by Ana Calin
“Well, what choice does she have?” says Magda. “Not accepting means Dracula gets his hands on the girl. That’s a bad outcome for her, for you, for the world at large. So raising the child in secret together is basically the only way, isn’t it?”
Before Radek or I get to answer, a cold wind wheezes through Magda’s kitchen, stirring the cutlery. It messes my hair and cools my scalp, making me stand and knock my chair back.
Sensing danger, Radek grips Magda’s wrist and hauls her over to my side, placing himself protectively in front of us. A flash of the great fight five years ago runs through my head, when both Radek and I nearly lost our lives down in the caves linking Dracula’s castle and the mountain. And when I see Miss Victoria’s hologram-like shape with the half dark half white witch hair glide into the kitchen, my flesh creases.
“Well, well, well, seems Lord Dracula’s lost brother is back,” Victoria’s static-like voice scratches my ears, making me want to cover them. But I have to resist. I ball my fists, ready to do whatever comes to mind the moment she strikes.
“I’m sure the Dark Lord would have appreciated word of your arrival, Prince Radek,” she says mockingly. “It’s gonna hurt, you know, when I tell him it didn’t look like you were planning to visit.”
To my horror, the Bloody Maries, the women who always float around Miss Victoria, trickle into the room from behind her. They look like corpses mutilated by the Black Death, the sight of them making me shudder hard, and their foul smell turning my stomach upside down.
For moments they all stare at Radek, Victoria grinning satisfied. She’s certain this time she’s trapped us. I look around for mirrors, but there are none in here, and Victoria surely knew it.
“How did you know we were here?” Radek sounds calm, but I know he’s tense, I feel the hardening muscles all over his back.
“I sensed you, Prince,” she replies, gliding closer like a ghost, her chin out to defy him despite her smile. “Lord Dracula had me, my girls, and a squad of his vampires monitor this place at all times. The reason is very simple, really. He expected that either you or Miss Jochs would return some day, even if only to visit a very old and dear friend. When I sensed your personal presence I couldn’t believe my luck, really. You haven’t reported on the Grail in a long time, I’m sure the Dark Lord would appreciate hearing something on it now.” She inspects Radek up and down, and then she pretends to take notice of me.
“I’m glad to see you in the company of Mrs. Jochs, two VIPs at the same time.” She looks at Radek again, shaking her head theatrically, going tsk tsk tsk. “You almost had us fooled that you didn’t care about her anymore.” Though she remains controlled, hatred charges her words. “Even Lord Dracula believed you, you know. But I never bought it, not for one second.”
“If you were keeping an eye on this place for Dracula, why not announce to him we’re here now? Why the small talk?” Radek says. I can sense him spanned to protect Magda and me, prepared for an attack.
Victoria keeps floating in front of him as she speaks, her eyes hungry on the man she once loved and now apparently hates with everything she has.
“I can see the mighty Prince of Midnight is still confident in his powers, confident enough to go facing Dracula. Or maybe you’re just trying to send me away for a little while, enough to give you time to escape again without reporting to him. Either way, I must warn you, Radek, not to use the midnight monster on vampires or other creatures that might attack you when you try to run away with your lover, even if you manage to escape me.”
“Why not?” he asks directly.
She grins wider. “Because the curse might actually strengthen creatures that are already monsters, instead of killing them.” She motions to herself. “Look what it has done to me.” She comes really close to him now, and fire starts in my belly. My fists ball tighter. “You can’t even touch me anymore, Radek, you can’t stop me if I decide to hurt your little lover girl. Seems I already was a monster on the inside when your curse hit me, Prince of Midnight, just imagine what it could do with vampires. You never thought about that before, have you?”
Magda snorts, glaring at Victoria from Radek’s side. “You may have become powerful with the help of his curse, Miss Victoria, but in a fight you’d never be a match for the Prince of Midnight.”
“Oh really,” Victoria snaps at her, opening her hologram-like arms, the loose cape she’s wearing hanging off of them like the cape of a scarecrow. “And what is he going to do to me more than he has already done? He can’t even grip me physically. As a matter of fact, why don’t you try? Come on, Magda the Book Master. Try.”
