FATHER THOMAS’ DECLARATION, while unexpected, was certainly not unwelcome. He took us out into the village, gathering for us, as the evening progressed, additional food and water, fresh clothes (undergarments! yay!), warm cloaks, extra clothes, packs, daggers, and sturdy staves (even for Eric, who, since we would be traveling by day, would be a normal boy; Piotr, of course, while he suffered to wear the white robe he’d been given by Father Thomas around the village, intended to travel in wolf form), and then showed us an empty-but-furnished house where we could sleep in actual beds. The owner, he said, had died recently—victim of neither rogue nor plague, he assured us—and had had no heirs to claim his worldly possessions, which would soon be going to those in need. For the moment, those in need were us.
We rose in the predawn darkness and made our way to the gate. Father Thomas had spoken the day before to the reeve (a man I’d never met, which said something about where the real power in the village lay), and also to Simeon. Neither, apparently, had been happy about his decision, but no one had the authority to tell the priest he could not travel on what he said was business of the Mother Church—which, I suppose, it was.
Father Thomas had also offered to assemble an armed escort for us, but neither Karl nor I thought that a good idea. We needed to travel with some stealth, and we also needed to travel quickly. However many werewolves might be making their way north to attack the castle, they could not be far now. We might have very little lead on them.
Simeon joined us as we waited in the chill air outside the brick building where I’d been temporarily ensconced under Eric’s guard when I’d first come to the village. Through the open door, I heard the musical four-note chime of the little clock Thomas had told me announced the time of real dawn every day of the year. Simeon stepped forward as those notes died away and unbarred the gates. He pushed open one side. “God speed,” he said to Father Thomas.
“Worry not,” Father Thomas said. “I will be back within days.”
Simeon said nothing to that, but even in the still-dim light, I saw doubt on his face.
Our little party left the village. The sun had not yet touched it, so, theoretically, there could still be vampires about, but Father Thomas had said they only risked staying out past real dawn, even in the shadow of the mountains, in extraordinary circumstances; Piotr had told me something similar, after the battle on the border.
I looked up at the switchback path that would take us to the top of the cliff that loomed over the village, remembering when I’d been brought down it, just a few days before—remembering, too, poor Elena. I glanced at Eric. He stood staring up at the cliff, tears glistening on his cheeks.
The moment we were out of sight of the gate, Piotr doffed his robe and shifted into wolf-shape. Then he loped along the path ahead of us, disappearing over the top of the cliff while we were still toiling up it, to scout out the forest beyond. By the time we reached the top, the sun shone full force across the valley floor. I looked out at the overgrown fields and abandoned farmhouses. The only living things I saw were herds of sheep and horses, unrestrained by fences that seemed mostly to have fallen.
“There’s really a werewolf army out there?” I said to Eric.
“There’s supposed to be,” he said. “They hadn’t set out yet when I left.”
“Maybe they didn’t.”
“Maybe,” he said, but not as if he believed it.
I didn’t really believe it, either.
Piotr reappeared. He didn’t bother turning into a boy, instead just giving a deep “woof,” which clearly meant, “All clear.” We set off through the woods I had last passed through in the misty, moonlit night while running from a party of vampires. Sunshine made a nice change.
We saw no one all day. All the werewolves and vampires were presumably holed up somewhere, hidden from the sun. Eric himself looked deeply unhappy to be out in it. “I feel so weak,” he said at one point, as we labored up a slope. I didn’t reply since I was busy gasping for breath.
As the sun passed the zenith and began its descent, I looked ahead and tried to judge how much farther we had to go to reach the vampire castle. I really didn’t want to reach it after sunset.
Unfortunately, as Mick Jagger famously sang, you can’t always get what you want. We reached the cottage where Karl and I had spent our first night just as the sun touched the saw-toothed peaks of the western mountains. There, we parted ways with Father Thomas. “Wait here,” I told him. “Watch. If things go badly . . . get back to your village and warn them.”
