Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
Epiphany has risen in clan status among the Rosso Lussuria vampires. Declared Elder and Inamorata, to raise a hand against her is to raise a hand against Queen Renata herself.
She has taken Iliaria, the Great Siren Dracule, as her lover and ally, wearing Iliaria’s sigil as a sign of their unlikely alliance. While Epiphany bears her mark, Iliaria upholds her oath and hunts one of her own—the traitor Damokles who seeks to destroy the vampire-kind. Yet Damokles is not the only renegade Dracule who wants to see the fall of the Rosso Lussuria. The Draculian society is split in two—those who seek to protect Azrael’s Gift and those who seek to eliminate it.
The Rosso Lussuria face enemies both old and new. Dismantling a reign of impending terror and uniting a clan is not so easily done when those close to you are all too adept at keeping their own council and agendas.
The second Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel.
Summoning Shadows
A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel
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Summoning Shadows
© 2012 By Winter Pennington. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-720-2
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: August 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Victoria Oldham and Cindy Cresap
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
The Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novels:
Darkness Embraced
Summoning Shadows
The Kassandra Lyall Preternatural Investigator Series:
Witch Wolf
Raven Mask
Bloody Claws
Once Upon a Twilight
Prologue
England, 1810
“You will learn, cara mia, to control your thirst.” Renata’s honeyed voice washed over the reverberating din of my hunger. The blindfold she’d set in place kept me from truly perceiving her, but I did not need to see her. Even if she had spoken no words, she was my Siren and my queen.
I could sense her where she stood some feet away. A thread of longing and connection pulled tight between us, and I knew she watched me. I could feel her gaze on me as intimately as a caress.
My arms were stretched high above my head, secured by some kind of metal shackles I could not break or slip from. I struggled in vain to get to the woman who knelt at Renata’s feet.
Justine.
I could feel the shadow beat of her pulse on my tongue. There was no fear in her, none that I could discern by the steady beat of her heart and breath. She knew why Renata had bid her to kneel, and yet, she did not fear.
Justine was one of the Donatore, a human blood donor among the Rosso Lussuria vampires. She was the only Donatore I had ever met face-to-face within the walls of the Sotto, our underground kingdom.
The blood in her veins tempted me as the fruit hanging from the Tree of Knowledge must have tempted Eve, thick and ripe, tempting and irresistible, begging to be tapped and released.
Yearning echoed throughout my limbs. It made my fingers tingle with the ache to touch Justine, to take hold of her as if she were nothing more than a succulent apple within my reach.
I would have called it desire, but that was too passionate a word. The hunger narrowed the scope of my thoughts into something primal, simple…animal.
My lips burned.
“Epifania,” Renata said and the tone in her voice was sweetly commanding. It took effort for me to focus on the sound of it and to resist the urge to fight my bonds.
She had taught me to serve and to please, but my control over my thirst was a hard-won battle I had to conquer myself.
Siren or no, she could not erase the very essence of what I had become when she had given me the kiss of death and rebirth.
You may wonder what it was like, the first night I spent with Renata.
And to that, I can only say this: it was beautiful and terrible.
She made love to my dying body, slowly, gently, artfully, riding my flesh beyond illness and into the throes of ecstasy. When she drove her fangs into my neck, I gave my life to her willingly. She destroyed my withering body in the fire of her passion, shielding me in the cage of her ardor.
On the following evening, I was reborn. I awakened to a world in which the senses dominated. But with the gift came the curse: a hunger I had never known.
It is said some go mad on the night of their first awakening. For me, I can only say that it was the first time I had ever truly felt alive. Even the hunger, in its own way, fanned the bright flame of life.
Renata brought to my lips the sweet wine of her blood. She soothed the fiery, cutting pain that threatened to be the source of my undoing. At the kiss of her blood, at the chalice of her wrist, I found a heaven man had never dreamt of.
The evenings passed, and each night when I woke, Renata was there to abate my hunger and to keep the madness of bloodlust at bay. In time, she taught me the arts of the bedchamber with skill and patience. She revealed to me the beauty and the heaven in being vampire.
That night, with Justine at her feet like a loyal dog, she unveiled to me the horror and the hell of it. For those who may think Renata had brought Justine before me as a gift, it was not so.
She used Justine to teach me the dire consequences of my curse. Justine was my blood martyr.
Renata had done her best to prepare me for weeks. Each week, she loosened the shackles she used to bind me, until they were loose enough that I was able to slip them, much to Justine’s misfortune.
