The Dragon Coin (7 page)

Our host chuckled with just as much disdain.

“Since you foolishly left your favored plane of existence, and entered one I can travel freely within as a spirit,” he replied, moving closer to his prone victim, who cringed and pulled desperately on his bonds to avoid Dracul’s encroaching presence. “When you traveled with the Atlantian descendent named Tampara in his domain, you entered my realm as well. I saw everything you did…including everywhere you went, and everything you discussed. I learned about these crystals, and know they originated from the Garden of Eden’s Tree of Life. They have reversed the aging process in your son, your wife, and in your latest rival, Viktor Kaslow. Imagine what such crystals can do for me?”

Although I may not possess Roderick’s sentient gifts, logic moves quickly for me, and the long list of consequences lined up neatly in my head. Everything from no longer being condemned to the less-developed corners of the world, to walking among the living in the full light of day. And the power…power that could potentially bring all other nations as a collective whole to their knees.

Very few good men could resist such prestigious strength. But an evil man? Especially one cursed to roam the earth as a bloodsucking menace?

“Why, of course, I will be delighted to take
all
of these crystals off your hands, Judas,” said Dracul, again sifting through my thoughts at will. “In fact, deliver every one of them to me, and I will not only let Alistair, Amy, and your beloved Beatrice live out their natural days in peace, but I will also grant you and Roderick another one hundred year furlough. We will be well into the twenty-second century before I take his life and send you off to your next incarnation. Perhaps even to a place far too removed to use the name William Barrow. Truly, it is high time you picked another, other than this one or the even more pathetic Emmanuel Ortiz.”

“What makes you think the crystals will work for you?” asked Roderick, and it was good to hear steadiness in his voice. He carried less trepidation than only minutes ago. “If for some reason they don’t work the wonders you seek, what then?”

“Hmmm…. I had not considered that possibility, since the visions I’ve been granted have all shown me walking down any famed boulevard in your most prestigious cities, without the use of parasol and my skin no longer smoking through my gloves.”

“Just cut the bullshit, Vlad,” I said, not liking his evasiveness. “Roderick’s question was straight forward, so what assurance do we get that you’ll keep your promise and not betray us?”

“Why…you have my word, Judas, and I have always kept it,” said Dracul. He brought his face forward to where enough candlelight illuminated his pale skin. His lips were smeared with blood. “Have I not promised to hunt you to the ends of the earth, and until the end of time? I did, and now I have you both.”

A tiny drop of sweat descended down my spine, and I shivered.

“As much as I loathe the idea, you shall have your freedom for a full century. But only if you keep your end of the bargain,” he continued. He stood up and approached us, fully bathed in moonlight. His long dark hair bouncing heavily on his broad shoulders, it presented the same image of the fiend I recalled from long ago. His eyes had always been a golden brown, with the telltale luminescence of his vampiric nature. But this night they were twin orange flames pulsating within golden irises. “As I said, I want
all
the crystals, including those hidden in your home in Washington. If you withhold a single shard from me, your beloved family shall suffer a far worse fate than what Branko is about to endure.”

In less than a nanosecond, he flew over to the man lying on the ground and removed his bonds. Branko screamed pleas for mercy in his native Montenegrin, and I only understood some of the Serbian words mixed in. But it was painfully obvious he understood what was about to happen, even before Roderick or I did. Dracul raised up his naked body and shoved him onto the stake closest to the throne. I can personally vouch for how painful it is to have something that sharp and large shoved into your ass. For this young man, at least his body wouldn’t try to repair itself while his intestines and other internal organs were torn through.

Dracul studied me for a moment, seemingly revisiting my horrifying memories with me in concert. He shoved hard on the young man’s shoulders to bring the spike into Branko’s heart, and then savagely tore open his throat with his fangs to catch the enhanced blood rush. A moment later, the demon stood before us while the emptied corpse continued to slide down the soiled spike of gold.

“Just like old times, my friends…. Is it not?”

Neither Roderick nor I answered him.

“I want the crystals two nights from now.”

