D-77

Chapter 14

A reaper never showed up anywhere just like that. Vlad knew this for sure. Therefore, the appearance of Ah-Puch rather frightened him. The god of death could appear in the cave for two reasons. For example, if the ritual to awaken Stellan failed and the sorcerer remained in hibernation for a few more days, it would no longer be possible to awaken him, so the reaper would come for his soul. But by the vampire's reckoning, he still had a couple of weeks left to perform the ritual, and he doubted that he could have made such a gross mistake.

But the second reason scared him more than the first one. Vlad had already told Danny that it was almost impossible to kill a vampire, and at that moment, in that place, there was no one capable of doing it. The vampire swallowed and stepped between the reaper and her. He didn't want to believe that Ah-Pooch had come for Danny. He couldn't come for Danny!

"Jesus" she wanted to approach the god of death, but Vlad stopped her, grabbing her by the elbow. If the reaper really came for her, a single touch to his corpse-stained body could take her life.

"Why are you here?" he asked quietly.

The Reaper gave Danny a short nod and moved closer to the niche. Looking the vampire straight in the eyes, he lowered his hand to the stone. After waiting for the wall around the niche to light up, he shook his hand in disgust. Before the reaper could leave, Vlad called out to him.

"Ah-Puch!"

The god of death slowly turned towards the vampire.

"Why did Ora use the Arrow of Eros?" Dracula confidently took a step towards the reaper, incinerating him with his eyes. "That wasn't the plan..."

"We had our own plan, my friend, and our own worries." Ah-Pooch smoothly looked from the vampire to Danny. “Danielle's safety is our number one priority. As long as the sorcerer is in love with her, he will not harm her."

"Emilian is in love with me?!" Sanders stepped closer to the men, looking between them in surprise. "How is it possible?"

The reaper affectionately looked at the girl and extended his hand to touch her, but Vlad did not allow him. The god of death sighed “Eirena was captured by the Inquisition for stealing a bow and arrows from the god of love. She fired an arrow at the sorcerer the night he came for our friend.” He pointed with his eyes at the vampire.

"Why?"

"I just said your safety is important to us." Ah-Pooch tilted his head forward a little so that the shadow of the caiman's skull hid the top of his face. "He didn't hurt you, Danny?"

She didn’t understand that the reaper was not asking about the sorcerer, but about Vlad right away. Seeing him greedily drinking her blood, biting her neck countless times, Ah-Puch must have thought that the vampire was torturing her. Smiling shyly, she took Vlad's hand, intertwining their fingers, and lowered her gaze to the floor.

The reaper tilted his head slightly to the side and looked attentively at their clasped hands. He seemed to be trying to figure out what she meant by that. And when he did, his eyes gleamed in the darkness. His cold hand rested on their clasped hands and he nodded as if giving them his blessing. Danny's smile widened a little.

Ah-Puch slyly looked at the two of them and took a step back. He turned to leave, but before he could disappear, Sanders called out to him.

"Jesus!"

The Reaper glanced over his shoulder.

"Thank you."

Danny couldn't be sure, but she thought he smiled.

"Take care of yourself, child," he said hoarsely, gradually fading into thin air. "I will see you soon."

As soon as the silhouette of the reaper disappeared, Danny turned to Vlad. He was apparently recovering from the sudden appearance of the god of death. When she took his face in her hands, he twitched. But meeting with her affectionate gaze, he came to his senses. The vampire took a quick glance at the sarcophagus and, seeing that a luminous liquid was dripping from the stalactite onto the stone lid, experienced an unprecedented relief.

They did it!

Not being able to hide the emotions that overwhelmed him, Vlad held up Danny in his arms. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and her sonorous laughter carried through the cave, breaking against its stone walls. He pulled her closer and dug into her lips with a hot kiss, knocking the ground out from under her feet.

Danny felt weak at the knees and grabbed onto his shoulders harder, almost hanging on to him. Her joy knew no bounds. She was pleased to see Vlad so alive, smiling, with a gleam in his eyes.

His passion quickly turned to tenderness. Holding Danny's head in his hands, Vlad showered her face with small kisses, occasionally catching her soft laugh with his lips. He continued to hold her in his hands, but no longer pressed her into his body.

When they both heard the movement of the body inside the sarcophagus, the vampire looked up and looked Danny in the eye. “Stain is about to wake up, love. Try not to make any sudden moves, otherwise, he may be frightened and his body will be damaged.”

"Has this happened before?" she asked softly.

