Starling

by Fiona Paul

  “So trusting,” Belladonna said drily. “I suppose you feel the same about your artist lover. Thanks to him we almost caught you yesterday.”

  Cass’s jaw tightened, but she tried not to show any emotion. Belladonna was obviously trying to break her spirit, and she would not give her the satisfaction. “Falco wouldn’t betray me either. He loves me. When I get out of here, I will prove to him that you are a bloodsucking witch, and he will no longer have anything to do with you.”

  “You think so?” Belladonna asked. “I’ve changed his life in ways that you could only dream of.” She paused for a moment to let that comment sink in. “Everyone has a price. Even you.”

  “I will never work with you,” Cass insisted.

  “We’ll take what we want, whether you cooperate or not.” Belladonna leaned in close to Cass and stroked her neck, her hand lingering for a moment. “Your blood will change the world,” she murmured.

  As she turned away, one of her fingernails caught on the chain of Cass’s necklace. She pulled the lily pendant from beneath Cass’s chemise and smiled, her green eyes studying the diamond as if it were a juicy morsel she wanted to devour. “You’ve no more need for baubles. Perhaps I’ll take this in return for your lodging here.”

  “No.” Cass tried to reach through the bars and slap Belladonna’s hand away, but Belladonna was too quick. With a sharp tug, the chain came loose.

  Belladonna polished the diamond on her skirts and held it up for examination. “This is lovely. You are so kind to surrender it.” Then she lifted her skirts, spun around, and exited out into the hallway.

  Cass swore under her breath. Losing the pendant left a hole in her heart. It was like losing the last piece of Luca she’d been clinging to for hope. And though she didn’t want to admit it, Belladonna’s insinuations had affected her. Had Falco or Feliciana willingly led Piero straight to Cass? Was everyone working against her?

  “We’ll never get away.” The girl leaned her forehead against the bars of her cell.

  Cass didn’t respond. As much as Belladonna’s words had needled her, they had also spurred her to action. The Order couldn’t kill her if they needed her blood for their elixir. That meant there would be chances to escape. Cass had broken Luca out of the Doge’s dungeons. She could figure out a way to get herself out of Belladonna’s makeshift prison.

  “Idiota,” the girl said. “I can’t believe I’m going to die here.” She started sniffling and then sobbing, tears running down her face and falling silently to the stone floor.

  “It’s all right,” Cass said. “Don’t lose hope.” She wanted to comfort the girl, and she would need her help if the two of them were going to escape. That meant she would need her to be calm. “I’m Cass. What’s your name?” She reached her fingers through the bars to stroke the girl’s hair.

  “Minerva.” Her labored breathing slowed somewhat as she choked out the single word.

  “That’s a strong name,” Cass said. “The goddess of wisdom.”

  “I don’t feel very wise right now,” Minerva said. “Sorry.” She leaned back from the bars and wiped her eyes with her rumpled sleeve.

  For the first time, Cass realized Minerva was dressed in a tattered formal gown. She wondered if this was one of the girls missing from Palazzo Dolce. “Are you a courtesan?” she asked.

  The girl nodded. “Tessa was too. That’s the girl who used to be in your cell.”

  Tessa. That was the name of the girl who had been found beneath the Conjurer’s Bridge, completely drained of her blood. She couldn’t tell Minerva that, though. It would send her into another round of hysterics. “How did you end up here?”

  Minerva’s face crumpled, and for a second Cass was worried she was going to start crying again. “We were so foolish,” she said. “We met a pair of men at a gala last week. Handsome men. They didn’t dress noble, but they seemed to have a steady supply of gold.” She flicked her eyes toward the doorway as if she’d heard someone approaching, but when no one entered, she kept talking. “They said they were new to Venice, and would we show them around the city? We took them to the usual spots—the Palazzo Ducale, the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge—but then one of them mentioned Palazzo Viaro. He’d heard there were no vampires, that it was just a story someone concocted to keep strangers away. He said nobles threw fabulous secret parties at the palazzo, and he dared us to take him there. It seemed harmless at the time, but when we got to the palazzo, he wanted to go inside.” She shuddered. “Tessa and I had consumed a fair bit of wine, but there was no way we were going inside a vampire lair. But then, one of the men pushed open the front door and stepped inside. He went through the whole house, told us it was empty, except for a nice cask of wine someone had left. He coaxed us inside.” She shook her head bitterly. “We drank the wine. I remember being led upstairs to a bedroom. Drinking more wine. The next thing I knew, Tessa and I were here.”

