Carefully she funneled his ashes through her cupped fingers and into the vial. She scooped from the center of the pile where the ashes were the thickest and darkest in color. His heart.
“I live because of you, my tormented love. May god have mercy on your soul and welcome you into his arms as I had once held you.”
Esmarelda pushed the cork stopper into the vial and stood.
“Adios, my vampire lover. I promise you I shall never let the sun quiet my day without a thought of you.” She pressed a hand to her stomach, knowing with a woman’s intuition of the new life that had begun inside her. “You shall have your immortality, Adriano.”
***
Los Angeles, present
Sebastian spread his arms out from his sides. He lay on the bed, exhausted from his tale.
When all was told he had come to a realization. All those he had ever loved and trusted had betrayed him. All…except Angelique, who had gone to her grave completely unaware of his secret. And of this, he was still glad.
But how he could keep winding up in the company of people who would play false against him was beyond his own comprehension. Over the centuries, he had had but a handful of good friends. Mortal and immortal. Francesco, Federico and Catrina, Angelo, Rosita—dear Rosita—Herb, his manager, and Gary and Scarlet.
Why did I never become a recluse? Sebastian wondered.
“You never told me this before,” Scarlet said from her perch on the windowsill. She had sat in silence for almost five solid minutes before speaking. Obviously brooding over the things he had revealed.
“You’ve shared so little with me, Sebastian. I thought I was your only blood child. And then I found out about Francesco, and now…Catrina and Federico.”
“Just Catrina.”
“Excuse my mistake,” she snapped.
The tension stretching Sebastian’s brows exceeded tightness. Had she heard nothing of his pain? They had sat here all day as he’d poured out his soul. And this had only been a small portion of his life. Scarlet wondered why he never told her of his life? It was just too damn hard remembering the pain!
“Did-did you love her?”
Sebastian sighed and closed his eyes. No matter how the story ended, he had fallen in love with Catrina Bellange. And Federico. Though, looking back, he wondered if what he had felt for the beautiful multi-color-eyed woman hadn’t been more lust than love.
No. Truly, he had loved them both.
And now Catrina lay imprisoned in some dusty old coffin behind a room of rotting corpses. Forgotten and unloved. No matter what lies Rico told Vince about his love for his sister, there was one thing Sebastian was sure of, if a man loved a woman he could never do that to her.
“Yes, I did love Catrina. And Federico.”
“So you’ve been in love many times before?”
She was angry at him now! The tables of betrayal were beginning to turn.
Sebastian sat up on his elbows and blasted her with a look that would have frozen the Pacific. “Scarlet, I have lived for almost three centuries. Do you expect a man can live that long without ever falling in love? Albeit, my love for Catrina was a lesser love than I have for you. The love I hold for you runs through my very veins.” He clenched his fist in the air, demanding she heed his words. “It is not the false, lustful love that a man falls into many times in his lifetime. Do you understand?”
He awaited her reply but she could only stare absently at him.
“Ahh…” He fell back across the bed, feeling any argument he gave her would be futile. “I am a man, I do have feelings. You cannot reasonably expect anyone to live for centuries without satisfying the carnal desires.”
“But—” Scarlet stopped abruptly.
“But what?” He sprang from the bed and stood before her. “You, my lady, are in no position to judge.”
“I-I know. I’m sorry, Sebastian. I don’t know what to say. What this information does to me—”
“What you did to me!” He knelt below her, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You allowed Vince to touch you!”
Scarlet winced.
“He touched you as only I should! Me, the man who is your soul, and who cherishes you. Do you know by giving your body to Vince you let him feel your strengths and your weaknesses as only I have?”
“He didn’t have me, Sebastian. We just—”
“He touched you, did he not?”
She nodded.
