Dracul (5 page)

“Where is the book?”

Constantine crosses his arms, assuming the same gaze-locking stance I used on him moments ago. “You want the book?”

“Obviously.”

“I cannot risk letting it fall into the hands of the other vampires. There are secrets men and vampires have died to keep.”

“Right. Of course. Your secrets are safe with me. It’s just an undergrad thesis paper. I’m not going to say anything that hasn’t been said before. I only need direct quotations and a source to cite.”

“I will translate it for you on one condition.” Constantine’s smiling again. It’s a disarming smile, the kind that makes me glad I’m secretly a dragon, because Constantine has way too many advantages over me already.

“What’s the condition?”

“You help me.”

“You’re not drinking my blood.” I take a step back and raise both hands, ready to use all my self-defense skills if necessary. Who knows what might happen if he drinks the blood of a dragon? I’m not about to find out.

I don’t care how charming his smile is.

“I don’t want your blood. I need your help with a little fundraising project. Living forever gets expensive. It’s time to boost my bankroll.”

“How?”

“Sunlight doesn’t agree with me, so I can’t work a regular job in the light of day. So we go to a place that’s used to strangers, a city renowned for its night life, a place where large sums of money change hands without raising anyone’s suspicions. We go to Vegas.”

“
Las Vegas
?” I clarify, like maybe there’s another Vegas.

Constantine nods. “We gamble, I boost my bankroll, you get your primary source.”

For a guy who’s supposedly been around for centuries, he seems clueless about how Vegas works. “The house always wins. You’re not going to make money there.”

“I have books.” His smirkish smile is way too confident. “I’ll go get them.”

“It’s getting late.”

“I’ll bring
Viața lui Vlad Dracula.”

“I’ll make coffee.”

Chapter Five

Constantine sprints out the door and down the street. I stare after him a moment before the stinging cold reminds me I need to close the door, among other things.

Sure, it’s late, just like I said. But I need to stay alert. Constantine may be wide awake in the middle of the night, but that doesn’t prove his vampire claims.

I’m not sure what he’d have to do to prove he really is what he says he is. Probably things I don’t want him to do. I really don’t know what to believe about the guy, but I’m way too intrigued now to stop listening.

The coffee is brewing when Constantine returns, ringing the bell for me to let him in.

To my relief, he’s cleaned up the gash on his forehead and covered it with a bandage. And as promised, he’s got a stack of books in a backpack.

“Hmm,
Blackjack for Total Idiots
,” I read the title as he pulls out the books and sets them on the dining room table.

“You can keep it for as long as you need it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I murmur sarcastically as I assess the collection. “These are all about blackjack.”

“It’s the only game in which a skilled player can turn the odds in his favor.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you learn the techniques outlined in these books, you can acquire the skills necessary to beat the house. You can consistently win, and win large sums in a relatively short time.”

His prediction doesn’t fit with what I learned in my
How to be Successful in College and in Life
freshman seminar. Of course, gambling was only a footnote in the financial strategies lecture. The idea of actually winning money by gambling was dismissed as a foolish hope that would lead to certain failure.

“The house always wins.” I repeat what we learned in class.

“Read the books.”

I shake my head. “If it’s so easy to beat the house at blackjack, why doesn’t everybody do it?”

“It isn’t
easy
. Simply
possible
. Read the books.” Constantine pulls what looks like an ordinary insulated lunch bag out of the backpack.

“I have a lot of legitimate studying to do. There’s a major thesis paper I may have mentioned—”

As I’m speaking, Constantine unzips the lunch case, revealing a very old, leather-bound volume.

My breath catches in my throat.

Is it
the
book?

There isn’t any title on the cover, but then again, he said there was no print run, just a single, handwritten volume.

It has to be the book. The book I flew to London for (or at least, the original of that translation). The book I feared I’d never find. The book that could make or break my thesis paper—more than that, my entire college degree. It could also explain certain mysteries that have haunted me for years.

“That’s some pretty old leather.” I try to make my voice sound casual.

“It’s human skin.”

“What?”

“The binding is human skin, tanned like leather. Not an uncommon practice at the time when I wrote this. And it seemed a fitting choice, given the content of the story.”

Sure, I’ve heard before of the practice of tanning human skin like leather. Seems to me I’ve even seen a book or two made of the stuff, behind glass cases in museums. Very medieval. Very morbid.