  “So they drugged you?” Cass asked. The goblet at Palazzo Viaro—it must have been left from the night Minerva was taken.

  She nodded. “They were so charming, and they seemed so confident and wealthy,” she said. “Well, I thought Cristian was a bit odd, but Tessa really liked his quiet demeanor. She said he had an artist’s soul.”

  Cristian. Cass was fairly certain he had no soul at all. How could the girls not see he was insane? Then again, even she hadn’t noticed anything wrong with him when they first met at Madalena’s family home. He was just an attractive if somewhat reserved man. Mada had trusted him, as had her father. Even Joseph Dubois had trusted him.

  Only Luca had known what Cristian was capable of.

  It made sense if Belladonna and Dubois were working together that Cristian was working with them too. But why had Belladonna switched her technique? Alessia de Fiore and Paulina Andretti had been executed as vampires, so obviously she had begun procuring blood here as she had done in Florence, perhaps through parties held at the deserted Palazzo Viaro. But then she had opted to capture and imprison a pair of courtesans instead of merely drawing off some blood. And she had gone so far as to kill one of them.

  Before Cass could further contemplate this, Piero strode into the room with a set of keys dangling from one hand and a candle in the other. Minerva cowered against the back of her cell. Cass glared at him.

  “I see you’re up to your old tricks,” she said. “Pity the only way you can get a woman to spend time with you is to drug her and restrain her.” Cass had woken in Florence to find her arms bound. Piero had untied her but then promptly began stealing so much of her blood that she was too weak to get out of bed.

  Piero’s lips twitched. “Signorina Cassandra,” he said. “I look forward to spending lots of time with you.” He cocked his head to the side, and his hair fell over one eye. Cass couldn’t understand how she had ever thought that he resembled Falco. Everything about Piero reeked of evil. “I was going to take her next door for this procedure, but perhaps you’d like to watch?” he asked.

  Cass could see into the next room only slightly, but she had a feeling it was the room with the surgical instruments and the big flat table, the room she and Falco had broken into a couple of months earlier.

  “Don’t take me in there,” Minerva whispered. “Please, just do it here.” Apparently, Minerva was so terrified, she preferred to have someone else nearby, even if that someone else was imprisoned and couldn’t help her.

  “You’ll never get away with this. Someone will find us,” Cass said. “Several people are looking for me.”

  “Really?” Piero arched an eyebrow. “Last I heard, the entire Republic had given you up for dead.” He disappeared through the doorway and returned with a large glass syringe, a small porcelain bowl, and a pile of cloth strips. He set his candle down next to the equipment. The flickering flame reflected off a long silver needle.

  Cass’s eyes followed the dancing fire. The needle was similar to t
he one that he had used to draw her blood in Florence. It would make a decent weapon, if she could get her hands on it . . .

  Piero unlocked Minerva’s cage and she went to him like a lamb cowed by its mother. “Please don’t kill me,” she said.

  Nausea welled up in Cass. How could Minerva be such a willing accomplice to her own demise? How could she be so . . . broken?

  “I’ll do my best.” Piero tucked the keys into the pocket of his tunic. Dragging Minerva roughly by the arm, he sat her down in the wooden chair and fastened the straps across her forearms. “Don’t get too excited,” he said to Cass. “We’re saving you. This one’s humors aren’t pure enough, but Bella likes the feel of her blood on her skin.” He smirked and then lifted the glass syringe with the great steel needle from the table. “I’d sedate her,” he said, “but she really is too weak.”

  “You bastard,” Cass said. “Let her go. Take me instead.”

