Chapter 63
Mindy
I WAITED FOR Raniero outside Jess's bedroom, and it didn't take long before he came out. Except the guy who came through the door didn't exactly seem like Ronnie. It was something about the way he walked and the look on his face.
"Raniero?" I asked him. "Is Jess okay?"
"Si." His voice sounded a little different, too. Like ... harder.
He looked like he was gonna keep walking, so I grabbed his sleeve and he turned around and looked down at me. Did I used to have to bend my head back so far to look up at him? Or was he, like, honestly getting taller? "Ronnie?" I asked again. "Are you sure?"
"Si, she will be fine."
We stood there for a few seconds, and I tried to figure out exactly what was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I also kept thinking about the way everybody had gone nuts when he'd walked into the funeral, and how Jess kept asking if he was dangerous, so I asked him a question that sounded weird even to me.
"Raniero ... who, exactly, are you?"
He didn't answer for a long time, and I thought for a second he almost looked normal again. His shoulders kinda slouched, and his eyes got softer, and so did his voice. "Oh, Mindy Sue..."
I never thought I'd say it, but I was relieved to see him not stand up straight. "Seriously, Ronnie." I watched his face real close. Especially his beautiful eyes, that still weren't exactly like I remembered them. "Who are you?"
He was hiding something. Or, like ... changing, somehow. But he still sounded like a philosopher—a sad philosopher—when he said, "I am becoming everything you ever wished me to be, Mindy Sue. And that vampire is no one whom you should want to know."
I was trying to figure out that puzzle when he walked away down the hall, seeming like he got taller again with each step he took, and suddenly I remembered the thing I really wanted to ask him, and I called after him. "Ronnie ... You and Ylenia ... What happened? "
He turned around, but he didn't say anything. He didn't have to. It was written all over his face, just like it had been written all over Ylenia's when she'd kept looking at him standing in the corner—like she couldn't stop looking—and I grabbed my stomach, 'cause it felt like the guy who wouldn't hurt anybody—the one who had that I am so sorry look in his gray eyes—had just beat the crap out of me.
Chapter 64
Raniero
LUCIUS—
I tell you again, rest easy. Your wife does have difficulty at the funeral, but she recovers. I think, in fact, she will be better than ever!
For many years, I believe that I learn nothing good in my time of violent training, but now I (with grudging heart) see the value of what gli Americani call tough love. The sages, who tell us that no experience is wasted, are proven correct again, yes?
As we are on the subject of violence, do you object to my borrowing an artifact from your collection of the weaponry of our ancestors? Or do you prefer that"I carve a new stake? R
I add another of the postscripts of which you are so fond. I am taking to wearing pants, as you suggest so often. I suppose that you will not be troubled if I borrow from your closet. Perhaps someday I can repay you ... such as with my existence! (LOL, very hard!)
Chapter 65
Antanasia
I DIDN'T GET out of bed right away when Raniero left my room. In fact, I lay there for a long time staring at the ceiling while the light faded and deep shadows crept across the walls.
Raniero was too harsh with me. Nobody can imagine how hard it is to be a regular high school kid one day and the married leader of vicious vampires the next. I might honestly lose my husband ... forever.
The rational part of me said that. The mathematician in
me, who weighed and quantified the challenges I faced in a logical way.
But I wasn't really that girl anymore. I was also—had always been—the daughter of Mihaela Dragomir, a powerful queen, who'd faced her own destruction without fear, writing a final journal entry that I'd never been able to finish reading because it started with "This is my farewell to you." And I had been raised by another strong woman, Dara Packwood, who'd kissed me good-bye in Romania and gone on to face her own new challenges, telling me, "You can do this, Antanasia. You promised Lucius that you could, and you will rise to meet whatever trials come your way."
I heard Lucius's words, too, and understood them. "Fear is the worst kind of grave, because it buries one alive."
And last but not least, I heard Raniero telling me to get the heck out of bed.
Rise ... I had to rise...
Without waiting any longer, because it was already almost midnight, I finally rolled off the mattress, changed into jeans, and went to the door. Opening it, I told Emilian, "Esti demis," the same way I'd so often heard Lucius say, "You are dismissed."
I didn't say please, or thank you, and I ignored his look of surprise and uncertainty. After a minute he bowed slightly and agreed. "Da."
When he disappeared down the hall—with one glance back, like he really wasn't sure if he should leave—I went back inside and grabbed my coat and tucked my mother's journal into my pocket. Then I headed for the stables, saddled the mare that Lucius and I had ridden to the cemetery, and rode off into the night, ignoring the wolves that howled deep in the forest, too.
I had nothing to fear from a few wild dogs anymore. I lived day to day with much more dangerous predators in my own home. And it was time I stopped hiding from them and started hunting.
Chapter 66
Antanasia
THE IRON GATE to the cemetery opened easily, because its hinges had just been used at Claudiu's interment, and the trail of mourners' footprints that I'd followed from the castle continued in the snow, leading to his fresh grave. But I wasn't there to pay my respects to Lucius's uncle.
