Dracul (23 page)

Wexler: origin: Swiss, German. Money changer, Banker, from the German words
Geldwechsler
or
Goldwechsler
, meaning
money changer
or
gold changer
.

Both Lombard and Wexler mean
money changer
.

They’re the same name.

“Jean Lombard
is
Hans Wexler,” I realize in a horrified whisper.

Of course, Lombard’s still talking about the serum. “I’ve been desperate to try it out, to see what it can do—particularly on a dragon-turned-vampire like yourself. Will it make you only human? Or will it be too strong for you, an overdose of death? Then again, what difference does it make to me? You’ve killed enough of my men in the past several weeks, I don’t care if you live or die. I simply want to see what it does.”

It takes me about half a second to process everything. Jean Lombard may be rich and handsome and have good taste in chateaus, but he’s also evil and cold-hearted and has just threatened the man I love with severe bodily harm or possibly death.

I raise my arms up, a split-second away from turning into a dragon, storming the waterfall room, and flying off with Constantine before anybody can inject him with anything, when I feel something cold clamp around my wrists.

What the?

A quick glance around tells me Lombard’s guards have snuck up on me and Felix and clamped us in shackles.

Whatever. I’m a dragon.

But, no matter how hard I try to change into a dragon, nothing happens.

The shackles. They must be magnetic. Of course they are! Wexler tried to use the same thing on my sister last summer.

And Lombard
is
Wexler.

The guards clamp their cold hands on our arms. They’re vampires, aren’t they? I glance at one, and he gives me a warning look, complete with fangs. They tug us forward while Lombard continues his chilling speech.

“You may have gambled in my casino and won, Mircea, but today, I have the upper hand. You have information I desire. And you will give it to me, or lose your immortality.”

“Immortality is a burden I no longer care to carry,” Constantine announces, his back still turned to the doorway, so he can’t see them leading me and Felix forward, or even hear us over the sound of the waterfall.

“I suspected you might feel that way.” Lombard laughs. I hate his laugh, which is saying a lot because I’m usually a fan of laughter. But Lombard’s laugh makes me want to vomit. “That is why I didn’t show all my cards at once.”

By now the guards have pulled us nearly onto the rug where Lombard and Constantine are standing. Lombard walks toward me. “You will tell me all you know of making gold.” Lombard stands close to me and strokes my cheek with the back of his hand, which is super creepy.

“You’re not injecting her with the serum!” Constantine shouts. He makes a move to leap forward, but the guard who has his arm has already slipped a shackle onto his left wrist, and another guard grabs him and shackles his right wrist.

“You are correct,” Lombard laughs. Up close, his laugh is even worse than it was from a distance. “I have no intention of using the serum on her. As a female dragon, she is far too valuable to me. No, I have better plans for this one. I will marry her.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I tend to be an optimistic person, but right now I see no way out of this. Constantine, Felix, and I are all shackled with magnetic bonds so we can’t turn into dragons. We’re deep inside a mountain where we can’t call for help, we don’t know how to escape even if we could break loose for a moment, and nobody even knows we’re down here.

How did I let myself get into this situation?

Ah, yes, I followed Constantine because I care about him.

And before that, senior thesis.

I better get an A on that thing.

But I have to survive long enough to turn it in.

Now that I’m in the middle of the room, I can at least look around and see if I can spot a potential way out. The room is like a gigantic natural cavern, possibly discovered when they bored into the mountain to build the casino, or maybe just built to look like it’s naturally occurring. Solid stone walls curve upward all around me, rising a good hundred feet or more from the floor, meeting in the center of the dome at a giant fan with whirling blades, each of which must be thirty feet across.

I don’t know what’s beyond that fan, but I know I’d have to be in dragon form to fly up there and reach it—and in dragon form, I don’t know if I’d fit between the blades, not at the rate they’re turning. In order to turn into a dragon, I need to get rid of these shackles, but I don’t see any sign of a key.

There’s a teensy tiny possibility that if we tried to kick our way free, the three of us could overpower the six guards and Lombard, even though he’s currently capable of turning into a dragon, and we’re not.

It’s pretty much a non-existent chance, but it is a chance.

But even that does us no good, because we don’t have a way out of here. Wherever we try to run, we’re almost guaranteed to come up against more vampire guards. So even if we had a good chance of escaping our captors, there’s no point trying it until we can turn into dragons again.

We’ve got to find the key to the shackles.

My guess is, Lombard has it.

And Lombard seems to like me, or at least, he wants to marry me. So of the three of us, that means I’m the one with the best chance of getting the key from him.

And I’ve got to hurry, before he uses the serum on Constantine or does some other terrible, irreversible thing.