  “Weren’t you listening? I said we’re saving you. We cannot make elixir without spider venom, and sadly my spiders escaped from their cage on the voyage from Florence. But more are on the way, and then you and I will be spending plenty of time together.”

  Cass shuddered inwardly at the thought of Piero’s spiders, but struggled to keep her face steady. She would not let him see her afraid. She would figure out a way to escape before the new spiders arrived, or she would die trying. If death was what God had planned for her, she preferred it to be on her own terms.

  With one finger, Piero felt beneath Minerva’s jaw, his lips curling into a smile as he located the pulsing vessel in her neck. Minerva whimpered. Cass shuddered as Piero slid the needle into Minerva’s neck. One wrong move with it and he might slit her throat.

  Dark fluid filled the glass syringe. When the syringe was full, he carefully detached it from the needle, leaving the silver tip buried in Minerva’s skin. He emptied the blood into the ceramic bowl and reattached the syringe. Blood flowed again. Minerva’s tiny frame started to slump forward in the chair.

  “Stop it,” Cass said. “I beg of you. You’re going to kill her.” The candle flame bobbed violently and began to smoke, as if Piero had conjured a demon to watch him work.

  He finished filling another syringe and emptied it into the bowl. Minerva’s head slumped awkwardly to the right. A tiny rivulet of blood trickled from the insertion site down over her collarbone. Piero withdrew three more syringes. Cass could see the ceramic bowl getting full. “Not enough for Bella to bathe in, but it will have to do for now.”

  He removed the needle from Minerva’s neck and more blood dribbled out of the wound. The courtesan’s whole body seemed limp. If Cass hadn’t been able to see her chest moving, she would have thought Minerva was already dead. Piero returned her to her cell, bending over to drop her wilted frame unceremoniously onto the pile of blankets.

  Cass pounded a fist against the bars of her cell as she stared at Minerva’s crumpled form, checking repeatedly for the rising and falling of her chest. “Minerva. Are you all right?” she asked.

  Minerva’s eyelids fluttered and one hand slowly opened and closed, but she didn’t speak. Blood continued to ooze from her wound.

  Cass bowed her head and prayed. When she had no more breath for prayer, she made the sign of the cross over her chest and leaned back against the wall of her cell. She had to focus, to be smart. Starting now she would keep track of everyone she saw. She would keep track of when they came and went. Eventually there would be a chance for escape, and when there was, Cass would be ready.

  Piero returned later to check on Minerva. Cass watched through the bars as he knelt down to examine the unconscious courtesan. “Still want me to take you instead?” Piero asked with a crooked grin.

  Cass didn’t respond. Her eyes smoldered with hate.

  “I’ve nothing against you, Signorina Cassandra,” he said. “We just need your blood.”

  “I have a lot of money,” Cass said suddenly. “My aunt hid it. If you let us go, I can make you rich.”

  “Wealth doesn’t buy immortality. And it doesn’t buy protection from people like Bella. If I set you free, she’d kill me.”

  “The way she killed Angelo de Gradi?”

  Piero’s lips twitched. “I heard he was attacked by vampires.”

  Cass decided to try a different strategy. It wasn’t like she had anything to lose. “What if I told you I have the Book of the Eternal Rose?” she asked. “And that I’ll give it to you if you let me go.”

  Piero’s eyes narrowed. “How do you even know about that?”

  “Because I stole it from the armoire in Belladonna’s bedroom. Then I followed you to the chapel and watched you pour blood all over your mistress.” Cass didn’t know if she could convince Piero, but she could try. At least if he and Belladonna thought she had the book, they might be willing to negotiate.

  “You’re a clever girl,” he said. “But Bella has already located the book. The only thing you have to offer me is flowing through your veins, and when I’m ready, I will take it whether you’re willing to give it up or not.”

  So Belladonna had recovered the Book of the Eternal Rose. Cass wondered if it might be somewhere in the workshop. Piero would never tell her. She had to escape while she was still strong enough, before Piero began taking her blood. She had to find the book.

  “What’s wrong, Cassandra? You look so pale.” Piero grinned. “I’ll be back to see you tomorrow, all right?”

