He held the cartridge out to the Impaler. In his eagerness to learn the traitor’s identity, Vlad leaned forward. The crossbow was now pointing at the floor.
Sam pressed the nozzle hard. Pssssht! A cloud of colored gas shot out that instantly liquefied and coated the voivode’s face with a reddish gel. Vlad jerked backward and the crossbow bolt whizzed through the air, slamming into the floor between Sam’s feet. Vlad screamed and clawed at his face. “The devil, the devil! Help me! Soldiers!”
Sam rushed to the cage, snatched the bracelet from its stand, and ran for the door, shielding his eyes against the gas still hanging in the air.
“I’m burning!” screamed Vlad Tepes. He had fallen to the ground and lay writhing. “Soldiers, to the square tower! He has killed me!”
Slamming the heavy door behind him, Sam searched for a way to keep it closed. He snatched one of the lances decorating the doorway and jammed it through the circular handle. That should slow Dracula down a little.
Now to get his father!
24 The Truth About Allan Faulkner
Sam leaped past the bottom step. Where would Dragomir have taken his father? They probably first headed for the armory, as agreed. They would have pushed the cabinet aside, opened the passageway, and … What then? The best thing would be if Dragomir had gone ahead to see where the tunnel led, which would give Sam time to warn his father about him. The worst…
“He escaped from the square tower!” screamed a guard. “Search everywhere! The dungeons too!”
A patrol was coming, and Sam again ducked behind the column with the Bran coat of arms. He carefully stuffed Meriweserre’s bracelet deep in his pocket, followed by the tear gas cartridge, then took out the Browning, his only means of defense. Could he and Allan return to their own time using only the golden circle? There was no other choice. He waited until the patrol headed off toward the kitchens and stepped out from behind the column, pistol in hand.
Suddenly a man armed with a lance stepped through a door hidden by a tapestry. He saw Sam and raised his arm to strike.
Sam automatically lifted his gun in response — aiming for the head, as he usually did in shoot-’em-up video games. But just as his finger tightened around the trigger, he remembered James Faulkner, who had once owned this very gun, and Grandpas sadness when he spoke about him: “A broken man …
The soldier looked to be about twenty, very blond and a bit baby-faced. At the last moment, Sam moved his wrist slightly and the bullet slammed into a lamp with a crash loud enough to wake the dead. The soldier gave Sam a terrified glance and fled without looking back.
Wiping sweat from his forehead, Sam tucked the gun in his pocket and took the hallway leading to the round tower. Gray stone, waves of dampness, sounds of running feet echoing in every direction … Luckily the guardroom was empty. That was hardly surprising; it wasn’t the first place you’d look for an escaping prisoner. The fire was still burning in the fireplace, and the meat was still roasting — or being burned to a cinder, in this case.
“Dad?” Sam whispered urgently.
No answer. Had Dragomir taken him back to his cell? Sam silently crept forward. On the armory threshold he suddenly saw something move and jumped aside just as a club slammed into the floor a few inches away.
“Dad?”
Allan stepped out from behind the door. His eyes were wild, and he didn’t seem to understand why he was holding the club.
“Dad, it’s me, Sam.”
“Sa-Sam,” he stammered.
“Wheres Dragomir?”
With his head, Allan gestured behind him. Dragomir was sprawled full-length in front of the half-open secret passage; Sam was relieved to see he was still breathing. The would-be singing star lay a few yards from him.
“He wasn’t a prisoner,” his father explained hoarsely. “No, no. He says I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy! I was the prisoner, not him!”
“We have to move the cabinet, Dad. Soldiers will be here any second.”
Sam slowly manhandled the cabinet aside, but instead of helping, his father leaned over the guard and talked to him.
“And if you wake up again —pow!” he warned with a hysterical cackle.
“Shhh! We’ve got to get out of here!”
Allan suddenly stopped laughing. “Do you have it?” he asked in a loud voice. “I won’t leave without it, you know!”
“Of course I have it! Come on!”
“Show it to me!”
Rather than waste time in talk, Sam took Meriweserre’s bracelet out of his pocket and held it under his father’s nose. “Here it is! Are you happy now? Come ON!”
The sight of the jewel had a strange, almost hypnotic effect on Allan. He hunched over a little more and fell completely silent. Sam took the opportunity to push him toward the tunnel.
“We need some light,” he said. “Wait for me a moment.”
He returned to the guardroom and unhooked the first torch he could reach. A detachment of soldiers was climbing up the stairs toward them.
“Maybe Ivan saw something,” a voice in the stairway suggested. “He was cooking a haunch of— phew! What’s that smoke? Ivan?”
A helmeted head appeared in the doorway, and Sam reacted instantly, grabbing the tear gas cartridge and throwing it into the fireplace. The gas was under pressure; maybe the heat of the fire would work some ortho-chloro-benzy-lidene magic!
“Sound the alarm!” yelled the soldier. “Call the guard!”
Sam jumped into the darkness, hauling his father by the sleeve.
They tumbled into the secret passageway just as the gas cylinder exploded with a loud Ka-boom! The walls shook, and Sam slid the heavy door shut in a cloud of foul-smelling dust. Frightened screams could be heard on the other side, but this was no time for pity. Sam hurried down the steps as quickly as he could, half carrying his father. Allan let himself be hustled along, walking mechanically and touching the rock. But halfway down the steps, he seemed to wake from a bad dream.
“Sam? What’s — what’s going on?”
“We’re leaving Bran Castle, Dad. Do you remember Bran Castle?”
“Bran, yes. The secret passageway. Klugg —”
“Klugg? Do you know Klugg?”
“It was Vlad Tepes; he kept repeating that name. But I don’t know who Klugg is. You believe me, don’t you, Sam?”
