Marjory took a deep breath as she entered the cemetery. “I haven’t been in here in a very long time.”
I glanced over at her. “Were you in here the night you locked Declan away?”
“We all were.” She placed her hands on her hips.
“Tell us,” I ordered.
“We have to start with Bogdan.” Her nose wrinkled as she said his name. “I wasn’t around when he was here. Those of us involved with the Declan situation had nothing to do with Bogdan. We did, however, know the story.”
She rubbed her hands over the front of her linen pants. “He did terrible things. Nobody knew what he was. The people of the time were familiar with vampires. Jareth was here, as were a few others, but no one understood how a vampire could be out during the day.”
“He wasn’t a vampire,” I pointed out. “He was a hybrid.”
“No one had ever heard the word dhampir,” she acknowledged. “That would have sounded like something out of a storybook back then. Unless you were in the trade, no one knew there was such a thing as born vampires. They were all just vampires.”
I rolled that notion through my head. “No one realized Bogdan was a monster.”
“Oh, no.” Marjory shook her head. “Manydidrealize. A lot of them. They didn’t realize he had any vampire in him. They thought he was a demon. It was assumed he was a diabolical mixture, a chimera of sorts.”
She grew quiet for a second, as if reflecting. “Jareth was feared but respected. He went after Bogdan. He never told the elders why.They decided that if Jareth believed Bogdan was dangerous, it must be true.
“No one had the power to overcome him alone,” she continued. “They hunted him, just like Declan, and managed to capture him.”
“Why not kill him?” Galen asked, speaking for the first time since we’d entered the cemetery. The grounds were eerily quiet, no sign of the zombies that roamed at night.
“They tried. They stabbed him. They shot him. They tried to hang him. They even tried fire. None of it worked.”
“They could have cut off his head,” Booker argued. “That’s a surefire way to kill a vampire. It would have worked with a dhampir.”
“No one knew he was part vampire,” Marjory argued. “I already told you that. They were working on a limited timetable. A handful of townsfolk banded together to end him. They didn’t want anyone else to know because it would have bred suspicion … and that’s the last thing the leaders wanted.”
“So they built a cage for him,” Galen said.
“A magical cage,” Marjory confirmed. “The island leaders — the pack leader, the coven leader, the siren leader, the cupid leader, and several others — joined together. They even had a demon representative, just to be on the safe side. They created a trap.”
“You need to speed up this story,” Galen admonished.
I didn’t want the story nut-shelled but Galen seemed to be reaching his limit. I could drill Marjory for more details later.
“The trap was a box,” Marjory explained. “A box positioned between two worlds. It was designed to keep Bogdan inside forever. He wasn’t part of our world or the one right next to us. He wasn’t supposed to be able to escape and wreak havoc. He would be trapped with his regrets forever.”
“But he didn’t stay trapped forever,” I guessed. “He escaped, to another plane.”
“He didn’t escape on his own.” Marjory shook her head. “The trap was well constructed. Someone helped him escape.”
“How do you know that?” Booker asked.
“The trap was checked often, and one day Bogdan was gone. There was an opening in the trap … from the other side.”
I shifted forward without realizing. “I assumed that there was someone on this plane helping Declan. Someone from a different plane.”
“I can’t answer that,” Marjory replied, “but follow your instincts. You have a knack for figuring these things out.”
That was a surprising compliment. “Did Bogdan try to get back to this plane?”
“Not to anyone’s knowledge.” Marjory’s forehead creased with concentration. “The islanders braced for his return for a long time, but he never showed. We assumed he died on the other plane and was largely forgotten.”
“And then Declan came to the island,” Galen said.
