by Alys Arden
“Madonna mia, Emilio,” León says. “Have you got another? Maybe they will sing songs about you.”
“No, not another.” There is alcohol on his breath. “But I’ve had the most brilliant idea!” He speaks with such enthusiasm, the girl bobs up and down against his back.
I’m fixated on her gown; there is something familiar about it.
Emilio pulls her body over his shoulder and sets her down on the table far more gently than he tossed Séraphine. “You are going to need a steady food supply for the vampire.”
The girl stirs—and I pause to process what my brother is actually saying. I know he is drunk, but this is lunacy. The girl stirs again, her hair sliding from her face.
In a fit of fury, I grab Emilio by the chest and slam him against the stone wall. “Are you mad?”
“Oh, don’t be such a dandy, Niccolò. It’s the perfect solution. She’s the perfect solution.”
I slam him a second time, bringing rage to his eyes. “Are you actually suggesting that I feed Maddalena to a vampire?”
Séraphine hisses in the cage behind us, shaking the iron bars with the strength of a Titan. Luckily, León’s reinforced them.
“That’s exactly what I am suggesting, brother. This will provide you with an endless supply of blood to feed the vampire, take the pressure off you to marry, and spare us from having to listen to the girl pine for you upstairs all day long! Everyone wins.”
“You disgust me, brother—and now it is clear to me why Father never picked you for this duty. This work is about the betterment of human life, which you have no regard for whatsoever! You are no longer welcome here!”
Emilio tries to push me away, but I smash him back into the wall. “Do you understand me?”
“Sì, fratellino. But do not disillusion yourself, Nicco. Your duty is about the advancement of the Medici among the great families, not the advancement of mankind.”
We stare at each other for another moment before I release him.
“Calm down, Nicco. I will put her back where I found her.”
“Do not touch her. Just get out.”
Cursing under his breath, Emilio leaves the chamber, slamming the door like a child. For a moment, I’m too overwhelmed by my own shaking to tend to her.
“Niccolò?” comes a meek voice from the table. “What is this place?”
I take a deep breath before falling to her side. “Do not fret, bella. You are safe. You are with me. I will get you back to where you belong.” I scoop her into my arms and lift her up.
“If I am with you, then I am where I belong.”
“Sì, but not here . . .”
“Shall I help you bring her upstairs?” León asks.
“No. This is my mess, and I will clean it up. You stay here with her.” I nod to the cage. “Do not do anything until I get back.”
“Of course.”
Before I make it out of the great hall, Maddalena is asleep on my shoulder again. It’s clear that Emilio has given her some kind of sedative. The thought of my brother administering tonics is frightening, but at least I don’t have to worry about her seeing the secret Medicean tunnels. I can only imagine what my father would do to her if he found out she was here.
I move quickly through the dark underground, and then through the palazzo, and up all of the stairs to her guest chamber, getting a firm reminder that I need to spend more time fencing under the sun and less time working.
I set her gently on the bed, wondering what exactly Emilio gave her.
Smiling, she whispers my name, causing me a swell of relief.
“Sì, bella?”
“You’re here?”
“Sì.” I say nothing else lest I stir her memories, which now hopefully seem like a distant dream.
“I am so glad.” Her Venetian accent seems stronger. It instantly brings me to the Adriatic, to the memories of when we first met. It was less than two years ago, though it seems like I’ve known her forever.
I stroke her cheek with tenderness. “But now I must go back to my work.”
“You could stay here.” Her hand slides over my wrist, and I can feel when she tries to pull herself up to me, but she lacks the strength, making me again wonder whether I should stay to monitor her throughout the night. I lower myself beside her and rest my head next to hers on the satin pillow; it is impossible not to get lost in her budding smile.
My fingers reclaim the place on her cheek, and for a moment I wish we had never left Paris and come back to Italy. “Tesoro mio, you are more beautiful than the sun’s rays.”
Her lashes bat, like I knew they would. “Tell me about your work, Niccolò . . . It takes up all of you.”
It hurts me deeply to hear her say it and draws me nearer. “Not all of me,” I say.
Her lips are now so close to mine it is impossible not to meet them with a kiss, for just one gentle moment. I start to envision myself on top of her, and I pull away. I know if there is just one more kiss, one more moment, I will have to have her.
Focus, Niccolò. There is a vampire in your laboratory right now. A vampire.
The quest for knowledge overtakes me—the only thing that could usurp my desire for her.
“You think I am too silly to understand it?” she says. “Is that why you won’t tell me?”
“No. No, not at all. I never think you are silly.”
“Then you don’t trust me to keep your secrets? What was the place with the twinkling lights?”
The question surprises me so much so that I don’t move away when her mouth comes back to mine. Her kiss draws out a desire to tell her everything—the science, the Elixir, and everything about my family.
I cup her cheek as my lips pull from hers. It is too dangerous to tell her my secrets. “Do you trust me, bella?”
“More than the sun trusts the moon to watch over the Earth while she rests each night.”
