by Aiden James
“I would hope you have not become a masochist, dear friend,” I said, shaking my head sadly. Despite the vision’s departure, the image of the girl’s agonizing cries for mercy and transformation into something loathsome remained before my mind’s eye. “So, do we intend to rescue any of these victims if we cross paths?”
“No, it is too late for them. In all likelihood, we shall be forced to kill them. It would be the merciful thing to do.”
“Standard stake through the heart, or can any weapon work?
“Stakes and beheading,” he replied, once again hiding his eyes behind his dark shades. “An axe or two would be nice.”
No sense in frightening our attendant or anyone else passing by our little cubbyhole on the way to the restrooms. Roderick had done a masterful job with his makeup to hide his ashen complexion. But if anyone happened to see the swirling gold flecks floating within his luminous blue eyes, the remaining nine hours of our flight might become a lot more interesting than we’d like. Fortunately, we had long since mastered the ability to converse to where we alone could discern each other’s words.
“A trip to the local hardware store, huh?” I jested, realizing getting better ammunition would require access to Budva’s local black market.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “There won’t be enough time to obtain the Baretta model you prefer, and such weapons will only work on his small army of bodyguards, who will be armed to the gills with the latest firepower, according to Comte. They number almost as many as the vampires, and are said to patrol his castle.”
“It seems like it would produce a flurry of red flags for the local citizenry. I thought Budva is fairly peaceful these days.”
“You keep forgetting about the cloaking abilities of our adversary,” chided Roderick. “According to every satellite image I checked, as well as what Comte could tell me, there isn’t a castle to be seen anywhere in Montenegro. At least not of the dark brooding kind Dracul prefers. But, a castle is certainly present. You and I have both now seen it, Judas, and it is real.”
“But it could be anywhere,” I said, feeling my irritation bubble up quickly. “It brings us right back to why Budva, and not someplace else?”
“Because that’s where he is. I’m rarely ever wrong with what comes to me…. You know this,” explained Roderick. “Not to mention, it’s the place confirmed by Comte earlier this morning. Somewhere along the coastline. ‘You’ll see it when you need to,’ is how he put it.”
“That makes no sense, none at all. You druids and alchemists are all the same in that regard.”
“No more sense than it did to postpone picking up your coin from him one hundred and twenty-six years ago.”
“Well, it’s a little late to quibble about that now, isn’t it?”
“Only if you continue to avoid the chance to procure your coin. If the opportunity comes to us, promise me you’ll do what you have to do to get it this time. Even if it means sacrificing my life.”
I didn’t hear anything else he said after that. Instead, I was brought back to the laughing face of Dracul, lips and long fangs stained with fresh blood. Before dawn that terrible night so long ago, one of us would die. I gave my life for Roderick.
If faced with the same situation, I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t do the same thing again.
Chapter Four
Our accommodations for the night were at the Gran Melia Hotel, not far from Vatican City. I hadn’t visited this particular establishment since the mid 1980s, with Alistair, and I must say the recent remodeling from a few years ago left me impressed. A five star resort once more, I looked forward to the surrounding view in daytime, since the area was once home to Roderick and me during the reign of Diocletian, from 286 to 295 A.D. It marked the beginning of two centuries of contentment and prosperity while residing in the Mediterranean nations, as I’ve touched upon earlier.
A long flight always brings a little fatigue, but neither of us requires much rest to recuperate. After settling in for the night, with the intent on revisiting our old haunts at sunrise, we retired to our rooms in our spacious suite. I’m not sure if Roderick discerned it before me, but in the quiet darkness I sensed Dracul’s presence. No, it wasn’t creaking floors or a chilled breeze crossing my bed…the tricks Hollywood uses to trigger our protective instincts. Rather, it was a general oppression, and I daresay an event the most sensitive barometers might perceive as well.
As with his previous voyeuristic invasions, it felt like a general observation that lifted after a few minutes. But, a chill crossed my heart when the feeling came back perhaps ten minutes later as I started to drift off to sleep, startling me wide awake.
