The Dragon Coin (13 page)

He fell dead at Roderick’s feet.

Meanwhile, two more vampires had drifted down toward him, hovering less than a foot above his near seven-foot frame. Impossible to know why the pair of females waited, but in the faint light provided by the fallen penlight’s refraction off one of the dungeon walls, I noticed their attention was drawn more to me after their cohort perished at my hands. They foolishly underestimated Roderick’s prowess, perhaps thinking his fear of Dracul extended to all blood drinkers.

He gave me a slight nod, surely picking up my vantage perspective of where the pair hovered above him. He jumped up and pulled the one to his right to the floor, briefly exposing his carotid to bring the demon closer while he plunged his blade into her heart. Gambling this would inspire her companion to come to her rescue, I staked the other one with my knife before she could sink her fangs into Roderick from behind.

Three vampires dead in under two minutes.

But there were more.
Many
more. We knew this, and it surprised me they hadn’t launched themselves at us all
en masse
.

“You realize we can’t kill every one of them,” Roderick advised, breathing heavily while scooping up the penlight from the floor. He moved closer to me. We then circled each other defensively, while I worried about Alistair, Amy, and Beatrice. “Be thinking of a way to barter, and I’ll do the same.”

“What could Dracul possibly desire from us? And, what about his mercenaries? The shots earlier must’ve been a warning.” I looked anxiously toward the darkness behind us.

Someone should be rappelling down by now!

“They’re not professional enough to be given that title,” said Roderick. “The thoughts I’ve picked up from Arso and some of the others indicate the entire lot are street thugs, pimps, and low-budget assassins. If Dracul wins and succeeds in becoming a full-fledged day-walker, then he will need to seriously upgrade his ranks.” He chuckled sadly.

“He’s not going to win, but of deeper concern is where is Amy? She should be in our cell by now.” I couldn’t hide my anxiety, and I glanced again into the darkness. A soft thud suddenly resounded from where I had stood moments earlier. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me…Amy.”

She sounded winded as she limped toward us. Roderick pointed the penlight to the top of the cellblock. Alistair was climbing through the space, while Beatrice clung to the bars just below him, looking around herself anxiously. Her affliction from earlier had not subsided.

“Ali, don’t come down yet.
Not
without your mom!”

I kept the volume of my serious tone low, knowing he would hear me, as often we communicated like this. However, the stressed look on his face as he nervously glanced into the darkness above his head made that prognosis dubious at best.

“She won’t come, Pops! It’s like she didn’t even hear me when I urged her through the hole just a minute ago,” he said. “There’s something hovering above me, I think. I smell an odor that wasn’t there when the three of us first reached the top of our cell.”

I grabbed the light from Roderick, ignoring the fact it would have likely taken no longer for him to point the narrow beam toward Alistair. I expected more vampires to be poised above my son’s head, but the beam revealed nothing, other than the hole, my son, and my bedeviled wife. But above our heads, I heard rustling, soft and subtle. Without needing to shine the beam above us, I knew beyond a doubt another attack was ready to commence.

Roderick sensed it as well. He grabbed Amy by the arm and ushered her to the tunnel’s edge, and I heard him whisper to her to be prepared to scurry through it at a moment’s notice. The opportunity to escape was slipping away, we both felt it. Rather than wait for Alistair to convince Beatrice to cross over into our side of the dungeon, I took matters into my own hands.

“Ali, jump!”

“What? And leave Mom up here?!”

“Yes!” I confirmed, feeling a lump form in my throat.

“Are you frigging crazy, Pops?!”

“Perhaps, but it’s now up to me. Only I can save her…. 
Jump!”

Alistair hesitated, but then seemed to hear the same rustling we did. A small army of vampires was descending toward our cellblock. He reached through the opening to pat Beatrice’s right hand, while mouthing something to her, largely inaudible to me. But I heard, ‘I’ll always love you, Mom.’ So little faith in his old man’s abilities to make things right—to save the day once more? Of course, our chances of surviving through any of this were not assured, and somewhat dismal when looked at objectively.

Alistair jumped down. Before he hit the floor, I was there to meet him, telling him, ‘I’ve got this!’ Then I scurried up the bars to where I prayed my wife still waited.

