“According to our laws, yes. So long as I am present and have reasonable cause, they cannot declare us Il Deboli.” She shook her head. “But it is difficult to predict the outcome of these things. I cannot say with utmost certainty how another ruler will react.”
“Still,” Iliaria said, “it might be worthy of the try. Anatharic and I can carry a few of you and move easily between the realms. It would be best to keep our numbers as small as possible, not only to keep the threat of attention at a minimum but to assure that we can evade capture if we need to.”
“How many can you carry at a time?”
“Effortlessly?” She seemed to think about it for a moment. “Two at the most. I’d say three, but I will not be as quick carrying three bodies.”
“Do you suppose Anatharic will agree to it?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s settled,” Renata said. “Come the next nightfall, we’ll leave for Bull Shoals and request an audience with their king.”
They began discussing who would accompany us to meet with the clan of Bull Shoals. The scroll on the table turned out to be a hand drawn parchment map. Though it was old, it was accurate, indicating the numerous vampire clans speckled throughout the American continent. The clan of Bull Shoals was some miles from the Arkansas-Missouri border. It was the closest clan to our own, and judging by the guide marks on the map, it was located in the midst of the Ozark Mountains.
“Great,” Iliaria said, “they’re located in a tourist attraction.”
“Yes and no,” Renata said. “The lake resort is here.” She turned the map, tapping it with the tip of her lacquered nail. “The clan itself was established many years before ours and is located in a set of caverns the humans have never and will never discover.”
At that, Iliaria raised her brows skeptically.
Renata smiled slowly. “We are not the first clan to have used the aid of the Stregha centuries ago. The pathway and entrance to the caverns is terribly difficult to find, let alone navigate to gain admittance.”
“Being so close to a resort poses an opportunity to their hunters, I imagine.”
“It does.”
No doubt, many a soul had gone missing while wandering their campgrounds at night.
“If I am to carry you there, I will need specifics. Do you know where the entrance is?”
“Yes.”
“You will have to guide me, lest we end up on a cliff edge.”
“Ah,” Renata mused, carefully rolling the map and sliding it back into its leather case. “That is where we will need to be if we are to gain entry.”
“This sounds a bit precarious, my lady.”
She shrugged. “It is the only way that I can perceive.”
“Do you know their ruler?” Iliaria asked.
“Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She placed her hand over mine, her eyes like dark sapphires in the flickering candlelight. “I met Augusten centuries ago, very briefly, before he left Roma to establish the clan here. I have not had any association with him since.”
There was a stumbling sound on the other side of the bedroom door. Renata and I looked at each other before Dominique’s voice filtered through.
“Padrona, they have returned.”
Renata did not raise her voice when she said, “Let them in.”
Dominique opened the door and Anatharic entered the room, standing to all his great height on his hind legs. He carried something swathed in a cloak in his arms.
Renata stood without hesitation and made her way toward him.
“Place him on the bed.”
Anatharic did so as the others began to spread out through the room. Nirena’s white-blond hair was speckled and matted with blood. A cut on her cheek had healed, but where the cut had been, the blood was just beginning to dry.
Vasco strode into the room behind the others. A few specks of drying blood decorated his brow and cheeks too.
My heart soared with relief. He smiled and came to me.
He wrapped an arm around me and murmured. “I keep my promises.”
I touched his hand when he drew back. “I’m glad you do.”
I turned my attention from him and the others and to the still figure laid out on Renata’s bed. She sat beside the figure and ran a hand through his dark red hair. Renata murmured his name and my chest tightened.
“They bound him to a tree so that he would burn come sunrise, my queen,” Nirena said. “He had been tortured when we found him.”
“You were right to bring him back,” Renata said and I could feel her closing down as she put a steady hand over her emotions.
She unwrapped the cloak from around him and revealed his bare torso. His chest was lined with old blood and numerous cuts, some deeper than others.
In the middle of his chest was a larger cut, a cut shaped into an unmistakable X. I had once worn the same X between my shoulder blades.
The room turned in my vision, and Vasco caught my elbow when my knees gave out from under me.
“Renata,” I said, feeling the blood I’d drunk earlier spin uncomfortably in my stomach.
“I must try to heal him, Epiphany.”
Vasco pulled me to my feet and held me close to his chest. I let him without protest. I let him comfort me while a sense of dread continued to unfurl within me.
Neither Vasco nor Renata addressed the sense of my dread or its cause, but I could feel empathically that they too felt it. They too thought about it and had an inkling of what that mark cut into Dante’s chest meant.
While Renata tried to heal Dante, I wondered how it could be possible. Surely, Lucrezia could not be alive out there somewhere. Renata had executed her, she had taken her heart and head. She had left nothing salvageable of her body.
Witches, Cuinn muttered, always playing with darker magics than they should.
Renata lowered her shields and the room crackled with her energy like a biting wind. Slowly, she narrowed that energy, shaping it and driving it none-too-gently into Dante. I let Vasco’s tall frame ground me against the tide of emotions that swelled within me.
I pray it is not true.
