“What the…?” Ivy said as her face turned up to the bright sky. “How can this be? Where exactly are we?”
Riah shrugged. “Been wondering that myself for the last few minutes. I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
“And?” Colin said as he unwrapped his arms from around Ivy, his own face full of wonder. “Where exactly are we, then?”
She turned full circle and stared, the germ of an idea starting to take root. It didn’t seem possible, and yet everything she was seeing told her it was so. Memories hundreds of years old seemed to be coming to life before her eyes, vivid and quite real. Of an island with gently rolling hills, acres of green grass, and a beautiful, well-used monastery.
This was no flashback. “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Wallachia.”
“Wall lacha what?” Ivy said, still sporting an expression of disbelief that she hadn’t gone up in a puff of smoke.
“Wallachia, the kingdom of the quite real Vlad Dracula.”
“Get out of here,” Colin said, his hands on his hips. “And what’s with the night/day thing. And…why are we all standing around in the sunshine without anyone going up in a puff of smoke? This is a brand-new twist for me, and ladies, I’ve seen a lot.”
“A little more than a paradigm shift, I’d say,” Adriana put in, her face mirroring amazement. “We just did a little time-warp thing, didn’t we?”
“Good call,” Riah said as she put an arm around Adriana’s shoulders. “What made you latch onto the idea of time travel?” She’d already worked it out in her own mind but was surprised that anyone else had too.
“That.” Adriana pointed to the monastery in the distance. It was tall and beautifully intact, as if it had been recently built.
“Holy crap,” Ivy muttered. “Are you kidding me?”
Riah listened carefully, breathed deeply. No, definitely not kidding. It might have been nearly five centuries since she last stepped foot here, but she had a pretty good idea where…or rather when she was. The centuries were rolling back as if she were hitting the back button on an old movie.
Her immediate thought was holy crap. The stories about the wormholes were true. She didn’t know how or why and, frankly, didn’t care. All she did care about was that they were here and hopefully so was Lura. Nothing physically or intellectually confirmed it. Only her heart felt her presence, and that was enough to push her forward. Now all they had to do was haul ass, find her, and get back. Easy peasy, as Adriana would say.
“I don’t know what kind of power those rocks hold, but we’re definitely not in the twenty-first century any longer. This is the world, more or less, that I came from, so you’ll need to follow my lead. Let me do all the talking. Anybody have a problem with that?”
Adriana laughed. “Yeah, well, that’s not exactly a problem. First of all, gorgeous, have you noticed yet that none of us speak the lingo? And that was before we took a giant leap backward.”
Truthfully, it was going to be a stretch for her as well. She was good at languages, always was, but it’d been a very long time since she’d been here, and the dialect was a distant memory. She’d muddled through well enough after landing in Bucharest and she’d silently patted herself on the back for the accomplishment. This was something completely different. From up-close-and-personal experience, everything changes, including languages. Nothing stays static. Hopefully the nuances of this place in time would come back to her sooner rather than later.
Ivy’s face suddenly stilled even as she seemed to be enjoying the feel of the sun on her skin for the first time in a year. “Hold up the cavalry. Let’s not ignore the obvious. I should be a pile of ash right about now, so why am I still standing here? This is just so not right in the preternatural reality that I’ve been living in.”
After a long silence, Riah finally admitted the truth. She wanted to be able to provide a good explanation, but she just didn’t have one. “I don’t know.”
Ivy tilted her head and studied Riah with intelligent, questioning eyes. She blew out a long breath and said, “You know this is fucked up, right?”
“Yes.” Again silence hung as a feeling inside Riah took hold. “Yes, and there’s something else I do know that you may not.”
“Like…”
Riah had nothing except gut instinct to base her answer on and yet didn’t hesitate for a second. “She’s here.” The words as they left her lips felt as true as if Lura were standing right in front of her.
“She who…Lura?” Ivy looked around in confusion. “Where?”
