“You look like you could use some company,” the old woman whispered in a hoarse voice. Her eyes shone curiously as she extended a dirty hand.
Catrina pressed her back to the can. No! So offensive. Don’t touch me. Rico!
The woman ignored her silent shock and knelt before her, placing a crumpled brown grocery bag on the ground in front of her. She reached inside and pulled out something.
“I’ve an apple?” She held the gift before Catrina, gesturing with a nudge of her wrist that she could share her prize.
So pretty. Red. Red as blood. Bleed them dry so I may live. Oh, the brilliant colors, Rico. Red and blue and orange and yellow. Yellow as the sun. No, Rico, we must hide. The sun. It rises!
Catrina shook her head, clutching her fists to her chest, and pulled her legs tight to her torso.
“No?” The lady shrugged, took a bite out of the rotting morsel and tossed it back in her bag. “Let’s see.” She thrust her hand in the bag. “I must have something.”
Her heart thud loudly inside her chest. Catrina bit her lip and tucked her head down against her shoulder. Her body rocked rhythmically to the drums inside her chest. Beware. She glanced up. Old. Old, wrinkled flesh. Sickness. Not young!
So old. I must never age, Rico. Please, promise me I’ll live forever. It is done, innamorata. I love you.
Whistling to herself, the bag lady pulled a shiny silver high heel from her bag. She eyed Catrina, seeing interest.
“Ah, yes. Lovely, isn’t it?”
“So different,” Catrina whispered. Really Cat, you should wear the ones with the red heels and the silver damask for an appearance in Versailles. As yes, the lovely silver damask. Like the sparkle in your eye.
Her interest piqued, Catrina crept forward and knelt on her knees. She did not reach to touch.
“What else.” The lady dropped the shoe back inside her soggy bag and rummaged about. “Ouch!” Her hand shot out of the bag, and she sucked at the red slash cut across her finger.
Catrina’s eyes widened. The life!
“Forgot I had that in there.” The lady produced a shard of shiny glass with her uninjured hand. She flashed it before Catrina. A triangular piece of mirror, perhaps salvaged from a broken looking glass or the inside of a music box abandoned by a small child.
“Oh.” Catrina procured the shiny mirror with a grab.
She cradled the sharp glass in her hand, examining her reflection.
“You like what you see?” the lady asked.
Catrina ran a finger down her cheek and over her lips. Pink and soft. So young. Still so young. She pushed her fingers through her hair, pulling the burnt red strands into the air.
“So lovely,” she said. “Young…forever.”
She looked up at the woman who sat silently observing her. Catrina reached out. “Not old. Not like you. Always lovely and young. Forever.”
She dropped the mirror to the tar. It shattered into dozens of sparkling confetti shards.
“No,” the woman protested as she bent over her damaged treasure.
“Yes,” Catrina whispered as her teeth descended over her lips.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You do understand I never meant to hide this information from you? I had no idea there was a relationship between Sebastian and you.”
Rico looked to Vince who sat clutching the steering wheel. He had just explained everything. How he and his sister had tricked Sebastian into giving them the gift of immortality and how he had mercilessly forced Sebastian out of the country in order to protect he and Catrina from the vampire’s wrath.
“It is quite a lot to swallow,” Vince said. “You have been very good to me...”
Rico laid a reassuring hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I would never betray your trust, Vince. You mean too much to me. You are family. I admit I use malicious tactics to gain what I have but I have never made myself to be a saint in your eyes. You know that.”
True. A saint, Rico was not, what with his addiction to the kill and his passion for material possessions. And then there was the pit...
Vince swallowed as the sickening smell of the death pit rebirthed in his nostrils. But what did he expect? Rico was a vampire, a creature of the night, an immortal beast cursed to live on the blood of others. A self-proclaimed wicked angel. Though, after everything he’d learned tonight, that was really stretching it. There was nothing whatsoever angelic about Rico Bellange.
