It was mid-December and winter had all but buried Budapest in thick blankets of snow. As consequence, the streets had gone quiet, the protesters which had been at the wall surrounding the north district since Francesca's call to arms a couple of months ago now having since taken refuge indoors from the storm. The city was still slowly hemorrhaging civilians on a daily basis, even more so now that news of the Spider's execution had spread.
What surprised everyone, however – except for maybe Frankie – was how his network had been virtually eradicated almost overnight, a feat owed to Louise and the Dracul Sânge, who had taken it upon themselves to quietly and effectively squash any would-be heirs to Basilio's criminal empire. Those that had been under his employ in the brothels, if they could manage it, fled in droves for the Oradea tunnel, the song of freedom a soft, lilting tune that hung in the air like a yuletide carol.
Marcus Augustine, however, had also gone notably quiet – not a hair nor hide seen by anyone; not even Feng's shadows could get a read on what the usurper was up to. This, naturally, left those remaining members of the alliance feeling especially wary, but they were quick to take advantage of the lull this latest winter blizzard had brought on.
Carmen's was constantly abuzz with activity. The news that Lilith had promised Augustine an army for the war ahead was now the chiefest of concerns. For nearly a week, Frankie was under a constant state of interrogation as she recalled whatever useful information she could conjure up from Basilio's memories. When that well began to run dry, it was divide and conquer, as meetings were arranged with protest organizers to see who would be willing to fight when the time came.
Unfortunately, with the mass-exodus of Budapest's citizens, the alliance was finding themselves short on bodies for the coming final battle, and while the lycans were more than willing to make up the difference in numbers, it left the vampires – Frankie in particular – wary of placing even more of a burden on the shoulders of the werewolves. They had borne the brunt of this conflict for so long, and while everyone was grateful for the support, this fight wasn't theirs alone. Frankie was forced to acknowledge that the only way to stave off mass-lycan casualties when things finally came to a head with Augustine would be to buffer those numbers with fang as well as claw.
They needed vampire support.
But with numbers dwindling by the day as people fled or isolated themselves in their own homes and communities, and with an unforeseen shortage of blood as humans and dhampirs continued to go missing – even with the Spider's death – things began to feel more uncertain than ever.
It didn't help that Frankie had become more and more distracted by the issue of the Dracul Sânge and the blood-hex. Usually with Jacob or Lyra or both in tow, she would disappear for hours on end to meet up with Bernardini to get the latest on his research, or she'd meet with a few of the stragglers in the witch community that remained in the city to pick their brains for information.
While no one else seemed to question her preoccupied state, Vladislaus, on the other hand, had become all the more concerned by it. He tried to exercise trust in her judgment – but it was becoming more difficult to so. Countless times now, he had opened up an opportunity for her to let him in, to tell him what was going on and what she was working on that required so much secrecy. He had tried on more than one occasion to lead by example, to divulge information to her in a show of good faith, as if maybe it would prove to her that he could indeed be trusted. But still, she remained tight-lipped.
Francesca was fully aware of his growing frustration, and while she did what she could to placate him, assuring and reassuring him in those moments when tensions grew and disagreements persisted, the continued secrecy had only served to drive a wedge between them. That mental link between them, that bridge forged by their blood-bond, had begun to grow in length as the distance slowly, but sure, increased.
It was nothing too severe, of course – but it was there and it left a bad taste in Dracula's mouth. Especially since it felt like everyone knew what it was his wife was dedicating so much of her time to – everyone except him.
"I need you to trust me," Frankie pleaded with him one evening after a group meeting at Carmen's. She was taking off again with Jacob and Lyra – to where, he once more had no idea. "I would tell you if I could, but I can't."
"I don't like being kept in the dark," he told her. "Especially when it feels like everyone else is at least somewhat acquainted with whatever it is you're doing... I am your husband, and your king."
"Vlad, please," she said imploringly, taking his face in her hands. "I want to tell you. I need you to believe that. And if everything goes right, I will. But I can't right now and I need you... I need you to trust me," and she held his head a little tighter when he tried to shake off her hold. "Please. I hate this secret keeping just as much as you do, if not more. But it's for the best. Please believe me."
"Frank! We need to go!" Lyra called out from down the hall.
Francesca let her hands fall to her sides with a heavy sigh. While Dracula's expression remained perfectly passive, she could feel his growing frustration and disappointment coming down that achingly long bridge between them in waves, as cold as the bitter winter air outside.
"I love you," she whispered to him, hoping the words would lessen his irritation. It took the edge off, but that was all.
