Groping around in the oily darkness, she felt through webs of spider nets, smearing them across her coat with a disgusted shiver. The chains were icy at first touch and surprisingly taunt. She pulled to see if they would give, but stopped, hearing the door in the other room scrape open.
Someone had found her. Yes! Vince had come looking for her!
She blindly raced toward the adjoining door.
“My, but the rats are getting rather large this time of year. I thought I heard something down here.”
Having been in total darkness, it took a while for Scarlet to adjust to the candlelight that floated nearer. As it thinned out to a fine flame she was able to see who held the black taper.
Rico’s eyes narrowed to slits, though his expression was not angry, more worried. He held out his heavily ringed hand. “Come. The pit is no place for you.”
“No place for me?” Scarlet gasped, thankful she could look at Rico and avoid the horrors at her feet. “My God, Rico, what the hell is this? It’s a human garbage dump. Do you have something against burial?”
“We’d be digging graves all the time if we were to start that,” he said casually. “Not exactly practical, nor a welcome to the landscaping, of which I’ve spent quite a lot of money.”
A tiny whimper caused Scarlet to jerk her head towards the maggot infested pile in the corner. A blonde girl with brilliant red fingernails had moaned. Scarlet saw her heather-dusted lid flicker.
“Rico, that woman is still alive!”
“Well now, that’s entirely possible.” He turned and held the candle high. Seeing the same movement Scarlet had spied, he walked over and stamped fiercely on the girl’s head. Her skull cracked, though there was little blood left to spill from the openings.
He turned back, casually offering his hand is if there were nothing amiss with the room the two stood in.
Feeling her stomach begin its hollow gripping again, Scarlet held out a shaky hand. “I can’t believe you, Rico. You’ve no scruples whatsoever.”
“Scruples,” he said with a deep-throated chuckle as he received her hand and stepped across an abandoned cadaver. “Aren’t you the one to speak of scruples. Coming here to rendezvous with your lover. Did you have another tryst beneath the willow tree planned?”
Scarlet was shocked to hear he had witnessed she and Vince’s little excursion. She tried to pull away from him but he in turn jerked her hand so she tripped forward and stumbled into his arms.
“Please, Rico, just get me out of here. I’m—”
“Afraid?”
“Yes! No! I’m disgusted. How can you live like this?” He wrangled her into his steel embrace. Scarlet beat his chest with her fists. “You are a demented beast!”
Ignoring her judgment of his character, Rico bowed his head to her neck and pressed hard kisses to her skin.
“What are you doing? Stop it, this is ridiculous. There are dead bodies everywhere! I want to leave right now.”
His lips played across her shoulder bone while he fought vigorously to control her struggles. “And will you not offer me the same affection you give Vince? We are, after all, family. What’s mine is his and what’s his is mine.”
“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you have me.”
“You don’t have much of a choice, lovely one. Vince will not care, or, I think, believe you, should you tell him. He trusts me. Which he should. I would never betray a friend.”
The word betray slipped like a butcher knife through Scarlet’s heart. She stopped struggling. She had been so close to making love to Vince on the rooftop. So damned close…
“Then why are you doing this?” she stuttered.
Rico’s breath whispered across her lips as he spoke. “Is it wrong to crave the affections of one so lovely? Since you have already seen fit to betray your lover, I believe you may have declared yourself open and available.”
“Let go of me!” She wrenched a hand free from her captor and tried to twist the other out of his grasp. “I did not betray Sebastian!”
Rico tried to grab Scarlet’s free arm but she kicked high and the toe of her shoe tore through the pin-striped fabric on Rico’s thigh. He released her and she slipped over to the door.
“If you ever touch me again,” she paused by the door, drawing a deep breath into her lungs. “I’ll kill you.”
Without looking back, she ran toward the main hallway, pushing through the crowd. Rock music assaulted her thoughts, scrambling a mixture of dead bodies, Rico’s vile kiss, and Vince’s devious grin into a psychedelic spin of visions.