“Who’s coming up here?” she asked, warily.

There was wildness in her eyes, but not the fear I expected. I had been mistaken, and it terrified my heart to realize something much more twisted was going on. I sensed Dracul’s handiwork, and yet this was not an attempt to use my wife’s eyes to see. No, this time it was something much more sinister, in that a form of insanity had overtaken Beatrice’s person. She was not herself, and I could tell she didn’t recognize me.

“Beatrice, I am a friend, and have come to lead you to safety,” I told her, doing my best to hide the terror I felt. Anything was possible at this point, either favorable or not. “There is danger near you. Come, let me guide you to safety.”

She looked around herself, not focused on anything. I wanted to reach out and grab her, to pull her to me regardless of her reaction. However, without that moment of eye contact to assist me, the mere touch of my fingers upon her flesh could disengage her grip, and she would fall nearly twenty feet to the unforgiving stone floor.

The potential for disaster outweighed the benefit of rescuing her, even when considering such a move would likely save her life. I was frozen by similar fears I once held, when she was a fragile elderly women standing on death’s doorstep.

“William, what’s taking you so long?” Roderick hissed from below.

I glanced back at him, feeling the negative energy growing in the darkness beyond the reach of his penlight’s glow. Alistair had joined Amy at the mouth of the tunnel. Everything seemed set for a legitimate chance of escape, at least from the present predicament.

“Just give me another minute!”

I returned my gaze to Beatrice, whose wild eyes had yet to lock on to anything. There wasn’t time to formulate the wisest plan of action, so I followed my instincts and gently reached for her hand, knowing she might recoil, but praying fervently she wouldn’t.

She stopped moving, and as she lifted her face toward mine, she grasped my hand tightly.

“William? Is it you?”

“Yes, it’s me,” I said, recognizing the change, and too thankful for the return of the woman I cherished to even consider what became of the foreign presence. It was gone, I felt certain of this fact. And, for now, it was all that mattered. “Come, let me get you over to safety.”

My heart thudded madly in my chest. I was a nervous wreck, knowing she could jerk free and fall to her death. All the while, I smiled at her lovingly…calmly.

“Okay, I’m coming, William,” she said, her voice laced with familiar sweetness. She reached out and I pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her when she threw her arms around my neck. “I’m so sorry, my love. I don’t understand what happened. It was as if I were someone else, and not me at all. I felt so much hate, and especially toward those I love with all my heart! It felt so
real
…I
hated
our child, and I hated you, but why? It makes no sense! It….”

Alistair and Amy suddenly cried out in surprise. I couldn’t see them, and my mind filled with panic. The only one I could discern was Roderick, whose tiny flashlight had fallen on the floor. In the beam’s narrow glow, I watched a dozen vampires pounce upon him—far too many to fend off as a team, much less alone.

“William, save your family! Lead them out of here while you can!” pleaded Roderick. “Dracul’s army is coming in droves, and we can’t fend them off any longer!”

“Hold on, Rod! I’ll be right…
huh?!”

Beatrice was snatched from my arms. She disappeared into the sea of black surrounding me. Or, so I thought, until she released a bloodcurdling scream from just a few feet beyond my reach. My heart sank and I screamed her name while begging for mercy on her behalf.

“Take me! Take me instead—you can do whatever you want to me! But release her unharmed! Please!...”

Deep guttural laughter filled the air before me. This was followed by a command in one of the older Serbian dialects. Immediately, the attack upon Roderick ceased, as well as the ensuing harassment upon Alistair and Amy. But there was no respite for my beloved wife.

“So, Judas? …It appears you have played out your hand as William Barrow,” said Dracul. A fiery torch flew across the room from my left and stopped as it reached the vampire’s right hand. In his left, he held Beatrice by the neck. She trembled from unspeakable fear that grew worse as he brought her face close to his. “How delightful!”

“Please—I’ll do anything you ask, and give you anything you want!” I pleaded. There was nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice to save her.
“Please
, I beg you!”

Amy and Alistair wept below me, and I could feel the immortal pull from Roderick’s breaking heart. Meanwhile, Dracul snickered in unabashed amusement.

