Chapter 5 #2
Then he does something that truly surprises me. He wraps his hand around mine, cool fingers locking tightly over mine, and guides the blade deeper. Then he pushes it forward—slowly—pushing the blade out through the front part of his neck, ensuring that what might have been a stab is a slice.
Suddenly, the sword is free. Blood spills in steady ribbons across his white shirt, soaking the silk lapel of his dinner jacket.
“There we go,” he says. “There’s a proper stab.”
I stagger back, letting the weapon clatter to the floor.
He fixes his cufflinks calmly as you please.
“W-what is this?”
He doesn’t bother to reply, not that I would have been able to process language at this point, because the gash is beginning to heal, right before my eyes. His skin is knitting itself together like real-life CGI.
Finally, his neck is smooth again. Whole. The blood from the wound darkens and dries, then seems to transform into dust.
He adjusts his sleeve with one final flick, then pulls out his pocket square and brushes off the blood dust. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to try harder. But personally, I don’t recommend it,” he says, voice clipped and elegant.
I blink, unable to make sense of what just happened. “I-I don’t understand...” I look down at the blade. Was this some kind of trick? But I know what I saw. I know what I felt.
“Now, then.” He straightens up to his full height. “Your father has been dead for ten days, and we have much work to do.” He strolls off, expecting me to follow.
Which I do not.
He turns with a glare. “I am not asking, Ms. Renfield.”
“A, not my name, and B, I’m not going anywhere until you let them out.”
“The rebellion phase,” he says wearily. “Your grandmother attempted to flee to America. Your father barricaded himself in a church for three days. Yet each one eventually recognized the inevitability of their position, as will you. I know you better than you know yourself. Your compulsions. Your obsessive need to systematize chaos. You were mine before you took your first breath, and you’ll be mine as you take your last. Your place is at my feet, Ms. Renfield.
You will come to see that and even crave it.
And you will never, ever give me orders. ”
“Newsflash: I’d rather dive headfirst into that pit and die with my siblings than be a bug-eating foot servant to you.”
A flash of something—shock? Alarm?—flits through his eyes before it’s gone. His lips curve into a cold smile. “Nevertheless.”
My eyes fall on a battle-axe mounted on the wall—medieval and heavy with a wickedly curved blade on one side and a spike on the other.
I wrench it free and rush to the trapdoor.
I manage to lift it over my head and bring it down with a mighty blow.
The wood cracks. With a grunt and every ounce of strength I possess, I lever it upward again and bring it down.
I then pry open a bit of the floor. Another bit comes up.
Brute force—that was the key!
Alexandru mutters something about somebody named Gregor having to fix the damage I’m causing, but for whatever reason, he isn’t stopping me. I shove it aside and peer down through the hole.
Three faces peer up at me, barely visible in the gloom.
“Help us, Harriet! Magda’s unconscious!” Irina calls, her voice echoing up from the depths. “She’s breathing, but...”
“My leg might be broken,” Stefan says, alarm in his voice. “There are bones down here, Harriet. Human skulls.” He lowers his voice. “Hundreds.”
“Okay. Hang in there.” I wasn’t there for my little brother, but I can be here for these three strangers who share my blood.
But how?
Alexandru is clearly supernatural. I saw what I saw, and being that he lives in Castle Dracul, I’m going with vampire.
Could I take Alexandru’s head clean off? That’s how you kill vampires, right? He seems to be giving me a lot of leeway now, maybe learning my ways, but I’m guessing if I did become a threat to him, he’d pull out the supernatural speed and strength.
I glare at him, and that’s when I catch it again—the flicker in his eyes. Not anger or amusement.
It’s alarm.
Does he think I’ll fall in? Does he think I’ll jump?
Does he need me, somehow? My forebears apparently served him for generations. Is there some symbiotic relationship happening here? A dependency?
I edge closer to the pit, feeling the cool draft rising from below. “Goodbye, Count Fangfiction. Headfirst ought to do it, right?”
“You will not jump.” His voice resonates with centuries of authority.
“Live free or die.”
He steps closer, voice dropping dangerously. “Do not be foolish.”
I move close enough that the tips of my boots are over the edge. “I’ll be as foolish as I wanna be.”
Fear flashes across his face. Yes.
I bend my knees and make prayer hands over my head, like I might actually dive. I’m my own hostage—the one screaming and the one holding the detonator. “Clear the way below!”
“Stop!” he commands.
“If you want me to stop, you’ll have to offer me something.”
His eyes sharpen with interest. “What would that be? Money? Gowns?”
Gowns?
“You will let them out and help get them medical attention. The kind that doesn’t involve fangs. Like regular human medical attention of their choice.” I’ve dealt with enough tricky tech bros on Serena’s behalf to know I need to close all loopholes.
“And you will agree to be my servant?”
I cross my arms, straining for sounds from below. “I might consider doing a few things to help you out if you let them free.”
“I require more than a few things. You will be my servant. We will write a contract, and it will be binding.”
He’s definitely fixated on the servant thing, and his bargaining position—namely, my siblings trapped in a bone pit inside a murder castle—is quite strong.
“What exactly does servitude to Alexandru Miramonte involve?”
Something ancient and hungry sparks in his eyes. “Managing my business affairs and real estate holdings.”
“That’s what my father did?”
“Yes.”
I’m thinking about his ledgers—not the tall, mystical ones, but the plain old office kind, crammed with numbers, addresses, and accounts. The non-weird ones. So that’s what he’d been doing: running this guy’s business the old-fashioned way.
