“You walked away from me!”
“I wanted to spare you. I didn’t want to walk back up to you asking you to love me. It had been so long. I thought you would have long forgotten me.”
“Never! There was someone else, wasn’t there?!” Marco shook Matt like a terrier shaking a rat. “There is always another with you.”
She stepped away quietly, closer to the font. “There wasn’t another, then. My English captain died fighting the Nazis.”
Matt tried to struggle free, but Marco gripped him so tightly he almost passed out. “He was fortunate. Your latest toy will not die as quickly.”
Fran closed her eyes and shook her head. “It wasn’t quick. And you know I can’t let you do that. Not again, please, not to Matt.”
Marco sniffed, “You will come to heel. You will come back to me as you always did.”
“That was then.”
The hands round Matt’s throat tightened. “You will give me the knife, and the codes, and smile at your master while I kill your toy.”
“This is now. I won’t let you do that. Any of it.” Fran cupped a handful of Holy Water from the font and swept it straight into his face. He dropped Matt to the floor as he clutched at his burning flesh.
She grabbed him and twisted him round so he hit the font headfirst, crying. “Please, Marco, don’t make me do this.”
He hissed, “Your boy will suffer for decades as you watch.”
Fran plunged his head into the font and held it there as he thrashed. Tears flowed down her cheeks dripping into the steaming water as he screamed.
Her voice was cracked with agony as she cried, “Matt, the stake in my pocket. I can’t let him die like this.”
Matt scrambled to his feet and thrust his hands into her coat pockets. A splinter piercing his finger revealed Fur Girl’s wooden-bladed knife. He pulled it out and raised his arm high enough to thrust into the writhing vampire’s heart through his back. But before he could strike, her right hand came flying up, grabbed the knife and brought it down hard and true.
Gurgling howls turned into the silence of the tomb. Fran collapsed into Matt’s arms as the body dried slowly into ash. The medieval bling ring clinked against the floor as it dropped through its disintegrating owner’s finger. The head melted into the Holy Water, rapidly reducing to mud which soon dissolved into water as clear as daylight.
She couldn’t stop weeping. “I didn’t want to do it.”
He held her like he was never going to let her go and croaked out of his abused throat. “I know. It’s not your fault. You saved me. You might have saved all of us.”
She clutched him, her gloves soaking his sleeves. “I’ll miss him.”
He rubbed circles on her back. “He tried to destroy you.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter about me.”
He tilted her chin up so he was eye to eye with her. “It matters to me. You’re not negotiable.”
She rested her forehead against his. “You’re the one that I couldn’t let him hurt.”
“And trust me, I appreciate it; I more than appreciate it. I think I love you.”
She looked at him, certainty growing in her eyes. “I think I love you, too. I couldn’t lose you.”
They should have been able to bask in the moment but Matt saw steam rising from where she clutched his sleeves. He unlaced her sodden gloves, revealing hands burned by the Holy Water that had soaked through the suede. “My poor, brave love.”
She didn’t register her hands. She just looked lost. “I couldn’t let him do what he wanted, any of it, but he was my patron, my first lover, my master and my friend for more than thirty years. He made me what I am. I’d be long gone to dust without him.”
He wiped his hand dry before he tried to stroke away her tears. “You were nearly dust today.”
She tried to smile bravely but lost the battle. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
He cupped her cheek. “But still—”
“He was the first man I ever loved. Not the last, even before I became what I am, but the first and he loved me.”
She looked down at her ruined hands. “I deserve this.”
* * * *
Matt unbuttoned his coat, which didn’t make breathing through his bruised throat any easier, but did let him tear off pieces of his shirt to dry her hands from the Holy Water. She shuddered and gasped as he couldn’t help but snag her burns, but she bore it in pained silence. Once they seemed dry he kissed her forehead and when she looked back at him, he asked, “Is there anything more I can do?”
She tried to smile bravely. “I think you just saved me a lot more damage.”
He had to know. He couldn’t bear thinking she’d have to live with those burns from saving him. “They will heal?”
She brushed his forehead with hers. “With time and with blood. A lot of both, but yes, they will heal.”
“Then let me help.”
“You’d let me bite you?”
“In a heartbeat. I don’t want you hurting.”
She kissed him softly. “I love you. I want you, and believe me that I’m going to have you in every way known to a very old vampire. But I can’t take enough from you now to heal even close to completely. And I won’t leave you as vulnerable as you will be if I feed on you. Remember, there’s a deranged girl running around trying to stake me and maybe hurt you, just for being with me.”
“Will it help at all?”
She nodded quietly. “Yes.”
“Then do it. My head, my call, my choice”
“And I love you for it. But later, when we’re both safer. I won’t put you at risk.”
“Now, so you’re at least able to use your hands to defend yourself.”
“You trust me.”
“With my life.”
She said solemnly, “I won’t betray that.”
She kissed him, at first gently, then as passion built on need, his mouth opened to hers and he tasted her, a masterpiece in burnished copper, razor sharp fangs wrapped in old silk around his tongue. He had just found the vintage he could spend eternity savoring when he lost her lips to his cheek, the tip of his nose, the eyelids closed by pleasure, before she kissed her way down his cheeks to lavish love on his neck. Nibbling kisses traveled up and down his neck, getting harder and harder until dancing on the knife edge of pain and pleasure needle sharp fangs pierced his skin.
