Trouble at the Game Graveyard

“Can’t you drive a little more carefully?”

The trip had been the bumpiest car ride any of the four teen Neopians had ever been to, but that was to be expected when you decided to spend the long weekend at the Haunted Woods. Jessica, Finley, Terrance, and Caden had been planning this Game Graveyard outing for over a month, especially because Caden had played all of Destruct-O-Match II and was aching to play more levels of the game he, according to the Kougra himself, “was such a Grand Master at.”

Still, just because they were visiting a graveyard didn’t mean they had to look like corpses themselves. Jessica readjusted herself in her seat and fixed her only slightly disheveled Usul hair.

“It’s called the Haunted Woods for a reason, Jessica,” Caden said from the driver’s seat. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

“Not as bad as if Finley was driving, though,” Terrance the Nimmo said from beside Caden. Both boys snickered at the remark, which made Finley squirm in his seat beside Jessica and grimace.

“Hey, I was just minding my own business here,” the Kacheek said, bringing the book he was reading closer to his face. “Reading about all the best games at the Game Graveyard.”

“Read all you want, buddy,” Caden said. “It doesn’t matter. There’s only one thing you’re worse at than driving, and that’s beating us in any games.” Caden took a hand off the steering wheel so he and Terrance could high-five each other, and Caden placed his hand on the wheel again and continued. “What’s the only game you’ve achieved an actual high score in, huh? Fashion Fever?”

“Whatever,” Finley said, rolling his eyes and grumbling. “You guys are going to regret saying that tonight.”

“Hey, it’s over there,” Jessica said, looking out from her window. “To the right. I see the sign and all the arcade cabinets.”

Caden looked to the right and saw what Jessica had described. “Finally,” he said, turning the steering wheel. “I thought we’d be driving through these woods forever.”

As the car drove closer and closer, Terrance kept bouncing his fists against his lap and chanting. “Game Graveyard! Game Graveyard! Game Graveyard!”

Soon enough, the four had reached the elusive graveyard, and it was a graveyard, alright. Sure, most graveyards didn’t include arcade cabinets next to their gravestones, but the place looked deader than any arcade they had ever been to. None of the games were running, but Finley had read about how to turn them on, and though anyone else would’ve been utterly averse to getting out of the car, the four Neopians did exactly that the second Caden had parked.

Once they were out, they all stood and stared at the strangest arcade they’d ever seen in front of them, one that no sane Neopian would ever build a whole vacation around.

“Alright, the Game Graveyard,” Caden said. “You all ready for the awesomest night of our lives?”

Terrance was the first to start running into the graveyard. “I call dibs on Ice Cream Factory!”

******

Finley was leaning against the cabinet, watching Caden collect negg after negg with his Meerca, when he looked up for a second and saw Jessica and Terrance in the short distance, walking towards where they were. “Oh, hey, look,” he said. “Either Terrance got the high score, or he finally gave up on the game.”

“Oh my gosh, Caden, you gotta check it out,” Jessica said as she and Terrance were within earshot of Caden and Finley. “Terrance got a perfect score in Techo Says!”

Caden looked up from the Meerca Chase I cabinet and stared at Terrance with rounded eyes. “What, seriously?” he said. “How’d you do that?”

“It’s basically just a more basic version of the current Techo Says,” Terrance said with a shrug and a grin. “How are you doing at Meerca Chase?”

Caden chuckled. “I’m doing a lot better than Finley did, that’s for sure,” he said. “I can’t believe you left me alone with this loser. He couldn’t even get a hundred after, like, five tries. I got higher than that on my first try!”

“Oh my God, Finley,” Jessica said. “Talk about embarrassing.”

All three of them laughed, and Finley could do nothing except shrink back and shrug.

Then, Jessica’s eyes lit up, and she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “Hey, we should invite Lloyd over here,” she said, flipping her phone open. “His family in the Haunted Woods, right? He could totally be here too for the long weekend!”

“Oh my God, yeah, Lloyd the Techo-bro!” Caden said. “Now, we can get the party started!”

Jessica pressed some keys on her phone and held her phone against her ear as everyone else heard the faint sound of ringing from it. As Jessica began walking away, Terrance grabbed Caden by the wrist and started pulling him away where they were standing. “Dude, come on,” he said. “You gotta watch the Terranceman play Techo Says. I’m, like, the absolute champion. If this game were still alive.”