Her words make me smile, and my hand settles on her waist. “You are my sun. You are the center of my universe.” Her hand slides over my jaw, and I can feel how much she desperately wants me to stay. “Be assured that the reason my work consumes me is humanitarian. My mission is to prolong the most delicate thing in the world: the human heart.”
“It brings me joy, Niccolò, that you consider the heart to be a delicate thing.” She drags my hand over her breast to the top her chest. “Because you hold mine.”
I nod.
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
“You don’t have to go,” she tells me again, and I want to stay. I want to kiss her.
And I do kiss her, the kind of kiss that shows us our future together.
Thump-thump.
No. No. No. I didn’t kiss her again. I left. I went back to the laboratory. Back to León and Séraphine.
Thump-thump.
As I taste her, I can envision her swollen belly and our joy together during the summers in Venezia and the autumns in Toscana.
Thump-thump.
You should have stayed, Niccolò.
She suddenly jerks away, breaking the kiss. “Get out!” she yells. “Get out!”
Light floods the room. I can’t see anything at all. I just hear her yelling over and over, “Get out!”
It’s not her yelling; it’s me yelling.
“Get out!”
Thump-thump.
Thump-thump.
“Get out!”
Everything goes dark. I can’t move. I can’t yell. I’m trapped.
There are no sounds of the Adriatic in the dank air around me. It’s not Maddalena’s heartbeat that thumps against mine. It’s Adele’s. I can feel her. I can hear her heart. I can smell her heart.
I’m starving.
She’s so close. I want her. I want her here, next to me. But not in Florence, not in the seventeenth century. Not in my head. No. No.
No!
Get out!
“Esci!”
“Nicco!”
I woke up gasping. I could feel him. Not Ni
cco the human, but my Nicco. I heard him speak. I felt him—his pulse, the fear.
His heavy hand on my waist.
I turned over and was almost startled when I saw Isaac there. A tiny fireball danced over us—his eyelashes cast dark shadows against his cheeks, and his expression was peaceful. Just as I thought about getting up, he stirred, pulling me closer, and breathing in his scent changed my mind. I wanted to kiss him, just one gentle touch, but I knew it would wake him, and where it would lead. Instead, with as little movement as possible, I reached into my bag for the vial of sleepytime potion.
The feeling of Nicco kicking me out of his dreamscape filled me with uneasiness. I knew he didn’t want me to unlock his secrets, but I also knew there wasn’t much time left tonight.
I chugged the potion back before my conscience could drape me with guilt. A part of me knew this was wrong, that this went way past a violation of privacy. But I wanted answers. I needed answers.
Nicco, I get that you think hiding things is the best way to protect me, but letting me in is the best way to protect you.
Otherwise . . . you’re going to be in there forever.
For a while everything was just darkness, but I knew I was getting close to something. Otherwise he wouldn’t be fighting back so hard.
León looks to me as he stokes the fire in the hearth. “You should take the night off, Niccolò. I’m sure Maddalena grows weary of dining with your madre e padre. She’s been here for a whole month, and you’ve hardly gone upstairs. Are you no longer fond of her?”
“Of course I am still fond of her! I am more than fond of her! But I’m sure Giovanna and her daughters are keeping her well entertained while I’m busy.”
León’s bright eyes dim ever so slightly, and I immediately regret mentioning Giovanna’s children.
“Niccolò, just because I have loved and lost does not mean you should deprive yourself.”
“I have the rest of my life to be with Maddalena, but there will be only one to first create the Elixir of Life.” I look at him. “Well, two in this case.”
“You might be surprised how little you’ll care about the Elixir if it costs you your love.”
“We are on the brink of finding the right combination. I can feel it,” I say, pouring a tonic of carefully distilled minerals into the pot of Elixir, noting it in the margin of the Medici tome, next to the date.
León sighs loudly, but I ignore that too, turning the page to catch up on my notes.
I dip the quill into the pot of ink and pause to reflect on the last few weeks, wanting to commit only certainties to the pages of the book. Needless to say, our interest in phlebotomies has turned into an obsession ever since Séraphine came into our lives.
When my thoughts feel precise, I move the feather across the top of the page:
SUI VAMPIRI
As she is confined to her cage, we have not been truly able to test her strength, but based on the way she threw a bloodletting fleam at León—nearly killing him—it is apparent that even in her weakened state, she is inhumanly strong.
I underline the last two words.
She is violently insistent about being freed, to the point where she thinks nothing of self-harm, slamming her body against her cage, intentionally cracking her own bones so she might slip through the bars. I have told her countless times there is no possibility she is getting through the metal, but she does not hear my words.
She either does not believe me or does not care for her bones—why should she when every part of her appears to heal so rapidly? I can only conclude that her own blood affects her in the same way it healed León.
Her eyes appear to lose coloration the closer she gets to starvation, although with her eyes naturally being such a pale shade of blue and the laboratory so dark, I cannot confirm this at the time. Her enlarged canines protrude when she is angry. Or when she is lustful. Or when she is reaching the point of starvation.
Anatomically, other than her blood, eye color, and canines, she appears to be exactly like a human. The key difference in her physiology seems to be her sustentative nutrition, which at the present moment is comprised entirely of human blood.