Very apropos.

Just not exactly something I expected to see in a lunch cooler on my dining room table.

In the next room, the coffee maker gives off the sizzling, steamy sound that means the last of the water is passing through the coffee grounds. Constantine and I both turn to look at the pot of hot brown liquid.

“The blackjack books you may keep to read at your leisure,” Constantine offers. “But this book is safer with me.”

Based on the trouble I’ve had with the bats, I admit, “I think
I’ll
be safer if that book stays with you.”

“Indeed,” Constantine agrees with a frown. “I know it is late. If you prefer, I can take my book and go. Or if you would like, I could start reading and translating
Viața
.”

“You said you’d translate it on the condition that I help you boost your bankroll.” I hold up
Blackjack for Total Idiots
emphatically.

“Are you ready to agree to those terms?”

I stare at the pile of blackjack books and blow out a long breath. “You said it isn’t easy?”

“It is not so very difficult, either. Certainly not for a person of your intelligence and determination. I will make you a deal. Tonight, I translate for you a bit of
Viața
. When you have time in the next day or two, you look over the blackjack books and decide if you want to commit. In exchange for the translation of the entire book, you come with me to Vegas five weekends. It is all very straightforward, no strings attached. I will pay all your expenses, airfare, meals, your own hotel room in a five-star hotel, front money for gambling—everything you need. You get your primary source, I boost my bankroll. We are all very happy, yes?”

For the first half of his speech, I watch Constantine’s face. Then I realize his charming manner is far too persuasive, so I stare at the human-skin book instead.

I’m not going to lie. It does occur to me that I could steal the book. Constantine may be a vampire (or not, I’m still not convinced), but I’m pretty sure my alter ego can take his.

But I’m an honest person, or at least an honest dragon. I’m not a thief.

And even if I did manage to successfully wrest the book away from him, I’d still have to keep it from falling into the hands of the other vampires. I’d have to find a translator—but who could possibly translate it better than the man who wrote it in the first place?

Assuming Constantine actually is the author, which would mean he actually is a vampire, which I’m still not sure about.

“Coffee first.” I head to the kitchen with a sigh, and Constantine follows me, thoughtfully bringing his empty hot cocoa mug from earlier.

“And then I read a bit for you?” He holds out his cup while I pour coffee for each of us.

I switch off the coffee maker with a decisive flourish. “You read me a sample of
Viața
, then I decide.”

We settle in with our mugs of coffee at the dining room table. I pull out my phone.

“What are you doing with that?” Constantine asks.

“I’m going to record everything you say.”

“Why?”

“I need a record of the translation. Or were you planning to type up a translated edition of the book for me?”

Constantine scowls. “Perhaps this was not such a good idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want another copy of this information to exist in any form. It’s too dangerous.”

“But I have to have a copy of it in some form. My professor expects me to use a real, tangible source. If I don’t have an authentic link to this material, how can I prove I didn’t just make everything up? What if she asks to see the book? I’m already on shaky ground because my bibliography listed Melita Thorne’s translation, not the Romanian original.”

“If she asks, tell her the library didn’t have the translation, so you had to revert to the original. I will even go with you to let her look at the original, and read to her the translated material. Tell her you took notes as it was translated. That is the best I can do.”

“You want me to take notes instead of recording you?”

“If you want me to translate, yes. Frankly, I don’t understand why you’re resisting my terms. I can find anyone to go to Vegas with me, yet this is the only copy of the book you need. You should be begging me to agree to this deal, not the other way around.”

So I stare at my phone and think about it, my over-tired thoughts spinning with caffeine-fueled confusion. What are the odds that the lone copy of this book would show up on my doorstep just when I needed it? If Constantine’s theory is correct, the vampires followed me home when I went in search of Melita’s translation.

And Constantine followed the vampires.

So he kind of is a stalker, but he wasn’t stalking me, not directly. He was stalking the vampires…who were stalking me.

Super creepy.

“Fine.” I pull out a notebook and a fresh pen. “Translate. I’ll take notes.”

So Constantine starts reading in old Romanian, and for a few seconds I’m transfixed as a shiver ripples up and down my spine. Sure, I’ve been to Romania plenty of times and heard the people speak the modern equivalent of the tongue. But this?

