Dracula pressed his palm against the cave wall and listened to the hunters above. Their boots scraped the rock. He had come down to these depths for one thing: a root that grew only where no sun had ever touched. The old scrolls said it could break the curse that locked him to the dark. One taste of it, and he could hunt under the noon sky like any living thing. But the root grew past a flooded passage, and between him and that passage waited the hounds. The cave hounds had no eyes. They hunted by sound alone, and their howls rose like sirens. Each cry traveled up the stone and told the hunters where to dig. Dracula counted six of them in the dark below. He could kill them, but a fight would make noise, and noise would bring the men with stakes and fire. A light flickered beside his shoulder. Luminara hovered there, small and bright, her wings throwing color on the wet rock. She had followed him from the surface, though he had warned her to stay away. "You'll get us both caught," he whispered. "You'll get us both killed," she answered. "You can't fight sound." She crossed her arms. "But I can sing." Dracula frowned. He did not trust her. A fairy had no reason to help a creature like him. But the hounds were already stirring, and the hunters were already close. "The hounds follow pitch," Luminara said. "Give me a path and a place to lead them, and I'll pull their ears away from you." He pointed down a side tunnel that sloped away from the flooded passage. "There. Dead end. Fill it with your noise." Luminara darted into the side tunnel and began to hum. The note climbed high and clear. Below, every hound turned its blind head toward the sound. They scrambled after her, claws clicking, howling at the false trail. The howls now echoed down the wrong tunnel, away from Dracula and away from his coffin's resting place. He moved fast. He slid into the flooded passage and swam through black water until his hand closed on the pale root. He tore it free and pressed it to his chest. Then a hound screamed in pain. Luminara's hum broke into a cry. Dracula surfaced and saw her light flickering low in the side tunnel. One hound had caught her scent in the still air. It had her cornered. He had the root. He could climb out now and leave her. The hunters' voices had faded down the hill, drawn off by the chase. His escape was clear. Dracula looked at the root in his fist, then at the fading light. He bared his fangs and dropped into the dark tunnel after the hound. He reached her as the beast lunged. He tore it aside and crushed its throat. Luminara dropped onto his open hand, her wing bent and torn. "You came back," she breathed. "I need your voice," he said. "More than I need the sun."

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.