Like Ivy, Riah turned to look full circle, not that she expected to find the woman they sought anywhere nearby. “She’s here. I don’t know exactly where, only that it’s the truth. All we have to do is find her.”
Three expectant faces stared back at her, and she wished she had something more to give them. She didn’t. It was all a feeling. Sure, it was a strong feeling, but nothing concrete that would make them believe with the certainty she felt. If there was ever a moment for blind trust, this was it.
Apparently, they thought so too. Ivy squared her shoulders, took Colin’s hand, and looked out toward the lakeshore in the distance. “Well, then what are we waiting for? Let’s get rolling and find my cousin.”
Great idea. Little problem. Riah saw it immediately, though it appeared to have escaped the notice of the others. “Have you looked at what we’re wearing? Not exactly local fashion, if you know what I mean.”
“Crap,” Adriana said, and then stared at her own hands as she turned them over and over. “I have a hunch I’m not exactly going to blend in here in medieval Eastern Europe, and I presume that’s where we are.”
“Neither is he.” Riah nodded in Colin’s direction.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Ivy tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Does the term giant mean anything to you, love?”
He opened his mouth to protest and then snapped it shut, muttering a single “oh” before he did.
“Yeah,” Ivy said, a wry smile on her lips. “If we’re when and where I think we are, you, my dear man are head and shoulders above everyone else and will stick out like a sore thumb. Don’t get me wrong. I love you, sore thumb and all, but somehow we have to find a way to make you blend in a little better.”
Riah ran her hand over Adriana’s face and stared into her gorgeous eyes. “You too, beautiful. While people of color aren’t entirely foreign here, neither are they commonplace. A single black woman would draw far too much attention, I’m afraid.”
“Do you know where we need to go?” Colin asked.
Riah nodded. Though not a hundred percent certain, she had a pretty good idea. “Tirgoviste.”
“That’s like forty miles away,” Ivy exclaimed. “And we’re on foot. And on an island. We are so screwed.”
Colin drew her close. “We’re going to have to find proper clothes and horses. Probably a boat, unless you ladies feel like a swim.”
Riah shuddered at the mere thought of slipping into that water and shook her head. “No swim. There’s usually a boat somewhere along the shore, or at least that’s what I remember. For now, we need to take cover and move as invisibly as possible. It would be hard to explain all of this.” She waved at their very modern attire.
Adriana grabbed her hand and tugged her toward some nearby trees. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s kick it in gear. If Lura’s with your buddy Vlad, I’m thinking the sooner we get to her, the better. He might have been a savior against the Turks, but everything I’ve ever read about the guy gives me the heebie-jeebies. Let’s find us a boat, some clothes, and some horses…in that order.”
Riah knew exactly what she meant. Warm and fuzzy, Dracula wasn’t. Bloodthirsty and dangerous? Absolutely. “Time to roll out.”
And that’s exactly what they did.
*
Lura managed to make it back to Nicoletta’s chambers before she tossed her cookies…a technical term taught in medical school. Earlier, she’d thought
both Alexandru and Nicoletta were nutbags…another technical term. Not anymore. Her world had taken a decided shift into the land of insanity when that man, that poor man, had been impaled on a roughly hewn stake. His blood had poured down as the stake was hoisted and secured, his body writhing as the life drained out of him. She’d never seen anything like it and hoped to God she never did again. It was nothing even the most skilled special-effects artist could recreate. The sounds, the smells, the sight were a horror that would not ever be erased from her memory.
Nicoletta’s tears mixed with hers as she kneeled beside Lura holding a damp cloth to her head. Her touch was soothing and helped her to calm down, even as the shaking in her body refused to subside. At last, she rocked back on her heels and stared into Nicoletta’s gorgeous brown eyes.
“What was that?” Her words were as shaky as her hands.
Nicoletta held a palm to her cheek, and Lura pressed into the reassuring touch. “He tolerates nothing but truth and honesty.”
“But he staked that man…alive! He was starving, and all he wanted to do was feed his family.”
