by S J Williams
A Novel
The Silver Bird
S J Williams
© 2021 S J Williams
All rights reserved.
S J Williams
www.sjwilliamsauthor.com
Cover designed by Miblart
https://miblart.com/
When immortals love, they love forever
The Silver Bird
The woman was sitting in the shade, her eyes cast down as she read something on her phone. The corner of her mouth quirked up in a ghost of a smile and her left eyebrow kept twitching, like the tip of a cat’s tail. Her face had been full of little quirks like that, each one only hinting at the depth of her thoughts. It had taken Sebastian years to learn her face, just as it had taken years for him to learn her mind, but he would never forget.
It was her expression that persuaded him. Leaving Henry to amble along in his wake, Sebastian crossed the piazza, bracing himself for the crushing pain of disappointment with every step. He couldn’t hope for the impossible, wouldn’t settle for a ghost. And yet.
There was something about that face, long and strong boned with a proud, patrician’s nose, that made her want to shiver.
Ridiculous. She had never shivered over a man in her life. She wasn’t about to start now, not even if the temptation was this strong.
She expected him to walk past her, take one of the streets which exited off the piazza but he stopped in front of her, looming like a stern headmaster. She abandoned the pretence of reading and looked up at him, raising one eyebrow in a haughty question. Strange. He seemed to shudder, a movement so fleeting it could have been a mirage. He opened his mouth then stopped himself, a nervous gesture at odds with his otherwise confident bearing.
Finally, he spoke.
“Effie?”
Prologue
Effie stood beneath the Palazzo del Bargello, staring up from under her hood at the corpses of criminals dangling from their wrists, a mute warning to any would-be offenders against the state. A gentle breeze brushed over them, carrying the stench of rotting flesh down to her nose. It didn’t bother her, however, as she gazed fixedly at the newest addition.
“Are you going to stand there all night or are you going to get me down?” The voice was oddly muffled from how his chin was pressed down into his chest. She winced in sympathy at the pain she felt from him.
“I was wondering why you had not already climbed down by yourself.” She said, the slight smile on her lips saying she was not even slightly concerned that her lover had just been hanged.
“I suppose you think this is funny?”
“Hilarious. Did you know, this is the third time you’ve been hanged this decade? You’re slipping, Sebastian.”
He bared his teeth at her in a snarl. She returned the gesture with a broad grin.
“So?”
“So what?”
“Why haven't you got yourself down? And why are we speaking out loud?”
He squinted at her. He couldn’t do much else. “My neck broke and the nerves healed wrong. It’s blocking my energy.”
She quickly brought her hand to her mouth but she couldn't muffle the snort. His glare sharpened.
“Ahem,” she composed herself. “This rather complicates matters.”
Another long suffering sigh. “I’m going to need you to kickstart the re-healing process. If you would kindly get me down first, that is.”
It was at that moment that the conversation was interrupted by a strangled scream. Effie turned to see a short man contort himself in an effort to turn and run away. He tripped, scrabbled a few steps on all fours, then took off, moving remarkably quickly for his girth, shrieking “Witch!” at the top of his lungs.
Silence echoed in his wake.
She sighed. “As if things weren't awkward enough.” The hanging man grunted in agreement.
“I don't suppose he was drunk?” Effie asked hopefully.
“Probably not enough.”
“Right,” she said, stripping back her cloak to reveal legs encased in leather breeches, “let's get you out of here.”
“Bloody finally.”
“I did tell you it wasn't worth the risk.”
“You are not going to start this conversation now.”
She snorted softly again then jumped at the wall, climbing up as nimbly as a spider, her hands and feet finding purchase on the rough stones. She reached him and pressed a swift kiss to his lips before grasping the chains that held his wrists above his head and freeing them from the stones with a sharp jerk. In a movement faster than the human eye could follow, she dropped the chains and caught the man before he started to fall. Slinging him over her shoulder, she started the descent. She smiled to herself when she thought of the incongruous sight they must make. Sebastian was at least a foot taller than her. His head dangled all the way down her back to her buttocks which seemed to cheer him up somewhat, judging from the emotions she felt through their bond.
“Don’t even think about it,” she growled.
“You have to allow a paralysed man some pleasures, my love.”
She harrumphed, then jumped from the wall, landing in a crouch that almost dropped her lover’s head in the dirt road.
“Watch it!”
Effie didn’t pause but snatched up her cloak and took off into the darkness, the man’s head banging against her bottom. This time, he didn’t seem so pleased about it. She didn’t have time to care. Shouts were echoing through the streets, far too close for comfort. Whoever the little man had been, and however inebriated his state, he had managed to persuade someone that all was not right.
Moving in a blur, Effie nipped down alleyways, leaping over piles of refuse and open gutters. Their lodgings were not far off but she took a longer route, trying to lose their pursuers.
She lost them by ducking beneath the Ponte Vecchio. Whistles and the loud slap of boots clattered overhead as they waited, silent in the shadows. Their return to their lodgings was more leisurely after that.