The vampire’s curse had been chosen by Rico. Albeit, Catrina was the first to be transformed and Rico did this solely to please her. Vince knew he would never have chosen vampirism if given a choice. Which he had not. So that made the two of them very different. Yet still he felt close to this man whom he had imagined to be the father he’d never known.
And who was he to judge? Acceptance was all he had ever asked of Gary. An acceptance that he now knew he could willingly give Rico.
“It’s cool, Rico.” Vince laid a hand over his friend’s. “I understand. Sebastian is a prick. I would have used him the same way…I guess. Anyway, you were doing it for your sister.”
“Yes, I live and breathe for Catrina. This was for her. She needed the immortality to dispel her fears of aging. Still family?” Rico prompted.
Vince nodded, finding he had no aversions to Rico. The man was just that much closer to being the monster he desired to be. “Definitely.”
“Then let’s go inside.”
The castle walls stretched three stories into the air, an imposing site, even in daylight. The sun cast a hazy glow across the double towers and barely glimmered across the uppermost portion of the third story windows.
Finding a pathway in shadow, they raced to the door and knocked politely. Though Vince wanted to barge in, Rico said things should be handled carefully if they were to expect cooperation from Sebastian. The door opened.
“Tony, my man.” Vince breezed by the bleary-eyed servant, motioning for Rico to enter. “Looks like you had a rough one. Sebastian home?”
“I don’t believe so, Mr. Lyons.” Anthony rubbed his eyes and took in the tall man standing next to Vince. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Nah, we need to talk to Sebastian. Can we wait upstairs?”
“Well…”
“Come on, Tony.” Vince hooked an arm around the servant’s shoulders and joggled him good-naturedly. “We won’t touch anything. Oh, sorry, this is Rico Bellange. Rico, this is Anthony, Sebastian’s faithful—”
“Slave?” Rico surmised gaily.
Anthony surveyed Rico’s appearance. “House servant,” he corrected tersely, running a hand over his bed-tousled hair though it did little but rake it into haphazard spikes.
Rico walked ahead as they made way to the study. Vince’s arm remained around Anthony, giving the sleepy-eyed servant no choice but to come along.
“And what is it that prompts a man to work for two vampires, Tony? Is it they keep you drained?” Vince tipped Anthony’s chin up to look over his face. “You don’t look so pale.”
“They’ve never laid a hand on me, nor would Sebastian ever think of it. He’s a good man,” Anthony said shakily.
“You mean he’s never gotten hungry and stolen a taste?”
Vince squeezed Anthony’s shoulders and joined in Rico’s sly teasing. “At least not as far as you know, eh Tony?”
“Looks pretty tasty to me.” Rico shot a glance Vince’s way. “What do you say, Vince?”
Both vampires stared hungrily at the shaking servant. At the sight of their teasing starvation, Anthony ceased to walk further, slinking out from under Vince’s arm.
“I w-wouldn’t think of it if I w-were you. Sebastian would not like it if you guys were to—”
“Oh come, Anthony.” Rico lunged forward into the servant’s space, sticking out a pouting lip. “Just a taste?”
“Stay away from me.” Anthony stumbled backward, crashed into the wall, and scrambled for the stairs. A moment later they heard the slam of Anthony’s bedroom
door and the slide of iron as the distraught servant locked himself inside his quarters.
Vince slapped Rico across the back, laughing with him. “You are too bad, man. Ha!”
***
Scarlet punched in the five-digit disarm code on the beach house alarm and collapsed in the foyer. She was tired after running across town, her vampire strength quickly waning with the rising sun.
She scanned the living room. White sheets covered the furniture, a film of minute dust coloring them dull gray. The curtains were pulled and the room was comfortably cool.
“You’re exhausted,” Esmarelda crossed the foyer. “You rest.”
“What about you?”
Esmarelda ran finger across the dusty white sheet that had been spread over the couch a year ago. “I’ll rest too. And when you rise…we’ll make plans.”
***
Sebastian stood in the study doorway, hands on his hips, taken aback. He never thought he’d loathe the day Vince Lyons stood in his home. And there was Federico Bellange, a man he hadn’t seen for over two centuries, looking physically the same, yet emotionally drained as he looked up from the piano where he sat next to Vince, as the blonde dabbled out some silly little strain.
