by Ted Dekker
The rain began to fall when I was only halfway up the mountainside, and my fear began to mount. Thunder hammered the earth, lightning split the sky, and I pushed my stallion faster. He lunged through the trees, splashing through mud, scattering rocks.
What if Lucine had returned to her mother after all? I was on a different road. I would have missed her entirely. But I was now committed, so I threw the thought aside and pressed on.
When I rounded the bend that first allowed full sight of the Castle Castile, the falling rain was so heavy that I could not see it across the ravine. I let my horse have his head and prayed I was not too late. Too late for what, I wasn’t sure. But my warrior’s instincts were raw with alarm.
There were no horses tied out front when mine slid to a stop at the post, but Valerik would have put them in the stable in this storm.
Rivers of water ran from my head and shoulders as I climbed those steps to the sealed doors. The wind whipped my coat about my legs. If the doors were locked, I would find another way inside— those stone walls could not keep me out.
Sword trailing at my side, I pounded on the door. Stealth would not be my friend here, because I had not come to take on an army, only confront Lucine with my love. But if anyone got in my way, I was sworn to put them to the side.
The door did not open, so I pushed the lever and shoved. It swung wide. I stepped into the atrium and let the door blow shut behind me.
Now I was here, in the silence, and for a moment I just stood. Then I shrugged out of my coat and let it fall to the stone. I gripped my sword’s handle and let the blade trail behind me. My determination would be clear, but I wasn’t foolish enough to go in swinging.
I hesitated for one deep breath at the door that led into the great hall where I’d first found Natasha. Then I pushed it open and stepped into the Castle Castile.
The floor was empty. I stood dripping on their marble and let my blade rest on the ground.
And then I saw them, lined along the balcony shoulder to shoulder, a dozen of the Russians, staring at me.
This was their welcome. They’d been waiting. And they wore knives on their thighs. A rage settled over me.
“I demand an audience with Lucine Cantemir!” The water on my lips sprayed with the force of my words. “Bring her to me! Now!”
NINETEEN
Rain poured from the sky. Lucine could hear it pelting the roof above, but here in Vlad’s tower it was only a distant, comforting murmur. Even the crashes of thunder were shut out by this magnificent fortress.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it?”
“What is?” she asked.
“The sound of the rain.”
“Hmm.”
Look into my eyes and see my love for you, Lucine.
She looked at Vlad, who was staring at her from the bookcase. Had he spoken to her? In his hand he held a brown leather book that was worn from years of handling. His eyes invited her to live in them. “I want you to know who I really am, Lucine. No secrets between you and me.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets?”
“Never from you. But it takes time to unveil all. It’s the only way to embrace true love.”
She smiled, toying with him and pleased to find herself in the position to do so. “And what is true love? As much as I appreciate all of this more than I ever would have guessed, is it really the stuff of true love?”
“No.” He approached her, holding his book in one hand. “It’s only one page of the whole. Still, you do find”—he glanced at the portraits—“all of this beautiful, yes?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“But it’s only a taste, I agree. The rest of the story is found in the rest of the pages. In the full truth of the matter.”
He turned from her and opened the book’s leather cover gingerly. “The problem with most people is that they’re afraid to look at the whole story. They live in fear of what they might find, because they cling to such a thin thread of hope that any disappointment might snap it in two.”
He was speaking about her, she thought, her own reluctance to embrace a hope for true love, her fear it might not exist. She felt her smile fade.
“And their greatest fear is of the wolf. The priests have done a good job of that, don’t you think? ‘Look here, the wolf has eaten your chicken. Look there, the wolf has killed that man,’ they say. But no one ever sees that wolf.”
“Perhaps.”
He paced slowly, fingering through his book. “Meanwhile the wolf prowls freely, dressed in a cloak made of sheep’s clothing.”
The soothing waves of his voice calmed her. “Yes,” she said.
Vlad looked at her sideways. “The Pharisees put up their fences: ‘Don’t touch, don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t cross the road on this day or that.’ And all the sheep bleat their agreement. ‘Yes, yes, yes, don’t, don’t, don’t.’”
He was so bold, this royal named Vlad.
“While religion is busy putting up fences to protect their young, the wolves walk through the front doors. And no one wants to strip them bare for fear of what they might find. It makes the wolf’s hunt so much easier.”
“I suppose it would.”
“Do wolves scare you, Lucine?”
Considering the wine and company, she felt somewhat fearless. “No, not really.”
“Perhaps if you spent more time looking at them, they would,” he said. “Because the real wolf comes to kill. To steal. To destroy.”
“Then I’d prefer not to look at them,” she said.
He smiled and closed the book with a thump. “No. No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Which is good for us both.” He lowered his eyes to the cover, rubbed his thumb over the embossing. “You wonder what makes me and my coven so unique.” Eyes up, drilling her, he walked to her. “So magical.”
“Yes.” In a whisper.
He reached for her chin and lightly brushed it with his forefinger. “Mine is a world in which the stakes for true love are higher than you can imagine.”
She felt her breathing thicken as he spoke.
