The problem with going on adventures with someone who does most of the thinking is that when you get stranded alone in a tricky situation, it’s not so easy to start doing all the thinking for yourself.
But, as I began the long walk towards Castle Arges – the only place I knew of where I might find Bella – I tried anyway.
I realised that it was unlikely Henry had gone on the next part of the quest on his own. First – and I wasn’t being big-headed, but – he generally liked to have me around, and second, if he had left for Snagov, how had he planned to get there without Mr Antonescu and the car?
This raised another question: where was Mr Antonescu anyway? Had he simply got fed up with Henry’s refusal to take his warnings, resigned from his job as our guide and gone home? Or, as I increasingly feared had happened to Henry, had he been taken by our attackers as well? Perhaps they were both lying dead – somewhere on the mountain? Had I failed Henry while I was sleeping? The thought sent trickles of terror down my spine.
So, here I was in search of Bella Dracul.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against vampires, especially when they’re as good-looking as she was, but I couldn’t help thinking about the whole blood-drinking thing. We only had her word for it that she had given up on all that kind of stuff two hundred years ago. After all, vampires need blood to survive, don’t they? If we were really friends, no problem, but I wasn’t sure of that yet. What if she got a bit peckish and I ended up as a snack?
But all I could do was go with my best instinct, which was that I needed Bella if I had any chance of rescuing Henry alive. Luckily I didn’t have to go far to find her because she found me. I was still a mile or so away from where we’d been attacked two nights before when the night was split yet again by brilliant headlights. With a familiar roar the big black motorbike came hurtling out of the darkness and skidded to a stop right in front of me, throwing up a shower of sharp grit against my legs.
I stood there, nervously rubbing my shins, as Dracula’s daughter turned off the engine and shot me a far-from-pleased-to-see-you stare.
“I thought I told you to go home,” she said, looking past my shoulder for Henry. “Where’s your friend?”
I began to feel uncomfortable, as if Henry’s disappearance was somehow all my fault.
“I think he’s been taken by someone!” I blurted out.
Bella put her head to one side. “No surprise there. Who took him?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I woke up a couple of hours ago and he was gone. Bed not slept in, no sign of his rucksack.”
Bella frowned. “Did he leave a note?”
“No.” I hesitated, then admitted, “I thought maybe he’d decided to go off after this beast thing on his own.”
Bella cursed in Rumanian (it needed no translation).
“Young and foolhardy!” she snapped. I wished I could have a bit of the softer Bella back, the Bella who seemed to want to befriend us. Then she stared hard at me. “And what are you doing here?”
“Um, I was… er… looking for you.”
“I suppose you want me to help find your friend?”
“Well, there really isn’t anyone else I can ask,” I said sheepishly.
Bella looked up at the moon as it emerged from a mesh of dark clouds. The wind blew mournfully through the pines as I heard a creature howl somewhere in their depths. Turning back, Bella regarded me from head to toe.
Then she let out a small sigh and said, “It looks like I have no choice – if only to stop that silly boy from bringing down the sky on our heads!”
A few minutes later I found myself sitting on the pillion of Bella’s motorcycle, my arms around her waist and my face pressed into the soft leather of her shoulder, as she roared through the night.
Bella said that first she needed to go home to consult some old records left by her father. I kept telling myself that there was really nothing strange about riding a motorbike with a five-hundred-year-old vampire girl who seemed to think travelling at eighty miles an hour on narrow mountain roads was perfectly normal, and that we were only going to her home (the word ‘lair’ kept popping into my head) because there was something there that might help us find Henry. In fact, I tried to shut out every other thought except for the fact that Henry was probably in danger and that Dracula’s daughter was the only one who could help me find him.
I had been expecting a ruined castle with bats and shadowy corners, but instead we pulled up in front of a small cottage hidden among dense trees.
Bella dismounted but then paused in front of me. Her blue eyes pierced mine and for a second she looked almost awkward. “You are the first mortal I have allowed here for more than a hundred years,” she said.
While I’m sure Henry would have known exactly what to say to that, I didn’t, so I stayed quiet and did my best to show how honoured I was by smiling.