“Alright, alright.” As both boys started running, Caden turned his head around and cupped a hand around his mouth. “Better catch up, Finley!”

Finley sighed. “Whatever, assholes,” he muttered as he started walking.

******

“Does anyone know where Jessica is?” Terrance said as he took a look around. “She’s been M.I.A. for a pretty long time.”

Finley furrowed his brow at Terrance’s statement. Caden, however, didn’t even bother looking up from his arcade cabinet. “Wasn’t she calling Lloyd or something?”

“Yeah, but that was like, twenty minutes ago,” Terrance said, checking his watch and frowning. “A call shouldn’t have taken that long.”

As soon as he heard those words, Caden stopped playing and looked up from the Techo Says screen. “Huh,” he said as he looked around, seeing arcade cabinets and a Kacheek and a Nimmo, but no Usul in sight. “Maybe she went off to take some selfies or something. Girl’s always entering the Beauty Contest every week, anyway.”

“Right,” Terrance said, nodding. “We should probably still call her, anyway.”

Caden snickered as he went back to playing. “You call her,” he said. “We all know you’ve had a crush on her since forever.”

Terrance grunted and hit Caden in the shoulder. “Shut up,” he said. “That’s not what I meant. Stop being such a jackass.”

Terrance walked a few steps away from Caden and Finley as he pulled out his phone from his pocket. He opened his contact list and clicked on Jessica’s name, and pressed the top of his phone to his ear as he listened to his phone start ringing.

For a while, there was no reply.

But Finley noticed something.

“Hey, do you hear that?” Finley asked, looking around like he was searching for something. “It sounds like Jessica’s ringtone.”

Terrance put his phone down as he perked his ears up, trying to listen to any sound out of the unusual. Caden turned his arcade cabinet off and did the same. Finley was right. Somewhere in the Game Graveyard was the faint sound of Jessica’s ringtone, a perky 8-bit version of a M*YNCI song’s chorus, and the phone kept on ringing, as if its owner was nowhere near it.

“Keep calling the phone,” Caden told Terrance. As Caden turned off all the other running cabinets, the ringtone became clearer with every shut-off cabinet, and all three Neopians followed the sound until they came to an empty patch of grass, just between the Game Graveyard and a sea of trees that made up the woods.

Only, there was something on the grass. Jessica’s cellphone was lying on the middle of the patch.

And Jessica was nowhere to be found.

“What the…” Caden said, tilting his head as he slowly neared the ringing flip phone.

Before he could move any further, though, something rushed past the three of them so fast, all they could see was a blur of orange and black. Caden tumbled back and had to take a few seconds to rebalance himself and stand upright again.

The next thing they saw, there was an Usul’s body lying face down on top of where the phone was, and blood was leaking from the Usul’s neck.

Oh my God.

It was Jessica.

The sight nearly made Caden throw up. Finley screamed at the top of his lungs, and Terrance dashed past Caden and grabbed Jessica’s dead body, trying to shake it awake.

“Jessica!” Terrance said, his voice shaking. Tears were streaming down his face. “Jessica, wake up! Please, please don’t be dead!”

Then, the three boys heard a cackle.

All of them whipped their heads up and looked around. Whoever had made that sound was nowhere to be found, but one thing was for sure – they weren’t alone. Whoever had killed Jessica was in this graveyard with them right now, and the second Caden realized this, the second his feet started moving.

“We have to run,” Caden said. He grabbed Terrance by the arm and pulled him up, and Terrance was forced to drop Jessica’s body. “We have to leave now!” As he dragged Terrance while running, he pointed to Finley and motioned for him to hurry up and follow. “Run to the car, run to the car!”

The three of them ran at full speed to the car, their feet barely touching the ground as they did so. As soon as they arrived, Caden swung the driver’s seat door open and leapt inside, and Terrance did the same for the shotgun seat and Finley the back seat.

As soon as everyone was inside, Lloyd locked the doors and tried to get his key out of his pocket. It was difficult when your hands were trembling like crazy, but he finally managed to do so. He scrambled to get the key into the ignition, but again, his shaky hands were making it near impossible.

“Caden, Jessica could still be alive,” Terrance said. “We didn’t check completely. I think we should go back —“

“She’s fucking dead, Terrance!” Caden screamed, whipping his head towards Terrance with a glower. “And we’re going to be too if we don’t get the hell out of here!”