He frowned. “I had intended to enter the castle with you.”
“Not a great idea, since if we’re wrong, and they no longer uphold the Pact, you’re literally food on feet,” I said bluntly.
“They claim Stephanie is the one who no longer upholds the Pact,” Karl said.
“I wouldn’t recommend Father Thomas enter Stephanie’s lair, either,” I said.
Father Thomas nodded reluctantly. “Very well. I will tarry here. If things go badly, I will return to Zarozje and try to ensure its safety. But if things go well, I want to talk to the queens.”
“If things go well, you can,” I said.
Eric went to the priest. “Be safe,” he said.
“You, too, son.” Father Thomas embraced the boy.
We left him there, staring at the castle, and descended along the white-stone path that had been the first thing I’d seen when I’d opened the Portal.
I frowned. And which had had a werewolf on it. Why had a werewolf been this close to the castle?
Probably scouting, I answered myself. Stephanie was already planning this assault, long before we popped up.
We were at the bottom when Eric said, “Sun’s down.” He stripped, packed his clothes into the pack he carried, tucked the pack under a handy bush, then changed into a wolf. Piotr was behind us, watching our back trail. Eric now trotted forward, to use his sharper senses to try to minimize surprise.
Above us, the castle loomed on its rocky outcropping, spires and battlements silhouetted against the darkening sky. Lights began to glow in its many windows. I remembered how lit up it had been when we’d first seen it: for creatures of the night, the vampires seemed to love a brightly illuminated fortress.
Just for effect, it seemed, a clammy ground mist like the one that had bedeviled us the night before Karl was taken by the vampires rose up around us, given an unearthly (literally) glow by the ever-present moon. I pulled up short. “Not ideal timing,” I said to Karl as he stepped up beside me. “What do we do?”
He shrugged. “We march up to the gate and demand to see Queen Patricia. I’m known in the castle, and they know I was sent south. She will want to see me. And she knows about you, so she’ll want to see you, too.”
“And the boys?”
“I think they’d better stay out here,” Karl said. “And stay hidden.”
I nodded. I whistled. I’d felt bad suggesting it as a signal for the boys, once they were in wolf form, but neither of them had understood why. “It is a sound that carries and that we can easily hear above other sounds,” Piotr had said. “An excellent choice.”
“But it’s like . . . calling a dog.”
Piotr had laughed. “No, it’s like calling a wolf.”
So, whistle I did, and the wolves came bounding through the mist, red eyes blazing. They didn’t change. They could understand me fine in wolf form, though they couldn’t talk. “We’re approaching the castle,” I said. “You two lie low. Don’t get caught by vampires. Watch for any sign of Stephanie’s attack.”
Piotr did change then. “And if we see werewolves?” he said.
“Warn us,” Karl said. “However it seems best.”
Piotr nodded, and returned to wolf form. He and Eric ran off together, vanishing into the mist and darkness. The last of the daylight had faded from the sky, leaving only the looming moon. Karl and I set our eyes on the castle and began climbing the path to its gates.
I was wondering if there’d be a bell to ring, like at the gates of the Emerald City, but I never found out. We were still a hundred yards away when fetid air blasted me from above and behind, and sudden terror gripped me. I froze, trying to breathe, certain that death stood at my back.
“Karl Yatsar,” said a strangely sibilant voice as cold as the grave. “How unexpected.”
“Re . . . release us,” Karl choked out, and just like that, the fear vanished.
I turned to see what had engendered it. A man-shape stood there, tall and slender, but a man-shape with the demonic eyes of the vampires in bat form. He was not clothed, but shadows seemed to wrap his naked form like a cloak.
Behind us, up the hill, I heard the sound of the castle gates swinging open. They gave off such a stereotypical haunted house groan I would have been tempted to laugh if there was the slightest chance I could have while facing the thing before us. Dim torchlight spilled down the path from the opened gates, just enough to show me the thing’s face, too angular to be entirely human, with gleaming, slicked-back hair above the hell-pits of those glowing eyes. Fangs showed over lush lips.