The door of the cottage opened of its own accord before we got to it. I tried not to look too amazed. After all it was something I guessed I should expect when visiting a vampire’s house. We went inside and Bella lit a lantern.
“No electricity up here,” she said. “And I don’t really need light to see by, but I don’t think you’d appreciate being here in the dark.”
I looked around in the dim golden light and saw a small room, with very little furniture – just a chest, an armchair and a side table – and not much else by way of decoration, except for a portrait of a stern-faced man with thick, dark eyebrows that hung above an empty fireplace.
Seeing my look, Bella held the lantern up and shone it on the face. “My father,” she said.
I must admit I stared a bit – who wouldn’t? This was an actual portrait of the real Count Dracula. It didn’t look anything like Christopher Lee – and not in any way like the portrait that hung in Castle Bran. It did look a lot like the picture in Henry’s book. Score for HH! In fact, despite being a bit severe, it was not an unpleasant face at all. No fangs in sight, and with a recognisable likeness to Bella. He looked powerful and demanding – as though he expected a lot. I felt like I wouldn’t want to let him down if he were my dad.
She set the lantern down on a tabletop and crossed to the big brass-bound chest tucked into the corner of the room. It looked like the kind pirates would use to bury their treasure.
Bella was lifting an object wrapped in oilskin out of the chest. She laid it on the table next to the lantern and unrolled it. Inside was a very ancient-looking piece of parchment with a map drawn on it.
“This belonged to my father,” said Bella. “He always kept it locked away in a secret place. I found it only a hundred years ago and I have never really examined it properly. But I remember that it shows places that are no longer found on modern maps.”
She bent over the parchment, tracing the lines of rivers with her finger, murmuring the names of towns and villages aloud. Then she stopped, her finger resting on the only bit of the map that had colour on it.
A place marked in red.
You didn’t have to be a genius to guess it was written in blood. And the word?
SNAGOV
I looked closer. Next to it was a little clutch of buildings drawn with amazing detail. A village? But something else was marked there – a wandering path that lead to what looked like the entrance to a cave. Beside it was a tiny drawing of something that looked remarkably like the picture Henry had copied from the well at Castle Dracula.
A picture of the Snagov Beast.
As I stared at it I felt almost dizzy. My eyes blurred and I thought the creature moved and grew larger. Then my sight cleared and it was once again just a few lines inked on crumbling parchment.
I looked at Bella. Her eyes were glazed, almost as if she’d given in to sadness. But it was gone a moment later, and she brightened again, tapping the map with a finger.
“Here is where I think we will find your friend. As I had thought, it is not so far from here.”
“All right, then, let’s go,” I said, reaching for my pack. I was desperate to find Henry before it was too late. If he was in danger, I hoped he knew I would be looking for him.
“Wait, there’s something else,” Bella said. She reached into a pocket of her leather outfit and pulled out a medallion on a broken chain.
“I wanted to show you this – I took it off one of those people who attacked you the other night.”
As it hung before me I felt dizzy again. On the medallion – which looked like gold – was a much larger picture of the beast from the map. The weird thing about it was that the more I looked at it, the less easy it was to see. The shape and form of the beast seemed to change as I stared. Did it have wings, or tentacles, or both? I honestly couldn’t tell. I wished Henry Hunter was there to explain it all. But he wasn’t – and that thought brought me back to earth with a bump.
“What do you think the Snagov Beast really is?” I asked.
“All I know is what my father told me, long ago. He didn’t really explain it, just hinted that there was a creature who was the ‘first’ – the first vampire that is. All those who came after, somehow came from it – including my father. He never told me what it was or where it might be found. But I remembered that he had this map and that he would never let me look at it. I did, of course, in the end, and I think it shows where we must go to find your friend.”
She looked at me seriously. “I can only conclude from the medallion that those people we encountered are somehow connected to the Beast.”
I had already guessed this, but her confirmation still shook me. I grabbed my pack and said, as firmly as I could, “Then we’d better get going. Every moment may put Henry in greater danger.”