“Ah. Let me amend. I believe his family has been involved with the care of the castle. His teaching position is new to their line. An honor and inspiration.”
“Why wasn’t he offered the position of headmaster? Surely that would send a more positive message than hiring him as a folklore professor.”
Thomas lifted a shoulder. “Unfortunately for Radu, I’m sure the academy is wrong. I doubt most villagers in our generation care as much as those in the past. They likely think of him as they think of the rest of us here. Blasphemous evildoers who should be ashamed of turning this holy castle into a place of science. Ah, look.”
Thomas pointed to a secluded section near a blazing fireplace. At first I thought he was being improper, suggesting a place where we would have privacy. But for once, he was focused on our mission. A sign in English hung proudly at the end of the aisle: building & grounds.
“Today might be our day after all.”
I set off for the massive aisle of books dedicated to the castle, hoping this was another of those times Thomas was right.
Tonga bat. Colored etching by S. Milne and Turvey.
TOWER CHAMBERS
CAMERE DIN TURN
BRAN CASTLE
5 DECEMBER 1888
Ileana stood on a rickety stool, dusting the crammed bookshelves in my sitting room when I finally made it upstairs shortly before midnight.
A pair of my boots—shining as if they’d been freshly polished—sat on the windowsill, but I didn’t have the energy to ask why. Our grand foray into the master library to see what information we might glean about where the two tunnels possibly led had been fruitless. The only things we’d discovered were that Radu was even more clumsy than originally thought and that he enjoyed reading old German texts.
The Building and Grounds section had obviously not been well maintained—there were books of poetry and journals with silly tales regarding the castle and the surrounding area, but nothing useful. Not that I’d expected us to simply waltz into the library and walk off with a book neither the headmaster nor the royal guard could locate.
I closed the door behind me with a soft click. Without turning, Ileana paused, hand mid-swipe with the dust-coated rag, the wood creaking beneath her feet. The dirt on the bottom of her embroidered apron made it appear as if she’d been trudging through wet earth. I didn’t want to think about what dank part of the castle she’d been forced to clean. If it were anything like the passage we’d been in, it was most decidedly wretched.
“I’m—I’m very sorry for earlier,” Ileana burst out. “Thomas asked for help and I couldn’t—I couldn’t… I didn’t want to say no to Daciana’s brother. I told him it was an awful idea, but he was desperate. Love makes fools of the wisest. I can leave if you don’t wish to speak with me.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself. I’m not upset with you. It’s been a long day, is all.”
Ileana nodded and went back to carefully wiping down the bookshelves. I flopped onto the settee and rubbed my temples, hoping for a bit of serenity to fall from the sky and splatter across my soul like a cleansing rain shower. If only I’d simply been upset by Thomas’s attempt at reclaiming our friendship. His feigning of death felt as if it had occurred millennia ago. We had much bigger problems to contend with.
Though the bats were terrifying, I knew they weren’t responsible for Wilhelm’s blood loss. He certainly would have had discernible scratches on his person if they had been. Which made me all the more confident that his blood had been removed with a mortuary apparatus.
The bite wounds on my hands still burned. I wanted to soak in the tub and cleanse the lingering bat saliva and never think about those grubby little monsters again. Father would start abusing his laudanum once more if he ever found out about my exposure to such potentially disease-spreading creatures.
Of course someone would be breeding vampire bats in a castle whose most infamous occupant was rumored to have become a vampire. My initial impulse was to blame the headmaster, but being rash was the exact opposite of what Uncle would instruct me to do. Coming to a hasty conclusion about the identity of the culprit, and then manufacturing evidence to confirm that conclusion, wouldn’t lead to truth and justice.
“You seem… is everything all right?” asked Ileana.
Even though I’d promised Thomas to remain silent, I decided to share our discovery with her. Perhaps she had heard something about the passages from other servants or occupants.
