As they neared, the man seemed to sense them suddenly. His whispers ceased, his head raising slightly, and his eyes slowly crawled toward them with a mixture of awe and fear.
He whispered then, “The master has returned.”
Mina woke with a gasp. The blackness was all around her, swallowing her whole, and she couldn’t take a breath, couldn’t force air into her lungs. But as her eyes caught sight of the open windows, the snow-covered trees outside, she stilled.
She was not in the dungeon.
Yet her body struggled to grasp this reality—her heart racing, sweat on her brow as her memory returned painfully slow.
Mina climbed out of bed, stumbling over to the window and pulling open the shutters, pressing her palms against the cold glass.
She was free.
She was safe.
But still, she clung to this piece of evidence—the sight of the snow before her.
And as relief slowly found her, something else filled its place.
Concern.
The dream—had it been a dream? It was so vivid, yet it was unlike any dream she’d had before. It hadn’t even felt like it was her eyes she was seeing through, but someone else’s.
When she finally returned to bed, sinking onto the mattress, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was no ordinary dream, but something more.
***
Despite the lack of sleep, Mina awoke the next morning feeling restless. With the sun barely peering over the horizon, she and Van Helsing said their goodbyes to Quincey and took Cinder down the mountain. They kept a quick pace, neither of them speaking as they navigated through trees androcks. Eventually, they reached a dirt road, and Mina’s chest tightened at being so exposed.
When the worry became too much, she found herself asking, “Do you think he knows?” She didn’t need to clarify who she spoke of—Van Helsing knew.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Surely no letter could have reached him yet, but I don’t know what other means of communication they have access to.”
Mina frowned, her eyes fixed on the scene before, the snow thinning out the further down the mountain they got. “What do you mean by that?”
He sighed, a sound she’d become much accustomed to. “I have reason to believe the Count can . . . communicate with the wives. Some sort of occult psychic connection. Though I have no evidence of that. It’s just a theory from my time studying them and others like them.”
Mina turned around, fear moving through her. “Others? You mean there are other vampires?”
“Certainly,” Van Helsing said, not looking down at her. “You thought the Count was the first?”
She faced forward again. “Well, no, I suppose not.” She hadn’t known what to think of it all. Even after all she’d seen, it still seemed unfathomable that it could truly be real. That such creatures could roam the earth at all, let alone take the form of a handsome nobleman.
She couldn’t help but think about the dream from the night prior—the intensity of it, the strangeness of it. As though she were seeing something through someone else’s eyes. Had that been a communication from the Count? It couldn’t have been—it had revealed nothing to her of where he was. All she could remember was darkness and stone, and that strange man she’d never before witnessed.
She knew she should tell Van Helsing, but he’d been so resistant to tell her anything, to give her even a glimpse of what he knew, that she decided to hold onto it for the time being, to use it as leverage. Perhaps if she had been more intentional and less trusting before now, she would have never ended up in this position.
They were silent the rest of the trip, the weather shifting from winter to autumn—a reminder that they were getting farther and farther from the castle, putting more distance between her and her prison.
Eventually, she saw a village in the distance, the muffled noise of people growing louder and louder as they approached. As their horse led them down the main road of Bistritz, Mina felt a chill run down her spine.
The last time she was here was with Jonathan, back when the innkeepers had tried to warn them. Mina swallowed, regret spilling through her at the memory. But why hadn’t they been more specific in their warnings? Why hadn’t they told her of the beast that the Count truly was?
But then again, would she have believed them? She’d seen it with her own eyes and it was still difficult for her to truly believe, even now.
“We’ll trade out the horse here so we can travel through the evening,” Van Helsing said, leading them to a small cottage.
He helped her off the horse, and her eyes caught on the inn just down the road. She hesitated for only a moment, but then her feet were moving of their own accord.
