Free Earthbound: An Otherworld Novella by Yasmine Galenorn

had no clue how real some of the legends and nightmares were. “Yes, Dracula’s very real. He was going to be sent to the Subterranean Realms about a thousand years ago when he escaped over to Earthside, through one of the portals. I don’t know whether it was left unguarded or whether he was just clever, but he made his way over here and took up life as Vlad the Impaler. There’s a lot your history books don’t say about him, but yes, he was…and is…Dracula. And when Vlad “died” he just shifted back into his Dracula persona and took up from there. The stories of Vlad’s death are merely a cover-up. Dracula still roams the planet, though I have no idea why he’s stayed so low-key since then.”
    “Well, what do you know? Maybe he got his fill of life in the public eye?” Chase let out a short laugh. “So, Dracula’s real. And Dredge is worse than he is.”
    “Dredge is far worse than Dracula. Dredge is carnage incarnate. Anyway, so Menolly was sent to spy on him. She was a jian-tu , basically a super-athlete. She could climb walls, cling to the barest of outcroppings, put any acrobat to shame, walk tightropes…but our half-human blood landed her the curse of occasionally losing her grip. You see, the jian-tu are born, not bred. And now and then her skills would vanish. She fell from the hiding place where she was spying right into the middle of Dredge’s nest.”
    “And they turned her?” Chase’s expression had gone from curious to horrified.
    “Not at first. She actually managed to get free and had almost escaped. In fact, she made it out of the cavern system and to the hilltop above. She was hurt, but she still managed to escape. But just as she about to run over to the woods and hide, Dredge appeared. She couldn’t fight him. He took her back into the lair, where he spent the entire night torturing her. He used a dull knife to cover her body from her throat to her wrists with carvings—he basically carved her skin. Then he raped her, forced her to drink from him, and then he killed her. Of course, she was reborn a vampire. As a final insult, he sent her home to destroy her family.”
    Chase leaned back against the railing. He closed his eyes as he rested his head on the newel post. “We have monsters like that over here. I suppose the fact that Dredge is a vampire makes it worse, but we have very real, very dangerous monsters of our own, Camille. Predators who prey on children, who maim and torture them. That’s one of the reasons I became a cop. I couldn’t face the thought that there were perverts running free, and I wasn’t doing anything to stop them.”
    His words made me see him in a new light. Chase truly cared about his job. He cared about the innocent.
    “Menolly arrived home, crazed. She was like a rabid animal, with Dredge’s instructions filling her mind. Delilah and I were home, along with one of the serving women. When Menolly came bursting through the door and I realized she was vampire, I sent Delilah upstairs to hide. I told the serving woman to get out. Then, I lured Menolly into the safe room that my father had provided in case of a vampire attack.”
    “Vampire attacks are that common over there?”
    I shook my head. “My father’s paranoid. He hates vampires with a passion. Menolly broke my arm in the process, but I managed to lock her in. The YIA took her away for a year. My father threatened to expose the fact that they had sent an agent, known for not having a lot of experience, into harms way. We had proof that Menolly had repeatedly asked for backup during the two weeks prior, when she was first assigned to spy on Dredge, but the YIA ignored her. Father made it clear that it wouldn’t look good to the general public to find out what had actually happened.”
    Chase was silent for a moment, then he asked, “if your father hates vampires, how does he feel about your sister?”
    It was my turn to hesitate. Father had treated Menolly like she had the plague. Oh,