  Minerva stirred gently. “Will you stay awake for a while?” she murmured. “So that I’m not alone if I die?”

  “You’re not going to die,” Cass said sharply. And then, more softly, “But of course I’ll stay awake with you.”

  Minerva fell silent, and for the longest time it was just the two girls in the little hollowed-out room of cages. Cass lay back on the floor and looked up into the blackness.

  “That man who escaped the Doge’s prison, do you know what became of him?” Minerva asked.

  “I know he didn’t drown,” Cass answered. She couldn’t help but wonder where Luca was, though. She prayed he hadn’t gotten himself captured as well.

  “Do you know for certain he is still alive?” Minerva asked.

  “No,” Cass admitted. For all she knew, Luca had been recaptured by the Senate and executed. She didn’t believe that, though. Despite their argument, Cass still held Luca inside her. Nothing else could explain how calm she was. Nothing else could explain why watching Minerva be tortured hadn’t driven her mad. Luca made her stronger. She would know if something terrible had happened to him.

  In the cell next to her, Minerva began sobbing into her tattered blankets.

  The room brightened again, and a guard entered with a tray of bread and ale. He had black hair and a beard that covered the majority of his cheeks. A small wooden club dangled from his belt. Cass had never seen him before. Her eyes were drawn to his hands. He did not wear the ring of the Order. As she watched, he unlocked Minerva’s cell and set the food on the damp ground. Minerva stopped crying, but made no move to retrieve the tray. He ducked out through the room and returned with a second tray.

  “I need nothing from you, you monster,” Cass said acidly.

  The guard shrugged and turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Cass immediately regretted her rashness. “I’m sorry. I’ll take the food.” She would need to keep up her strength if she was to have any chance to escape. Also, allowing the guard into her cell might provide helpful information. She wanted to see what he did with his keys when he brought her the tray, whether he left them outside the cell or put them in a pocket where Cass could possibly grab them.

  The guard returned with the food. He balanced the tray against his body with one hand as he unlocked the padlock and unthreaded it with the other hand. The cell door groaned as it opened outward. Cass tried not to stare while the guard pocketed the keys and entered the cell. T
he thick end of his club dragged on the ground as he bent down to hand the tray to her. He had clear, kind eyes.

  She took the tray and set it on the ground. “How can you do this?” she asked suddenly.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said.

  “But you’re not like them. I can tell.”

  “I’m like them in the one way that matters,” he answered. “I don’t want to die.”

  “So you really believe her?” Cass asked. “The fifth humor? Immortality?”

  “She rose from the dead,” the guard said. “It’s a matter of record.”

  “It’s a matter of opinion,” Cass said. “My friend Madalena told me that story. The caretaker of the graveyard decided to break into her tomb and steal her rings. Only when he hacked through her flesh, she awoke. It sounds to me like she wasn’t truly dead, just in a deep sleep.”

  “How do you explain the way she looks now?” The guard was so close that Cass could have raked her fingernails down the side of his cheek. He wasn’t at all afraid of her, and why should he be? She was only a girl, after all. In the next cell, Minerva lay in a heap, about as threatening as a dinner napkin. This guard didn’t know Cass had clubbed a jailer. Seraphina’s words floated back to her: Men, they think we are weak.

  Seraphina was right, and Cass could use that to her advantage.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s not worth killing people for.”

  As the guard straightened up, she tried to keep a neutral expression on her face, but beneath her skin her blood was rushing, her heart pounding in her head and neck. Cass lifted her hands to the sides of her throat, her fingertips feeling the strong, even pulsing of her blood. If Seraphina’s little trick worked, and by all accounts it did, Cass probably wouldn’t even need to fight the guard. She could just surprise him, incapacitate him, and steal his keys. He’d wake up later and probably not even know what had happened.

  But then Piero’s voice echoed in the next room. Who was he talking to? Cass imagined having to come face-to-face with Cristian again. She didn’t know if she could remain calm trapped in a cage while Cristian walked free. She would die before she let him hurt her.