Sebastian’s voice threatened to give way, but he swallowed and went on. “You let him hold you in his arms. He knows you now, Scarlet. As I do! I…I cannot understand…”
Scarlet bit her lip as Sebastian hung his head before her in resignation. She reached to touch his hair, stopping inches away, afraid to feel the shimmer this time. Afraid to feel the ties that bound them together for eternity. Ties that had been tangled and frayed by both of them. He had loved before. He has always told me I was the only one.
Sebastian dashed away from her and strode across the room. “We must get her out.”
“What? Who? Catrina?” Scarlet took no precautions in hiding the blatant shock on her face. “No! There has to be a good reason Rico locked her inside that coffin.”
He paced away, nodding negatively as he did. “Possibly, but I don’t know. No one deserves to be locked away like that. Not even Cat…”
“So it’s Cat now, is it?”
Sebastian swung around. His cool glance instantly doused Scarlet’s angry grimace.
“Sebastian, I-I never wanted things to happen the way they did with Vince,” she blurt out. “But things did not happen as you think. You must believe me. It’s just I’m so confused about myself right now.”
He shook away her outstretched hand. “I shall concern myself with you and Mr. Lyons later. For now, I must overlook your infidelities if you are to help me.”
“Help you? With what?”
“I must go to Catrina.” Sebastian drew himself straight and thrust his chin valiantly. “Even though she is damned and evil she has no right to be kept locked away. I did love her once.” He pounded his fist against his open palm. “I must find out what is going on with Federico and Cat.”
***
They drove in total silence, save for the radio, which Sebastian turned up to blasting level. A bubblegum pop tune that was too upbeat for the heavy mood. The music gnawed at Scarlet’s brain and she had taken to chewing on her thumbnail. She was thankful when they pulled onto Rico’s estate.
I do still love you, Sebastian.
She wondered if he could hear her mental thoughts. Hoped and prayed he could, for she did not know how to speak them at the moment.
All lights were out in the mansion, which didn’t mean much to either of them. Darkness was a comfort in a vampire’s lair, and most of the rooms occupied by Rico and his family were inner rooms which meant no visible light from the outside. But the van normally parked out front was not and neither was Vince’s Monte Carlo, so Scarlet felt confidant the house was empty.
Sebastian assumed the place had an alarm, and looked to Scarlet for a possible entrance. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and shrugged. She couldn’t think of one until she remembered the iron bars in the room where Catrina’s coffin rested.
“This way,” she said, and ran around to the side of the house, scanning the ground level.
There were no bars or windows around the base of the mansion, the entire structure was solid brick.
“Did you even see a coffin? Or was that all imagined, too?”
Ignoring his petulance, Scarlet stalked past him in the grass. Her feet fell upon a red-stone path that led up to a utility shed across the lawn. Of course! The shed seemed about the right distance when she thought of the length she had walked the underground hallway. Racing ahead, she quickly circled the small structure. Three iron bars were set into the brick near the ground. She slipped her fingers between the bars and glass and tried them, but they gave little.
Sebastian came up behind her, roughly p
ushing her aside. Scarlet landed on the grass. His manners regarding her had taken a full circle in the opposite direction since her confession. Or else, he was very excited about getting to his old lover.
Dusting the grass blades from her elbows, she stood and watched Sebastian wrestle with the iron bars. “Pretty eager to get your hands on her, aren’t you?”
One thick bar gave, sending Sebastian flying onto his back in a spray of shattered glass. “As you were to Vince?”
Why bother trying to vindicate herself by explaining nothing had even happened? Nothing except kissing and groping and getting as close to naked as possible. Sebastian had already decided her guilty before the trial. And his eagerness to get to Catrina sickened her. He didn’t deserve an explanation. If he could so much as think she would betray him by making love to another man then so be it. He didn’t deserve her trust.
He succeeded in removing the other bars and carefully broke away the remaining glass. The two of them slipped inside the two foot wide space into the darkened room, landing with a crackling crunch on the broken glass. The stench immediately overwhelmed, causing Sebastian to gag while Scarlet held her hand over her mouth and nose.