She wanted nothing to do with the horrors of Rico Bellange, or his newest pupil, Vince Lyons. As she started the car and the engine roared loudly she screamed, releasing her pent up frustrations to the air.
***
How she got home in her state of mind, she wasn’t sure, but as Scarlet dashed towards the castle entrance and stepped inside the comforts of home she kept repeating one vow over and over.
“I’ll never kill again. I’ll never kill again. I’ll never—”
“Chèrie?”
She turned to see Sebastian gazing curiously at her. He looked a bit haggard, his face abnormally pale and there were deep circles beneath his eyes. She swallowed her heart, which had risen to her throat, and tried to act casual.
“What is wrong? You nearly jumped out of your skin.”
“Um…nothing,” she answered quickly, glancing up the stairs in an attempt to avoid his curious gaze. “You surprised me…that’s it. I thought you still might be at the studio. I’m fine really. I’m going to my room now.”
“You look frazzled. Where were you? I called Gary a few minutes ago, and he said you hadn’t stopped by.”
“Yes, well, I was…um…”
“He thought you might be with Vince. Is this true, Scarlet? Why would you be spending time with Vince Lyons instead of your brother? What’s that on your shoe?”
He bent his head, as did Scarlet, but her scream halted him before he got a good look. Scarlet shook the greasy maggot from her foot and scrambled toward the stairs, shrieking hysterically. Sebastian reached out but only touched her shirt as she sprinted up the stone stairs.
“No! Stay away. I can’t do this! I’ve got to get away from all this death. I promise I’ll never kill again!”
“Again?” Sebastian raced up the stairs. “Scarlet wait!”
She slammed the bathroom door behind her and scrambled out of her dress, feeling as if the tiny grease worms squirmed about her entire body. Her screams turned to havoc and she pulled at her hair, feeling the corpse worms crawling on her scalp and eye sockets like the woman on the floor. She dashed into the shower and flipped the water on as Sebastian entered the room. Hot water burned her flesh.
“Chèrie, no, no, what are you doing?” Sebastian twisted the water off and stared helplessly at her as she squirmed and itched and pulled at her hair. “Stop it! Please, Scarlet, you’re scaring me.” He wrapped her in his arms but she pushed away.
“Don’t touch me! I have to get them off.” She flipped the water on again.
Quickly, Sebastian harnessed Scarlet’s arms to her sides and pulled her from the water. “You’re hurting yourself, chèrie. There is nothing on you!”
Scarlet pulled her legs up and pushed against the wall, sending her and Sebastian crashing to the floor. She grabbed a towel and held it to her chest. “Get out! Now! Leave me alone!”
As her demands persisted, Sebastian backed out of the bathroom. “All right. I’ll be waiting for you in the study.”
Scarlet slammed the door behind him and fell to her knees. Her head went down to the floor and she scanned the smooth gray stones for anything that was moving or squirming. Satisfied she was safe from the hideous worms, she fell to her side, curled up and sobbed bloody tears into the towel.
***
It had been hours. She did not come to him. I’ll never kill again, kept resounding inside Sebastian’s head. Could it be true? He’d never
thought Scarlet would do such a thing. While it was her vampire nature to desire the kill, he had tried so desperately to squelch that over the past year. There was no reason for Scarlet to take life, to be ravaged by taunting nightmares. He’d tried to protect her from those horrors.
Obviously he had failed.
Sebastian pushed the bedroom door open with the toe of his boot and peeked inside. She sat on the window ledge in a thick white damask robe, her knees pulled to her chest, her hair veiling her face. The sun just tipped the horizon. The white-washed sky cast an eerie sheen across her skin.
His heart sank. Everything he had imagined could go wrong, had. His suspicions were correct. The dream of his dancer in the devil’s arms had come true. He knew it.
He spoke gently as he neared her, “You are a child of darkness, Scarlet. The moonlight is your halo. The morning sun can never compete with your beauty.”
She sat beneath her shroud of midnight hair, not moving or acknowledging his nearness. “You know I prefer the warmth of the sun. It is the only thing that can still make me feel like a mortal.”
