“I will text them to let them know I will be home later,” I say as I quickly retrieve my phone out of my bag. I have a text from Sofia asking if I am okay and to be home before eleven, and they will explain later.
“We have until ten thirty,” I tell him.
“That will have to do, I guess?” He smiles. “Can I be your tour guide tomorrow?” His eyes bore into mine and I am unable to string a sentence together again.
“Yes,” I manage to mumble before he looks toward the fountain, breaking the hold he has on me.
“Tell me something about you?” he asks.
“I’m from Brisbane in Queensland, and I study at university.”
“What are you studying?” he prompts.
“Ancient History. What do you do?”
He looks down at his cake and I hear him take in a deep breath; he is stalling. I wait patiently for him to respond, but instead he has a mouthful of cake, and I mull over why he is avoiding my question. My imagination runs riot and I come up with many different assumptions—the most outrageous is that he is a hitman whose family is part of the Italian Mafia. Up until earlier this afternoon I would have thought this impossible; now I’m not sure what is make-believe and what is real. I stab my fork into the cake and break off a small piece, trying not to drop any on my top.
“My family has a glass-making shop. I work there with my father and uncle and have been taught the trade since a young age,” he lets out in one long breath.
His smile widens as he looks at me and has another bite of the rich cake. I follow suit and shovel another small piece carefully into my mouth, this time managing to sprinkle a few crumbs down my top. I finish chewing and pray that I have none in my teeth. Why did Franco have to choose dark chocolate cake, I think to myself.
“Do you live in the city?” I ask watching the water spray in the fountain.
“Yes, not far from here.” He indicates with his hand.
“Have you always lived in Rome?”
“Nearly all my life.”
There is a dark edge to his response, and I look up at his profile to see his mouth set in a hard line. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees.
“Have you always lived in Brisbane?” he asks without taking his eyes off the fountain.
“My whole life.”
“How old are you?” He smiles at me.
“I’m eighteen next week.” I beam at the thought of being in Rome for my eighteenth birthday. “How old are you?”
He laughs freely. “I’m twenty.” There is something behind his tone that I cannot put my finger on. “Where would you like to go tomorrow?” He changes the subject again, turning the questioning away from him as he sits up and leans casually against the backrest of the bench.
“Surprise me,” I hint, raising my eyebrows. He chuckles under his breath and shakes his head.
“That could end badly,” he taunts. “I have a fondness for the obscure and it may frighten you. I can’t have you running scared just yet.” His eyes darken, his stare intense.
“I’m up for a challenge; I’m not that squeamish. Besides where could you possibly take me that could be that scary?” I blink a couple of times before managing to break away from his beautiful dark eyes. There is a dangerous edge to his demeanor, and I think he is trying to caution me, but there is nothing I would not do to be able to spend the day with him tomorrow.
I check my phone. “I have to go. I said I would be back by eleven,” I sigh. I could sit here all night and talk to this beautiful man sitting next to me.
“I’ll walk you home; it’s not safe for a young woman to be walking by herself late at night,” he warns.
I turn to where Franco is with his horse and cart and they’re not there. I was so absorbed by our conversation that I didn’t hear them leave. “Thank you.”
We walk through the darkened streets, his hand at one point gently skimming mine. I peek up at him as we slowly make our way back to Piazza Maddalena. His strong, masculine face is something to behold, and I cannot believe I am here in Rome with someone I met just twenty-four hours ago. We reach the piazza quicker than I had hoped. The light from the church windows illuminates the piazza, and I sense the cautious eyes of the priest on us.
He walks me to the front door of the building where I stand on the step to face him. He takes a hold of one of my hands in his. His skin is neither warm nor cold, and the electric charge between us is hard to ignore. I am a nervous bubble of energy. I watch his face as he gently tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. His breath hitches and he gently pulls on my hand to purposefully pull me into him. I think I may combust when I feel his hand on my lower back. I am locked in his burning gaze and he leans in with parted lips, slowly testing the air. Our lips touch, and the tingle makes me giddy. I allow myself to completely lean on him, deepening the kiss. I slowly pull away, as I feel like my lungs are going to explode, to see him smirking, his eyes aglow. He retrieves his phone from his back pocket, a furrow forming between his eyebrows as he stares at the screen. I take it from his hand and place my number in it. Smiling shyly, I hand it back to him.
“Can I call you?”
“Definitely.” I grin. “I have to go upstairs. It’s getting late.”
I feel the tingle of his breath on my neck as he whispers, “Sweet dreams.”
My heart melts, and I cannot get the stupid, goofy grin off my face. He stalks off and I watch him as he heads across the piazza.
Walking up the cold staircase, my phone beeps and I pull it out of my bag expecting it to be Sofia. It reads: “Meet you at our pillar at 10 —Dom.”
I smile to myself as I know exactly where he means. I quickly text back, “Can’t wait.”
I burst through the apartment door and see Sofia and Maria sitting on the lounge, looking a little worried.
“Where have you been all evening, sweetheart?” Maria asks.
“I’m sorry, I lost track of time. I was sitting down near the Pantheon trying to get my head around all of this,” I reply.
