Max touched a large green gem with a finger. “Is this stuff real?” he asked, eyeing the pile of gems and what he guessed was easily a half kilogram of golden aureus.
“Yes.” The mage smiled at his reaction. “There is more, if you need it.”
Max choked and began shoveling the fortune back into the bag. “This will be fine… thank you very much,” he managed to wheeze out. Once the last golden coin was tucked safely away in the bag and the top tied, he handed the leather sack to Shy with a trembling hand. “You hold onto this for the time being. That much temptation makes my fingers itch.”
Shyilia opened her mouth once, but nothing came out.
He took a deep breath. “If everything has been settled, we should be away,” he said, already planning what he had to do next.
Standing rooted to her spot, Shy threw him an exasperated look. “Are you planning on telling me what we are doing and where we are going? Or am I simply a piece of luggage to be carted along?”
Max gave her a long look, as if seriously considering what she’d said, and her cheeks flushed in anger. He chuckled. “Actually, since I would have been traveling alone, I hadn’t considered the need for lengthy explanations.”
Her look softened not at all.
“We will travel by runespell to the gate I arrived at. If I arrange things right, we will step out of one gateway and through the next, winding up in the ruins of an ancient city in my world. When I came through from my world, I left there and arrived here at night, and this time, we will do the same, to avoid awkward encounters on the other side.” He glanced pointedly at the darkness outside the windows. “From there, we will drive to Râșnov, Romania, the place where the whole adventure started. I need to speak with a couple of people there before I head back to my homeland.” Rubbing his beard lightly, he considered the elfin woman standing beside him. “I was going to take a plane back to the States, but now that there are two of us, I think we’ll simply travel by runespell.” He smiled to Oewaelle. “Once in the States, as the saying goes, I need to see a man about a horse. That could take up to a month, and then we will return. Future plans will depend on how well this trip goes.”
With a thin smile, the mage touched his shoulder. “And here I thought you were just going off in a huff.” Her smile faded. “Be very careful, and come back as soon as you are able. Aeyaqar needs you, Maximilian.” Her violet eyes said something much more personal, along the lines of I need you.
He swallowed with effort, his mouth suddenly dry. It had been a very long time since he’d been in this particular situation, and in that case, he’d married the woman.
“We will see you soon, Oewaelle,” he mumbled, shrugging on his pack and retrieving his staff from against the wall. Turning to Shyilia, he grinned. “Coming, my dear?”
He’d already begun setting the parameters of the runespells in his mind: one to travel to the gateway on Aeyaqar, the next to activate the gateway to Earth, and the last to set the destination. He felt the young woman move to his side as his fingers drew the complex pattern in the air. It shivered in silver fire as he spoke the activating words. Suddenly, a portal stood before them, the light from a bonfire to its rear giving it the strange appearance of a black hole. “Now… big step,” he commanded, taking Shy’s hand and jumping.
Max stumbled over the uneven flagstones and just caught Shyilia as she popped out of the stone doorway a moment later, nearly slamming into his back. The bright shimmer of the gateway faded quickly as the doorway shut, leaving only a dull ripple to let his vampiric vision know that there was a gateway at all. Shy opened her mouth to speak, and Max touched a finger to her cool lips and shook his head, pointing to a deep shadow under a broken wall.
Safe in the concealing shadow, he studied the surrounding ruins carefully, with all of his senses, then relaxed slightly. “We seem to be safe for the moment,” he whispered.
The air held the faint odor of burning buildings and carrion. Although the familiar stars shone overhead, a sound like thunder rumbled in the distance, flashes brightening the horizon.
“I don’t understand,” Shy whispered, her mouth close to his ear. “I see stars, but is that thunder from a storm?”
She couldn’t see his mouth twist. “Wrong type of storm. The sounds you hear and the flashes you see are battle.”
The ground trembled under their feet, and dust sifted down from the crumbling stones over their heads.
