I opened my eyes and the vision shattered. “He’s locked in the purgatorio. And he’s alone.”
I do not know who had first begun calling the small prison that the Cacciatori used to keep their captive humans the purgatorio. Having been held prisoner in such a place, I can honestly say it’s less a purgatory than a level of hell filled with despair and darkness.
The Cacciatori hadn’t needed to hunt for humans in some time, since we had plenty of healthy Donatore, so there were no mortals being kept there. It was only Dominique, and though I knew where he was, it left me with another question: Where was Dante?
Renata stopped me when I started to get up.
“I could not sense Dante,” she said, and her gaze was tinged with a fear that twisted my stomach into knots. “We will wait until the others return to release Dominique. He appeared unharmed, as far as I could tell, but I’ll not have us walking into a potential trap.” Her voice had taken on a frosty edge, and I knew she was trying to contain her worry.
I let out a breath and fell back on the bed. It was reasonable, practical, and thoughtful to wait for the others, but how long would it be until they returned? And if it was a trap and Damokles was somewhere nearby waiting for us to find Dominique, would he kill him for sport if we took too long to show our faces? If Renata couldn’t sense Dante, our best chances of knowing what had happened to him rested with Dominique; that I was sure of.
But I was not queen. Renata was, and if she wanted to wait, we bloody well waited. I bowed slightly and said, “As you will, my lady.”
Vito and Vittoria remained at their posts by the doors, neither saying a word in agreement or disagreement. Given our low numbers without the others’ aid, I did not think they disagreed.
What seemed an hour later, though it was probably far less, Anatharic and Vasco returned only a few moments before the others to announce that they had indeed found Vasco’s Stregherian witch. Iliaria manifested with Nirena and an unfamiliar woman I pegged as the witch.
Renata had taken her seat in the high-backed chair in her room. Had we not been under attack by Damokles and his henchmen, I knew she would have preferred to greet the witch elsewhere, as it was more politically correct. Yet, we still did not know if Damokles remained within the Sotto. Cuinn, of course, did not sense anything. When I pressed him to explain why he could not sense anything, he pointed out the fact that Damokles had been working with a witch and that there are many ways to cloak one’s presence. It made enough sense that I let it go.
“My queen.” Vasco knelt before Renata. “I introduce you to Savina, the Stregherian witch of whom I spoke.”
Savina was a woman of modest beauty. If I had not known she was one of the Stregha, I would have thought her no more than a mortal woman. She was not as striking as many of the Rosso Lussuria. The thick mane of her dark hair was bundled and clasped at the back of her head. Her honey and olive kissed skin was garbed in a simple dress the color of deep merlot. The curves beneath the material were lush and soft; she was not portly by any means, but her hips widened slightly by the fullness of age and motherhood, and I wondered how many children she had.
The witch moved to kneel beside Vasco where Renata could see her fully. Her voice, when it came, was smoky and heavily accented.
“You seek my aid, Queen of the Rosso Lussuria?”
“Rise, both of you,” Renata said and they did so. Savina was not so much taller than I, perhaps an inch or two. “Will you aid us?” Renata asked her.
Savina said, “I am here, am I not?”
“You sound none too thrilled about that,” I spoke without giving thought to my words. I moved where Savina could see me.
Her lustrous gaze met mine, and even with the distance between us, the blood in her veins sang a sweet siren song of life and crimson promise.
It had been many years since I had been in the presence of a woman who was truly alive. I had no doubts in that moment that, immortal or no, the Stregherian witches were human enough.
“Colombina, are you well?” Vasco asked.
I hadn’t realized how intensely I was gazing at the drum that beat in the side of Savina’s neck. With an effort, I peeled my gaze away.
“I believe your vampire wants to take a bite of me,” Savina said.
“I am well,” I said, addressing Vasco.
“Yet, you do not deny the call of my blood?” she asked.
I straightened my spine and met the look of challenge she gave me unflinchingly. “Should I? I am what I am. I am a vampire, and witch or no, you smell very much like a feast.”
Iliaria cleared her throat, I think to disguise a laugh.
“You’d do well keeping in mind what I am when you begin to think I smell like your supper.”
I inhaled a slow breath to steady myself, inhaling flickers of emotion permeating from Savina.
Her words had been harsh and what lay behind them was harsher: complete and utter distaste.
“She does not want to be here,” I said.
“And who are you to speak my mind?”
“Now it is you who wishes to take a bite out of me. If you are so displeased, why are you here?”
Savina opened her mouth to speak when my vision of her was superimposed with the sight of Cuinn. Cuinn rose to his paws, drawing his ears back with a snarl.
Watch it, witch.
A muscle in her jaw twitched, giving the slightest indication that she had heard him. “Vasco, you did not tell me one of the Fatas was among you.”
“It is not important,” he said.
“Enough,” Renata said, sounding tired. “You have said you will aid us. What aid can you give?”
“Vasco has told me of your troubles,” Savina said smoothly, sounding politic. “I can reverse the spell.”
“Why would you help? I asked.
“Because I can,” she said, and I got a very strong sense she wasn’t offering to help because she cared, but for some other reasons. Maybe she just wanted to show off her powers.
