"The headlights on your toy car are dim, but still visible from many miles away. Few people travel this way at night. The road is too perilous—and the destination far too treacherous."
"So that's why the gate was open. You knew I was coming."
"Indeed. I wanted to see how far you would take this ill-advised visit." He paced toward me, hands clasped behind his back. "I must admit, you came much farther than I ever anticipated. You are nearly at my home."
"I'm not afraid of the dark," I lied.
Lucius advanced closer, looming before me. "There are wolves in these woods," he advised, leaning in to watch my face. "And they would find it difficult to resist one as tempting as you, I fear. Especially in that magnificent bloodred gown."
I glanced down at my dress as Lucius circled around me, surveying me, in a parody of what he'd done months ago in my parents' barn, the day we'd met. He had changed since then—but I had, too. Gone were my dirty boots, my ragged T-shirt. Red silk glistened in the moonlight.
"Did you never read 'Little Red Riding Hood,' Jessica?" Lucius asked, still circling slowly, crowding and confining me. "Do you not know what happens to innocents who wander alone in dark forests?"
A weird thrill of terror mixed with anticipation shivered through me. Lucius was too close—and not close enough. I couldn't quite see his black eyes in the darkness. I couldn't quite gauge his mood. Was he toying with me as prelude to a kiss— or the thrust of a stake?
You're betting your life on the former, Jess.
"I forget the story, Lucius," I said. "It's just a tale for little kids."
"Oh, it is one of my favorite fables," he said, pausing behind me. I tensed, feeling vulnerable with him at my back. "The origins are lost in time," he continued. "And there are many adaptations. In some, the little girl is saved. But I particularly love the ending just the way Perrault related it in the classic version."
"How . . . how does that end?" I inquired, not moving.
" 'Grandmother, what big TEETH you have got!'" Lucius recited, leaning so close over my shoulder that his lips brushed my ear, almost nipping at me. " 'All the better to eat you up with.' And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood—and ate her all up.'"
I shivered as he told the story, half from his nearness, half from the clear relish with which he related the awful conclusion.
"Is that not a simple, satisfying ending, Jessica?" He laughed softly.
"I like happier endings myself."
Lucius laughed harder. "What could be happier—for the wolf? Why do humans always look at these things from the wrong perspective? Predators deserve our sympathy, too."
"I didn't come here to talk about fairy tales," I said, breaking the sinister spell. He was genuinely starting to unnerve me.
"Run along home then, Riding Hood," Lucius said, taking my shoulders and steering me back toward the car. "It is late, and you are in danger of becoming wolf fodder. What would I write to your parents then? That I allowed Jessica to be devoured, torn limb from limb, after they were so hospitable to me?"
I shuddered again, this time mainly from the cold, and turned around, shaking free of his grasp. "I want to go inside to talk. I came here to strike a bargain with you."
Lucius paused, head cocked, bemused. "A bargain? With me? But you have nothing with which to bargain." I could tell that he was nevertheless intrigued. "Do you?"
"Yes. I think so."
"And this bargain . . . does it end with you returning to Pennsylvania, where you belong?"
"It could end with me leaving," I said. This world. Forever.
"You capture my interest," Lucius admitted, touching my shoulder again. "And you tremble with the cold. I am a rude host, to taunt you in the frigid air, when you are unused to a Carpathian Mountain spring. Let us go inside, where I can infuriate and inspire loathing in comfort."
We began to walk side-by-side down the path, Lucius's feet sure on ground familiar to him, me unsteady and ill-dressed for a late-night hike. I wobbled slightly, and Lucius reached out to steady me. After I regained my footing, he kept his hand at my elbow, and I felt that with that simple gesture, I had come one step closer to winning the Vladescu-Dragomir war.
Or perhaps not. Because when the massive wooden door to his castle swung shut behind us, sealing us in an imposing Gothic stone foyer that disappeared above me into blackness too high to be penetrated by a circle of twenty actual, flaming torches, Lucius noted, "You know that you effectively declared war this evening. And now you are my first prisoner."
I spun around just in time to see him slam a long iron dead bolt home, locking us into his monstrous mansion.
"You're joking, right, Lucius?"
It was the wrong thing to say. His eyes were flinty when they met mine. "The sad thing is, Jessica, I had almost thought you had finally learned not to trust me tonight."
As I watched in horror, Lucius reached behind his back and withdrew something that had apparently been concealed, tucked in his belt, the whole time wed been together alone in a dark Carpathian forest.
A stained, sharpened stake.
Chapter 65
LUCIUS TAPPED the rudimentary, but nonetheless potentially deadly, instrument against his palm. "I have done all that I could to keep us from this moment, but you refuse to cooperate. I will offer you one last chance, Antanasia. I will slip the bolt, you will slip into the night, and my guards will ensure your safe return to your car. From there, you will fly home and forget this entire episode. That is my offer, on the table."