This is like jumping back in time. Call me gullible or overtired, but it doesn’t take much imagination to believe the guy sitting across the table from me actually lived hundreds of years ago, as he claims.

I shake off my stupor and gulp a long draught of coffee.

The words are mostly foreign, but I can pick out a few recognizable Latin cognates. Most noticeable, though, are the names. I recognize Vlad. And every time Constantine says, “Dracul,” I flinch internally, almost as though I’ve been struck. Vlad Dracul was Vlad Dracula’s father. In my research, I’ve had to take pains to keep track of which one was which one.

Dracul means
dragon
.

Dracula,
son of the dragon
.

Dracula was Vlad Dracul’s son. What a family.

After several long sentences, Constantine switches to English. “Shortly before dawn on February 8
th
, 1431, Prince Vlad of Wallachia, the son of Mircea the Great, was inducted into the Order of the Dragon at the imperial fortress in Nuremberg. This secret society, founded by the Holy Roman Emperor, was highly selective. There were only 24 members from all of Europe, most of them princes of larger, wealthier lands. Vlad was included largely because of his (and his father’s) success in ruling a tumultuous country. Their land was geographically pivotal, lying at the crossroads of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but also, as would soon prove crucial, in the path of the advancing Ottoman Turks.

“Though Imperial Rome did not esteem Vlad or his people very highly, nonetheless, they realized Wallachia was a critical outpost, both geographically and politically, and a decisive point of defense against the surging Turkish forces. If Wallachia were ever to fall, war would come to the rest of Europe, and all of the Holy Roman Empire would be in grave danger.”

Constantine pauses to switch back to Romanian, and I jot down hasty notes, well aware that nothing he’s said so far is new information. I probably could have given the same summary from the rest of my research, though not in such a chilling accent or rumbling voice.

After reading a Romanian passage, Constantine continues in English, “As part of his induction into the Order of the Dragon, and to bind himself irrevocably to the Empire, Vlad took a new bride from the Imperial royal family. Thus was born to him on December 13, 1431, a son, Vlad. The elder Vlad, in keeping with his membership in the Order, was known among his people as Vlad Dracul. His son, then, was referred to as Vlad Dracula, or Vlad, the Son of the Dragon.”

Some of this stuff I knew, but elements of it are new information. I’m jotting furiously, but I drop my pen as Constantine takes a deep breath, about to continue in Romanian.

“Wait. Vlad Dracul already had one son at that point. He took a new bride? I—I was aware from my research that he had a number of wives and mistresses over the course of his lifetime. It was common practice then, death rates and life expectancies being what they were, and heirs being so important. But I’d never heard who…”

“Her name is not recorded. She did not last long. None of them ever lasted long.”

“None of them?” I cringe. Sure, because of my research, I’m fully aware that females were poorly treated in medieval society. But still, the way Constantine dismisses these women as though they didn’t matter…as though they were disposable…not even worthy of being named…

“I tried to learn their names.” Constantine’s eyes hold something that looks like regret or apology—or maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see. “There has been scholarly speculation into the identities of Vlad Dracul’s wives, but the sad truth is, the women who lived long enough to bear him children, often died in childbirth. None of them ever lasted long.”

I flip open another notebook to a page where I’ve copied the family tree. “He had three sons born to him in his youth, in addition to those born in his later years. Mircea, born in 1428, named after Mircea the Great, Vlad’s father. Vlad Dracula, born 1431. And Radu the Handsome, born 1435.”

“They were born of three different mothers,” Constantine clarifies. “And his later children, different mothers still. So you see, though Vlad Dracula had many brothers, none of them were full brothers. But your research paper is about Vlad, not his father or brothers.”

“His family of origin is important. It helps us to understand who he was.”

Constantine frowns. He’s silent a moment, then offers in a still, almost foreboding tone, “We understand who Vlad Dracula was through his actions. His actions were shaped in part by the values of the cultures in which he was raised, as well as by his early life experiences, which were, as I’m sure you are well aware, quite trying. But do not confuse him with his brothers. Ever. Mircea, Vlad, and Radu were all very different people. Very different.” Constantine’s words snap with an energy like anger, which he seems to be struggling to restrain. “They carried their father’s name and blood. That is where their similarities ended.”