“We need to get Dominique first,” I said. “There’s no telling how long this could take. He’s still alive. Surely, restoring the Donatore can wait until he’s with us again.”
“You have found him?” Nirena asked.
“Dominique, yes. We’ve not yet found Dante. We can’t. Renata can’t sense him. We’ve been waiting to retrieve Dominique on the chance it’s a trap of some sort.”
Vasco’s sword sang from its sheath. He stood armed and waited for Renata to give some instruction. She nodded and I retrieved the fox blade from the bed.
“Anatharic,” Iliaria said and ordered him to take the rear.
Vito moved to the main doors to be near his sister. As they had before, the Elders in tow put Renata and me in the middle. This time, Savina joined our little hunting party, standing on the other side of Renata so that she was between us.
I spared her a glance.
“If you’re worrying about me,” Savina said, sounding defensive, “don’t. I’ve no need of your weapons.”
I held my tongue. I wasn’t worried about arming her. What worried me was whether or not she could be trusted.
*
The hallway of the purgatorio appeared empty.
“No one else is here,” Iliaria said after taking a cautious look around.
Anatharic was on all fours beside me, the length of his tail swaying gently. “Coward,” he said, half-growling and obviously referring to the fact that our intruders had disappeared.
Our little hunting party descended further down the hall and rounded a corner to find the cell where Renata and I had seen Dominique. Vasco tried to open the cell and jerked roughly on the lock when he realized it was latched.
“It will not open,” Dominique’s voice grumbled from the shadows.
“Dominique,” Renata said, relief making her voice soft. “Are you well?”
“I am, lady, aside from their silly parlor tricks.”
“They’ve spelled the door,” Vasco said.
/>
It was the only thing that explained why, when he tugged on the metal lock, he could not break it. A human, of course, wouldn’t have been able to break it. But Dominique and Vasco should have been able to do such a thing easily.
Savina parted our throng. “I’ll do it.”
Vito and Vittoria stood near the sharp turn in the hallway, quietly guarding and keeping an eye lest Damokles returned. Nirena was just as silent, standing in a spill of flickering torchlight that made her long hair glisten like fine spider silk. Her violet eyes met mine, and though I’d never quite figured her out, there was something different about Nirena; different in a way that had nothing to do with vampirism.
Savina examined the lock and confirmed that it had been spelled. When she summoned her magic, a warm breeze picked up in the hallway. She murmured no words of incantation, merely tugged on the lock and pulled it open.
Those standing closest to the door moved aside to allow Dominique to make his way through. He knelt in his very modern black jeans and white T-shirt, the tail of his dark hair falling over his shoulder as he bowed his head.
“Forgive me, my queen.”
“Where is Dante?” she asked.
“I do not know, my lady.”
Renata nodded sharply and pressed him further. “What happened, Dominique?”
“We heard noises in your chamber hall, my queen. Dante went to check. When he did not return, I left my post in search of him. That is when they grabbed me.”
“How many of them, do you reckon?” Vasco rocked back eagerly on his heels.
“I do not know. They caught me unaware.” Dominique shook his head as if shaking away a buzzing thought. “At a guess, I’d say four of them. I did not see Dante.”
Iliaria cursed so heatedly that for a moment I thought she’d drive her fist through the wall. She did not, thankfully. “They are toying with us.” Her voice was an angry hiss.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I think she means,” Vasco said, “that because Dominique is unharmed and yet the Donatore do not remain so, that this has become a game of proving their ability to infiltrate our clan and hurt, or spare, whomever they choose.
“But what of Dante?” I asked. “Do you think they would have killed him just for sport?”
Iliaria considered my words. “I do not know,” she said. “Damokles hates vampires and murdered his own sister for being the lover of one. If that is any indication—”
“There is the chance that they are using him to gather information for further use against us.” Nirena stepped away from the stone wall and circle of light, sending a ripple of energy through the air.
“There is that,” Iliaria agreed.
Renata took rein of the situation. “The other Elders will wake soon. It will be easier to find Dante with more of us looking for him. Do you have a problem with restoring the Donatore before our Elders wake?” she asked Savina.
“No.”
We left the hallway of the purgatorio, for which I was relieved. My memories of such a place were not so terrible, but I had not seen it in two hundred years and didn’t much care to see it again. I remembered a man who had beseeched Renata when I had been held there. He had knelt on the rough stone. His face had been dirty and his eyes hollowed from lack of sleep.
“Please, great lady, I have a family to provide for, mouths to feed…”
I remembered her cold response. “As do I.”
Whatever became of his family, I do not know, nor do I know what became of him. Like as not, he became nothing more than food in our bellies, as the Donatore were chosen with care and the man had been too desperate, lost in his concern for his family. Too desperate to survive meant he would’ve been all too eager to run away and return to the life and love he had known. For that reason alone, he would not have been chosen as Donatore. Those that became Donatore became such consensually and were, more often than not, mortals who had nothing to lose in the human world.
I did not know this, Piph, Cuinn’s androgynous voice whispered, tempered with compassion. He was a part of me, my little fox, and when I remembered something, he shared in those memories.
It was a very long time ago, Cuinn.