An idea is starting to form in my mind here. “Would I have to use his whole ledger system? What if I had something superior?”
“You would be free to establish your own superior ledger system, as long as it is truly superior.”
“What if I wanted to establish an entirely new system?”
He looks baffled. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Because it’s the twenty-first century and they’ve invented more modern forms of ledgers. More effective and vastly superior. Doesn’t that sound good to you?”
“As long as you manage my affairs effectively, I hardly care what manner of ledger you use.”
“And efficiently, of course. You want efficiency, right?”
“Of course I want efficiency,” he says, annoyed.
I could digitize everything and probably accomplish in twenty minutes what he did in a week. I could even hire it out to somebody on Fiverr.
I try to hide how worried I am about my newfound family. Men like Alexandru use that sort of thing. “Do I get paid for this servitude?” I ask.
“As my servant, you will have no need for money. You would have all you require right here.”
“What if I didn’t want to stay here? I have a home back in Ohio, and I could easily run your business empire from there.”
He looks at me as if I’ve just proposed that penguins should drive taxis. “From Ohio? In the Americas?”
“Yes, in the Americas.”
“Your father made the journey to the post office in town once—sometimes twice—a day,” he informs me, as if this is a cornerstone of modern logistics. “How exactly would you propose to manage that from across the ocean?”
I blink. Does he not know about computers?
He studies my eyes, all arrogance and ancient power.
“Would you have bank correspondence and notarized contracts flown across continents in aeroplanes?” He pronounces the O in aeroplanes.
“And what of truly important documents—would you entrust these to couriers whose names you do not know, whose loyalties have not been tested?”
“Uh...” I’m not quite sure how to answer this question. It’s not the argument that’s baffling me—it’s the entire century he seems to be operating in.
His gaze deepens. He seems to think that he’s winning this point. My god. He doesn’t know... so much.
He lowers his voice to a hot whisper. “Or perhaps you would tie the scrolls to the throats of carrier pigeons? And what of the translators? The local scribes? The tenants in my vast real estate empires? Would you manage them from a parlor in Ohio, with a spyglass in one hand and a ledger balanced on your knees?”
“A spyglass…”
“You see my point, of course.”
“Oh, I do.” Though it’s not the point he wants me to see.
He fixes me with a look, dark eyes dazzling as starlight. “And how, precisely, would you access the archives here in the castle? Reach for them through the mirror?”
Never did a man spout such utter nonsense in such a very compelling way. Is it possible my father managed a modern business empire with 1940s tools?
“Did my father ever try to modernize things like... do you have a computer here?”
“Your father had no need of a computer.”
“Do you guys even have a phone? Did he ever get mail and look at files over a phone?”
“Your father was a bit addled toward the end, but he was not stupid,” Alexandru bites out. “He knew the difference between a telephone and a crystal ball.”
What the hell? “Can you describe your phone? Does it by any chance have a thing you put to your ear and a circle with numbers on the face of it?”
“I believe so. Have you not seen a phone?”
Yes, I think. In museums and Instagram photos captioned “vintage vibes.”
“Fine. Here is the deal I’d like to make with you. I will manage your business affairs vastly better than my father ever did... once my brother and two sisters are safely on their way to the nearest city for medical attention.”
“From here in my castle.”
I smile. “I’ll do you one better. I will position myself in such a way that communications are carried out even faster than my father could manage.
I will work with your translators and scribes more closely than he ever did, checking in with them more frequently.
There will be no carrier pigeons and no air-o-planes.
I will make sure everything’s at my fingertips—all the files.
All the correspondence. I will hold your bankers to the highest standards, and I will use only the best modern tools.
I will organize things so that I can find them right away. ”
“You shouldn’t make promises you cannot deliver on, Ms. Renfield.”
“Don’t worry, Alexandru, I will deliver on my promises so hard.”
His eyes narrow. “Very well. We will draw up a contract establishing your duties. Then and only then will I allow your inferior kin to go free.”
“I would be happy to sign a contract, and I would naturally abide by my word and adhere faithfully to whatever is set forth in that contract down to the very letter, but how do I know you will?”
His lips curve in a cold smile. “A vampire is bound by his word.”
So there it is. He’s just saying it outright. Hi, I’m a vampire.
“You Renfields are bound by your word, too.”
It’s surprising that he would know this about me. The fact is, I’m meticulous about keeping promises and secrets and following terms I’ve signed on to. It’s something of a compulsion.
I strain to hear any noise from the pit. I hope they can hear all this and understand that help is on the way. “Okay. Let’s do this,” I say.
“Come.” He turns and strides across the floor.
I follow him down a candlelit corridor, talking myself into feeling positive about my chances of getting us all out of this alive.
He’ll be good for his word—I have to believe that. And I draft contracts for Serena all the time, protecting her interests in a thousand little ways. I’m going to draw up a contract to end all contracts with this guy and get my siblings and me out of here.
“Your father demanded just such an agreement,” he says.
“Interesting.” I follow him up a winding stone staircase, each step worn in the middle from centuries of use. “So now that we’re doing this, maybe you can tell me what those tall ledgers are all about.”
“That is for you to divine.”
“Why not just tell me? You said you’d tell me.”
“Actually, I believe my words were, ‘Don’t you want to know what purpose they truly served?’ I did not say I’d tell you.”
“So you won’t tell me?”
No answer.
“A hint?”
“In due time,” he says breezily.