Hunting Prince Dracula

by Kerri Maniscalco

  “He feels dreadful. I honestly don’t believe he thought how his actions would come across. Thomas sees the world in equations. A problem for him has a solution. He doesn’t figure in emotions, but he’s trying. And willing to learn.”

  I did not bother pointing out that if he was so interested in learning, then he would have taken note the first time we’d had a conversation regarding his involvement with informing me of what I ought to do. And then he most certainly wouldn’t have made such a scene in anatomy class. Instead of expressing my exasperation, I simply said, “I need some time.”

  “Understandable. I’ve never seen him so… affected before. All he’s doing is pacing around his chambers. Do you want me to pass a message along to him before I leave?”

  I shook my head. I truly appreciated Daciana’s attempt at mending our friendship, but now wasn’t the time. I would not allow outside issues to affect what I’d come here to do—improve my forensic skills and earn a place in the academy. Personal distractions would be dealt with after I’d secured my future with one of those spots; I would not sacrifice myself or my goals. Not even for Thomas. It wasn’t something I felt anyone should do—especially a woman. The right partner would be supportive and understand that, even if they longed for things to be right again.

  At this moment, I needed to understand how our classmate had lost every last ounce of blood in his body. How it happened within an hour. And how his corpse had been dumped in the middle of the village without any clues or witnesses. Though I supposed the headmaster had probably already inquired about that while inspecting the scene.

  I hated that Uncle wasn’t part of this case. I’d have been right beside him while he spoke to investigators, not sent back to the academy to wait. Even Detective Inspector William Blackburn—and his many secrets—had included me during the Ripper crimes.

  Ileana lay nestled in Daciana’s lap, lids half shut while Daciana ran her fingers through her hair. They spoke about where Daciana was traveling to next, which family she’d be visiting. Their tones were soft, caring, if tinged with a bit of sadness at the prospect of not seeing each other for a while.

  Their distraction allowed my mind to wander back over what I had observed in the village. The way Wilhelm had been left. The lack of disturbance in the snow around his body. It was as if he’d been tossed from a nearby window…

  I jumped off the chair and paced before the fire, something was breaking apart and coalescing in my mind but I couldn’t quite make sense of the merging pieces.

  “Everything all right?” Daciana asked.

  “I apologize,” I said. “I’m just thinking.”

  She smiled and went back to quietly speaking with Ileana. I recalled the figure I thought I’d noticed in the window above what had become a crime scene. The shutter that had smacked against the wall, drawing my attention upward. Odd that the shutters would have been left open during the storm. Less odd if that were, in fact, the place from which his body had been thrown.

  A knock came at the door, startling us all from our respective places. Ileana and Daciana quickly moved apart. Anastasia waltzed in, waving to Ileana and smiling widely at me before inspecting Daciana closely. I hadn’t been expecting her for a while, though I was quickly learning that Anastasia danced to her own rhythm in life.

  “Are you the handsome one’s sister?”

  Daciana narrowed her eyes. “If you’re referring to Thomas, then yes. And you are?”

  “I’m the girl hoping to steal him away for herself.” Anastasia threw her head back and laughed. “I’m teasing! Your expression was marvelous.” She motioned toward me. “No offense to you, Audrey Rose.”

  Daciana pursed her lips. I could only imagine what she longed to say. I knew how taken aback I’d felt at Anastasia’s bluntness at first. Anastasia knew what she wanted and wasn’t shy in voicing it. An admirable trait for a young woman being raised by the strict headmaster.

  “I think I worked out where Wilhelm was killed,” I said, hoping to break the tension. I quickly told them about the shutter, the open window, and the shadowy figure. I left no detail out about the state of the body or the lone set of footprints that led down the adjacent alley. As if whoever had tossed him from the building had examined him before slinking away.

  Anastasia had gone entirely still. Ileana touched a cross she’d pulled from beneath her embroidered shirt, and Daciana got up and poured herself a dash of wine from a decanter she’d sneaked in.

  Once I finished filling them in, Daciana set her glass down, concern etched across her brow. “If he’d been tossed from a window, wouldn’t some of his bones have fractured?”

