“It’s not Szilagyi,” he cut me off. “It’s Vlad, and it’s not just for this season. I’m off the carnival circuit forever.”
“What?”
His smile was lopsided. “Vlad knows you think of me as a second father, and he knows Szilagyi won’t be his only enemy who tries to use me because of it. Since there’s no way to guard every carnival I go to, he ordered me to stop performing. Said he’d double whatever I used to make and give me another job—”
“He can’t expect you to quit,” I whispered, stunned.
Marty’s smile faded. “He can and he did. He knows I’m in no position to refuse. If I did, he’d cut me off from you, which would hurt worse than quitting the circuit since I love you like my own daughter. Plus, then he’d be pissed, and I already experienced what Vlad does to people when he’s not mad.”
“But being a carnie is more than your job, it’s your life!” I said, as if I was telling him something he didn’t know.
“Told you, kid,” he said lightly. “You’re the only one still in denial about who you married.”
I was about to say that Vlad had no idea who he’d married if he thought I’d let him get away with this when sirens started blaring from the castle. Before I could react, Marty threw me over his shoulder, rushing back toward the house with Vlad’s guards running ahead of him like two fanged linebackers.
Those alarms kept me from arguing about Marty flinging me over his shoulder as if I was a sack of potatoes. Thanks to my trip to the communications room a couple months ago, I knew what they meant. The invisible security grid that extended like a huge bubble around the castle and grounds had been breached.
“Incoming air strike!” one of the guards called out in heavily accented English.
Air strike? Szilagyi had gotten his hands on missiles? I shoved away from Marty, landing on my feet in the grand hallway, only to be swept up by more guards as they hustled me to the stairway behind the indoor garden.
“Madame, we need you belowground,” Samir said. Then the black-haired head of Vlad’s guards pinched his collar and muttered something into the wire concealed there. Another spurt of Romanian came through the same device, then Samir and the rest of them were almost shoving me down the staircase.
“Wait, where’s Marty?” I called out, not seeing him through the sea of guards that had surrounded me.
“Go on, I’ll catch up!” I heard Marty yell before more communications from the guards’ wires and multiple footsteps on the stone staircase drowned out his voice.
“To the dungeon!” Samir said, shooting me an apologetic look as he added, “it’s the deepest underground part of the castle, so the surrounding rock will protect you.”
Did he really think I’d pick now to be snooty about my accommodations? “Will it be big enough to fit everyone?”
Samir wasn’t the only one who looked at me like I was crazy. “We stay above to fight,” the blond named Christian said.
I put on the brakes at that, but it had as much effect as a leaf trying to stop the raging river it was floating in. “I’m not huddling below while the rest of you risk your lives!”
They kept propelling me down the narrow passageway as if I hadn’t spoken, moving so fast that I barely saw us being waved through the first two security doors that led to the dungeon. When we reached the third, I tore my gloves off. Light suffused my right hand, casting a bright glow in the unlit tunnel.
“Stop!” I demanded.
They ran even faster, ushering me through the foot-thick metal door that was the entrance to the dungeon. Frustration made my hand spark. Vlad. He must’ve threatened them with something awful if they didn’t get me to a safe place in the event of an emergency. Either I hurt them for their obedience—which I couldn’t do—or I switched tactics. They wouldn’t let me fight, but maybe I could protect some of them another way.
I pulled my right hand tight to my body and put all the command I could muster into my voice. “Send all the humans in the house down here with me. They can’t help in the fight and they could, um, get in the way if they stay up there.”
“Get them,” Samir said, and one of the guards ran back through the dungeon’s entrance. I sighed in relief, then nearly choked at the odor that seemed to shoot up my nose. I’d forgotten how this place reeked, as if the dungeon’s oppressive atmosphere, manacles, and other gruesome devices weren’t unpleasant enough.
Samir barked more orders at the guards, who half dragged, half carried me past the stone monolith that marked the first section of the dungeon. Then I was whisked past the various “information extraction” devices in the second, larger section before we came to the third, where the roof abruptly sloped and the walls shrank until the passageway was as tight as the narrow staircase leading down here.
