Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dragon’s Eye sat in the middle of a bowl canyon bordered by two peaks of the Belaya Noch range and thick forests. It would be easy to overlook, as no roads passed near here. The wind shear off the north side of Mount Noch was brutally cold, making this place impassable. Or nearly so.
“Perfectly out of reach,” said Mikhail crouched on Friedrich’s left within the shallow tree line at the base of Mount Noch.
Friedrich scanned down the line of twenty vampires of the Bloodguard as they passed Helena’s hair ribbon from one to the other. Brenna had brought it so that they could find her swiftly when the time came. Every vampire was strapped with the crisscrossing harnesses over chest and back, the leather straps lined with sheaths of daggers. No less than twenty per man. Perfect for throwing and weakening an opponent from afar. This wasn’t including the serrated longer variety of knives they carried at their hips and in their boots for more close-contact combat. Weapons thick and strong enough to sever windpipes and crush through chest cavities to a vampire’s heart.
“The fortress wall will be easy to scale.” Friedrich noted there were few guards walking the perimeter at the top.
“These walls weren’t built to keep vampires out but to keep humans in,” added Grant.
“True.” The very idea rubbed him raw. His bastard of an uncle preyed upon the weaker species, the ones he was meant to protect. He turned to his human brother. “Let’s go.”
The line to his right nodded. Then to his left. Mikhail lifted a hand and flattened it toward the fortress in a “go” signal. Without another word, the vampires bled into the darkness in such swift speed there would be no detecting them. Friedrich threw an arm around Grant’s shoulders and he did the same, then they blurred through the cold night. By the time they’d gotten to the only entry gate, two of the Bloodguard had dispatched the watchmen, their throats slit with such force the guards’ heads were barely attached.
Once more, Friedrich was relieved to have the Bloodguard on his side. They knew how to kill their own kind with swiftness and silence. The plan was to enter at different points. Those who scaled the wall would eliminate the guards at each point so the rest could maneuver through the encampment without detection. They waited at the entry while Mikhail stared up at the perimeter wall.
Within five minutes, one of his men dropped from the wall directly beside them as silent as a wraith. With a lopsided grin he motioned to move on.
Damn, if these Bloodguard didn’t love killing just a bit too much. Once they’d freed Helena and joined Brennalyn and Dmitri back at Winter Hill, he planned to offer Mikhail a more substantial incentive to join the resistance. They hadn’t spoken about what would happen beyond this mission. Friedrich had hired the Bloodguard to replace the Legionnaries at Winter Hill. But after tonight, they’d be moving on from Winter Hill. The Black Lily could use expert assassins like them. If they would agree to align with human revolutionaries. But something told him with Mikhail having had a human mother before she was transformed to vampire, he might be sympathetic to their cause.
One thing Friedrich knew for certain. While this bloody war may have begun by Arabelle and her peasant army of Sylus near the Glass Tower, it was no longer a war of humans against vampires. It was a war between justice and tyranny.
Grant remained at the entry, keeping watch in the shadows. While he didn’t have the speed of vampires, his skill with a blade was unparalleled. Even Mikhail had remarked on it. But it was best he remained in a fixed position and watch their backs as they swept through the camp.
They split, Friedrich and Mikhail skirting behind rudimentary log buildings with thatch rooves staggered toward the front of the fortress. There were no windows but the slats were loosely aligned, constructed roughly and quickly, allowing them to peer in at certain points. There were three vampire Legionnaires playing a game of dice-and-daggers in the first. In the second, the moans of a woman and grunts of a man echoed through the thin walls. Only silence from the third, but the slow, rhythmic heartbeats told him there were many vampires sleeping inside.
They maneuvered more swiftly toward the back of the fort. Torches burned in braziers along the front path. As they crossed between two barracks, the stench of death wafted in their direction. Rank and putrid. He gripped Mikhail, who had already frozen as they peered through the narrow break between the buildings.
Beyond the row of barracks was a line of five stakes in the ground. Impaled through five men. All of them disemboweled, their clothes in tatters, their mouths and eyes wide in ghastly death with the distinct carving of the word “traitor” on their chests. They appeared to all be human.
So this is what happened to those caught in service to the Black Lily. He and Mikhail exchanged a furious look. It was an old tactic. Torture your traitors publicly, give them a gruesome death, then display them for all to see, instilling deep-seated fear to keep the other prisoners obedient.
Friedrich looked beyond the dead men where there was line after line of windowless shacks. They were similar in construction to the barracks, except they were much smaller and the door was made of wooden bars. They extended far back into the keep. Prison cells.
Without a word, they crept along the perimeter. There was little to be heard within the thin walls. Women and children whimpering, shivering, crying. Some making no sound at all to avoid notice from any passersby. Fury lashed at Friedrich with a stinging whip. They couldn’t free these people. Not even one more than Helena. They needed her disappearance to look accidental. They couldn’t take the chance to free others without a larger force. But now that they knew where this hellish pit was, they’d be coming back. With the army of the Black Lily.
Slinking along the periphery and ducking when a night watchman came close, they moved with agile grace from one rudimentary cage to the next. And the next. But nowhere did he scent Helena.