  I lifted a shoulder. “Possibly. It’s something to investigate further, but I didn’t see any early indications of broken bones or bruising. The fall wasn’t that high, and if he was already deceased…” I didn’t finish the statement. Ileana appeared as if she might be ill.

  “Well, I believe someone needs to find out who owns that home,” Daciana said. “Regardless of anything, it’s a very intriguing lead. You ought to tell the headmaster.”

  Anastasia snorted. “She should do no such thing. We should inquire into it on our own. If my uncle is informed, then he will discover secrets and not share them.” She clutched my hands in hers. “This might be your opportunity to show him how valuable you are. Te rog. Please don’t tell him this theory. Let me assist you. Then he’ll see young women are capable of such things. Please.”

  I swallowed my initial response. She very well might be correct. If we told Moldoveanu about this, he’d force us to stay behind while he investigated. Then what? He’d not share a thing with us. Not even acknowledge our role in assisting him with the case. Then there was the matter of not being permitted off academy grounds; he’d most certainly use that as an excuse for making us stay behind.

  “For now we’ll keep this information to ourselves,” I said. “But we must plan to investigate in the village soon.”

  Daciana and Ileana exchanged worried glances, but I pretended not to notice. Both Anastasia and I needed this.

  Anastasia kissed my cheeks, smiling triumphantly at Daciana. “You won’t regret it!”

  But as I bid good evening to my friends and wished Daciana well on the next stop on her Grand Tour, I couldn’t help feeling as if Anastasia was dead wrong.

  Cannula and sounds.

  TOWER CHAMBERS

  CAMERE DIN TURN

  BRAN CASTLE

  4 DECEMBER 1888

  Dragonlike flames roared against the cage of the fireplace in the small sitting room of my empty dormitory.

  I watched them, half mesmerized, as my medical tome pressed into my legs, nearly making them prickle with numbness. Our part of Romania had dragons everywhere I looked. The sconces throughout the castle. Tapestries in the corridors. Sculptures in the village and insignias on carriages. I knew “Dracul” translated to dragon and assumed the designs were simply an homage to two fearsome leaders, Vlad II and Vlad III.

  I made a mental note to ask Professor Radu if it also had anything to do with the mysterious Order of the Dragon. Perhaps the dragons held clues. To what I wasn’t sure, but it seemed a good lead to investigate. Maybe the Order was behind Wilhelm’s death. Perhaps it was targeting members of nobility or families who no longer upheld their Christian values.

  I sighed. That was quite a stretch. I didn’t know if the Order was even still in existence. Maybe it was nothing more than peasant rumors and tales told to keep people behaving long after their beloved yet brutal prince had lost his head to the Turks.

  I shifted my legs, hoping to regain some feeling in my toes. My mortuary-practices book was the size of a large house cat but was far less pleasant company. It neither purred nor issued a disdainful invitation to pet behind its ears. Instead it offered information and pictures I’d found disturbing.

  Diagrams were done in black-and-white, showing exactly how to remove blood from the body as well as sew the mouth shut—requiring a ligature from
the chin through the gums and septum—for funeral purposes. One sketch even advised the use of petroleum jelly to keep eyelids from opening.

  Grieving family members would probably collapse at the sight of their loved ones’ eyes or jaws snapping open as the priest delivered them from death to heaven. I wouldn’t particularly care to witness such a thing myself. A dried-out tongue would be quite ghastly, a dark slug left sitting for hours in a desert sun. It was better left to the imagination.

  I’d seen enough corpses in Uncle’s laboratory to know well enough that most people would rather be spared such images, especially when it came to those they loved. I stopped lingering on thoughts of ones I’d lost, flipping to the next chapter of the book. The pages were thick and rough around the edges. It was a beautiful tome, despite its subject matter.

  Unbidden, I imagined Thomas sitting with me, pointing out details most would never take note of as we studied these volumes. Though I’d permitted myself a few stolen glances, I had avoided him during both Radu’s folklore lesson and Moldoveanu’s anatomy exercise. He hadn’t appeared well in either class. Shutting out that line of thought, I refocused on my book. I wasn’t as familiar with mortuary practices as I was with postmortems, so I’d borrowed the volume from one of the libraries on my way up to my rooms after class.

