by Am Hudson
“I’m fine.” I jerked my hand back.
He took off his cloak and wrapped it around my shoulders, even though I tried to shove it off. “Keep it on, Amara. I beg of you.”
“Why?”
“Because your pulse is slow and you’re pale. You could be in shock.”
I twisted the cape in an elegant swirl off my shoulders and shoved it at Drake. “I said I’m fine.”
And I was fine. I wasn’t in shock. I was just… I don’t know. But I didn’t need his help.
With my big girl panties all the way up around my ears, I placed my hand on the stone wall and followed each slimy brick until I heard voices at the bottom. Drake overtook then, and stepped into the room to talk about ancient methods of torture—including the one Walt planned to use on me: the Pear of Anguish.
While everyone watched that poor guy on the chair suffer at his torturer’s hands, I walked slowly around the crowd and listened to what they were saying. For the most part, no one believed it was real. But, shamefully, those that did were very clearly turned on by it. I could feel their energy.
When the other tour guide led everyone back upstairs to witness a real vampire feeding, I held back to see that the tortured vampire was okay. Drake stayed too.
“How do you get away with this?” I said to Drake, eyeing the victim’s cuffs to see if I could loosen them. “Don’t people send those photos to the authorities?”
“Yes,” Drake said simply. “And the authorities investigate—almost every time.”
“But—”
“But what?” He laughed. “They come to find the very person in the picture to be in perfect health—no cuts or scars.”
“Healed.” The torturer snapped his fingers. “With a gulp of blood.”
“That’s clever.” I nodded, raising my brows. “I’ll give you that.”
“Of course, this showmanship also benefits the vampires in question.” Drake patted the victim’s ankle. “In exchange for exhibitionism, they get a lesser sentence—often only two weeks.”
“And you’re okay with this?” I asked the pale, bloody-looking victim.
“I k…k…killed a human,” he stammered. “That’s t-t-twenty-five years in prison normally.”
“Several humans,” Drake added. “Purely for the pleasure of hearing them cry. He deserves this, Amara, there is no question there.”
Even the victim nodded.
I took a step back from him. “Did you parade me like this when I was in that chair?”
Drake glanced up once at the camera in the corner. “No. I would never do that,” he said, and something in the way his eyes spoke with his words made me think he held some small pocket of regret. “I’m not a completely evil man, Amara,” he added, “no matter what you may have heard.”
“No one is completely evil,” I snapped, turning to walk up the stairs. “I’m sure even Hitler was an innocent child at some point in his past.”
“You liken me to Hitler?” He followed me.
“You’re right. That was unfair,” I said, looking back down at him. “Unfair to Hitler, Drake the Impaler.”
“Touché.” He laughed, and it sounded out of place in the dark stairwell. “But surely I am allowed to change and learn from my mistakes—perhaps even seek forgiveness for my sins?”
Back in the somewhat warmer light of the corridor upstairs, I wiped my feet on the red rug to rid the feel of moisture and slime. “You killed those children, Drake—after locking them away for centuries. You are not redeemable in my opinion.”
His shoulders rounded and he let out a little sigh. “If only I could make you understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That what happened that day…” He swallowed the sentence down and instead said, “Everything was not as it seemed.”
My eyes narrowed at him, studying him. “Are you saying you have some sick justification outside of revenge for what you did to those babies?”
“I can say only this.” He took a step closer, lowering his voice. “If I wanted to hurt David for what he did to Morgana, I would have killed him—or kidnapped and tortured him at the very least. But you have done me no wrong. Why would I hurt you to punish David?”
“But you did hurt me. In the worst way—”
“Precisely. So ask yourself this: if, in my attempt at revenge, you were to feel the ripple effect, why would I choose to take the one thing you cared for most?”
“I…” I started, but I didn’t really have an argument for that. He was right.
“If I wanted to hurt him without hurting you, I could have taken Arthur. Jason. And yes, you might have shed a tear, but it wouldn’t have devastated you as the deaths of those children did.”
As I opened my mouth to speak, his eyes flicked up quickly to the other end of the corridor and he shook his head at me to stop.
I angled my head back and followed his gaze to the woman with stark white hair coming toward us—one of the tour guides, I guessed, given her sixteenth-century Court dress.
She smiled softly at me, placing her hand gently on Drake’s arm as she leaned in to whisper something.
He looked at me, then at my belly. “Amara, this lovely lady here is my oldest friend—”
“Charmed,” she cut in, bowing her head; she had thick dark brows, like Drake’s, but her skin was olive, a red dot at the centre of her forehead. I couldn’t place her age, because she looked no older than twenty-five, but her voice and her eyes looked far beyond any vampire I’d met so far. Aside from Arthur.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, trying to remember if she said her name.
“I was just asking my good friend Drake here if I might trouble you for a touch—of your perfect little belly.”
“Um.” I cupped it, feeling a bit awkward.
“You see,” she explained, “I once had a child of my own, and if there is one thing I miss, it is the feel of her within me.” She moved her hands to her flat stomach.