Matt saw stars. He saw whole galaxies born and die as he filled her. As her fangs slipped from his skin, the last waves of the supernova rippled through his entire being and he slumped forward into her arms.
As he passed out, Matt knew he’d found where he belonged.
* * * *
Matt wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious, but the hands stroking his forehead were covered with a thin layer of new skin and he couldn’t see bones any more. His head swam as he tried to sit up and his voice was sounded more like The Godfather than himself, but he managed to say, “It worked?”
She stroked his cheek. “On all counts, I think.”
He managed a grin. “I’ve been around the block but that—”
Fran practically purred, “Was just a taster.”
Matt had always known that “Greed is Good” would kill him, but he never thought the passing would feel this damned good. “I can’t wait for my full course meal.”
She licked her lips. “Dessert will be a special treat.”
“Mm…I can’t wait.” He nestled into her chest. “I think I’ll just lie here until I get my ice cream.”
Her voice promised everything she’d just delivered. “I do know the perfect spot for gelati.”
He rumbled, “I bet you do.” He snuggled closer to her and let himself float in the afterglow of his life. “The one by the wedding cake fountain?”
* * * *
Only to have the mood shattered by Fur Girl’s, “The one you will never see again!”
She looked in horror at the ring and the ash as she screamed at Fra
n. “You killed him!”
Fran looked shamed. “Yes.”
Tears running down her face, Fur Girl cried, “I kill you!”
Fran shook her head clearly in just as much anguish, “I can’t kill you.”
“I am not you!”
Fran got to her feet and reached out. “No, you’re not. That’s why I can’t kill you.”
Matt tried to stand as Fur Girl batted Fran’s hands away. “It was her. It was always her, never me. Never the others!”
Fran slowly lowered her palm to Matt, clearly asking him to leave Fur Girl to her. “That must have been…hard.”
Arms waving wildly, Fur Girl could have cliched for Italy, if not for the perfume of pain dripping off her. “Always your picture over the bed, surgeons coming to the palazzo to make me look more like you, forced to dress like you, somehow be you.
Fran tried again to get through her. “The way I was.”
She just shook her head. “That was all he wanted—you. But him, he was never happy.”
Fran closed her eyes and shook her head. “I never wanted that for him—for anyone.”
Fur Girl caught a lock of Fran’s hair and ran it through her fingers over and over again. “Not one of us lasted. We were never enough like you. Too warm, too cold, too tall, too thin, never soft enough.”
Matt was now three exits past worried and tried again to struggle to his feet, only to get a face full of furred fist. Between the blood loss, the allergic breathing issues and the impact, it felt like he’d spend most of his remaining life struggling to stay conscious. He could have lived with that. It was being useless to help Fran with her mad doppelganger that he couldn’t cope with.
Fran concentrated on trying to break through to the girl. “You don’t have to be me.”
Fur Girl let go of Fran’s hair and ripped out a piece of her own. “We had no choice!”
Fran tried to hold Fur Girl’s hand. “There’s always a choice.”
But she slapped Fran into silence. “Your choice? Running away? Letting him think you dead, so you escaped and he made us look like you! For centuries he did this, and destroyed every one of us?”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know any of it.”
Her twin snapped her fingers in Fran’s face. “You lie. Is impossible not to know.”
She shook her head sadly. “Not impossible—just human. We might not be human anymore, but we’re still all too human. I honestly didn’t know he survived, not for centuries and when I did, I knew I didn’t belong here re-opening old wounds. I’m sorry, I didn’t know what he did to you or the others.”
“We were his toys.”
Fran nodded. “Always. That was who he was, for good and bad. But knowing he lived and loved again, it hurt. I didn’t want to know too much. Maybe I should have dug deeper, come back earlier, but I stayed away until I thought he was dead. Milan wasn’t mine; it was his. It’ll be yours when I’ve gone.
“You are leaving?”
Fran said quietly, “I have to.”
Fur Girl sparked back into full on fury after her moments of quiet. “You run, again!”
“I thought it was giving him space and peace from thoughts of me. I can’t do anything about how he’s made you look—only you can do that—but I can give you space and peace from my face on the streets I leave to you. I owe you that. I owe him that.”
Fur Girl said proudly, “He was a brave man.”
A pride equally present in Fran. “He was. He saved me when the soldiers and the priests came for us. It took so many to take him that I was able to run, save myself. I honored his saving me by surviving. Sometimes it was all that kept me going. I couldn’t die, not and be true to him.”
“They showed him your death.”
“What?”
Fur Girl’s pleasure was palpable. “The Inquisitors tore your flesh with pincers in front of him. Your eyes were burned away before they took him to your cell, but they made him watch you thrown into the pyre. He still dreams—no dreamed—so many nightmares. Night after night, the screams.”
“It wasn’t me.”
She looked bewildered. “Another sister?”
So did Fran. “Some poor girl. They took so many.”
Fur Girl nodded sharply. “Is true.”