Caden refocused his attention on the ignition. He breathed a sigh of relief as he finally got the key into the hole, but as he turned the key, the car wouldn’t run.

He turned the key again, but still, but the car remained unstarted, and all three boys stared at the key inside the ignition as the lines on Caden’s forehead began to deepen.

“What the hell?” Caden said. He turned the key again. And again, and again, and again.

No matter how many times he did it, the car just wouldn’t start.

“Why won’t this stupid car run?” he said, banging his hands against the steering wheel.

“Look at the gas meter,” Finley said, peering over Caden’s seat and pointing at the fuel gauge. “It’s empty.”

Caden looked at the gas meter, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull when he saw the red pointer right above the letter E. “How are we empty already?” he screamed. “We still had gas when I parked!”

Caden turned around and looked at Terrance and Finley, and it was clear from the look on their faces that both boys were just as confused and terror-stricken as he was. “What do we do now?” Caden said.

Finley exhaled a heavy breath. “We gotta stay here.”

Terrance furrowed his eyebrows at Finley. “Stay here?”

“It’s the Haunted Woods, Terrance!” Finley said. “We can’t go out there when there’s a monster that just killed our friend!”

“Why not?” Caden said.

“Why not?” Finley said, turning his head toward Caden. “Because that monster is probably extremely familiar with this place, you idiot!”

“Don’t call me an idiot —”

The end of that sentence, though, was interrupted by the sound of a loud thud hitting the car’s roof. The second they heard it, all three boys looked up and stared at the ceiling, seeing the faint indent of a creature’s paws and feet. Caden wasted no second in getting down, crouching underneath the steering wheel, and when Terrance and Finley saw what Caden was doing, they were both quick to follow suit.

Whoever had killed Jessica was on their roof now. Who else could it have been, after all? All three Neopians slowed their breath and kept incredibly quiet, as they heard whoever was on their roof jump onto the ground, followed by the sound of scratching against the side of the car.

Eeeeeek, the sound went. Eeeeeeeeeeeeek. None of them could look outside the car windows, but it sounded like… claws, maybe? Or maybe a weapon keying the car?

After a short while, the sound stopped.

The three boys waited a few seconds, but still, the sound didn’t come back. They waited a few more, and a few more after that, looking at each other with faces that made it clear none of them knew what to do next.

Then, they heard the sound of clicking.

It was a quick and faint sound, but in this car, you could’ve heard a needle drop with how quiet all its passengers were being. The three boys all looked at each other with rounded eyes, then Caden looked behind him, and his heart almost stopped at what he saw.

The car door was unlocked.

Caden leapt to lock the door of the driver’s seat, but before Terrance could do the same, the door to Terrance’s seat swung open in a flash. Terrance felt something grab him by the ankle, and he screamed as something pulled him away in a blur. It was a blur of orange and black, Caden saw again, but he and Finley could do nothing but stare at the open car door in horror as they heard the screams of Terrance from a slight distance away.

Then, Terrance’s screaming stopped. Caden and Finley’s eyes met and both their faces were utter question marks, but before either of them could whisper anything, there was a heavy thud against the car’s front window, which set off the blaring noise of the car alarm.

Caden and Finley turned their heads towards the front window.

Lying on top of the glass was Terrance’s still body, and there was blood leaking from the Nimmo’s neck.

“Oh, fuck this shit!” Caden said. Without waiting a fraction of a second more, he pushed open his door and sprinted into the woods, not daring to look back. It wasn’t until he tripped on a rock and fell to the ground that he was forced to stop, and as he got himself back up, he heard the voice of Finley catch up from behind him.

“Wait, Caden!” Finley said in between breaths. He stopped and rested his hands against his knees as he slouched down, panting. “Where are you running?!”

“Anywhere!” Caden said. “Didn’t you see there was a monster there?!”

“So you were just going to leave me?” Finley said, shooting Caden a look.

Caden groaned. “I don’t have time to argue with you right now, Finley,” he said. “If we don’t start running again soon —“

“Wait, over there,” Finley said, pointing behind Caden. Caden turned around and saw the opening of a cave that Finley was pointing at. “There’s a cave.”

Caden gazed back at Finley and raised his eyebrows at him. “You want us to run into a cave?!”

“We’re never going to outrun whatever’s attacking us!” Finley said. “We might as well hide! Come on!”

