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I get dressed, glad that I crammed a week’s worth of clothes in that bag, though originally I thought I’d be in Northern California, not the Bavarian Alps. I slip on leggings and a tunic top of dark gray silk that shows off my breasts, then decide to take the leggings off in the end. I’d never go out in public without something underneath since the top barely covers my ass, but since it’s Valtu and I’m supposed to be his plaything for the next while, I guess it can’t hurt. I decide to forgo the bra and underwear as well in the end. They’d just get in the way.
Then I head to the door and pause, realizing he’s locked me in here. Am I supposed to just wait until he comes to get me? Knowing Valtu, yes. He always liked to keep me waiting, especially when it came to anything related to sex.
I try the handle anyway and to my surprise it opens. Either he never locked it with wards at all, or he unlocked it this morning.
I make my way out into the hall, the floors cold against my bare feet, and head down the corridors to the lower level. This time I don’t feel any eyes watching me or any dark presences at my back. The demon must be elsewhere.
The thought of it makes me shudder. The way it watched me, the way it held me from behind. The pain of its claws. It didn’t say anything to me, just this low raspy breathing, but I could feel what it was thinking all the same.
The demon was showing me to Valtu.
It was saying:this is the one you used to love. This is the woman you made yourself forget. What should I do with her?
Valtu seemed to think the demon was claiming me as its own but that’s something I wouldn’t bet on. To do so could cost me my life.
The light at the end of the hall grows brighter and I find myself in the music mezzanine. There are two cigars in an ashtray, smoked halfway. Though no longer smoking, I breathe it in and smile. It’s the same cigars that Valtu used to smoke.
I look around for him here but I don’t see him. The view through the windows catches my eye and I open the shuttered doors to the balcony and gasp.
It is stunning out here.
I step out onto the dusting of snow, the chill biting through my feet, and into the cold wind and immediately feel like I’m flying. We’re on top of the world and though I’m wary about getting too close to the railing, flanked on either end by gargoyles, I can see the mountain peaks across the valley, the clouds passing just below us. Twirling around I look up at the rest of the castle and the mountainside. I can see where the upper floors go, the row of windows, then two tower-like impressions above the rest that seem to push their way out of rock. The rest of the mountain goes straight up for another fifty feet or so until it ends in a craggy-peak, snow settling on the sides.
Suddenly I get the feeling that I’m falling and I stumble for a couple of feet, right up to the railing. I grip the edge of it and look over for a moment and see nothing but a sheer drop of two thousand feet, straight down into the forest far below.
The vertigo takes hold of me and I gasp and quickly move away from the edge. I know I’m immortal, but there’s no guarantee that a fall from this height won’t kill a vampire. Plenty of opportunities to get your head sliced off on the way down, not to mention the pain of the impact. We might not die from things like that, but it doesn’t mean things don’t hurt.
I’m just catching my breath and calming the spinning sensation when I catch a fluttery movement out of the corner of my eye. For a moment I think it’s a bird that’s come to perch along the stone railing.
But when I turn to look at it, I realize it’s a bat. A small black bat resting there on all fours, sharp claws at the tips of its leathery wings.
“Hello,” I say curiously to it. I had no idea bats could be found this high up and in winter.
The bat seems to stare at me for a moment and I get this peculiar feeling, like it knows me, or I know it, but that can’t be possible because—
Suddenly the bat takes flight, going straight up in the air and down right in front of me and with a gust of wind the bat warps in shape and size and suddenly Valtu is standing right in front of me.
“Oh my god!” I scream, hands at my mouth as I stumble backward.
Valtu just dusts off the shoulders of his black coat and eyes me with a hint of amusement.
“Did I scare you?” he asks mildly.
“A bat…you just turned into a bat. That bat was you?”
“Of course.” He gives me a ghost of a smile.
“We candothat!?” I exclaim.
“We? Oh you mean vampires. No, no, no,” he tuts, looking proud of himself. “You can’t. But I can.”
“How?”
“A magician never reveals his secrets.”
Of course. The damn book.
“Do you know magic, Valtu?” I ask, playing dumb for a moment.