Pulling the gate shut behind me, I stared across the silent graveyard to where moonlight gleamed off that pale mausoleum I'd barely been able to look at when I'd been there with Lucius. I turned to the Vladescus' crypt, too, and it was almost invisible against the sky, black against black. I could just make out the spiked roofline, which reminded me of the wall of stakes in the camera de miza.
"There is nothing to fear in here."
I heard Lucius's words again, and I squared my shoulders and began to trudge toward the Vladescus' crypt. Then I stopped and headed first toward the smaller structure to finally face the vampires who'd given me the existence I'd squandered for too many weeks when I should have been savoring every moment I had with my husband. Some people—and most vampires—never experienced the love we had. I had been wrong to waste a second of that.
My boots squeaked in the snow, and the small gate that sealed the crypt squealed when I pulled it open, yanking harder than I had to. I'd half expected the entrance to be rusted shut, because I couldn't imagine anybody coming here. Not even Dorin, who would quiver in that place, imagining his own demise.
Stepping inside, I lit one of three candles that waited in sconces on the ancient walls, and while I'd expected to be sad, maybe to cry again, I found myself smiling a little, because somebody had been there not too long ago.
Lucius
Chapter 67
Antanasia
THE NOTE WAS tucked under a small bowl of blood—dried by then—but I could see enough of my name, inked in familiar, distinctively bold handwriting, to realize that the message was for me, so I bent and picked it up, unfolding it with fingers that were stiff from the cold. The paper was brittle, too, maybe from being exposed to the icy air—or maybe because I'd waited longer than Lucius had expected to make the journey.
Lucius.
He'd obviously had faith that I would someday have the courage to stand in that spot with my birth parents—and with an empty place that was probably there, somewhere among the thirty or so caskets inside the walls, waiting for me.
Moving closer to the candle, I read Lucius's words:
Antanasia—I come here often and pour out a cup of blood for your parents. I
t is a traditional offering among vampires, to show reverence for the deceased. I present this gift in gratitude, too, and as I bow my head, I thank them, silently, for you. I wish that I could offer them more in return for the gift they have given me, but NOTHING could repay that.
L
I was still smiling with a weird mixture of genuine happiness and profound sadness as I tucked the note in my pocket and finally searched the marble walls for the names of my parents.
Mihaela Dragomir and Ladislau Dragomir.
And when I found them etched in simple script, I bowed my head and just let myself feel for a minute. I let everything wash over me, including the things I'd been struggling to avoid—all my fear and grief and homesickness—and the pride I had in my parents, too. And when I raised my face again, it was like the connection that had been growing between me and my birth mother, especially, was sealed. As I stood there, I knew, for the first time, that I loved them. I'd admired my parents, and been in awe of my mother, and was grateful to them for saving my life, but I hadn't quite loved them until that moment.
And I suddenly understood why Lucius would visit a graveyard, and what he felt when he was there.
My family is here. This is where I started and where I will likely end and where I belong.
Taking my mother's journal out of my pocket, I moved closer to the candle and finally read her final entry to me. It was surprisingly short and said only, "It is time for me to say good-bye to you, Antanasia. I want you to know that I am ready and at peace. And if you have read this far—you are ready, too."
I noticed that she didn't say what I'd be ready for. I was pretty sure she meant everything. From marrying Lucius to leading the clans to facing the fate that brought both my mother and me to that place one snowy midnight, almost nineteen years after her destruction.
Closing the journal for the last time, I tucked it into a crevice in the marble that separated my parents' caskets. That was my private offering to them. My way of saying, "I am ready."
Then I went out into the cemetery and closed the mausoleum gate behind me. Standing in the snow, I hesitated again, then took one step toward the crypt whose dark, spiked face was etched with a suitably jagged word. VLADESCU. Something stopped me, though, and I went instead to the shivering mare, climbed onto the saddle, and turned toward home to begin the hard work of saving Lucius.
But when I tapped the horse's sides with my heels, we both jerked to a stop—because somebody had grabbed the reins. I'd sort of known he'd been close by me all along.
Chapter 68
Mindy
I LAID THERE in my huge bed with the MacBook I'd borrowed from Jess's office, trying to be interested in surfing Zappos, but I couldn't even care about shoes, or the snack I'd ordered just by picking up the phone, punching buttons, and saying "ice cream" till somebody got what I meant.
Jess was right. It was awful in that castle. I was surrounded by great stuff, but it didn't make me hurt any less inside. I woulda gone home if she didn't need me so much—and if my mom still didn't wanna kill me.
I stuck the silver spoon in my mouth, but I hardly tasted the Häagen-Dazs, 'cause how could I care about eating—even chocolate ice cream?
Just from that look on Ronnie's face, and the way he hadn't said anything, I was pretty sure he had bit Ylenia Dragomir. That he'd done something with her that he wouldn't even offer to do with me.
I knew I should hate him. But I didn't.
I loved that stupid, no-ambition Italian vampire. I couldn't stop loving him.
It was HER I hated. There was something wrong about her, from her dweeby glasses to her dumpy shoes, and she'd done something to him. I knew it.