Aye, Cuinn’s ears flattened behind my closed lids. But ’tis better to be well prepared of the possibility than to deny and live in ignorance. A danger foreseen is half avoided.
A ragged breath shattered the silence and Dominique and Anatharic were suddenly beside the bed to help restrain Dante and keep him from thrashing about.
Renata stepped away with something akin to defeat. Dante’s green eyes were wild and completely unlike him. There was nothing recognizable in his gaze. He bared his teeth at Vito and Vittoria when they approached to help and then he began to scream, a high-pitched and panicked sound that vibrated inside my ears and made me wince.
It was then I knew that Dante’s captors had broken his mind.
*
We learned from those who had ridden out among the Cacciatori that they had ridden hard through the woods in pursuit of a cloaked figure, presumably one of the witches that had been working with the Dracule. The cloaked figure had led them to Dante, bound by silver chains to a large tree.
It had been a trap, an ambush. Severiano recounted three Dracule. With Anatharic’s help, they’d fought them into retreat. Damokles had not been among them.
“Scouts,” Iliaria said. “If they retreated, they were scouts, nothing more.”
“Why set an ambush only to retreat?” Vasco asked.
To that, Iliaria shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps he is biding his time and testing the abilities of your warriors.”
“Or he’s preoccupied doing something else,” I said.
No one disagreed with me.
Dante had been taken to a holding cell, for his protection as well as the protection of the other clan members. With his mind so broken, none of us knew what he would do. Renata could heal him bodily, but she could not repair the damage done to his wits. We could
only hope that with time, he would awaken from his madness.
Lorrenzo shifted where he sat on the sofa beside Allesandra. He hissed through his teeth when he moved his leg as if it pained him.
“You are injured,” Iliaria said.
“Show us,” Renata said.
Lorrenzo raised the leg of his breeches to reveal the nasty gash along the length of his calf muscle. Iliaria knelt to inspect the wound and he backed up as far as his seat would allow.
“You have a Draculian barb in your leg. If we do not remove it, it will not heal.”
“I thought your barbs were toxic?” Renata asked.
“The skin sheathing the barb is,” she said, probing his wound despite his fear of her and making him wince. “Luckily, the Dracule missed and did not get a fatal shot. Anatharic, I need your assistance.”
Anatharic unfolded his wings from around his body and knelt with her.
“Hold him down,” she said to Allesandra.
Allesandra obliged while Iliaria and Anatharic set about removing the barb from Lorrenzo’s calf. Anatharic used the tips of his claws to slice the wound open wider and Iliaria plunged her fingers into the wound to find the implanted barb. Lorrenzo protested, but let Allesandra hold him down.
“This is going to hurt,” Iliaria warned him, as if her digging in the wound hadn’t, and then she jerked her hand back. Blood flowed in a rivulet down Lorrenzo’s leg and he screamed, but Iliaria had already pulled free the barb. She held up a sharpened spine longer than my hand.
“Would you like to see?”
I moved closer to her, because honestly, I did. She handed the barb to me and I examined it, tracing the bloody length. Beneath the blood, the barb was as white as bone. It sharpened at the tip like a dagger. Tiny teeth traveled down the length of it to a widened base.
“There is no way to pull it out delicately,” she said. “Once embedded in the skin, it is a snug fit.” She indicated the direction of the serrations. “It cuts and tears flesh on its way out, no matter how you pull it.”
“I see that.”
“So it is only lethal if it is a mortal wound?” Vasco asked.
“Yes, the toxin can kill a vampire if the blow is to the heart.”
“That is useful to know,” he said.
Iliaria took the barb from me. “It’s no longer toxic, as it’s no longer attached and the skin sheath has already been broken.”
“May I keep it?” I asked and everyone in the room gave me an odd look at the question. Iliaria shrugged and handed the barb back to me. It was fascinating, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.
“What will happen to the Dracule?” Lorrenzo asked.
“In regards to the loss of the barb?”
He nodded.
“Another will grow back.”
She sighed and tossed aside the long train of her brocaded coat. The Draculian attire, when they wore it, was a combination of both modern and outdated. It was specifically tailored to fit their bodies, at least Iliaria’s was. The back had perfectly stitched openings to give her wings freedom. Her tail, on the other hand, was usually hidden beneath folds of fabric.
She pulled back the slightly spaded tip of her tail to expose a barb much longer and sharper than the one that had been thrust into Lorrenzo’s leg.
Vasco gave a low whistle. “That’s a great deal larger than the other.”
“I’m older,” she said as if that explained everything. In a way, it did.
“I hadn’t known that the size of the barb was dependent on age.”
“Now you do,” she said and sent her tail flicking back beneath the folds of her coat.
She stood. “You should bind the wound to prevent further blood loss. You may feel some symptoms of the toxin, but your body will heal now that the barb has been removed.”
Lorrenzo looked a bit out of sorts but acknowledged with a nod that he was listening and understood. Even if he hadn’t understood, Allesandra paid rapt attention to Iliaria’s instructions.
Renata dismissed the Elders, all save Vasco, who reclined at ease on the sofa with his long legs crossed at the ankles.
“What a night,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself.