As Lucius spoke, his eyes had become completely black, the irises consuming the whites, as if he were some exotic nocturnal animal. The transformation was just as captivating and terrifying as it had been the first time I'd seen it back in my parents' dining room, when Lucius had thirsted for the blood that would heal him. It took every ounce of my courage not to beg him to pull back the bolt, allowing me to run for safety. But I couldn't do that. Our short, intense, confusing relationship would come to its climax, for better or for worse, that night. I would not wait one day longer.
I mastered my voice with effort. "I'm not interested in your offer of flight," I said. I pointed at the stake. "That is precisely why I am here. That in your hand is the crux of my bargain, too.
Lucius watched me carefully, clearly caught off-guard.
"Did you expect me to be afraid, Lucius?" I asked, hoping my eyes or my voice didn't betray just how scared I really was.
"Yes," he said. "As you should be."
"Maybe, for once, you were the one who was naive. Who underestimated just what I'm capable of."
Lucius hesitated, and the silence in the tomblike foyer was deafening, except for the occasional hiss and pop of the torches. "Let us talk," he said finally.
Walking ahead of me, not waiting to see if I followed, Lucius led me through a maze of passageways that opened into wider chambers, like a series of tunnels linking caves, sometimes ducking beneath stone lintels built at a time when men were much shorter than Lucius Vladescu, sometimes mounting quick flights of steps that seemed to have no purpose. This was a castle designed not to welcome visitors, but to confound enemies. It wasn't a home. It was a lair. A stone spiderweb. As we traveled deeper into the edifice, the turns seemed to become tighter, the hallways more narrow, the steps steeper. I realized, with more than a bit of alarm, that I was completely lost. Completely at Lucius's mercy. If things did not go as I hoped, I would never escape. My body would never even be found.
He stopped so abruptly that I bumped into his shoulder as he reached to open a portal I hadn't even noticed in the wall. Twisting the knob and giving the door a push, Lucius stepped back. "After you."
I eyed him warily. His eyes were no longer pure black, but they were still cold. I stepped past him. "Thank you."
As Lucius pulled the door shut behind him, I gazed around the chamber, then at Lucius. "Lucius . . . this is beautiful."
At the heart of the Vlad
escu labyrinth was a richly appointed study, a truly magnificent version of the stage set that Lucius had cobbled together in our garage. A gargantuan, antique Turkish carpet smothered the stone floor, and the walls were lined with overflowing bookshelves—as I would have expected from Lucius. Deep leather couches were cracked and worn, testament to the hours he'd no doubt spent poring over the works of Bronte and Shakespeare and Melville. Tucked among the books was one red trophy, with a basketball player arcing a ball that tripped off his gilt fingertips. Lucius's award for winning a free-throw contest back in December. I turned to him, smiling, heartened that he'd retained a bit of his life as an American teenager. "You brought your trophy home."
Lucius smiled, too, but in a caustic way. "That? Dorin rescued that. I keep it to remind me never to be an idiot again—indulging in ridiculous games when there is business to attend to."
I didn't believe him, but I let it go.
Shrugging out of his coat, Lucius bent to pick up a log, tossing it into a guttering fireplace. Sparks rose in a shower, and the fire fluttered back to life. He had tucked the stake back into his belt, and I could have snatched it at that moment while he had his back to me and hurled it into the flames. . ..
"Do not even think you would be fast enough," Lucius advised without even turning around, nudging at the logs with his booted foot, urging them to life.
"It never crossed my mind," I said.
Lucius turned around, a knowing smile on his face. "Of course not." He retrieved the stake again, running his hand along it, testing its point on his fingertip.
"Lucius—you don't really think you're going to destroy me tonight, do you?"
Instead of answering, Lucius came over to me, taking me by the wrist, and pulled me to the very center of the room, where the complicated design of the carpet culminated in a pale, worn circle. "Look down," he ordered, voice suddenly very rough, his grip on my arm too tight for comfort.
I did as I was told and saw a dark stain that spread across the fibers. Blood ... It didn't even look as though anyone had tried to clean it up. "Is that. . . ?"
"Vasile. This is where I did it. This is where I destroy."
When I looked up again, tearing my gaze away from that stain to search Lucius's face, I saw that his eyes were narrowed—and pure black again. We were so close that I could peer deep, deep into the wide irises, almost as if I could see his actual thoughts, read his mind directly through his eyes, as true vampires were supposedly able. . . . And the thoughts spinning through Lucius's brain were so, so dark that I flinched. In his eyes, I could read my destruction.
"Lucius, don't," I started to urge him, but in a split second, he was behind me, one arm firmly across my chest, my hands trapped in his, and the spike he'd been clutching in his hand upthrust under my breastbone, nearly piercing my skin, pricking the red silk of my gown. Stopping just in time. I held my breath, afraid to move.
"You said you had a bargain to strike," he growled. "Speak now."
"This is it," I managed to say, pressing myself against his chest, away from that spike. "I left a note telling my family that I've abdicated. But my last act was to order them to submit to your leadership without a struggle."
