On the screen, a man in a white hat waved a walking stick at the carriage man. As he opened his mouth to speak, all the soldiers chimed in as one:

“Don’t take my luggage down, I’m going on to Borgo Pass tonight!”

An explosion of general hilarity. Peter tore his gaze away to glance at Hollis. But his friend’s eyes, glowing with reflected light, were raptly focused on the moving images before them. He turned to Sara and Amy; they were the same.

On the screen, a heavyset man was speaking to the driver of the carriage, a burble of meaningless sounds. He returned to the first fellow, in the hat, his words amplified by the shouted recitation of the men:

“The driii-ver. He eez … afraid. Good fellow he eez. He wants me to ask if you can wait, and go on after sunrise.”

The first man waved his cane arrogantly, having none of it. “Well, I’m sorry, but there’s a carriage meeting me at Borgo Pass at midnight.”

“Borgo Pass? Whose carriage?”

“Why, Count Dracula’s.”

The mustached man’s eyes widened with terror. “Count … Dracula’s?”

“Don’t do it, Renfield!” one of the soldiers yelled, and everybody laughed.

It was a story, Peter realized. A story, like the old books in the Sanctuary, the ones Teacher read to them in circle, all those years ago. The people on the screen looked like they were pretending because they were; their exaggerated motions and expressions called to mind the way Teacher would act out the voices of the characters in the books she read. The heavy man with the mustache knew something that the man in the hat did not; there was danger ahead. Despite this warning, the traveler resumed his journey, to more mocking shouts from the soldiers. In darkness, the carriage ascended a mountain road, approaching a massive structure of turrets and walls, drenched in a forbidding moonlight. What lay ahead was obvious: the mustached man had more or less explained it. Vampires. An old word, but one Peter knew. He waited for the virals to appear, falling on the carriage and tearing the traveler to shreds, but this didn’t happen. The carriage pulled through the gate; the man, Renfield, stepped out to find that he was alone; the driver was gone. A creaking door, opening of its own accord, beckoned him inside, where he found himself in a great ruined cave of a room. Renfield, unaware, his innocence almost laughable, backed toward a massive flight of stairs, where a figure in a dark cloak, holding a single candle, was descending. As the cloaked figure reached the bottom, Renfield turned, the whites of his eyes expanding with such horror it was as if he’d stumbled on a whole pod of smokes, not a single man in a cape.

“I am … Drrrrrac-ulaaah.”