“We should go.” Max pointed to a few dim lights glowing a half kilometer away, then he realized that, despite her excellent elfin vision, Shyilia couldn’t see in the dark. Sighing in exasperation, he took her arm.
It took both of them pulling and pushing to open the jammed garage door. Inside the garage, the Citroen was just as he’d left it, although the coating of dust and debris was a little thicker. After cleaning the car, they sat in the ancient seats, waiting for the sun to rise. The titanium fighting staff, Max had wired to the bottom of the car.
The two-lane road to the west of Eskişehir was dusty and bumpy, but an exhausted Shyilia had wadded her burnoose in a ball for a pillow, stuffed it against the window, and fallen fast asleep. The rounds from the Russian Sukhoi Su-24’s 23mm Gsh-6 rotary cannon slammed into the small French car, jerking it into a shallow ditch in a cloud of dust. Shyilia screamed as twin geysers of dust erupted on each side of the disabled vehicle.
“Open your door, fall out, and lie very still,” Max shouted over her screaming. “We’re going to try to make the pilots think we’re dead.”
Shy opened her door and crumbled, half in and half out of the car. In the distance, Max could hear the jets banking for another run. Without bothering to look, he ran a few steps from the car before flopping to his face in the dirt, doing his best to emulate a corpse. The scream of the SU-24’s A-F turbojet engines grew louder as they completed their turn and began another approach. Then the pair of jets thundered overhead without firing a shot, and the sound slowly faded.
Max breathed a sigh of relief and sat up. “We should be good for the moment. Are you all right?”
On the other side of the car, a dusty, ashen-faced Shyilia struggled to her feet. “What were those?” she asked with a trembling voice, staring at the rapidly vanishing dots in the sky. “They looked like… like birds of death.”
Max grunted, pushing himself to his feet. “They were, in a way. Those are fairly common fighting aircraft in this world.” He stuck a finger in one of the holes that stitched the side of the gray Citroen. The left rear tire was flat, and the small back window had a hole punched through the center. Rounds had pierced the thin body of the car in a number of places, and Max knew that they had been incredibly lucky, and even more so when he discovered that the spare tire was still intact and the engine coughed to life.
On their arrival in Bursa, Max and Shy sat in the silent car, staring at the hotel for long moments, unable to believe that they had survived this leg of their journey.
The very same customs inspector Max had met before raised his bushy eyebrows as the car stopped in front of him. “It looks as if you have had a hard time, my friend,” the inspector said warmly, recognizing the car if not Max.
“We were on a small road west of Eskişehir, heading for Bursa, when they hit us out of nowhere. My companion and I were lucky to survive.” Folding a US twenty-dollar bill into his passport, he handed the two documents to the customs inspector.
The man’s eyebrow went up as he pocketed the money.
“Has it always been this… dangerous?” Max asked, accepting back the two stamped documents.
The customs man seemed to droop. “Since the war spilled over from Syria five years ago, it has been getting worse. Soon, Turkey will be the same desolate wasteland as Iran and Iraq.” He bent closer to the car. “I am making plans to move myself and my family to my brother’s vineyard near Santa Marta, in P
ortugal,” he said in a low voice.
Max dug out a single golden aureus, which he placed in the man’s hand. “Don’t wait too long. Go this very week, if you can.”
The customs inspector gave Max a strange look. “As-Salaam-Alaikum,” he murmured as Max reached for the ignition and the car coughed to life.
Max grinned at the man. “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam. Is the ferry from Istanbul to Constanta still running?”
“Yes, for the moment, but people fear to take it. They think the jets may sink it out of spite.”
Max snorted as he put the car into gear. “They may be right.”
Viorela and Ilena, the younger woman with a baby on her hip, were standing in the doorway of the cottage when Max finally shut off the ignition and breathed a sigh of relief. Shy’s eyes appeared to be glazed. Leaning over, he touched her shoulder, and she flinched.
“We’re here,” he said gently, guessing that she was regretting her decision to tag along on his trip to Earth but too proud to admit it. “Come and meet Viorela and Ilena. They’re good people…for vampires.”
