“Got it.”
She helped me to my feet.
“Not bad,” she said. “But you still need to have the basic knowledge of the blades and the footwork. It’s something we learn at a young age. If you don’t have that and Damokles forces you to fight your way into his ranks, he’ll know something’s amiss.”
“Surely, not all of the Dracule are such fine warriors?”
“Every Dracule knowsss how to ussse the bladesss.”
“I haven’t seen Morina use them.” In fact, I hadn’t seen Morina at all since she disappeared from our room.
“She knows how,” Iliaria said. “That’s the point.”
Anatharic and Iliaria shared their blood with the vampires before Iliaria and I retired to dine in our room. Emilio brought up a metallic rolling cart with plates of food. Iliaria handed a large bowl to me and I found that whatever it was, it was very good and only lightly seasoned. Large chunks of beef and potatoes drowned in a savory and peppery broth. Emilio handed us a basket with a loaf of bread and Iliaria tore a piece off and handed it to me. I dipped the bread in the broth and practically moaned at the deliciousness of it.
“Well?” Emilio asked.
“It’s quite good,” I mumbled around a bite of bread. I swallowed so that I could speak clearly and dabbed at the corners of my mouth with a cloth napkin. “You’ve already helped us so much, Emilio. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling almost shyly. “It is my pleasure, lady. It is as much for me as it is for you.”
“Have you not tried it yet?” I asked.
“I will eat later.”
“Nonsense,” Iliaria said. She placed her bowl on the nightstand and rose to move the armchair under the window closer to the bed. “Sit.”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Emilio said politely.
“Sit,” she said again, raising her bowl. This time it was clear it wasn’t an invitation, but an order.
Emilio joined us and we enjoyed a quiet conversation with our dinner. He asked about his father and we spoke at some length about Vasco. I told him how good Vasco had been to me when I most needed a friend, but it was obvious when speaking with Emilio that I did not need to say such things for him to respect Vasco. I could tell that he already did.
He told us about Savina and how she never spoke of him, how he had asked as a child about his father and was given the same cold silence repeatedly, until one day, he just stopped asking.
“She despises him,” I said. “She’s hurt, which in a way is understandable, but she’s also blind.”
“I know,” Emilio said. “My mother clings to any slight she perceives. It’s petty and childish, but that is who she is.” He shrugged and took a bite of his soup. “I cannot change it. I’ve tried.”
“We can’t change people,” I said. “We can love them, we can despise them, but we can’t change them.”
“Indeed.”
We finished our meal and Emilio bid us good night. He took the tray and dirty dishes away with him. I got the door for him as he guided the cart from the room.
“You look so like your father,” I said.
Emilio blushed. “Is that a good thing, lady?”
I nearly snorted. “Aye,” I said. “He’s a handsome one, your father. Many a vampire among the Rosso wouldn’t mind keeping his bed warm. Women and men alike.”
With that, he blushed a brighter shade of red and took his leave. I closed the door with a laugh.
“Flirting, Epiphany? I thought you didn’t fancy men.”
I felt my brows rise practically into my hairline. “That is Vasco’s son we’re talking about, and that, my Great Siren, was not flirting.”
“It sounded like it to me.”
I bent and touched her arm. “If I was flirting, my lady, I would have done this.” I slid my palm lightly up the length of her arm before I ruined the seriousness of the gesture by fluttering my lashes absurdly.
Iliaria laughed and grabbed me by the shoulders. She rolled me onto my back on the bed and tackled me. “You little minx,” she growled and nipped at my throat.
“Minx?” I asked, pretending to be appalled. “I’ll have you know, I’m quite the lady.”
She settled down on top of me and pinned my wrists above my head. “Oh, really?” she asked, but not like she believed me.
“I am.”
“I’d dare to argue that.” She grinned wickedly.
“I said nothing about the bedroom. A lady doesn’t always have to be a lady there, you know.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“I’d be more inclined to thank Renata.” I smiled.
