Page 19 of Queen of Darkness
The vampire’s shriek was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It clawed at my eardrums, provoking a visceral response in me tostopwhat I was doing and let him go. On some instinctual level, a part of me knew no creature deserved that kind of pain.
Then, I twisted.
He bit my arm. I let go, and as the vampire gasped in relief, I plunged a thumb into his eye. More screaming, but it didn’t matter. The fight was all but over. Blinded on one side, he cradled his head. I snuck my fingers in under his neck and squeezed with all my vampire-shifter might.
His trachea collapsed in my hand, and he started gasping for breath. Shortly after, as I disentangled myself from him and stood, he started turning blue, staring up at me with his good eye. His hand grasped at my pants, but I kicked it free just as Fred came up to me.
“Good job,” he said.
“Thanks.” I shivered as the vampire fell back, weakly writhing as he died. “Now, where to?”
Fred nodded, gesturing to the portal. “Back through there, first, before it starts affecting your mind again.”
“And then?” I asked as we left the corpses behind, the grasses already wrapping around them, hauling the dead vampires into its embrace.
“A place Aaron showed me once, a long, long time ago. His home.”
Chapter Eleven
We stepped through a door and onto the creaky wooden floor of a dimly lit hut. Behind us, a fire blazed merrily in the hearth, though it emitted no heat. There was dirt on the floor, a thin layer over the floorboards, and the only light besides the fire came from the solitary window set above a counter that stretched along one wall.
The roof curved inward, rising to a central peak. To my untrained eye, it looked like it was thatched with straw or hay. There was no movement, except for the slow sway of the trees visible through the window, the movement casting crazy shadows across the interior walls.
Wordlessly, Fred motioned me to the single door, gently opening it and leading us out into the darkened wood beyond.
I shivered under the moonlit sky as a cool breeze caused the trees to moan and sag. Leaves swirled across the forest floor while dead trees stretched their branches high above us. Somewhere in the darkness, an owl hooted. Moments later, something small screamed; the cry abruptly cut off as a predator found prey.
Other noises filled the air. The rustling of creatures near and far. A branch snapped as something stepped on it, the sharp crack causing birds to leave their perches, spilling into the sky, a cawing cacophony of protests and warnings to all who trod beneath them.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“Transylvania,” Fred replied in an equally soft voice, swinging his head left and right.
I swallowed, mouth abruptly dry. “Like,Transylvania,Transylvania? As in, Dracula?Thatplace?”
Fred nodded grimly before pointing to his right and setting off. I hurried to keep pace, looking around wildly as we entered the woods surrounding the empty hut. Glancing over my shoulder through the window, I thought I caught a glimpse of movement inside, but when I looked again, it was gone. Had I imagined it?
My wolf was on guard as we walked, the hairs on my neck standing straight up. Everything about this place had her on edge, and I couldn’t blame her. Our night sight didn’t seem to penetrate very far at all—as if something were preventing us from seeing into the woods.
Fred had said this was Aaron’s home. That this was where he was from.
“But Aaron told me long ago that hewasn’tDracula,” I hissed as something large growled from off to our left, momentarily silencing the night.
“No,” Fred corrected, never taking his eyes off the forest around us. “What he said was that it was Count Drakul who still lives here. That was very much the truth.”
“More like a misdirection,” I muttered.
“He never confirmedordenied it,” Fred countered. “I was there, remember?”
I remembered. “Still, he let me believe it meant he wasn’t Dracula. Now you’re telling me heis?”
Fred shrugged, the motion barely visible. “That’s his story to tell. Come on. We need to move. We don’t want to be wandering out here for very long. There are worse things than old Drakul.”
As he spoke, the darkness of the forest seemed to close in on us like some sort of blanket. The wind stilled, and trees sighed as they returned to their natural position, the dead trunks relieved as the pressure faded.
All around us, the noise tapered off. I frowned at that while my wolf rumbled a warning inside my mind. She didn’t like it. Something was off about the unnatural silence.
I opened my mouth to ask Fred, but he put a finger to his lips, hushing me before I could make a sound. Noiselessly, we crouched, waiting.
