“D-d-d-don’t touch her.”
A dark shape moved on the other side of the room. Grey staggered to his feet and lurched into the hallway. He was death walking, and as he moved through the square of light cast by the moon through the window, I made out the shape of Mrs. Ellis’ stake still buried in his back.
“Ah, Grey, my loyal servant. I wondered where you’d got to. Come, we shall share her blood together.”
Cynthia screamed.
“I s-s-said, don’t touch her.” Grey’s voice sounded like wet sand. He lunged at Dracula. Cynthia screamed again, and I heard bangs and thumps as the servant turned on his master.
We’d been right about Grey – even beneath all those layers of evil, a piece of his humanity remained. Grey was a class A dickweasel, but he loved his wife.
“Croak!” Quoth swooped in to help his master, but his battle cry turned into a wail as he was caught in the bloody battle between Dracula and Grey. I cried out as he was tossed onto the hallway rug, his tiny body lolling in a dark pool of his own blood.
“Quoth, no.”
And even though I knew I’d lost him forever, even though he was no longer mine, I couldn’t leave him there to die alone. I leaped from behind the door, throwing my body over Quoth and trapping him against my chest.
“Croooooak.” Quoth struggled a little, but he was so weak that I held him easily. Warmth spread across my chest as his blood and the pasta sauce soaked my clothes. I shoved Quoth under my arm and ran from the room. I’d lost my knife somewhere in the shop. All I had was another jar of pasta sauce. Dracula and Grey rolled on the rug, slamming into the walls and sending Quoth’s paintings crashing down on top of them. I’d have to try and get past them, hope I could find something to finish the job, hope the others had been sensible enough to get out while they could.
My blood rushed in my ears. Quoth squabbled, beating his wings in an attempt to fly to his master. I gripped him tighter as his blood covered my clothes. My mind whirred over something.
Covered in blood…
It was a memory from months ago, a throwaway sentence that I thought mysterious at the time but forgot about in all the chaos of Dracula’s arrival and every other crazy thing that happened in my life. But now that phrase slammed into me with the full weight of its power.
Next time I see you, you’ll be covered in blood.
I didn’t have time to consider if it was a good idea or not. At the same time as Dracula’s ice-cold hand reached from the darkness to grip my ankle, I grabbed the handle for the time-traveling room.
As the bloodsucker dragged me backward, I pulled the door open, revealing nothing but oppressive gloom. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side, but all I knew was that it had to be better than here.
“You cannot escape me,” Dracula snarled, his icy touch crawling up my leg.
Hold on.My pinkie finger slipped from the door handle. Quoth’s beak sank into my wrist. I howled and twisted and cried, but Dracula held me fast. Where was Grey? I couldn’t move forward, and soon my grip would fail and…
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” someone huffed. A hand reached out of the darkness and grasped under my shoulder, warm and mercifully alive. A second hand joined the first. Quoth slipped through my fingers. I screamed as they tugged me forward and Dracula yanked me back. I was being torn in two. Neither would give me up. Something in my spine popped, and pain rushed my ears.It’ll all be over soon…
“It will never be over, Mina,” Dracula roared inside my head. “You’ll be mine for all eternity.”
“Croak!”
I couldn’t see what he did, but Quoth squawked and Dracula hissed and his fingers dropped from my ankle. The last thing I heard before the door slammed behind me was the flutter of midnight wings as Quoth flew through and crashed into the floorboards in front of me.
I lay on my stomach, gasping for breath. It took me a few moments to realize I’d screwed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to open them. I didn’t know what I’d see. But a bright light pulsed beyond my eyelids and I needed toknow…
Quoth…is he here…is he alive…
I sucked in a deep, precious breath of air, the edges tinged with blood and ice.
I opened my eyes.
The room was exactly as I remembered – the elegant four-poster bed weighed down with rich linens, the ornate chairs and heavy wooden furniture. The doors leading into the study and the octagonal bathroom above the occult room. But there was one difference – one strange feature that made me certain that I was truly dead, that this was my dying mind playing a last, cruel trick.
I could only see the gloomy spaces because the entire room had been lit up like a Christmas tree, like a Halloween bonfire. Candles and oil lanterns flickered on every surface and burned from sconces affixed to the walls.
“Well, well, well, Wilhelmina Wilde,” a dark voice chuckled. Victoria Bainbridge peered down at me from behind her hawklike nose. “At last we meet.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