“Well then, perhaps I’ll get her a fruit basket to show my gratitude.”
The idea was so ridiculous that I laughed until my belly ached. I could only imagine the look on Renata’s face if Iliaria were to actually follow through with the gesture.
In time, we slept, and the following day Iliaria gave me a more in-depth explanation of the workings of Draculian society. At the head of the society, there was always a king or a queen, much like with the vampires. Only, unlike the vampires, where a single clan was governed by a single monarch, below the throne the Dracule were broken up into smaller groups, houses where an individual was chosen to lead and answered to the queen for the entire house. Iliaria explained that it gave those that wanted a taste of power a position to be in it. In essence, they became miniature kings and queens for the group or house they represented.
To make certain I couldn’t be caught off guard, Iliaria taught me some Draculian history, along with some cultural norms. Though I would only be Dracule for a short time, it was fascinating.
The Dracule descended from a line of beings they referred to as the Mal’akh. Once, the Mal’akh had been favored by their God, held in high esteem for their passionate natures. Iliaria explained that, in the beginning, it was their passionate natures that had pleased their One God. Yet, in the end, it had been their fall from grace. The Mal’akh walked the earth among mortals, instructed by the One God to teach them how to cultivate the land, to weave, to build, to defend and protect. The Mal’akh taught the first tribes to provide for themselves and to live in harmony with nature. But living among the mortals ignited other passions in the Mal’akh, passions that the One God frowned upon. The Mal’akh began to take the mortals to their beds.
“The One God overlooked it thinking that the Mal’akh would remember their purpose on their own,” Iliaria said. “But being a passionate and hedonistic folk, they did not and it was not long until mortal women held within their wombs the seeds of their couplings. The One God could not turn his back on such an abomination, and so he ordered Azrael to destroy the bastard children that grew within the mortal women. He sent the sword of his right-hand, Gavrille, to lead an army to retrieve the Mal’akh. Yet, as with everything the Mal’akh did, they fought the advances of Gavrille and his army with unrestrained passion.
“They knew they could not win against the One God’s forces, but they refused to give up. They gave Gavrille’s army no other choice but to overpower and destroy the Mal’akh. Azrael, with his orders from their God to destroy the Mal’akh’s offspring, waited until he heard a woman’s screams of labor. The babe was born and the woman, having learned his name from the teachings of the Mal’akh, begged him not to destroy her child. Azrael held the child in his arms and where the One God saw a monstrosity, Azrael saw the same unwavering passions of the Mal’akh reflected in the strange child, and swayed by their passion and a mother’s love, he refused to destroy the babe.”
“That was the first Dracule?” I asked.
“Yes. Azrael and the last remaining Mal’akh created Drahalia and took the babes there to hide them from the One God’s sight. Only three of the Mal’akh survived Gavrille’s invasion. The others were captured or destroyed. Adara, Ephraim, and Keshet raised the babes that Azrael brought to Drahalia as their own, in honor of the Mal’akh that had fallen prey to their God’s c
ruelty.”
“What happened to the three remaining Mal’akh?” I asked.
“No one knows,” Iliaria said as she traced a line across my bare stomach. “The Dracule grow fast and we learn quickly. It is said that when the first-born came of age, the Mal’akh saw in him the same sense of honor and echoing passion that they saw in their brothers and sisters. He ruled Drahalia for a time with the Mal’akh by his side, and then one day, they vanished.”
It was a beautiful story and I was hard put not to believe it, for I saw in the Dracule before me the same passion she had spoken of in the Mal’akh, the same fine vein of heroism and hedonism that had lured them down the path of love and carnal delight.
But a thought occurred to me when she told her story and I gave voice to it. “If the Mal’akh were able to take mortal lovers to bed,” I said, thinking out loud, “they didn’t experience the bloodlust?” I asked. “Is that not something they inherited from the Mal’akh?”