“The beauty you see here is only a fraction of all I possess. If you would step with me beyond the pages of this story you see about you, I could show you a new kind of love.”
She didn’t know what to say.
Vlad grinned, then turned, crossed to his desk, set the book down, and splashed some wine into a tall brass goblet.
Lucine cleared her throat so that she could speak. “That’s what you wished to show me, this magical book of yours?” she asked.
“No.” He lifted the glass and stepped across the room to her.
She took the glass.
“Don’t drink it yet, my love. It is a very special wine.” He winked at her. “The kind that opens the eyes of mortals to true wolves and true love and to God himself.”
She laughed. “Then it’s what Natasha has been drinking, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
“She’s never had a problem running after love.”
“But you, my dear Lucine, are the more beautiful by far.” He drew her hair off her cheek with his fingers. “You are exquisite, and if I were so humbled to have you as my queen, together we would rule the world and show them all love.”
“And put all the wolves into cages,” she said.
“May I kiss you?”
She felt her heart stop for a beat, then resume with more force.
Vlad slid one arm around her waist and gently pulled her against him. Then he brought his lips to hers and he kissed her. Like a dove. And it made her head spin.
He lifted his lips and spoke in a whisper, only inches from her mouth. “Will you remember me forever, Lucine?”
Her heart pounded and she let her restraint slip.
“Yes.”
“Then drink this wine in remembrance of me.” And he pushed the goblet up to her lips.
She took only a drop of the musky-smelling liquid, barely enough to slide down her throat, and then the goblet was gone from he
r lips. He kissed her again, and this time she returned the kiss, softly at first, but then with hunger.
“You will be my bride soon, Lucine. Forever my only bride.”
TWENTY
They were twelve and I was one, and we faced each other across the hall, I the lone lion with my teeth bared, they the wolf pack with dead eyes.
They did not answer my demand. They gave no indication they had even heard it.
They did not circle nor reach for their weapons. They only stood on that balcony and stared down at me like generals watching a battle in the valley below. Nine males and three females.
I staggered forward three steps and stopped, sword still low on the stones. They were all dressed in black trousers, some with shirts open in a V to their bellies, some of the men bare-chested. All were lean and well muscled, pale as the moon.
I recognized only two, Stefan and Dasha.
“Where is she?” My voice echoed through the hall.
Stefan spoke quietly. “You are no longer welcome, dark twin. Leave us.”
It was true, Toma means “twin,” and a thousand dead infidels might have called me “dark,” but in the Castle Castile I was surely the beacon of light.
“Let Lucine tell me that I’m not welcome,” I said.
“She loves another.”
My hand began to shake. “Then take me to your master!”
I swear I could see a grin on that Russian’s face, though his lips were flat. “He’s in her embrace. Your love is wasted here, dark suitor.”
Until that moment I did not know how far I would go, indeed if I would use my sword at all, but when I heard those words my mind lost all thought of sparing even one of those infidels. I became that man who could step onto any battlefield without fear for my life.
Cold calculation, not blind rage, determines the warrior’s fate, and I became ice.
My mind skipped through the weapons at my disposal. Two throwing knives, one pistol, one sword. The hall was open for maneuvering. I could take twelve men if tremendous fortune was on my side; I’d done it before. But my first purpose was to find Lucine, not slay these fools.
I was confident that their master resided in the western tower, because he’d taken that direction when he left Sofia and me the last time I was here. The door he took rested shut across the hall to my left. It would be my goal.
Slowly I walked out to the center, eyes on them all for the slightest movement. “Then give me my man Alek,” I said, hoping to engage their minds. “Give him to me and I will go.”
In answer, the twin of Stefan, the man I had shot at the Summer Ball of Delights, threw his legs up and to one side, vaulting over the railing as if hopping over a small tree in the forest. His shirtsleeves fluttered as he fell ten feet, and I swear he did not remove his eyes from me as he dropped, not once.
He absorbed his landing with a light spring in his knees.
“But Alek is no longer your man, Toma.” Stefan stepped toward me, unconcerned, knife still fastened to his thigh with buckled black straps. “He’s Dasha’s man.”
Dasha dropped over the railing and landed with the same ease Stefan had. So they were accomplished gymnasts, but such tumbling could not stop a blade.
Stefan halted ten paces from me, lips twisted in a whimsical grin. “And you should know that Natasha is mine. She became mine when I kissed her at your ball.”
The thought distracted me for a moment. Then this was the man I had shot?
“We heal rather quickly,” he said.
My sword was still touching the ground and I remained as ice, despite that bell of alarm ringing in my head.
Dasha stopped beside Stefan. “Did you like our wine, Toma?”
“You have bewitched my man with this drug.”
“No, not a drug. Blood, lover boy.”
“Then this is your way of loving? To drug your victims with blood so they become pliable in your arms?”
“We force no one to drink. And no one may drink from us unless they beg. Would you like me to drink your blood? Then you would be my lover.”
Natasha. And Alek.