“Should have brought a flashlight,” he choked.
Scarlet still had the lighter in her coat pocket. The tiny flame brightened the air around them in a circle about five feet wide.
She plugged her nose and spoke,” You still think I’m lying about the dead bodies? Have a look over here.” She thrust the lighter through the door hole and Sebastian gazed across the carnage.
“It does not surprise me at all,” he said, clearing his throat.
“It’s running out of butane,” she said.
“Yes, I noticed. Flick it quickly so I can see what I’m working with and then leave me to take care of things.”
“Certainly, your highness.” She caught his jarring glare as the light flashed over his face and then flickered out.
Standing in the center of the room, Scarlet listened as Sebastian’s hand ran over the cold chains and his boots stepped from one end of the coffin to the other, crackling over bits of glass and debris. She heard a buzzing and jumped when the wings of a corpse fly passed over her nose. Her aversions lurched to her throat and she reached out, feeling Sebastian’s shoulder.
“Hurry up, or I promise you, I’ll puke.”
“So eloquent you are, my lady.” He shrugged off her touch. “Are these the charms that attracted your lover?”
But I didn’t make love to Vince!
But why should he believe her when he already assumed the opposite? If only he would have let her tell him everything. If only she felt compelled to tell him. For some reason it didn’t matter at the moment. Defiance rushed through her veins.
“Well…at least Vince lets me do as I please.”
“And that would be killing innocent mortals and leaving them to lie in a putrid pit of hell?”
“I did not partake in anything that lies in that stinking room! Though it burns me to admit that I wish I had just for the chance at forsaking you and your stupid rules.”
Sebastian’s hand lashed through the air, catching Scarlet’s wrist in his iron grip. “I have never forced you to do a thing, Madame, that would cause you harm, or irrevocable damage such as what I witnessed last night. You were mad when you came home.
“Vincent Lyons, on the other hand, is a miserable excuse for a vampire, as is his fiendish friend, Federico Bellange. They prey on the weakness and fear of mortals. They have no respect for the human condition and I shall never consider them to be a part of my race. They are animals! As you would plainly see should I thrust you into the next room.”
His breath hissed across her face. Scarlet tugged back, but Sebastian clutched her tightly and pulled her to his chest. “Can you not see what you have done to me by taking up with these men? You are my soul, Scarlet. I trusted you!”
He released her wrist and turned to the coffin.
I’m not taking up with them. I don’t even want to see Vince anymore. Nor do I want to please you after all I have learned today, Sebastian DelaCourte.
She backed away as the chains hugging the coffin began to snap and fly off, aided by the force of Sebastian’s rage. She shielded her face, not so much from the flying links but from Sebastian’s anger burning like a blaze in the hazy room.
“Bring the lighter over here,” he snapped and she rushed to obey.
The stone cover scraped across the box and as the light filled the room Scarlet peered over Sebastian’s shoulder into the dusty confines of the sarcophagus.
There was a woman inside. At least it resembled a woman.
“I wonder how long she’s been in there?”
“Maybe she really is dead,” Scarlet offered.
“Then why the chains to hold down a dead corpse?” he said, surveying the contents. “No, she is alive. There is still flesh on her bones, though it has wrinkled and dried. Look here.” He lifted a snarl of matted hair. “It would crumble with time if there were not a minute amount of vampire blood pushing slowly through her withered veins. Others have survived centuries to reawaken, I’ve heard tales.”
Sebastian pushed a hand under the dried relic and lifted.
“No! You can’t lift her. She’ll crumble.”
Considering her words, he gently lowered the head back.
Scarlet clamped her hand over her mouth. What the hell am I doing? Giving him advice on how to get his dried lover out?
“Then I shall revive her right here.” He jumped inside the coffin, carefully placing his feet to either side of the withered legs.