"Not to him." Vlad released her from his embrace and went to the sarcophagus. "But I've seen immortals whose awakening went badly."

He pushed back the stone lid of the coffin with no apparent effort and reached out his hand to help Stain get out of it.

At first, Danny calmly watched as Vlad removed the body of his friend from the sarcophagus. But when the crystals illuminated him, she could barely contain her scream. And she was the one who the vampire asked not to scare Stellan? And what should she do? Of course, she thought that after lying in hibernation for a couple of decades, the sorcerer would look a little rumpled. But no one warned her that the f*****g Imhotep from the movie "The Mummy" would come to life before her eyes! Horror gripped her so much that she literally rooted to the floor and could not move a single muscle of her own body. She wanted to run away and hide in some secluded corner, so as not to see the half-decomposed body slowly growing flesh, but her body became numb.

Vlad was quietly talking about something with his friend, as if not noticing his unsightly appearance. He smiled broadly, which made Danny's heart warm. She liked how different he looked when he was with Stain. However, not a single muscle twitched in her face. She continued to stand with an expression of utter horror, waiting for the shock to subside, and she would be able to move at least a finger.

When the vampire glanced in her direction and noticed her condition, he threw a few words to his friend and hurried over to her. She couldn’t take her eyes off Stellan's broad back. And even as Vlad's hands squeezed her shoulders, she couldn't bring herself to look away.

"Are you okay, love?" his worried whisper seemed to bring her back to reality.

"W-what?" she moved her lips, but her voice stuck somewhere in her throat. She looked into his blue eyes and her body suddenly relaxed. Grasping his forearms with both hands, she snuggled closer to the vampire and exhaled noisily.

"Scared?" His hand rested on her waist and caressed her gently.

"You could have warned me about what your buddy would look like..." She looked back at Stellan. His back was already beginning to be covered with snow-white skin.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think that you might not be ready for this," his lips touched her forehead. “Before, I have not been able to perform a ritual with those who have not previously seen the awakening of an immortal… You're doing great, love. A true born Inquisitor…"

The last phrase sounded so bitter that Danny involuntarily grimaced. She wasn't an Inquisitor, and she didn't want to be one. Perhaps if she had trained as a true descendant of the great line of Inquisitors, had known their history and understood them, she would have thought differently. But so far, the Inquisition disappointed her. She didn’t want to engage in catching evil spirits, and even more so, didn’t want to keep them in cages, like animals. Danny decided that before she chose how her life would go, she would definitely talk to all of her father's patients. She needed to find out what they had done to be doomed to years of imprisonment. Because they never seemed like they deserved such punishment.

She wanted to tell Vlad that it was unpleasant for her when he called her an Inquisitor, but she couldn’t even open her mouth, because a large, blond-haired man approached them. His long hair cascaded over his broad shoulders. His gray eyes looked at Danny point-blank. His thick blond beard beautifully framed his manly face. The lips were pressed tightly into a thin line. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at the vampire.

"Stain!" Vlad hastened to cover Danny's eyes with his hand. “Why the hell are you walking around showing off your d**k?! Get dressed, for f**k’s sake!”

Danny couldn't help but laugh.

"Did you bring a mortal here?" his voice sounded like thunder. With a contemptuous snort, Stain moved away somewhere to the side. "How could you trust this rotten tribe, my friend?"

She wanted to be indignant, but Vlad was ahead of her. "Don't compare Danny to them, Stellan."

The sorcerer snorted again.

Danny walked around the vampire and came closer to Stain. Due to the difference in their heights, she had to tilt her head back to look into his face. He bored her with the cold look of his gray eyes as if trying to burn a hole in her. Sanders put her hands on her hips and furrowed her brows menacingly. After playing peepers for ten seconds, Stain suddenly laughed out loud, throwing his head back. Danny was taken aback. What was he laughing about?

"Did I do something funny?" she asked. Her eyebrows went up.

"What do you think?" Stellan took out a T-shirt from Vlad’s bag and pulled it over his head. “Some small flea is trying to pretend to be a strong and courageous eagle. Isn't it funny?"

"I'm not a flea..."

"You're right," he slipped his hands into the sleeves of his T-shirt and smoothed the fabric over his stomach. "The fleas have more honor than your fellow tribesmen combined all together," he looked over her head at Vlad. “You ate too much henbane, or what? Messing with the Inquisitor…”

“Oh for crying out loud!!!” Danny stamped her foot menacingly. “Why is everyone labeling me as an Inquisitor?! You didn’t even bother to find out my name, but you accuse me of all the s**t that was done by the Inquisition!”