Magda seems uncertain at first, but then she raises her chin, then steps in front of Radek. She takes a moment, then she stretches out her arm, ready to touch Victoria as if nothing, but her hand slides through the woman like through mist.
“What the—” slips from Magda’s mouth. Victoria laughs hysterically.
“See,” she says, her static-like voice scraping. “How could he hurt me if he can’t even touch me?” She looks Radek defiantly in the eyes. “What are you gonna do about me now, Prince? Don’t you wish you hadn’t broken my heart, don’t you wish you hadn’t put your curse on me?” Her evil eyes fall on me again. Her voice fills with darkness. “Come on, I want to hear you say it. Say that you regret not having chosen me. Otherwise I will kill your beloved little pet, right now, before your eyes, and you won’t be able to do anything to stop me.”
Radek’s teeth crunch against each other, his jaw ticking. I sense his anger.
“Leave Juliet out of this,” he hisses.
“No,” Victoria snarls, making me wince behind Radek and grip tightly to his shirt. “Juliet Jochs is the reason you despised me. Now I could become the reason she dies, and only your regret will make me spare her. But I want to feel your regret is real. You have to persuade me that you’re really sorry, Prince of Heartbreak.”
“Why are you even doing this?” Magda intervenes. “You never even truly loved him, you were just enthralled with his looks.”
“Shut up, stupid old witch,” Victoria growls at her. “Even if that were true, even if all I loved was his beauty, I deserved that beauty dedicated to me! I sacrificed my youth for him, my life, I stayed to serve him even though I had to watch him bring in other women. If only for what I did for him, he should have chosen me.”
I want to push Radek aside and face Victoria, come nose to nose with her, and scream in her face that I loved Radek for real, I even wanted to make love to him in the form of the monster, touching his coral-like flesh, kissing him in the most intimate places, while she always despised the monster.
But the moment I want to make the move Radek pushes me harder behind him.
Victoria’s eyes rest on his, glimmering with a grudge. Her face distorts in rage.
“You’re obsessed with her, I can fucking smell it off you. The chemistry your body oozes, it tells me everything.” She points a gnarled finger at him, her long grey nail like the claw of a witch almost scratching his face. “You will pay for this, Radek. I will have you watch the life drain from your lover’s face, and while you watch, know that she’s dying because of your obsession, because you refused to leave her for real. Hadn’t you fucked her in the middle of a fucking club for everyone to see how madly in love you are with her, she would still enjoy her freedom on top of the Berlin skyline.”
“That wasn’t life, what I had to live without Radek,” I say powerfully, fuelled by my own love, gripping tightly to his arm and straining to look past him at Victoria. He applies enough force to keep the barrier, though.
“Don’t, Juliet,” he says over his shoulder.
“No, I won’t shut up. Now I fully understand why you left me.” I glare at Victoria, while still addressing him. “You broke my heart in order to protect me from your brother and from her. You knew she would have done this long ago if you’d married me.”
“She’s right, Radek,” Victoria says, glaring back. “Can’t
you see? No matter what you do, you’ll never be free to be together. I will always stand in your way. You can’t protect her, Radek, not from me, not forever.”
She makes a sudden move to grab me, bypassing Radek, but he turns around swiftly and protects me with his body. Things happen so fast that my head spins. All I know is that one moment I feel Radek’s powerful body against mine, and then Victoria attacks him with a hiss. His fist shoots up, then the window above the sink breaks. All of a sudden I’m outside, in the winter chill of the Carpathians.
I’m dizzy, as if I hit my head, and there are stains of blood on the snow at my feet. I must be bleeding. I see a blur of Radek fighting Victoria through the broken window, still inside the house. She seems a hologram octopus, shimmering in more places at the same time, hissing and piping at him. He must be activating the midnight monster on her, because the hologram in the middle seems to solidify, her face showing strain and pain.
“Now,” she shrieks.
