There were no formal gardens here, only a little grassy area before the trees of the forest took over. There was a large flat rock in the center of the clearing, and Lady Ioana stepped up onto it without any assistance. For an old woman who carried a cane, she could certainly move well when she needed to, Dacia reflected.
No longer fiddling with her sash, Dacia gave her grandmother her full attention. A stillness had fallen over the family that made Dacia even more nervous than she already was. Radu was making a noise low in his throat that she could just barely hear. Looking at his face, which showed his whole attention focused intently on Lady Ioana, Dacia wondered if he even knew he was making the sound at all.
Lou’s cold hand slipped into Dacia’s, and Dacia squeezed it by way of reply. Whatever it was that everyone had been hinting about was going to happen now, that much was clear. But what was it? Dacia looked around, but could see little beyond the ring of torches that had been placed in tall holders around the clearing. It was the dark of the moon, and though the sky was bright with stars, the forest loomed black, blocking the starlight.
“It has come, my children,” Lady Ioana announced. “The time has come. The Son of the Dragon is ready to take his place on the throne, and we are poised and ready to aid him. But before we can do that, we must teach our two youngest members—the two daughters who the dreamers told would one day lead us to glory—the way of our people!”
“What?” Lou whispered, but Dacia had no answer.
“From darkness into the light,” Uncle Horia said in a hoarse whisper, more to himself than anyone else. “Not to glory, from darkness into the light.”
Dacia couldn’t even think about what that meant. More growls had arisen from more throats, and now she saw movement in the ranks. People stepping forward, swaying back, making tense little motions, tightly controlled. Their faces strained toward Lady Ioana, and Dacia saw Aunt Kate lick her lips in a weird, hungry gesture that was more unnerving than anything else she had seen thus far.
Lou must have seen it, too, because she clutched Dacia’s hand even tighter. Dacia didn’t mind.
“Daughters belong to their mothers, and sons to their fathers,” Lady Ioana said. “But we have not had daughters to initiate into our ways for a very long time. Not since Ana Katarina, Maria Louisa, and Ileana Ioann were themselves young maidens. It is always a pleasure to look upon the daughters of our family, and see them take on their new forms.”
Lady Ioana had an expression on her face that was not pleasure, but a vulgar gloating. And what did she mean, to take on their new forms? Lady Ioana stopped addressing the family in general, and looked directly at Dacia and Lou.
“The time has come, daughters of my daughters,” she said. “To teach you who you really are.” She lifted her carved cane and brought the tip down on the stone with a sharp crack.
The growling was louder now, louder and higher and coming from all around them. Dacia pressed close to Lou as Radu’s entire body convulsed, and he folded over until he was crouched on the ground. Everyone was on the ground, on all fours, and the growling had risen in pitch and volume until it was now a howl forcing its way out of dozens of throats.
“What’s happening? What are you all doing?” Lou’s voice was halfway between a sob and a whisper.
“Miss Dacia will be first,” Lady Ioana said in a silky voice.
Lou let out a scream as Uncle Horia grabbed her from behind, locking his thick arms around her shoulders to tear her away from Dacia. Dacia shrieked as well, and reached for Lou, terror making her whole body shake. Cold sweat ran down her back, and the hair on the back of her neck lifted and prickled.
But before she could snatch at Lou’s grasping hands, a sound behind Dacia made her whirl around. It was coming from Radu . . . but the thing that crouched behind her now was not Radu . . . could not be Radu.
Where Radu had been, there was a shredded pile of clothes, and a very large wolf with reddish-brown fur.
Its golden eyes looked at Dacia, and she knew. It was Radu. This was her family’s secret, their strangeness, their arrogance, and all things that they were.
Beyond Radu, Aunt Kate slithered out of her white-and-red gown, panting, and stood tall in the moonlight. Then she transformed into a slender white-and-gold wolf. For a moment before her transformation, she had been standing naked without an ounce of shame, but that didn’t shock Dacia, nor had the expression of sheer joy on her aunt’s normally cool face. Nothing could shock Dacia anymore.
