Azazel hopped off his horse, then tied both animals to a bare lone tree and came forward to stand next to Mathias. “I told you this place was spelled.”
“So?”
Azazel rolled his eyes at Mathias. “So, not only does it exist on its own time, but the spells make it hard to remember it.”
It would have helped if he would have told him that in the first place. “But Vlad sure as hell has to know—“
“At one time, perhaps. Now, not necessarily.”
Mathias paused. It was so damn far-fetched, but without another explanation, he was lost. Still, Tallus had to have made some sort of bargain with the queen, what he didn’t know. It had to be something big. Something she would covet.
“His soul,” Azazel said.
Mathias blinked. It had been a long time since someone could tell what he was thinking. He’d worked on it hard since after his encounter with Lilith. Again, Azazel was the stronger party here. “His soul was worth that much? To start a war with us?”
Azazel grunted. “No cause for war while Nossy is still alive.”
It was so fucked up. It seemed like every time he thought he had a handle on all of it, something else was thrown in that made it all a jumble again. He was starting to think that this quest was about more than just Nosferatu, but he had no proof. “So, if I get us in there, I could forget where we were?”
Azazel shrugged. “I said it was hard to remember, not impossible. Besides, once you crack the door, the spells will need to be reset. She’ll have to come to this world to do that.”
“So how do I get us inside?” Mathias asked.
Azazel laughed. “It is not for me to say. You must find the way.”
Of course. Again, there was some reason he had to do it himself, and it wasn’t all connected with the spell. “That makes no fucking sense.”
Azazel said nothing. Even his face had no expression.
Mathias swallowed his pride and turned toward the obsidian fortress. There was nothing else to be gained from bantering back and forth. He might as well do what he came here to do. Hopefully he wasn’t too late for Nossy.
He stepped close to the wall of the castle. The cold didn’t even seem buffeted away from the wall. The castle itself seemed to be giving off its own chilliness. It wasn’t going to be easy, he knew that. His head pounded worse the closer her got to the castle. It also didn’t help that he had no idea what he was doing. Some hint would have been nice, but Azazel wasn’t going to give.
He waved his arms around. “Open sesame!”
Of course nothing happened. He knew it had been stupid to try, but Azazel wasn’t exactly helping. If he was supposed to do this, someone should have at least handed him a book on basic magic for God’s sake.
Mathias began to pace. Minutes could be hours as far as he knew. He didn’t have this much time. Nossy couldn’t be doing well. The time for him to do stupid shit was over. He had to think of something solid, something that had basis in reality.
He stood up straight and began pulling power from the earth. When he felt himself filled with it, he touched the stone and forced it out of his body. “Open up!”
His body was blasted backwards into the snow. “Fuck.”
He looked up at the wall. It was unharmed. How many times was “nothing” going to happen?
He crawled up out of the snow and walked back over to the wall.
“Goddamn motherfucking sonofabitch!” He kicked and clawed at the stone. Finally, he resorted to pounding the stone with his hands. His claws shattered. As soon as the skin split on his knuckles and the blood seeped from the wound onto the stone, the obsidian began to fall like broken slate. Sheets of stone rained down. Finally, an opening large enough to allow the horses to pass through was open in the wall.
Holy shit. If he would have known it was that easy, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. But, someone wasn’t talking.
Mathias stared at it for a moment. Then, he turned to Azazel. “You coming?”
Azazel shook his head. “It is you who must bring him back.”
Of course it was. It was really starting to get on his nerves. “You can’t help me?” This was such bullshit. How was he going to be able to help anyone like this? It seemed like they all wanted Nossy to die. If he did, there was going to be hell to pay.
Azazel shook his head again.
“Fuck.” There was no sense in arguing. Maybe the plan was to trap him here too. Still, he had to try.
As soon as Mathias stepped into the castle through the hole, he sank to his knees. The pain and the pounding was that strong. He resorted to crawling. Then, he turned around and called out to Azazel. “How will I know when I find him?”
