He didn’t glare, didn’t snarl. He stared.
He looked nothing like his beautiful brother.
Dad’s expression went through a series of quick changes that would have been comical in another moment, among other company. “Ah, your grace, excellent timing, as always. My daughter’s just arrived. This is Mia.
“And Mia.” He sighed. “I’m sure you already know who this is. Vlad Dracula of Wallachia. Prince.” He said the last crisply. Be polite, that word meant. Don’t embarrass me in front of royalty.
She said, “Hello, Vlad.”
He didn’t respond. Just stared. Studied her, she realized, from the crown of her head to the toes of her paddock boots. His expression never changed.
She shivered again.
“Dinner should be ready soon,” Dad said, catching her attention, and she couldn’t believe this. How was it happening? How could he think that she would want to sit and have dinner with him when–
“Dr. Talbot,” Annabel interrupted smoothly. “I was thinking Mia might like to freshen up. Change her clothes, maybe, if she wants. I was going to take her up to her room before dinner.” She was smiling, and very polite, but it was a statement and not a request.
“Oh,” Dad said. “Oh, um, yes. Of course. That’s fine. Do you–”
“I know which room.” Annabel looped her arm through Mia’s. “Come on up.”
Dazed, Mia followed.
It was a wide, ornate staircase; the risers had been sized for a man’s stride, and Mia felt a little dizzy by the time they were halfway up. They hit a landing, one that fed forks off to the left and right.
Annabel towed her to the left and whispered, “I’m guessing you didn’t bring a bag with you?”
Anger flared again. “No.” She looked down at her dusty barn outfit of breeches and t-shirt; she’d polished her boots not long ago, but they looked obscenely dirty against the crushed red velvet carpet runner.
“Don’t worry.” Annabel patted the back of her hand in a gesture at once familiar and out of place. It was a grandmotherly gesture; no one in this generation did that sort of thing. “We’ll find you something.”
The top of their climb found them along a gallery with a spectacular view of both the ceiling and the floor far below. And a series of narrow, wood-paneled hallways that Annabel navigated with ease. An outfit of spare workout gear was located in a closet, and then Mia was led to “her” room.
She had to pause in the doorway and take it all in.
There was a theme, and that was burgundy. Heavy velvet drapes, and an elaborate counterpane with matching pillows. Burgundy woven into the rich weave of the rugs, and patterned into soft florals in the wallpaper.
The bed was a monstrous, heavy four-poster thing, with drapes held back by golden cords. Angels were carved into the headboard, the legs, angels reflected in the overwrought lines of the matching dressing table and dresser. Through a half-open door, she caught a glimpse of an adjoining bathroom with a claw-foot tub.
“This is…”
“Yeah.” Annabel urged her to the side with a little shooing motion and shut the door. “The man who commissioned this place had very rich tastes. I’m not sure if this is the original stuff, and they just cleaned it up, or if someone spent a shit-ton of money on eBay trying to find furniture out of some old mansion basement somewhere.”
Mia turned to look at the girl beside her, and knew her face was full of questions.
Annabel’s smile was wry. “It’s crazy, I know.”
Mia could tell she wasn’t just talking about the décor. She set the borrowed clothes aside on the dressing table and sat down on its matching stool. “What’s going on here?” An emptiness seemed to swell in the pit of her stomach, a vacuum that was an act of self-preservation, a place to put all the panic, and doubt, and hurt where it couldn’t mess with her head.
Annabel held up a finger, tilted her head. Listening. She sniffed the air, nostrils flaring delicately. Then she nodded and went to sit cross-legged on the end of the bed. She held onto her ankles, young and comfortable in her own skin.
But something…something was just a little bit off about her. Nothing wrong, nothing threatening. Something other, though.
But Mia wasn’t afraid.
Annabel said, “Did Val tell you what he was?”
“A vampire? Yeah.”
“Do you believe him?”
A loaded question. A heavy gaze leveled at her.
What sort of person admitted to believing such a thing? But she did believe. “Yes.”
Annabel studied her a moment, eerily similar to Vlad in that respect. Then she nodded. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “My husband Fulk is the Baron Strange of Blackmere. He’s a British lord, he’s seven-hundred-and-fifty years old, and he’s a werewolf. So am I.”
Her back was sore and tired from the long flight; she needed to eat; her head spun lazily, a constant dizziness that left her imagining her tumor creeping slowly larger and larger as the minutes ticked past. But she sat up ramrod straight. She was in love with a vampire who could visit her in the form of smoke. And the girl sitting opposite was a werewolf. And she wanted to understand.
“Tell me,” she said, and Annabel did.
She told her in blunt, Southern-accented tones about the Institute, about what it was doing here, and about why it wanted to use her husband’s manor house. About the Romanian vampire brothers her father had been using to conduct experiments on humans like Major Treadwell and Sergeant Ramirez. About meeting Val – “your Val,” she said, smile going soft and affectionate – in the subbasement that was really a dungeon. About taking him a cat that he named Poppy, and Frappuccinos, and giving him someone to talk to. About, briefly, the ways that wolves and vampires had enjoyed symbiotic relationships throughout history, since the founders of Rome had washed up on a reed-choked riverbank and been nursed by a she-wolf.