He touched her hair, pulling it aside to reveal closed eyes and a bowed head. “But you are not mortal.”
“Must you take that away from me, too?” she said in a voice soft and drained.
“Scarlet.” Sebastian thought sure she would crumble if touched.
“Forgive me.”
He swallowed. She was already asking forgiveness. Truly, things were as he had dreamed.
“How are you feeling now? Is…everything all right?” He knew it wasn’t.
She stretched her legs across the ledge and leaned back, meeting his eyes with a withdrawn care and a sigh. “There are some things I must tell you, Sebastian. I haven’t been able to think of anything else. I’ve done something terrible.”
He swallowed and looked past her out the window where the leaves had begun to change colors on the tall elms. With a sense of what was to come, he turned away and sat on the first step that led up to the window, his back to her. He had known since two nights ago when his heart had been wrenched with a twisting pain. “Yes. Go on.”
Catching her face in her hands, Scarlet spread her fingers over her cheeks and pressed hard. “I…I’ve betrayed you, Sebastian.”
“Betrayed.” His word voiced over his name as she spoke.
Scarlet stared at his back, his thick coal hair flowing over the white shirt. He didn’t move an inch. But he had known.
“Yes,” she answered meekly. “But I have to explain.”
Sebastian’s sigh pushed all the air from his body, his shoulders slackened and he melted into a meek shadow before her. A small child who had spent his entire life searching for something to hold, to value, and now to have it ripped away. “Who?”
Scarlet swallowed. “Who? No…its—”
“Who!” he commanded.
“Vince,” she blurted out and then shrank back into a tight fetal ball. “It just happened. It was a mistake, but…I didn’t—”
“And you have killed too, haven’t you? I cannot believe this!” He pounded his fist into the stone step. “Not only do you betray me physically and emotionally but you also go against all that I believe and have taught you by killing. He did teach you to kill, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said. “But let me explain, Sebastian. I didn’t—”
He wasn’t hearing her. “What did he do to you that made you so manic earlier?”
“Nothing, I never found—” She stopped as Sebastian turned to meet her teared eyes. If he wouldn’t hear her confession, she at least had to tell him of the pit. It wasn’t right. Rico had to be stopped. “Sebastian, you must listen to me. I have to tell you what happened tonight.” She went on her knees beside him and gripped his collar.
“I do not need to hear details of your affair, my lady.” He tugged his shirt from her hand.
Scarlet stared at her empty fingertips for a moment and then searched her lover’s eyes for the compassion he’d always held for her. Sebastian’s eyes were voids of dark silence. No glint of warmth from beneath the velvet lashes to offer her security.
“It’s not that, Sebastian. It’s something more, something so evil.”
“Tell me,” he said through tightened lips.
“It’s this family Vince has joined, they’re evil. You can’t imagine. I went to the mansion tonight to look for…Vince.” She checked his face for reaction but received only his unflinching stare.
“There was a party…there were so many people. I started looking around and wandered down this hallway and stumbled across this…this room.”
Flashes of maggots crawling across the girl’s face, of her skull being crushed beneath Rico’s heel, dried the saliva in Scarlet’s throat.
“There were dead bodies everywhere. I started to panic, but I found another room with a coffin in it. It was chained down, as if someone were trying to keep whatever was inside in. I think it was his sister. Vince told me he used to have a sister, though he never said whether or not she was dead.”
“Who’s sister?” Sebastian asked dully.
“And then he found me—oh, well, Rico’s sister—he’s the one who owns the mansion. He took Vince in…but he threatened me, Sebastian. We were standing in that hideous room of corpses— My god.” She gasped. “And Rico stood there so calm, so unaffected. And then he crushed the girl’s skull—she was still alive! They had thrown her into this pit of bodies to die amid rotting corpses.”
Hot tears flowed across her cheeks and Scarlet was unable to continue.