It was also so dark I had to squint despite my supernaturally enhanced vision. Cells lined the cold stone walls, their height maxing out at four feet, restricting their unlucky occupants to a permanent stoop. The last time I’d been here, Maximus had been the dungeon’s only prisoner, and he’d been in one of the regular-sized cells at the end of this row. This time, the squat cells around me weren’t empty.
Since we were now at the end of the dungeon, the guards finally stopped shoving/carrying me. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Shrapnel, Vlad’s former third-in-command, in the cell to my left. He’d been down here ever since he got busted for betraying Vlad to an associate of Szilagyi’s, not to mention the part where he drove me off a cliff trying to kill me. Thick silver chains hung from Shrapnel’s wrists and ankles, their length secured into the stone floor with a large clamp. I met his dark eyes and felt a flash of pity as he looked from me to the cell across the hall from his. It was the only other occupied one in this section of the dungeon, and in it was the woman Shrapnel had betrayed Vlad for. I doubted it was an accident that Shrapnel’s cell was positioned so that he had an unrestricted view of her.
Something soot-smeared flung itself against that cell’s bars as I neared it, then grunting sounds emerged from a mouth filled with a spiked ball-gag of silver. If I didn’t already know who it had to be, I wouldn’t have recognized Vlad’s former girlfriend, Cynthiana. She looked even more terrible than the last time I’d seen her, and Vlad had been torching information out of her back then.
Cynthiana’s long, lustrous brown hair was gone, replaced by a bald skull that was as soot covered as the rest of her. She couldn’t speak past the hideous gag that kept her from uttering spells like the one that had killed me, but her glare conveyed her hatred. She was tiny compared to her tall, heavily muscled lover, yet Cynthiana had more shackles than Shrapnel. Every part of her was bound with silver chain, leaving only her fingers free. Even in her pitiful condition, she wasn’t cowed. Two middle fingers shot up at me as we stared at each other.
Alexandru began to rebuke Cynthiana, as if that would do any good. Out of all the crimes that had landed Vlad’s former girlfriend in the worst part of his dungeon, cowardice hadn’t been among them. She glared at him, twisting her fingers in such a way that the clear translation was Fuck you in the ass!
If the situation hadn’t been so ominous, I might’ve made a mental note of how she did that. Instead, being in the dungeon’s deepest, darkest—and thus safest—region only highlighted the fact that something terrible was about to happen.
“Alexandru, Petre, Dorian, stay here,” Samir said, leaving the corridor of cells at a run. “Protejati-o cu vietile voastre!”
I knew what that last sentence meant because I’d heard Vlad say it many times. Protect her with your lives. My gut twisted. I might be safe with the guards and the half mile of rock between me and the impending attack, but what about Marty and everyone else? The only person who could contain the fiery fallout from an air strike wasn’t home at the moment!
All at once, I remembered the phone Vlad had left me. If this didn’t count as an emergency, nothing did. I shoved my gloves back on despite the entire phone being encased in thick rubber, then pressed th
e big red button on the front of it. It glowed, and I didn’t even hear a ring before Vlad answered.
“Leila.”
“We’re being attacked,” I began.
“I know, my people called,” he interrupted. “I’m on my way, but I’m far. I’ve summoned my closest allies to assist, but you need to stay below until I get there. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly.
Playing the cowering princess went against every instinct I had, yet I couldn’t distract Vlad’s people by forcing them to drag me back down here if I tried to join them in the fight, and drag me they would. They’d already proven that.
“Good.” Relief edged the word before his tone hardened into deadly implacableness again. “It’s no coincidence that Szilagyi is attacking now, so remember what I told you when I left.”
I glanced at Alexandru, Dorian, and Petre. All three were at the entrance to the third section of the dungeon, their stances bow-tight, as if expecting Szilagyi to leap out of a dark corner. They looked like the loyal, fierce guards they were supposed to be, but I also didn’t believe in coincidences. Someone had tipped Szilagyi off to Vlad’s absence, and for all I knew, it was one of the men down here with me.