“Shawna,” Karl said, “allow me to introduce the Prince Consort of Queen Patricia. I believe you know of him.”
I had to swallow before I could speak. “I . . . don’t think so.”
“My name is Dracula,” said the vampire. “You must be Shawna Keys.”
Dracula? I wanted to give Karl a withering look but didn’t dare turn my head. He’d mentioned the queen’s consort but somehow hadn’t thought it important to mention the vampire’s name. “The Dracula?” I said.
Dracula smiled. “I know of no other. The name means ‘son of Dracul,’ and I was an only child.”
“We need to see the queen,” Karl said. “Immediately.”
Dracula’s smile vanished. “You do not have the right to demand such a meeting.”
“I am not demanding it,” Karl said. “But I am urgently requesting it. I have returned with Shawna Keys, whom I went to retrieve from the kingdom of the werewolves. She escaped from the very presence of Queen Stephanie. We have reason to believe that Queen Stephanie is approaching with a large force of werewolves, to execute an assault aimed at capturing this castle. If we are correct in that belief, do you really think Queen Patricia will be pleased if our appearance before her is unnecessarily delayed?”
Dracula’s eyes blazed bright, like embers fanned by a bellows. “An attack? Impossible. Our patrols would see any approaching force.”
“Maybe it’s still on its way,” I said. “All we know is what we were told by someone from Stephanie’s court. Don’t you think we should pass that along to Queen Patricia?”
Suddenly, Dracula was back in bat form. He hissed, almost like a snake, the sound directed over our heads, and I turned to see two more winged vampires behind us. They had approached without the slightest sound; it felt like they had appeared out of thin air.
Werewolves were beginning to look not-so-bad. At least they were warm and fuzzy. These things were cold and dead.
As vampires are wont to be, I reminded myself. The Shapers had kept many traditional aspects of their creatures intact, even as they had warped others. These vampires, for example, could apparently reproduce like normal humans. I wondered how that worked. What did baby vampires drink? Did they nurse? Did they . . . ?
There are some things, I thought then, I’d really rather not know.
With a blast of wind, Dracula leaped into the air, winging up and over us and the castle wall, heading for a huge open window, ablaze with light, high up the side of the keep. Our silent guards pointed us toward the gate.
We climbed up that last hundred yards, our feet crunching on the path’s crushed white stone. We passed between the ironbound doors into a torchlit courtyard. We paused there while our escorts closed and barred the gate behind us. Overhead, I saw Dracula—I presumed—emerge from the open window. Somehow, he must have communicated with many more of the castle guard in the few moments he had had to do so. The creatures streamed over us, at least two dozen of them, maybe more, winging their way from various parts of the castle, where large windows capable of accommodating them seemed to the be the norm. If hordes of werewolves were indeed somewhere out there in the valley, the vampires would surely see them.
But then, No, I thought. Stephanie knows about the vampire patrols. She understands their abilities. Somehow, she will have hidden their approach.
She’s out there, for sure. But how close?
Not as close as the other queen, Patricia. In short order we entered the keep, climbed steps, walked down a hallway, turned left, turned left again, and strode along another long hallway, at the end of which light glowed through the open doors of what had to be the throne room.
We entered it. Just as Karl had described, it blazed with candles, so many they turned the air oppressively warm: and there on the black throne sat Queen Patricia, accompanied by two other female vampires, both dressed in long, flowing black robes trimmed with red fur, their feet (and presumably the rest of them) bare beneath. “Seraphina,” Karl muttered under his breath. I glanced at him. His eyes were locked on the vampire to the queen’s right, who looked like she’d stepped right out of the pages of an old comic book I’d seen once . . . Vampirella, that was it. Seraphina, Vampirella. Pretty close . . .
“Welcome back, lover,” said Seraphina, and my eyes, which had drifted to her, slashed back to Karl.
Lover? He hadn’t mentioned that. He hadn’t mentioned her.