“Rico,” he whispered. Sebastian’s mind flooded with visions of ancient memories. Memories he had long ago stored and sealed tightly. “Federico?”
“Yes,” Scarlet seemed surprised to see some recognition in his eyes. “Federico…mmm…I can’t remember his last name. Vince told me.”
Sebastian gripped Scarlet’s chin. “Federico Bellange?”
“Yes, I…think that was it. Do you know him? I didn’t think— But wait, he said he did know you. No, he had only heard you play, it didn’t seem as if he knew you personally.”
“That bastard is in America.”
He released her and walked across the room, hands on his hips. After all these years. Had Federico come in search of him? He paced from the bed to the window steps where she sat. “I know him, Scarlet. And I know his sister, Catrina.”
“You’re right. That was the name he used—Catrina. But how do you know them? And what happened to his sister? Is she still alive? I can’t imagine if she were dead that he would need to chain her coffin up. If that was her coffin.”
“I have no idea why he would keep her locked away,” Sebastian’s voice faded as his thoughts brought him over to the vanity and he bent before it to examine his reflection. For a moment the mirror reflected a dandy young fop, with moiré ribbon binding back his hair and Belgian lace circling his wide cuffs.
What a fool he had been then.
“Federico is an evil man, Scarlet. I can’t believe you’re involved with him, too.”
“I am not involved with Federico or Vince—”
Sebastian whipped around and glared at her. “I don’t want to hear that bastard’s name touch your lips ever again.”
She hunched into submission, her eyes trailing across the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
“Your treatment of my emotions is unforgivable,” Sebastian cut her off quickly. “I had never thought you would betray me. And now, to become involved with this man… I see I must tell you all I know of Federico and Catrina Bellange.”
Part Two
Federico and Catrina Bellange
Menace in Venice
Chapter Eighteen
Venice, 1778
Ruby damask slithered across her cool skin, wrapping seductive color about a bare neck of palest cream. Federico laced the bodice front, his fingers working slowly, a ritual he enjoyed daily, while Catrina stood silent and content.
Essence of vanilla b
ean, crushed to a delicate emulsion by some far-off Indian slaves, wafted from her body. Federico bent to devour the scent. His favorite.
His nose touched her skin, gliding across an ample mound of breast that plunged forth from the tight gown. He breathed deeply, inhaling sweetness, delighting in the minute quiver beneath his mouth. He pressed his lips to the sweet valley between her breasts, prolonging the kiss, awaiting her expected reaction.
Her fingers threaded through his unbound hair, gently coaxing his mouth higher as he trailed his tongue over the delicate clavicle bone and then to her neck. Her jugular beat fiercely as he pressed his lips to her vein, counting the pulse.
Both knew what that simple action meant. What they both wished for, dreamed of…
Federico closed his eyes, concentrating on the heavy pulse beneath his lips. The taste of vanilla, salt and of divine feminine mystique tempted him to bite. He did, lightly, then quickly withdrew to look into her eyes.
Each was a reflection of the other as they faced one another. Her right eye was a vivid blue, a shallow wishing pond lovers dreamed over; the same as his left. Her left eye was a murky gray, as if mud splashed into the spring pond; the same as his right. When he stood by her right side, the combined blue eyes formed one solitary creature. Two hearts that beat as one. One soul, shared, yet never divided.
He lifted a lace-encircled hand to brush his fingers across her parted lips. They betrayed the color of her dress, making the ruby damask seem pale in comparison.
“Our guest awaits,” he said, and followed with a resolute sigh.
Though they both enjoyed the company of others, the act of sharing one another with guests was sad. When their minds parted in individual conversation, their energy decreased. They became less. Though the taking and feeding off the energy of others was all they knew.
Federico retrieved an ivory fan from the lacquered vanity and placed it lovingly in Catrina’s fingers as they left the bedroom. “Come, dear sister. I believe we’ve kept Signore de la Court waiting long enough. He arrived on foot, I’ve been told. A pity the foyer is not warmer in the winter months, though, I expect our guest should have no problem adjusting.”
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