Finley grabbed Caden by the wrist and pulled him towards the cave’s entrance, and the two dashed into and made their way further and further into the cave. The more they went in, though, the less and less they could see, and pretty soon, it didn’t make a difference if Caden closed his eyes or not. Why was it so dark inside? Where had the light from the opening gone? Why had Finley pulled him so deeply into the cave?

“Finley?” he called out to the nothingness.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m right here,” Finley’s voice replied. A light started shining and floating around, illuminating Finley, and Caden realized Finley had turned on the flashlight on his phone. He patted his pockets and felt relief that his own phone was still in his pocket, so he began fishing it out as well.

“What the hell was that thing?” Caden asked as he turned on the phone. No signal. Crap. At least he still had his flashlight.

“I don’t know!” Finley said. “Did you see it when it attacked Terrance?”

“I saw, like, an orange blur…” Caden racked his brain, trying to remember everything he knew about the creatures in the Haunted Woods, which, of course, wasn’t a lot. “What monsters live in the Haunted Woods?”

“A lot,” Finley said. “Hubrid Nox, the Esophagor…” Finley stopped in the middle of his sentence, and his face told Caden that he had noticed something in their surroundings. “Wait, what is this place?”

Finley swept his light around in a circle, which illuminated the inside of the cave. The cave looked lived in. Lanterns stood on each of the corners, and there was an open casket leaning upright on the left wall, with bones and skulls surrounding its base. Caden shuddered, thinking about whether those bones were real or not.

At least they knew where the cave’s opening was now — there was a curve that led to it, which explained the sudden darkness when they went further in. As Caden swept his own flashlight around, he saw a purple chair on the right that looked straight out of a horror movie, with bat wings decorating its back and its armrests ending with claws.

“Hey Finley,” Caden said. “Wasn’t that the chair you said you wanted when we were looking through the Neopian Times?”

“The Chair of Darkness,” Finley said. Then, he cleared his throat. “No time to be window shopping for furniture now. Did we sneak into someone’s house? Maybe a Varwolf’s or something?”

“Maybe.” Caden continued moving around his flashlight. As he did so, he ran his light past a figure standing by the curve leading to the cave’s opening. It took Caden a second to realize what he just saw, but when he whipped his light back to where he saw the silhouette, there was nothing to be seen.

“Finley…” Caden whispered. “We’re not alone here.”

“What?”

A figure dropped to the ground behind Finley. As the figure stood up, Caden could finally see who it was, and the sight made his blood run cold. This was a creature he only knew about from campfire stories and Neopedia readings, but he never expected to ever be face-to-face with him.

There, in the same cave as he was, was Count Von Roo, standing tall with his long black coat draping over his orange fur, and everything that had just happened to him and his friends had immediately clicked with Caden.

He was the orange and black blur that killed Jessica and Terrance.

“Finley, run!”

Finley turned around, but it was too late. The Count Von Roo looked down at the Kacheek with a devilish smirk on his face, and Finley stood frozen as the Count grabbed him by the shoulders, opened his mouth wide to reveal his fangs, and bit into Finley’s neck.

Finley let out a blood-curdling scream.

The sound and the sight made Caden’s throat dry up and his heart sink. He nearly fainted as he watched the Count suck Finley’s blood, making Finley scream more and more, until Finley stopped and gasped his last breath, closed his eyes, and lost consciousness. As soon as Finley’s body flopped down onto the Count’s shoulders, the Blumaroo vampire let his teeth go and threw the Kacheek’s limp, unmoving body onto the ground.

Caden’s hand was shaking so hard, he could barely keep his flashlight still. His gaze shifted from Finley’s dead body to the Count still standing tall, his eyes fixed on Caden while blood dripped from his lips and a devious grin grew on his face.

“Hello, Caden.”

Caden’s jaw dropped. His whole life, he’d heard scary stories about the Count, but never once did he think he’d meet the creature like this. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever meet the creature at all, since he had never had any solid plans to visit Roo Island. And now, here that creature was, standing in front of him in a lone, dark cave in the middle of the Haunted Woods.

And he knew Caden’s name.

“How do you know my name?” Caden managed to say in a shaky voice.

“I have my ways,” the Count said, walking towards the right side of the cave. Caden followed his movement with his shaky flashlight and watched the Count light a match and light up a lantern, illuminating the cave more. “Do you want to live, Caden?”