Before he could say the words back, she departed, leaving him alone to watch as, once again, she vanished into the night with her friend and brother-in-law in tow.
The man released the breath he had been holding out through his nose, struggling with his instincts to cling to his anger and mistrust like an armor. It was a challenge. None of this made any sense to him. They had agreed to do this together, to lead this alliance and the battle against Marcus as one cohesive unit, as partners, as equals. She insisted that she didn't want to keep secrets from him, so what could be so important for her to do so anyway?
Dracula was loathed to admit it, but it made him feel terribly vulnerable, and sitting in that indefinite uncomfortable state of trusting another, especially when he had spent centuries of his life relying on no one – it was too hard. Damn it all to hell, it was just too hard. He had already bent and scraped and humbled himself to win her – did she expect him to just lie down and be passive forever?
The thought made his chest tight as his temper flared.
He knew that falling in love and binding himself to a headstrong female like Francesca wasn't going to be without its challenges, but this. For some reason, everything about this situation felt off to him – whether it was his own insecurity talking or his instincts, he wasn't even sure anymore, but he hated this.
He turned on his heel, ready to just leave for the evening so he could go vent his frustrations to Bernardini in person when he paused mid-step down the hall, catching wind of a conversation Carmen and Rémy were having in the war room.
"I know that she says Dracula isn't ready to get directly involved, but if there was ever a time for him to do so, it's now," Rémy argued. "Frankie has never gathered, let alone led an army before – and neither have I. At least to this scale. We're both completely out of our depths here."
"I know that as well as you do, but we can't force him to come out of the woodwork," Carmen replied. Vlad, unbeknownst to either party, moved closer to the door so he could better listen in. "His majesty insists on Frankie using this time to acquire the experience she'll need to rule at his side once everything is said and done. It's important to him."
"And I can appreciate that, but she can still get the experience she needs with him at the helm. If anything, having Dracula actually pull his fucking weight would not only prove to the people that he gives a damn about them, but it would offload a good chunk of the burden from Frankie's shoulders. I know my sister puts on a good front, but even I can see how crushing the responsibility is. Did you know she blames herself for Vesper still being in a coma?"
"Lyra told me as much," Carmen confessed. "I've tried to get her to adjust her perspective. I mean... Dracula healed her blood condition for crying out loud – and her blood-rage! How many decades did she live with that burden on her shoulders?"
"Too many," Rémy said with a sigh.
"The fact that she's pretty much – for all intents and purposes – back to normal should be a cause for celebration. But instead..."
"I know. I could shake her sometimes," and the pair laughed quietly. "But back to my earlier point – we need Dracula. We need our king. There's got to be a way we can talk to him. Maybe I should just send a message with Vlad or something."
"You could try, but I'm not sure it'll do much good."
"If only there was a way we could... inspire him to come out of the shadows, something we could do to draw him out."
Dracula didn't particularly care for Rémy's conspiring tone of voice.
"Did you have something in mind?" Carmen asked suspiciously.
"It's just a thought... do you remember that assignment Rob and I sort of made up for her last year?"
"With the interviews? Of course I remember. What of it?"
The wheels in Vlad's head began to turn. Interviews. Why was that ringing a bell?
Ah yes.
In the earlier days of their relationship, when she'd be out for an entire evening for some secret meeting that no one spoke of. He had forgotten all about them! More secrets that Francesca had yet to address...
"I was just thinking – nothing ever really came of those."
"Well, that's not true," Carmen interjected. "They're responsible for softening her up to the idea of Dracula in the first place."
"True – but that's not why I agreed to having them meet with her," Rémy insisted. "The original plan was for her to write a series of exposés on them, to use the information she acquired from their meetings and that whole memory absorption superpower of hers – she was supposed to get leverage so we could eventually draw Dracula out. And what has she done with all of that information? Absolutely nothing." He scoffed. "I mean – I take it she still hasn't told him that the Dracul Sânge are even alive."
"No, she hasn't."
Vlad froze.
"See, that's another thing I don't get. Why hasn't she told him? From what I've heard from Lyra and Tristan, they're already massively involved in our undertakings as it is."
"It's not that simple, Rémy."
"But why can't it be? She's already got the rapport with them and the king. Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd have her using them as leverage against him. Frankie may claim her opinion on Dracula has changed, but I know my sister. She hates him. She should be using the Dracul Sânge to strengthen her footing against the dragon – bend him to her will. You know as well as I do that she can't be killed. If he refuses to bend, she could always threaten to..."