But Justine had known, too. She had lived in seclusion among the Rosso Lussuria long enough to understand. Though she looked to be a girl of some twenty years of age, she was older than even I, kept youthful and fresh every month by nothing more than a drop of queen’s blood.
All the practice in the world cannot spare a vampire her first kill. Some days, I wish Renata had chosen someone other than Justine, for I had known her. I had seen her alive and well. But such had been Renata’s purpose.
&n
bsp; When I think of Justine now, I remember the husk of her body. I recall the taste of her blood in my mouth, the life I raped from her in order to sustain my own. To further drive forward her point, Renata left me there, kneeling over Justine’s body, her blood on my mouth and hands.
The blood of a vampire can sustain and prolong human life. It makes mortals a hardier lot. But I had taken it all from Justine, even that small touch of magic.
Three nights I spent with Justine’s body as my only companion. Renata did not seek to comfort me. She did not console me. She threw off the shackles that had held my hunger at bay and barred the door, giving me no room to escape or flee from the lesson at hand.
And when the bloodlust passed, I realized what I had done.
One might believe I bear resentment toward Renata for the harshness of her lesson. Yet, if it had not been for Justine’s sacrifice and for what Renata had done, I do not think I would have ever found my conscience again. Every night I woke with Justine’s body as a reminder, I gained an ounce of something stronger than the hunger. I regained bits and pieces of myself.
Renata returned on the third night and her guards, Dante and Dominique, took Justine’s body away. Renata stood just inside the doorway, freshly bathed and dressed in a gown of black silk, her long waves of hair still damp.
I had not fed in three nights, and though I grew weak, I could feel Justine’s blood inside me still. Faint, like an echo, but still there.
Renata gave the order for me to bathe and I went, drawing my own bath and soaking quietly. When I emerged garbed in one of the fine dressing gowns she had provided for me, I found she had not been waiting for me alone. A small human boy knelt in the middle of the room, mirroring Justine’s position three nights prior.
“Cara mia,” Renata said as she swept her hand out toward the boy.
I paused in the doorway, refusing to step further into the room. The blood in the boy’s veins tried to seduce me like panpipes playing in a distant forest, a forest that promised wild abandon. With a will, I shook my head. “No.”
“He is there for the taking, cara mia. Will you not feast more than your eyes?” she asked.
As if she had spoken some command, the boy pulled aside his shoulder length honey hair and tilted his head back to offer the line of his neck. He reminded me so of Justine that my limbs trembled. Renata had chosen well, for he looked near enough like Justine to have been her sibling.
I took a shaking step back, and seeing nothing but Justine behind my lids, said, “No.”
Renata did not respond, not to me and not to dismiss the boy. She perched on the edge of her bed and simply waited. How much time passed, I do not know, but I knew she waited to see if my will would break.
I fought with every fiber of my being not to lunge, not to give in to the hunger.
When at last she was convinced, she rose and went to the double doors of her room, summoning Dante and Dominique to escort the boy back to safe quarters.
Renata had come to me then, offering the comfort and solace of her body and blood. And so, I learned as she had said I would.
I learned to control my thirst.
Chapter One
America, Present Day
Gold eyes slashed with veins of onyx lightning watched me as I climbed into bed. Her nude body shone like selenite, framed by the black, knee-length tresses of her hair. A small tuft of fur shielded the mound at her groin as she reclined, marvelous and striking. I straddled her, careful of the leathery wings that spread from her back and across the bed.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” she spoke with human lips.
“How so?” I asked while I settled my body over hers. I brushed my sex over her, letting her feel that I wore nothing beneath the silk robe. The small node of flesh between her legs stiffened against me and sent a shivering wave of pleasure through my lower body. The black sigil at my wrist tingled with warmth. Once, only a few weeks ago, the sigil had itched and burned whenever I had been close to her. Now, it simply grew warm and tingled ever so slightly.
We were bound together, she and I.
The Dracule, the Great Sires and Sirens of the vampire kind, are a breed unto themselves. Iliaria had never been mortal, and though her current guise mimicked that of human, she was not. She was female, most definitely. The Dracule have a form that is anatomically similar to human, but there are still differentiations. The spur-tipped leathery wings that arched from her back, the long, spaded tail, and the Nod Dragoste between her legs set her apart from truly appearing human. It marked her as something beautiful in an otherworldly sort of way. Mayhap for some, it marked her as the stuff of nightmares. For myself, well…
I rolled my hips forward to dance my skin across hers. “Have you any word on the traitor Damokles?” I asked.
