“So how does this Radu feel about you?” Raven asked her grandmother as they drove the old Toyota Corolla through the mountains. Helga was driving and she stared straight ahead. If she heard the question she wasn’t letting on. This road was the only one that Solomon wasn’t watching, but it seemed just as dangerous as the patrolled roads with all of the potholes, and the half-finished construction.

“Are we even on a road right now?” Ali asked as the car was tossed from side to side. According to the signs, Jgheaburi was still miles away, and no one thought their spine could last through another mile. “This car wasn’t made for off-roading.”

“We need to fly,” Raven said the words through the strain of holding her body up off the seats. She was saving her butt, but her arms were killing her.

“Yeah, ‘cause nothing says common, ordinary tourists like flying into town on broomsticks,” Carrie quipped as she held tight to the handle over the door. She wasn’t happy about the trip, but she knew it was necessary.

“You didn’t answer Raven’s question,” Carrie said when the car had returned to normal. It was a smooth patch of road, and Helga had no excuse for not answering this time. “How does Radu feel about you?”

“Did you turn him into a vampire?” Raven asked. Her grandmother was the one who turned Matthias into a vampire. “I’m just saying you have done it before. I didn’t know if creating vampires was a habit of yours.”

“I don’t know about a habit,” Helga sighed. “I did create Matthias, but Radu was not one of mine. He was created by Unul Vechy.”

Helga told her coven about the story of Unul, and Balaur, and the creation of Radu. She talked about the fortress, and the sword that Solomon needed to wake the dragon. “The man who holds the sword, ‘Nefericită’, carries all the destructive force of Balaur the Dread.”

“How would he wake the dragon?” Carrie asked. She was looking out the window at the gigantic full moon. She could feel her skin crawling, it felt like she had heard this story before. Not directly, but like the clues had been left all over Greta’s cottage, and the story had seeped into her subconscious.

“He would need to take Nefericită and plunge it into the heart of the Carpathians, the heart of Balaur,” Helga shrugged. “But no one knows where that is.”

“I do,” Carrie mumbled as she saw the sign from the cottage appear in her mind. It had seemed so odd, and out of place at the time. She remembered it because it seemed strange.

“What are you talking about?” Helga asked as she turned her eyes away from the road.

“Look at the road!” Carrie screamed. Raven reached in from the back seat and grabbed the wheel. The car slid a bit in the gravel, but they managed to get all four tires back on the road.

“Hit the brakes, I’m driving,” Raven shouted as she got back into her seat. She was still shaking her head. Helga rolled her eyes as if the whole thing was an overreaction, but she stopped the car anyway and they all got out for a second. “Get in the back.”

Ali and Carrie traded too. Carrie needed to talk more to Helga.

She’d seen something strange in the old woman’s eyes when she mentioned she knew where the heart was. Carrie wanted to be looking the old witch in the face as they continued to talk about the dragon.

“So, you found the heart?” Helga asked as they sat down in the back seat. Carrie studied the profile of her mentor for a moment. The old witch was hiding something and it was beginning to make Carrie distrust her. Carrie wanted to believe that Helga was there to help them. It was just something about the way she was talking that made Carrie doubt Helga’s desire to assist the coven on this mission.

“I found a sign for sure, but I couldn’t understand why it was in the room it was in.” Carrie watched Helga like a hawk, but Helga didn’t notice because she didn’t seem capable of looking Carrie in the eye. Helga’s eyes were moving from one place to another. “It was in the castle,” Carrie lied. “I’ll show it to you when we’re all done securing the book.”

“Solomon would do anything to get his hands on that location,” Helga said quietly. “It’s a good thing he doesn’t have it.”

“He was in the cott…castle for a while by himself,” Carrie reminded Helga. “There’s a chance that he has already seen the sign.” Carrie was worried about this fact. Solomon had been in the room where the sign hung on the wall. He was powerful. It was highly likely he had seen the sign as well.

“Are you still in love with him?” Carrie asked, and Helga’s head whipped around fast. “We know about your relationship with Solomon. We saw you and him together. We saw him murder your double.”

“He knew it wasn’t me,” Helga sounded very sure of herself. “He knew that I was testing him. I shouldn’t have cast that spell. I knew that he was willing to do anything to stake his claim to the power of the mountains.”