Or so she thought.
She saw Aunt Maria shed her own gown and stand there, pale and plump in the torchlight before she gave a little screech and leaped into the air to become a bat the size of an eagle. Lou’s heart-rending cry brought a sob to Dacia’s own lips, but even then she was not shocked; she was calm and cold and rapidly moving to a place beyond fear.
Until Lady Ioana looked at her once more, and said, “Run.”
Then Lady Ioana’s clothes dropped away and she, too, became a bat, a silver bat that flew straight at Dacia’s face. Lady Ioana raked her needlelike claws down Dacia’s cheek, scattering droplets of blood on the ground.
Dacia saw that only she, Lou, and Uncle Horia were still human, and that Radu and the other wolves were staring at her and her bloody cheek with hungry eyes, and that there was a cloud of giant bats about her head.
And Dacia saw that no one was looking at Lou, and she knew what must be done. She had to protect Lou, just as she’d always protected Lou.
So she ran.
She ran into the forest as fast as she could, dodging between wolves and around rocks and trees. In her Romanian shift, unhindered by a corset or high-heeled shoes, she ran as she had always dreamed of running, out and away, as swiftly as she could.
But the exhilaration of being able to run freely was marred by the pain slashing her cheek, and the sounds of pursuit behind her. She sobbed and prayed as she ran, but she knew in her heart that no one would come to save her.
Lou struggled against Uncle Horia’s grip. Dacia was gone, and once her white gown had disappeared into the woods, the wolves who had been their cousins, their uncles and aunts, had all followed her. The bats, too, had followed, but Lou could not look at them as they went.
Her mother had become a bat.
One of those creatures had been her mother.
Radu had changed, Aunt Kate had changed, but there was something more human about the wolves. Their eyes, perhaps. Or perhaps it was seeing the creature that had been her mother flapping its velvet wings, just over her head, that had so horrified her. Whatever the case, Lou could not dwell on it another moment or she thought she would lose her mind.
It was better, instead, to think about Dacia. Dacia was being chased, hunted, by wolves and bats, through a dark forest. What would they do when they caught her? She couldn’t evade them for long: she didn’t know the forest, and she was encumbered by her gown—her white gown that almost glowed in the darkness—and by her human body, which was not meant for running through the forest with its tangled undergrowth and fallen logs.
“They’re going to kill her,” Lou moaned.
Uncle Horia tightened his grip on her arms. “We do what we must.”
Lou felt hot tears running down her cheeks, and she leaned forward, straining against the iron-hard grip that held her back.
As she ran, Dacia felt her fear replaced by hate. She hated Aunt Kate, Aunt Maria, Uncle Horia, Radu, Lady Ioana . . . all of them. But most of all, she hated her mother. Her mother, Ileana, had known this terrible secret when she sent her here. Her mother had known what they would do to her, her first-born child, and she had sent her anyway, with only Aunt Kate to watch over her. Her mother was probably a wolf; she had the figure for it, or lack thereof. Dacia snorted, which caused her breath to come short and she tripped over a large tree root.
She let out a scream of pure rage and tore off her shoes and stockings. She tore off her sash and apron, and shook her hair loose, since it was falling out of its br
aids anyway. What did it matter that she was half-naked and dirty and bloody and barefoot? She was no longer Miss Dacia Vreeholt of New York, who went shopping at the fashionable warehouses with her friends all day and attended all the best parties at night. She had stopped being Miss Dacia Vreeholt of New York the moment she set foot on Romanian soil.
If she had ever been that person at all.
That part of Dacia that had always yearned to run and shout and scream came to the fore. She heard the snarls and howls of wolves hunting for her, smelling her blood on the wind. She saw dark flickers above her, black on black, and knew that the bats were there in the trees, watching her, but she didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t care about anything but getting away, getting free. The hem of her white gown tangled around her ankles. Dacia tore open the drawstring collar and let it fall down past her shoulders, her hips, to huddle on the ground. She leaped out of the circle of white cloth and ran.