The sorcerer was taken aback, staring at the girl with his eyes wide with surprise.

Vlad stood aside, allowing Danny to win back her own honor. He liked how his little girl fearlessly confronted the huge man. He planned to tell his friend how disrespectful and ugly he had behaved, but he wanted to do it in private.

"I'm not an Inquisitor!" she went on. “I found out about their existence a few days ago! And even if I knew about them, I had nothing to do with their actions and mistakes! So stop thinking of me as one of them!”

Blinking a couple of times, Stellan looked at Vlad and pointed his finger in her direction. “She’s not even an Inquisitor? Why the hell did you bring a mere human here? She's useless!"

"HEY!" Danny pushed the man in the chest with all her might, but he didn't even flinch. "’ She’ is right here! And ‘she’ can hear you! And if it wasn't for ‘her’, you'd still be snoring in your f*****g sarcophagus, you poor excuse of a mummy!” growling angrily, she hit Stellan in the stomach with her fist. "Don't you dare judge me without knowing me!"

Taking a couple of deep breaths, Danny straightened her hair and forced a smile as she held out her hand for him to shake. "Okay, let’s start over. Hello, my name is Danielle Sanders and I'm your friend's girlfriend.

Stain looked between Danny and Vlad in surprise, and then yelled, “You slept with an Inquisitor?! Are you out of your mind?!"

Sanders felt rage fill her. Before she had time to realize what she was doing, she swung and hit Stellan in the chest with all her might. He was thrown back and, flying a couple of meters, he collapsed to the floor.

"f*****g moron!"

While Stain was recovering, Vlad approached Danny and turned her to face him. "Calm down, love."

“Remember, mummy! I won't put up with that kind of s**t again! If you insult me ​​again, I swear I will grind you to powder!”

Stain got up from the floor and dusted off his pants. Pushing the strands of his hair out of his face, he came very close to them and flicked Danny on the nose. “Go ahead,” he looked at Vlad. “Sleep with your eyes open, my friend, you never know what your… girlfriend has in mind.”

Danny twitched in the vampire's arms to hit Stellan again, but he managed to hold her back. He stroked her cheek, trying to calm her down, but rage splashed in her eyes... He realized that her anger could not be appeased by a simple caress, so he decided to use his hypnosis.

She felt the cinnamon scent surround her and turned her gaze to Vlad. His voice echoed in her head, whispering to her to calm down. But this did not calm her at all. On the contrary, she was getting angrier. However, looking at the worried vampire's face, she decided that she would not allow herself to show emotions like that again. She didn’t want to take it out on Vlad. She closed her eyes and nodded. Feeling his cold lips on her forehead, she smiled and relaxed a little.

"Hey! How much longer do you plan to enjoy each other’s company?” Stain picked up Vlad's bag from the ground and reached into its side pocket. “If you really wanted to be alone, you could do so before waking me up!” turning away from them, he muttered, "So I don't have to watch this."

He fished out a stone amulet on a leather lace from his bag, wrapped the lace around his wrist, and made a sign in the air with his hand. A sheaf of sparks departed from his hand and, flying off a short distance, they formed a passage into the dark forest.

Turning around, Stellan saw that his companions had already approached him, holding hands. Rolling his eyes, he snorted once more in annoyance and was the first to enter the opening.

They found themselves in a dark, dense forest. Stain confidently walked forward, and Vlad and Danny followed him. They moved in complete silence, broken only by the rustle of their steps and the crunch of the branches they sometimes stepped on.

Danny was the first to break their silence, as she quietly turned to the vampire. "Do you know where we're going?"

Stellan froze in place and slowly turned around. Danny felt a chill run down her spine. He looked at her as if she was the lowest being in the universe. It was as if her ignorance offended him.

"Take the trouble to explain to your stupid girlfriend what we're doing," he hurried away before she could freak out and try to hurt him again.

Sanders clenched her hands into fists, digging her nails into the skin of her palms. She had no idea how much time they were to spend together, but even then she wanted to imprison the sorcerer back in the sarcophagus. Looking at the vampire, she arched an eyebrow. "Well?"

Vlad sighed and, putting his arm around Danny's waist, walked on. "You see, sweetheart, Stain had to transfer some of his powers into a special item, and hide it at some distance from the burial place of his body."

"Why?"

"We could never be sure that our enemies would not find him." He ran a hand through his hair and looked at his friend's receding back. "A wizard can absorb the powers of another wizard to become stronger..."