She nodded, her eyes reflecting deep sadness. “It is the way of the Prince.”
The way of the Prince? What a goddamn cop-out. Surreal didn’t even begin to describe what she’d just witnessed. All morning she’d been going along with Nicoletta and Alexandru, believing the whole time that their story of shifting to the past was nothing more than that: a story. How wrong she’d been.
The blood pouring down the ugly wooden stake was real. She saw it every time she closed her eyes, smelled the rancid odor of terror and death. She might be able to convince herself this was all a façade, but she’d never be able to reconcile any of it with the man whose life had slipped down the rough surface of the stake.
Nor would she ever forget the expression of the man who’d ordered his death. Any doubt about the truth of Alexandru and Nicoletta’s story of where she was now had vanished in the space of time it took to rob that poor wretch of his life. She understood with crystal clarity that she was in a time and place far removed from her world.
Worst of all, she understood at last that the man who filled her vision with blood and terror was, in fact, the very real, and very vicious, son of the dragon, Vlad Dracula.
How could this be happening? As if it wasn’t bad enough that Vic was dead or that she’d been waylaid on the way to pick up his ashes. Oh, no, she had to step through some wormhole, space/time wrinkle, or whatever the fuck it was, and end up in a Middle Ages nightmare.
Why couldn’t she have found herself back in ancient Rome in a nice palace with maybe an orgy or two? Just the kind of thing to make her forget what a bitch she was.
True to form, no Rome. No palace. Definitely no orgy. Her journey into the world of the paranormal didn’t take her anywhere fun. She’d managed to drop into the lap of Vlad the Impaler. She’d be lucky if she got out of this mess without finding herself on the pointed end of one of those hideous stakes.
“All right.” She captured Nicoletta’s gaze. “I get it. We’re not in Disneyland.”
Nicoletta’s face clouded. “Disneyland?”
“An amusement park,” she started to explain, and then stopped. “A place in my world where people go to have fun. I’ll tell you about it another time.”
“As you wish.”
“What I’m trying to say is, I finally understand what you and Alexandru have been trying to tell me. I get where I am.”
Relief seemed to soften Nicoletta’s features, and for the first time, Lura realized how truly lovely the woman was. Lovely but haunted. Something in her eyes spoke of pain and heartache. A man, perhaps? For some reason that thought made her want to put her arms around Nicoletta and protect her. She didn’t want to dwell too much on why. She had enough on her plate without taking on slaying dragons for a beautiful woman.
“We must be careful.” Nicoletta took Lura’s hand.
Even with the soothing touch of Nicoletta’s flesh against hers, the horror of the man impaled on the tall spike returned and her stomach did a flip. She might not fully understand what kind of hades she was neck deep in right now, but Nicoletta’s earlier cautions made perfect sense at last. Whatever it took not to catch the attention of the Prince was precisely what she planned to do. She might be a lot of things; stupid wasn’t one of them.
Chapter Twelve
As Riah anticipated, a boat was on the shore pulled up away from the water, and they were able to launch it so that they could row across to the mainland. They made it across in no time at all. From centuries past she recalled how small boats would dot the shoreline both on the island and the mainland. Her recollection hadn’t been wrong and now they stepped to dry land. Things from there seemed to go their way. A real treat considering the obstacles they typically ran into.
Their first piece of luck was finding clothes. Stealing wasn’t high on Riah’s list, but sometimes it was the only option. The second bit of luck: no one in residence. The manor house they stumbled on was what they needed most: vacant and well stocked. Whoever lived here was apparently gone at the moment, taking along any servants they might employ. Fate was smiling on them. She’d take it and not question why. Sometimes explanations just weren’t necessary or needed.
Riah directed their choices like a good movie wardrobe chief. After all, she was the only one of the group who’d actually been here, even if it was a few decades later, judging by the styles she found inside the manor house. Still, things hadn’t changed that much by the time she and Rodolphe landed on Wallachian soil. She remembered very well what was and wasn’t proper. Stylish wasn’t as much a concern as propriety.
