Dracul (7 page)

That sound like fluttering, and screeching, and holy murder of crows, it’s a flock of birds!

No, bats.

Angry bats are careening toward my head from all directions.

While I’m distracted, my attacker lets go of the bag with one hand and tries to unzip my coat.

If he pulls my coat off, the backpack will go with it.

That’s it. I have no choice.

I blow a blast of fire that sends the cloud of bats screeching away from inches in front of my face. I turn my head to aim the flames at my attacker, but he just sort of leans away from the worst of it (he’s got the straps stretched far enough he can do that now, pulling several feet away from my face without letting go of my bag, though he at least lets go of my now-unzipped coat). And maybe his ski mask is fireproof, or something, because it doesn’t seem to melt or burn or anything.

Fireproof vampires?

My worst nightmares have nothing on this.

At least now, the guy is in kicking range.

I whip my left leg around in an outer crescent kick even as I pivot in that direction.

The guy ducks, but I hit him with a series of inverted round kicks alternating intermittently with regular round kicks, which seem to both confuse him and give him a taste of my shoe leather.

Is he seriously trying to bite my boot? It’s kind of hard to see with bats swooping around my head everywhere.

“Creepo, you’ve got freakish taste,” I observe aloud, but he’s starting to lean in too close for me to kick him effectively again, so I follow up my words with another blast of fire, which is long overdue because the bats were getting way too close for my comfort. I don’t think any of them touched me, but I’m a tad distracted right now, so I can’t say for sure.

I switch legs, taking care to keep my jeans away from the flames (note to self: maybe look into fire-proof pants—can’t let the enemy have every advantage). I whip a couple of kicks toward his face before I notice the bag and my coat are slipping from my shoulders.

Between his strap-tugging and coat-unzipping, he’s got the straps loose enough to pry the bag free.

I blow another furious blast at his face, but this time, as he ducks away, he takes my bag with him, ducking and rolling across the snow with the bag held tight to his chest.

I lunge toward him, only to fall flat on my face on a sheet of wet ice.

Oh no, I didn’t.

I did.

My fiery breath melted enough of the abundant snow that it puddled all around me, and is quickly freezing up again in the frigid winter evening, fanned by the wings of dozens of low-swooping bats.

You know what? Come to think of it, I really
don’t
like bats.

I scramble to my feet in time to see my attacker roll free of the ice, spring to his feet, and start running away with my backpack.

Chapter Seven

No, no, no, no, no!

I can’t let him get away with everything in my bag.

My wallet. My ID. The contact info on my phone that would lead him to every dragon I know, including the babies.

Flameproof vampires cannot be allowed to find my niece and nephew.

I don’t care who sees me.

Thankfully, I long ago perfected the art of changing only parts of myself into dragon form. My coat is dangling loose on my arms, so I fling it off as my wings rip through my shirt and beat down once, launching me past the bats and after my bag.

The guy has one arm through one backpack strap, and he’s trying to slip the other arm through the other strap as he runs.

I swoop low, grab the bag, and lift off into the sky. I’m trying to get away with my bag, but the dude is dangling by one arm, looped through one strap. I shake him hard enough to rattle every bone in his body, but he doesn’t let go.

Meanwhile, the longer I’m airborne and the higher I fly, the greater the chance I’ll be seen.

Can’t risk that.

These were great gloves while they lasted, but the claws are coming out.

Five long talons sprout through the leather at my fingertips. I hold the bag tight in my left (normal) hand, and slash at the strap with my right (clawed) hand.

But even as I do so, the man tugs the bag against his chest and rolls in the sky, so I manage only to slash open the front of my bag.

I can see my phone and my wallet inside the slashed-open outer pocket. They’re all I really need. At this point, I’m ready to take what I can get.

My talons retract instantly, and I grab the phone. The wallet is too bulky, and I fumble after it with my split gloves.

We’re still in the air about eight feet off the ground when the dude wraps one arm tight around the backpack.

It shifts in the sky. I’m trying to grab my wallet, but I don’t dare let go of my phone.

And he’s gone.

The guy is completely gone, disappeared out of thin air.

My wings pull back into my shoulders, folding away to nothing as I land and look frantically around.

What the?

He just disappeared?

I shake my head, which is still throbbing from that poor choice of a head butt. Ow.

The good news is, I still have my phone in my hands.

The bad news is, when my attacker disappeared, he took my bag with him.