Lou had stopped struggling. She knew it wouldn’t do any good: Uncle Horia was twice her size and as determined to hold her as she was determined to get free. Instead she stood in his grip and strained with her soul. She tried to see through the thick trees and the darkness to Dacia. She tried to feel with her heart if her beloved cousin was all right, and she prayed as hard as she could for something to happen to end this terrifying ordeal.
Then she heard the howling of the wolves change. A note of triumph, a call to those lagging behind.
Lou wept, straining forward with every particle of her body, reaching for her cousin until she thought her heart would burst. She had to reach Dacia.
Lou shattered into a million tiny motes, carried on the wind.
Surrounded, Dacia backed up the side of the mountain. All around her, gleaming with a light of their own, a light that had nothing to do with the brightness of the stars above, were wolves. Wolves who had once been her family, her cousins and aunts and uncles. She had kissed them, embraced them, eaten with them, talked and laughed with them. They had sent her little gifts on her birthdays and at Christmas. She had written thank-you notes in return, had sent letters and gifts on their birthdays.
And now they surrounded her, with fangs bared, eyes shining, hungering for the blood that continued to drip down her cheek. In the forefront of the pack she saw Aunt Kate, pale and deadly but just as beautiful as she was in her human form. Dacia swiped a hand across the blood on her face, and held it out to Aunt Kate.
“Is this what you want?” She shouted it at her aunt. “Come and take it!”
For a moment, she was distracted by the sight of the blood on her fingers. In the starlight it looked very dark, and there were flickers in it, like silver. Then she turned her eyes back to Aunt Kate, who was creeping closer, ready to pounce.
Dacia let out a snarl of her own. She was not going to stand here, naked and vulnerable, in a dark forest, and let her own aunt attack her. She leaped at Aunt Kate, hands outstretched.
And changed.
She landed in front of Aunt Kate with all four paws firmly on the ground, her body transformed into something lithe and powerful and wondrous and strange.
The other wolves fell back, deferring to Aunt Kate, but Dacia continued to stare into her aunt’s golden eyes. In this form it was a challenge; Dacia knew it in the core of her being. But all the same she continued to stare.
Lou was not a bat, flapping through the air on wings of taut velvet, nor a wolf running through the forest on silent paws. She was a swirl of white, of mist, of nothingness. The wind carried her up and she fought it, trying to force it to take her to Dacia until she was exhausted. She stopped fighting, and then she saw how she could slip through the streams of the air, flowing down and over, until she swirled among the trees where the wolves crouched, tense, and watched two slim shapes in the center of a small clearing.
With shock, Lou saw that the two wolves in the middle were Aunt Kate and what must surely be Dacia. She had fur the dusty-gold color of Dacia’s hair, with large dark eyes. The two females were circling each other, while the others looked on. Lou floated over to Radu, and slipped a tendril of thought into his ear.
What are they doing?
Aunt Kate leads the wolves; she is our queen, Radu replied, the thoughts floating out of him and into her mind. Dacia must bow to her.
He turned his head and let out a yelp of surprise when he saw Lou, but she was already swirling away, moving toward Dacia.
The other wolves all whined and edged around Lou uneasily. She drew herself into a column. She could sense how easy it would be condense, to change back into her solid, human form, but she was afraid to. Dacia might need her help like this, and she didn’t know if she would be able to do it again.
And then there was the pleasure she felt in this form. There was a natural feeling to it, as though she were at last at peace. She could, at last, fly.
While the wolves were staring at Lou, Dacia made her move.
She would not bow to Aunt Kate. Aunt Kate had done this to her, as much as her mother or Lady Ioana. She saw the other females fall into ranks behind her aunt, and would not take her place among them. This might be her fate, to be this thing, this animal, but it would be a cold day in hell when she exposed her belly to Aunt Kate like a lapdog begging to be petted.
A strange mist slid out of the trees and hovered near Radu. It was Lou, Dacia could smell her, but she had no time to be astonished, or to mourn with her cousin over their fate. The other wolves were looking toward Lou now, and she saw Aunt Kate’s ears swivel.