  According to undertakers, inserting a cannula—a long tube—into the carotid artery and then forcing liquids out by means of gravity was the best method of removing blood and other bodily fluids.

  Morticians then moved fluids by massaging their way from the deceased’s feet toward their unbeating hearts. Which seemed an awful lot of work for someone to have accomplished while people were walking about busy afternoon streets in Braşov. I wagered there would have been a great amount of disturbance in the snow around Wilhelm’s body. Surely some fluids or blood would have splattered onto the ground. His body had to have been moved after the blood extraction. There was simply no other way for him to have gone through all that where he’d been found. I still very much believed that house with the unlatched shutter might hold clues.

  I was becoming more convinced that a mortuary apparatus was the method used to drain his blood; however, it did not answer the question of how he died. If he’d been murdered, he’d have some sort of outward wound. Strangulation would have obvious signs—petechial hemorrhaging present in the whites of his eyes, discoloration around his neck. His body was free from all that. Except for the supposed bite marks, I couldn’t recall any concrete evidence that showed he’d been killed.

  I doubted he would have stood by idly and allowed someone to drain his blood without a fight, so the “bite marks” likely weren’t the cause of his death. It didn’t seem out of the question to believe he could have been slipped opiates. Perhaps that sort of toxin would have caused his rash.

  As my mind wandered back over the strangeness of my classmate’s bloodless body, my heart demanded that Thomas come and discuss this with me immediately. I told my heart to forget its plea. I would solve this mystery on my own. Even though I knew I was capable of accomplishing this task, I couldn’t deny the emptiness that lingered in the space around me. Daciana was traveling around the Continent already, and Anastasia was unable to come to my rooms because of a book she was studying. She claimed it might help with Wilhelm’s case. Ileana was busy with her tasks and I refused to put her position in jeopardy because I was lonely.

  Where are you when I need you, Cousin?

  I was still awaiting a return letter from Liza, hoping she might offer some much-needed advice on the matter between Thomas and myself. Romance was to her what forensics were to me, and I wished she could be here now to help me navigate this storm of emotion.

  I despised being so distracted during a crucial time. No matter how often I commanded my brain to formulate scientific theories, it stubbornly pushed itself back to Thomas and the unrest I felt. I needed to resolve the situation, if only so I could concentrate. I sighed, knowing that wasn’t the exact truth of why I wanted to address the issue. I missed him. Even when I longed to strangle him. I didn’t care for this one bit, but it was far preferable to the other invasive thoughts I’d been having.

  As if waiting to be summoned, memories of the Ripper’s most heinous murder assaulted my senses. The way Miss Mary Jane Kelly’s body had been torn apart… I stopped myself right there.

  I closed the book and headed to my bed. Tomorrow I’d rise and begin fresh. Tomorrow I’d deal with the aftermath of our fight. For now, I’d tend to my own wounds. Thomas was correct about one thing: I needed to heal myself before I could address anything or anyone else.

  I turned down the covers, about to slip into their warmth, when a knock sounded at my door. My breath caught. If Mr. Thomas Ridiculous Cresswell were calling at this indecent hour, especially after his reprehensible behavior…

  Heart traitorously fluttering, I flung the door open, admonishments perishing on my tongue. “Oh! You’re not at all who I thought you’d be.”

  Anastasia was dressed in solid black and there was a devilish slant upon her lips. “Who, pray tell, did you assume would be here at this hour?” She grabbed my hands and swung us around in a clumsy waltz. “Certainly not the dashing Mr. Cresswell… hmm? The intrigue! The scandal! I must admit, I’m envious of your secret life.”

  “Anastasia, be serious! It’s nearly ten at night!” My accompanying smile did me no favors. “What on earth are you doing out of bed?” I took in her ensemble again, recalling a time when I, too, dressed in a mourning gown. “Actually, it seems I ought to be asking where you’re planning on sneaking off to instead?”