I didn’t know what kind of coven I had fallen into, what kind of witchcraft or evil proceeding. I was ignorant of religion, as I have said. But my lack of faith was wearing thin. Surely what they suggested could not be entirely true. Only the raving mad might drink blood!
Drink this blood in remembrance of me. Holy communion. I had never understood how the civilized could talk so openly about drinking blood. Christianity was obsessed with blood—the blood of Christ, the blood of the lamb, the blood of the saints, always blood. It was one reason I considered priests to be the better part of mad and churches their asylums.
I was one who spilled blood on the battlefield, not on an altar.
And now Lucine was in the monster’s arms, drinking his blood? The thought of it made my bones tremble.
“Let me pass.”
Stefan stepped forward. “You shot me,” he said. “It’s only a memory now, but I can’t say it did not hurt. Would you like to try again?”
The door was to my left, a good twenty paces. At a full spring I might make it before they got to me.
“I’m not here to kill you. I am only here for Lucine.”
“And yet Lucine is my master’s property. None of us take kindly to thieving.”
“Then you have twisted her mind and taken what is not yours to take!”
“You were not listening to me,” Dasha said.
I had listened, but I could not embrace her talk of blood. It did not seem feasible to me. They clearly had some powerful drugs, but they were not devils. I wasn’t so naive.
“Fight me,” Stefan said. “Kill me again, and they will let you see Lucine, whom you have lost to our master.”
I had only three options. I could retreat and return later with more men. I could make a break for the door on my left and trust my speed to carry me past these two. Or I could engage Stefan. Kill him.
I was never a man to delay unless it was to my distinct advantage. And it no longer was.
I took a deep breath. “Then I must insist . . .”
My arm flashed.
It was my practice to house a single, perfectly balanced throwing knife as part of the hilt in my sword, released with a single clasp by my forefinger. I had released the clasp as I took that deep breath.
And now with the snap of my arm that steel blade rushed toward Stefan.
It sliced into his chest and thudded to the handle. He made no attempt to deflect or duck. I don’t think he moved so much as a hair, not even after it drilled him.
No one moved. I expected him to fall, earning me an undisputed victory. Instead he calmly reached up, grasped the handle, and pulled the knife out of his chest.
Blood ran down his belly. He held the blade for a moment, then let it fall noisily to the floor.
“Very nice throw,” he said. And then he moved.
Not a sprint, not a leap, not a swerve. He was a blur shifting from his position five paces away to my side, knee drawn back, and then smashing against my ribs as he reached me.
I had time only to brace for the blow and fall with it. I landed on my shoulder and rolled, grasping for the blade at my side.
I saw the room in one glance as I came to my feet. Six of them were dropping from the balcony like crows settling for a landing; the other four streaked to my left to cut off the approach to the western tower. They covered twenty paces in the space of one breath.
But I saw more. Dasha’s face looked bleached, and it had narrowed. Her eyes were bright red. And her fingers were longer, like claws with extended nails.
I knew then that I was outmatched. Swords and knives and bullets were no use against twelve of them. Nevertheless, I threw my second knife.
It took the nearest in his forehead. The force of the blade kicked his head back so that he faced the ceiling. Blood drenched his hair and he crashed to his back like a felled tree.
If I had more blades
. . .
I had my pistol in my hand and discharged the load into the shoulder of Stefan. The bullet spun him once and dropped him to one knee. But he waited only a moment before pushing himself back up.
I was trapped. Out of blades. The pistol was too slow. There was only one unguarded door, and I had no idea where it led.
My heart was broken for Lucine. I had failed! I would have rather died than lived with that knowledge. But my death would only cut her last thread of hope.
So I ran for that door, certain I would never make it.
TWENTY-ONE
The wine’s burning in her mouth was quickly soothed by a warm flutter in her belly. Vlad stared into her eyes, and the world seemed to slow. How she had managed to resist the lure of love for so long, she did not know. Now that she was embracing it—embracing Vlad’s seduction of her—she felt as though she might be in heaven.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
She reached up and pulled his head closer, then fed hungrily on his lips with her own. “I love it,” she breathed.
“I thought you would, my love.”
Vlad straightened, lifted her hand, and danced with her. She lay her head back and laughed at the ceiling. Thunder crashed over them, yet only the most distant threat.
“You will be my bride. We will rule the world, Lucine!”
“We will be heroes.”
“We will show that terrible suitor why you belong to me.”
“We will feed on that evil suitor.”
She had not a clue what he meant with all of his poetic speech. It hardly mattered. There was plenty of time for understanding tomorrow.
“Now you should go home, before the road washes out completely,” he said.
“No.” She pulled back. “No, I can’t go now.”
“Why ever not, dear?”
She searched his eyes. Was he serious? He was sending her home already?
“I . . . The night is young. It’s storming outside.”
“Then you want to stay with me?”
“Yes!”
He spun away, delighted, and he shouted at the roof, one fist raised, “I knew it!”
Lucine pealed with laughter and let him sweep her around, off the ground. Oh what bliss, what delight, what wonder! Music was flowing from the walls now, from the room next door perhaps, she didn’t know, only that the mournful fiddle sounded like an angel crooning to her.