Azazel smiled. “You’ll know.”
* * * * *
It had been a long time. Even Stuart knew things weren’t looking good, and yet, no one had felt either Mathias or Nosferatu die. Each month that passed looked worse. The questions about King Mathias’ whereabouts were no longer asked. It was scary. No one, not even Vlad, knew what to do anymore.
He and Vlad had kept things together. Barely. At first, there had been a lot of rejoicing when all of the traitors had been put to death. Stuart knew better than to rejoice. They had gotten some of them, sure. But it was too possible that some were still left. All he could do was keep his eyes open.
Still, Vlad was not good at modern rule. He was too harsh, too medieval. Each time someone did something that displeased him, punishment was cruel and swift. Sometimes too cruel. Those were the times Stuart opened his mouth.
God only knew where Mathias and Azazel were. He tried various things to contact them, but nothing worked. No cell phones. No mental probing. Sometimes, late at night, he imagined hearing the great door of the castle creak open but each time he went to investigate, there was nothing.
It was starting to feel like Mathias never existed—in this life anyway.
Winter turned to summer and then winter again.
It was January first. This was the day in the vampire world where Mathias would turn eighteen. Mathias had been gone well over a year. He’d missed two separate Januaries now. His seventeenth year had gone without even a whisper. They should be escorting him to his own set of rooms.
Instead, he was sitting on his sofa getting drunk. There was no set of rooms to escort the boy to. There hadn’t been a need. Mathias was not there.
* * * * *
Mathias crawled on the floor of the castle. He couldn’t even crawl quickly. Each movement was a struggle, almost as if he was plodding through molasses. That was the best he could do. Each movement, whether it was his arm or leg made the pounding worse. The inside of the castle, while every inch was made out of that obsidian stone, had its own odd luminescence. Each wall faintly glowed blue around the edges. There were no lights that Mathias could see. No way for the glow to come from somewhere.
The air was cool, but not freezing, not like it was outside. For that, Mathias was grateful. How the hell did this turn into a fucking epic quest?
It made no sense. He’d fought the queen and survived. He’d already been made king. There wasn’t a higher position he could hope for. It wasn’t like there was some sort of great enlightenment he had to achieve. He was a reincarnated vampire for Christ’s sake. There wasn’t much left.
He forced himself forward, down a myriad of hallways. It was starting to look like he should have brought some bread crumbs to lead his way out. If he made it that far that is.
The Snow Queen’s castle was every bit as huge as the school. He just couldn’t tell how far he’d gone because the walls and the floors looked the same everywhere he crawled. As far as he knew, he could have gone only several feet, or he could have gone miles. Mathias had no way of knowing. There were no hallways that he could see, not if he could judge by the lighting. It had no breaks.
“Thias,” the voice hissed.
Mathias pulled up short. This was it. He’d had enough. “Fuck you. Okay. Get out of my goddam
ned head.”
His voice seemed to echo throughout the halls. He was tired of Lilith being in his damn head. She didn’t even exist anymore. He never liked her. Why in the hell was she there?
He sat there for a minute. It was getting to the point that he’d do anything to get the pain to stop. It was so bad he felt like he was going to pass out. He forced himself not to think about it. Yeah, so the Snow Queen wasn’t there. That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t sink her claws into him. He was in her castle after all.
She had a right to protect what was hers, and if she was as bad-ass as Azazel implied she was, he was going to end up a smear on the stone.
He started pulled himself forward again. Staying still wasn’t going help anything. The closer he got to what he where he guessed was the heart of the castle, the more his muscles tried to revolt. Everything about this was telling him to leave. Go away. But, he couldn’t. There was no way he was just going to leave Nossy like that.
Suddenly, it felt like the floor was angling downward. The air around him was getting colder. His hands were starting to hurt from the frost that was collecting on the floor. The blue was starting to seem lighter. Mathias wasn’t sure if the color changed or if it was all the frost.