“Y-y-yes, of course,” Caden said as the Count walked to the other side and lit another lantern. “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” At this point, the cave was illuminated enough to overpower Caden’s flashlight, which was good, because the light from his phone could only do so much. Caden placed his phone in his pocket as the Count continued. “Maybe, even… play a game?”

Count Von Roo put a hand inside his black coat’s pocket and pulled out two dice, one black and one white. It had dots on it and not skulls, so it wasn’t the Deadly Dice, which gave Caden a minuscule sense of relief. If those dice could take away your level, what else could they take away?

“We’ll play a game, Caden,” the Count said as he bounced the dice in his left hand. “You like games, don’t you?” He stopped playing with the dice and rolled one of them, the white one, towards Caden’s shoes. “We’ll roll a die together. If we roll and you roll higher than me two out of three times, I promise I won’t hurt you.”

With a trembling everything, Caden knelt down and picked up the die by his left shoe. As he stood up and inspected it, he saw it was as regular as the die you bought at the Toy Shop, the sides numbered from one dot to six. Still, Caden was uncertain about the Count’s offer. “H-h-how do you know you’ll keep your promise?”

The Count looked at Caden, his chin high. “My castle is a famous tourist spot for a reason, Caden,” he said. “I never go back on my word when it comes to my dice. Besides…” The Count snickered. “What other choice do you have?”

Caden exhaled a heavy breath and nodded. “O-o-okay,” Caden said, nodding his head. He stared at the die, then back at the Count. “Do I roll first, or…”

The Count waved his hand in the air in a motion that said yes. “Go ahead.”

Caden’s heart beat faster and faster in his ribcage. He wrapped his die in his fist and breathed hard into the opening his thumb and pointing finger made. He closed his eyes and gulped, and though every bone in his body told him not to, Caden shook his fist and rolled his die onto the ground, listening to the sound of it rolling and bouncing against the cave’s hard floor.

Caden opened his eyes.

He had rolled a five.

Caden looked at the Count expectantly, and the Count shook his fist with his die inside it and rolled it onto the ground. Caden’s chest tightened as the die rolled across the cave floor before finally landing.

Caden’s chest loosened.

The Count had rolled a three.

“Looks like you win the first round,” the Count said. Thank God, Caden thought. He breathed a sigh of relief as he ran to pick up the die and wrap it in his fist again, and after he did so, the Count went and did the same.

After he had walked back to where he had originally stood, the Count cocked his head at Caden and raised an eyebrow. “Go again.”

Caden rolled his die again, this time rolling a one. His heart sank at the singular dot on top of the die, and he felt that tightening in his chest again as he watched the Count shake his fist and roll his die onto the ground.

Please roll a one. Please roll a one. Please roll a one.

The Count also rolled a one.

“That counts as a win!” Caden shouted, pointing at the snake eyes between both of them.

“No, it counts as a tie,” the Count said, pressing his lips together and raising an eyebrow. “Don’t try to swindle a dice master, Caden. I know more about dice than you ever will.”

Yeah, well, for a dice master, you still haven’t won once, Caden wanted to say. He knew better, of course, but he couldn’t help but give the Count an ugly stare as he picked up his die and wrapped it in his fist once more.

His breathing slowed even more when he realized this roll might be the one that determines if he lived or died. If the Count won this time or if they got another tie, there would still be one more roll. But what were the chances he would win that one? What were the chances he would win this one?

Caden didn’t want to play this game anymore. He never wanted to play in the first place. A game of rolling dice had never felt so dreadful, so much like torture, and he needed to win this round so he could it get it all done and over with.

No longer hesitating, he closed his eyes and threw his die down to the ground.

He listened to the sounds of die rolling and bouncing until it finally stopped. He heard the sound of the Count’s die hitting the floor a few seconds later.

When the sounds finally stopped, Caden’s whole body went rigid.

He didn’t want to see the results. But he had to. Forcing himself to, he opened his eyes.

He had rolled a four.

The Count had rolled a two.

“I win!” the Kougra said, jumping up and down like crazy as he pointed to the pair of dice. “I win!” He redirected the direction of his finger to the Count. “You let me go! You set me free! That was the deal!”

The Count nodded and smiled. “Alright, you win,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “I’m a Count of my word, after all. You’re free to go.”

Caden heard all the words he needed to. Without a second more wasted in this cave, he clicked his heels against the ground and began running out of the cave, the curve to the opening seeming like the gateway to paradise that moment. He ran past the Count, ran past Finley’s body, heading as fast as he could to the tempting light at the end of the tunnel.