Fran’s eyes took on the familiar note of reliving her own history, “They took me.”
“No!”
Matt’s heart broke just that little bit more when Fran said, “Not then…later. I died on them before confessing. It still hurt.”
Fur Girl questioned, “Like we hurt.”
Fran nodded. “We all hurt. Alive or dead—there’s not so much difference sometimes, I think.”
“For some more than others. Some need to pay, for what you did to him, to us.”
Fran shook her head. “I can’t kill you.”
Fur Girl beat her breast. “You will have to.”
Fran said firmly. “I won’t kill you.”
“This must end!”
Fran caught Fur Girl’s hands. “Then we’ll end it, both of us, together.”
But she shook her off. “No, me. I will end this, you!”
“No, you won’t.” Fran gripped Fur Girl’s shoulders, shrugging off the pain in her hands to shake her twin hard. “What’s your name?”
Only to receive a rote answer, “Francesca.”
Fran looked intently into her eyes and carried on shaking her. “Your real name.”
She shrieked, “Francesca.”
Blood dripped into fur as her new skin broke, but Fran didn’t give up. “No, you remember. You must.”
Fur Girl’s voice cracked, “It has been so long.”
Fran’s tone softened, “Who are you?”
Her voice was that of a questioning child. “Fran—no, not Francesca—that was what he called me.”
Fran smiled at her proudly. “That’s it. You can remember. Who are you?”
“Carla. My name is Carla.”
“Remember that. You can be yourself, you can be Carla.”
“No!”
Fran nodded firmly, “Yes! You can and you will be.” Then she elbowed Carla in her temple and she dropped like a stone. “But only if I’m not here to confuse you when you wake up.”
Fran tucked the furs around the unconscious Carla so she was covered and warm, then kissed her forehead before telling her, “Goodnight, little sister. One day when you’re you, not me, we’ll talk of many things, but you have a long walk ahead of you before that night, and to be you, you need the time without me. Sleep well, and I’m sorry.”
* * * *
Gripping Fran’s arm, Matt made the challenging ascent to vertical. He took one look at the heap of fur and said, “Tell me breathing is optional for vampires and you don’t get allergies.”
She tried to laugh. “Only to garlic. And it’s entirely optional other than for speaking—then it’s vital.”
Matt stayed safely away from the furs of allergic doom and said, “We should get the knife now, before they find her and everything goes to hell.”
Fran nodded and they slipped out of the door. She led the way to a staircase winding into the wall of the cathedral. The metal bars guarding it were both high and spikey, but the lock was no match for vampire strength, even strength channeled through hands still wrecked by Holy Water. Fran left blood streaking the metal, but she got the door open and they climbed up to the roof.
It was wide, with a gentle slope and more pinnacles, towers, stone friezes, and statue topped pillars than Matt had ever seen in his life before he came to this city. The floodlights trained on the cathedral worked with the moonlight and the white stone to create a gothic winter wonderland.
He knew he shouldn’t disturb her from her trip back in time as she walked to the main screen, but he needed to acknowledge, “I came up here for the view across Milan to the Alps when I got here, and it was incredible, but this blows me away.”
She looked up and smiled at him. “Some things are better
in the moonlight.”
“You are. I can’t wait to see more.”
“You will. I promise. But now—”
“Magical knife.”
“Yeah. I’m going to need you to be ready to catch. Can you do that?”
He nodded.
She walked back from the screen towards the main square, counting statues all the way, before leaping up a pillar. She found a break in the fluting and used it as a secure foothold to lever herself up to the tiny platform holding the statue. Well, as secure as something so delicate looking that it seemed ready to break at any moment could be.
The fact that the pillar/statue combination was three times her own height and she was more than three hundred feet above the stone streets below didn’t help Matt’s heartbeat any. It tapped out a two for one staccato stabbing, combining the gibbering fear that she’d lose hold of the pillar and turn herself into the world’s first vampire Jell-O, and dagger sparks of agony every time she whimpered from working her injured hands too hard.
The sudden echoing crack of the statue snapping free didn’t help his heart health either. Though it was the sheer weight of the thing hitting his arms and chest that bruised seven hells out of his ribs. Matt crashed to the floor of the roof, taking the statue with him as he rolled. As he tried to catch his breath, she reached up and over the broken open statue base, standing on tiptoe to do it.
Matt lost all hope of ever getting the ability to breathe back. All desire for it, too. All that mattered was her, being with her and not losing her, too.
He didn’t have to. The knife flashed in the moonlight as her hand arced up and she jumped backwards to land as surefooted as a cat on the roof.
Matt let the statue lie and fought his way through light head and multiple bruises to his feet. He enfolded her in his arms and they stood there, resting against each other before he tipped her head up and told her, “I can’t ever lose you. I want to be with you, Fran. Eternity, two, three lifetimes, whatever we can make outta this—I want it. I want you, us, together—and the same.”
She looked at him eye to eye. “What about your job?”
He sighed, “I thought it would be everything. I’d prove how good I was, how smart I was, that the kid from Brooklyn could pitch with the best of them, prove it to all of them, teachers, the trust fund kids at school, my bosses, most of all my family. And you know what? I did.”
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