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Before, I’d been a wilting, English-speaking maid. But now, in my black apron, I was a bossy, in-charge kitchen Frau.
I stopped the first girl I saw whose hands were empty and ordered her in crisp, perfect German, “Go upstairs. Tell them the other girl is indisposed. ” I saw by her widened eyes, she knew exactly who was upstairs. I shoved the tray at her. “Serve them brandy. Do not spill. ”
She stared at me blankly, the glasses tinkling lightly as they jostled on the tray in her trembling hands.
“Schnell,” I barked, enjoying it more than I should.
My mind whirring, I stormed on. How to find the dungeons?
I passed another woman in a black apron like mine. The head maids were older, and I was afraid I looked far too young for the part. I felt her pause, assessing me.
I headed her off at the pass, spitting, “Es ist keine Zeit. Es Probleme mit den Gefangenen. ” No time. Trouble with the prisoner.
Her expression softened, accepting me as a peer. She felt my urgency, though, and nodded down the hallway, where I spotted a shadowy chasm. Another spiral staircase, I guessed, this one going down.
“Carl has the keys,” she told me in German.
I gave her an officious nod. Carl was about to meet my steak knife.
This staircase was
darker, and foul odors rose from below, damp and rotting. I paused on the narrow stairwell, hiking up my dress for the second time that day, and slid out my knife. Holding up my skirts, I tiptoed the rest of the way down.
Carl was probably the guard—I hoped he was just a Trainee, or better yet, a human man. I wasn’t sure how I’d do facing a full-on vampire.
Cells lined the hallway, most empty, a few not, their occupants all catatonic, or worse. I kept my movements fluid and light as I went, repeating my mantra. I am water that flows. I am Watcher. Murmuring was coming from the end of the hall, and I walked toward it. The only other sound was the whip-whip of the single torch hanging on the wall.
The guard didn’t hear me, but the rodents did, and a burst of chittering and scurrying announced my arrival.
“Vas isst—?” I heard a German voice hiss in the dark.
I sped up. I was distantly aware of a pale face floating in the shadows, in a cell at the end of the hallway, but I didn’t have time to consider it. The guard had turned and spotted me. He was headed my way.
Crap. It was a full-on vampire.
No time to think. I stopped short, grinding the balls of my feet to the dirt-packed floor. I readied the knife in my right hand, finding its balance just below the midpoint. I imagined his beating heart—if a vampire’s heart did beat—and I threw.
The adrenaline, the ghostly figure at the end of the hall, the vampire rushing toward me—all of these things focused me, and instantly my mind snapped to a different place, one where it was only me and this target, a bright, razor-sharp point where the vampire’s heart would be. Like iron to a magnet, my knife flew truly, struck the left side of his chest, and stuck.
He staggered and crumpled. My concentration broke, and I stood there for a second, brutally thrust back into reality. My right side was killing me. …I couldn’t catch my breath. …There might be other guards. …That was my only weapon.
And…the vampire imprisoned at the end of the hall was staring right at me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The clap of a hand broke the silence, and then another, until it became clear that the vampire imprisoned at the end of the corridor was giving me a lazy round of applause. It was accompanied by the hideous sound of rattling chains—if I could see more clearly through the shadows, I imagined I’d find him shackled.
I looked around nervously, but he stopped me, saying in a voice hoarse with disuse, “Relax. He was the only one. ”
I squinted in his direction, but his face remained a featureless, pale specter in the darkness. There was only one torch, and even though the drink had greatly improved my vision, it wasn’t enough to see clearly through this murk.
“Come into the light,” he said.
I stepped forward, tilting my head and peering through the darkness.
“That’s it. …Come closer. I won’t bite. ” He laughed, amusing himself, and the sound was a breathy rasp. But when I stepped closer still, he only laughed louder. “My savior is a girl?”
Great, another man to whom I needed to prove myself. I stood tall, making my tone fierce and impatient. “Carden McCloud, I presume. ”
