Chapter One
When Alys' best friend had announced that she was up and moving to Transylvania in a god forsaken attempt to prove to the world that Vlad the Impaler had always been nothing more than a man, Alys did what any sensible friend would do….she outright called her crazy and ordered that she remove any such demented plans from her head at once. And when that didn't work, she reminded Cassandra that Romania hardly had electricity, let alone Ipads and phones… she felt certain Cassandra would never be able to defy that logic.
Yet, five months later, Alys found herself on a flight to Bucharest. Cassandra had to know she would give chase….five months without her yapping in her ear! As if. Cassandra counted on her going stir crazy while the silence deepened and the dust settled… And Alys felt certain she had been counting on it.
Lesson number one in Alys 101: How best to get a writer, who despises vampire lore and the world frenzy over them, to Transylvania? Why it was easy, of course. Starve her of company, watch the boredom win and book the flights on her behalf…without telling her until afterwards. This, ladies and gentlemen, was why you should never keep people around longer than a year….they learnt how to exploit your weaknesses and Cassandra was the mastermind behind that particular con.
Alys did nothing but question why she had given in right up until the flight landed in Bucharest. At that point, she realised that, for the first time in months, she and Cassandra were finally in the same country….and so what if that country was the capital of vampire myth? She had Cassandra. It would be worth it, surely.
Comforted by that revelation, she hired a car and began her long drive to the Carpathian Mountains. The closer she got, all thoughts of vampires were pushed from her head and replaced by the beauty that was Romania. It was utterly breath taking and Alys began to muse that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't such a bad thing…being forced to take a two week holiday here if the surrounding were so beautiful.
#
Entering the Carpathians was like no other experience. Alys almost felt at home away from home. Wales was very mountainous and green but she wasn't certain her homeland could hold up to the splendour of this serene paradise.
With blue skies ahead, she drove into Transylvania, feeling the slight flutter of nerves. She had no knowledge of Romanian, German, or Hungarian, and if English and French didn't quite suffice, she would have to depend on Cassandra at every turn. Unnerving, spending two weeks in a country oblivious to the language.
Almost shameful. For the first time, she began to wonder what the locals would think of her non-blending ways. Alys was a writer after all, and her inability to speak a common language wouldn't be the only reason she stuck out like a sore thumb. No, she had a natural curiosity that would make any slightly removed from modern day person suspicious. Never mind her blonde hair and striking blue eyes. Sure, the picture of innocence but it wouldn't help her blend in…neither would her love of short sundresses, come to think of it.
Parking the car, Alys cut the engine and sighed. "Here goes nothing," she muttered, picking up her phone and dialling Cassandra. She listened to the rings impatiently tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. Oh no, Cassie, dear, you did not fly me up here to let me face strangers alone. She smirked as images of the methods of torture she would inflict on Cassandra if such an event occurred flitted behind her closed eyelids. It would be a possibility if she didn't –
"Cassandra Williams, here," Cassie's familiar Welsh accent chirped through the phone.
"You are so lucky you picked up," Alys growled testily. "Anyway, I'm here and I'd very much like a bed, alcohol, a shower and food. Not in that order."
"Are you in the main square?" her friend asked with a slight chuckle at Alys' tone.
"I am. In a black SUV. Hurry up, too many people are staring."
"They probably haven't seen a car as fancy before," Cassie scoffed. "You couldn't have gone for a less noticeable car?"
"When there was cross country driving involved…. I'm afraid not," Alys snorted. "Eh, it's an SUV. Not a Ferrari!" she felt a slight twinge at the back of her mind….fancy? Would there even be electricity or Internet? How was she going to survive two weeks in the middle of nowhere?
"To some people here, it's the same thing," Cassie puffed. Good, Alys thought, she's moving.
As the sun dropped behind the trees, a tap on the driver's side window startled a small but somewhat high pitched screech from Alys.
"Geez, Alys, don't do that when the phones is still at my ear!" Cassie cried. "What are you trying to do? Blow my ear drum?"
"I'm sorry," Alys sighed, shaking her head. "Something hit the window and it startled me."
"Yeah, me, you numpty!" The driver's door flew open to reveal a grinning Cassie. "Got you!" she laughed.
"That," Alys growled, "was so not funny."