“So, it sounds like the answer is yes.” Carrie was fighting to keep the judgement out of her voice. She knew that love was a powerful force. Love was like a drug, especially for a witch who was in tune with the world’s energy. “I get it, but it does make me a little worried.”

“I have fought for years to stop him from gaining the power he wants,” Helga’s voice seemed strained. Carrie could hear the pain that the topic of the conversation was causing her mentor. “If you three looked into the past, as I knew you would, you saw that I was the one who gave Greta the tools she needed to create the covenant.”

Carrie and her friends had seen all of this unfold on their trip through time. They had watched Solomon murder Helga’s doppelganger, and then they watched Ali’s boyfriend Anatolie become the covenant, the embodiment of a powerful spell. The girls had made sure that Anatolie became the indestructible ruler of the castle that controlled the power of the Carpathian Mountains.

“We saw that,” Carrie said, “but I know that it’s hard for you to stay away from Solomon. I heard you tell Greta that you can’t be trusted with the secret to her spell, because you might reveal its true nature to Solomon.”

“I did say that,” Helga nodded as she looked out the window at the full moon. “I don’t know what to say. I want to help you protect Greta’s book, and I wish you could trust me.”

“I want to trust you,” Carrie assured her mentor. “I owe you so much and I hate that I have to ask you this, but it is hard to put my faith in you right now.” Carrie could see that she was hurting Helga’s feelings. She took a moment to breathe, and then she decided to change tactics. She used a gentle tone when she asked the question. “What is your plan for meeting with Radu?”

“Radu needs sacrifices to help us,” Helga said as she continued to look away from Carrie. “So, I am going to give him something he needs.”

“Does he consider himself a god?” Carrie was concerned about that. She had to stop and wonder what they were getting themselves into. She could easily imagine a vampire letting their powers go to their head, especially one who seemed as powerful as Radu. “What kind of vampire are we going to be working with? Is he evil? A monster? Egotistical? Tell me about him.”

“One who sees himself as a saint,” Helga stated the words coldly. “Well, he sees himself as the heir to a saint anyway. He is the only vampire created by an angel, so, yes, his ego is astounding.” Carrie could tell Helga didn’t care for Radu in the least. She paused a moment before continuing, wondering if she might need to trust her own judgment after meeting him, instead of taking Helga’s word for it. The old witch was in love with Solomon. That meant any enemy of Solomon’s would not be on Helga’s list of friends.

“So, you’ve dealt with him before?” she asked.

“I’ve dealt with him in a manner of speaking,” Helga nodded, a look of distaste covering her face. “He knows who I am. We haven’t always been on the same side of conflicts, but however he feels about me, he hates Solomon even more than he hates me.”

Carrie absorbed those words. To her, it meant that Helga’s feelings for Radu most likely matched Solomon’s own feelings towards him. She was right to preserve her own judgment for when the time came.

“Tell me what you meant by the giving of sacrifices,” she said bluntly. Helga hesitated only a moment, even taking the chance to glance up at Carrie, if only briefly.

“When Unul Vechy came to Earth there was a group of monks assigned to his care,” Helga explained. “These monks still look after the vampire, and that kind of care has a way of changing the way you see the world. I haven’t dealt with Radu in hundreds of years. In his human life he was a prince and he was beloved by his people.”

“So he had little hope of being a real human anyway,” Carrie grunted. She was reminded of the rich snobs she had met at college. They were entitled and lazy, and they didn’t seem to realize that the rest of the world had feelings and could easily go on without them. Carrie was already forming opinions about Radu. She knew that was dangerous and what Helga was telling her was something to be seen for herself. She wasn’t going to trust the word of a woman who loved the enemy.

“He ruled over Wallachia twice before he finally found a woman and started to travel throughout central Europe. They were trying to stay ahead of Solomon.” Helga was fidgeting with her hands. Carrie had never seen her this nervous before. “Nevasta was a great beauty, and he turned her so that they could spend their immortal lives together. They managed to evade Solomon for almost 400 years, and then he caught up with them in Jgheaburi…”

“What did he do?” Carrie couldn’t hold back the outburst. She had been dealing with Solomon for long enough to know that there wasn’t a happy ending to this story.