“Some say the bloodlust is a part of a curse their God placed on the Dracule when he learned of the babes Azrael refused to kill.”
“What did the Mal’akh look like?” I asked. “And why wouldn’t the One God, if he was a God, have destroyed the Dracule himself? Not that I’m too keen on the idea, mind you.”
“Some say like us, some say more beautiful. Some say their God cursed us to appear as we do, some say we inherited our appearance from the coupling of mortal and Mal’akh.” She offered a sharp shrug. “As to why he did not destroy us, I do not know. Some believe a blood curse was placed upon us in hopes that we’d destroy ourselves, which didn’t work, if that was the case.”
“What do you think?”
“We are what we are,” she said. “Whether it is curse or inheritance, that is what I think.”
The days passed and my more physical lessons resumed. Yet again, I sparred with Anatharic and Iliaria to better improve on my footwork and fighting skills. Iliaria made me practice in both forms. When she saw that I continued to struggle in Draculian form, she pressed me even harder to wear it and practice in it.
I grew exhausted though I slept and ate. Lesson after lesson, I learned the Draculian tongue, recitations, penmanship, blade work, agility, all of these things and more as the days passed in a dizzying haze of lessons. I worried that I wouldn’t remember all of it and that she was pushing too much into my head at once, but Iliaria persisted, and yet another week of lessons passed. She taught me to evanesce, to visualize a destination and use my abilities to go there. The experience made my body tingle uncontrollably afterward, as her mark used to on my skin. Iliaria ensured me that I would get used to the sensation, though I found it highly unlikely.
Finally, the day came when she woke me with news that Emilio had found Damokles. Such news tightened my chest as fear and excitement both surged through me. I asked her when I could go only to learn she still was not satisfied that I was ready.
Almost an entire month passed in the human world and I began to grow anxious. I remembered what Cuinn had told me about Azrael. Four months. I had four months as a Dracule to find and rescue Renata.
And an entire month had already passed us by. Renata had been a prisoner for too long, and I was becoming impatient. A few days later, Iliaria’s curriculum changed.
“We must work on your disguise,” she said. “If you are to infiltrate Damokles’s ranks, we must work on your story.”
And so we did. Iliaria gave me false names for my parents and came up with a believable history that I was an unlucky child born in the sin and slums of Drahalia’s Noapte Quarter. I sat on the bed cross-legged while she explained the dark cobblestone streets and crude shops in great detail and when she was done, she had me repeat it to her in full detail, down to the services offered, the illicit brothels and pub houses and the faces of their clientele.
“Who is your mother?” Iliaria asked me in the Draculian tongue.
“I was born to Batya and Chaim,” I replied smoothly.
“Their occupations?”
“Merchant rovers, they stole and sold whatever goods would bring them fortune.” Iliaria and I both agreed that if I was the offspring of a sort of Draculian gypsy folk, Damokles would be less able to confirm their existence, or rather, their lack thereof. Too many faces passed through Noapte Quarter. It would make the task of finding two in particular difficult, if not impossible.
Iliaria told me to stay in Draculian form so that I would gain confidence in it. The Draculian language grew on me. I found the soft lilt and curl of it beautiful and fascinating the more I heard it and the more I used it. For a week, Iliaria verbally chastised me whenever I slipped into English.
After a tiring day of blade-twirling and even fancier footwork, Iliaria woke me the following evening with news that she had invited Cuinn and Vasco to dine with us in our room, and although Vasco did not eat any of the lamb stew that Emilio had made, Cuinn nibbled on pieces of meat that Emilio had set aside for him. We conversed quietly about nothing much. Several times, I found myself slipping habitually into the Draculian tongue. When I did, Iliaria gave me a look of sadness and pride.
I was ready.
We both knew it.
Vasco caught it, too. “When?” he asked.
Iliaria turned to me for the answer. “Tomorrow, I think.”
