Bank of Westminster

Chapter 3

November 15, 1987. Overcast, no sunlight, rain on the Thames.

"Name?"

"Baron Constantine."

"Age?"

"Twenty-two."

"Home address?"

"Past or present?"

"Either."

"2887 Frankendy, Warrington, Cheshire."

He was giving the address recorded in the diary—where Edward, the original body's older brother, and younger sister Yelena had lived.

"Do you know what crime you're charged with?"

"I didn't commit any crime."

"Yet there were eyewitnesses at the scene."

"I didn't kill anyone."

"Who said you killed anyone?" The interrogator's tone was odd. "Your charge is illicit contact with the Dragon Witch."

"The Dragon Witch? Who is she?"

"Carmen Ray Dracoon. She killed the Red Dragon."

...

Wind hurled rain against the iron bars, accompanied by a meaningless rustle. Late autumn chill knifed across the skin; clock hands spun, slicing shadows.

The heavy iron door clanged shut. Baron sat on the narrow plank bed of the prison cell, hearing a sinister laugh from the other side of the cement wall.

"I told you—playing the fool won't fool those Holy Cross bastards, kid."

The laughter came from his neighbor in the next cell, a fellow named Lawrence. Rumor said Lawrence had spent three years in this riverside prison that the world never noticed.

Originally, this corridor had held only one lifer. Baron made two.

"I also told you, I'm not playing crazy. They didn't convict me of murder—they convicted me of illicit contact with the Dragon Witch."

Baron pictured the red-haired, crimson-eyed girl who looked like a fairy.

She could transform into a colossal, jagged dragon, yet she was as unpredictable as the girl next door. "Dragon Witch" suited her perfectly.

"The Dragon Witch?" came the gasp from next door. "The one who killed the Red Dragon and wiped out House Dracoon a hundred years ago?"

"You know of her?"

After a night of conversation through the wall, Baron had learned a rough sketch of this world's background.

As he had guessed when he met Carmen, beneath 1987 Britain lay a hidden side—ancient, steeped in history, as fantastic as any novel.

That world had dragons, vampires, walking corpses, devils who seduced hearts... and the guardians who opposed them, the enforcers known as the Old-Bloods.

According to Lawrence, Old-Bloods were humans whose veins carried "the blood of elder gods." They could sign a covenant with the Codex and become enforcers.

What the Codex and enforcers truly were, Baron had not managed to pry from Lawrence, but he suspected they were tied to his so-called "Knight Codex."

"Call me Mr. Lawrence, you impudent brat."

Lawrence huffed through the wall, then shifted tone, mocking and wary.

"Still, after meeting the Dragon Witch you actually lived to show up here. Looks like the witch took a fancy to you."

Baron was about to protest that he truly didn't know what had happened, but his mind flashed back to yesterday's scene:

the girl who had become the Red Dragon, the lamb-white naked body, the kiss through parchment, the vow-like words and sighs... and the dead family of three on the bed, Mrs. Eleanor's vacant stare, the iris on the windowsill that had withered in an instant.

"To be or not to be—that is the question."

He remembered the girl's whisper in his ear. In his previous life he had been a playwright—of course he recognized the line from Act III, Scene I of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

It was the moment when Hamlet, learning his father had been murdered by his uncle and that his mother had quickly married the killer, was torn by inner conflict and doubt.

In the language of his former life's literature exams, the line reflected the character's inner struggle from the side.

Why had the Witch said that to him? What did it signify? Should he tell the police about the bizarre "Codex" contract he had signed with the Witch?

Baron's thoughts were cut short by a roar like an angry bull from the other side of the wall, accompanied by the dull thud of something striking the cement—like a head ramming brick.

Lawrence suddenly screamed.

"Adel! Adel... Adel!"

He repeated the name over and over, voice ragged with hatred, like poison-soaked cloth torn by a blade and set alight.

"Hey! Guard!" Baron pounded on the iron door. "My cellmate's in trouble! I think you'd better take him to the infirmary!"

The peephole slid open. The guard yawned.

"Ignore him. That fellow's alias is 'Roaring Lawrence.' Every so often he goes mad. I hear it's an after-effect of getting kicked in the back of the head by a griffin when he resisted arrest years ago."

"Worry about yourself, bloodless scion of House Constantine." The guard's voice was impatient. "Your trial starts at dawn tomorrow. Better think how you'll defend yourself..."

The peephole snapped shut; the fading laughter cut off like distant bells.

Baron had been about to ask what the trial was, or what "bloodless" meant, when he heard another low growl outside the cement wall.

"Adel..."

The growls came in waves, mixed with a soft rushing like seawash on sand.

When Baron saw the moon hanging beyond the barred window, Lawrence's faint panting finally drifted through the shared slit.

"Everything connected to the Dragon Witch is controlled by the Tower of London, the Holy Cross, the Inquisition... those lofty types. Anything tied to that woman is cursed."

"Because she killed the Red Dragon?" Baron asked.

Red Dragon... In his memory, Carmen had been a crimson, horned dragon. Was there a connection?

"Killing the Red Dragon and wiping out House Dracoon are the least of her crimes. Some say the Witch's greatest sin is..."

"What is it?"

"If I knew the Witch's original sin, I wouldn't be stuck in this god-forsaken hole."

Lawrence, regaining his senses, leaned against the wall, gazing through the slit at the city veiled in drizzle.

"My guess? Your best outcome is life imprisonment."

Life imprisonment for merely meeting the Dragon Witch? It was almost the twenty-first century. No matter how backward British law might be, it couldn't be that immature.

Baron thought Lawrence was trying to scare him.

He didn't believe it.

November 16, 1987. 6:00 a.m. Prol Court, Her Majesty's Prison Thameside.

BANG!

The gavel crashed on the walnut table; the sentence sounded like Death swinging his scythe.

Baron was the straw severed by that blade.

"Defendant Baron Constantine! According to the final deliberation of the five-judge panel of Prol Court... you are sentenced to death!"

I take it back—British law is worse than immature!

Baron shot to his feet, outraged, only to be slammed back into his chair by two black-clad guards.

He lifted his head and stared at the white-haired, hook-nosed elder on the dais—the judge who had casually ended his life.

Through clenched teeth he hissed, "I object! What crime have I committed!?"

He had transmigrated only two days ago; he hadn't done a thing, and now the death penalty?

Even if he had murdered Mrs. Eleanor's entire family, shouldn't there be a scene with relatives weeping in court and the culprit feigning remorse?

If life were a play, Baron had stepped onstage and bowed out in the same breath.

"What crime you committed..."

The white-haired judge snorted. He raised the gavel etched with heraldic lion and serpent.

"Your crime is..."

Under Baron's disbelieving gaze, the gavel fell with a crack.

"Assassination of the Knight-Commander!"

Assassination of the Knight-Commander? What trumped-up charge is this now!?

——

[Work Diary of Baron Constantine (original body):

October 28, 1987 / London / Overcast

Walked the London streets; heavy fog. A car ran over a cat.

I buried the cat... (many smudged corrections; Zhou Yike couldn't make it out.)

Christine is leaving me for a while. I wish her a smooth journey.

No one loves her the way I do.]