“We found a rather… mutilated body in the morgue. Well, below the morgue. There was a trapdoor and…” Ileana went rigid. I hurried on, hoping to spare her too much talk of the dead. “Anyway, I wish we’d left well enough alone. It—was difficult to tell if there were similarities to any other case we’ve been involved with. Bats had been… feasting on the blood. I don’t know what to make of it. You mustn’t tell anyone. Not yet, at least.”
“Bats were… drinking from a corpse?” At this Ileana turned, blinking. She appeared shaky enough to fall backwards in a stiff wind. “Was it a student? Did you tell anyone?”
An image of the moon-white body assaulted my mind, viciously taunting me with each vivid detail and the lacerations she must have sustained before taking her last, damned breath. I shook my head.
“It—it was hard to make out anything. I only know her sex by her clothing. We couldn’t inspect the room with all the… bats swarming. We’re going to send the headmaster an anonymous letter if she’s not discovered by tomorrow afternoon. We thought the person responsible for the murder might happen to ‘find’ her body, and thought it best to wait a few hours.”
I closed my eyes, trying to forget the sounds of wings beating against my head, the feel of claws digging into my soft flesh. Her death must have not come fast enough. I hated thinking of how long she’d lingered while they’d drunk deeply. Again and again. Razor-sharp teeth slicing and biting. How powerless she would have felt the more her life force was drained.
I focused on the fireplace, getting lost in the flames. If I allowed my imagination to run so freely, I was sure to be sick.
“Do you think the same person who’s impaled those two others is responsible?” Ileana fiddled with the dust cloth. “Or is there another murderer in Braşov?”
I ticked off the facts I knew. “So far there are two bodies that have been impaled off grounds: one on the train, and the one reported in the newspapers. Then there’s the bloodless body of Wilhelm Aldea. Now this young woman, who likely died from being a living host to the bats. Judging from the lack of rigor mortis, I’d say she… passed away at least seventy-two hours ago. It’s hard to be certain, though.”
I didn’t mention the slight stiffness present in the limbs, or how the warm temperature of the room might have accelerated the process. Uncle had made me memorize different factors that contributed to the speeding up or delaying of the aftereffects of death last summer. Since the temperature had been moderate to warm in the room, and her body was decomposing, that meant a minimum of twenty-four hours had likely passed since she’d taken her last breath. Though I placed her time of death closer to three days earlier, maybe almost four. The stench had been horrid.
“Is it possible she was another victim of the Impaler?”
I peeled off my lace gloves, wincing at the tattered pieces as I unveiled scratches and bite marks. “I wish I knew. One pair of bodies are made to appear as if they are vampires. Another as being feasted on by vampires.”
From outward appearances, these crimes weren’t all committed by the same person. It seemed as if the woman and Wilhelm had been murdered in different ways than the other two, and than from each other.
I wasn’t even sure someone had forced her into that room. Perhaps she’d gone wandering and had the misfortune of getting trapped. It was black as pitch in that chamber—she might have stumbled in, been attacked by starving bats, then fallen, unable to escape from her hell. Until her body could be inspected, there were too many unknown variables.
“Either someone is trying very hard to stage vampiric crimes,” I said, disengaging from thoughts of her battered corpse, “or there are two murderers working—I don’t know, almost working to outdo the other. One who imitates the methods of a vampire hunter, the other those of an actual vampire. I’m not sure what to believe. There are still too many missing pieces. If Wilhelm died because of bats, we would have seen multiple wounds on him. They were quite savage.”
I held my hands up, showing the bites that had dried ruby red.
“The castle is old, as are the tunnels you found,” Ileana said, tearing her attention away. “Maybe they’ve been breeding since Vlad’s time.”
“Maybe.” A charming thought indeed. “I think someone is breeding them, all right. Thomas said they’re called vampire bats, but they’re usually found in the Americas. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how it relates, unless it’s simply misfortune.”
