ground, these black and brown little creatures glistening with the rain. A shiver races over Matilda’s body as she watches the man fall to the ground and roll around under a blanket of bugs, his cries muffled by the lot of them.
When Matilda is finally able to tear her eyes away from where the poor man had been moments before, she realizes the roaches have engulfed not just this one victim but the other hapless men as well—more than a dozen in number—all writhing in agony on the ground.
Only then does she remember to breathe.
* * *
? ? ?
“HURRY! GET INSIDE!” Vambéry cries out, holding the door open wide.
Thornley is first into the house, followed closely on his heels by Ellen, and then Bram, who clutches a small wooden box with both of his muddy hands.
BRAM
FIVE MINUTES UNTIL NIGHTFALL
The roaches parted as they ran towards the house, clearing a path in the carpet of writhing insects as men scream all around them.
Vambéry hastily slams the door of the house once they are inside.
“What the hell was that?” Thornley demands, retreating in the far corner of the room just inside the door, his eyes darting to Bram.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Bram stutters. He is breathing heavily, his heart pounding in his throat. He sets the small box down on the table and leans over it, steadying himself with both hands.
Matilda is staring at him, too, unable to speak, as rain pours in through the hole in the ceiling.
“We must hurry,” Ellen says, reaching for the box.
Bram watches as she unhooks the tarnished latch and gently lifts the lid, revealing the heart inside.
“You did that,” Thornley says. “You commanded those . . . those things?”
Bram says nothing. When he catches Matilda’s eyes on him, he turns away.
Ellen reaches inside the box and takes the heart in hand, her fingers brushing off the dust with care, even tenderness. Her thoughts become lost in the task, oblivious to the others in the room. Folding back the tarpaulin over Deaglan’s body to reveal the gaping hole in his chest, she returns the heart to its cavity.
Bram is not sure what he expects to happen next, but nothing does.
The body of Deaglan O’Cuiv remains inert, nothing but the pieces of the man he used to be assembled in loose order on a table.
Thornley crosses the room to Ellen. “You said Dracul’s blood is evil. You said anything born of him is evil. What will happen if you wake this man? Should he be restrained somehow?”
Vambéry is there then, his silver sword in one hand and a wooden stake in the other. “I think we have let this go on long enough.”
Ellen hisses at him and he backs away.
Thunder rumbles outside, followed all too quickly by Emily’s peals of laughter. Bram and Thornley go to the window. Emily is standing at the top of the hill overlooking the cemetery, her long blue gown whipping in the wind and rain. She takes a step, then another, a sort of childish skip from one end of the hill to the other. “Come out, come out, my love! Dance with me in the rain! Thooornley . . . why are you hiding from me on such a beautiful night?”
Bram watches as she goes back and forth. There is something off about her steps, the flowing nature of them. It isn’t until she makes her second pass that he realizes what it is—she is no longer touching the ground, but floating slightly above it. The icy rain seems to miss her, the drops rolling away before they contact her. The burn marks on the backs of her arms, the cuts, are all gone now, her skin healed. She laughs again, and Bram hears it in his mind as clearly as he hears it with his ears.
The storm breaks for a second, but it is long enough for him to realize the sun has left them, disappearing behind the horizon as night takes hold.
Emily dances atop the hill as the storm churns, swirling thick raindrops pounding at