Radek

The guards tremble in front of me in the tower, heads down, weapons hanging from their hands. Victoria keeps spitting ‘incompetents’ and other names at them. The woman can be venomous, even with her lover, Gruia. She thinks I don’t know they’re banging, so she’s particularly vicious to him, but I’ve always known. I just never gave a fuck.

I sit in my throne-like chair, hands in leather gloves gripping the chair arms, my cape flowing to the floor. To them, I surely look majestic, my face as if carved in stone, frightening. Inside, I’m howling in pain and rage.  I’ve been deceived and abandoned. For the first time in forever, a woman has made me fall for her, I became addicted to her healing touch. Which she then took away from me, disgusted with the monster she discovered beneath my mask of beauty.

The guards keep blabbering she wasn’t at the bookstore together with Lazarus, that they’ve searched everywhere. But they smell of mead, one of them even came in staggering, and I suspect the old bookseller has certain powers that made them sloppy, too. They haven’t searched half as thoroughly as they should have. I always thought there was something strange about that woman, but I’ve never given it much importance until now.

“Enough,” I tell Victoria in a calm but powerful voice that fills the tower hall. She and the guards look at me, their mouths frozen. I push myself off the throne-like chair, whipping my cape as I turn around to the windowsill and to the autumn clouds gathering in the sky.

I close my eyes and try to sense Juliet. My feelings for her make an easy job of it. I wonder if she can sense me, too. But for that she’d need to return my feelings... I grin bitterly. Which she surely doesn’t, otherwise she wouldn’t have left me.

I feel her perfectly. My senses localize her at the bookstore, somewhere in the basement. She thinks she’s escaped my guards. Good.

“Dismissed,” I tell them.

“But, my lord,” Victoria intervenes. I can hear her steps as she approaches me. “You can’t afford to let Juliet Jochs escape from Bran with everything she knows, that would expose you like never before. It would expose all of us, the entire Hidden World. The others before her, they left, but you remained in their heads like a steering device. They wouldn’t be able to tell what they saw and lived here if they wanted to. But Juliet Jochs, she got away before you got to put a seal on her mind.”

“She hasn’t left, Victoria. And she never will.”

The guards murmur in confusion behind me.

“See the borders of the town sealed,” I command the guards. “Do it inconspicuously. Use the civilians we have undercover around town. I’ll have the rows doubled with the Old Priest’s men.” I frown at the clouds. “I’ll contact him about it tonight.”

The guards are happy to leave my presence, they always are. They’re scared to be around me, and I don’t blame them. They scurry off, but I can feel the other servants lingering around, lurking outside the arched exit. This hall doesn’t have a door, which makes eavesdropping easier, and they know there’s material to eavesdrop for, since Victoria stayed.

I feel the pressure of her angry stare on my back. Lately, she’s been acting like she has a word to say, or some sort of claim of me, which is starting to piss me off.

“Are you just going to seal the borders and nothing else?” She presses. “You should send the guards back, surprise the fugitive with her lover tonight, when they don’t expect—”

“Shut your mouth,” I command, low but pointed. I turn to her, my stare making her take a step back. “Remember yourself, Victoria. These decisions are mine to make. I will chase and punish the fugitive as I see fit.”

I stalk by her and leave the tower. But her words keep bouncing in my head. ‘Surprise the fugitive with her lover, tonight.’

***

Radek

THE AUTUMN NIGHT IS chilly. My dead flesh prefers the cold, it thrives on it. My black heart twitches while I’m watching the bookseller’s house from the shadow of the forest, my eyes fixed on the lit window in the attic. Rage and pain make me grimace under the mask.

But I’m a calculated man. Juliet Jochs will come back to me on her own two feet, begging me to take her back. And then I will make her my slave indeed. I’ll lock her down in the cellar and punish her every night for what she’s done to me.

The light is turned off. I wait for another few hours, still as a piece of stone in the forest. I can see the curtain moving now and then as she peeks outside, which I expected. She must sense the eyes of death on the window to the room she shares with her new lover. My heart twitches painfully, but I can’t get rid of the intrusive thoughts of the two of them; the more I try, the more they flood my mind.

