all around.
They continue forward, the hours passing in silence, the cypress and yew trees growing dense by the foot. Tall and thick, the old trees sway with the increasing wind and bitterness of the approaching storm—a storm that moves slowly, seeming to follow them rather than passing overhead.
“We must be getting close,” Vambéry says, pointing at the ground. Bram glanced over the side of the wagon and sees the remains of a stone foundation of an old building long lost to the elements. Another building, smaller in size, stands about a hundred feet farther down the road.
They pass the place where they saw the man and find no sign of him. No footprints, no trampled weeds, nothing.
Another wolf howls in the distance, much closer than the last. The horses begin to strain and rear, but Thornley speaks to them soothingly and they quiet down.
The road winds through the trees, and soon they come upon a low stone wall and follow it down to the floor of the valley.
The remains of the village appear before them. One moment, there is nothing; then they turn a corner and the ruins appear from behind a wall of tall cypress. Old stone structures, the thatch and wood roofs long since rotted away, dozens of them, all clustered together. The name Dreptu pops into Bram’s mind, probably from Ellen. He knows it isn’t a German word, and it isn’t the name of this place, yet it is there, now known to him.
At the middle of what is probably the village green stands a black coach and four horses, their coats glistening and dark as coal.
THREE HOURS UNTIL NIGHTFALL
“Is that his coach?” Matilda asks, her eyes fixing on the black vehicle sitting silently in the center of the village ruins.
“Where’s the driver?” Bram asks. There is no sign of whoever drove the coach here. The windows are covered in dark velvet, holding back all light—Bram can’t see inside. He might be in there or he might be somewhere else in the village. He may be watching them right now.
“There’s someone lying on the ground,” Thornley says, climbing down from the wagon. Vambéry and Bram follow.
The weeds around the coach are tall, and at first Bram can’t see anyone. Then he does, a body lying near the front right wheel. Unmoving. Bram starts towards the coach.
Vambéry grabs his shoulder. “Wait.”
Vambéry retrieves the rifle from his satchel. He also retrieves three wooden stakes, the ends sharpened to wicked points. He hands a stake to Bram, another to Thornley, and retains the third for himself.
“I see at least three other corpses,” Matilda tells them, standing in the back of the wagon. “Two behind the coach, the legs of another around the other side.”
Bram sniffs the air, confirming that the bodies around them are, indeed, all dead.
He crosses the village green with the other two men at his back. As he approaches the coach, he again tries to peer inside, but the curtains are not only pulled tightly shut but are tacked to the frames of the windows. If someone is in there, Bram cannot tell.
The body beside the coach is dressed in the same garb as the man they spotted on the road earlier. His eyes and mouth are open, locked in an expression of extreme fright. There is a small tear at his neck, still sticky with drying blood.
“This happened recently,” Bram says. “No more than a few hours ago.”
Vambéry shakes his head. “That is not possible. The strigoi do not hunt during the daylight hours; they lack the strength. Look at the size of this man. He could have overpowered Dracul easily if his life was threatened. Dracul would never risk such a confrontation.”
Thornley next kneels beside the two bodies behind the coach. “These two are the same, drained of all blood. Their bodies are still warm.”
Bram is now at the fourth corpse, his fingers slipping over the two small punctures at the neck. “What if they died willingly?”
“What do you mean?” Vambéry frowns, puzzled.
“What if these men gave themselves to Dracul, allowed him to drain them in