I listened in the darkness, determined not to fall for phantom creaks that meant nothing. My pulse quickened for a moment, when I mistakenly took Roderick’s soft snores from across the suite as breathing by my bedside. I even sat up in my bed, and almost reached to turn on the nightstand’s lamp. But then the sensation dissipated as quickly as a childhood night terror.
Did it mean anything? Hard to say…but the mental image of a satisfied leer stayed with me, making it nearly impossible to rest peacefully. For the second straight night, and forty-five hundred miles from where I held Beatrice close to my fearful heart, I watched night give way to dawn.
* * * * *
“You really should learn to listen to my admonitions, Judas.”
Roderick waited to chide me for my needless nighttime vigilance until we were served our breakfast. Dressed in jeans and a yellow polo shirt, I marveled at how normal he looked. Other than his basketball star height and prominent cheekbones, he would draw only a cursory glance in this city filled with beautiful human beings. Of course, sunglasses can make it a coin flip as to whether the mystery of what lay hidden behind them created additional allure. Not to mention the regal hairline, snow white in color, and the slight MAC tan that hid the faint wrinkles he had accumulated as a young man before his sacrificial druid death nearly two thousand years ago.
So, maybe he would draw curious looks after all.
“And, as for your habit of scrutinizing my attire, it will be the blue-eyed Jew in the prime of handsomeness that will always upstage the quiet Celt,” he continued, perhaps hoping his telepathic peek inside my head would temporarily shut down my need to analyze and define everything around me. “But to my original point, I told you Dracul’s pull and worsening voyeurism would get stronger the closer we came to his stomping grounds.”
“Oh, goody…I hope he leaves me in peace when I need a piss in Budva. I’ll try harder to enjoy the sightseeing before we board our two o’clock flight to Montenegro.”
“Well, you should give it your utmost effort, since you’re the one who suggested an afternoon flight so we could catch a few sights. During the last one hundred years, I’ve been here much more frequently than you, Judas. Other than a few new art exhibits, there’s nothing I’m dying to see this morning.”
“No curiosity about the old neighborhood?”
He chuckled. “Truthfully, I’ve seen it twice since the latest turn of the century. There’s no reason to see it again this soon. Besides the old walls near where our villa once stood were dismantled to make way for a wider road back in two-thousand-one, leaving nothing more to remind me of Claudia and Albinus.”
The laughter died quickly, and it brought to mind a particularly painful year for Roderick in 292 A.D. Claudia died while giving birth to Albinus’s younger brother, Octavian. The death of the woman he loved more than any other has been particularly difficult for Roderick to heal from. I believe he may never fully recover. As for Albinus, he remained in Rome with his maternal grandfather when we moved on to Crete, and later died fighting under Constantine.
“We can skip it, if you’d like,” I told him, compassionately. “There are other things I’d like to check out instead, and I’m game for visiting the exhibits you mentioned in lieu of forgoing everything else.”
“You won’t feel cheated?”
&nbs
p; Suddenly, the image of the wife I had back then popped into my awareness. Her name was Fulvia, and she was a few years older than me. As those following my ongoing saga should certainly appreciate, the fact she continued to age while I remained young led to serious discord in our relationship. Fulvia was among the first to accuse me of dabbling in sorcery. Romantic love was tenuous for me in those days, and nearly impossible to sustain under such suspicions. I was more than willing to leave her behind when we left for Crete.
“No, I don’t believe I will,” I advised, while still picturing Fulvia, and her incessant grilling about my youthfulness and other traits she found annoying.
“Very good. If you are finished, I would like to get started,” said Roderick. “A morning’s worth of entertainment will help clean the palate of painful distractions, and perhaps lessen the dread of our upcoming rendezvous with Dracul.”