With a big frustrated sigh, I shoved aside the laptop and picked up Cosmo, 'cause there was nothing I could do that night—not for me or Jess or Ronnie or Lucius—except maybe check our horoscopes to see if there was any good news for anybody in the future.
But before I got to the stars, the big feature in "Secrets & Advice" just about stopped me cold. I'd totally forgot that article was in there, but when I saw it then, I read it like there was gonna be a test on every word. It was probably the fastest I ever read anything, and when I was done, I slammed the magazine shut and said the title out loud.
"Keep Your Friends Close, and Your FRENEMIES Closer."
I would remember that. And I knew I'd never forget the last few lines, either—even though I didn't even try to memorize 'em.
"Who knows? Keeping your frenemy close might just win you an honest-to-goodness new friend. Maybe she's not as bad as you thought. And if she is a backstabber, at least you'll probably learn all of her secrets!"
I ate another big bite of ice cream, thinking Cosmo always gave good advice.
It sucked, and I hated doing it, but I grabbed the Mac again and called up Jess's e-mail, where of course there were messages to her new BFF, Ylenia—who it seemed to me should not be using the screen name Dragomir1. She was, like, number two—at best.
And even though I had to grit my teeth to get through it, I typed, "Hey Ylenia it's Mindy using Jess's e-mail. I am getting bored cuz Jess is busy, duh, and she says your the world's best romanian tour guide so how about hanging out? Your friend too—Min."
I knew it was the right thing to do—I had to know if I
was just jealous or if Ylenia really was a bloodsucker-slash backstabber—but I still about puked up all the pricey Dutch chocolate inside me when I hit send.
Chapter 69
Antanasia
"I WAS GOING to come looking for you," I told Raniero, who held the reins while I dismounted. "But I had a feeling you were close by anyhow."
"Si, I have followed you." His eyes were trained on the cemetery, and he seemed edgier than me to be there. "I wait for you at the gate."
Was Raniero scared that his fate lay inside the stone wall? It didn't seem likely, but he was definitely uneasy. Quite a few moments passed before he tore his eyes away from the graveyard to meet mine in the moonlight. "Why do you wish to find me? "
It was probably odd that he didn't first ask why I'd come to a cemetery alone at midnight, but maybe he knew what I was doing. How I was changing. He certainly didn't seem surprised when I told him, "I want us to be partners, and if it comes down to some kind of fight, either in a courtroom or with stakes, I will stand by your side and never run away." I looked deep into his eyes, which were as complicated as Lucius's—and held even more pain. "I made vows to Lucius a few months ago, but I didn't really understand what they meant then. I promise you, though, I understand now."
The guy who was pretty sure that I was asking—ordering—him to sacrifice his existence to save my husband studied me for a long time, like he was deciding whether I might retreat back to bed at some point. Then he nodded and said, "Of course I will help you and the brother who has shown me such mercy. It is my honor."
I knew I'd finally done something right then. I had won the respect of a vampire whom I respected in turn.
But I wasn't quite as bold as Raniero yet, or as bold as Lucius might have been, because when Raniero prompted, "The trial date ... Do you think of setting it?" I answered quickly, "No. Not yet. There's still no evidence to save him." I kept meeting his eyes, though, so he would see that I wasn't cowering anymore—even if I wasn't gambling everything, either. "But I will find some."
I was pretty sure Raniero would have rolled the dice and set a date immediately, but the love he had for Lucius, however strong, couldn't come close to what I felt for my husband, and I wouldn't take that chance. Not yet. Until I had some proof of Lucius's innocence, it was better to keep risking the possibility of luat than to condemn him to certain, outright destruction. To know his existence would end, with no hope of ever seeing him again, touching him...
"No," I repeated. "I won't set the date yet."
"Of course." Raniero handed me the reins, and as we
started to walk into the dark Carpathian forest, side by side, he asked, "Then how do you wish to pr
oceed, Princess?"
"I need a map of the castle," I told him. "I can't keep getting lost in my own home."
"I can do this," he agreed. "I am good with mappa. Can render the estate from memory—including places perhaps you do not even know of."
I wasn't surprised to hear that. Lucius had promised me that Raniero had many hidden talents that would come in handy.
"What else do you wish?" he asked, looking down at me. The surfer really was almost gone, but somehow I was more at ease with the warrior who was emerging. I understood him—because I understood Lucius. And I made another decision, right then and there. If I was going to trust him, I had to do it fully. "I need you to teach me how to use a stake. Lucius was going to do that, before he got incarcerated."
The trees had closed over us, shutting out the moonlight, but I thought I caught a glimpse of white teeth, like Raniero was smiling in the darkness. I hoped it was a grin of approval for the way I was finally pulling myself together and not anticipation at the prospect of touching a weapon I was pretty sure he hadn't handled in two years.
Chapter 70
Lucius
R—
I rouse myself from what seems like endless slumber to ask if there is any news from aboveground since the funeral was held ... how many days ago? Two? Three? I lose track. Is Antanasia still safe? For I begin to have terrible dreams that too often end in ways which I cannot bear to commit to paper.