I imagine how it must have been, when Juliet and Lazarus met for the first time. The doors to Arrivals slid open, and she exited dragging her luggage. Lazarus was waiting, Miss Jochs written on a piece of cardboard. Their eyes met, they smiled at each other. Did the air sizzle between them as he drove her here? Did he stop the car to show her the first waterfall on their way? As they watched and listened, did their fingers brush, did a thrill go through her?

I can’t keep acid tears from swelling in my eyes, melting my flesh away as they flow under the mask. Tears of frustration, of... A new feeling rises inside of me. Is this what loss feels like?

The curtain has been still for a while now. I enter the house the way I always enter houses—like a ghost. People can never sense me. In the end, I fought countless wars. Stealth and assassination are second nature to me.

For six hundred years I thought I was prepared for everything, but nothing could have prepared me for the feeling I have when I stand in front of their door. Hell, I almost wish I’d had my heart broken before, so I could cope with the fearful anticipation.

I push the door, very slowly, to avoid being heard. The process is painful, having to wait until the two lovers are exposed to me, waiting for the sight of them to tear into me like the fangs of a pit-bull.  

When my eyes finally discover Juliet lying on the bed, I grit my teeth. I approach slowly, my eyes glued to her. Her chest rises and falls slowly, so she’s definitely alive, but she’s lying on the bed like in a coffin—her small white hands together on her chest, her white-blond curls spread like a fan over the pillow, her face white, and her lips, usually rosy, just as white. There are dark circles under her eyes. Finally, I realize—she isn’t all right. Something drained her.

A snort in the corner draws my attention. So taken with Juliet, I even forgot to look for her supposed lover, Lazarus. I find him crouched on a small mattress by the heater like a dog. He’s probably been watching over her.

My fingers graze over the duvet, my eyes on this pale sleeping beauty. If she only knew how close the angel of death is to her.

Wondering what happened to put her in this state, I take her hand. My skin prickles, and when I look down I can barely keep the hiss in my throat.

As if through magic, my hand has fully transformed into the ivory hand of Prince Radek, the skin repairing itself like tide moving from my fingers toward my wrist. I look at my hand in the air. The effect is much stronger than at the castle, and it seems to stay. The hand doesn’t give any signs it would bubble up into a coral-like shape anytime soon.

I look at Juliet again. She’s certainly been through something that drained her of energy, and that stabilized her power of healing me. On the inside, I’m inflamed with the need to wake her up, talk to her, demand answers. Fuck, I’m just an idiot.

What am I expecting to hear, that she loves me even though she left me? She and Lazarus must be lovers; he’s just sleeping separately because of her having a rough time, feeling drained and sick. I refrain from looking at him because, if I do, I know I’ll tear him apart.

I gaze at her long, pain tugging at my heart. I have to rip myself away from her, and stop looking for reasons to believe she returns my wild feelings. She ran away from me. With him. But I’ll get her back, even against her will.

Stroking her pretty face and her fairy-like hair one last time with the back of my fingers, I leave the bait under her hair on the pillow. She’ll see it soon after she wakes up. And then, panicking, she’ll find the quickest way back to me.

***

Juliet

I PUSH BY LAZARUS TOWARDS the door, the pink slip of paper between my fingers. Lazarus grabs my shoulder and turns me around.

“You’re not going to the castle,” he commands. “I’ll keep you here by force if I have to.” I try to struggle away from him, but his big and bony hands are clamped on my arms.

“I have to, he knows I’ve been communicating with my sister,” I blurt, looking desperately at Magda. She isn’t any help, standing in the living room, blocking my way to the exit.

“He surely got his hands on her,” I press when neither she nor Lazarus budge. “What if he brought her to his castle, what if he’s using her the same way he used me?” That last idea cuts like a two-sided blade through my heart. The man I’m in love with, having his way with my sister. In a surge of despair, I try to rip myself from Lazarus’ hold again, but in vain.