I couldn’t agree less. But in light of the fact he might very well be in the afterlife before this day ended, I decided to make sure I remained a good sport until we were back on a plane to Budva. I downed my mimosa and picked up a croissant to take with me, and we hailed a taxi for the Palazzo Altemps. Two of the exhibits were held there, and upon Roderick’s advisement that this is one of the better museums the locals favor, I warmed up to the idea of spending a few hours admiring what is considered ‘an entrancing collection of classical sculptures’.
The artistry was stunning, even without considering the featured Renaissance collections we eventually visited. It was indeed the perfect distraction, and the additional ancient jewelry and coin collections from the reign of Trajan were equally fascinating. From there, we spent our last hour and a half browsing the artifacts on display at the Museo Nazionale dell’Alto Medioevo. Viewing familiar weaponry encrusted with jewels brought back a mixture of fond and not so fond memories from the years preceding the Crusades, and almost capped our museum excursion splendidly.
Yet, I didn’t expect to see other, more recent, items on display. These were attributed to the period when Vlad Tepes masqueraded as a pious arm of the Vatican. Everything from jeweled capes, that he and others had used to adorn themselves, to swords and daggers carried by Dracul himself were on display. Surely, some of you might question whether or not the articles were in fact the very ones he held close to his person. But no two weapons in the collection were the same, and I recognized slight flaws in craftsmanship. Hell, after seeing the daggers up close on several occasions, I had never forgotten the gleaming sapphires, rubies, and diamonds encrusted upon the hilts, glistening in the fiery glow of torches and the blacksmith’s furnaces in the Inquisition dungeons. The blades were often heated to an orange glow to make it more painful when slicing away skin and severing delicate body parts. Not to mention the cauterization extended the torture sessions before a victim would expire.
“At least there are no impaling poles lying about, bearing jewels encrusted along the length,” joked Roderick, obviously privy to my thoughts. “The longer dagger looks identical to the one carried by Dracul.”
“Yes, it certainly does.” It was damned near impossible to look away, as Roderick tugged on my sleeve to pull my attention to other artifacts from the same general time period. “Certainly you didn’t know beforehand that we would encounter such items, or did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” he advised. “I’m beginning to wonder if his influence forged the attraction to come here in the first place.”
“But, we decided to come here while flying over the Atlantic,” I said. I could tell my tone sounded on edge. “I didn’t feel the old familiar tricks from the bastard until early this morning, after we retired. Besides, how would he know what buttons to push to get you to consider this visit off the beaten path?”
“It’s easier than you think, and we have seen his cleverness before. And, Comte and even Racco have used similar tactics, though for the better good. Especially, when trying to make a lasting impression for a message they deem important.”
“So, it is sorcery, then?”
“Yes, that and an acute understanding of how subtle illusions can be melded together to create a much bigger one. Think of it as a massive hallucination.”
“Sounds like bullshit.”
“No, smells like bullshit…or your upper lip.” He chuckled, grasping my shoulder to ensure his jest was understood to be made entirely in fun. “My biggest concern is the scale and reach of Dracul’s illusions. He’s had centuries to prepare and scheme for us, to practice for this moment. Believe me, my friend, our enemy has looked forward to this reunion with anticipation for a very long time.”
I nodded thoughtfully to Roderick’s words, intent on absorbing the entire message. Much of what he related was new, at least in the sense I’d never fully considered the possibility of Dracul setting up an elaborate trap for us. A trap extending far beyond the barbaric mind I recalled, and I now understood with chagrin and regret that I had underestimated his cunningness and intelligence.
It was what I thought about most as we drove to Rome’s busiest airport, Leonardo da Vinci/Flumicino International. Neither of us spoke much after leaving the museum and picking up our luggage from the hotel. As we approached the main terminal, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Pops? Where in the hell are you?!”
Alistair. My kid sounded as upset as I had expected. Actually, that’s not quite true. What I expected was for him to be screaming at me in overflowing rage, after I left without answering any of the questions he had bombarded Roderick and me with two nights earlier, at the gala.
“Hi Ali,” I said calmly. “I’m in Rome taking care of personal business.”