“Perhaps the Impaler has a connection to the academy,” Ileana said, her focus stuck on the allegedly risen immortal prince. “The first murder occurred in the village. Then Wilhelm’s body was found there as well. If what Dăneşti said about threats being made against the royal family is accurate, then perhaps the Impaler was looking to create panic with the first two murders.”
“Or perhaps he was practicing.”
“Maybe he’s collecting blood,” she whispered.
My own blood chilled. The thought prodded the sensible part of my brain until other, more menacing ones sprouted to join it. It was certainly possible that a career murderer was living beneath this turreted roof, stealing blood for his own purposes.
Uncle’s theory on murderers involving themselves in the crimes flitted through my head. In a school composed of students and professors, who had more to gain from the murders? Unless the motivation was simply the thrill of the hunt. That bloodthirsty compulsion always terrified me the most. I wished Uncle were here now to discuss this with me. He always saw beyond the obvious.
Ileana had gotten so quiet that I started when she shifted off the stool. “You believe the Impaler exists?”
“Not in the literal sense, no,” I said. “I’m certain a very human person is re-creating methods of death made famous by Vlad Dracula. I do not believe—for one instant—he’s risen from the grave and is hunting anyone. That’s both preposterous and completely contrary to the laws of nature. Once someone is dead there is no way to reanimate them. No matter how much one wishes otherwise.”
I would not divulge how painfully familiar I was with the truth of my last statement. Fingers twitched across my memory, and I shoved the image away.
“Some villagers would disagree,” Ileana said quietly. “A few have gotten ill over the last couple of weeks. One girl has disappeared. They are certain a strigoi is to blame. Now Wilhelm’s body is discovered, his blood missing. They are not unaware of what that might mean.”
I began to comment on the village girl’s disappearance and stopped myself. I was ashamed to admit to sneaking into her home. I believed her case was simply an unfortunate one, brought on by drinking too many spirits and getting lost in the woods. No vampires or werewolves snatched her from the path.
“Do you know of anyone who’d want to shut the academy down?” I asked.
Draping her cloth over a galvanized bucket, Ileana tapped the sides, creating a hollow, echoing sound that ricocheted in my skull. I narrowed my eyes as she glanced toward the door and then swallowed. I was about to ask what was wrong when she hurried over to the settee. She pulled a leather-bound book from a pocket on her apron, handing it to me as one might pass on a reeking bedpan. I reluctantly took it.
“I… I know it’s wrong. But I found this journal. It was in Prince Nicolae’s room.” I lifted my gaze, but Ileana kept hers locked on the book and stammered on. “Remember when I told you servants are to be neither seen nor heard?” I nodded. “Well, it’s very easy for some of the more highborn students to forget we exist. Some think their fires magically light themselves, and their chamber pots grow wings to empty their waste.”
“I’m sorry people are so cruel.”
Her eyes were shards of ice before she blinked the expression away. “I’m not proud of filching the journal, but I heard him mentioning something about drawings. When I peeked inside, I saw awful images. Here.”
I flipped the leather journal open, scanning a few diagrams. Hearts, intestines, a human brain, and… bats. Skulls of bats with horrendous fangs. Bat wings with notes and details of claws at their apex. Each page proudly displayed a new section of a bat’s anatomy. I flicked my attention back to Ileana, whose gaze was locked on her hands.
“He’s got quite a few specimens in his chambers, too.”
“Why did mention of his drawings trouble you?”
Ileana wrung her hands. “I recalled what Dăneşti and Moldoveanu had said about the royal family receiving those threats. That they were drawings.”
I sat straighter, as if the movement would make what she’d said more palatable. Waves of nausea roiled my stomach. “He couldn’t possibly have sent those himself…”
“That’s why I looked. Then I saw the sketches of bats and noticed all the skeletons he has in his room… I don’t know why I took his journal. I just”—she shrugged—“I thought there might be more to see. And then I saw this one near the back.”
Reaching over, she turned the pages until she found what she’d been searching for. My breath stilled along with the rest of my body. A girl with onyx hair, eyes a deep emerald green, and lips that were dripping blood smiled boldly.