I give Lombard my best sultry look, which seems to startle him.

This might have worked better if I could have practiced in front of a mirror first, but it’s too late for that now.

“You want to marry me?” I bat my eyelashes and try to look flattered. “A big, strong dragon like you, is interested in me?”

He takes a step back.

I may be laying it on too thick.

Come on, come on. My sister seduced an arch-enemy once. Of course, she really did have a thing for him, so that probably made it easier. Also, he thought she was there to kill him.

Why was that so easy for her, but this is so difficult for me?

“It’s funny.” I look down at the shackles on my wrists. “Where I come from, when a guy wants to marry a girl, he gives her jewelry—but this wasn’t at all what I was expecting.”

Lombard gives me an appraising look.

I’m wearing an evening gown. And make-up. And my hair is pretty much the best it has ever looked in my entire life. Everything about me looks about as good as it ever has. He ought to be at least a little impressed.

He flashes me a look that’s more challenge than smile. “Perhaps you can earn an upgrade.”

Hardly has he finished speaking than my stomach rumbles.

If you’re keeping track, I flew all the way across the ocean this weekend, ate a couple of quick meals in Romania, flew to Lombard’s French chateau, and then drove here. Flying makes me ravenous. I never really recovered from my transatlantic flight before flying halfway across Europe again, and I haven’t eaten anything since that last flight.

“Hungry?” Lombard asks.

I’m famished, but I don’t want to show weakness in front of Lombard. “Perhaps a little,” I admit with a coy shrug, while my stomach makes a grumbling noise so loud, it seems to be threatening to digest anything and anyone in the room.

Lombard turns to the vampires and starts issuing orders. “Take the men to the cell. Give them nothing.” He snaps his fingers. “Table, chairs, roast pig.” He claps his hands and issues more orders, and the vampires jump to do his bidding.

They haul Felix and Constantine away. I try to give them a look that says
don’t worry, I’ve got this
, but the moment I make eye contact, I see the two of them are giving me pretty much the same look.

At least we are all equally in denial of just how far we’re in over our heads. We came here to tell Lombard to make Gane back off. At this point, we’re going to do well to get out alive.

While I’m thinking these things and trying to form a plan or at least not hyperventilate, vampires carry in a table and chairs and plates and napkins and finally, a roasted pig on a spit.

It’s not a huge roasted pig on a spit. Actually it’s a fairly small one, but still, Lombard must have had it cooking in back ready to go or something, because the only way I could roast a pig that fast would be with dragon fire, and even then the outside would be pretty charred.

This meat, however, is tender and juicy. Lombard carves meat from the pig and places it on my plate before serving himself and sitting opposite me.

I’m so famished I could tear into the pig and devour the entire thing myself, but Lombard looks like he wants to eat a civilized meal and talk. And since I’m supposed to be playing nice in an attempt to get the keys from him, I pick up a knife and fork and try to use the manners my mother taught me, which she learned at boarding school, which we rarely use at home but she still taught them to us precisely for occasions such as this one.

So I’m sitting with impeccable posture and eating as neatly as I can considering that I have heavy shackles around each wrist. The shackles are attached to thick chains about six feet long, each of which leads to an iron weight on the floor on either side of me. The weights look to be forty or fifty pounds or so.

“What brings you to my casino?” Lombard asks.

“Your vampires keep attacking me. We asked them to leave me alone. They wouldn’t. So, we came here to tell you to make them leave me alone.”

Lombard looks way too pleased. “Ah, they didn’t get your book, but some good has come from their mission, nonetheless.”

I swallow a big bite of meat before asking, “Some good?”

“You and me, me and you, the two of us, together.” Lombard’s eyes sparkle with a deep blue that might be attractive if his words weren’t so threatening. “The world needs more dragons, Rilla.”

“Why? So you can chain them up?”

“So I can control them, yes. And so they can help me make gold.”

I try, too late, to hide the reaction from my face, but I can see from the sparkle in Lombard’s eyes that he saw recognition and fear on my face as he spoke. I slice my meat and refuse to look up.

“Ah, so you know, yes?” Lombard mutters something in French. I wish Felix was here to translate, but the only way I’m going to see my brother again is if I get through this conversation. “Dragons make gold. Do you know how?”

I stab several pieces of pork with my fork and stuff them into my mouth, then shrug. Hang manners. This is bigger than manners.

“I know you know, Rilla.” Lombard’s voice takes on a hypnotic smoothness. I don’t like the way he says my name. Every time it comes out of his mouth, it’s like he’s taken a piece of me, like he owns me. “My vampires have been listening to your conversations with Mircea.”