“Of course I believe you, Dad.”
“‘Klugg,’ he would say over and over, ‘Klugg! Klugg, Klugg, Klugg!’ Then he locked me up. I was hungry, I was cold, and they beat me … Oh yes, they beat me! I spent a long time there, a very long time! I thought I was going crazy, Sam, I swear. But I’m not crazy, am I?” He started to sob like a little boy.
“Its all over, Dad,” Sam said soothingly, even though he felt heartsick. “You’ll be able to rest soon.” He tried to distract his father. “Tell me, do you know if we can use the bracelet to go home?”
“Meriweserre’s bracelet,” said Allan, blowing his nose with his fingers. “Ah, yes, the bracelet! We got it, Sam. Did you know that?”
They had just reached the foot of the iron ladder when a noisy horde started down the passageway behind them. From a distance, Sam could hear the clank of weapons, men swearing, and “Kill them! Kill them!” The soldiers had apparently cleared the rubble away from the hidden door, or Dragomir had woken up and told them about the tunnel.
“One foot after the other, Dad, all right? Go at your own pace. I’m right behind you.”
They climbed the rungs with great effort and came out inside the abandoned mill. Allan slumped against the wall and groaned with exhaustion, clearly at the end of his strength. Below them, the shouts and sounds of running grew louder. Sam slammed the trapdoor shut and shoved some heavy stones onto it.
“I scratched this sign near the arrow slit for you,” gasped his father, pointing to the initials A. F. in the rock. “Its all my fault, Sam. I was the one who got you to come here.”
“Forget about it, Dad. We re together now.�
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“No, you don’t understand. I deliberately —”
Sam helped him to his feet and Allan gave a yelp of pain.
“My back is a mess,” he said with a grimace. “Its my punishment.”
“Don’t think about that. Come on. Hang in there!”
They left the ruined building with Allan bent almost in two and Sam holding him up by the waist. Rather than follow the river as he had before, they opted for the woods, which offered protection in the gloom.
“I arranged all this,” his father continued. “You have to know that, Sam.”
“Arranged all what?”
“I wasn’t sure, but that was the meaning of the letter. I didn’t… I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, you see. I had to have the bracelet!”
“The letter? What letter?” asked Sam, who was willing to encourage his father’s rambling as long as he kept walking.
“The letter from the Turkish ambassador. Kata … Katasomething. The one the sultan sent to demand money from Dracula. He wound up impaled too,” he added, clearing his throat. “Anyway, Kata-what’s-his-name wrote back to the sultan and said that at their first meeting, Tepes was beside himself with rage, because he’d just had something very precious stolen by a boy. A mere boy! He stayed angry for a week. I know, because I saw a copy of the correspondence.”
“Do you mean that this boy —”
“I — I couldn’t be sure, Sam. I thought I could get into the tower alone and grab the bracelet myself. But in case I failed … There was a chance you would be in a better position to succeed than me. Do you understand?”
Sam was stunned.
“You planned the whole thing!” he burst out. “The coin at Maxs, the William Faulkner novel — all of it! Not so I could save you if you needed help, but so I would steal the bracelet!”
“I really hoped I would manage it alone,” said Allan abashedly. “I really did! It’s a very valuable bracelet, Sam.”
“I know — a million dollars. You wrote it in the notebook!”
“I was sure if you solved those puzzles, it meant that you could go all the way, you could meet all the challenges! And I was right, wasn’t I?”
Sam was speechless with astonishment and rage. His worst fears were all confirmed. His father had wanted him to steal Meriweserre’s bracelet! He had risked his own life and Sam’s for money Was he completely out of his mind?
“Why didn’t you tell me before you left? Why did you just take off without letting anyone know, and without even —”
He broke off at a clamor from the direction of the mill. Apparently the stones on the trapdoor hadn’t delayed the soldiers for long. And there must be a lot of them, Sam thought, to judge by the glow of torches from the clearing and the shouts he could hear, now joined by an even more dangerous sound: barking.
“Dogs,” he groaned. “They’re going to send dogs after us.”
He started walking faster, practically carrying his father now. The forest was growing darker, but carrying a lighted torch under these conditions was becoming dangerous. He beat it out against a tree and threw it behind them.
How far did they have to go? And where was the stone exactly? They would have to follow the river or risk missing it. They broke through a tangle of branches and came out at the riverbank. Once out in the open, Sam had the unpleasant fantasy that the dogs were practically on their heels. Then he remembered their next difficulty — no coins!
“Dad, is that bracelet going to get us home?” he asked again.
Allan had been breathing with increasing difficulty since leaving the mill. But he managed to smile as he wheezed, “You still… you still need your old dad, don’t you? Lesson number one, Sammy: Always bury a coin near the stone statue.”
“You’re not joking? There really is a coin near the stone?” “I’m telling you … You still have a lot to learn, kiddo!” The news lent Sam wings. A hundred yards farther on, he recognized the reeds and the tall pine tree with broken branches. “Here’s the stone, and it’s fine!” he exulted. “Do you remember where you buried the coin?”
Allan gestured vaguely toward the riverbank. Sam made his father sit down, his back against the stone statue, then he started clawing at the ground like a man possessed. The vegetation had clearly grown up in the past six months.
“You’re right to be angry at me, Sam,” Allan admitted. “I haven’t been a very good father to you. Since your mother’s death, I know I’ve been … I’ve been absent. You must have wondered what I was doing instead of taking care of you!”
“Well, I have some idea now,” said Sam, trying to keep his tone neutral as he continued to dig. “I heard about the mortgage from the bank and … Anyway, all those books and treasures must’ve been pretty tempting.”
To be continued in Book III: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
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