"Rémy, your sister is a lot of things, but a mercenary is not one of them."
"Ah, but she could be if you push her just right – I've seen it happen more than once. She has it in her to be just as diabolical as Dracula – perhaps even more so." He almost sounded proud. Carmen laughed and Vlad's blood ran cold.
"Rémy Chase, you are deplorable," the woman announced with an amused groan.
"All is fair in love and war," Frankie's brother said with a sudden gravel to his tone. "If Dracula refuses to play, I say we take away his option to choose... see how he likes it."
There was the soft smacking sound of a kiss and Vlad dared to take a peek into the room. Carmen was sitting on the edge of the table with Rémy standing between her legs, his face in the crook of her neck.
"You are so lucky his majesty isn't around to listen to that traitorous tongue of yours."
Rémy began to whisper in her ear the things he'd like to do to her with that tongue of his, but Dracula had ceased to listen. He was a mélange of conflicting emotions – disbelief, hope, betrayal...
It couldn't be true.
The Dracul Sânge – his children – they were alive?
But how? How was such a thing even possible? He had felt their passing nearly four decades ago. His soul still bore the scars of it, that deep, hollow ache in his bones. It couldn't be.
And yet...
If it was true, if Francesca had known all this time, why hadn't she told him? Why did she continue to pretend that they were gone?
Vladislaus felt sick.
He had poured out his heart to her that morning after the incident with the library and Basilio. He didn't talk about the black night that he had lost his children with anyone, not even Bernardini. He never discussed his feelings, what he had endured – what he continued to endure. He had always kept it bottled up inside – and yet he had confided in her, and for what? She could have told him the truth of it at any point in their relationship. Why keep such a thing a secret? Bernardini surely would have told him if he had known... so why had Francesca kept silent?
Did she really hope to use them as leverage against him?
Was their entire relationship a lie?
Vlad quickly grabbed the reins on his mind before it could run away with all of the doubts and questions now bubbling up to the surface. There was no use in jumping to conclusions just yet.
But one thing was for certain.
He had to find out for himself if there was any truth behind any of this.
Talking to Frankie directly wouldn't be an option for the next couple of hours, and in truth, he wasn't sure he could wait that long. This left him with only one alternative. Without making a sound or any indication that he had been eavesdropping, Dracula vanished into the night, leaving Carmen and Rémy ignorant of the events they had just set in motion.
----
The pealing of little warning bells continued to go off in his head as he willed himself into a being of mist and shadow. With effortless ease, Vladislaus slipped into the Chase siblings' apartment, the flat dark and empty. As he made his way through the front room towards the bookcase, a nagging voice continued to poke and prod –
You shouldn't be doing this.
Francesca told you to trust her.
You're better than this, Vladislaus. There has to be a logical explanation.
But he didn't care.
He was beyond caring, feeling almost possessed by this impatient, borderline irrational need to know for himself. He skimmed the books on the shelf next to the small dining area, recalling how he had seen Rémy access a hidden safe in the wall almost a year ago. Had the book been red or blue?
Blue.
He tipped back the spine as if to remove the book from the shelf and he heard a click.
The bookcase shifted on the floor and he pulled it back with ease, revealing a massive metal door with a keypad and nothing else.
He dipped back into the memory – four beeps. So it was a four-digit passcode, which left him with easily 10,000 different combinations to try. He didn't have that kind of time. He studied the buttons on the keypad in search of any notable wear or useful indications that could help him narrow it down.
Only three numbers in particular stood out.
One, three, and seven.
So one of them repeated at least once.
Vlad's mind raced with the possibilities as he struggled to come up with something that would have resonated with both of the siblings – perhaps a date or year or something.
He thought back to their trip to France that summer, the things he had learned about their family, their history. He suspected the date – probably a year, the more he considered it – started with 17. He closed this eyes, racking his brain for things he might have read or seen, shuffling through the events as if he were combing through the pages of a book.
1706 – the year their parents were married.
1707 – the year Rémy was born.
1709 – the year Francesca was born.
1710 – the year their sister, Marguerite was born.
1725 – Francesca married Alphonse
1726 – Marguerite dies and Francesca miscarries.
Then it hit him.
1737 – the year Eduardo de Meirás entered their lives. The year they all became vampires.
He punched in the year into the keypad and was greeted with three resounding beeps and a green flashing light, followed by a loud click as the locks in the wall released. He opened the safe and quickly began to rummage through the contents. After a few seconds, he ended up gathering everything up into his arms before dumping them out onto the dining room table so he could get a better look.