I set the quill down and run my hands through my hair, trying not to get too frustrated by the words. We tried giving her the blood of pigs, which she spat back at León, and the blood of lambs, which she spat back at me. This was followed by calves’ blood and then goats’, but nothing seems to bring her back to health other than freshly extracted human blood.
Not that we wish for her to be at peak health, but we cannot stand to lose her. This marvelous creature is surely the answer to modern sickness. If her blood, when applied to the human body, can have such a great effect as healing León’s burn, it could be the basis for a revolution in internal medicine. It would tumble the entire old guard of physicians!
If finding those answers means León and I bleeding ourselves to feed Séraphine—then so be it! I return to the page.
We have yet to determine the exact amount of fresh human blood required by the vampire to survive, but Séraphine gets one vial per week from each of us, in exchange for one of her own.
As I dip the quill into the ink, I think about how having Séraphine in our laboratory has changed our routine completely. We spend our days working on the potion for my father, and our nights rigorously attempting to distill Séraphine’s blood to the very essence of its healing properties.
We add drops of vampire blood to salves, oils, and tonics. We add it to soap. And we have seen great success in healing minor afflictions such as rashes and infected wounds. But the longer the blood has been extracted from its source, the lesser its potency, until it has no more healing qualities than the blood of a frog.
I push away the book and move to the hearth to stoke the embers. Focus on the Elixir, Niccolò . . . not Séraphine. I pull out the pot, the quicksilver and brimstone, the salts and the measuring tools. And the rest of the night goes as nights always do. A careful eye on the measurements, and a careful eye on the pot, while careful words are read from the book.
When it’s finished distilling, I pour the potion into a round-bottom flask and wait for it to cool so I can parse it out in measured doses to our fresh batch of rats, which is my least favorite part of this duty. I live to heal living creatures, not poison them.
León comes to the workbench and begins tidying up. When he returns from the basin he says, “Nicco, I’m doing this for your own good. You need to take a break.”
“What?” I ask, looking up. “No!”
I jump up, but it’s too late; he’s already brought the flask to his lips and swallowed back its contents.
“León!” I yell, shocked at the risk he has taken, but also enthralled to the point of jealousy by his gumption.
“Now,” he says, wiping his lip, “we’ll make another batch tomorrow. It’s too late to start one now. Follow your heart, and take the night off. I will stay here and watch Séraphine if it means you having a night of pleasure with your love.”
“Brother, if you think for a second that your little act of foolery hasn’t solidified me staying in the lab for the rest of the night to watch over you, then you really do not know me at all.”
“Madonna mia!” He throws his arms up in the air. “I’m sorry, Maddalena,” he cries, looking up at the ceiling. “I tried.”
I laugh, and so does he, and when we turn back to the fire, Séraphine is watching us from behind bars; the warm glow from the fire cast over her face makes her look almost human.
I pour wine into chalices, and for the rest of the night, record León’s vitals, eagerly awaiting some kind of change.
As the dawn approaches, my eyes droop, and León encourages me to once again give up and go upstairs, to Maddalena’s bed.
“You know, Niccolò, even your twinkling Medicean eyes won’t hold her attention forever. She’s desired by more than one Roman duke.”
“Let them come and try to get her attention. I will slay each one of them.
But tonight there is nothing that will take me from you, brother. Not even Maddalena. I will stay with her tomorrow, te lo prometto.”
But as we doze off at the table, I dream of nothing but her—the scents of the Adriatic, the taste of her skin, and the way her fingers feel in my hair. Her arms circle my chest, and she whispers in my ear, “You want to be immortal, Niccolò Medici?” Why does she sound French, I wonder, but before I realize that the arms are not Maddalena’s, Séraphine’s fangs sink into my neck.
My dagger releases from its sheath and plunges into her leg as she drinks from me, which only seems to make her more excitable—each of her pulls renders me further and further into helplessness, until the pain stops. It’s as if I’ve been dosed with some kind of sedative. I know she’s still behind me, her fingers moving through my hair, but there is no more pain. There is no feeling at all, just weightlessness. Her fangs slide into me a second time, bringing me to a euphoric state.
But how did she escape? My pulse slows to near nothingness.
She withdraws from my flesh and whispers in my ear once more. “I will give you endless life, my precious little boy.”
I awaken on the laboratory floor, my cheek cold from the stone. The clockwork timer is rattling. I swat at it and miss. The noise rings through my head like a stampede of horses, and my hand scrapes through a pile of glass looking for it. My eyes squint open to find several broken boiling flasks surrounding me, but I can focus on nothing but the noise.
I grab the timer and hurl it across the room. It smashes against the stone wall, the sound jabbing my head like a million daggers.
Something is wrong. Why am I on the floor?
I reach for my waist. My blade is gone. Still squinting, I turn and see it lying a few feet away on the floor, dark and sticky with blood. Behind it the cage is open . . .
I spring up, hardly able to comprehend what my eyes have revealed. My hand goes to my neck as the memories pour back. There’s a slight sensation, but I feel no wound. Nothing at all.