We ate the rest of our meal in silence.
Iliaria and I spent our last night together making love. The satin of her fur slid against mine as our groins brushed to send a wave of heat and pleasure coursing through us both.
Her hands gripped my buttocks. “Come back to me,” she whispered, her voice tight.
I shuddered as the climax built between my legs. “I will try, I promisse.”
“Don’t try.” She clung to me as I held her. “Jussst do.”
*
The goldenrod glow of the late afternoon sunlight shone through the thick curtains that covered the window. Iliaria’s tall frame was nestled beside me, her arm draped loosely over my hip. Carefully, I climbed out from beneath the covers and worked my way into a pair of black velvet trousers. The trousers were less troublesome to pull on over my tail than the shorts had been, as a small clasped opening snapped closed above it to secure the material. The bathroom tile was cold beneath my feet as I struggled with the blouse. I still had not quite gotten used to dressing myself in human form. The wings, whether the blouse had slits that hooked below them in the back or not, were still difficult to work around when it came to getting dressed. After some fuss, I managed to secure the tiny hooks and sighed with relief. No doubt, Iliaria would chastise me for me changing form, but on my last day with the others, I wanted to feel more myself in my skin.
With all the training and lovemaking, it felt as though I’d had little time to do aught else but prepare for this day. The one time Vasco had tried to pull me away and give me a reprieve from the task hadn’t gone as well as planned.
I stalked the hotel hallways, inclined to be alone with my thoughts. Truly, a part of me didn’t want to leave the safety we had established here. I wasn’t the type of person drawn toward reckless adventure, let alone the type to undertake the task of walking boldly into the heart of danger and a nest of intrigue. If at all possible, I tried to avoid such things. But with Renata captured, I couldn’t avoid the coming fight.
I thought of her with a surge of heartache and longing. No doubt, she had felt my death when Azrael had changed me, and I could only guess of what she thought, let alone endured, at Damokles’s hands.
I stopped before the window at the end of the hallway to watch the last strands of light filtering through.
This whole plan is madness.
It had been madness from the beginning when Renata had turned herself over in order to tip their hands. And now, due to her impulsive stubbornness, I had to find the courage within me to go in after her.
I wasn’t even sure how I would do it. Iliaria and I had discussed many things, but we hadn’t specifically decided on how I would work my
way in and gain Damokles’s trust.
I sensed someone behind me and turned to find Cuinn. “I thought I’d sensed ye out here.”
“Cuinn,” I said. I turned my back on the window and slid down the wall beneath it to sit on the floor.
Cuinn came to me and propped his chin on my knee. “Aye, your thoughts are heavy, lass.”
“They are,” I admitted as I stroked the fur between his ears. “I wish you could go with me. You’ve more courage than I.”
“Ye know why, lass? I don’t question myself,” he said matter-of-factly. “Ye’ve got to trust your instincts, come what may, and then with whatever comes, ye’ve got to trust ’em again.”
I fingered the amber stone that hung from the makeshift collar about his neck. “How am I to do this thing, Cuinn? I can speak their tongue, I can move and fight like them now, but when it comes down to it, what am I to really do? Just walk into Damokles’s midst and claim to join him in treachery?”
“Aye,” Cuinn said, “if ye cannot work your way in undetected—”
“I’d much rather work my way in undetected.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Morina strode toward us in the same black trousers and white billowy shirt and dark overcoat she’d worn for the last several days.
“And?” I had not seen her since she had watched Iliaria and me make love, and I wondered how she thought of me now.
“I will take you.”
“You said that you weren’t working with Damokles.”
“Yes,” she said, her face an expressionless mask, “I did, but that’s not to say I won’t begin working with him. If I take you, I can ensure that you stay alive long enough to keep your promise to me.”
Cuinn had risen to his feet when she came forward. His ears had slicked back to his skull as if he were ready for a fight to break out between us.
Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel Page 29