"He separated some of his power so Emilian couldn't take it all," she guessed.

“Exactly, dear,” Vlad pulled her a little closer to him. “It's a pity that Eric decided not to send you to training. You would be the smartest kid in your group."

"But I wouldn't have a choice..." Danny said softly, turning away.

The vampire nodded in understanding and hurried to change the subject. "Stain hid the enchanted item quite far away, but he preferred to keep the key to his treasury closer to him."

"The key?"

"Not literally, my dear." His hand moved from her waist to her shoulder.

"Another enchanted item?"

"Yes. A rune."

"And it's... hidden in the woods?" she frowned.

"Love, I don't know where it's hidden." He stretched as if he'd just woken up. “I think he forgot it too, which is why we wander through the forest, looking for landmarks.”

Danny carefully wriggled out of his arms and moved a little to the side.

"Love?"

“What landmarks are we talking about, dear?” she moved the fallen needles away with her foot, carefully peering at the ground. “I don’t think he marked landmarks with arrows.”

Vlad smiled softly and shrugged.

They scattered in different directions, trying to help Stellan find the ‘key’, even if neither of them fully understood what they were looking for. They wandered through the forest for a long time, trying not to lose sight of each other. Vlad kept an eye on Danny all the time, more worried about her than the lost rune. Stain hid it himself, so he should have been able to find it himself. But he did not want to stop her, because she tried so hard to help, even though Stellan was rude to her.

The desire to reprimand a friend for such behavior grew stronger. He knew the Stain wasn’t fond of the Inquisitors, to say the least. And although Danny was not directly related to anything that the organization did for centuries, even millennia, she continued to be the bearer of the Gift, which made her the target of Stellan's enmity. Vlad wasn't sure if he was capable of changing Stain's attitude towards Danny. But he firmly decided that he would punch his friend for being rude, and urge him to treat the woman he loved with respect.

A few more hours passed. Danny kept her cool, did not complain of fatigue, had a snack on the go, not being distracted from her searches, and she never even hinted that she needed to go to the bathroom. She set herself the goal of finding the f*****g key to prove that the sorcerer was wrong about her, so she kept looking for the signs with her teeth clenched. She glanced furtively at Stellan and saw that he was already beginning to get annoyed. Even though she didn't like him, she was wary of the change in his mood. She wanted to ask him about it but decided that it was more important for her to save the last surviving nerve cells.

When Danny decided to slightly change the direction of her search, she moved away from the men. Having walked a little over a hundred steps, she saw a white crow in front of her. The same as the ones she saw in Stockholm. She approached the bird, no doubt that the magical beast belonged to Stellan. As she approached it, the raven slowly retreated further and further. She sped up. The bird did as well. When Danny ran towards the raven, the bird flapped its wings and darted away. The game of catch-up did not last long, the raven ran out into the clearing and soared up. Danny ran to the clearing but did not even have time to breathe because the ground parted under her feet. She screamed as she fell through the gap. Grasping the protruding tree roots with her hands, she tried to stay on the surface. Most of her body had already fallen into the hole.

Spitting leaves and needles, she turned her face to the side and croaked “Vlad!”

The rift kept growing, absorbing more and more of her. Soon Danny was left hanging, clinging with both hands to a pine root. She did not look down, afraid to see the bottomless pit she was to fall into. She tried to pull herself up, but she didn't have enough strength in her arms, so she prayed that she could hold on until help arrived. She felt the muscles in her arms begin to ache as two pairs of male hands gripped her wrists in a death grip. Raising her face, she saw the worried faces of Vlad and Stellan, who pulled her up, standing shoulder to shoulder.

When Danny was rescued, she didn't hesitate to wrap her arms around both men's necks. Oddly enough, both responded to her impulse. After standing like that for a couple of seconds, Stellan handed her over to Vlad, and he himself went to the edge of the fault. Danny hid her face in the vampire T-shirt, holding back her tears with all her might.

"It’s alright, sweetheart," he gently stroked her hair, cradling her and pressing his lips to her hair. "Are you okay?"

“Y-yes. A little scared,” she admitted, hugging him tighter.

Hearing a rustle nearby, she raised her head and met Stellan's smiling face.

"And you're not as useless as I thought, little human." He roughly ruffled her hair and returned to the rift.

"Wh-what?" she turned around to clarify what he meant, but the sorcerer had already jumped into the pit, causing her to squeal in fright. Danny turned to Vlad. "What did he mean by that?"

Giving her a sweet kiss, the vampire smiled. "Looks like you just found the key."