It was so much. All of it. So much.
But she believed it, somehow. “He’s not evil,” she said, quietly.
Annabel smiled. “No, I don’t think he is, either.” She sat forward. “And this is interesting. Since Vlad woke up, we’ve all assumed he hated his brother. Because, well.” She shrugged. “I mean, look at the guy. But something’s going on. He brought Val up out of the dungeon today. He gave him a bath.”
Mia’s pulse kicked at her ribs, high and fast in her temples. “He did?” She kept seeing Val in her mind’s eye as he’d last appeared to her, in tattered clothes, his hair in greasy clumps, gaunt and filthy. He’d been so neglected for so long… “Does that mean–”
“I don’t know.” Excitement sparked in Annabel’s eyes. “But I think it might. Mia.” And here she grew serious. “You’re not the only guest coming to dinner tonight. There’s someone else.” She bit her lip and looked even younger, uncertain for the first time in the past few minutes.
“Who? Frankenstein’s mons
ter?” Mia tried to joke. It fell flat.
“I wish,” Annabel said, without a trace of a smile. “It’s an old acquaintance of my husband. A mage named Liam. They used to work together, bound to serve the same master.”
Mia frowned. She was still struggling to understand the whole vampire-mage-wolf thing that Annabel had explained. “Is Dad just collecting people with supernatural powers?”
“More or less. Liam is–” She shuddered. “Look, I don’t want to tell you anything about your dad that will make you even angrier with him…” But her face said that she was dying to tell someone this and be understood. Almost pleading.
Mia had a horrible realization. Val wasn’t the only prisoner here.
“You and your husband aren’t hospitable hosts, are you?”
Annabel hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “No. Fulk keeps telling me to leave, to sneak out on my own – he’s the one they really want. He woke Vlad up, and they don’t know how many other of the Old Guard they might be able to discover and need awakened.”
“So Val was right. Vlad really was sleeping?”
Annabel nodded. “Checks and balances. It takes a mage to turn a wolf, and a wolf to wake a vampire. Keeps things evened out.” She sighed and glanced toward the closed bedroom door. “Vlad says there’s a war coming. Someone – we don’t know who – is trying to wake his uncle up. There’s some old, dark magic that’s been popping up in the Middle East. Romulus’s magic. Turnings gone bad. People that aren’t people anymore.
“Mia, your dad is trying to put together a superhuman army to put down that threat. That’s not a bad thing. But. The way he’s doing it…Liam has kids. Young ones. Ones who were born from surrogates and raised like lab experiments.”
“Are you serious?” She felt faint, and it wasn’t because of the tumor.
“I met one of them. A girl.” She shook her head. “She got away, though, so now we’re back to square one.”
“And now the father – this Liam – is coming.”
“Vlad needs a mage. Or, your dad thinks so, anyway. He wants to do it very traditionally. I think he thinks there’s some magic in that.”
Mia slumped down on the stool and tried to wrap her head around all of this. She couldn’t.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you love him?”
Mia lifted her head in surprise. “What?”
Annabel’s expression had gone soft. “Val. You’re in love with him, right?”
Mia sighed. “Against probably anyone’s advice. Yeah.” She shrugged, but this was something of which she was sure. On the flight over, she’d wondered if that kind of panic would set in – a crisis of heart and soul. Did she really love him? Or was that just a convenient fancy for a sick, lonely girl? But no. Her conviction hadn’t wavered. It was the only part of this nightmare she didn’t even have to think about.
Annabel smiled. “Good. I just wanted to make sure.”
She sent the other woman a questioning glance.
Annabel held up her index finger. “I like Val. He tries to be this smarmy bad boy prince type, but he’s a sweetheart. He’s had a shit life, and he needs more people to love him. And.” A second finger. “In my experience, knowing where your heart lies makes this sort of thing easier.”
“This sort of thing?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but something is about to go off. Get ready.”
Mia took a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay.”
48
DINNER
When Annabel left her alone, she went to explore the decadent bathroom. It was all sparkling and new, designed after historically lavish bathing rooms from a century ago. Someone – Annabel? Dad? – had laid out everything she could need on the marble countertop: lavender-scented soap, shampoo, a hairbrush and toothbrush, hair ties, disposable women’s razors, and a stack of fluffy towels. A basket offered moisturizers and lip balm.
“It’s like a hotel,” she murmured, quietly horrified. And then she noticed the terrycloth robe hung up on the back of the door.
Someone wanted her to be comfortable. To feel welcome.
That was how hostages grew content with their situation, she thought.
But for the moment, she would take advantage of the hospitality. She took her time showering, and then blew out her hair with the dryer she found under the sink. She lingered in front of the mirror a moment, smoothing a fingertip along one freshly-moisturized cheek.