I wasn’t jealous—there was nothing like that between us—but I was surprised he could be attracted to a . . .
My eyes suddenly turned back to Seraphina. She’s gorgeous. How did I miss that? My breath quickened along with my pulse. I’m not gay or bi, but right then, if she’d asked me to, I would have . . .
“Seraphina,” the queen said. “Stop it.”
Just like that, just like Dracula’s terror before it, the desire I felt vanished. I gasped, then swallowed, and very carefully did not look at Karl, who I was pretty sure was also very carefully not looking at me, although obviously I couldn’t be certain without looking at him, in which case, he might look at me . . . so I didn’t.
“I see you succeeded, Karl Yatsar,” Queen Patricia said. “A surprise, since your escort returned with tales of a werewolf ambush and your disappearance.”
“Our arrival coincided with a scheme of Stephanie’s to turn Shawna into one of her werewolves,” Karl said. “Fortunately, I was able to rescue her.”
A lie, of course, but we had decided Piotr would not make an appearance in our tale. Nor would Eric. We didn’t want vampires wondering where they were now and perhaps going in search of them.
“And you return with a wild tale of Stephanie planning an assault on this castle,” the queen continued. “Unlikely in the extreme. Impossible, even, given our patrols.”
“Yet we saw those patrols flying out in force as we entered,” Karl said. “Surely at your command.”
Patricia shrugged. “It costs nothing to check your story, and confirming it as a lie is worth some minimal effort. The question I have is, why would you lie about such a thing? Is this supposed intelligence coup intended to sway me to your side?”
“I did not lie. I told you what we were told,” Karl said.
“Of course, you did,” Patricia said. She turned her attention to me for the first time. “I presume you are this Shawna Keys of whom Karl spoke—the companion my followers saw him with but were unable to capture, due to the interference of the werewolves. Karl says you claim to be a Shaper.”
I felt a surge of annoyance. “I don’t claim to be a Shaper,” I said. “I am a Shaper. Like you.”
“Who lost her world to this . . . Adversary . . . Karl speaks of?”
“Yes,” I said (perilously close to snarled, actually).
“When were you in Ygrair’s school?”
“I left ten years ago.”
“Some fifteen years after Stephanie and I graduated, then,” she said. “Tell me, did Ygrair ever build that new girls’ dorm she talked about, or did you have to freeze in the winter and swelter in the summer in old ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ like we did?”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. Karl was looking at me. It sounded like a test. I could assume she’d made it all up, I could try to be vague, or . . .
To hell with it. “I have no idea,” I said. “I have no memory of being in Ygrair’s school.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath from Karl, but I kept my eyes on Patricia.
Her eyebrows raised. She turned her gaze to Karl. “She remembers nothing of Ygrair, and yet you would have me give her my hokhmah?”
“I don’t know why I don’t remember,” I said, forestalling any comment from Karl. Talk to me, Queenie. I’m the Shaper, not him. “But I am a Shaper. If you try to give me your hokhmah and it fails, you’ll know I’m lying. But if it succeeds, it proves I’m telling the truth.” And let me get close, and I’ll take it from you whether you want to give it to me or not. Because I can do that now.
Patricia glanced back at me with a slightly surprised look, as though my speaking for myself was unexpected. “It might prove that, but it will not prove that you are an ally.”
“I am not your ally,” I said. “Nor am I Queen Stephanie’s. I serve Ygrair. I want to save this world, and all the others in the Labyrinth. And to do that, I need your hokhmah.”
Queen Patricia leaned back again. She steepled her fingers under her chin. “This needs consideration.” She turned to the other vampire at her side, the one who wasn’t Seraphina and who hadn’t tried to magically seduce me. “Escort them to . . .”
To where, we never found out. A woman’s voice rang out behind us, a voice I instantly recognized, but could not, for a moment, believe I was hearing: the voice of Queen Stephanie, queen of the werewolves.
“Hello, Trish,” she said. “Long time, no see.”