With my finger I traced the jawline up and around to the catlike eyes, then touched my own face. “I don’t—this cannot be me. He wouldn’t have had time to—”
Ileana turned to the next page. On it, drawn with great care, was the image of a girl wearing an apron splattered with gore, an autopsy blade poised above stark white flesh. I tore my gaze away. The cadaver was male, and no cloth covered his nude form. Heat flashed over my cheeks.
I hardly knew what to make of the crude drawings.
“There’s more.” Ileana showed me image after image. Each featuring me as a beautiful creature delighting in blood and death. The way the prince had captured me, it was as if he’d turned me into an immortal being, a little too perfect to be human. A bit too cold and hard for this fragile world. The flames in the fireplace flickered wildly, its heat suddenly sweltering. I longed to fling my windows wide, letting the cold wind of the Carpathians cleanse this space.
One final image had me sucking in a gasp. It was hard to tell exactly who the male was—either Thomas or Nicolae—but he and another Audrey Rose stood side by side. The young man wore a suit made of bones, holding an ivory skull as if it were an oracle to divine from. My bodice hugged my frame. The illustration was gorgeous, despite the large anatomical heart and circulatory system that branched from my chest, then wound its way down my arms and ran fingers to my skirts.
The black gloves in the drawing caught my attention next. Lace and swirls covered my arms as if they’d been inked permanently onto my skin. Ileana watched closely before pointing to the design on my arms. “Prince Nicolae’s arms are covered in ink. Not so delicate as these. But I’ve seen them when he rolls his sleeves back.”
I raised my brows. How intriguing. I’d read that many aristocrats had gotten themselves tattooed over the previous several years. Once magazines had announced how fashionable it was, nearly one in five highborn ladies and gentlemen, it was estimated, had them secreted on their bodies. They were also growing in popularity in the royal courts. It made sense that the prince might dabble in something such as tattooing. It added to his mystique. I imagined many young women would be more than delighted to unwrap his layers for a peek at what he was hiding.
“What are his of?”
Ileana pushed herself up from the settee, then took back the journal and motioned toward the door. “It’s late. I polished your boots and left them for Moş Nicolae. You should get some re
st so he has time to deliver his winter gifts.” She smiled at my confusion. “I believe your version of Moş Nicolae is called Father Christmas. It’s a tradition for him to bring sweets. If he shakes his beard and snow falls, then winter may truly begin. Sleep now. Tonight is Magic Night. Maybe he’ll leave you a trinket.”
Sleeping was the furthest thing from my mind, especially when someone else named Nicolae might be prowling about the castle, delivering “gifts,” but I bid her good night. I pressed my fingers against my eyes until flashes of white streaked across them like stars shooting against the sky. In one day, I’d thought Thomas was dead, found a secret passage, been attacked by blood-leeching bats, discovered another body, and now had become acquainted with Nicolae’s disturbing illustrations. The dark prince very well might be the person we were searching for. He had the opportunity to send illustrated threats to family members.
Perhaps it was an attempt to secure the throne for himself.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Nicolae might also be responsible for his cousin’s death and, if I continued to unearth his secrets, that something worse than a threat might befall me soon. Thinking what morning would bring was enough to weight my lids against their better judgment. I removed my layers and slipped beneath chilly covers. The last image I remembered before falling into darkness was of an unearthly young woman with tattoos swirling over her arms, her lips twisted into a feral grin as her incisors sank into her own blood-soaked lips. If Prince Nicolae truly thought I was cursed, perhaps he’d crafted that illustration as propaganda. He’d certainly turned me into Princess Dracula.
I hoped no one would seek to stake me through the heart.
Audrey Rose,
If you’re reading this, then you likely came by my chambers. I apologize for leaving without saying goodbye. I found a connection between the Order and the goodbye. I found a connection between the Order and the murders—I told you I recognized that book! Trust no one. I swear I will return in one week with more information. I believe that young woman staged the scene in her home.