Mikhail stopped and grabbed his forearm, pointing with the other hand. Three rows of cages over, Friedrich could just discern the figure of one of the Bloodguard giving a signal behind him. Within a minute, they’d slipped through the shadows to join him near the southern wall. Their man pointed. Six more Bloodguard suddenly appeared at his side.
When most vampires moved in hyperspeed, they disturbed the air and wind with a rushing sound or sudden gust. Not the Bloodguard. When they arrived to their destination, it was as if they’d emerged out of thin air.
Behind the ramshackle cages were a second set apart from the others flush against the stone wall. And these were heavily guarded. They needn’t exchange words to know that these were special prisoners. They could house no other but those suspected to be affiliated with the Black Lily. Or the White Lily, thought Friedrich with a shiver, thankful Brennalyn would already be leagues away with Dmitri by now.
Mikhail made silent hand gestures to the vampire who’d killed one of the guards at the gate. The other whose name Friedrich had never learned held up eight fingers. Mikhail pointed to him and three others. In less than a minute, Friedrich heard blades slicing flesh, blood spurting, and the cracking of bones, then the long slide of the dead Legionnaire guards being pulled into the shadows.
No more guards, Friedrich moved swiftly, scenting the open doorways down the row. He ignored the soft feminine smells of the women beneath the dank, fetid odors of bodies living in cramped quarters. Fighting the urge to scream in impotent rage at the travesty of this place, he surged on until he finally smelled it. A whiff of honey and morning dew. Faint, but there.
Peering through the wooden slats of the cage, he saw an insubstantial lump laying in the corner beneath an animal hide. Grabbing the door, he wrenched it from its hinges. The lump in the corner didn’t move.
Kneeling, he pulled back the animal skin to find it was indeed her.
“Helena,” he whispered, brushing her dark hair away from her face.
Mikhail growled low in his throat behind him. She had puncture wounds at her neck. Several. And more along her frail arm. So thin. Her cheekbones cut sharply where her skin sagged. Her pulse was slow but strong. He swallowed the rage at her captors, his heart swelling with pride for this young girl and her strength to survive. Brenna would be so relieved.
Wrapping her in the animal hide and lifting her in his arms, he said not a word as he ducked his head and shouldered his way out of that fucking nightmare of a prison cell. Then he sped lightning swift along the wall to the open gate. He stopped for only a moment. Grant immediately stepped from the shadows, a pile of three dead men behind him. Mikhail walked toward him. Knowing his brother was taken care of, he fled across the field, moving so fast the icy wind blowing in howling gales off Mount Noch cut into his face. But he never slowed down. Not even to see if the Bloodguard was with him.
Soon enough he felt their presence like dark ghosts shifting in the draft around him. He stopped only within sight of the black spires of Izeling. One by one, they materialized at his side. Mikhail and Grant stumbled to a stop. Grant stepped close and placed his finger on the pulse in Helena’s neck, scowling.
“Her pulse is strong,” he finally whispered, “but we’ll need to—”
Mikhail and four of the Bloodguard whipped around, long daggers drawn the split second three vampires appeared among them. Friedrich’s stomach plummeted.
“Dmitri,” he growled with slicing vehemence. Gavril and Yuri at his side. “Where the hell is Brennalyn?”
The man’s pale, horrified expression scraped him on the insides. “I don’t know. We looked everywhere. Her room was empty, and she wasn’t in your room or the parlor.” He spilled his words in rapid succession, his pulse a thrumming hum in the air.
A cold icicle of dread pierced his chest. “She didn’t just fucking disappear.” Friedrich practically tossed Helena into Grant’s arms and spun to flee back to the Tower.
“Wait,” Dmitri grabbed his forearm before he could blur away. “I realized the same thing. There had to be another way out. It took us a while, but we found it.”
“Where?” Friedrich didn’t even recognize his own voice, a malevolent growl from a dark place inside.
“The mirror. In her bedchamber. The passage led down a flight of stairs. It opened into a library from behind a painting of the king’s sigil, a black dragon. But there was no one in the room.”
Friedrich’s fists balled and cracked as he stared at the knife-like spires stabbing into starless night.
“Dmitri,” he said evenly, the words flowing out in a monotonous stream. “You take Helena and two others and go to Winter Hill. If I don’t return within a day, take her on to the Silvane Forest near Hiddleston. A vampire named Nikolai lives there with his woman, Sienna. He’ll pay you handsomely for getting her to safety.”
His countenance fixed and heavy, he vowed, “I will ensure her safety. With or without pay.”
Mikhail pointed. “Gavril and Yuri, you go with him. Take the west road. Don’t stop.” His orders harsh and clipped.
Friedrich faced the Bloodguard. “Your mission wasn’t to take on the King of Izeling. Whoever wants to leave may leave. No questions asked. Keep the coin I’ve paid you.”
Mikhail scoffed with a sinister gleam in his eye. “Not on your damn life, Your Grace. Every man here owes the crown a slice of vengeance. I say we take it tonight. Aye, men?”
A rumbling “Aye” echoed back.
With a tight nod, Friedrich stepped out toward the castle. “Then let’s go get a slice together.”