There were all kinds of documents, file folders, a few thumb-drives... and then an old shoebox – perhaps from a pair of boots, given the size – held together with two pairs of rubber bands.
Pulling off the bands, he lifted the lid of the box and recoiled briefly when he saw his family crest – that dragon insignia – printed onto a folder. Paper clipped to the front flap was a picture and a name.
Jack Belinskaya.
The hair on the back of Vlad's neck stood on end as he lifted the slip of paper with the name of his son to see the face it had been covering. His chest tightened painfully, an uncomfortable lump settling in his throat. He lifted the folder to find four more just like it, one for each member of the Dracul Sânge – Niklaus, Ezekiel, Louise, and Tempest.
Vlad removed the folders from the shoebox and placed them down onto the dining room table before taking a seat. He spread them out so they lied side-by-side and he just looked at them for a moment.
That small and quiet voice in the back of his head returned to nag at him.
Why would she keep this from you?
Maybe she had a reason.
She asked you to trust her.
But why would she hide this? Why did she lie?
Vlad opened the folder for Jack first. Within it were a few notes, some basic facts, and then pages on pages of what appeared to be a transcript of an interview between Jack and Francesca. He skimmed through the first few pages, and as he read their conversation, he could have sworn he could hear Jack's voice in his head. He thumbed through a few of the others before realizing he had overlooked a small USB drive still in the shoebox.
It wasn't difficult to locate a laptop for him to commandeer – the password was the same the alliance used to access their private servers.
What he discovered were a series of audio files of varying lengths. He clicked on the one titled "Louise" – the shortest one – and the default audio player loaded.
"Jack, your presence is no longer required," Louise's familiar voice announced from the laptop speakers. Dracula felt his eyes prick and burn with unshed tears at the sound. "I do not believe I need protection from Miss Chase."
"You keep going on like that, Lou, and you might," Jack replied. Vlad covered his now agape mouth with his hand and something tangible shifted inside of him, like a displaced gear locking into position.
They were alive!
His children were alive!
"Do you mean to say that I am in danger here?" Louise challenged. "That is no threat to me."
"Lou, seriously, stop acting like such a spoiled brat. You're embarrassing me."
"The only child in the room is Miss Chase. No one so naïve would dare to aspire to being our father's queen. I mean look at her, Jack! You seriously expect me to believe that that is the undying bride of the great dragon, the savior of our race? I've seen more promise in some of father's whores than I do in this pitiful disgrace of a woman."
"Miss Poincaré, clearly your brothers have failed to inform you – first and foremost, I have no desire to be any man's queen, let alone Dracula's," came Frankie's reply. Her voice was so clear, so cold – it sent a chill through him.
He listened to the increasingly hostile conversation between his wife and his eldest daughter with such rapt attention, he didn't even hear the deadbolt of the front door click as it was unlocked, nor did he notice the sudden presence of another.
All he knew was the sound of his daughter's voice, the exchange of barbed insults... and then there was a scuffle and Louise was screaming in pain.
His reaction was purely visceral, that old fatherly instinct to protect galloping hot through his veins as his temper flared and his gaze darkened.
"Francesca, that is enough!" Jack was shouting, but Louise's cries only continued.
She had hurt her! Francesca had harmed his daughter!
The rage in him only continued to boil, even as the horror of what was happening in the recording continued to swallow him whole.
"I'm not afraid of that bastard," Frankie was saying now. "Would you like to know what happened to me because of your precious father?"
His stomach dropped to the floor.
"Don't touch me! Don't you dare touch me!" Louise was saying. He could hear her anger, her tears, her fear.
"Francesca, stop!" Jack begged.
"She will never learn, Jack, if she is not taught," was the icy response from Francesca.
The sound of Louise screaming brought the man flying out of his chair. He grabbed the laptop with a clawed hand and sent it soaring across the room. It smashed into the wall. While things had gone silent once more, he could still hear his children in his head – his daughter's anguished shrieks, his son's pleading...
Something beyond rage coiled tight around his heart and squeezed, thorns of betrayal and sudden desperation sinking deep into the muscle as a familiar madness settled in – and then it shifted, distorting into something else, something new, something impossible to free himself of.
His children were alive.
His children had been threatened.
He had to find them and he had to find them now.
Shoving the chair behind him aside, he turned – mind singular, as if he were possessed.
He would tear this city apart brick by brick if that's what it took to find them. But then he stopped mid-step, finally noticing the person who had been standing silently in the entryway, a look of horror on her piqued face.
Francesca.