"That is not a bargain." Lucius laughed. "That is submission."
"No." I shook my head, feeling my curls graze his stubbled chin. His arm was heavy and tense across my chest. In another time, under different circumstances, it would have been heaven to be held so tightly by him, in a way that could have felt protective. If not for the stake at my breastbone. "If you don't destroy me tonight, as you seem intent upon doing, I'll go home before Dorin wakes up and throw away the note. The war will go on."
Lucius paused, clearly thinking. "You know I have no qualms about continuing the war."
"And you say you have no qualms about destroying me. About sacrificing me," I countered. "So just do it. Do it and prevent the war. I am sacrificing myself, Lucius." I heard my voice rising in tandem with my emotions. "Just do it, if you're so goddamn hardened! So goddamn vicious! Do what you claim you were going to do all along!"
Fear and frustration and anger at his obstinance and changeability and refusal to accept our love for each other—feelings that had been harnessed in me for so long now-erupted to make me suddenly reckless, and I found myself pushing him hard, even though I knew the risks were tremendous. "Go ahead, Lucius! Do it!"
"I will do it," he swore, vehemence in his voice, and I felt him breathing hard, his chest heaving against my back. The stake pressed a touch more closely to my flesh, sharply, and I arched away from it. "Do not test me!" he cried.
"That is exactly what I'm doing," I said, gasping. When I spoke, the stake pricked at me, making my breath come short and ragged. I cried out a little and twisted my head against his shoulder, writhing away from the weapon, and he relented, slightly.
"I am testing you, Lucius," I continued, struggling to reach him while he showed the faintest bit of vulnerability. "I am risking my life to prove that you are not Vasile. That you are not damaged. That you love me too much to have ever destroyed me, let alone now. I am betting everything that you will spare me."
"I can't spare anyone!" Lucius roared, his composure gone, abruptly and completely. His hand beneath my rib cage shook. "All of my options are cruel, Antanasia! I destroyed my own uncle, for god's sake. I imperiled your parents—even as they tried to save me. My horse, destroyed. My mother, destroyed. My father, destroyed. You—no matter what I do, you are destroyed. I can't leave you behind—you won't let me. And I can't drag you into this . .. this world of mine, either. Everything— everything around me gets destroyed!"
He buried his face in my hair then, clearly spent, and his hand dropped away from my chest, the stake falling to the floor, rolling across the carpet, and I knew that I had won. I had gambled and won.
I turned around slowly, still trapped against Lucius by his arm, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his head to my shoulder, comforting him. He allowed me to hold him that way, stroking his black hair, caressing his stubbled jaw, tracing the scar that no longer frightened me.
"Antanasia," he said, voice unsteady. "What if I could have done it. . ."
"But you couldn't. I knew you couldn't."
"What if someday..."
"Never, Lucius."
"No, never," he agreed, lifting his head from my shoulder and cradling my face in his hands, wiping at my eyes with his fingers. I hadn't even realized I'd been crying. I had no idea how long I'd been crying. "Not to you."
"I know, Lucius."
He drew me in again, resting his head back on my shoulder, as we both composed ourselves. We stood that way for a long time, until Lucius whispered, "There will always be a part of me that is treacherous, Antanasia. That will never change. I am a vampire, and a prince at that. A ruler of a dangerous race. If you are to do this, you will have to understand that..."
"I don't want you to change, Lucius," I promised him, drawing back so I could look into his eyes.
"And this world," he said. "I worry about you in this world. You will have enemies ... a princess does. And a vampire princess faces ruthless foes. Others will want your power and will not hesitate to do what I could not."
"You'll protect me. And I'm stronger than you think."
"Indeed, stronger than me," Lucius admitted, managing a grudging half-smile, although he was clearly still shaken, just like me. "I did all that I could to have my way—to keep you safe from me and our kind—but you would have your way, like a true princess."
"I wanted you, Lucius. I had to have my way."
We clung to each other in the center of the room, standing above the bloodstain that marked the passing of the vampire who'd tried to create in Lucius a real monster. Behind us, the fire crackled, and I thought back to the Christmas dance, when I'd been transported to this very scene, as we'd held each other. This—this had been the place I'd imagined.
Lucius bent his head and touched his lips to
mine, still cradling my face, and in the very heart of that stone labyrinth we kissed, tenderly at first, our lips barely meeting, again and again. Then Lucius drew one hand up behind my head and another down to the small of my back, a gesture both protective and possessive, and kissed me more fiercely, and I knew that he was finally taking me for himself as his destined partner, for all time. That we would fulfill the pact.
He drew away, searching my face. All the softness was back in his eyes. I knew that I would see the warrior prince again, many times. He was still Lucius Vladescu. But the hardness, the harshness, that was inside him would never again be directed at me. It never had been, really. Only in his imaginings and fears.
"This is eternity, Antanasia," he said, both warning and imploring. "Eternity."
Beth_Fantaskey-Jessicas guide to dating the dark side. Page 31