“That’s what he wants you to believe, that’s why he put that slip of paper on your pillow.”

“But Isolde wrote that she was coming for me! He knows I’ve been telling her things, he’ll take away her freedom, lock her up with all the others!”

“All the others?”

The tears freeze in my throat. For a moment I’m not sure of what I’m doing, but then I realize this is the only way to get these two on my side. I decide to spill the beans.

“The other women Radek has had before me. He used them until they were drained of youth and vital energy, turned into living corpses. He now keeps them locked in a dungeon deep inside the mountain.”

Magda and Lazarus look at each other. Lazarus’ grip on me softens for a moment, and I rip myself away and run towards the door. Magda just watches me rush by her, but as I reach to the door handle, the heavy wooden latch falls into the lock of its own accord. In my despair I forgot the witch doesn’t need her hands to move stuff around.

“Fuck!” I grip to the latch in frustration, struggling to lift it, but it’s way too heavy.

“He keeps those poor women prisoners?” Lazarus asks with a frown on his brow. “And you haven’t told us anything?”

“I was afraid you’d get hot-headed and confront Radek about it. And there isn’t anything you can do, he’s a powerful monster with guards and minions, while you....” I motion to the two people staring at me with reproof in their eyes. “It’s just the two of you. But I can save Isolde before all that’s left of her is a dried out shell!”

“He’s not going to dry her out, because he wants to use her as bargaining material,” Magda says calmly. “He’s using her to make you return to him.”

I’ve come to trust Magda’s judgment over anyone else’s in the world. When I woke up from the trance she put me in order to unlock my hidden skill, I felt weak like never before physically, but mentally I felt like a powerhouse. It felt like I had new software installed on an obsolete device. Magda said I’d get used to it, and my body would catch up in time.

She and Lazarus join each other across from me, Magda small and silver-haired, Lazarus like her young, tall bodyguard.  The latch makes a sound behind me, and I glance back to see that Magda has lifted it.

“You want to go to the prince?” She gestures towards the door. “You’re free to do it. But know that you’re making a wrong move, a fatal one. Even if your sister were silly enough to decide to come here and take on a prince of darkness on her own, she would still need time to book a flight, get ready. But I don’t think she’s as stupid as to try that without getting some kind of back-up first. I agree that her back-up, be it police or some other kind of security, wouldn’t have anything on the prince, he’d finish them with a wave of his hand, locking them in a different dimension, or simply removing his mask at midnight. But still, she’d need time to set all that up.”

“What Magda is saying,” Lazarus picks up, “is that Isolde cannot be at the prince’s castle right now. He is only baiting you. We have time to think this through.”

“We’re not saying you should stay away from the prince forever,” Magda says. “I unlocked your skill for a reason. But we need to plan this well.”

I let their words sink in. They just stand across the room, Lazarus behind Magda, watching me.

I take a deep breath. “What is your plan?”

***

Juliet

I STAND ON MAGDA’S porch, leaning on the wooden railing with a mug of mulled wine between my hands, watching the castle in the moonlit night. Its towers rise like spires from the rock, snow glowing in the moonlight. I can hear Lazarus’ steps behind me.

“It was the right decision,” he says. “Waiting until the Christmas festival. Just a few more days.”

“This month’s wait felt like forever.” I brace myself, gathering Lazarus’ oversized jacket around me. It’s already December, and the temperature has dropped drastically.  “I wonder why he never came for me in all this time, when I didn’t go to him,” I whisper. “Maybe Isolde is in his power already.” Tears of anxiety lurk behind my words. Sick jealousy also rears its ugly head, but I do my best to choke it down. That should be the least of my worries.

Lazarus walks closer, and places his big hands on my shoulders.

“He’s sealed the town borders, he knows you’re not getting away. He’s old, he knows how to wait. Regarding Isolde....” He pauses, and my body tenses. He doesn’t know what to say, I can tell.

“What if he hurts her just to get back at me?” I can barely keep the panic out of my tone.