“Solomon murdered Nevasta.” The crushed look on Helga’s face told Carrie all she needed to know.

“You helped him track them down,” Carrie whispered. She didn’t want the others to hear them talking. She knew that they would make things worse. Right now they needed to find unity as a coven. Carrie hated keeping the others in the dark, but they were already so mad at Helga. “He won’t forget that.”

“He went into hiding after that,” Helga said, softly. “Radu knew that someone had to guard the sword, and as a punishment to himself for failing to protect Nevasta, he stayed alive. He wanted to take his revenge, but Solomon had surrounded himself with a pack of vampires.”

“And a powerful sorceress,” Carrie added. “Couldn’t he have just used the sword to take his vengeance?”

“It likely took amazing restraint,” Helga admitted. “He could’ve easily gotten to the sword, but when you use power of that magnitude it becomes hard to control the results. He knew that the sword had the power to destroy all life on Earth if it was not kept under control.”

Carrie had her doubts that Radu was the spoiled monster of Helga’s portrayal. It seemed to her the spoiled prince would definitely have killed Solomon and Helga, and then destroyed the world to get over his broken heart. It was hard to imagine a person like Radu would put the world ahead of his own desires and needs if he was the evil monster Helga was making him out to be.

“Now he lives in hibernation,” Helga explained. “He has been kept alive by the monks who cared for his master. He will be weak and he will have aged a great deal. He will not be ready to fight Solomon right away. We will need to build his strength.”

“Are you sure he’s the one who can help us? Time is of the essence, you know. We don’t really have time to nurse some vampire back to health, especially if we don’t have a guarantee of success. We must hurry. We are being hunted as we speak.”

“He is the only one who can help us.” Helga was completely confident in her words. Carrie could tell and was satisfied. Helga turned to the window, the moonlight bringing out the wrinkles in her worn, tired face.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing there is at least one person on Earth that he hates more than he hates you,” Carrie said the words and then immediately regretted them. She knew that it was hurtful and unnecessarily brutal. She was just getting worried and they were all getting tired of cleaning up Helga’s messes.

Carrie decided that she had gotten enough information out of Helga for one night. She tried to remember all of the good times they’d had in the past but it was getting tiresome trying to look back on them. There weren’t any new ones. Helga had helped Carrie get her powers under control and taken her out of a bad situation. But one good deed didn’t mean a person would stay good forever. Many good people turned evil. Especially when tragedy or love was concerned.

Carrie’s parents had been devout Catholics, and when their daughter showed signs of mystical powers, their first thought was to call an exorcist. The thirteen-year-old Carrie was strapped down, bound up, splashed with holy water, with concerned priests all around her, trying to convince her to let the demon out. But there was no demon. She just knew things and couldn’t help that. Her brain functioned at a much higher spiritual level than any of theirs. She couldn’t make them understand. They refused to accept reality.

Helga had put an end to it. She posed as a nun and told Carrie’s parents that their little girl needed to be taken to a convent to have the demon removed. The distraught couple believed Helga and they turned their little girl over to the care of the church. Helga had been raising Carrie ever since.

“I owe you a lot,” Carrie said to Helga. She looked at the others. “We all do.”

“I don’t want you to feel that way,” Helga murmured sadly as she wrapped her arms around Carrie. “I know what you’ve all been through. I know what I have put you through. I wish that I could’ve told you more, but Solomon and I still have a strong connection, and I wasn’t sure how involved I could be without tipping him off to my plans.”

“What happened with you two?” Carrie pulled back and looked at the old woman, holding her thin elbows in each hand. Helga shook her head.

“I was just never able to deal with losing him completely.” She lowered her head. “I needed to be stronger, and that’s what I’m trying to do now. I’m trying to be stronger.”

Carrie pulled her into a hug again and let her head rest against Helga’s chest. She needed to feel the comfort at that moment, as she tried to regain the feelings she had once had for the leader of the coven. She could hear the girls in the front seat. Raven and Ali were also very jaded when it came to Helga, and Carrie knew that these feelings weren’t going to help the coven take on Solomon.