“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare’s face blurred in and out. He looked like he was struggling to stay calm. He wasn’t struggling half as much as I was.
I’d met Mircea for the first time in a bar in Italy, around the turn of the seventeenth century, not in a castle in Romania. Especially that one. Cetatea Lui Negru Voda, the Citadel of the Black Ruler, was the real castle Dracula. It had originally been built in the fourteenth century, but Drac rebuilt and expanded it after he returned from his Turkish adventure. The Turks had let him go after learning of his father’s assassination and Mircea’s burial alive at the hands of the nobles of the town of Tirgoviste, who supported a rival family on the throne. They knew he’d stir up trouble as soon as he got home, giving the Wallachians something else to think about besides fighting them. And in that regard, Drac hadn’t disappointed.
He had decided that the only thing that would protect Romania from outside invaders and inner rebels was a show of strength. On Easter Sunday 1459, he started as he meant to go on. Drac invited the nobles of Tirgoviste to a lavish dinner party. Once there, they were arrested and forced to march fifty miles to the town of Poenari, located where the Carpathian foothills turn into real mountains. Those who survived the trek were put to work building him a fortress on a steep precipice overlooking the Arges River. The job continued for months, until their elaborate banquet attire rotted and fell off their bodies—then Drac ordered them to keep working naked. It was the harshest kind of physical labor, mixing mortar and lugging huge stones and timber up the steep mountainside. Many died of fatigue and illness, but some survived. Drac examined his new fortress, decided there was nothing major left to do and ordered the remaining workers impaled.
The castle had, not surprisingly, developed a bit of a reputation. It was said to be haunted by some of the thousands who had died there. Maybe that’s why, when tourists come all agog to see Dracula’s castle, they are taken to Bran Castle in Transylvania, even though the only connection with it Uncle ever had was to besiege it once. But it’s in good condition, while Poenari’s version is a hulking ruin, a great lump of stone and misery, with pieces regularly working loose from the grainy old mortar to drop onto careless-tourist heads.
And Bran doesn’t give people nightmares.
“Dorina! Are you all right?” Louis-Cesare shook me, and from his frantic tone, I had the impression that it wasn’t the first time he’d asked.
The problem was, I didn’t know the answer. I’d been under a lot of stress for a month, without Claire to help mitigate it, not to mention I’d almost died twice in one day. Even with my past experience, that could bring on a troubled night. It could be just a nightmare. But the images had seemed so real, much more detailed than my usual dreams. What if the spell had combined with the wine to dredge up something long buried?
But that didn’t make sense. I’d never been to Poenari, not in its heyday and not afterward. And if I’d never been there, it couldn’t be some residual effects of the spell. So why could I almost feel the rough texture of the stone under my fingertips? Was it a nightmare, or something more? And if it was more, how was I supposed to find out? I couldn’t very well use a flawed memory to search for gaps in the same memory.
Mircea, I thought blankly, what did you do?
“Dorina!”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully without thinking about it, and it wasn’t the right answer.
Louis-Cesare began fumbling around in the bedclothes. Hands slid over my body, looking for an injury. I quickly recalled that I wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of panties, having not had anything suitable for nightwear after Stinky ruined my tee. I realized when a drop of water hit my nose that Louis-Cesare wasn’t much better off. His hair was wet and the only article of clothing on that long body was a damp white bath towel draped loosely around his hips. I couldn’t understand why he’d been showering in the middle of the night, until I noticed a sliver of daylight peeking through a gap in the heavy curtains.
It was morning. Morning of the day I was going to get Claire back. I started to get up, only to have Louis-Cesare force me back down. “You will stay here until I have a physician called.”
“I’m okay—”
“Which explains why I have had to hold you down for the last five minutes to keep you from tearing at your own skin!”
“—and doctors can’t do anything more for me than you already did.”
“Dorina! You are ill!”
“Louis-Cesare! I’m a dhampir! I go crazy on a regular basis. Just one of the joys of being me.” I tried to rise again, only to find that I couldn’t. It was no longer sexy, I decided. “Let me the hell up!”