A skin-crawling hiss fills my ear, making me turn to discover, in horror, one of the Bloody Maries right next to me. Her face, wounded and bubonic, her flesh all an open, angry wound, emanates a terrible rancid smell that makes me think of pain and rage. She cries out, showing an abnormally large mouth with black, broken teeth. Black spit forms deep inside, dripping like venom from her palate.
She leans back as if someone were pulling her like a sling, preparing to spit her black curse right into my face. I freeze, certain I’m just about to watch my own life run before my eyes. I squeeze my lids shut, paralyzed in fear, but then I hear Radek’s desperate cry, “No!”
It rips me from my dread, firing my instincts on—flee!
I drop to the ground, black spit flying in a curve right over me. I look at the woman who just threw the curse. She stares at me out of washed-out irises, as stunned as I am. Taking advantage of her momentary what-the-ffff, I scramble up and run as fast as I can towards the first line of trees, the cold air burning my lungs, steam leaving my mouth, my own breath jagged in my ears.
Black curses whip by my head, wheezing through the air and driving me to scream, ducking behind a tree. Panic grips me when I hear the Bloody Maries’ steps beating the snow, ever closer, and I force myself to run again. All of them are after me, I’m sure of it.
People start emerging from behind the trees in the distance and, even though my sight is blurry from the cold and all I can actually make out is undulating shapes on the horizon, I laugh in relief. It gives me strength to run faster, but when I realize they’re moving too slow to be trying to save me, moving as if the sight of the Bloody Maries chasing me doesn’t surprise or confuse them, my feet slow down, sinking into the snow.
For a few moments my head goes blank, my ears filling only with my own heavy breathing, the steam from my mouth misting the surroundings. Fuck, I’m trapped.
Now they’re close enough for me to see their snow-white faces, their blood red lips, their shiny fangs—they’re vampires. I glance desperately from the approaching Bloody Maries to the vampires, surrounded, until Radek’s hard body crashes into mine. He throws me to the ground, face down in the snow, lifting his weight off of me again in a second.
Muffled bumps and bangs make it through the wheezing in my ears until I shake my head and spit out the snow in my mouth. My teeth hurt from the cold. Still lying flat on my stomach, I look to the side, my heart jumping into my throat.
Radek flings kitchen knives at the vampires’ throats, but all he accomplishes is to push them back. One opponent flies away from the bundle, then the other, but they keep returning until they surround him.
I scream out his name, but even if he heard me, there’s nothing he can do. They are too many, and normal kitchen knives have nothing on vampires. They form a heap around him in no time, claws out and fangs bared. I scream with all I have until the Bloody Maries surround me, picking me up and holding my arms in such a way that I can see my lover fighting and, maybe very soon, losing.
I’m wearing only the two-piece that I wore when we first went to visit Martina and Carla, jacket and pencil skirt. Both are now torn, my feet bare, almost snapping with cold, the top under the jacket flimsy. My body is so cold snow doesn’t melt on my exposed skin anymore, but I don’t feel the ache either. The only thing that hurts are the too hot tears that burn down my frozen face as I watch in a blur how Radek fights the vampires, now pulling out something like a machete.
He slashes throats, blood squirting from the vampires’ jugulars, his muscles flexing expertly under his white shirt. For a moment I have a vision of the beautiful warrior of the past, his mailed body moving swiftly between his opponents, his blue eyes cruel and focused.
But the only thing that actually helps in this fight is his raw force that stuns his opponents, because their wounds heal rapidly, merely staining the white ground. Radek’s blades aren’t made of silver, they aren’t even sharp enough to cut through the muscles, just scratch their skin, and all due to his force rather than the blades.
The Bloody Maries pipe in unison, holding me as if crucified between them, and I understand they want to draw Radek’s attention. They succeed, and his eyes find me. From one instant to the other, dread replaces focus in his face, his irises going from opaque metal blue to the icy blue of fear.
“No,” he whispers, lowering his machete. One instant is enough for the vampires to grab him swiftly, one of them gripping his jaw while the other rips the blade from his hand.
