Walter de Ville's Advocate

Chapter Eighteen

I needed out.

Climbing against the walls, I fought to run from it, that black abyss threatening to swallow me whole.

"I have to go, I need to go," I chanted, finally reaching one of the dozen exits from my manor.

All I knew is that I needed to be outside, to pretend that I could feel the cold air seizing me up like the time I fell in the frozen lake outside my family's castle . . . when my older brother had saved me from drowning.

I barely made it to through the door before I collapsed against the stone exterior of my home.

"H—how is it that I can remember that?" I asked the open air. That heavy weight seemed to drop on me then, threatening to bring my knees to the ground. "What the hell is happening?"

An ache in my chest caught me off guard, and I winced up at the moon and stars that were desperately trying to light the ground on this foggy night. I summoned all of my strength to right myself – standing firm on my own two feet – and almost roared in pain when I noticed a piercing noise I hadn't paid attention to when stepping outside.

Voices.

Just like last night when I overheard Evie, Viktoria, and Lucy?

No.

No, there were thousands of them – hundreds of thousands, overlapping each other. Some crying out in anguish, while others seemed irate and accusative. I couldn't see them, no ghostly forms like that of my late wife, but I knew that they surrounded me; that they were closing in.

That fear struck me, the same I felt ebbing and flowing for the last hundred years without three brides, but it was stronger . . . almost lethal.

And now I could distinctly make out some of their words:

Walter.

Master de Ville.

Lord Drăculești.

Traitor.

Treacherous.

Vlad Impaler.

Evil.

The Devil.

Son.

My mouth opened like that of a fish, and I felt like I might be drowning. My chest lurched forward, and then my hands were on the ground as if magnetized there. I tried to lift my head from the flagstone, but the weight crushing me was unbearable.

I cried out then, pain saturating my mind. To a human's eyes, they would've thought I were bawling, but still no tears appeared; they couldn't.

It was impossible.

My eyes seemed to focus on the ground just a few meters from me, and it's when I first saw her. The hem of Emmaline's dress slowly came into view, and I glanced up to see her standing over me in the same satin gown she wore the night she took her own life.

"Do you remember?" she asked. When I didn't respond – couldn't respond – she continued. "You were desperate to prevent Mehmed II from invading your country again, and you were out of options, not to mention the propaganda wielded against you that had your own people questioning your authority."

"They called me a m—monster," I groaned, fighting to pull myself up from the ground.

"So, you became one?" she asked.

"You already know the answer to that question," I muttered, thinking that she seemed to already know the answer to everything she would be asking me. "Would be amusing if you didn't, Emmaline."