For that reason, she and Ivy chose the nicest dresses they found, while Adriana and Colin were guided to the oldest and most tattered clothing. They would have to give the impression of servitude. Dressed too richly, they would be questioned. A black woman and a giant man were simply not everyday sights in this place. Ivy’s Hispanic heritage was easier to camouflage, and she’d easily be able to pass herself off as a woman of substance.
Ivy’s short hair was a bit of a challenge though. Refined women did not cut their hair in such a way. The longer, the better. They solved the problem with an embroidered cap that covered most of her head. It worked well to hide the shortness, and as long as she kept it on, no one would be the wiser.
By the time Riah was finished with her, Ivy was a proper lady of standing. Her black dress with gold collar and sleeves was an excellent fit and gave her a somber but elegant look. She was all nobility in the gown, and by the look on Colin’s face, it was a successful choice. No one would question her authority dressed so appropriately.
Riah discovered ribbons in one of the drawers that were the same rich burgundy color of the soft wool dress with the slashed sleeves she now wore. Weaving the ribbons into her long hair, she soon looked like a very well-to-do European noblewoman herself. It was amazing how fast it all came back to her.
After some discussion, they decided that Adriana would do better going undercover as a boy. She’d draw less attention as a boy servant, and so they scoured the estate until they found shirt, shoes, and pants. Her rather generous chest was a bit of a problem they solved by binding her with a length of cotton. By the time they were done, the curvy beauty Riah shared her bed with was gone, replaced by a scruffy boy wearing shapeless clothes a mere step up from rags. The metamorphosis was stunning.
Unwilling to give up all her twenty-first century goodies, Adriana managed to fashion a bag out of cord and a piece of soft leather. She hung the contraption around her waist, and it actually worked with the whole waif motif. Riah smiled when she saw her in the grubby duds, little bag resting on her hip. Damned if she wasn’t sexy in that getup. Might have to remember that after they got back home. Role-playing could be fun when life and death was off the table.
If they got back home.
She shook her head to banish the negative thought. They got here through the rocks and they’
d return through the rocks. Whatever magic was in those stones, it would hold long enough for them to make the reverse journey. It had to. She was going to keep focusing on that thought. No reason to believe it wouldn’t work.
Getting Colin into character proved to be a greater challenge. He was simply too big to blend in easily or find clothes close to his size. They finally found a shirt that sort of fit and gave him a little more of a servant appearance. They couldn’t do much about his pants. Nothing they uncovered came even close to fitting him, and forget about the shoes. Nobody in the fifteenth century had a size-thirteen foot. If they got into a pinch, he’d just have to stash his shoes and go barefoot. It wasn’t great, but it’d just have to do.
“This is the best we can hope for,” Riah said when they stood out in the courtyard, the clothes they’d come through the rocks in folded in their arms.
“I say we stash these somewhere,” Ivy said, nodding toward the clothes. “We can put them back on when we get ready to take a run at those rocks again.”
“If we can get back here in one piece,” Adriana muttered.
Riah gave her a hug. “We’ll be fine. I know we will.” She hoped she sounded more convinced than she felt. Maybe if she said it enough times she’d actually believe it.
Adriana kissed her cheek. “If you say so.”
“I’ve kept you safe so far, haven’t I?”
Adriana rolled her eyes, hands on her hips. “Oh, please, Vampira. I’ve covered your ass more than once.”
Riah loved the way this woman made her feel. Whenever her confidence was shaken, Adriana could say or do exactly what she needed to help her center once more. “I love you too,” she said, and kissed her. “Now, let’s tuck these away somewhere we’ll be able to find them again and then get on our way before whoever lives here comes back. We really don’t want to get caught with our hands in the cookie jar. These folks do not take stealing lightly, and they’d be real quick to cut off said hands.”
Vermilion Justice Page 11
