Page 62 of The Curse of Eternity
“Where are all the vampires?” I whispered under my breath, barely audible but confident Drake could hear me.
“While this is the most direct entrance to the fortress, it is not one that is frequented often, these days.” Except his attention lingered on the displaced dust coating the steps below.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I hedged, my grip tightening on the machete’s handle.
“Only select immortals, lycans, and the sorcerer of the Domnitori reside within the fortress—and we are not yet there.”
“What are you talking about?” I retorted, straining my voice low. “Thisis where Helsing defeated Dracula. My family’s passed that story down for generations. They weren’t lying.”
“No, they were not,” Drake agreed. “Although there is a distinction between Poenari Castle—the home to Vlad the Impaler—and the fortress built by his son, the vampire Dracula.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I insisted, keeping my guard up.
“Dracula employed powerful sorcerers to strengthen his position. He instructed them to utilize the immortal magick in his blood in order to create a fortress to shadow this one, parallel with the Poenari Castle of his youth.”
“Like the Summerland?” I nearly stumbled, and Drake steadied me through the shock. “There’s a hidden realm—no, a hiddenfortressinside this one?”
“In essence? Yes.” Drake descended another step, and my footfalls softened when the flooring leveled out.
I followed Drake around one last bend, and nearly ran into him when he stopped. Eyes wide, I glanced over the room we stood in. Across the space, two figures imitated our position, and I raised my blade. When the silhouette opposite did the same, I stopped short.
Roughly thirty feet ahead was an enormous mirror. Its edges stretched to obscure the stone wall behind it, with a gilded frame that glimmered despite there being no light to reflect. I swallowed, shivering from the cold and the eeriness pervading this empty room. Nothing existed between us and our reflection, but the smell entering my nostrils churned my stomach.
A memory flashed, of the days before Halloween following my fourteenth birthday. The funeral service, my crying family members, but I’d already exhausted my own tears by then. Numbed and heartbroken, I couldn’t help but focus on thesmell.Decay staved away only by formaldehyde and the rosy blush on Mom’s unmoving cheeks.
Bile rose up my throat, but I gulped it down, focusing on the here and now.
“That’s why Helsing spent nearly three centuries searching for Dracula,” I mumbled, releasing Drake’s hand to take another step. “Because he was hidden, somewhere Helsing couldn’t enter.”
“There is a…falsehood, for lack of a better term. The myth regarding vampires owning an invisible reflection.” Drake walked past me, his silhouette nearing in the illustrious mirror, undamaged by time or the elements. “It is a mistranslation. The truth is not that Dracula was unable to see his own reflection, but that he was concealed within it.”
“Why a mirror?” I approached, feeling the room grow cooler with every step.
“Where else would you create a place identical yet inverse to your own?” Drake’s gaze traveled along the perimeter of the glass, never quite facing his own image. “This passage is rarely used anymore. When the Domnitori diverted their agenda from conquest to self-preservation, they no longer left their fortress on a regular basis. Instead, their sorcerer communicates with the Cneaz in command of whichever region they wish to contact.”
Through the dim, I squinted at the engraved framework. The shimmering metal held vaguely religious symbols, like the ones on the small bell in our church’s steeple. Except, these depicted perpendicular lines and infinity symbols interspersed with stars facing the earth.
“How do we get through…”
“It is intended for only the lifeless to enter.” Like a demonstration, Drake placed his right hand against the mirror’s surface. It didn’t stop there, passing straight through the glasslike it was as insubstantial as water, but left no ripples in its wake. My heart raced, and I blinked as his pale hand flexed on the other side before he pulled it back to our reality. “In order to gain passage, the enchantment must be deceived. In my day, we were fed the blood of a vampire.”
“I have to drink your blood?”
“A drop will do,” he explained, but I winced. “I must warn, it may offer some…interesting side effects.”
“Like what?”
“The magick running through our veins gives us strength, as it will for you until it is metabolized.”
“Like caffeine? Make me more alert?” Damn, a shot of espresso sounded really good right about now.
The wary expression Drake wore wasn’t reassuring. “More akin to an amphetamine…”
“Never tried that one,” I muttered, and Drake’s responding smile was strained.
“I would not suggest it if it were not the only way I know.”
“Just one drop, right?”
