Dracula's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Dracula held the broken fairy in one hand and the pale root in the other. The hunters had faded up the hill. But the noise of the fight had reached the rest of the hounds. He heard them now, scrambling back toward the only way out. Their claws ticked on the stone. Five blind heads turned toward the exit tunnel and filled it with their bodies. "They've blocked the mouth," he whispered. "We can't climb out that way." Luminara lifted her head from his palm. Her torn wing hung useless. "I can't fly. I can't sing loud enough to pull all five." Dracula set her against a rock. He crouched and listened. The hounds would not leave the exit now. They had heard prey, and they would wait. He could not fight through five without more howling, and more howling would call the men back with their stakes. Then a small shape moved near his boot. His pet rat climbed from the dark, its bleached bones pale in the fairy's light, its eye sockets two black holes. It had followed him down from his coffin, as it always did. He had kept the creature for years. It feared nothing, and it made no sound a living ear could hear. An idea struck him. "Sing one low note," he told Luminara. "Just one. Hold it." She frowned but obeyed. A soft hum filled the cave. The five hounds swung their heads toward her. Dracula lifted the rat to his mouth and breathed the note back at it, low and steady. The rat understood. It skittered across the floor, its tiny claws clicking in a bright rhythm the hounds could track. Dracula guided it with soft sounds, pushing it away from the exit, deep into a flooded side channel. The hounds broke from the tunnel. All five chased the clicking bones into the water. They crashed in after it, snapping at sound. The rat slipped between their legs and vanished into a crack too small for any hound. "Now," Dracula said. He scooped up Luminara and ran. The exit tunnel stood open. He climbed, the root clamped in his teeth, the fairy pressed to his chest. Stone gave way to cold night air. He pulled himself out onto the hillside under a black sky. The hounds howled behind him, trapped in the deep water, chasing a rat they would never catch. Dracula did not stop until the cave mouth lay far below. He set Luminara down on the grass. He took the root from his teeth and held it up. He had it. He was free of the cave. But the moon still hung above him, and his skin still feared the dawn. "The root alone won't break the curse," Luminara said, breathing hard. "You have to know how to use it. And I know who does." Dracula looked at her torn wing. He owed her now. "Then you'll take me to them," he said.