The Carnival of Deepest Desire, Part 4
No Way Out
This serial is a sequel to North of Midnight. Carnival of Deepest Desire can be read as a standalone, but if you’d like to read North of Midnight first, click the button below.
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“I am not property,” I said. “I cannot be sold.” Brave words—but they were undercut by the shakiness of my voice.
“You came in uninvited,” said the Dulluhan’s severed head. “That gives me the right to do with you as I please. But your situation could be far worse. Anyone who buys you will want to keep you in good enough shape that you can still use your prophetic gifts.”
This seemed the wrong time to point out that I had no prophetic gifts—at least, not that I knew of. But what could I say or do that would work better? The red caps that encircled me pressed closer, their overly long pikes now near enough to wound me if I moved an inch. The darkness that obscured even my magic senses made it impossible for me to tell if Carlos, Shar, or Khalid was close enough to help me if I took the risk of crying out. And aside from those senses, I had no magic to use against the Dulluhan’s forces. The amulet I wore might protect me from some kinds of magical attack, but it didn’t shield me from physical attacks. The pikes could make a pin cushion of me any time the red caps got restless.
“Lay your sword and amulet on the ground,” said the Dulluhan. “You’ll have no need of them now.”
Allowing myself to be disarmed and left more vulnerable to magic seemed like a bad ides, but getting myself killed seemed like a worse one. I dropped both items on the ground as fast as I could. One of the nearby red caps snatched them up and passed them in the Dulluhan’s direction.
“Hurry along now,” said the Dulluhan. “I have a buyer waiting already.”
His coach began rolling forward, and the red caps shoved and poked at me to keep me going in the right direction. I had no choice but to follow the Dulluhan as fast as I could.
I tried repeatedly to sense anything around me, but I had no luck. Shar had probably seen the direction in which I’d run to follow the Dulluhan, but I had no idea if we were still going in the same direction.
The farther we went, the tenser I got. My heart was beating too fast, even though I didn’t have to exert that much to keep up with the pace. Each step took me that much farther from any hope of rescue.
When at last we approached something I could see through the darkness, the sight was hardly reassuring. Instead of being a carnival booth or ride, it was a building whose black marble exterior reminded me a little of a mausoleum, except that structures like that normally housed the remains of only one person or, at most, a family. This building appeared to stretch out for a long distance, as if it were some kind of city of the dead.
As we got closer, I could see a rounded archway, possibly the entrance, that was lit by two torches. Large flocks of what appeared to be gray birds flew above it, though what little I could see from my magical senses made them seem more like vampires than living birds. A kind of undead aura radiated from them.
Now that we were close to the mausoleum—or whatever it really was—I noticed that, though it still looked like black marble, it smelled like soil. Was it a faerie mound in disguise? What would be the point of such deception here?
The Dulluhan parked his coach at the entrance and led us down a hallway so narrow that the red caps had no choice but to string out into a long line, with some in front of me and some behind me. How I wished I still had that faerie sword now! If I only needed to take on two at a time, and they lacked room to use their pikes effectively, I might have managed an escape. But I doubted I could fight my way out with my bare hands.
The hallway was broken periodically by arched doorways that led into small rooms. They were mercifully dark. I had the feeling I didn’t really want to see what might be in there. At best, it would be human remains, but I kept hearing scratching sounds from somewhere inside. My nerves were on edge enough without knowing the origin of those sounds.
I could see light up ahead. Its source turned out be torches burning in wall sconces set at about eye level at regular intervals around a large, circular chamber with a domed ceiling.
Having some light, inadequate as it was, was a welcome change for once. But what stood in the center of the chamber was not.
Fake Dracula gave me a fangy smile. Attired as he was in a white tie and tailcoat outfit that would have been the height of fashion in 1930, he still looked as if he had stepped out of a Bela Lugosi movie. My magic senses weren’t as limited as they had been outside, so it was easy for me to spot the aura of his gray, soul-sucking magic. It was also easy to see the slight fuzziness at his edges, which I’d learned was a sure sign of some kind of illusion or shape shift.
I’d seen him endure sunlight, so I knew he was no vampire, but I couldn’t help shuddering at the sight of him. He certainly had a vampire entourage, though none of them were present at the moment. The odds I might be rescued dropped again. Since he was here, that could mean that, besides whatever vampires had survived, he might also have Formorians ready to come to his assistance.
“We meet again,” he said. I didn’t bother responding.
“Well, Count,” said the Dulluhan’s severed head, “Here she is, just as promised. The question is, what are you willing to pay for her?”
“For a seer such as she is, I offer my Transylvanian castle and its adjacent grounds.” He produced a deed as if by magic. He was a fake, no doubt—but he was clever with his stage management.
I should have kept my mouth shut. Instead, I said, “Do you really expect anyone to believe that you have a Transylvanian castle? You aren’t Dracula—since he’s a fictional character, you couldn’t be.”
Fake Dracula shook his head. “Poor, delusional girl! But even if I were not who I appeared to be, that doesn’t mean I don’t own a castle.”
The Dulluhan’s severed head raised an eyebrow. “I don’t care who you are. My buyers often choose to be anonymous. But if you think her delusional, why buy here as a seer?”
“One doesn’t need to be sane to be a seer,” replied fake Dracula. “I hear some of the best are not.”
“Perhaps,” replied the Dulluhan. “But the insane ones are far harder to get a straight answer from. In any case, I am not particularly interested in real estate, and even if I were, I deal in satisfying people’s deepest desires. How many people do you suppose lust after a Transylvanian castle?”
“Some wealthy reader of Bram Stoker would,” replied fake Dracula, using his broad smile as a cover for the vagueness of his answer.
“It would take work to find a person like that,” replied the Dulluhan. “And such an interest seems like a mortal one. Many of my clients are supernatural. But even the ones who aren’t want something you can give quite easily.”
“And what is that?” asked the Dracula impersonator.
“Why, immortality, of course.” I could have sworn that the severed head’s right eye winked.
“Ah, so it’s vampire blood you want? That could be easily arranged.”
I doubted his blood would do any good, but he still had his surviving vampire followers to work with.
“Vampire blood, yes—but perhaps not ordinary vampire blood.”
Fake Dracula smiled even more broadly. “I do not understand. What kind of vampire blood do you want?”
The severed head returned his smile. “One of the reasons I came here was that I got word of someone who might be a new kind of vampire—one that can endure the sun. Eternal life without the drawbacks—now, that would be a true prize, certainly equal in value to a seer.”
Despite the Dulluhan’s bizarre form, he’d seemed intelligent before. Certainly, he could perceive enough to tell the Dracula impostor wasn’t a real vampire, which was the reason he could survive direct sunlight. Did the Dulluhuan somehow think that the obvious fake was a real vampire but of some new type?
Fake Dracula’s forehead wrinkled as he concentrated for a moment. He seemed almost as flumoxed as I was. But then his previous confidence returned.
“Ah, you must mean the lad who used to work as a bell hop in a hotel near here. I do not have him, but I believe I could lay hands on him easily enough.”
I could hardly breathe. I felt as if the world had fallen from beneath my feet, leaving me hanging helplessly in midair.
It wasn’t bad enough that I’d gotten myself trapped. Now, to pay for me, Fake Dracula was going to capture the guy I’d come to rescue and sell him to the Dulluhan, who would no doubt use him as a living blood bank—forever.
“The Carnival of Deepest Desire” is related to the Spell Weaver series. (The action takes place between the sixth and seventh books, just after the end of “North of Midnight.”)
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