“I’m just relieved that you are okay and that you didn’t run off.” Maria pauses before continuing, “Are you okay?” Her brows knit together.
“Yes, I think I am. I have a million questions to ask, but first I want to have a shower and get into my pajamas,” I explain in a rush.
After warming up in the shower, I throw my pajamas on and head straight to the lounge room. Nestled on the leather sofa, I stare absentmindedly at the platter of food that is sitting just out of reach on the table. My stomach growls and I try to hide it, but Sofia looks at me with understanding. I take my hot chocolate graciously and sip the hot liquid carefully; it burns my throat as it goes down. A light flickers off in my peripheral vision and I look in its direction. The lights in the church have been switched off, and I wonder what the priest thinks of Maria and Sofia living across the piazza.
Maria’s gentle tone breaks the silence. “Ask anything you like and I will try my best to answer you with complete honesty. Nothing is off limits.”
I take a deep breath to ease my nerves. “When did you become…” My voice trails off. I’m not sure if I can say the word out loud.
Sofia speaks first. “I was turned nearly two hundred years ago. Back then the onset of the dreams started later, and that is why I am a little older than you,” she explains in a voice barely more than a whisper.
“Why did you choose to become one?”
“It seemed romantic to me, living for eternity and staying young. I lived in France in the beginning, where we are only myth and legend, so it was easy to roam the streets without detection,” Sofia clarifies. “Here in Rome we have to be more careful. Stories of our kind are passed down from generation to generation, and the local people believe we exist.”
Maria answers my question next. “I turned over seven hundred years ago. Back in the times when there weren’t many of our kind here in Italy. I had no choice in the decision. My mother was Cassia and because she was pregnant with
me when she was cursed, the blood she drank coursed through my veins.” Maria’s eyes show no emotion at the memories of her past.
My mouth drops open in astonishment and I have lost my voice it seems. I cannot fathom the thought of Maria being seven hundred years old. How is it possible that she sits here in front of me and does not look a day over thirty? “Seven hundred,” I choke.
“Yes, it’s hard to believe, I know.” Maria smiles warmly. “Is there anything else you want to know, sweetheart?”
“You are Cassia’s daughter—it all started with you?” I state the obvious.
“Yes. She visited me on occasion after she escaped. However, I have not seen my mother for about three hundred years. She may not be alive anymore.” She shrugs.
There are hundreds of questions swirling through my head and I don’t know which one to ask first. “How do you walk in the daylight?”
“With this.” Maria pulls out a pendant that is suspended around her neck on a gold chain.
“Nonna gave me one of those before I left home. She knows?” I gasp.
“Your Nonna knows. All the women in our family are aware of the curse. Your mother came to me on her eighteenth birthday, just as you have done. Your mother did not want anything to do with becoming a vampire and she has never returned.”
I look closely at Maria’s pendant and notice it has something in it, unlike my empty one from Nonna.
“Mine has a bloodstone in it. A witch can cast a spell on the stone to allow the receiving vampire to walk in the daylight. The stone aids in the circulation of blood in our veins, keeping us warm to the touch, much like humans. If you choose this path for your future, you too will need a bloodstone for your pendant.”
My thoughts are a jumbled mess; this is too much to take in all at once. In the back of my mind one question keeps circulating and it is one I am trying my hardest to ignore. I look from Maria to Sofia. They sit poised and totally at ease with themselves. This is their everyday life.
“What? How? Err.” I cannot bring myself to say the words; it’s just too absurd. The thought of their feeding habits makes me queasy.
“What is it, sweetheart? You can ask me anything and I will answer you with honesty,” Maria comforts me.
“What do you feed on?” I blurt out.
Sofia holds her hand up to Maria indicating that she wants to answer my question. “We need blood to sustain our strength. Human blood.” Her eyes glass over at the thought of blood and I can see her skin start to glow under the light. “As we get older we don’t have to feed as often, and we don’t need as much blood. Take, for instance, Maria; she only needs to feed once a week. I, however, still need to feed every second day to keep up my strength. You are probably wondering how we get this human blood.” Sofia looks at me with a grin.
I nod.
“It is much more thirst quenching straight from the vein, especially if your prey is struggling to get away from you,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Sofia!” Maria growls, and I have never heard that noise come from a person before. It makes me jump, which is what it is designed to do, I’m sure. “I’m sorry, Katalina, Sofia has no manners.”
Sofia stands up in a huff and walks to her room calling, “Goodnight.”
“I will explain to you how we get our sustenance and then I too need to get to sleep. The way Sofia described our feeding is the most pleasurable way; however, there are other ways. We can hypnotize our donor into letting us feed and they won’t remember any part of it. There is also a small vampire organization that has started to collect blood these past twenty or so years. They ask regular humans to donate blood. These humans think that it is for the hospitals, but it’s not.”
I am appalled at this last revelation. Of all the things to be affected by, I choose this one? Maria senses my reaction.
“It is unethical taking human blood to feed our kind when it is needed by the sick, but many humans have been spared this way. It is hard not to completely drain a human when feeding. It takes self-control and years of practice to be able to not kill your prey.”
“But you eat food?”