I looked down at my not-so-flat stomach. “Um, I guess that would be okay. If Drake says.”
He looked up from the floor at me, then at the woman.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She brushed her long white hair back. “I didn’t realise Drake was the father—”
“He’s not,” I assured her. “But—”
“It’s fine,” he cut in. “You can touch her.”
The woman’s dark eyes turned to me then, leaving me with a very uncomfortable feeling in my limbs.
She knelt slowly, as if every move were calculated to receive an exact response—perhaps unease—and I looked at Drake as she lifted my top, laying her cold, bony hands and her ear to my warm, firm belly.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “I hear her.”
“You can tell it’s a girl—by listening?” I asked.
Her head whipped up and those cold eyes stung me again. “I hear everything.”
“Well.” Drake laughed nervously. “Fun’s over. We’ve a tour to catch up to.”
The woman took her cue and stood up, stepping only slightly back to allow us on our way.
I followed Drake’s lead, letting him pull me along, but the unnerving feeling that woman gave followed me.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“No one,” he said in voice that made me glad he didn’t tell the truth.
***
Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Interview with the Vampire. The performance was ridiculous and yet brilliantly funny, vibrant, alive with passion and music and amazing dancing. The crowds had not only roared with laughter but cried at the end when the vampire hero loses his eternal love. The script, although no vampires or anyone else in this corner of the world would know, was based loosely on Drake’s own story—his loss. And Heaven strike me down for admitting it, but even I cried.
“So?” Drake said, wiping a trace of eye-liner from his face.
“So?” I prompted.
“What did you think?”
I tried to make sense of this vamp
ire beside me; he had so much life in him—spirit, energy, youth. He looked and acted like a very different person when he was in costume to when he was in his capes, and a small part of me wasn’t so sure the evil overlord was his true self.
“If I’m honest.” I screwed my nose up, and his shoulders dropped a little, then my face broke apart into a super-massive grin. “Drake. It was amazing.”
“Really?”
“Oh my God! I don’t know why you’re not touring the world with that show. It has to be among the best I’ve ever seen.”
He looked ahead with a warm and very human smile on his face. “Well, I thank you. It was my pleasure to present it to you.”
“Well, you didn’t need to go and embarrass me by dedicating the performance to me as well.”
“What can I say?” He bowed his head. “I was honoured to have the Lilithian Queen in my audience.”
“And I can say without any reservations that it truly was my honour to be there.” I looked around the corridor, shaking my head. “You were right; this place really isn’t as bad as I remember, and I can see it now for what it is.”
“Oh, and what’s that?”
“A very expensive and exclusive Vampire Tour of Drakeula’s Castle.”
We both laughed.
As we passed the spot where the woman with white hair had been, a shiver went along my spine in the wrong direction. And not just for the way she made me feel, but for the fact that we were nearing a dead-end.
“Why are we going this way—the door is that way?” I jerked my thumb behind me.
“We’re taking a passage through the cells—a shortcut.”
I stopped walking. “Drake, I’m not comfortable with that.”
“It’s okay.” He held up his hand and made it glow. “I’ll light the way.”
“How do you do that?” I looked from his blue hand to his head. “Don’t you get headaches?”
“Not when I wear this.” He reached into the neck of his loose white shirt and drew out a green stone on a leather chain.
“What is that?”
“A piece of Nature—from the forest at Loslilian—about as close to the Mother of Nature as one can get.”
“And that works—keeps you close to Nature?”
“It does.” He dropped it back into his shirt. “Helps me draw on my powers when needed—gives me strength.”
My eyes were about as wide as they could be. How did I never think of that before?
“It occurs to me only now that you do not carry a stone,” he said.
“I didn’t think of it.”
“Yes, well, you’ve had no teacher,” he added with a nod. “I don’t imagine David knew much about our kind.”
“No. He and Mike forced me to use my light as a weapon. It was Jason that discovered the whole Nature thing—stopped my head from exploding one day.”
Drake smiled. “Ah, Jason—smart boy. But he never thought to give you a talisman?”
I shook my head.
“Well, perhaps we will comb through my box of stones tomorrow and find you one of your own.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good. Then come.” He linked my arm with his and shone the Cerulean light onto the dark entry to the torture chamber. “Let us get to bed and get some rest, and I will come to find you first thing in the morning.”
***
As I lay on the bed last night, reliving the tour, the show, that creepy woman, and the talk I had with Drake, my thoughts led me back to the slow return journey under the castle. I wasn’t sure why, but as I walked along the secret tunnel in the glow of Drake’s blue light, the howling winds and things unseen didn’t bother me. I realised something while we were down there: I trusted him.
Now, with the daylight stripping back the hours until he would come to find me, all I could think about was what he said about the Damned. I could feel the anger and the resentment uncoiling in my chest and changing into curiosity, because I knew Drake’s words last night weren’t just a clever way to make me trust him. He meant it. Those children died for a reason other than revenge.