His hands apply a reassuring pressure to my shoulders. “Even if that happened, there’s nothing you could have done before the Christmas festival. During the festival we can get inside the castle using masks and costumes, and Magda can search for Isolde and save her while you and I distract Radek. Trust me, we’ll save her before he does to her what he did to those other women.”

I glance over my shoulder, starting to realize—or rather accept—what I’ve done wrong.

“I’m sorry I haven’t told you guys about those women. But, believe me, I only kept it to myself because I feared your temper. I feared you’d confront him. And, no offense, but you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Lazarus snorts. “Trust me, I’m well aware of that. A whole army wouldn’t be enough to defeat him. You don’t even begin to imagine the sorts of monsters that serve as his minions.”

I glance back at him. “What monsters?”

“How do I explain this? For example, Dracula has lesser vampires, everyone who knows the legend knows he creates them. In the same vein, Radek has lesser versions of himself.” He looks in the distance, pondering. “Maybe he even keeps those women to create a new kind of army.”

I squint at the castle spires, thinking. “But, if the legend is as real as Dracula himself, then he turns people into vampires by biting them. His victims survive, mostly. But in Radek’s case, the people who look into his face die. How does he create his minions?”

“Not all the people who looked the Prince of Midnight in the face died,” Magda answers from behind us. Both Lazarus and I turn to see she just came to the porch, cradling a mug of mulled wine of her own. The woman is usually so quiet we barely ever hear her move around the house.

“His victims have much less chance of survival than Vlad’s, it’s true,” she says, joining us with a quilt around her shoulders, and looking into the moonlit distance at the castle.

“Those who survived along the centuries have been taken to a monastery deep in the mountains. They are called Black Monks. They spew curses at people, curses in the form of black spit, shooting like arrows from their mouths. The victims are infected with a galloping plague, very similar to the Black Death. Black blisters pop to the surface all over their skin, and they die in pain in only a few minutes.”

“One of those women in the dungeon spat black slime at me,” I think aloud, eyes narrowed on the dark shape of the castle under the full moon. “Victoria kicked me out of the way, but if it had hit me.... She said the black slime was just foul body liquid.”

Magda stares at me. “Sounds like those women are the female versions of the Black Monks, and that snake Victoria lied to you.” Her golden eyes flash to Lazarus.  “Tell me more about your theory, that Radek is building another army in his underground.”

“Well, we know he hasn’t looked a man in the face in a very long time,” Lazarus replies. “And the survival rate in the case of those men was very low. So he can’t create very many Black Monks and, even though they’re more dangerous than vampires because they can kill from a distance, they’re very hard to replace. If one gets killed, it can take years to create another. Whereas his brother, Dracula, can create vampires much quicker. So Radek might have decided to increase the numbers of his warriors by turning his former lovers into warrior monsters, too.”

My skin creases all over. “There’s got to be a way to rid the world of these two evil princes, make sure nobody else becomes their victim.”

“Creatures like them pretty much rule the world. Defeating them is nearly impossible,” Magda says.

“Nearly. But it looks like you and Lazarus always had a plan.”

“All we could do until now was lay low, make sure the princes didn’t discover our final purpose of bringing them down,” Magda says. “I even managed to keep my talents hidden from them for over a hundred years, hoping to discover someone or something in this world that would pose a real challenge to Radek and Vlad. There are others, of course, but they’re as nasty as the two princes. I looked for someone who would want to oppose them, someone resilient to the lure of power and money. But the Prince of Midnight and Dracula can offer anyone a golden life outside of the system, so to say, stress-free, all their dreams coming true, Vlad can even offer immortality. Right now, the only real thing standing in one brother’s way is the other brother.”

“They are enemies?” I inquire.

“Vlad and Radek always had a love-hate relationship with each other,” Magda replies. “They went through a lot together since the ritual that turned them both into monsters. That strengthened their bond but, both being avid for power, they eventually started fighting. Things escalated, and for hundreds of years there have been bloodbaths between Vlad’s vampires and Radek’s Black Monks and cross-over warriors.”

“Cross-what?”

Magda looks at Lazarus. “I think you can explain this one better than me.”