His claim confirms my fears that the bats in my attic, the bat smuggled in my backpack, as well as any and all of the bats that have hidden just out of sight anywhere near me recently, are spies sent by Lombard.

Which was pretty much the claim Constantine made on day one, back when I wasn’t sure I could believe him.

My stomach churns with regret. Too late, I believe him.

Lombard continues, gloating visibly over what he knows. “He has been telling you Vlad Dracula’s history, the history from the book. I know it’s the same because I have the book. I know—”

“You have the book?” Too late, I make the connection. “Eudora gave you the book she stole from the British Museum?”

Lombard’s smile confirms it, though he shrugs casually. “She read it, found nothing useful in it, and gave it to me. I have found it to be…incredibly useful.”

Hardly has Lombard finished his sentence when an angry shouting noise echoes from somewhere nearby. The words are in some foreign language—maybe Romanian or something like it, I can’t quite tell.

Lombard turns his attention to his plate as an angry man stalks toward us.

I know this guy.

No, no I don’t.

I’ve never met him before, never seen his picture. And yet, I’ve read enough of the descriptions of Vlad Dracula, I’ve stared at the woodcuts and paintings of his image…I’ve looked at Constantine enough to recognize his relative.

The man stomps toward Lombard, shouting angrily at him in multiple languages—French, and probably Romanian, but unfortunately, not English.

Lombard finally looks up from his plate at the guy I’m nearly certain is Lazaro Drake. He says simply, “No.”

Drake pulls a large syringe from his jacket and gestures it toward me. It has a little rubber cap on the tip, but that’s hardly comforting.

“No.” Lombard stands and takes hold of Drake’s wrist.

I form a quick plan in my head. Drake is a vampire. The pig is on a wooden spit. I could pull out the spit, snap it over my knee—no, wait, that might break my kneecap. I could snap it over the back of the chair—it’s a heavy, solid iron chair—and then I could threaten Drake with it or maybe even impale him through the heart.

But even as I’m thinking through my plan, Lombard takes Drake by the arm and leads him toward the waterfall. He’s talking to him in a smooth voice, probably in Romanian. Whatever the language is, I can’t understand a word of it.

They circle around the pool at the base of the waterfall, then duck behind the falling water and disappear.

I don’t think they teleported. No, there’s a hidden passage behind the waterfall, an opening so wide I don’t think either of them even got wet, though the passage is off to the side so you can’t see the opening from here, or even tell there is an opening until you’re up close and facing it.

The moment they’re gone, I leap up and tear into the pig. It’s not pretty, but frankly, I’m starving and I don’t know exactly what’s coming next, but there’s an extremely high chance I’m going to need to have my strength up. I’m gulping down pork, tearing it from the carcass and washing it down with water, when I expose a section of the wooden spit.

The wooden spit has a crack in it—probably from the weight of the pig. It’s not a particularly heavy-duty piece of wood. It’s barely more than an inch thick. I could snap it easily.

Lombard is still behind the waterfall with Drake. They left two vampires behind to guard me. I glance at them over fistfuls of meat as I eat.

The vampire guards look bored and are not even watching me that closely. I guess they figure the shackles and weights will do their job.

I debate my options for another moment while I eat. I could wait for Lombard to come back…and then what? Then he continues to have his way like the big mean bully he is? Maybe he even uses the serum on Constantine and tortures Felix into telling him everything he knows about making gold, and then learns how to make it and takes over the world while I bear him dragon babies to be his gold-making slaves?

No way am I letting it come to that. I reach for the pig like I’m going to grab more meat, but instead, I whip out the wooden spit, grasp it by either end, and snap it over the back of my chair.

Both vampires leap toward me, and I jam the long wooden poles through their hearts. I’d pinch my eyes shut, but I need to see to aim, and the whole thing is over surprisingly quickly.

The vampires turn to dust, their clothes fallen empty on the floor, sending up puffs of dust like smoke. It’s a huge relief not to have to look at dead bodies on the floor, but more than that, it’s a reminder that I didn’t kill them. They were undead already. I just, you know,
un
-undeaded them.

Released them from their captivity, you might say.

Anyway, I have more to worry about than the twinge of guilt I feel for spearing the vampires. Who knows how much time I have before Lombard returns and starts asking questions about where his vampires went and why they left their clothes behind? I could make up a story, maybe something involving a vampire nudist colony or a sudden scourge of biting clothes mites, but I doubt he’d believe it.

No, I need to get to the bottom of what’s going on. I need a key to the shackles, or a bolt-cutter, or
something
.

All I know is, Lombard has a secret passageway behind the waterfall. And nobody, not even evil villains, especially not evil villains, bothers to hide their secrets behind waterfalls unless there’s something behind there they really don’t want their enemies to find.