Page 134 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding
Luckily for Victor, and unluckily for Drachmar, Pandora had been sure to return Victor’s protection necklace to him once they’d got back together.
“I’m not much of the cowering type,” Victor said, making Pandora have to force her lips into a straight line, not wanting to irritate their host. “So … this isn’t Bran Castle.”
That got a growl out of Drachmar.
“That,” he said, with a wave of his arm that made his cape fly out dramatically, pointing to the other side of the hill, “is Bran Castle. Yet another thing the storybooks get wrong. This,” he waved at the castle he stood before, “is my true castle. Built by the same bloody Saxons. But better. Not crumbling like in all those ridiculous books.”
Pandora and Victor shared a small smile.
“I’m sorry, Drachmar, but we were under the impression that the castle was open for guests. Had we known you were here, we never would have come.”
It hadn’t been Pandora’s first – or fiftieth – choice, in fact. But Victor had been intrigued by the idea of staying in the castle where so many of his fictional vampire stories took place. Even though Pandora had insisted time and again that Uncle Reginald was notorious for embellishing the truth. If not outright lying.
“It is yours,” Drachmar said with another wave of his long-boned hand. “I’m afraid I have to track down my familiar.”
“Renfield?” Victor asked.
“Raymond! Ray-mond. That is his name. You mortals.” Then, before anyone could say anything else, Drachmar shifted into a bat and flew off with an eerie shriek.
“How long until you can turn into a bat?” Victor asked, looking over at Pandora. She whacked him across the stomach. “Shall we?” He waved toward the front door.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Pandora said as they stepped into the castle. “But … ah, this was not it.” They both looked around, not sure what to think.
Sure, it was a castle. Stone walls. Long, sprawling rooms. Heavy drapery. Fireplaces large enough for families to live inside.
But it wasn’t the bones of the place that had their attention.
It was what Drachmar had decorated the space with that had them not quite believing their eyes.
Nearly every inch of the entire lower floor was full of TV and movie posters, thousands of books, even action figures and stuffed animals that were based on the character of Dracula.
“He’s his own fan club,” Pandora said with a little laugh.
“I’m kind of disappointed I already finished my thesis,” Victor said. “Because … this would have been an interesting twist. Looks like Reginald wasn’t lying, was he?”
“No,” Pandora said, running her fingers over the comically large fangs in a full-sized vampire replica she figured must have been from a movie set or museum at some point. “So now I’m wondering if the perch Vlad uses at my mum and dad’s house actually did belong to a king.”
And maybe hehadtalked about philosophy with a drunken Socrates. And had helped design the Notre Damecathedral. And had been the one to make the famous Mona Lisa smile while Leonardo da Vinci had painted her.
“Maybe that ancient scroll he gave me really did come from the Library of Alexandria,” Victor said, reaching for Pandora’s hand. “What a place for a honeymoon,” he added, lifting her hand to his face and kissing her on the finger, just in front of her engagement and wedding rings.
This time, they’d actually gone through with the ceremony. Though, it had been touch-and-go there for a while.
For example, they had all almost burned to death because one of her aunts had decided to set up a bunch of candles around the library. The library full of old books loaded with ancient, dry paper.
If it hadn’t been for a quick-thinking and moving Lucy, the knocked-over candelabra would have ignited a whole shelf of encyclopedias and trapped them all in a burning room.
Sure, the encyclopedias had been full of old, inaccurate information. But it would have been a real tragedy for everyone to have died on such a lovely day.
Then, well, there’d been the reception. Where Ravenna and Henrietta had got into an argument that had devolved into an actual, real-life food fight. While Vlad had sulked and pretended not to be jealous of Elizabeth’s new beau – a lovely Camelot macaw who hadn’t seemed to know that Vlad and Elizabeth had ever been an item. And Victor’s father almost finally figured out the whole vampire thing.
She and Victor had decided as a couple not to share that information, both believing his parents were a bit too … practical to be able to wrap their heads around the idea of supernatural creatures not only existing, but marrying into their family. Most humans wouldn’t be able to handlethat kind of truth without hysterics or even an outright breakdown as the world they thought they knew fell apart around them.
It wasn’t worth the risk. Especially considering how infrequently the families got together. It would be even less often when his parents finally moved to Portugal like they’d been dreaming of after retirement.
As crazy as it had all been, Pandora knew she would look back on it with nothing but fondness for the rest of her life.
Even just thinking back on some of Victor’s vows made her feel like she was flying.