“Got it,” I said, holding the phone in the crook of my shoulder as I looked at my right hand, my most effective weapon.
“I love you.”
Growled just before I heard a click, then the phone’s single red button stopped glowing. He’d hung up on me, probably to make more calls rallying his allies. I put the phone back in my jeans and glanced at my left hand, too. I might need all the voltage I could transmit, even down here where it was supposed to be safe.
“This way,” I heard Samir shout, then a stampede of echoes sounded in the front part of the dungeon. From the multitude of heartbeats, Samir had followed through on my order to bring the human inhabitants of the castle down here.
I was friends with a few of them, so after a brief argument with my guards, they agreed to let me go to the dungeon’s front section to see them. I also wanted to check if Marty had come down with them. He’d promised to be right behind me.
I made it to the second section of the dungeon when the floor suddenly heaved with such force, I was knocked off my feet. Then the walls shook so violently that long cracks appeared in the stone. I grabbed the nearest sturdy object—a modernized version of an ancient rack—and fell again as the ground pitched and heaved like a boat being tossed in high seas.
Alexandru and Petre rushed over, but the next violent heave knocked them to their knees, too. Then a thunderous crash boomed through the dungeon, sending a cloud of stone dust rushing into our section. Amidst the screams, I heard an eruption of Romanian from the guards’ communication devices. Most of it was too rapid to translate, but I understood three chilling words.
Explosion. Foundation. Collapse.
Szilagyi hadn’t launched an attack from above. Somehow, he’d blown up the foundations that the castle rested on.
Chapter 8
The three of us staggered to the front section of the dungeon, the ground pitching and rolling beneath us the entire time. Once we reached it, I looked around in disbelief. The huge stone monolith in the center of the room had toppled over, crushing several people beneath it. A few were still alive, but trapped by the massive rock formation.
“Help me!” I said, running over to the massive oblong stone. While the dungeon continued to shudder as if in its death throes¸ Alexandru, Dorian, and I lifted the monolith so that Petre and Samir could yank out the survivors. My friend Sandra was one of them, and I saw with relief that only her lower leg had been crushed. Vampire blood would heal that, as it would heal the other living peoples’ injuries—
A tremendous boom! sounded, followed by the most horrific screams I had ever heard. Not even the distance between the dungeon and the castle muted sounds that curdled my blood and filled me with an instinctive panic. What was happening?
“Napalm!” came through the guards’ devices, followed by more crashing sounds and that awful, high-pitched screaming. “It’s being dropped from helicopters—!”
That transmission cut off with terrifying abruptness, but more screams came through the lines. I caught the word “trapped” several times, and a sickening picture began to form in my mind. Szilagyi had managed to blow up the house’s foundations, causing large parts of the house to collapse. Then, he’d dropped napalm on the trapped survivors, burning them to death before they could free themselves from the rubble.
“Block the door and stay here!” Samir shouted, shoving past the terrified people still trying to spill into the dungeon. He slammed the door behind him, the instant mechanical screech indicating that he’d locked it.
I stared at the door in shock. Samir did not just lock out people trying to get to the only safe area in the house! Yet he had, and Alexandru, Petre, and Dorian rushed to heave the stone monolith in front of the door, almost crushing a few people who didn’t move quickly enough out of their path.
I shook myself out of my temporary paralysis. “You can’t let him lock those people out. They’ll burn!”
To punctuate my point, screams leaked through the thick metal door. A glance around showed that only half the house’s human residents had made it into the dungeon. The rest were on the other side of that door, and even if the collapsing house and napalm didn’t kill them, the poisonous smoke would. Plus, any vampires who’d freed themselves from the rubble needed to get underground to avoid the merciless fire, but now they couldn’t get down here, either.
“We need to move that block and open the door,” I said more strongly, heading toward the stone monolith.