Sensing that her aunt’s attention was being drawn away, Dacia leaped forward once more, only this time she did not land in front of her aunt. She landed on top of her, opening her jaws wide to grasp Kate’s throat in her long, strong teeth. Her aunt fought, growling and clawing, trying to twist her neck free. But Dacia let herself go heavy, clamping down with her jaws for an eternity of time. Flesh ripped as they rolled across the ground, a rock bit into Dacia’s hip, and one of her aunt’s claws gouged her left ear, but still Dacia held on. In her mind, she ranted, cursing her aunt for everything, calling down damnation on them both and the entire family as well.
And then it was over, and Aunt Kate went limp. Dacia waited another heartbeat, then two, before she released her jaws and stood. The other wolves came forward, crawling and whining, but she turned her back on them and fled higher up the mountain, into the trees, running faster and faster on her four legs.
When she stopped at last, exhausted, she found she could not wear her inhuman form another moment, and she rolled on the ground, howling, until the howls turned to screams and she was naked and cold and dirty and scraped and human.
Mist swirled through the trees, then condensed into the smoky shape of a girl. Then the smoky shape became solid, became Lou, and the two cousins held on to each other as tightly as they could and sobbed.
THE DIARY OF MISS MARIA LOUISA NEULANDER
13 June 1897
I am the Smoke.
CASA DRAGOSLOVEAN
The next morning, Lou woke with the sun. She threw open her curtains and stared out at the forest, so green and beautiful in the early morning light. When the maid came in, she was so startled to see Lou up and around that she nearly dropped the tray of hot chocolate she was carrying.
“Thank you,” Lou said, taking the mug before it could fall. She had moved across the room so gracefully that she couldn’t stop smiling.
For the first time in her life, Lou felt beautiful. She felt swift and light, as though she’d lost the heavy weights that had been keeping her tied to the ground. Her terror of the night before had been pushed to the back of her mind, which was now largely filled with memories of what it had been like to slip through the air, flying above them all.
She continued to smile when the maid went to her wardrobe and showed her the Romanian gowns that had been placed inside. They were less elaborate than the one she had discarded the night before, and had colors other than red decorating the white linen, but Lo
u shook her head all the same.
“I’ll wear the pink Parisian morning gown,” she said.
“Lady Ioana said that—”
“I prefer the Parisian mode of dress,” Lou said. “If you’ll just help me with my corset?”
The maid looked nervous, but didn’t run to Lady Ioana to tattle. She got out Lou’s chemise, corset, bustle, and stockings, and laid out the gown and the lace-edged petticoat that went underneath it while Lou washed at the basin.
To her delight, Lou found that her gown fit so well that her corset did not need to be laced all that tightly. For the first time, she felt that the corset merely enhanced her figure rather than struggled to contain it, and the smoothness of her linen underthings and the airy weight of the silk gown thrilled her. The maid put Lou’s hair up in a simple twist, tweaking the natural curls at the front so that they fell just so over Lou’s forehead. Pleased with the effect, Lou thanked the girl and went down to breakfast.
To find no one else there.
She looked at the fried tomatoes and sausage on the sideboard and gave a little shudder. It was all so heavy! In the end she ate rolls with jam and drank mint tea, and when the breakfast room was still empty she went to find Dacia. Crossing the front hall, she heard raised voices from the sitting room, but the thick door muffled the exact words. She thought about eavesdropping, but then decided that she honestly didn’t care. What could they do to her?
She was the Smoke.
She went back upstairs to Dacia’s room. The door was closed, and she couldn’t hear any noise within the room. She knocked, but didn’t get an answer. The maid, coming down the hall with Lou’s nightgown over her arm, shook her head sadly at Lou.
A sudden panic clutched at her, driving away her euphoria. She tried the door, but it was locked. She went to her own room and out along the balcony to Dacia’s other door. Sure enough, Dacia had not locked the outside door, and Lou went in without knocking.