“We are able to enjoy a human-food diet, but it never truly satisfies the deep hunger. I’m sure you noticed both Sofia and I ordered rare steak last night at dinner. We can consume animal flesh if we haven’t fed for a while, but it has to be undercooked. Raw is best,” Maria explains.
“So you need human blood to survive, end of conversation.”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised I’m not grossed out by this. To be honest, earlier today I thought I was going to have endless anxiety attacks. Now that I have heard a little about what you are, I can honestly say I am not in the least bit horrified.”
“I am happy to hear this. I can count on you not to book a flight home for tomorrow then?” Maria laughs.
“No, not yet anyway.” I smile.
“Is there anything else you want to know, sweetheart, before I retire for the night?”
“Yes, there is actually. Why do you have to be here in the apartment by a certain time?”
“There are more dangerous beings out there on the streets than my kind. They prowl for beings like us. You needn’t worry about them yet though as they don’t harm humans,” Maria says with a slight tense tone behind her words.
I look at her surprised she has mentioned this to me. I have no words to say in reply, so I sit staring at her. She takes this cue as though I have no more questions and stands up, gathers all the plates and mugs, and takes them to the kitchen. Following her with my mug in my hands, I notice there is lightning in the far distance. The night is black, darker than usual even with the streetlights.
“Buonanotte.” Maria kisses me on the head and heads to her room.
“Goodnight.”
Switching off the lights as I head to bed, a flash of lightning illuminates the room and creates shadows along the walls. I scurry down the hall. My heart races and I have frightened myself for no good reason. I change into my warm pajamas and climb under the covers. I feel like a small child frightened of the dark. I fall into a deep sleep full of dark dreams.
I wake to the grey gloom seeping through the drapes and I sense it has been raining all night. The ache in my bones is more severe this morning. I stretch my stiff limbs to help ease the ache. I check the time; it is just sunrise, which means I have a few hours before meeting Dominic out front of the Pantheon. I can’t help but smile as the butterflies in my stomach fly rampant at the thought of seeing him again.
Once showered and dressed I head straight to the kitchen for coffee and some painkillers. Maria is at the sink looking out the large window.
“How did you sleep, sweetheart?”
“I didn’t wake once, but my sleep was full of dark dreams.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes please,” I answer as I grab the Vegemite, bread, and butter out of the fridge. I make my breakfast in silence. I take a bite of my Vegemite toast that I have been craving since I arrived and it doesn’t taste right. I examine the piece on the plate.
“It all tastes different, doesn’t it?” Maria asks.
“It’s foul.” I freeze.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
I swallow. “It’s closer than I thought, and all these slight changes are becoming more prominent. I guess I just thought it wasn’t real.”
“You still have time before you have to make the decision,” Maria explains as she watches me with a glint of expectation in her expression.
I smile weakly at her, hoping she doesn’t see through me. In my mind there is no decision. I do not want to be a vampire, not now, not ever. How could one choose that over staying mortal? The whole concept of changing into a dead living being is absurd; it is beyond what my brain is capable of processing. I push it aside as I do to all things that are too difficult to deal with in the moment and concentrate on eating my awful toast. I gulp my coffee down to wash away the taste on my tongue and watch as Maria disappears t
oward her room. My phone buzzes next to me and I pick it up knowing exactly who it is that is texting me. I sit grinning at my phone as Sofia enters the kitchen.
“Is that lover boy?” She giggles.
I give it away by blushing. “Yes, it is.”
“Are you seeing him?”
“At ten,” I whisper, glancing in the direction of Maria’s room.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell her. Although she can hear our every word.” Sofia laughs.
“Great.” I roll my eyes as I rinse my dishes in the sink.
“Where are you going today?”
“I don’t know yet. Probably to all the touristy places?”
“Make sure he doesn’t take you to the Vatican. They won’t be able to detect what you have running through your veins yet; however, I doubt you will want to explain as to why they may kick you out before you enter through the main doors. Just in case,” Sofia warns.
“I didn’t think about the churches. What am I going to do if he wants to take me into one?”
“Because you have not turned yet but are showing signs that it is imminent, I would steer clear of any church,” she explains. “Tell him that you don’t like them because they’re, how do you say?” Sofia waves her hand in the air.
“Creepy,” I answer.
“That will work.” She smiles.
“Will you be in class today?”
“I will be home by two. Bring him home so I can meet him.” She winks.
“Only if you promise not to scare him.” I laugh.
“Katalina!” Sofia exclaims, a hint of a giggle escaping her lips. “I would never. No, maybe I would.” She laughs.
Maria strides back into the kitchen faster than any normal human would be capable of. Both Maria and Sofia seem to be more relaxed around me. Now that I know what they are, they behave more in their true nature. Not having to disguise their abilities must be a relief. Putting on the human façade day after day would be tiring. I watch Maria as she packs her bag for work. Her hands move so fast that they become nothing but a blur of motion. She catches me staring at her and smiles.
“One of these days we will show you all the good parts of being a vampire. It does have its perks,” she says in a rush as she kisses me on the head. “Have a beautiful day, my girls,” Maria sings as she exits through the door.
Bequeathed Page 5
