Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel (42 page)

The sky stretched above us, a faded cerulean that peeked through melancholic gray clouds. Fiery strokes of sunlight penetrated through the places between the clouds, illuminating a sparkling veil of mist and casting imposing shadows across the terrain. I stepped away from Morina and she caught my arm as I tried to navigate the rocky, uneven ground.

“Thisss isss Drahalia?”

“Yes,” she said, her speech clear, as she had remained in human form. “This is the wildlands of Drahalia.”

As far as I could see, it was nothing but rocks. The land consisted solely of dark boulders, some larger than others. Most of the boulders were jagged, only a few created smooth slabs of stone to walk on. Dark mountains jutted sharply above the rocky wasteland to serrate the sky, their façades imposing and so uneven they appeared impossible to climb. A few of their peaks disappeared into misty clouds.

“The sssun sssetsss in the eassst?” I asked.

Morina released me and started making her way carefully across the uneven landscape. I followed and slipped on jagged stones.

“Yes,” she turned back to watch me as I tried to find a way, albeit precariously, over the rocks. “You don’t intend to walk the entire way like that, do you?” Something close to amusement flashed across her face.

I slid and shifted my weight to my other foot as I nearly fell into a crevice between two larger stones. “Do you have a better idea?”

“Try all fours. It’s really not as difficult as you’re making it to be. At the rate you’re pussyfooting, we’re not likely to be there for days.”

I sank to all fours and found that she was right; it was much easier to crawl and climb through the rocks than to continue the uncertain dance I had been doing. I used my tail as Iliaria had taught me to do to maintain balance when I leapt from one boulder to another. The force of the leap threatened to send me skittering through the rocks, but I managed to catch myself.

Morina had no trouble whatsoever with the treacherous terrain, even in her human form. She moved without hesitation, as if she instinctively knew where to step. Stones crunched beneath her boots as she swung a leg over a short wall of boulders, and I followed, pouncing from rock to rock when I encountered ones that were too big to leap from.

After we had walked for some time, the landscape began to smooth out and I was able to walk beside her. The ground was still uneven beneath my clawed hands and feet, but the rocks were smaller and less complicated. We walked for what seemed ages. The night sky was a bright cloak of moonlight and stars.

“We’ve been wandering for hoursss,” I hissed. “You didn’t think to drop us sssomewhere clossser…why?”

“Impatience is not a virtue, Epiphany. You’ll get us there no sooner complaining.”

Irritated at the chastisement, I closed my mouth and decided to walk the rest of the way in silence. Some hours after nightfall, we reached an edge where the terrain sloped down into a valley. Morina came to a halt and pointed to the darkness below. “There,” she said.

The area she indicated looked like a large gathering of rocks. Once my head made sense of it, I realized it was a building composed of the same rocky material we traversed. It was well camouflaged in the dark. With so many mountains and rocks, it was easy to mistake the pile as part of the mountain range from a distance.

Morina led the way down the hill. No torches marked the entry, but Morina found it, a small door of gray wood nestled between jutting stones. She placed three solid knocks upon it, and that queasy feeling returned to churn at the pit of my stomach.

*

The Dracule that admitted us was by far larger than any of the Dracule I’d ever seen. He had to be a good nine feet tall, if not taller. He opened the door and Morina pushed past him, obviously not unsettled in the least by his stature.

“Where is he?” she asked.

The Dracule’s ears swiveled. His voice, when it came, was a low, hissing grumble. “Thisss way.” He strode forward and started down the darkened hall.

Apparently, he recognized Morina. Why else wouldn’t he attack us on sight?

He kept his imposing back to us as he led us down the lengthy hallway. Here and there, torches flickered to provide substantial light to see by. I stayed on all fours, deciding in that moment that I’d simply follow Morina’s lead. I kept my head low as we walked around a sharp corner and down another hall.

“I can find my way from here, Bastaille.”

The Dracule sank away from the doors ahead of us. “Sssuit yourssself, Morina.”

Morina flung open both doors and stepped inside. Inside the room, we found ourselves surrounded by a dozen Dracule that were suddenly armed and on their feet. Morina strode between them with a swagger in her step, her tail flicking behind her with dangerous confidence.

She strode toward a tall figure slouched in a throne at the far end of the room. A woman moved up beside the figure, as if to protect him, but not quite. Her dark hair framed a round face. Her green eyes narrowed as she raised a hand. She didn’t have wings, and she was very much human. The figure on the throne touched her wrist and the woman lowered her arm.

“Morina,” Damokles hissed.

“Hello, cousin,” Morina addressed him in Dracule.

The tension in the air built like a tsunami threatening to break over us. I stayed close to Morina’s heels, not quite on them, but close enough that no one in the room would think I wasn’t with her.

Though, I wondered if such a bold statement of association was in my best interest.

“Come to join usss at lassst?” Damokles asked, idly twirling a chain that hung from his neck around his clawed fingers.

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

Damokles made a noise low in his throat, a Draculian chuckle of sorts. He leaned forward, and the intensity in his ominous gaze seemed as though it’d burn a hole through Morina.

“I told you that you couldn’t do it on your own. Lassst I heard, the vampiresss had reclaimed what you’d ssstolen and imprisssoned you, cousssin.”

I prayed silently to whatever Gods there might’ve been that the ears of Damokles’s spies only heard so much. If he knew of the mark Morina had placed upon me, things would be bad. Very bad, indeed.

But apparently, he knew very little.

“How did you essscape, cousssin?”

Morina stepped aside to reveal me. She brushed the arched curve of my wing. “I have my ways. You should know that.”

And so, our plan began to play out in earnest as Morina swung into motion. She told the story believably, so believably that had she told it to me, I too would’ve fallen for it.