  “We are about to investigate the scene of Wilhelm’s death.” She skipped into my bedchamber and removed a few dark pieces of clothing from my trunk. “Hurry. The moon is full and the sky is mostly clear. We have to get to Braşov tonight. Uncle told me he’s called for royal guards; they’ll be arriving tomorrow and will make sneaking about difficult.” She glanced at me over her shoulder. “You are still interested in searching that house, correct?”

  “Of course I am.” I nodded, trying not to consider the creatures in the woods. Monsters were only as real as our imaginations. And mine was intent on populating the world with the supernatural. “Shouldn’t we wait until daylight? Wolves might be out hunting.”

  Anastasia snorted. “Professor Radu is simply filling your head with worries. However, if you’re too afraid…” She allowed the taunt and challenge to hang between us. I shook my head, and her eyes lit with pride. “Extraordinar!” She tossed the dark clothing to me. “If we’re lucky, perhaps we’ll run into the immortal prince. A midnight stroll with the enchanting Dracula sounds delightful.”

  “Delightfully morbid, you mean.” I slipped into my black dress and fastened a matching fur-trimmed cloak about my shoulders. Before we left, I snatched a hat pin from my dresser and stuck it in my hair. Anastasia smiled at me, bemused, but didn’t inquire about it. Which was good. I didn’t wish to say so aloud, but I certainly hoped we would not run into anyone who thirsted for our blood.

  In fact, I would prefer to never set eyes upon Prince Dracula.

  Anastasia had been right; the sky was clear of both clouds and snow for once, and the moon was so bright that we didn’t require a lamp or lantern. Moonlight glinted off the blanket of snow, glittery and shining in spots.

  The temperature, however, was even colder than the laboratory in Uncle’s basement where we inspected cadavers. We hurried along the well-worn path that connected the academy to the village below, our procession mostly quiet save for the occasional sounds of nature, our skirts swishing across the packed snow, and our breath steaming out between huffs. We were keeping up a brutal pace, hoping to move away from the castle as quickly as possible.

  Shadows flickered above our heads as tree branches creaked and groaned. I tried ignoring the hair standing upright along my neck, and the feeling of being closely inspected. There were no wolves. No hunters keeping pace with us, immortal and feral. No on
e to delight in mauling our flesh and tearing us into unrecognizable shapes. Blood swooshed in my head.

  For the second time that evening, a horrid image of Miss Mary Jane Kelly’s corpse crossed my mind, as it often did when I imagined something truly brutal. Her body had been destroyed by Jack the Ripper until it barely resembled anything human.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, willing myself to remain calm and steady, but the feeling of being watched persisted. The forest was charming during the daylight hours, but at night it was forbidding and treacherous. I vowed to never leave my rooms in the dark again.

  Werewolves and vampires are not real. There is no one hunting you… Vlad Dracula is dead. Jack the Ripper is also deceased. There is no…

  A branch snapped somewhere close by, thudding to the ground, and my entire body went numb. Anastasia and I sprang together, clutching each other as if we might be torn apart by a malevolent force. We listened in silence for a few beats, straining to hear any other sounds. All was still. Except for my heart. That was galloping through my chest as if being chased by supernatural creatures.

  “The forest is as wicked as Dracula,” Anastasia whispered. “I swear something is out there. Do you feel it?”

  Thank goodness my mind wasn’t the only one conjuring up starving beasts tracking us to the village. The skin on the back of my neck prickled as the wind picked up.

  “I’ve read studies that claim human instincts are heightened in times of duress,” I said. “We become attuned to the natural world in order to survive. I’m sure we’re just being silly now, though Radu’s lessons seem much more plausible under a cloak of darkness.”

  I noticed that my friend didn’t comment further, but she also didn’t relinquish her grip on me until we’d made it safely into Braşov. As I’d expected, the village was quiet—all its occupants fast asleep within their pastel-painted homes. A lone howl echoed in the distance, its mournful note finding another singer farther away. Soon a chorus of wolves disrupted the stillness of the night.