Page 60 of Dragon Slayer

“Why would he come here?” Vlad asked.

“He’s been traveling. But when I told him about losing the girl…” He twisted his hands together a moment, distraught. He took a breath and regathered his composure. “Anyway, it’s just as well. Your punishment” – his gaze flicked up, carefully constructed behind the lenses of his spectacles – “seems to have damaged the tracking spell the Necromancer placed on your brother. Even if he were to dream-walk again, we’d no longer be able to tell where he goes, and who he visits. While he’s here, he can cast it again. Perhaps next time,” he said, delicately, “it would be prudent to not usequiteso much electricity.”

“Yes,” Vlad agreed. “When will he arrive? This Necromancer?”

“In a few days’ time.”

Vlad nodded. “Fine.” He turned and resumed course for the stairs. A few days would give him enough time to figure out what to do with a man purportedly able to raise the dead.

~*~

Pain can only be tolerated for a finite spell. Eventually, the body and the mind part ways; the brain’s way of sparing the physical form the sensation. Mortal or immortal, the only difference was a matter of duration. Just because vampires could survive terrible injury, mortals tended to think they didn’t feel pain the same way.

But they did.

Being a vampire, Vlad knew this. And he’d attached the cuffs, and collar, and electrical leads anyway.

It could have been hours, or days. For a stretch, Val’s world was pain, and only pain. The incandescent, blinding pain of electrocution.

At some point, it stopped, because all things stopped eventually.

When he woke next, he was a charred, trembling wreck in the corner of his cell, too weak to even push the hair from his eyes or check the nature of the wound where Vlad’s sword had bit through muscle and bone.

Instead, he tilted his head back against the stone wall, shut his eyes, and put every ounce of pathetic strength into dream-walking. He went to see Mia, so that he could explain. It might be the last chance he had to see her, and he had to make her see that he was real, that he could be honest, no matter what anyone thought. And, selfishly, he wanted someone to know the real story.

And he wanted to see her face again.

But he wasn’t strong enough. He showed her his abduction, that horrible moment in Gallipoli when his life went sideways, and then the blackness swallowed him. Exhaustion, pure and simple.

The next time he woke it was to the sound of a disapproving voice saying, “Sir, I’m sorry, but you don’t have clearance to–” The speaker cut off with anoomph. Val, even behind crusty, closed eyelids, swimming in drowsiness, recognized the sound of someone’s back hitting the wall.

And then: “Let me through.” Vlad. Low and commanding.

Vlad.No, no, no, no. Val curled in on himself; a whimper got caught in the back of his throat, too tired to even voice it properly. He was so tired, and he hurt so much, andno, no, no, no.

Flight instincts kicked in as he heard the key turn in the lock. Of course the guards were letting Vlad through; he didn’t have the power to compel; there were no mind tricks. It was simply his presence. His implacable stare, the reputation that still, alarmingly, dogged his heels in the twenty-first century.

Get up, get up, he thought, desperate, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He managed to crack his eyes open a slit, just in time to get a blurry glimpse of Vlad’s boots as he came to stand over him. He opened his mouth to croak out some pitiful insult, but his throat was too dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Vlad’s clothes rustled softly as he crouched down. And then…

Then.

A touch on his head. The gentle weight and warmth of a palm; he could feel it even through his tangled hair. And he squeezed his eyes shut, ashamed, because even after all that had happened, he could scent his brother, recognize his touch, and his muscles unclenched. Family. Safety. But it had never been safe, and Vlad didn’t want them to be family.

Vlad’s hand withdrew, and here it came: more pain. Val braced himself as much as he could, muscles feebly tightening in anticipation.

But there was no pain. Only Vlad’s hands, turning him over onto his back, and then his strong arms sliding under Val’s knees and behind his shoulders, and he was being lifted. His soreness spiked when he was moved, and he hissed, awash with pain – but it wasn’t intentional, was it? It was…it was…

Tears pushed at his eyelids, and he kept them shut tight as Vlad walked out of the cell, carrying him, Val’s head tucked into his chest. He smelled like modern human laundry, and sweat, and steel…and like his brother. Like Wallachia. Like home.

“Sir,” the guard tried again.

Vlad growled, deep and threatening. Val felt it rumble through his cheek.

There were no more protests from the guard.

Val drifted, teeth gritted against the pain of being moved, but lulled by the rhythm of his brother’s familiar gait. Vlad seemed to walk forever. Through the labs that, only a few weeks ago, Val had broken through. They rode in the elevator. Went up more stairs.

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