She twitched, blinked, and opened the car door without saying a word.
Voirela, who gave him an askance look as he approached, hadn’t changed. “You look like hell, Maximilian,” she said in her rough voice.
“It’s been a long trip. Viorela and Ilena, I’d like you to meet Princess Shyilia Iangwyn, jewel of the throne of Ideryn and next in line to rule the elfin lands of Aeyaqar.” He shot the young woman a sly grin.
“Thanks,” she said dryly to Max then turned to the ladies. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Viorela and Ilena.”
Viorela smiled. “It’s good to see that Maximilian is finally seeking his own level. We knew that it would happen, sooner or later.” Standing aside, she waved them in to the warm, bread-scented cottage. “Come in. Tea is on.”
Max was frowning as the door closed behind them.
“What do you mean ‘seeking my own level’?” he grumbled, holding Shy’s chair for her as she sat.
Viorela had a triumphant little smile on her face, as if she’d just pulled a fast one. “Your great grandparents, Lucian and Kristina Kiritescu, along with their immediate family and staff, moved to Earth through the now-closed Russian portal in the mountains north of Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula of far eastern Russia. They didn’t move voluntarily but were asked to move by the king and queen of Aeyaqar, in order to preserve the aristocratic bloodline. A seer had informed the queen of serious trouble in the future. Lucian and Kristina, along with the family, had lived in Castle Kiritescu, in the province of Wraniel far to the east and bordering the elfin lands.”
“I know where the castle is in Wraniel,” Shy blurted. “I used to hunt there, and the only residents are ghosts. There are a few small hamlets in the province and one modest city large enough to support a mayor turned governor, as well as a few hundred armored bullies he calls soldiers.”
Viorela sipped and smiled. “The province isn’t all that large,” she explained to Max in a soothing voice, “barely the size of your state of Connecticut. It might clear things up if you know that Lucian and Kristina were the Earl and Countess of Wraniel.” Despite Max’s stunned expression, she continued relentlessly. “My own parents were Nicolae Lacusta and Sybil Chivu. Sybil was the sister of Beatrix.”
Max frowned at the familiar name. Thanks to his wife’s genealogical research, he knew that Beatrix Chivu was his grandmother on his mother’s side.
“My parents were baron and baroness of a small holding named Cellirah, in the northeast section of Wraniel, but lived in Castle Kiritescu with the rest of the family. When the diaspora began, the earl and countess departed first, and so on down the line. We left two hundred years later, give or take a few decades. My daughter, Ilena, is Max’s cousin, and he is her liege.”
Shyilia stared at him with an open mouth. “Your grandparents are dead?” she asked in a hesitant, fearful voice.
Not trusting his own voice, all he could do was nod.
“And your parents are dead?” she asked.
Max gave a jerky nod, grimacing. It didn’t take a seer to see where her train of thought was headed. Since the king and queen of Aeyaqar and all the rest of the gentry are dead… that makes him, as the highest surviving royal, and the Earl of Wraniel, the next in line for the throne of Aeyaqar.
Max drummed his fingers on the table, looking from face to face, finally settling on Viorela. “So, if I have this straight, you are Baroness Viorela Chivu, rather than an old crone, and Ilena will become baroness when you pass or step down. Is that about right?”
The crone nodded, her face suspicious. “Why?”
Max’s smile never reached his eyes. “Could I talk either or both of you ladies into returning to Aeyaqar to run the country?”
Viorela’s eyes widened, and she shook her head violently.
“I’d even throw in a castle, if you’d like one,” Max added a moment later.
“Not on your life,” Ilena hissed, moving her chair away from Max as if he had some communicable disease.
He heard a snicker from Shy.
“Thanks,” he whispered to her.
“You’re welcome, my lord,” she answered in kind, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“Well then,” he said, addressing the two Romanian women, “if I can’t get you two back to Aeyaqar, then I suppose I’ll have to leave you here as my forward intelligence outpost.”