I finished tying the ribbons on the pretty sky-blue top and quickly checked the bathroom mirror to see how it looked. As I imagined it would, the bunched cut above my belly accentuated the bump and made it look like a real pregnant tummy—like I’d waited so long to see—and the light denim jeans made my butt look smaller. Which was good, because I’d noticed it getting a little bit bigger these last few weeks here at the castle—as if Drake’s food had more calories than Chef’s food. Or maybe it was just that I felt safe here, and happy without the emotional weight of a monarchy or the tension that’d been between David and I these past few months. Happy enough to put on a different kind of weight.
When I heard a rap on the door, I blew out the candle and went to open it, and there, as fresh as the morning, was a smiling vampire with a bunch of yellow roses and a square gift box about as big as my palm.
“Morning,” I said, taking the flowers.
“I thought your room could use a little cheer,” he said, coming inside. “I chose yellow because it’s your favourite colour—not to imply the need to apologise.”
I sniffed the flowers, going back in time for a second to my last year at school. “They’re lovely. Thank you.”
Drake sat in the armchair and stoked the fire while I went into the bathroom again to put the flowers in a cup with water, since there were no vases in here. When I came back out, he leaned forward and placed the gift box on the other chair, tapping it once. “For you,” he said.
I put the flowers on the windowsill and sat down across from Drake, lifting the little box first, resisting the urge to ask what was inside. I hated when people would do that. I mean, open it and find out, right? So I did. I lifted the lid and looked at the small ring of purple stones, confused.
“It’s an amethyst bracelet,” Drake said. “A piece of Nature. I thought perhaps you deserved a talisman of your own, rather than to inherit an old one of mine.”
“Thank you.” As I lifted the cold, weighty little stones and slipped them onto my wrist, I could feel the energies instantly, like heat going up my cheeks and making my ears burn—almost as if I were blushing.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Drake watched me with a careful eye, but a smile underneath.
I nodded.
“I knew it!” He slapped his knee. “I knew you’d be an amethyst girl.”
“An amethyst girl?”
“It’s your energy.” He nodded to my arm. “When you’ve practiced Cerulean Magic as long as I, you come to learn a lot about a person by their aura. And you know how best they connect with the earth and Nature. I felt amethyst for you, and I was right.”
“Why do you call it Cerulean Magic?” I put the box on the coffee table.
“Because it is magic—when you learn how to use it properly.” He stood up and offered me his hand. “And I thought we might take a walk outside the castle grounds today—get back to Nature. Then perhaps I can teach you a few things.”
I grinned widely, taking his hand. “I’d really like that!”
***
Beneath the tangled boughs of ancient pines, Drake and I walked, our feet crunching over the dried needles as they sank into the muddy ground. I had brought a coat with me but abandoned it as we exited the castle because my body was still fluctuating with the effects of wearing the amethysts. Drake said it would wear off or ‘simmer down’ in a while. And I did start to feel a little chill as we reached what Drake said was the dead centre of the forest.
We stopped there and he put both hands in the pockets of his short denim coat, taking a deep breath of the day.
I followed suit, feeling the particles of Nature move down my throat and into my lungs, connecting with my cells and bringing them slowly back to life, as if every breath I’d taken at the castle had killed me a little each time.
When I opened my eyes, Drake did at exactly the same time, and we both laughed, gid
dy with the exhilaration of Life. My hands warmed another degree and my shoulders rolled back to their natural position for the first time in weeks. All I wanted now was to kick off my shoes and curl my toes into the soil.
Nothing like the scent of pines in autumn could ever be found anywhere but an untouched forest such as this—as if the wind from the past lingered here, carrying the ancient lemony scent with it.
Drake hadn’t said a word since we entered here, which left me thinking the whole time that maybe this place was sacred somehow—like The Enchanted Forest at Loslilian. But when he turned to a tree a few meters away to relieve himself, I realised, with a shake of my head, that the silence was clearly just because he wanted time with his own thoughts.
When he walked back to my side, a gallon or so lighter, I couldn’t help but grin at him. “For someone so proper and so ancient, you really do surprise me.”
He laughed. “I’m sure you’ve seen a man relieve himself on a tree before.”
“Many times.” I turned and trudged deeper into the forest. “But never an evil overlord.”
Drake just laughed again.
As we walked a bit deeper, branches and twigs joined hands across the path, and the sun and any light it brought retreated, making it nearly impossible to navigate through the treacherous terrain.
“It’s kinda dark now, isn’t it?” I noted.
“The trees prefer it that way.” He aimed a finger to the tangled web of branches above us. “They don’t much like the sun.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps they feel it illuminates their secrets too much.”
“They have secrets?” I glanced back at Drake.
He pushed a branch aside and finally caught up. “Anything as old as these trees have many.”
“Like you?”
“Yes,” he said, and that one word seemed to carry a vault of his own secrets and conceal them at the same time.
“And the children—are they one of your secrets?” I asked. “You say you didn’t choose to kill them—”
“I never said that.”
“But you said—”
“I said… okay, maybe I said something to that degree.” He huffed—at himself, I think. “But there really is no way I can explain it to you without putting you in danger.”