She spoke of Iliaria with distaste, making it sound as though she truly sought his aid in her mission of vengeance. One by the one, the Dracule around us relaxed. Even Damokles leaned back as he listened.

“Well, cousin?” Morina asked him. “What say you?”

Damokles curled a finger and a Dracule covered in smoky fur stepped forward. “Yesss, massster?”

“Alahard,” he said. “Find my cousssin and her pet a room.”

“My king, do you think it wise?” The woman who stood beside Damokles said it quietly, but not so we couldn’t hear it. Damokles’s ears flattened back against his skull as he glared at her. She lowered her gaze. “I meant no disrespect, your lordship.”

“Hold your tongue,” he growled in threat. “Our arrangement can be a temporary thing, vampire.”

She stepped away from him but turned her attention to us, her murky green eyes flashing with anger.

Alahard obeyed his king’s orders and escorted us from Damokles’s makeshift throne room.

In spite of his initial distrust, Damokles welcomed Morina and me into the kingdom he had established for himself. Morina advised me against wandering about on my own, and I found myself relying on skills I’d acquired both among the Rosso Lussuria vampires and under Iliaria’s guidance. I stayed close to Morina’s side at all times, shadowing her as inconspicuously as I could. To my surprise, my endeavors to remain unnoticed were successful. The Dracule often spoke freely to Morina, and a great many of them paid no mind to my presence, either because they truly believed I was just her pet or because they really didn’t care who I was to begin with.

Two days after our arrival, Alahard returned with a summons from Damokles. If Damokles had any spies among the clans assembled at the White Lady’s castle, they weren’t very good ones. It became apparent in their conversation that he truly didn’t know how Morina had gotten free.

“What do you know of the vampiresss?” he asked, his head tilting toward her.

“They’re gathering against you.”

Damokles chuckled, the sound odd and drumming in his chest. “Asss I sssussspected. Good.”

I was tempted to ask why it was such a good thing, but kept my yap closed. The last thing I wanted was for Damokles to begin focusing his attention on me.

“I have sssomething to ssshow you, cousssin. Sssomething I think you will find very pleasssing.”

“I wait with bated breath,” she replied in a snarky tone.

Damokles showed no irritation at Morina’s sarcasm. If anything, it seemed as though the bitterness in her attitude was expected and the norm between them. Damokles led us through a rectangular room and down a flight of stone steps.

He pushed open the door at the base of the stairs. The room beyond was set aglow by a single burning torch that he took from its place on the wall and held aloft in one of his clawed hands. I fought to mask my rising sense of unease, continuing to keep my head low as I followed the Dracule more deeply into the room beyond.

Damokles stopped in the center of the hall and raised his torch so that the light fell on the cell blocks around us. Beyond the crisscross of metal bars, my mind slowly began to take in the reality around me.

“Behold, cousssin,” he hissed boastfully, “my conquessstsss.”

Morina walked a circle around him as she peered into the holding cells. I followed her with my gaze, reminding myself that Damokles was with us and not to let any expression pass through my features or my body. Dracule or no, the slightest uncomfortable twitch of an ear could give away my discomfort and potentially expose us both.

A hundred or so vampires were imprisoned beyond the bars like dogs in a kennel. Their bodies were hunched and slack, their eyes glazed and empty. What had he done to them?

Morina’s face was a hard mask, though the corner of her mouth curled in a secret smile. The expression sent a shiver through my bones.

“Well done, cousin, but might I ask what you intend to do with a bunch of starved vampires?”

One of the vampires closest to the bars of a cell near me raised her head with an effort. The shackles behind her clinked as she shifted her position lightly. Her desolate gaze met and held mine behind strands of straw-like hair.

“Aaah, but there’sss more, dear cousssin. Thessse are only the vampiresss that refusssed me when I took their queen. There are othersss that have been ussseful.”

Damokles breezed past me and waved the torch near the vampire staring at me. He hissed, “Ssstupid ssswine!” and she sank back further into the cell, turning her face and shielding it in the curve of her shoulder from the embers. Her attire was tattered and torn as if she’d at one point been in a physical fight, and though she had healed, her clothing had not.

My muscles twitched with the urge to intervene, to stand between Damokles and the vampire he verbally abused.

I thought of Renata and a hollow feeling gripped my heart.
My lady
, I thought, as I crawled away from Damokles and closer to Morina,
this threat is indeed greater than we thought.

I wished that somehow, somewhere, Renata could still hear me. Knowing she couldn’t, not while I was a Dracule, I hung my head in dismay.

Damokles kicked the bars and the metal rattled. A few cells down, someone screamed, sharp and startled. It hurt to hear it.

Damokles chuckled again. Morina’s hand touched my head and I flinched. With Damokles’s back turned to us, she shook her head lightly. I knew something must’ve showed in my posture and I steeled myself. I raised my head and refused to look away, refused to show anything, most especially how much I loathed Damokles. My ears slicked back against my skull of their own accord.

“You ssseee?” he asked Morina as a smile stretched unnervingly across his feline face. “It isss only a matter of time until they break. Then they will be of ussse to me.”

Damokles made his way to the far end of the cellblock. He rapped on the door and a Draculian guard from the other side opened it to admit him.

I descended cautiously to find two other guardsmen posted at the bottom of the stairwell. The walls faced us in an octagonal pattern. It reminded me almost of the Elders’ chambers in the Sotto, if it hadn’t been for the heavy metal doors and the small barred windows. The place was very much a prison.

“Here,” Damokles hissed again and motioned with a flourish. “My greatessst trophiesss.”

He seemed quite to enjoy bragging, and Morina indulged him effortlessly. She walked the perimeter of the room with her head held high. I stayed put, waiting for her instructions like any good
pet
.

“Hmm,” she murmured, “seems as though you’ve already done most of the hard work, Damokles. How can I be of service to you, cousin?”