“There is more, I’m afraid.”
He fixed me with a questioning gaze and I looked at Renata for permission to speak. She gave it, with a slight nod.
“We’ve been discussing matters, and it’s been decided that we’ll travel with Iliaria’s and Anatharic’s help and approach the King of Bull Shoals.”
At that, Vasco appeared somewhat surprised.
“Truly, my lady?”
“Truly,” Renata said. “I believe it is the only way for us to uncover whether or not Damokles and his toadies are targeting vampires as a whole or simply our clan.”
Vasco swung his legs to the floor and leaned forward. He propped his elbow on his knee, resting his chin on his hand. “Not that I disagree with you, my queen, but how do you suppose the king will take our arrival at his gates?”
At that, Renata raised her thin shoulders. “I’ve no idea.”
“If we do not take that many, we will be able to evade capture even from the king if necessary,” Iliaria said. She asked Anatharic, “Do you have any qualms about this?”
“No.”
“Who will you send?” Vasco asked.
“It is more a question of who I will take,” Renata said.
Vasco’s eyes were filled with calculation. “Do you think it wise to risk yourself?”
“Wiser than sending an ambassador, yes.”
“You believe the King of Bull Shoals will honor our laws?”
“I do,” she said, “unless he has changed that much in a few centuries.”
“Not an easy call, my lady.”
All of us agreed with him.
They finished discussing matters and Renata appointed Vasco to choose who he would take among the Elders. He gave the question some thought.
“Vito and Vittoria have skills better suited for defending the clan,” he said. “They are some of our strongest fighters, but I think, my lady, given their loyalty, they’re the ones you would want to leave behind to protect your throne.”
Wordlessly, Renata encouraged him with a nod to continue.
“Severiano is a good huntsman,” I added.
Vasco shook his head. “A good huntsman and a bad politician, he doesn’t have the patience for it. Nirena,” he said. “Nirena is politically savvy and a good fighter.”
“Then we will take her with us,” Renata said. “We will leave for the clan of Bull Shoals next sundown and see just how deeply this threat goes.”
“What about Dante?” I asked. “The mark?”
“The mark does not necessarily mean anything, cara mia. I know you fear the worst, but many cuts happen during a torture session.”
“So you believe it is purely coincidental, my lady?”
“I do not know,” she said, surprising me a little with her candidness. For a moment, I feared she would deny my fears altogether.
“Do you think it’s her?”
Renata’s features softened with sympathy. “I cannot say. The hand of logic would prompt me to decline the idea, but at the same time it encourages me to consider the possibilities. The Dracule have been working with witches, and though I think the chances incredibly slim, cara mia, I will not deny it altogether.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She reached for me and I took her hand. She gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. “We can but wait and see what strands unravel, my love.”
“Sì,” Vasco said. “The unfortunate way of politics, sorella. One step at a time, a lot of watching and waiting.”
I sighed. “I hate bloody politics.”
Chapter Five
As sunrise drew near, Vasco, Vittoria, and Vito decided to bunk in my bedroom. My room was closer to Renata’s bedchamber than the Elders’ sleeping quarters and more accessible if we needed them. Technically, Renata’s room w
as the safest in the Sotto, and though Iliaria and Anatharic could travel quickly by their own means, everyone agreed it was a more convenient location if I personally had to wake the others.
Renata wanted me to wake her after the sun rose.
She had not chosen another guard. At Iliaria’s behest, Anatharic stayed in the sitting room off of Renata’s boudoir. Dominique hadn’t liked the fact that Renata hadn’t chosen another guard. Dante was like a brother to him and I could tell, though he hid it, that he worried for him. But Renata was his queen and he worried for her as well. His worry dropped a few notches when Anatharic agreed to keep vigil at Iliaria’s request.
It struck me as odd, how compliant Anatharic seemed to be toward her. I decided to ask about it when I wasn’t so overwhelmed with everything else.
“Epiphany,” Renata beckoned to me from her great bed.
I went to her and when she drew me close, I rested my head on her shoulder and reveled in the feel of her, of feeling sheltered in the circle of her arms.
“Dracule,” Renata said, bringing my attention to the fact that Iliaria stood watching us from the center of the room. “Will you join us?”
“Is that a request?”
“Please,” I murmured, “don’t start quarrelling. There’s been quite enough of that this day. Come to bed, Iliaria.”
“Is that what you want, Epiphany?”
“Yes, that’s what I want. If I didn’t want it, I wouldn’t have asked. This silliness must stop. I don’t have the patience for it. I want to lie between the two of you, to feel safe and protected and loved. So get over here and stop it.”
Iliaria merely blinked at me.
I let out a breath of air in a huff to show my impatience. Renata’s laughter came slowly, trickling softly throughout the candlelit room.
“Well,” Iliaria finally said, “when you ask so kindly. How can I decline?”
I snuggled into Renata’s luscious form and buried my face in the bend of her neck. The bed dipped as Iliaria crawled in behind me. She laid her body against mine and her arm slipped around my waist under Renata’s.
Well played, Piph, Cuinn said with a victorious smirk.
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