But then, he felt a hand hold onto his ankle. He tripped and fell down.

Pain exploded through his body from the impact. Caden whipped his body around with anger. “You said you wouldn’t —“

What Caden saw, though, stopped him dead in the middle of his sentence. It hadn’t been the Count who had grabbed his ankle. It was Finley, pushing himself up from the ground as he locked eyes with Caden.

Finley was still alive.

Finley was still alive.

Caden couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The Kacheek he had thought was dead, the one he had seen die right in front of him, was now towering over him and staring at him, still very much alive. A devious smile was growing on his face, revealing a set of fangs, one on each side of his lips.

Finley was still alive, and he had fangs now.

“You’re right, I did say I wouldn’t hurt you,” the Count said from behind Finley with a shrug. This time, it was his turn to smile. “I never said anything about anyone else doing so.”

Caden’s eyes shot back from the Count to Finley, and his throat was so dry, he wasn’t sure if he could speak. “Finley,” Caden said in a whisper. “I don’t understand, I thought —“

“Were you just going to leave my body to rot here, Caden?” Finley asked, his eyebrows forming a downwards arrow and his smile turning into a frown.

“What?” Caden said. “No. I was, I was gonna g-g-get help and go back —“

“I don’t believe you.” Finley stepped on Caden’s ankle, and the pain was so much it caused Caden to scream. Finley’s grip was so tight, Caden couldn’t move at all, but that almost didn’t matter when the disbelief was enough to keep him frozen.

“Finley, please…”

“You and everyone else were such assholes to me,” Finley said. “But especially you, Caden. I was always your punching bag. I was always the punchline to your joke. Well, not anymore.”

Finley grabbed Caden by his shirt collar and pulled him upwards, the now vampire’s face only a few inches from his. “When I made a deal with the Count,” Finley said, his smile returning, “I told him I wanted to be the one to kill you.”

In a flash, Finley bit down hard into Caden’s neck, and Caden felt the sharp pain of Finley’s fangs seeping into his neck’s blood vessels. He finally understood why Terrance and Finley had screamed so hard, because it was all he could do to deal with the pain, too. Second by second, he felt the energy and life seep out of his body as Finley kept going, kept drinking his blood like he couldn’t get enough.

Everything was becoming blurry, Caden was losing consciousness, his chest was getting tighter, his breathing was getting shorter, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see…

Total darkness.

Once Finley felt Caden’s body go limp onto his shoulder, he let go of his bite and threw the Kougra down on the ground. Once he lay face down, Finley kicked Caden’s side and stomach and watched his body roll face up, and it couldn’t have been clearer than crystal: Caden was nothing more than a corpse now.

The delight of seeing the Kougra’s lifeless body filled Finley up, and he turned and grinned at the Count. “And they say never play with your food.”

Count Von Roo smiled back. “Welcome to the Count Von Clan, Count Finley,” he said. “I must admit, that was a lot of fun. I shouldn’t have doubted your fake dice idea.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to give that bastard one last sense of hope before I took it away from him,” he said, sneering at the corpse below him. He bent down and stared at Caden’s dead face. “I was gonna get help and go back. Bullshit. He was going to leave me to rot. They all would’ve.”

“You’re going to make a great vampire,” Count Von Roo said, placing a hand on Finley’s shoulder. “But the night’s not over yet. We still have one thing left to do.”

******

No evidence left, the Count had told him. That was how he stayed so inconspicuous for so long. After all, there was no way Roo Island was allowing him to hold Deadly Dice in their island if he was a proven murderer, so he made sure every kill he committed could never be traced back to him.

Which was more than alright with Finley, since it meant seeing the dead bodies of his once tormenters again.

The two were in the middle of carrying Jessica away to the cave, Finley carrying Jessica’s arms and the Count her legs, when they heard a voice from far away. It was a voice that Finley recognized right away, a voice he should’ve expected but forgot about due to all the excitement.

“Hey, Jessica!” Lloyd’s voice shouted, echoing through the woods. “Caden! Terrance! I’m here, you guys!”

As soon as Finley heard the voice, his eyes lit up at Count Von Roo, and the Count knew just what his new apprentice was thinking. Finley’s lips curved into a grin. “I know I just had my meal, but is there any chance left for dessert?”

The Count grinned back. “Well, we can’t have any witnesses.”