He had driven the streets of L.A. into the early morning hours but there had been no sign of Catrina, no mention of a haggard half-dressed woman roaming the streets, no strange news reports of vampire bites. He was much too drained himself to want to think about dealing with either of these men, but it seemed there was no choice.
Rico’s mismatched eyes shone between the triple mounts of the brass candelabra. Scarlet had always lit those candles with such care, such grace.
Scarlet. After thinking of no one else for the last four hours Sebastian regretted the words he’d allowed to hatefully fly her way. He knew he could never ask her forgiveness. But he must try. If he should ever lose her…life would not be worth living.
But as Vince rose before him, his blonde mane and pretty face beat down the trust that had resurfaced for Scarlet.
“What are you doing in my home?” He addressed neither Vince nor Rico specifically as he glared from one to the other.
Vince tipped his mirrored sunglasses down to reveal red-lined eyes and a gaze that wasn’t about to back down against Sebastian’s commanding stance.
Before Vince could speak, Rico stood and stepped forward. “It has been a very long time, Signore DelaCourte. But I see your revenge has survived the centuries.”
“My revenge?”
“What did you do with his sister?” Vince joined Rico’s side, both vampires over six feet tall, creating a force to be reckoned with.
“What I did with— So you think this was some sort of revenge, Federico? Not that you didn’t deserve some recourse, but do you actually think after all these years I would try and vindicate myself against you? If anyone should seek vindication it should be Catrina. But I chose to help her, fool that I am.”
“Help?” Rico snapped. “What have you done with her?”
The two ancient vampires stood but a few feet apart, the tension in the room creating invisible shock waves that shot back and forth between them.
“I only wanted to help her,” Sebastian said. “To take her away from the man who imprisoned her senselessly.”
“Oh man, you don’t know what the hell is going on, do you?” Vince’s voice rose to a shout. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“You didn’t revive her, did you?”
Sebastian regarded Vince fiercely, ignoring Rico’s childlike plea. His mental state was at its lowest, his patience gone, one wrong move and he’d attack the man who had touched Scarlet. But Rico repeated his question.
“I had no intention of revenge against you, Federico.”
Rico shook him off, nodding irately before renewing his plea. “That is what you say. But did you revive her?”
“Yes, there was no other way to get her out of that pit of horrors you keep in your basement. Scarlet helped me.”
“Scarlet?” Vince jerked his head defiantly, tossing his hair across his squared shoulders. “Where is she, anyway?”
The nerve of Vince to ask such a thing. “She is gone, I cannot abide infidelity. And I wish you would leave this house also, Vincent Lyons, or I will not be responsible for my actions.”
Vince lunged but Rico caught him with outstretched arm before he came close enough to touch Sebastian. The two enemies stared at one another, Vince’s cool gaze sparking menace; Sebastian’s dark stare daring him to try.
“Perhaps you should wait outside,” Rico said calmly. “I’m sure Signore DelaCourte will be much more obliging in your absence. Go on. I’ll be right down.”
Sebastian was not impressed with Rico’s interference. “You know where the front door is.”
Vince sneered and gnashed his fangs before striding out the room in a huff and a slash of suede fringes.
“If you had no intention of revenge, then I trust you’ll return her to me.” Rico spoke softly, his words choked with obvious emotion. “I’ll cause you no pain should you return her safely.”
Sebastian walked to the piano, running his fingers along the glossy ivories. He recalled the harpsichord upon which he had taught Catrina to play. Her delicate fingers had been willow branches on the wind, dipping into heavenly choruses.
“Why did you lock her away? I thought you loved Cat.”
“You really have no idea, do you?” Rico pressed his palm onto the cool ebony surface of the grand piano meeting Sebastian eye to eye. “I’ve loved no other more than I love her. You know I could never cause her pain or harm. You know that!”
Yes, Sebastian was aware of the love between brother and sister. The incestuous love.