I scream and struggle, capable of anything to stop this or die with him, but I feel like a lunatic banging her head helplessly against the walls. I can’t escape the Bloody Maries’ grip.
“And this,” the last vampire says with a triumphant grin. “Is how the Prince of Midnight ends his centuries long existence.”
I recognize Gruia the Guard in the man, Victoria’s old lover. His beard is copper-red, making it seem made of iron against the glistening snow, his eyes like rusty bullets. He’s big, raw and strong, broader than Radek. But the moment he approaches him and puts the blade at his throat, Radek kicks him so hard in the chest that Gruia stumbles and falls on his back like a big cockroach.
“Son of a bitch,” he grunts, getting up and stomping to Radek again. I know he keeps cursing, but I can’t hear him anymore, my ears filled with my own screams. This time Radek rips himself from one vampire’s hold, and punches Gruia in the jaw so hard that the man crouches down, groaning in excruciating pain. I realize his jaw must be broken.
“Don’t try again, Gruia,” Victoria says, approaching from the woods. “The Prince of Midnight is stronger than any of Dracula’s vampires. Only the Prince of Blood himself matches that kind of strength.”
The creature that now is Victoria Dunham stops in front of me, a hologram that doesn’t quite seem to find its right frequency.
“I see you listened to me and haven’t activated the midnight monster’s curse on the vampires, Radek. You must be worried that it would turn them into worthy opponents. But do something for me. Activate the monster on Gruia. It’s no secret to you that we were sleeping together back at the castle. Consider it one last favor you do a woman who served you for years in return for as good as nothing. Also, it would make me seriously consider sparing your filthy little pet, Juliet Jochs.”
“Don’t do it,” I cry out, my voice scratchy from the cold and the screaming. “She’ll use him against you afterwards.”
Victoria grins an ugly grin at me. “I could do that, yes. Or I could let you go. I’m sure even your lover boy prince Radek sees it—you’re not getting out of here alive if he doesn’t do something about it. He won’t move fast enough to save you from the Bloody Maries’ curses, not to mention I could just cut your throat. So his only hope is to give me something I want, in return for something he wants.”
I’m certain this is it, Radek and I will lose our lives today. Even if he uses the midnight monster on Gruia, it will only make him stronger, and Victoria surely won’t keep her promise. I open my mouth to urge h
im again to refuse, ready to leave this realm by his side, when an unusual noise draws my attention.
Something hammers through the tree behind. A huge spike rips from it, and flashes into the Bloody Mary on my right, spearing her right through the heart.
I freeze, my mouth open, eyes on the Bloody Mary falling to the ground with a gaping black mouth, her eyes rolling back, black blood spreading like a flower around the spike in her heart. The spike pierces the snow as she falls forward, her hair falling over her head and spilling onto the snow.
Vampires murmur, forgetting Radek and letting him go. They look around, prepared to defend themselves against the invisible enemy.
Radek runs over to me and catches me in his arms just as the other Bloody Mary lets me go, looking around like a scared dog. Victoria hisses at us with a glare full of hatred, but then even her attention leaves us. She joins Gruia, searching for the invisible enemy as well.
Another thunder-like sound tears through a tree, sending a big splinter through the next Bloody Mary’s head. I grip to Radek’s shirt, pushing myself against his chest, my head jerking in all directions, searching for the attacker. Radek’s arms tighten strong and protective around me, wrapping me in a cocoon.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers, pressing his lips on top of my head. “I’ll shield you with my body, no matter what.”
“But you don’t know what this is,” I shriek. “It could kill you!”
“It will take more than splinters of wood to kill me.”
For the first time in all the years I’ve known him, I realize—I don’t know what it would take to kill the Prince of Midnight. I know that Dracula is sensitive to sunlight and silver, and that vampires can’t survive decapitation, but Radek?
A black and white shape shows itself in the distance between the trees, walking leisurely towards us. I squint against the cold and my own tears, my eyes straining to bring the creature into focus. Then my heart stops, a long buzz in my skull.