The room fell still. Scarlet listened as he shuffled about inside the narrow confines of the sarcophagus, his boots scraping across stone. She heard a ripping noise, as if leather were being torn. “What are you doing, Seb—”
“Silence!”
Firmly admonished, Scarlet stepped toward the window and listened intently.
“Her mouth is so dry,” he said to no one in particular, more as if he were talking his way through the procedure. “Come here, Scarlet. I need you to pry her lips apart so I can drip my blood into her mouth.”
Oh, well, that was certainly high on her list of things she most wanted to do. Pry a dried vampire’s lips apart so her lover could drip his blood into it and revive her for a grand old reunion. No problem.
“Scarlet!”
Snapping to motion, she groped her way to the coffin. Sebastian grabbed her hand and pulled it down so she could feel the dry parchment that was Catrina’s face. “Well, I guess this is better than walking through corpse hell.”
“I would appreciate your silence,” he said swiftly.
No pleasing this guy tonight.
Feeling her way about the woman’s dried face she located the crusted mounds she assumed were lips. The jaws were stiff but she was able to pry them apart and felt the first drops of blood on her fingers as Sebastian bit into his flesh and lowered his mouth to the parched vampire.
Feeling once more like a voyeur as she assisted in some twisted sexual practice between a man and his dried vampire, Scarlet closed her eyes and rolled her head to the side, thinking there were probably more pressing things for her to do at the moment. Lounging in the garden at home, soaking in a luxuriant bath, or even helping Anthony prune the viciously thorned rose bushes seemed a treat compared to this.
“Step back.” Sebastian nudged her hand and she pulled back.
What followed was nothing less than incredible. Though she couldn’t see, what she heard was more than enough to determine what was going on.
After long minutes, a rustling started within the boxy depths of the coffin. A sharp cracking noise, as if bones were snapping straight, knees were bending, and arms began to animate beneath a rubbery shroud of dried skin. Skin Scarlet felt sure became more supple with each reviving drop of blood Sebastian dripped into the vampire’s mouth.
Sebastian’s lingering moan did more than startle Scarlet—it infuriated
her. My God, she thought, I’m jealous of some stiff! But the next sound sent chills down her spine. The sound of her lover moaning and the ripping of flesh as the sharpened daggers of his reincarnated vampire lover sank deeply into his neck.
Scarlet stepped forward in the darkness, then stopped. She heard a new sound now. The sound of a female voice as it awakened to a new life.
Chapter Twenty
Sebastian brushed his cheek along the renewed flesh. The dried corpse had reanimated quickly, the cheeks filling out and moistening, her lips becoming slippery with saliva and the hair softening into fine silk across her forehead.
“Sebastian?” He remembered Scarlet stood in the darkness.
“We must take her home with us. She is still too weak.”
“Did she…revive? Is she—”
“She is as you are now.”
Not quite as lovely, he remembered, though it mattered no longer. He now stood in the presence of two women who had betrayed his love. He felt drained and tired. He wished to go home and crawl into the comforts of his coffin and forget them both. But he had started something here tonight he must finish. He had to find out why Catrina had been locked away by her brother and what Rico was up to. That bastard could not remain in the same town as he. Not without a fight.
“What time is it?”
“It’s only been an hour,” Scarlet answered.
“Then we must hurry. We’ll have to go through the house. I don’t want to push her through the window in her fragile condition. Open the door for me and I’ll carry her.”
He listened for a creak of a door, some motion, but heard none. “Scarlet?”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t go through that room again, Sebastian, it’s too gross.”
Immortality had hardened him over the two centuries he had lived, but Scarlet was still so new, so affected by her surroundings.
“There’s no light, Scarlet. Now come on, you won’t see a thing.”
“That’s what I mean, I won’t see! I might step on something. Can’t we try to hoist her up to the window.”
“Open the door now,” he demanded. “I will not argue with you when we’ve so little time. Now, do it!”
Dark Rapture Page 60