“That isn’t possible—“

“Yes
, it is,” he interrupted me. “Don’t leave it to me to procure them myself. Otherwise my offer will become forfeit, and the three stakes of exquisite gold you see before you will bear the blood of those you cherish most, Judas, Emmanuel, William. Do all your personalities understand me?”

“Yes.”

What else could I say? Dracul controlled the entire game. He held all the cards, all the marbles, and unfortunately all the answers. Roderick’s confidence quickly drained away, and there would be no more rebuttals that night. The happiness I dreamed of with my beloved Beatrice and Alistair was for naught. It was the only thought loud enough to temper the growing din from Dracul’s boisterous laughter.

Chapter Seven
 

“We have no choice, Judas, but to cooperate.”

Roderick sounded resigned to our fate as dictated by Dracul. We had returned to our hotel, and it was just after 3:00 a.m. Normally, at this hour he might require some rest, or at least to lie silently in his bed. But, the sheer terror of being in Dracul’s presence erased any weariness on his part. Roderick was resolute.

He picked up the hotel phone book in preparation of booking the connecting flights back home, as well as the ones retuning to Budva again. Meanwhile, he kindly deferred the bad news about my wife and kid’s immortality being curtailed for me to handle. That could be double the fun if Amy Golden Eagle and her brother Jeremy were in the same room at the time. I pictured blindfolds and a long narrow plank to step out over shark-infested waters.

“But, Alistair and Beatrice will be gone long before he comes to look for us. I will cherish such an end if life is without them!” I admit, at the moment I was distraught. My dreams of unending happiness had been dashed.

“So, you’ll revert to your selfishness and forget about me?” said Roderick, shaking his head wearily. “I love Alistair as my own flesh and blood, as I do Beatrice…but they will simply return to their natural aging process. Alistair will have damned near a full lifetime with you, and the time you lost with Beatrice, you’ll now have back. You get a full natural lifetime with them both. And who knows, you may have collected all of your coins by the end of their current lives, my brother. Lives that will in effect last far longer than the standard human fare.”

The imploring look he gave me cut me to my core, and his silent accusation was worse than anything he had uttered. Whether it was in response to his druid influence, or not, I suddenly thought of my coins. Six left to recover, and then….

“And, then what?”

He finished the question I loathed to ask.

“Don’t you have plane reservations to make?”

“Why detest me for broaching the truth of the matter? You’ve said so many times over the past year, how it is imperative for you to be diligent in collecting the remaining coins.”

Yes, I had said this, and even used the word ‘imperative’. But, that was stated in the belief the inspiration to actually search for the last coins would mimic the previous recovery patterns, where a coin might show up on the radar every few years. Sometimes the gap was more than five years between coins—and that was only considering the patterns Alistair and I had encountered since I re-entered his life nearly thirty-five years ago. In the past, I could easily go a century without so much as sniffing one of my blood coins.

“You shouldn’t shirk your obligation to The Almighty,” he cautioned, while paging through the phonebook. “Diligently searching for your coins is what you should be doing.”

“Including the one I didn’t sense tonight?”

That got him, at least at first. Then his surprise morphed to sadness, and the little needles pricking my soul returned.

“It’s there…somehow cloaked,” he advised. “Five hundred years gives one plenty of time to get creative in that regard. But getting back to the island after our business with Dracul is finished might be a challenge.”

“What are you suggesting?” I asked, guardedly.

“It might be best to put this one on hold for a few years, until we have a better idea where he is hiding the damned thing,” he replied. “Otherwise, our only chance to get anywhere near it will be two nights from now, when we bring the crystals to him.”

“Who says I’m giving him any crystals?”

“Judas, you saw what he did tonight. Do you want the same agonizing deaths for Beatrice, Alistair, or Amy?”

“No! Of course not.” I began to feel constricted, as if the hotel room was shrinking. “But, what makes you believe Dracul will keep his end of the deal? If we give him the crystals, we’ll have nothing left to barter with. And, if we want any chance at finding the coin you think is hidden in his castle, we’ll definitely need something. If not to strike a deal, perhaps to distract him long enough to gain a clue on where he’s hiding the coin.”