She looked tired – that was unavoidable. But she didn’t think she looked sick…did she? Her skin was clear, bridge of her nose dusted with a few pale freckles from the sun. She had lines branching out from the corners of her eyes, faint, but present; souvenirs from too many horse show days in the blazing sun.
She wondered what Val thought of her. What he’d think of her in person, close enough to touch. That sort of thing had never mattered to her before, but now, stomach sinking, she realized that it did. A little, anyway. He was beautiful, and she loved him, and she wanted him to think she was beautiful too.
She turned away from her reflection with a sigh and pulled on the borrowed clothes.
Annabel came to collect her for dinner a few minutes later. “I’m sorry in advance,” she said as they headed for the grand staircase. “This is going to be awkward.”
Downstairs, scientists in sneakers and white lab coats still moved about, but the candles in the heavy standing candelabras had been lit; the juxtaposition of modern science and historic grandeur was jarring.
“I can’t get over this place,” she murmured.
Annabel said, “Just wait.” And then they reached the dining room.
As she had in the bedroom, Mia felt herself grinding to a halt.
Three crystal chandeliers hung suspended over a table that could have comfortably seated the entire court of a small nation. Light reflected off its polished surface – and the wealth of white china, cut crystal, and gleaming silver of flatware. Candles flickered on silver sticks. White roses floated in big glass bowls. A tablescape fit for a king.
Or…a prince. The Prince of Wallachia, who stood at the head of the table, hand resting on the back of an ornate, carved chair.
Mia took a deep breath and continued into the room.
Vlad wasn’t the only occupant. Her father was there, and a forgettable man in a suit. And a man whose eyes went straight to Annabel – her husband, Mia figured.
He was worth a second look. Tall and lean, pale, his face all sharp lines and bright blue eyes. Regal, like Val, but harsher, more withdrawn. He wore his hair in a thick black braid that hung over one shoulder and reached nearly the center of his chest. His clothes, she noted, red leather and black cotton, belonged on a mannequin at Hot Topic. He pulled it off, though.
Annabel leaned in to whisper, “That’s Fulk.” The warmth in her tone left no question as to their relationship.
“He’s hot,” Mia whispered back, and felt herself smile for the first time in hours.
Annabel smothered a giggle with her hand.
“You’re here, wonderful,” Dad said, and Mia felt her smile drop away. “Here, Mia.” He pulled out a chair for her. “You can sit–”
“She will sit by me,” Vlad said.
Mia hadn’t realized there was noise in the room: side conversations, the movement of staff as they rolled in carts loaded with food, a bartender preparing drinks at a sideboard. But everything went dead silent after Vlad spoke. Everyone froze. Everyone stared.
“I…” Dad started, and trailed off.
Solemn and deliberate, Vlad stepped around the corner of the table and pulled out the chair beside his own. He waited behind it, expectant, hands on its carved back.
For a moment, she was terrified. She’d read just enough about Vlad Tepes online to know that she should be frightened of him. The rumors, passed down from Italian monks, and other leaders of the time, like Matthias Corvinus, linked him with everything from baby e
ating to by-proxy rape. The sight of him in the flesh only furthered that impression.
But she took a deep breath and recalled the image Val had shown her, of Vlad as a boy, with dark circles under his eyes and copper highlights in his sun-bronzed hair. Whatever else he was, Vlad was Val’s brother, and for that link alone, she owed him the benefit of the doubt. At least a little.
“Alright,” she said, and moved to take the seat he’d offered. When she was settled, he scooted her in so she could reach the table, and only when he stepped back and took his own chair did she finally exhale.
She thought that was when everyone exhaled, because then there was a flurry of movement. The staff resumed passing out drinks and wheeling in trays. Dad sat down beside her. Fulk took the chair opposite her, on Vlad’s other side, Annabel next to him.
A waiter put a brimming glass of white wine down in front of Mia and she reached for it immediately, only spilling a few drops over the rim as her hand shook.
“You’ve met the baroness, and His Grace Vlad Tepes. Mia, this is the Baron Strange of Blackmere,” Dad said, because in the midst of this insanity, he thought formal introductions were important. “He owns this lovely house.”
She met the baron’s – Fulk’s – stare over the top of her glass. “Congrats on the giant mansion,” she said, tone flat with…with exhaustion, and disbelief of a kind she didn’t know how to classify. “And on being a werewolf, I guess.” She hoped he could read her gaze: Who’s side are you on in this? Please don’t agree with my psycho dad.
He stared a moment longer, then inclined his head in a polite nod, eyes almost seeming to flash. Maybe it was just a trick of light refracting off crystal, but she didn’t think so. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said, and even if she couldn’t read his tone all that well, she could tell that something was there. Something heavy.
Annabel sent the tiniest of smiles across the table, and then dropped her head over her plate.
“We’ve been doing incredible work here,” Dad said, and launched into an over-detailed description of all he hoped to accomplish with vampire research.
A salad landed on the charger before her. Caesar…with tomatoes, for some reason.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 65