"Of course, it was," Cassie insisted. "You've been too uptight without me. You needed a bit of a scare."
Alys didn't feel like she had been uptight at all. Contrary to Cassie's opinions, she felt she had been coping quite well considering her best friend had up and left her for another country. Not just another country… the wilderness, with its lack of signal and limited internet range. If she thought I had been uptight then she clearly caught me at the wrong moment.
"And would that be the reason you insisted I come visit you? In vampire country, I might add." Alys was not a fan of vampires. Actually, she wasn't a fan of modern vampire. The world had destroyed the original image of vampires, always insisting on a love interest and control. That wasn't a vampire. That was a housetrained puppy. At least, if said puppy were real.
"Earth to Alys," Cassie ordered, waving her hands in front of her eyes. "Don't go wandering off now, Alice! This is a foreign land."
"Did I not mention something about showers and alcohol?" Alys muttered, shaking her head at Cassie's imagination.
"Stop acting like your namesake and we might get you that alcohol," Cassie ordered, hands on hips as she stared pointedly at Alys' none moving body. "You can get out of the car now, Alys. They don't bite you know…Or maybe they do!" she threw her head back, howling with laughter.
"That was low, Williams! Even for you," Alys retorted, throwing herself from the car in a manner that suggested that the action had to be done before the mind caught up. Vampires. She shivered and found herself staring beseechingly at Cassie.
"You've done it now. You're not getting away. Never," Cassie grinned, slamming the driver's door and moving around to the back. "Open." Alys just stared at her, stubbornly refusing to respond until she apologised. It could be a long night. "Did you not hear me, Jeeves? I said open. As a general rule, the next action is you press the little button on the key fob with the boot symbol and the boot pops open…almost like magic but not because you pressed the button…" Cassie trailed off, her eyes focusing on Alys' crossed arms and tense body language in the dark. "Am I gonna need to do the unthinkable before you move a single muscle?"
The need to laugh gurgled up inside Alys and instead of releasing said laughter, she cocked an eyebrow. There, I moved a muscle.
"Oh alright, smart arse. You know that didn't count, yeah? Facial muscles are excluded at all time! All times, I tell you!" Cassie ranted. To an unsuspecting onlooker she would appear quite mad. Yes, all that time spent with mummified bodies and crumbling paper must have leaked some kind of noxious gas into her nervous system…because Cassie could be quite… interesting … yes interesting… at times. Said part time mad woman sighed loudly; a sigh that should have drawn the attention of the intended target - If the intended target had not been ignoring her. "Alright, fine! You got me. I'm sorry; I won't make a single vampire joke for the rest of your stay. Happy?"
A winning smile broke over Alys features, her body straightened out of its sulking position and the boot popped open with an audible swish. "Quite."
Alys' suitcase in hand, Cassie slammed the boot and spun on her heel. She wandered off across the square without so much as a glance back. Confused, Alys didn't move an inch and just stared after her. She still couldn't quite believe that she, Alys Taylor, had been forced – yes, forced – to visit vampire country.
That thought alone caused a sharp spike of fear to make itself known. If her feet hadn't been glued to the floor before, they were now. Her eyes frantically scanned the growing darkness, her mind spitting out every image of vampires she had ever come across, every piece of literature she had ever begrudgingly read.
Why did you agree to this? Alys' mind screamed. It served her right, it told her. She had been the one who stupidly thought she could face that fear, no one else. It was all on her. Not Cassie. Oh no, if Cassie got herself killed living in this country, that would be on her. Alys getting herself killed in this godforsaken country was not on her. How foolish, Alys.
#
The silence unnerved Cassie even though she felt a small thrill that Alys had managed to put a sock in the complaints she knew would come. Glancing to her right to assess Alys' face, Cassie promptly realised that her vocal best friend was not following her and stopped dead. She turned, her eyes scanning the murky darkness.
Spotting her, stood still as a statue by the car, Cassie sighed. Only Alys would stand still in a country she feared. She'd never admit to said fear but Cassie knew. She had the intuition of a best friend. An intuition anyone would develop having known a person for ten years.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Alys…but didn't you demand alcohol and a shower?" Cassie called from the other side of the square. "Because standing still in the cold is not going to get you that alcohol and it most certainly won't clean you."
Alys shook her head in response and followed after Cassie.