It appeared as though it took her an effort to concentrate. She touched my hips to bring my dance to a halt and I obliged.
Damokles had been a very naughty Dracule who had conspired with two overly ambitious Elders to overthrow the Rosso Lussuria Queen, my lover, Renata. Iliaria had initially been summoned by the traitors to kill us. But she had taken an interest in me, and Renata and I had bartered with her.
I took Iliaria to my bed and she spared us. She offered to give me her mark as a truce and symbol of an alliance between us. I had taken it, and so I bore the black flowing lines at my wrist like an elegant tattoo. The mark is Iliaria’s name, odd and flowing in the tribal alphabet of the Dracule.
The Dracule tell a story of the beginning of our kind. Menelaos, one of the first kings of the Dracule had taken a mortal woman to his bed. Yet, the Dracule are not a race made for mortal lovers, for bodily lust can awaken in them darker lusts. In the throes of passion, Menelaos had slain his human lover. When he realized what he had done, he wept. The angel Azrael, guardian of death, heard the Draculian king’s cries and offered to return the mortal woman to life if Menelaos would give up his own immortality in exchange. Thus, to save his beloved, Menelaos sacrificed his own immortality, and Lilith, the mother of our kind, was created.
The King’s Sacrifice, they call it. The Origins of Vampire.
It was some hours after dawn and Renata had already died for the day, giving me time to enjoy Iliaria’s company. I wore a delicate ring on the middle finger of my right hand, the same side of my body on which I bore Iliaria’s mark. The ring was set with a dainty tear-shaped gem. When held to the light, a small prick of crimson showed in the center of the gem’s smoky blackness. The ring had been a gift from Iliaria. The gem set within the band is a Stone of Shadows. It is a stone forged from the blood and magic of the Dracule. Its power cloaks a vampire and protects us from sunlight. Oddly, the Dracule do not have to worry about sunlight or dying at dawn. A lucky lot they are, for the ring was the only power that kept me from dying like the rest of my brethren.
I fingered the ring idly as I awaited her reply.
“I am sorry, Epiphany. I have no word on Damokles’s whereabouts.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, and my words were met with a heavy silence. With Damokles alive and well, we were still in danger. Iliaria feared his hatred for the vampires would rouse some of the other Dracule to rise against us.
Granted, the Rosso Lussuria are not the only vampire clan in existence. There are others like us throughout the world. We simply choose to keep to ourselves, living in our underground kingdoms and away from the prying eyes of humanity. In our daily lives, the Cacciatori, the vampires who hunt for us, are the only ones who venture outside the walls of the Sotto. I should know, for it was the Cacciatori who had kidnapped me and brought me to this world.
It was Renata’s mercy that had kept me. I was dying from the consumption when first I had been brought to the Sotto. That was in England, before we made the long and arduous journey to America. For fifty years, I had been Renata’s lover and pet. She had cast me out for a hundred and fifty, and I had only recently discovered why. In her own way, she had been trying to protect me. There were th
ose among us who perceived our love as weakness.
Now, I am an Elder. I no longer live a life of servitude. I no longer try to move as quiet as a mouse or cast down my gaze. I am Renata’s Inamorata, her lover, her consort, and was declared such before the whole of the Rosso Lussuria. To raise a hand against me is to raise a hand against her.
Inamorata or no, if someone decides they want you dead, I have found they will not stop trying until they succeed. And when one is immortal, they have a very long time to keep trying.
Iliaria’s nails dug into the fabric over my hips, bringing my attention back to her.
“You are deep in thought this morning,” she said. “Is your little fox speaking with you?”
“Not right now.”
Iliaria shifted her hips and her sex pressed against that sensitive spot between my legs. My eyes fluttered closed as a tendril of pleasure unwound within me.
“Epiphany.” She released me. “Take off the robe.”
I obeyed and loosened the sash, shrugging and sending the silk spilling from my body to pool across her legs.
In the short amount of time that we had been together, there remained certain acts of the bedchamber that Iliaria had not allowed me to perform. She, like Renata, was a dominant by nature, and though they had shared me, neither commanded the other. Iliaria, however, was not the same kind of dominant as Renata. Renata often took the reins of our lovemaking, unless swayed with good reason and the promise of pleasure. Even with the promise of pleasure, Iliaria was not so easily swayed. When I began marking a path down her smooth stomach with my mouth, she caught hold of my hair and forced me to meet her gaze.
“What are you doing?”
I bit back a childish retort fueled by my own selfish frustration. Iliaria would not take kindly to it, nor would I gain any ground with her by using sarcasm.
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