“Why, Judas…you have nothing I need. Nothing I desire, and no reasons to present to spare yourself…much less your loved ones,” he said, his tone jovial. “I warned you there would be no quarter for you, Roderick, and your family. The only thing you can count on is that you will be last in the order of human sacrifices to come this night. Therefore, prepare yourself to witness the demise of all whom you cherish.”

“Surely there must be something I can bargain with?” I persisted, as he pulled back Beatrice’s neck. Whether he intended to feast on her blood or create an unholy companion, it appeared she would be spared his favored execution of impaling. Of course, what was to stop him from a ruthless combination?

He laughed heartily.

“Have you still not learned to shelter your thoughts? It does seem as though you are not evolving well, eh?” he taunted. “But fear not, you will suffer less than those who oppose my conquest of the day kingdoms I’ve looked upon longingly for far too long.”

“You’ll never succeed, Vlad,” I told him, realizing nothing I could say would change the course of the night’s events. “You don’t have enough crystals you covet, and you never will.”

“On the contrary, I have enough of your ‘Tree of Life’ crystals on my person to walk in daylight as of sunrise tomorrow,” he said. “But enough of the bullshit! Let the death of those you hold dear begin!”

He moved to take his first victim.

“Wait! What if I told you of a place where I have more crystals than you could use in a lifetime?”

“What, in America? My agents are already on their way to all of your homes. By midnight tonight, each abode will be leveled to the ground, and the bounty held in secret by your family will officially be mine. Enough of this nonsense!”

He reared his head back angrily, and his eyes glowed hotly. I have no doubt Beatrice sensed the same thing as I, that the fiend intended to rip open her throat beyond the necessary puncture wounds to drain her blood. She whimpered, eyeing me with a resigned look. How I wished The Almighty had cast me into hell immediately after my infamous betrayal of His favored Son!

It doesn’t happen often, but in the midst of my moments of deepest despair, miracles sometimes emerge. I didn’t expect one to take place this time, and had already prepared myself for a forlorn existence until the end of the ages. But, a minor miracle did happen, in the form of sudden inspiration. I clung to a glimmer of hope.

“I have a stash of these crystals that could last you and the rest of your vampires for several centuries!” I announced, though believing I was too late to save Beatrice. I would honor her memory and live out my days as determined by God. “But harm a single hair on her head and you will never know about it!”

There, I said my peace. Time to begin grieving over the loss of the only woman I’ve thoroughly loved. I couldn’t bear to watch her die and closed my eyes, until a powerful grip pulled me up into the air. I faced Beatrice once more.

“I will hear your tale of these other crystals, William Barrow, and we shall adjourn to my throne room within the hour,” advised Dracul, somehow balancing his hold on my shirt with the torch that came close enough to my face to singe my whiskers. “But, make no mistake. If I find you are lying, and there is no such place, you will wish I had simply drained your wife as I intended just now. Am I clear?”

“Yes,” I replied, confidently. In truth, I had not lied to him. There was a treasure trove of such life-enhancing crystals. Only trouble was, he would need an industrial digging device and Iran’s blessing to get to it.

The crystals were buried in the Alborz Mountains, and far, far away from Dracul’s castle in Montenegro.

If only it was far enough.

Chapter Fourteen

The air was colder than expected. Then again, everything else seemed different from Roderick’s and my previous visit to Dracul’s throne room. Only the pewless sanctuary and the same towering stained glass windows in dark hues along either side of the immense hall seemed unchanged.

The stage surrounding the ostentatious throne chair was filled with spikes. Most were of the traditional wooden or iron variety that Vlad had favored during his storied mortal lifetime. All but five, and these appeared to be made of solid gold.

“It appears you and I have been added to the previously privileged few,” quipped Roderick.

He and I were flanked by a dozen menacing vampire youths dressed in full black attire. Alistair and Amy walked ahead of us, looking anxiously back at Roderick and me, as if begging for some sort of miracle to come forth from the pair of ancient immortals who had rescued them before. A trio of gunmen escorted them, carrying assault rifles trained on their heads. As for Beatrice, Dracul had yet to release his deadly grip on her neck. He carried her like a chicken about to be strangled for supper, and he marched with regal resolve into the immense room. I died moment by moment; terrified his careless approach might break her tender neck at any instant.