I laughed out loud, trying to hide my nervousness. “I’d hardly call any of this okay.” I nodded toward Aidan, wondering if Connor had told him he was his brother yet. “Did you two discuss anything interesting…?”
Connor shook his head.
Aidan looked down at the retracted bat in my hand. I moved it to my belt, hung it in its holster, and pulled my coat over it.
I looked at Connor. “Nicholas here is going to help us with our Jane problem.”
“That’s great, kid,” Connor said, still distracted by Aidan’s presence. “You can get on with that without me, right?”
I grabbed him by his sleeve, dragging him a few feet away from his brother, forcing him to look at me.
“Hey,” I said, giving him a series of light slaps to the face. “Snap out of it. What’s going on with you? Does Aidan have you in his thrall or something?”
Connor’s eyes came into focus and he grabbed me hard by my wrist, stopping me. “What? Enough, kid! No, I’m not in his thrall.”
“You sure?” I asked. “You’re acting all… like this.”
Connor laughed and shook his head. “Jesus, Simon, I just found out that dead Aidan Christos of twenty years is actually undead Aidan Christos of twenty years! Of course I’m dazed. Hell, I’ve seen you more dazed about missing Jane for a few hours.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “but the thing is, if you leave me alone with Jane, you don’t have to worry that she’ll turn me into the walking dead. I’m not leaving you here with him.”
“You know,” Aidan said from the spot he and Nicholas occupied farther down the castle corridor, “one of the cool things about being all vamped out is the heightened senses. Like, you know, hearing, for instance.”
“Sorry,” I said, speaking up and turning to him. “Didn’t mean to offend. I just don’t think it’s in our best interest to leave my partner alone here in a den thick with vampires.”
“Your loyalty is touching,” Aidan said, holding up his hand in a three-finger salute, “but he’ll be fine. Scout’s honor.”
I turned to look at my partner. “Connor?”
Connor nodded. “I’ll be fine, really. I know I’m at risk here, but do you really think Aidan’s going to let any harm come to me? You saw what he did to those other vamps out in front of the castle. Besides, Aidan’s working through some things from these dreams he’s had that led him to me. I need to stay here. I need to help him figure this out.”
I hesitated. “If you’re sure,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Connor said, patting me on the shoulder. “You take care of the Jane sitch with your new vampire pal there.”
The two of us started heading back to our respective vamps. Nicholas gave Aidan a parting glare as he turned to head off to our left down another corridor. As I started to follow him, Connor stopped me by putting his hand on my shoulder.
“And kid? Let’s not bring this up with the Inspectre, shall we?”
“I kind of have to, don’t I?” I asked. “After the last time I called a false ‘vampire’ on a case? My rep is a bit shaky. Negotiating all this will more than make up for it. Allorah Daniels might pop a gasket, but we can’t not report this.”
“Fine,” Connor said, frustrated. “But just… not now, okay? Not until I deal with Aidan. I know Allorah. She gets really worked up, really fast. She’ll want to come in here crosses a-blazing, and I can’t allow that to happen. We need to take the slow, subtle approach if we’re going to deal with this the right way.”
I nodded. At this point, what were a few more days in the grand scheme of things? I didn’t bother to ask Connor out loud what he meant by “deal” with his brother, but I hoped it didn’t involve using a sharpened piece of wood.
Connor walked back over to Aidan. The tension in the air let up as Nicholas led me away from the Brothers Christos and we walked along castle corridors until we finally came out into the courtyard of the castle.
“What the hell is this place?” I asked.
“This,” Nicholas said as plain as he could, “is our castle.”
“But what the hell is it doing here in the middle of New York City?” A terrifying thought struck me. “We are still in New York City, right? Because wormholes and rips in time and space aren’t in my job description. I’m not even sure it’s in anyone’s job description back at the office. If you tell me we stepped through a Stargate or something to get here, I think my brain is going to explode.”
Nicholas gave a gentle and reassuring smile. He was much quieter and softer-spoken than I thought a vampire could ever be… more articulate, too. “Not quite,” he said. “I assure you we are still in New York City and still inside the Gibson-Case Center. The castle and its grounds are the result of much decorative illusion and not exactly what they seem. Through extensive landscaping, we’ve recreated the castle’s original surrounding homeland of Wallachia in painstaking detail.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “When we came out of that tunnel into the edge of the forest… There’s no way all that fits in just a city block.”
“I assure you, it does,” Nicholas said. “We’ve employed a lot of scenic trickery in designing this space.” Pride was thick in his voice and he stopped to point off to various areas nearby. “Forced perspective, false horizon lines, lighting to simulate the passage of night and day… theatrics to give the appearance of open space surrounding Castle Bran.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Did Brandon name your castle after 90210, too?”
Nicholas shook his head. “Actually, no. That is mere coincidence.” He started walking again and I followed. “Castle Bran is from Wallachia’s Brasov County,” he continued. “Our people took occupation of it when Brandon killed the Wallachian viovode Mircea the Old several hundred years ago.”
“How nice,” I said. “So what’s it doing here?”
“All this has been in the planning stages for years. The castle was finally moved here stone by stone over the past seventy years.”
“You’d have made an excellent history teacher, Nicholas,” I said.
“Architect,” the vampire offered, pausing on the cobblestone path as we reached the portcullis. “I was an architect… That was long ago.”
Sadness rolled off of him as he stood there in silence, and I fought to not get too wrapped up in his emotion. Thankfully, he began walking again and the sadness started to fade.
“So… what?” I asked. “You’ve built this ivory tower around your secret castle here? To what end?”
“It’s not just a tower,” Nicholas said, looking a little insulted. “It’s an entirely self-sufficient city-state. Have you ever heard of the term ‘arcology’?”
“Enlighten me, oh, architect,” I said. The tunnel where Connor and I had come in here was off in the distance and the vampire led us down the path toward it.
Nicholas ignored my comment, but spoke anyway. “The Gibson-Case Center is what’s known as a hyperstructure. We’re a self-contained, self-sufficient system of commercial and residential facilities-educational, business, housing, production, technological-all while maintaining the privacy of everyone living within the system, both human and vampire alike. We even have our own hospital, through which our residents unknowingly support our appetites with their contributions of blood by donating it to what they think is a regular blood drive. We see that those who donate on a more regular basis receive a reduction in rent in exchange. It’s very symbiotic and the perfect ecosystem for a culture like ours, who put such a premium on retaining our privacy.”
I whistled, impressed. “You’re telling me that not only did you move an entire castle into the city, but you then managed to put a… What did you call it again?”
“An arcology,” Nicholas repeated.
“Yeah,” I said. “That. You built this arcology around it?”
“That is correct,” he said.