He held his hands up in front of his face and blew on them, trying to get them warm again. Or, at least, warmer. But, his breath had lost its heat.
He wanted to kick himself for not bringing his pack. What if he got lost in here without food? Then, there would be two of them that needed to be rescued instead of one. He’d never even thought about it. But then, maybe this had been Azazel’s plan all along. The magic had been a hell of a distraction.
He leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to rest his hands. Slowly, his eyes began to creep closed. And then, there was nothing.
* * * * *
“What are we going to do?” Stuart asked. He was in Vlad’s office again. They had puttered around for so long that the entire vampire world was annoyed.
Vlad looked up from the paperwork he was browsing through on his desk. “With what?”
Stuart threw himself down in the chair on the opposite side of the desk. Vlad needed to stop the dumb act. He knew very well what he was talking about. “The Mathias situation. It’s been over a year, Vlad.”
Vlad lay the papers back down. “I don’t know.”
Stuart rolled his eyes. That was the first honest answer he’d gotten from him about the whole mess. “That’s great. That’s just great. Do you even know if we could trust Azazel?”
Vlad shrugged. “I thought so. Now, I’m not so sure.”
Stuart took a deep breath. “Just what are you sure of?”
Vlad stared at Stuart. “That they are still alive. If Nossy or Mathias had died, we would have felt it.”
Stuart glared. “That’s ever so comforting.”
Vlad slapped his hand against his desk. Papers went flying. “Just what do you expect me to do about it? Do you not think I haven’t done tracking spells on all of them? Nothing comes back. Nothing!”
Stuart didn’t say anything for a few moments. It was better to let Vlad calm down. Nothing was going to get accomplished if they both kept fighting. And, if Mathias and Nossy were both dead, they would have to deal with it, wait until the boy was once again reincarnated. There was nothing else to do. “We need to figure out what we’ll do if they don’t come back. We can’t keep sending people out after them.”
Vlad leaned over and held his head in his hands. “What do you think keeps me up at night? I can’t let him go, not after all this, but it is getting harder and harder to believe he’ll make it back.”
A group had just come back a few hours before. And, again, there had been no sign. Vlad would have thought he imagined it all if it wasn’t for everyone else remembering Mathias.
Stuart sighed. “I know even the people keep wondering. Eventually, someone is going to get tired of the holding pattern and cause a revolt. I don’t think we have the power to stop them anymore.”
Vlad closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them. “All we can count on is what we have at our hands.”
“And what is that?” Stuart asked.
“We lie.”
* * * * *
“Wake up.”
The cold made his eyelids feel frozen to his face. He didn’t want to get up. He was too tired. He wanted to sleep. Still, the voice was not one he’d heard before. It was different.
“You don’t have time for sleep here.”
The voice was female and almost twinkly in its tone—like crystal. Where Lilith’s voice had been harsh and grating, this one was like a song.
“What?” he asked.
“I know, dear one. But the pain will stop. I promise.”
Mathias slowly opened his eyes. In front of him was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was tall, at least six-feet with long, white hair. Her skin was as white as the make-up he’d seen on Geisha girls in history class. Her eyes were probably what captivated him most. She looked Chinese with completely almond shaped eyes, but instead of the usual brown color, her eyes were ice blue. She was equal parts alien and beauty.
She wore a long gown covered in crystals. It looked like it was made of some sort of light blue crushed velvet. She belonged in the time of Arthurian kings and queens, not this stupid modern world.
“Who are you?” Mathias asked.
She tilted her head slightly to the side. “It is I that should be asking the question. You are in my home after all.”
Mathias paused. He didn’t exactly know how to handle this. He couldn’t risk pissing her off. He hadn’t found Nossy yet. “Why did you allow them to hide Nossy here?”
He wasn’t about to let her beauty fool him. Being beautiful had nothing to do with trust. Lilith had been beautiful, but she’d been evil. Just, until the end, she’d hid it very well.
