Free The Vengeance of the Vampire Bride by Rhiannon Frater Page B

word.
    “Powers?”
    “Gifts,” she answered. “I can will fire
into being.” The firelight danced in the depths of her dark eyes.
“Sometimes I cannot contain it as I should.” Her voice was tinged
with regret and she averted her gaze as she moved toward a door on
the far side of the abandoned kitchen.
    “We should be careful,” I instructed
her. “All of the windows are shuttered. They could still be about
in the darkness.”
    “Count Dracula will not hurt me,” Magda
assured me.
    “Yes, but I cannot say the same for
me.”
    Drawing close to her, we walked deeper
into the castle.
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    Letter to Lord Astir from
Adem continued…
    We found the castle to be
as the countess had described: some areas were quite pleasant and
restored to their former glory while others were in great
disrepair. Near the library that the countess had described in some
detail, we found the bodies of two gypsies. Magda let out a gasp
when the candlelight fell upon their hideously twisted
forms.
    Taking her candle, I drew
closer to the corpses. Both were completely drained of blood and
only their clothing revealed they were women. Magda looked away
from their wretched faces filled with terror even in death. Setting
the candle near me on the floor, I began to examine them. Their
clothes were bulging around their withered limbs. With gentle
hands, I pulled back their clothing and uncovered bags full of
jewels and other valuables such as a gold goblet.
     
    “They were stealing from the castle,” I
ascertained.
    Magda glanced over her shoulder to see
the loot. “Why would they steal from him? In Buda, all of us knew
that to steal from him was death.”
    “Maybe because they do not fear him
anymore,” I answered, my thoughts quickly sifting through the
various possibilities.
    Instead of commenting as I expected,
Magda instead bit her lip and averted her gaze. I found this
reaction to be intriguing and set aside the looted goods. Returning
her candle, I took hold of Magda’s elbow as I guided her to the
stairway that would lead us down into the dungeons.
    As we passed through a long room filled
with armor, I plucked a torch from the wall and lit it using
Magda’s candle. The light scattered the shadows and illuminated the
dusty floor. Though the darkness lingering in the stairwell was
daunting, I did not sense any lurking danger. I am old enough to
not let my nerves rule over my imagination and I gave Magda a
reassuring smile. The candlelight flickered in her dark eyes as she
returned a strained one.
    “Stay behind me. Their resting place is
nearby, but is not accessible from the dungeons,” I
whispered.
    She glanced over her shoulder into the
blackness behind her. “That is where they rest, isn’t
it?”
    I nodded my head. “The other stairwell
at the opposite end of this hall leads to the chapel and their
resting place.”
    Swallowing hard, she returned her gaze
to me.
    “We shall hurry and be
gone.”
    I do not have the preternatural
instincts of a supernatural creature, but even I could feel the
distinct lack of Vlad’s power in the castle. The man’s presence is
overwhelming even when he is sleeping. His power is as majestic as
it is evil. Yet, despite this castle being his haven, I could not
perceive it. In that moment, I believed that he was
dead.
    I crept down the darkened stairwell, my
ears attuned to the slightest sound that was not our footfalls or
breath. The air was heavy and cold, reeking of mold and rot. The
stairs spiraled downward until I reached the torture room filled
with rusting devices of pain and death. Magda coughed on the dust
that rose as we tread over the ancient floor, approaching the door
that had once kept the countess' mother captive. Countess Dracula
had not recounted the tale of her mother’s death in any detail, but
sorrow had filled her eyes and spilled from her words as she had
instructed us where to search for her mother’s rosary.
    The light from my torch revealed that
the