Viorela let out an outraged squawk.
“Complaining won’t help you.” He smiled grimly. “We had a saying in the military that shit rolls downhill. Now perhaps you can tell me where on this planet I can bring a number of men across from the other side without their being noticed. I’d prefer someplace that would keep them rather… penned up.”
Ilena shot Viorela a quick glance before she spoke. “Turkey is out because of the fighting,” she began, ticking the count off on her fingers, “and the South American gateway is much too exposed. The Russian gateway could be reopened, I suppose, but… it is Russia, after all. There is rumored to be a gateway between Gyaring and Ngoring Lakes in north central China, but it is so remote that travel would take you several months to reach civilization, and then only to be arrested by the Chinese military. The Atlantis gateway, or thin spot really, was lost…”
“There was actually a gateway on the legendary island of Atlantis?” Max interrupted.
Ilena nodded sadly. “It was destroyed, so the stories say, when the civilization was wiped out four thousand years ago.” She took a breath. “That only leaves Akimisli Island, just off the shore of Hudson Bay. Three thousand square kilometers, and twenty kilometers from the shore of Ontario, without a boat, the frigid waters make it as distant as the moon.”
Max grinned. “I believe that Akimisli Island will work just fine.” He nodded to the two women. “Thank you, ladies, and if you would be so kind as to teach me the traveling runespell to Akimisli Island, we will be on our way.”
Viorela was frowning, although on her wrinkled face, it was hard to tell. “What will you do with the car?”
Max slid her the keys. “It’s not much, but it will get you from place to place, although the bullet holes may draw some comment.”
Viorela’s voice was flat. “I saw them when you arrived.”
Max sighed. “I told you that it was a trying trip. We were strafed by a pair of Russian jets in Turkey, and the ferry we were taking from Istanbul to Constanta was buzzed by the Russian jets until the Turkish F16s showed up to drive them away. We’re lucky to be alive.”
Ilena shook her head in disbelief. “Will you be eating before you leave?”
Max thought about it for a few moments and grinned. “I think that we’ll take the car and hit the local McDonald’s for a burger. Shyilia has got to get used to Amer
ican food sooner or later, and now is as good a time as any.”
Viorela gave the elfin woman a pitying look. “Good luck.”
Later, Max sat back in his seat, grinning, while Shy looked down on her only partially eaten burger and untouched fries. Her milkshake, however, had been sucked dry.
“You call that food?” There was a note of disgust in her voice. “I’m not even sure the ‘burger’ was meat.”
Max’s grin widened. “Oh, it was meat all right, but the real question is: from what animal? The Romanian government relaxed certain regulations in 2020, and since then, it’s anyone’s guess what the mystery meat is.” He wiped the crumbs from his lap and stood. “The burgers here taste the same as the burgers in America, if that’s any consolation.”
On their return, Max tucked the Citroen behind the small cottage, then he and Shy stood bundled under a well-tended but currently leafless apple tree in the sheltered backyard. Reaching over, he tucked the warm wool scarf up over Shy’s nose and mouth and glanced at her warm gloves. Both travelers held their packs tightly, and Max considered retrieving the staff from its hidden location beneath the Citroen but discarded the idea. Checking in to the Hilton while carrying a quarterstaff might be somewhat… awkward. The quaint clothes would be bad enough.
“Are you sure about this?” Viorela asked, standing shivering beside them.
“I am,” Max replied resolutely. “Give us time to get through, count to five, and close the gate behind us.”
“As you wish.” She sighed, tracing the runespell in the air. “You will find the gateway ten meters before you.” She gave Max a serious look. “Take care, Maximilian.”
“I will.” He stepped through the shimmer in the air.
The wind, many degrees below freezing, sliced at his cheeks like razorblades, and Max groaned, pulling his tattered winter coat just a little tighter… not that it did any good. A thin screech of pain caught his ear as Shy stepped out of the gateway to his rear.
Destiny of the Vampire (Adventures of the Vampire Book 1) Page 8
