Ifelthim before I saw him – the concentration of pure evil that waited in the dark like a snake beneath the rocks. My heart plummeted to my knees as his power wrapped around us, stealing away every ounce of bravery I’d fought so hard to keep intact.
Count Dracula stepped forward with malignant silence, and Isawhim. I saw him in vivid, terrifying detail. I saw the corners of his mouth twist up into a smile, baring long, white fangs. “Mina Wilde, we meet at last.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It didn’t make any sense, because Nevermore Bookshop was still pitch black and even if all the lightshadjust come back on, I still shouldn’t be able to see this level of detail.
But I wasn’t really seeing him with my eyes. He wasinsidemy head, giving me this vision of himself so that Iknew.I understood. He had already beaten us. Standing this close to him, his power washed over me, soaking into my pores. I felt him crawling in my veins and swimming behind my eyes. He held my body frozen. I couldn’t move. He could manipulate me however he wished.
Count Dracula was at least as tall as Morrie, but his power made him seem taller still. His features were those of an older man with a hooked nose, a bushy Victorian mustache and pointed beard. He was clad entirely in black, without a speck of color anywhere about his person, so that he seemed to emerge from the darkness itself.
In his hand, he clutched a book he’d plucked from the Classics shelf – a beautiful leather-bound volume of Bram Stoker’sDracula. I could see the damp pages crimping at the edges, and a circle of damp on the rug beneath his feet – the broken pipes must have leaked through the back of this wall.
I opened my mouth to speak, but he stole my words, too.
“Listen to them, Mina.” Dracula held his hand to his ear as Fiona and Quoth and Grey screamed their madness, their allegiance, above our heads. “My children of the night. They make such sweet music. They can be our children, Mina. We can make the whole earth anew in our lineage.”
Quoth’s cries filled my ears, and in his distress, I found my voice.
“We have poisoned your earth with holy sacraments,” I said. “Every last box of Romanian dirt has been tainted. If you try to use the earth to regenerate, you will die.”
“It is no matter.” His long fingers turned the book, screwing up the pages. Water dripped from the sodden paper – something else I shouldn’t have been able to see.Something he wants me to see, but why?“In the waters of Meles I will find my resurrection – true immortality not just in this life, but in all possible lives. Your father tried to lure me away from this bookshop so I would not discover its secrets. Even in his dying breath he did not give you up to me.”
“My father is…is dead?” After all the letters and clues he’d left behind for me, after all the time-traveling, I’d started to think of my father as alive but far away where I couldn’t talk to him, which was sort of how I’d thought of him my entire life. But now I knew the truth – Dracula had robbed the world of the greatest poet that ever lived. He robbed me of my chance to meet my father. I’d never forgive him for that.
My rage and love bloomed hot inside me, and in that rage I found the strength to defy Dracula’s hold on me. I wiggled my fingers. I twitched my wrist. I moved my hand into my purse and searched inside for what I needed.
Dracula smacked his lips together. “Homer tastedexquisite. But only after I drained him did I realize I needed him alive to guide me through the waters. But no matter, I have you now, my beautiful bride.”
He reached out his hand toward me, and every inch of my body jerked to obey him. Except for my hand. My hand closed around a jar at the bottom of my purse.
I flung the jar at Dracula. It clipped him on the chin, popping the lid off and splattering green goo all down the front of his fancy clothes. He swiped a finger through the goo and held it up, squinting in confusion. “What is this?”
“Um…that’s cream made from ground-up Venus flytraps. But this…” I flung another jar. “This is Mrs. Traverson’s extra-strong pasta sauce.”
The jar hit Dracula in the face, and as the garlic hit his skin the vision of him in my head dissolved. He couldn’t hold the magic while he was screaming. And scream he did – an inhuman wail that I knew I’d hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life. Which I hoped would be longer than the next few minutes.
My limbs jerked free of his spell. “Run!”
We thundered from the room. Morrie slammed the door behind him and shoved a chair under the handle. Oscar barked triumphantly at the door.
Dracula roared, his anger shaking Nevermore down to its foundations. Books cascaded from the shelves as the door cracked and groaned under Dracula’s fury. Morrie thrust the burning book into Jo’s hands and leaned against the door, bracing his long legs against the bookshelf opposite as more heavy volumes rained down on him.
“Run. I can’t hold him much longer,” Morrie yelled.
“I can’t leave you—”
But Heathcliff grabbed my arm and tore me away. “I’ll help Morrie. You get away.”
His grip dropped from my arm, and I was swept away from him as Jo and Oscar and Mrs. Ellis and Robin all rushed for the stairs. As my feet hit the first step, Morrie’s scream tore through the bookshop.
No, Isis, no. Please, not Morrie…please…
But I didn’t look back. I wouldn’t let Morrie’s sacrifice be in vain. I poured on speed, clattering up the stairs after Oscar. Behind me, the doorway slammed against the wall. Heathcliff bellowed as he met Dracula’s full fury with his own love-kissed savagery – an unstoppable force meeting an immovable rock.
The moment my foot touched the first-floor landing, Heathcliff screamed.
I didn’t know Heathcliff Earnshaw had it in him to scream. The sound rent my soul.
