Page 105 of Whispers at Dusk
She smiled. “I do, too. Hey, who knows where we’ll wind up when!”
“Yeah, well, I want to get out to the bayou again,” he told her, just as Mason joined them, ready to head out, too.
“The bayou is great—especially when you spend time there for pleasure,” Mason said.
Edmund Taylor nodded. Then grinned and gave Mason a light punch on the arm.
“The next time we’re out there,” he said, “you can introduce me to your friend, Gideon. I’d really love to meet him.”
He walked on by them. Della looked at Mason. They laughed, shook their heads, then headed out together.
The world could be so senseless, but now and then...
Some things just did make sense!
Epilogue
“Fact, fantasy, folklore—and fiction,” Mason said, turning to smile at Della.
She smiled in return. “There is something here, maybe something we need to put together. And, hey, now we can say we’ve been to Castle Bran and, well...”
They stood on the ramparts of Bran Castle. While it might not be “Dracula’s Castle” in fact and history, the castle featured displays with fascinating information—and looked over beautiful countryside in the shade of the Carpathian Mountains.
Neighboring villages were charming, medieval, brought into the modern world in colors that added to their historic charm.
But they hadn’t come for the beauty.
It seemed that even after Stephan Dante had been captured, they’d been waiting for the next development in the case.
Detectives Edmund Taylor and Jeanne Lapierre had moved on to London, along with François Bisset. They were poring over every detail of the killings that had taken place there.
Della and Mason would join them, flying out of Transylvania the next morning. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t help thinking that with all the mind games Dante played, there was something she would see or perhaps even realize at Castle Bran.
“So...hmm. Thinking it all out. Vlad Tepes was born circa 1431, and his father was a member of the Order of the Dragon, and thus he took on the name Dracul, or Dragon,” Mason said. “At the age of seven, Vlad was sent to be a prisoner, a hostage, of the Turks to guarantee his father’s loyalty. Then his brother was killed and his father was assassinated. At seventeen, Vlad was released...and left to avenge his father—who was hated by his own people—and then... I guess that his horrid imprisonment under the Ottoman Empire left him bitter, and when he finally gathered forces and help from the Hungarians, he managed to take over Wachovia and started a true reign of terror against the Turks, and thus—Vlad the Impaler, monster and hero, came into being. Okay, so, many historians are of the opinion that he never entered Castle Bran, and we know that Bram Stoker never set foot here—”
“But Bram Stoker was the ultimate writer, creating all kinds of incredible fiction by researching all kinds of historical fact,” Della said. She wasn’t sure herself what they were looking for. Stephan Dante was imprisoned and seeing Patrick Law an hour a day. Patrick had suggested that Della not give in to the man—he wanted to tease and tempt and torment her, and if given time, Patrick believed he could get through to whatever truths the man had that might lead to another killer.
Not at all sure why, Della had been determined to come back to Romania. The truth—or the information they were seeking—lay somewhere between fact, fiction, folklore, and fantasy, which defined their journey to Bran Castle.”
“Okay, vampires, bats... Stoker probably knew that one of the biggest bat caves in the world is in Romania.”
“And the boundary lines of the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia, Transylvania, Hungary, and Romania changed through the years, with the Iron Curtain only falling in 1989,” Della murmured. “But while Vlad the Impaler might not have been here...hmm.”
“I was thinking of... Well, fact or fiction. His first wife threw herself from the ramparts of Poenari Castle rather than face imprisonment by the Turks,” Mason said. “But! Others say she killed herself because she knew that her husband really wanted to marry his mistress.”
“Right, great, so...no one knows which is true,” Della murmured. “Wait—I think in one of the movies that was made about Dracula, his beautiful wife threw herself from this very parapet.”
“No one knows which is true,” Mason agreed. “Just as no one knows what happened to Vlad’s remains. It’s believed that he died in battle. He was supposedly buried on a small island in the floor of a fantastic eleventh-century church, but archaeologists disproved that. The story I believe the most is that the Turk’s displayed his head on a spike in Istanbul. I can imagine their anger. It’s estimated he killed between forty and a hundred thousand people—of course, some of them his own—in the short seven years of his reign.” He shrugged. “We see man’s inhumanity to man on a daily basis, and still, it’s difficult to imagine fields of people impaled—and in a way that made sure they didn’t die immediately but suffered as long as possible. Patrick would have had a field day with the man’s mind, I’m sure.”
“Imprisoned, growing up abandoned and bitter, and into a world of brutality,” Della said. “Marrying...and...maybe he did love his wife and maybe she threw herself to her death because she didn’t intend to be taken by his enemies. Hmm...”
“What?”
“I think I know!” she said.
Mason looked at her, his eyebrow hiking. “Um—the name of the man Dante took under his wing as a second killer in London?”
She sighed with exaggerated aggravation and told him, “No! Mason, think about it. Okay, yes, it’s a long shot, but the best that seems to come to mind. Dante preyed on those who were weak. Who had been bullied or had something happen to them that twisted their minds.”