“I was paid,” she said. “Quite extensively, I might add.”
Mathias glared at her. What spell was so important that she needed the soul of such a dickhead? “Is the soul of one person worth the life of another?”
She smiled. “That would depend on the parties involved.”
Heh. He might be cold, but he wasn’t scared. She was starting to piss him off. “And was that a good exchange?”
She smiled. Instead of only her eye teeth being pointed like a vampire, every tooth in her head was sharp and needle-like. “There is a reason I am helping you now.”
Her helping was suspect, but he had to take what he could get. It wasn’t like Azazel was helping anymore. “Is Nossy okay?” Mathias asked.
She bowed her head a little. “He is not well. I’ve slowed down his body processes as much as I could, but he is very ill indeed.”
“Seriously? You slowed down his body? Ever think about letting him go, feeding him even?” This was such bullshit. If he was strong enough, there was a bunch of things he’d like to do to her for all of this. Maybe she’d like to starve and waste away for months. See how if felt.
“It was part of the agreement,” she said.
Yeah right. Why would the kidnappers care what happened to Nossy? Especially if they planned to kill him anyway. “And what would have happened if you’d gone against the agreement?”
She twitched. “What do you think I am doing now?”
This woman, creature, made no sense. She wouldn’t feed Nossy, but she’d almost freeze him to death until he could be saved. What a bunch of horseshit. “I mean, if he dies from this, you’ll be first on my list.”
She suddenly smiled so wide that her mouth stretched all the way up to her eyes. It was one of the most grotesque things he’d ever seen, worse than anything he’d noticed in a horror film.
“Remember, young one, there is no black or white,” she said. “Only shades of blue and grey.”
Yeah. What about black ice, bitch? Still, he didn’t say it aloud. There was something about her that fascinated him. He just didn’t know why, but he had sense
enough not to like it. “Where can I find Nossy?”
She pointed down the way he’d been heading with her finger. It was tipped in a long ice-blue nail. Then, she faded away. The frost melted and the stone went back to being black.
“Yeah. No black in winter. Right.” He forced himself further down the hallway.
* * * * *
Finally, he reached a part of the castle that was dark. There was no illumination at all. Everything was so black, even Mathias couldn’t see the nose on his own face. It bothered him. He’d been getting so used to being a vampire, he’d forgotten just how helpless humans were. And, here he was, reduced to that.
He felt around, ignoring the pain now. Nossy felt so close. The pain was too strong to be anything else. It felt like it was going to rip him apart.
His fingers crept over the surface of the wall. Most of it was smooth. Here and there he would find a ripple, almost like a fault in the stone. Finally, he felt a distinct crack. He felt around. It was in the shape of a door. He explored further, trying to find the knob, but there was none. Mathias couldn’t even feel a crack underneath the door. Just the sides and top felt like there was an opening.
“Great.” Of course there had to be yet one more obstacle. He should be used to it by now. No one involved in this mess wanted any part of it to go easy. What do you do when you have a door with no knob? All he knew how to do was the thing that opened the castle to begin with. If that didn’t work, he would have to back up and punt. Mathias put his hand in his mouth and bit down. When he tasted the blood, he pulled his hand out of his mouth quickly and smeared it on what he thought was the door. After a moment, he could hear stones grinding, and finally, there was the stench of rotting waste and unwashed body.
Mathias reached his hands out in front of him. Where solid stone used to be, there was an empty expanse roughly the same size as the crack of the door.
Mathias gagged. The smell was so strong. Nothing he’d smelled on the street was even this bad. He crept forward. “Nossy?” Suddenly, the pain just stopped. He reached out with his hand and felt cloth. He was here.
It felt so weird without the pain. He could move freely. He could think. Hell, he didn’t feel like falling over every two seconds. Now that the pain wasn’t distracting him, he blinked the room lit. Nossy was in front of him, but there wasn’t much more than a skeleton left. He was too late. Too fucking late.