I was drifting off when I thought I heard the smallest of noises—a light click. My eyes shot open, instantly awake. Although the outer regions of my room were pitch-black I was somehow sure that someone was in the room with me. The curtains around the bed obscured my view. I leaned out a little, then drew my head back quickly. The fire had died down but from the glow I could make out a dark figure, moving closer and closer. At last he stood over the bed. I opened my mouth but I was too frightened to move or to scream. The glow from the fire illuminated his face. It looked just like the young man from the portrait on the wall.

He leaned closer and closer to me and he murmured something in a language I didn’t understand. He was smiling, his teeth reflected in the firelight. Everything Belinda had told me about vampires biting necks and the ecstasy of being bitten rushed back to me. In the safety of London and daylight I had laughed with her. But the face above me was all too real and it seemed as if those teeth were heading straight for my neck. However terrified I was, one thing was certain. I was definitely not about to be turned into an undead.

I sat up abruptly, making him leap backward.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded in a way that my great-grandmother Queen Victoria would have been proud of.

The young man gave an unearthly moan of horror. Then he turned and melted back into the shadows.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

A bedroom in Bran Castle. Darkness.
Wednesday, November 16

For a while I couldn’t move. I sat up, my heart beating so rapidly that I could hardly breathe. Was the creature still in the room with me? How did one ward off vampires anyway? I tried to remember from reading Dracula. Some sort of herb or plant? Parsley? No, that wasn’t it. I thought it might be garlic. Had I eaten enough of that on the venison to breathe on him? I wasn’t about to try to find my way down to the kitchen to locate some. I also thought I remembered that crosses might work, but I didn’t have one of those either. Stakes through the heart? I didn’t think I could pull that one off even if I had a stake at my disposal.