“Is that right, Pops? Would this be personal business of a coin-collecting nature?”
I could almost feel him tighten his grip on his handset, which I gathered from the number he called me from was the latest Samsung device he purchased a month earlier. I’d hate for the damned thing to crumble from rage, or slip from his grasp and the Gorilla Glass screen explode on the upstairs balcony floor. That’s where he was at the moment, based on the road traffic noise surrounding him, and Beatrice’s calls to him in the background, begging him to keep some ‘promise’. Maybe it would be best if he did have such a mishap. In that case, I wouldn’t answer my phone again until, or unless, we survived our upcoming encounter with Dracul.
“This isn’t an excursion to collect a coin,” I told him, drawing a sharp glance from Roderick. “It’s something I should’ve taken care of long before you, or even your mother, were born. But, I am taking care of it right now.”
“Mother told me everything,” he said, his tone lowered slightly while his voice still shook with anger. “She said you’re going to meet Dracul, and I’m not sure I even believe that isn’t code for someone else. But you’ve gone to the Mediterranean to meet somebody and damned if I don’t believe you’ve decided to ditch me for some undisclosed, selfish reason!”
“Ali, I’m not ditching you at all. I’m protecting you!”
Honestly, it felt like a knife had cut through my soul. Beatrice betrayed my confidence, and yet, it wasn’t a fatal sin. Lord knows my boy can be an incorrigible handful when he gets riled up.
“Ahh, cut the bullshit, Dad!”
Dad? Alistair never uses that name, except in the ruse we used to play on others.
“I’m not bullshitting you, son!” I responded, finding it almost impossible to control my own temper. Roderick shot me another look, and I wasn’t sure if it was a warning to watch the sharpness in my tone, or because I had just repeated the same lie, in a sense, about collecting a coin. “Dracul is real…very, very real! If I don’t find a way to stop him now, he will come for you, Amy, and your mother. I will die before I let that happen!”
Silence on the other end, and if not for the continued sounds of traffic flowing sixty feet below him, I would’ve assumed he hung up.
“Sure, whatever, Pops,” he said, unapologetically. I could hear the pain in his tone…a
lmost as if I’d broken his heart. My heart began to feel like candy glass about to shatter. “Go ahead and have your fun out there, wherever you really are, and be sure to say ‘hi’ for me to Roderick. Yeah, you two take care, and when you get back to the states, Amy and I will be looking forward to an update on your frigging bullshit trip!”
The line went dead before I could respond further. The oppressive weight that had been steadily worsening seemed to grow twice as heavy as it settled upon my entire being. Numb to my core, I barely acknowledged Roderick’s polite nudge when we reached our destination.
Chapter Five
There wasn’t time to mourn the conversation with my beloved son. Our flight to the capital of Montenegro, Podgorica, left at 2:08 p.m., and we took our seats with a mere four minutes to spare. A much smaller plane, since the flight over the Adriatic Sea was only an hour and a half in duration, the difference between first class and business class was negligible. However, given Roderick’s unusual height, we’ve always opted for first class unless traveling by private jet.
For this small jaunt, the extra space was good for pondering what had taken place, and also reflecting upon the dangerous unknowns ahead. Of course, it all felt hellish to me at the moment. Beatrice had broken her promise to not tell our boy what I was up to, and as a result, his feelings had been severely hurt. Yes, love would likely soothe and quickly heal the wounds the three of us had incurred, but the healing wouldn’t begin before Roderick’s and my safe return to Virginia.
“He wasn’t calling you from my place, was he?” asked Roderick, after studying me quietly for a few minutes.
“No, they hadn’t left yet,” I said. “And, I doubt they will now. At least not Alistair, and if he doesn’t go, then neither will Amy or Beatrice.”
“It’s too dangerous for them to remain in the condo, as you know,” said Roderick, reaching for his phone. “As soon as we are able, I’ll send an email message to Margolise over the plane’s WiFi network. Do you trust me?