Aye, he said, and though you serve her, you are not like her.
His words made me focus my attention on Renata.
Her magnificent eyes met my gaze and held it. The midnight fragments in her irises were nigh black in the dancing torchlight, shadowing the soft ocean blue flecks like Caribbean waters and a starry sky. The expression she gave me was unreadable.
I am not as strong as she is.
Nay, Cuinn said, ’tis not that, Epiphany. You do not share the same cold practicality.
I severed the eye contact with Renata, afraid that she would hear.
For a long time, I did not understand it—her cold practicality. I did not comprehend how she could seem so cruel, and yet, she showed me compassion when I had not asked for it.
A hand touched my hair to tuck a curl gently behind my ear.
Light and dark run through us all, Renata said.
Chapter Three
We made it safely back to Renata’s chambers, and she left Vasco in charge to oversee the Donatore’s restoration. Those that were not with his party overseeing the restoration stood guard in the adjoining room. Soon, the Elders would wake and they would need to feed. It may seem unusual to some, to take such great lengths to restore the Donatore. If the human world was nestled so close above us, why did we not just send the Cacciatori to hunt for more? Many of the Donatore have been with our clan long enough to have never known electricity or seen an automobile. They had been gathered throughout the years, slowly, cautiously, like lambs taken by unseen wolves in the night, to become our glorified cattle, our forever source. It would take many, many humans to replace their numbers to provide sustenance for the entire clan.
We didn’t feed directly from the Donatore. Their blood was taken every day and brought to us in a dining hall. It was all very civilized, all things considered. We didn’t know the Donatore as people, but as food sources.
If we wished to remain unbeknown to the world above, we could not hunt and kidnap mortals in such great numbers. We would have to replenish our crops slowly, which was impossible. Renata could only stay the Elders and Underlings for so long before they would go mad with thirst and seek the world above of their own accord. Driven by a lust for blood, they would be as animals. It would drive us into the mortal world, making us targets.
I had to admit, it was a clever plan. Damokles had hit us where we would be most weakened by the blow. If we could not restore the Donatore, I feared to think of what would happen.
All would be lost to chaos. The streets of Bolivar, the nearest city, would run red with blood. The Cacciatori for the nearest clan would inevitably seek us out and destroy us, one by one, in an effort to stem the chaos.
I fell back on Renata’s bed with a sigh.
“You are becoming more thoughtful in your age, cara mia.” Renata roused me yet again from my thoughts.
“What do you mean, my lady?” I asked.
She sat in front of her dressing table, and her reflection met mine in the looking glass. The smile that curled the corners of her sensuous mouth was knowing and mysterious.
“Ah,” I said. “You’ve been listening. Do you ever grow bored with that, my lady?”
She did not offer a response and instead set about unwinding the black strands of her braided hair. She brushed the glistening waves until they fell in a veil of silk to her waist. I stifled a warm shudder at the memory of her hair on my naked skin.
Renata laughed, albeit quietly. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I caught Cuinn’s amber fox eyes rolling lightly.
Vampires, he grumbled.
Do not pretend I’ve not noticed where your particular interests lay, Cuinn. You may be closer to my thoughts than I’d like, and I may not truly hear yours unless you direct them to me, but I am an empathic vampire and have
sensed a stirring of curiosity in you.
Needless to say, Cuinn closed his yap.
I don’t know why, but he didn’t want me to tell Vasco. Oh, Cuinn pretended not to like him, and he’d never actually broached the subject with me. He didn’t have to. I’d gradually begun to notice the subtle change that took place in Cuinn’s demeanor when Vasco was around. Not all of the time, but every now and then, I caught it—the way he became just a bit more impish when Vasco was around. Almost…flirty.
My thoughts circled around one another like sparrows flitting in flight. I kept thinking of the Donatore. I hoped Savina had not boasted falsely when it came to her abilities.
When first I had come to the Rosso Lussuria, I had myself been under the impression that they were nothing more than mortal servants who did our bidding. It is not so, in reality. Yes, they are servants of sorts, and to many, no more than cattle, no more than food. For that reason, we lived in a sort of segregation; Donatore and vampires, adjacent and separate. In fact, the only mortal I had ever known to spend time away from the Donatore’s quarters had been Justine.
Justine.
I shut my eyes, blocking out the sight of Renata’s bedroom.
Shortly after Justine’s death, I had learned of the segregation. The only mortals the Elders, not the Underlings, had any contact with were those imprisoned in the purgatorio. The rest lived in their own underground community among other Donatore.
Which was how Renata had found me and how Rosabella, another Elder, had found her pet Underling, Karsten. Though Karsten was no more, taken by Iliaria when she was summoned to execute our kind. No one seemed particularly disturbed by his loss. Rosabella had been more horrified by the Dracule than distraught by his death.
It seemed as if such events had transpired months ago, but it had only been a little over a week. I had not forgotten that Rosabella had voted against me becoming an Elder, had not forgotten the look of disgust she’d given me when she’d found out I was bedding one of the Great Dracule.
Like so many other things, it was not easy to forget.
I never thought to ask Renata why she had chosen Justine.
Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel Page 4