“There.” She said, dropping his body into the only chair with a back. “What do you need me to do?”
“Just angle my head a bit… that’s it. Now push some of your energy into me.”
She raised her eyebrow as she stood over him.
“Are you sure? That’s going to hurt.”
He glared at her and she shrugged, placing her hands on either side of his neck. She winced when she heard a sharp crack but kept up a steady stream of heat passing from her core through her palms and flooding into his neck.
“You do get yourself into the worst scrapes.” She murmured.
“It’s a gift.” He smiled crookedly up at her. It was a smile she couldn’t help but return.
She saw something glinting in the low light around his neck. Hooking her little finger around a silver chain, she pulled out a delicately wrought medallion. Shaped in a silver disk, a small bird had been engraved in the centre, surrounded by a border of flowers and leaves.
“You were wearing this when you were hanged?” She asked, incredulous. “How did you hide it from them?”
“I might have tampered with a few thoughts while they were hanging me.” He scowled. “Bloody vultures. If there hadn’t been so many people watching, I would have got away without being hanged at all.”
Effie pursed her lips.
“As it is, we’ve now got to leave Florence in case someone recognises you. You didn’t have to steal it, you know. Just because I said I liked it didn’t mean I wanted to have it.”
Sebastian did his be
st to shrug with his eyes.
“It was around the neck of a vampire. We needed to kill her anyway. It would have been a shame to let the medallion go to waste.”
Effie sighed, tenderness slipping into her eyes as she looked down at him.
“You said you needed an hour?”
“At the most.” He reassured her.
They didn’t get an hour. They barely had minutes before the door burst open on a hysterical shout.
“There she is! That’s the witch!”
Effie twisted to face the intruders without letting go of Sebastian’s head.
How did they find us?
No response. Sebastian still wasn’t healed enough to communicate mind to mind. The watchmen who had burst into the room reared back in horror when they saw the newly executed criminal glare at them.
“She’s brought the dead back to life!”
“Witch!”
Sebastian grunted to get Effie’s attention. Their eyes met.
“Go.” He said simply, his voice hoarse with the fear and determination that was coursing through his body. “Run!”
Effie shook her head, eyes pleading. “Not without you.”
There was no more time. The watchmen seized her arms and dragged her away even as she tried to hold his neck steady, give him a few more seconds of healing. Then she turned on her attackers, teeth bared as she writhed in their grasp. One man was thrown against the wall, another into the others trying to cram through the doorway.
Effie was a trained fighter but the room was cramped and she didn’t see the blade until it was too late. Cold steel pierced through her ribcage and bit deep into her lung. Her kind were tough but even they needed working organs to function. Effie collapsed, breath whistling in her throat, blood soaking into her shirt and jerkin, trickling into the waistband of her breeches. Darkness swept in from the corner of her vision and drowned her senses.
Through it all, helpless, Sebastian watched with furious eyes from where he’d collapsed on the floor.
The men bundled Effie in ropes, rough hands brusquely wrapping them around her slender body, trying to limit contact with her blood. They hissed at it with disgust, as if it would poison them.
“What should we do with him?”
“Leave him. Without her magic, he’ll die.” The directive came from someone at the back. A deceptively melodious tenor belonging to the man who pushed to the front as he spoke. He sneered at Sebastian lying paralysed at his feet. There was a subtle but unmistakable flash of fang at the corner of his mouth before he turned back to his men.
“Take her away and burn her. That is the only true death for…”, he scowled at Effie, “…witches.”
The watchman in charge nodded, his expression resolved. They dragged Effie out of the room and out of Sebastian’s line of sight until only the leader remained.
His sneer turned to a snarl of rage.
“Where is it?”
Sebastian remained resolutely silent.
“Ah? Struck dumb by the distressing scene? Perhaps this will loosen your tongue.” He pulled out a knife that gleamed silver in the candlelight.
“Speak, Sebastian. Where is the medallion?”
“Aren’t you more worried about your daughter?”
His interrogator grabbed Sebastian by the shirt collar and hauled him up, the knife point digging into his cheek.
“I would like to remind you that you are not in charge of this conversation. Where. Is. The. Medallion?”
“Perhaps you should ask the men who arrested me. They were very eager to divest me of my coat.” Sebastian croaked out through damaged vocal cords.
The knife bit deeper into Sebastian’s flesh.
“The medallion was not with the coat, though by now you’ll be wishing that it had been. Then your sweet Effie would not be facing her doom as we speak.”
Sebastian’s eyes flashed with rage.
“This isn’t about the medallion, Barty, stop playing games.”
Bartholomew leaned his head back and tilted it at an angle, observing Sebastian down his nose. His anger disappeared, leaving only cold amusement.
“Why should I, when the fun is only just beginning?”
He gave Sebastian’s neck a brutal twist. The newly healed tissue tore again. Stepping back, the vampire let Sebastian fall back to the ground and, his interest in finding the medallion seemingly forgotten, turned to the door.
