Page 75 of Whispers at Dusk
So far, nothing. But Mason knew Della was convinced their killer, Stephan Dante, had moved on.
He also believed it. Dante wanted to get where he was going, to kill or train new killers, and to taunt them again from a new location.
“I’m just telling you what I’m reading. Anyway, after World War I, Transylvania became part of Romania. But before... So, Bram Stoker never set foot in Transylvania. Sources who knew the man or studied him suggest that in his research reading, he found out that the modern Romanian name for the devil wasDracul, and so...a vampire was born.”
“And before that,” Edward Taylor said, rising from the settee in the suite’s parlor to join them at the computer, “you had Varney the Vampire.”
“I thought Barney was a large purple dinosaur beloved by children,” Bisset said, joining them as well.
“Barneyisa purple dinosaur. Varney—with aV—was a serialized vampire in the mid-1800s in England, a precursor to Stoker’s vampire,” Edmund explained.
“Ah!” Bisset said. “So, listening to the killer on Della’s recording, I do come to believe he’s obsessed with vampire fiction. And the legends that stretch across the globe. But I still wonder if byhomehe means America. Whoops! Excuse me, my phone’s ringing,” he told them, then stepped back to take the call.
Mason and the others watched him as he answered. His look was grim. “We’ll be there shortly,” he said, and ended the call.
“A young woman has disappeared from Bucharest, a Canadian tourist.”
“Romania?” Della asked.
“Bucharest airport is the closest to Bran Castle—Draculacastle. Historically, Vlad Dracul didn’t even rule from there, but it has the perfect look, and some believe Vlad Dracul was held prisoner there. But the woods surrounding it are everything you would expect. It sits high on a hill, and yes, there are Dracula tours. The Romanians know how to market for their tourism. At any rate, our young lady, Nanette Grissom, went on from Bucharest to Busteni, Romania, where she was staying in one of the oldest hotels—a travelers’ inn since the fifteenth century. When she was to meet her friends to go out on their first night, they couldn’t find her. They went to the police, and the police, being forewarned, called us immediately. We can go and catch them up on what we know and help with the investigation. Now, of course, this young lady might have met a handsome Romanian—”
“No. She was there with friends. She would have told her friends,” Della said. “Trust me. Friends don’t just disappear on friends, not the kind of friends you make a trip to see Castle Bran with.”
“She’s right,” Mason said. “I’ll call the pilot—I think we’re all ready to travel—”
“Mais oui!”Lapierre said. “I mean, yes, of course, we must go immediately.”
Mason smiled. “Jeanne, I think we all understood. Let’s head to the airport and get going.”
He and Della were already packed and so were the others. They just had to stop by their rooms. They’d meet in the lobby.
Robertson wouldn’t be coming with them; he was helping the family of the last victim make arrangements to bring her body home.
When the others stepped out, he smiled at Della. “Well, I did readDraculawhen I was a kid and thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to go to Transylvania. I just never knew that I’d be going and looking for a human monster.”
She smiled weakly in return. “Mason, he is ahead of us. Just ahead of us—and he has a victim already. We must get ahead of him somehow.”
He nodded, pulling her close for a minute. “I don’t know where this will take us. We never know where we’ll be. But I know that...”
She smiled. “Yeah, me, too. We are—well, totally awe. I don’t think anything can change that. Not for me.”
He brushed her hair back. “Never for me.”
They went down to the lobby and met up with Bisset, Taylor, and Lapierre. Within an hour, they were at the airport and the Krewe pilot had filed their flight plan.
“Have any of us ever been to Castle Bran?” Mason asked, looking at Della. He expected her to say she and her family had been.
But she shook her head.
“I’ve been there,” Bisset told them. “And... Well, you’ll see. It’s easy to imagine such a story as Bram Stoker wrote. We’ll be meeting Commander Anton Alexandru—he speaks English perfectly, as well as French, German, and Russian, and Romanian, of course. A brilliant young man, he rose through the ranks quickly and he’s seen what has happened elsewhere...and was moving the minute the girl was reported as missing. He knows the terrain and the people. Of course, we know who is doing this, so it is perhaps most important that he knows the terrain.”
“So. Do we believe Dante has this girl, and he’s taken her somewhere near Castle Bran?” Edmund asked.
Mason nodded. “We do. If he hasn’t taken her himself, he has groomed someone to do so. It might be easier for him to acquire a sick follower to commit murder for him if he’s in Sighisoara near Bran Castle,” he said.
On that, they were all in agreement. “Well, almost sixteen hundred miles of flying,” Bisset said. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
“Maybe we all should,” Mason said, glancing at Della.