Lazarus takes a deep breath, looking down into his mug as he explains. “You remember, at the castle, there were doors that led to one place now, and later to another, yes?”

I remember the Time Tunnel then, later, while under Radek’s influence over my mind, never finding my way to the inner courtyard. “Yes.”

“Well, all that happened because Prince Radek masters dimensions. He can intertwine the time-space reality of the present with the time-space reality of the past, and of different places. He brings in warriors from different historical periods but, even though they’re ruthless and much more effective in close combat than modern armies, they’re helpless against technology. That’s why Radek also uses the Black Monks, who can fight all kinds of armies, and are more dangerous than any machine gun. Also, Radek masters the mirror-reality of the present—this reality has a reflected side, like a reflection in a pond. So, basically, the tourists at the castle couldn’t see you because Radek often kept you in this mirror-reality.”

I’m dizzy with the information, struggling to understand. “Like a reflection in a pond?”

“Or like those one-way mirrors from interrogation rooms at the police station. I’m sure you know them from movies. You can see the people in the interrogation room, but they can’t see you.”

I glance from Magda to Lazarus with an open mouth, trying to wrap my head around all this.

“Radek is an incredibly powerful monster,” Lazarus sums up. “Which is the reason why Dracula is wary of him, even though Dracula can basically build entire armies of vampires really fast if he wants to. But Radek can lock his brother’s armies in a different dimension, for example. Add the Black Monks and the cross-over warriors, and you have a formidable opponent for the world-famous Dracula.”

“However,” Magda takes over, “the two brothers struck a truce since WWII.”

“The Second World War?”

“They were both against the Nazis, so they worked together during it,” Magda continues. “After the war was won, they decided on a truce. But in order to keep this truce, they must never see each other. Whenever they do, sparks fly. They sometimes use the old priest in town to deliver messages from one to the other.”

This gets me thinking. “But Magda, aren’t there any more of—” I think of how to put it. “More of you? I mean witches, other supernatural creatures that can oppose these....”  I search for the word.

“Villains?” She smiles sadly. “There are, but they are scattered around the world, and we’re not particularly big in numbers. You’ll find witches, warlocks, and many other supernatural creatures.” She looks at me. “You, for example, are a special kind of healer. You can heal not only humans but also other supernatural beings, which is a very rare gift. You know, people’s faces actually say a lot about them, and it’s probably why Radek felt so attracted to you from the start. He sensed that, deep within, you had the ability to save him.”

“Which is why we place our hopes in you,” Lazarus says. I turn to meet his eyes. There’s a sort of pain in them as he looks at me, some kind of loss. Like he’s giving up on something by accepting what he’s saying now.

“Radek fell in love with you in some twisted way. That’s why he didn’t kill us both when he visited that night—it probably helped that I wasn’t lying in bed with you. Magda and I hope that, by healing Radek of the midnight monster, you will also strip him of his power. Without the midnight monster, he may actually become a normal man, and I could restrain him, take him down.”

“Wouldn’t losing his powers expose him to his brother? Wouldn’t Vlad then take advantage and—” The idea goes like a blade through my chest. “Kill him?”

“So what?” Lazarus reacts, his brows knitting as he frowns at me. I think it’s the first time I see something similar to malevolence in his face. “Shall I remind you of those poor women he keeps locked in his dungeon? He wasn’t even gracious enough to let them have their peace in death, but keeps them in this world, tormenting their bodies and souls. The best thing that can happen to this town, to the world at large, is that dark prince Radek Basarab is finally dead and gone.”

That was another blade through my chest. For a moment my heart screams that it wants to die with Radek, but it must be only the leftover of his dark power over my mind. I can’t possibly be in love with this terrible creature.

“But then we would still have Dracula to worry about,” I say.

“This town is in Radek’s hands. Plus, it’s Radek who’s trying to expand his influence over the entire Europe. Dracula has kept himself away from the world for centuries.” He looks in the distance, as if exploring some distant danger. “If he rises, we’ll deal with him, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.”

***