Page 155 of Dragon Slayer

“You haveno ideawhat I’m capable of. I’ll only ask one more time: who sent you?”

She burst into flames.

The fire sprang up from nothing, engulfing her head to toe, and it rushed toward Vlad, a curl of it like a great tongue, straight for his eyes.

He didn’t think about what he was doing; he simply reacted. He reached through the fire, a fast grab, and gripped her by the throat. The fire burned him – bright, blinding pain on the skin of his hand, scorching his shirt, eating away at flesh – but then it cut off with a puff of thick, acrid smoke. His hand was a red, blistered mess, but the sinews still worked; he was still able to squeeze until the mage choked, coughing and fighting for air.

Vlad dragged her in close, toes of her fine shoes fishtailing in the pebbles at their feet. Close enough to see her eyes bug, to see her face go dark with suffocation.

He peeled his lips off his fangs, long and sharp. Snarled. “Who sent you?”

She made a few croaking sounds, and he loosened his grip the barest fraction. “R-R-Rom-ulus,” she stuttered.

Romulus. Ah, Uncle.

He squeezedtight, and her neck broke with a pop. Her head sagged.

He dropped her to the path, and the others came back to life around him, shaking their heads, bewildered.

Cicero shifted back to his man shape, and stumbled immediately to one knee, his other leg torn and bloody.

“Your grace,” a voice said, behind him, and Vlad sighed. Turned.

Malik Bey stood just outside the kitchen door, a lantern held aloft, highlighting a face made wild, for the first that Vlad had seen, with unchecked emotion. Shock, and terror, and disbelief.

This was it, then.

Vlad wiped his blade on the sleeve of his shirt, the one that wasn’t burned, and sheathed it. Held up his ruined hand for the janissary to see. “Malik Bey,” he said, and his voice sounded heavy, the way the words felt in his mouth. “May I formally present my mother, Eira, Viking shieldmaiden from the Norse lands. Her Familiar, Fenrir. My Familiar, Cicero. Werewolves. And myself.” He gave a mocking little bow, best as he was able in his current state. “Vlad Dracula: the vampire prince of Wallachia.”

~*~

“It’ll heal on its own,” Vlad said through his teeth, resolutely not flinching under Eira’s ministrations. Ithurt.

“Healing isn’t the same as healing well,” she chided, dabbing at his burned and blistered skin with a warm, wet cloth. Helga stood beside her, a bundle of herbs picked fresh from the pots in the kitchen window ledges ready and waiting; the scent filled the room, covering the stink of blood and dead skin coming off his ruined hand.

He sat in a chair by the fire in his father’s – in his own – study, the glow of flames and of the candles lined up along the mantle giving his mother light by which to clean his wounds. Fenrir stood beside the closed door, listening, keeping watch. Cicero, after a lot of protesting, had been pushed down into a chair beside Vlad; his leg had bled all over the floor. Vlad had insisted he be seen to first, an insistence that had left Cicero whining in distress; he wanted his master seen to, cared for; he could have bled to death, happily waiting. Vlad had stood over him, holding him by the scruff with his good hand, rubbing soothing circles with his fingertips until the Familiar pressed his forehead into Vlad’s stomach and subsided with quiet, protesting chuffs.

Now it was Vlad’s turn, and the bandaged Cicero watched Eira’s hands, unblinking, his shoulder pressed to Vlad’s.

Malik stood in the center of the room, admirably calm for a man who was, clearly, dumbfounded.

Vlad looked at him, finally; he needed a distraction, if nothing else. “You still haven’t said anything.”

“I’m thinking, your grace.”

“In my experience,” Eira said as she worked, “that doesn’t do much good with men. They still do whatever stupid thing they set out to do in the first place.”

Malik’s gaze went to her, eyes brimming with questions.

“You’ve been thinking the whole time,” Vlad said. “Mostly, you’ve been thinking my mother must be my mistress, because she doesn’t look old enough to have a son my age. And also because the princess, my father’s wife, is dead.”

Malik looked back at Vlad, the shadows on his cheeks seeming darker – a blush. “I – forgive me, but yes, your grace. I’ve been thinking exactly that.”

Eira sighed as she stepped back and set the cloth down, reaching for the herbs and grease and mortar and pestle Helga offered her. “Honestly, Vlad, don’t toy with the man.”

“Is that an order?”

“It’s a suggestion, from someone much older than you.” She began to grind a handful of herbs in the mortar. “Curiosity,” she said to Malik, “is only natural – and so are we.”

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