Dorian yanked me back so hard, he broke my arm. “Napalm cannot burn through stone, but if you remove the barrier and open the door, it could flood this area and kill us. We need to wait. Help is on the way.”
My arm had already healed by the time he stopped speaking, and if my heart still worked, it would have been hammering. Another shudder rocked the dungeon, followed by more crashing noises above us. I looked into Dorian’s flinty blue gaze and saw that he really would let everyone on the other side of that door die, all to obey orders. Yes, help was on the way, but by the time Vlad’s allies arrived, most of the people in the house would be crushed or burned to death.
I couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen. Marty was up there, not to mention all the guards who were fighting for their lives and ours. Yes, we might be in danger if we removed that barrier and opened the door, but those people would die if we didn’t. With a choice like that, there was no choice.
Besides, I thought, steeling myself for what came next, stone wasn’t the only thing that was immune to fire. Thanks to Vlad smothering me in his aura, at the moment, so was I.
“Dorian,” I said in an even voice. “I’m sorry.”
Then I laid my right hand on him and blasted him with enough voltage to send him crashing into the wall behind us. Alexandru started toward me, but stopped when I held the same hand out, a line of dazzling white now dangling from it.
“If you make me, I will do it,” I said, snapping the electric whip I’d formed. I meant it, too. Countless lives hung in the balance, my best friend’s among them.
Alexandru must’ve sensed that I wasn’t bluffing. He nodded and gestured at the huge rock in front of me.
“It will go faster with both of us.”
I waved him forward, keeping a wary eye out for any sudden, duplicitous movements as we grasped either end of the rock. Then we heaved, and even with our combined supernatural strength, I felt like I’d burst a spleen by the time we rolled the monolith aside to reveal the door.
“Open it,” I ordered. When he hesitated, I snapped, “Samir didn’t lock us down here without any keys, so open it!”
“Don’t,” Dorian gasped out, crawling toward us. “Samir will kill you for disobeying, and if he doesn’t, Vlad will.”
Alexandru glanced at my glowing whip, at Dorian
, and then dropped to his knees. “I can’t,” he whispered.
My whip glowed brighter as the sounds behind the door grew more desperate. Yes, Vlad had ordered them to keep me safe, but he wouldn’t want scores of his people burned alive when all that was needed to save them was to open a damn door!
“Get back,” I yelled as loud as I could. “Nobody touch the door, it’s about to blow!” Then, with a quick prayer that I wouldn’t kill the people on the other side, I brought that sizzling electric whip down onto the thick metal door.
A hunk blew off near the lock, the voltage electrifying the highly conductive metal. I brought the whip down again, channeling more energy into it. The entire door became suffused with an eerie white glow before another piece hurtled off.
“No!” Dorian shouted.
A rush of wind warned me of his charge. I pivoted just in time, causing him to smash into the door instead of me. Electricity still coursed through the metal, making his whole body shudder with the voltage he absorbed. Seizing my chance, I yanked him off with my left hand and then kicked him out of my way before aiming another strike at the door.
That final, crackling whip cut through the locks, causing the door to sag open. Grief flooded me as I saw two of Vlad’s human blood donors stuck to the other side of the door, their bodies still convulsing from all the electricity they’d absorbed. I didn’t get a chance to check them for pulses before the door flung all the way open from the rush of people nearly trampling one another to get inside. In the next instant, a tremendous explosion shook the dungeon, knocking me out.
When I came to moments later, I could barely see through the blood, soot, and stony dust in my eyes. Then I could see with dazzling, horrifying clarity because the pitch-black dungeon was suddenly lit by countless rays of moonlight . . . and flames.
The side of the mountain where the second and third sections of the dungeon were located was gone. A gaping hole was all that was left, and flaming debris from the house rained down in front of it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, yet that didn’t stop the moans, crashing noises, and screams that came from around and above me. Szilagyi wasn’t just destroying the house; he was bringing down the entire mountain, just as he’d planned to do months ago when he was laying a trap for Vlad. I didn’t know how he’d managed to pull off his stunningly successful attack, but it didn’t matter.