“You should also know what hell it was for me when I was forced to lock her away,” Rico continued. “She was mad, Sebastian! The nightmares of her victims enfolded her into a manic world of living hell. She was no longer able to determine whether she was living in a nightmare or in the real world. The two worlds were crossed into this crazy sort of vicious pandemonium. Do you understand? I had to put her away before she destroyed herself in a rage of unreal trauma.”
“The nightmares? But Scarlet told me you and Vince are into the adrenaline rush, that you live off the fear of your victims. There are no nightmares with fear.”
Rico’s sigh did not dissuade Sebastian’s intentions. He hated the man and would not let down his guard. But he would hear him out. For Catrina’s sake.
“It was only after Catrina had been locked away that I changed into this monster who sought the fear in my victim’s eyes, the final death-beat of their heart in my hands, before their expiration brought forth some sort of sadistic satisfaction for the loss of my sister.”
Expiration. Sebastian winced.
“Oh come, Rico, you’ve been playing games for centuries. You’re never satisfied until your victim suffers and you in turn reap the losses. I wasn’t the only man you toyed with to get what you wanted.”
“Yes, and look where it has gotten me…and Catrina. Mio innamorata. She is mad because of you—”
“Me! I provided her with the one thing she desired more than even you, Rico. It was her quest for everlasting youth, and your”—bittersweet memories came crashing full force— “your incestuous love drove Catrina mad.”
“You are jealous because you shall never have such a love!”
Sebastian marched to the study window. Federico was blind to all around him unless it concerned Catrina. Two centuries of this blindness. And he could see no way of breaking open the barrier that had demented and shaped Rico into the evil that he was.
And now Cat roamed the streets of L.A. alone and possibly in a manic state. He had set her ravaged mind in motion. Once again, he had played into the game.
“I fear I may have inadvertently exercised some unknowing sort of revenge.”
“What?”
“I revived her, Rico. She was in the back seat of the car when S
carlet and I stopped for gas. When we went back out, she was gone.”
“Gone! No, this is not possible. Dio mio! Where? My poor Catrina alone in her ravaged state, in a world she hasn’t seen for almost a hundred years?”
“When did you put her in the crypt?”
“It was early in the century. God’s mercy! Sebastian, you must help me find her. Yes, you owe me that much.”
“I owe you nothing!”
“But you do! Catrina is my heart. Surely you must understand the loss of one so dear.” Rico’s eyes narrowed and his voice took on a wicked edge. He slipped so easily into the game. “It’s too bad about your precious Scarlet.”
“You leave Scarlet out of this! This is another of your evil games. You plotted Vince against Scarlet and I. He…he coerced her…in some way.”
“Ah, I wouldn’t be too hasty in my judgments, Signore. Vince was well underway with the seduction before I ever met him. I actually witnessed their coming together,” Rico said slyly. “Such a romantic tryst beneath the willow tree.”
“I won’t listen to this. Leave this house now, Federico, before I—”
“Quite the tart if you ask me. She kissed me, too.”
Sebastian lunged, pushing Rico against the wall, the force of his blow sending settled dust flying about their heads. “You bastard! You lie.”
Rico fought back, smashing his fist into Sebastian’s jaw, though it did little but irk the other vampire. They fought across the room, a misplaced kick from Rico’s boot shattering the wooden leg of the antique divan, their struggles knocking the candelabra from the piano, and finally they fell to the floor where Sebastian repeatedly dashed Rico’s head against the stones.
Venom drawn from centuries of deception flowed freely in Sebastian’s veins. His fingers slipped through the sweat in Rico’s hair, mixing with blood as he felt Rico’s skull crack against the hard stone.
“Very…well,” Rico struggled. “I’ll tell the truth.”
Sebastian unhanded the miserable vampire and sat back on his haunches, waiting as Rico shook the sense back into his head.
Rico swiped a finger behind his ear and examined the blood. He grinned and licked his finger clean. “I kissed her. I couldn’t help it. I had to know what it was like.” He squinted, pressing against his skull as if to reposition a misplaced bone. There was an audible crack.
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