Was that why he was trying to put it on? Because he knew he could disappear with it? If so, I was only seconds away from losing everything, or at least every contact in my phone.

The bats have fled. They didn’t disappear into thin air the same way my attacker did. Rather, they flew away in all directions, probably back to whatever warm hiding place they came from, although I do wonder…don’t bats have to hibernate to survive cold winters?

When I was looking up about rabies, I came across several articles about white nose syndrome. I didn’t read any further once I found out it doesn’t affect humans, but I did learn it’s a fairly harmless fungus that grows on bats’ noses. It’s usually fatal, though, because it itches and wakes them up during hibernation when there’s nothing to eat, but since they’re not in hibernation stage anymore, they use up their stores of body fat too quickly and starve to death, or go out looking for food and freeze to death.

Fungus or not, the bats the vampire called to help attack me are probably freezing and hungry right now.

Okay, I know I said a minute ago that I really don’t like bats, but you know what else? I think that’s a mean trick, calling them out and then leaving them to die.

I check the sky for any further sign of the bats or the dude who stole my backpack, but I don’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary as I walk back to where I dropped my coat.

Thankfully, my coat was unharmed, and the zipper still zips smoothly. This is especially good since the back of my shirt got ripped out by my wings, and until the moment when I’m back inside my coat, I could feel the cold breeze hitting me through the gaps.

My right glove is also noticeably mangled. From the smell of it, my jeans may have gotten singed in a few places, too, but they’re at least still intact.

I’m also sore from all that kicking and landing on the ice and struggling with my attacker, so I move slowly as I head back up the sidewalk, late for my dinner rendezvous with Constantine.

The sidewalk has been plowed, but there’s still enough snow here for me to see footprints. Of course, my attacker and I are not the only ones who have walked here, but his footprints should be on top. I squint at the ground and walk slowly, searching for any clue.

“There you are!” A deep, slightly Eastern-European voice calls out to me. “I was starting to worry about you.”

I look up as Constantine trots toward me.

Sure,
now
he shows up. Why couldn’t he have gotten here a few minutes earlier and helped me out?

At least he didn’t get here when I had my wings out. That would have been a tough one to explain.

Constantine stops before he reaches me, crouching near the ground. I can’t see what he’s doing—the streetlights here are too widely spaced, the evergreens and tall buildings casting shadows that make it too dark to allow me to see clearly.

When he stands again, he’s holding something in his hands, studying it.

I’ve nearly reached him when he holds the item out to me. “Is this yours?”

“It’s my wallet.” I grab it and look through the contents. Everything appears to be there. “How did you—”

“It was lying on the ground. How did it get over here?”

“I’m not sure,” I answer truthfully. One of two things could have happened. Maybe it fell out of my bag as I was trying to grab it while fighting my assailant in the air.

Or maybe—and I study Constantine’s eyes for any sign of guilt, but his eyes are as dark as the night and just as mysterious—Constantine may have been my attacker.

I don’t know what my assailant looked like because he was wearing a ski mask, but his build fits Constantine’s. The jeans and parka, though ubiquitous this time of year, are fundamentally the same, and it was too dark for me to see any details that might differentiate between them. Constantine may have disappeared with my backpack (just as he disappeared last night) and then reappeared and pretended to find my wallet on the ground.

The cold air invades my lungs and slows the ramming of my heart with a dread akin to terror.

Did Constantine attack me?

Or did my wallet fall out of my bag before the real attacker fled with everything else?

I’m not sure which theory is more plausible, but until I know the truth, I really can’t trust this man, can I?

“Ready to go eat?” Constantine seems to shake off his question about my wallet’s strange location, without pressing for any clear answer.

Is that strange? Should it make me suspicious?

I shake my head once, slowly, then wince. “Sorry. I slipped on the ice back there and fell.” I point behind me to the place where my fire created a safety hazard. “I think I may have hit my head.” On a vampire’s hard noggin, but I don’t want to let on about that last part. Not if Constantine’s head may have been the noggin in question.

Constantine looks more closely at the glove I’m using to point. “What happened to your glove? You know, you look…roughed up.”

“I—I,” I place my hand on my forehead and think quickly. In another moment, he’s going to be asking me about the blackjack books, which are long gone. How much do I dare tell him?

I don’t like keeping secrets. I certainly don’t like secrets being kept from me.

But there are a lot of things Constantine has yet to tell me. Why should I be an open book when he keeps his book to himself?