“You may not feel the coin’s call yet, Judas, but I sense its presence inside the castle. As for the other, I fail to see how stonewalling him will enhance our chances of survival,” countered Roderick. “Logic says he could bypass us altogether and take the crystals from everyone that has them, including Jeremy Golden Eagle. So, why else would he strike a deal to have us bring the damned things to him?”

Although he would be unwilling to admit it, terror lurked behind Roderick’s eyes. It was different than the agitated mixture of gold and blue I’d sometimes see when my antics pushed him to the limits of his tolerance. His eyes were dark, and the gold flecks were nearly impossible to detect. It brought back the image of Krontos Lazarevic, the sorcerer who saved Vlad’s life, or more accurately, enhanced the warlord-king’s diabolical nature. Lazarevic’s eyes would turn as dark as Roderick’s were right then, and I must say the sorcerer’s fear of the afterlife was likewise comparable to Roderick’s. Lazarevic had designs to become chief advisor to whoever ruled the Order of the Dragon. An honor never bestowed upon him, despite his relation to Hungarian royalty, he grew more and more fixated on becoming a member of the Order and then desperately sought its revival after it was disbanded in the mid fifteenth century.

It isn’t known how Lazarevic came into knowledge of the blood coin, carried for centuries by his ancestors. However, as this disgruntled former nobleman became older and progressively embittered, he was said to have developed a fondness for the black arts. One record I reviewed back in the early seventeenth century spoke of his pact with Satan. An outrageous claim symbolic of the superstitions running rampant at the time, the only reason I considered it as authentic was the storied immortality the old man had gained at his deathbed through similar human sacrifice to what he later performed for Vlad Tepes. The fruits of this legend are verifiable, since Roderick and I had seen the bastard alive and well on several occasions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Reliable eyewitnesses from long ago had seen Vlad’s severed head intercepted and delivered to Lazarevic on the way to Constantinople. Someone qualified, skilled in the dark arts, would’ve been the only one to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

“Why does Dracul do anything? Certainly not from the goodness of his heart,” I said, struggling to keep my tone compassionate, as it needed to be. “He’s playing on your natural fear of him, Roderick. You’re not listening to the truth held within your heart, and worse yet, your mind is rationalizing around false hope. He will kill us all. As for a reason why he hasn’t already claimed the crystals from us? The bastard can’t do it. He will fry in direct sunlight…you know this. So, unless he chases the moon in a jet, he is very much a prisoner on his island, relying on his second sight for knowledge and upon others to do his bidding.”

“You know, he could actually do that.”

“What?”

“Chase the moon in a jet,” said Roderick, wearing a wry grin. “Other vampire breeds do that sort of thing. Even before modern times. Racco and Comte have spoken of how Gustav Domnul-delael and his brood travel in similar fashion.”

“What in the hell is your point?”

“My point is he could certainly travel without much trouble if he truly desired a hands-on approach. Which means….”

“He could be toying with us,” I said, following the flow of Roderick’s course of thinking. “And if that’s the case….”

I reached for my cell phone, and once I confirmed I had a clear signal, I placed a call to the landline in Alistair’s condo. There was no answer, which could be a good thing. But not getting through to his and Amy’s cell phones, as well as the one I bought for Beatrice at Christmas, I began to worry.

“Don’t panic yet,” he advised, setting his phone book aside to join me where I stood, as if the two of us could make the damned phone connect to my beloved family any easier. “Remember, it’s just after nine o’clock back home, and by now, they should be safe and sound at the Abingdon place, preferably in the fortress down below.”

“Did Louis ever call you back to confirm the pickup?”

Roderick’s confident smile faded. Here was another clue that the reemergence of Dracul had thrown him off his game. Details were almost as defining to Roderick’s persona as his unusual appearance.

“No, he didn’t,” he confessed, checking his cell phone as if to make sure he hadn’t missed a call. “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t pick everyone up and drive them to Abingdon. Who are you calling?”