“You will be too late, you know?” He said, glancing back over his shoulder. “She will be dead before you reach her.”
He left with Sebastian’s roar pressing at his heels.
Sebastian was old. The power in his core was an ocean of strength. But even he could not mend a broken neck in seconds. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, feeling came prickling its way back to his limbs. All he could do was wait as a phantom smell of burning flesh tormented his nostrils.
Finally, after what felt like hours, he scrambled down the stairs on stiff legs and out of the house, barrelling through the watchman left to guard the entrance. Staggering, he followed his nose and the now real smell of fire to the same square where he had been hanged. A hastily erected bonfire blazed. There was no post at the centre, Effie’s body had been slung onto the pile like another bundle of logs.
He was too late.
He could smell her boiling blood, her roasting flesh.
Hands grabbed him even as he fell to his knees, his strength expended in a shuddering scream which echoed over the stones, empty in the grey hours before dawn. No one had come to watch, to gloat as his Effie died.
A voice hissed in his ear.
“We have to leave. Now!”
Sebastian wouldn’t move. Let them kill him where he knelt. He didn’t care any more.
The hands were insistent and strong, pulling him away even as he resisted. He couldn’t find the strength to fight.
Gone. She was gone.
1

The bird seemed to dance in the warm, Florentine sunlight. Sebastian held the medallion by its chain and let it spin slowly. There was no admiration in his eyes, however, only a distance, a dull meditation. Barty’s medallion had no beauty for him.
“That's clever.”
Her voice in his ears, the light in her eyes as she watched the little bird as it glimmered around the neck of a long dead courtesan. Would any of it have happened if he’d just left the medallion where it was? Let it burn in the pyre that had sent the vampire to her death? It didn’t matter now. All Sebastian wanted to remember were his last moments with Effie, before it all went wrong. Perhaps it was ironic, but nothing worked as well as the medallion to keep the memories fresh in his mind. If not for that, he would have slung it into the Arno years ago.
“Well, it doesn’t look like they’re coming.”
Henry, whose hands had saved him when he’d wanted to throw himself onto the fire with Effie, was still at his side. Fingers tapping the cafe table impatiently, he glanced down at his watch. “You’d have thought they could have warned us.” Slumping back in his seat, Henry’s eyes were glumly scanning the crowded piazza.
“I don’t suppose it matters that much. It’s not as if the clock was particularly… Blimey!”
Finally stirred from his memories, Sebastian glanced at his friend. Henry was sitting up, his attention fixed on the other side of the piazza. Surprise and interest stirred in the bond between them.
“That girl over there. What do you think?”
Sebastian sighed but obligingly looked. When was the last time he had found a woman even remotely attractive?
His mind seized when he spotted the woman who had caught Henry’s interest.
Small, slight, gold tints in her golden brown hair, bright intelligent eyes in a creamy face that looked just like…
It couldn’t be. She was dead.
“Want me to go talk to her?”
Sebastian turned slightly at Henry’s words, only realising now that he had spoken aloud. He didn’t take his eyes off
the girl. He couldn’t.
“No, it’s probably just a freak resemblance.” And yet he still couldn’t look away.
Henry snorted then stood in one sinuous movement.
“Well, I want to talk to her. She looks like she might be interesting.”
Sebastian had lunged before he thought, his fingers latching onto Henry’s arm, even as his mind blared out a warning. Henry just looked down at him, one sardonic eyebrow raised.
“Either you or I, but I’m not going to let this slide, not if she is who I think she is.” Henry murmured, bending down to Sebastian’s ear.
The woman was sitting in the shade, her eyes cast down as she read something on her phone. The corner of her mouth quirked up in a ghost of a smile and her left eyebrow kept twitching, like the tip of a cat’s tail. Effie’s face had been full of little quirks like that, each one only hinting at the depth of her thoughts. It had taken him years to learn her face, just as it had taken years for him to learn her mind, but he would never forget.
It was her expression that persuaded him. Leaving Henry to amble along in his wake, he crossed the piazza, bracing himself for the crushing pain of disappointment with every step. He couldn’t hope for the impossible, wouldn’t settle for a ghost. And yet.
Effie watched the two men from under her lashes, her phone screen going black in her hand. Both of them were arresting to look at, tall – well over six foot – lean and dressed exquisitely in tailor-made suits. True Italian fashion though only one of them seemed to be a native. He was walking towards her now, his stride determined and his expression grim behind his shades. There was something about that face, long and strong boned with a proud, patrician’s nose, that made her want to shiver.
Ridiculous. She had never shivered over a man in her life. She wasn’t about to start now, not even if the temptation was this strong.
She expected him to walk past her, take one of the streets which exited off the piazza but he stopped in front of her, looming like a stern headmaster. She abandoned the pretence of reading and looked up at him, raising one eyebrow in a haughty question. Strange. He seemed to shudder, a movement so fleeting it could have been a mirage. He opened his mouth then stopped himself, a nervous gesture at odds with his otherwise confident bearing.