He can’t know I’m a dragon. Not unless I know I can trust him, and we’re far,
far
from that. So I can’t let on anything about what I just did or what I’m capable of, but I can tell him why the books are gone.

“I think I may have been attacked. Jumped from behind. My backpack is gone.” I snap my fingers through the slashes in my gloves. “That would explain why you found my wallet down the sidewalk.”

Constantine’s face hardens. I’m not going to lie, this is a scary look he’s sporting right now. He may be charming when he smiles, but he’s terrifying when he’s angry. His nostrils flare as he breathes out a furious breath that forms a cloud in the cold air between us, veiling his face. “Your backpack?” Another cloudy breath. “What was in it?”

“Your blackjack books, mostly, and my textbook and notes from the political science class I came from before I hit the library.” Thankfully, the poly sci text should still be available in the campus bookstore, and I can get the notes from the class online forum, so none of that is irreplaceable. And even more thankfully, because of the sheer volume of blackjack books I was carrying, I left all my Dracula materials at home.

For once.

“Do you have any idea who may have attacked you?” Constantine meets my eyes.

I study his face for any sign of guilt. He looks livid. He’s also significantly taller than I am, even though I’m pretty tall and these boots add a couple inches to that. From this vantage point, his nostrils are flaring like a bull about to charge.

I set my jaw and meet his gaze as well as I can from below. “Do you?”

He flinches slightly, glances at the sky for just an instant, then stares back at me again, blowing a white cloud from both his nose and mouth this time. “Are you okay? I can walk you home.” That breath must have been his anger deflating. He’s suddenly being nice to me?

This is strange.

“I’m more hungry than hurt,” I tell him honestly. “Let’s get those steaks, then you can walk me home.”

We head for the restaurant, moving slowly. I don’t know how wise it is to hang out with Constantine, but at least this way I can keep an eye on him, and we’ll be in a public place. That’s sort of safe, isn’t it?

Since it’s a Tuesday evening, the restaurant isn’t terribly busy. Constantine gets us a small table near the back. He’s all business while the waiter is taking our orders. I go ahead and order the 24-oz. T-bone, the biggest steak they have. Normally I’d hold back on a first date, but after all I’ve been through, I just want to eat a big, juicy steak.

He’s lucky I didn’t order two, especially since he already said it was his treat.

Once the waiter is gone, however, Constantine leans close and speaks in a low but intense tone. “Do you have any enemies?”

“Do you?”

A tiny twitch of a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, and he leans back in his chair, eying me. “Rilla Melikov.”

Did he just learn my full name earlier when he looked inside my wallet?

It’s possible. I certainly never revealed it to him.

I lean back and imitate his posture and gaze. “Constantine, I forget what you said your last name was. Something with an
F
?”

“Funar.”

“Funar?”

“It means rope maker.” He shrugs. “I bought it, you know.”

I lean forward again. “Who else have you been?”

He shakes his head slowly, his eyes never once leaving mine. “It is less dangerous for you if you do not know.”

I can feel my eyes narrow as frustration and even anger squeeze my face. “I was attacked this evening. Robbed. Somebody—some
thing
—is after me, or after something I have or something they think I have, I don’t know what. But I think you know more than you’re willing to say, and until you tell me—” I swallow back my words as our waiter appears with our water glasses.

I whisper “thank-you,” and sip from the straw until the waiter is out of earshot. Then I tell Constantine, “I cannot help you until I know who and what you are.”

“I already told you.”

“Names. I want names.”

“I bought them all. None of them were me.”

“The first one. Who were you originally?” I’m staring him down, but he looks away, stirring the ice in his water with the straw.

When he looks back up at me, he says, “Constantine.”

“You were Constantine the first time?”

He nods. “Last names weren’t necessary then. One name was all I needed.”

“And
what
are you?” I whisper, leaning close, even though the people at the nearest table are young co-eds laughing loudly, completely oblivious to our existence.

“I told you what I am.”

I raise an eyebrow. My brows might not be as imposing as his, but they get the point across.

He swallows. “Vampire.”

“I want to see.”

“No.” He leans back in his chair. “Too dangerous. Far, far too dangerous.”

“Where are your fangs?”

He rolls his eyes. Then he plucks the dessert menu from where the waiter left it to tempt us. Constantine uses the big laminated thing to shield his face from anyone else’s view (it’s a wall on our other side, being in the back, as we are) and opens his mouth.