Dark Rapture

by Hauf, Michele

  Her footsteps skittered away and he turned to lift Catrina in his arms. She was heavy, her dead weight being over a hundred pounds, he thought. But he could feel his blood flowing through her veins, reviving, warming and renewing, as it had over two centuries ago when he first created her. His blood child. His insincere, spoiled, nasty brat blood child.

  You must be crazy, he thought. Why are you doing this? Is it because you have some vicious desire to be used by women? Can you never leave well enough alone? Both of these women have spurned you once already.

  The door creaked open and he walked blindly, recalling the door in the other room had been directly across from him when he had scanned the scene earlier. “Hold onto my shirt so you won’t get lost,” he offered.

  Sebastian stepped on something hard. He instantly pictured a thin finger bone, but walked on, shrouding his senses to the carnage.

  Once out and up the stairs, he breathed deeply, inhaling smoke tinged air to rid his senses of the putrid vapors. Catrina hung limply in his arms, motionless, though the shimmer was becoming stronger. She was gaining strength with each breath she took, but she would need more blood to recover completely.

  The hallway was dark. They walked quickly and soon the moonlight shone ahead of them. Scarlet rushed to the foyer. Sebastian looked around. Rico’s taste for the extravagant hadn’t changed. Had he become selfish over the years? Did he lock his own sister away so there would be more for him? He found it hard to comprehend when there was only the deep love he remembered between the two of them.

  The second floor was lined with a trail of doors. Most likely bedrooms, Sebastian presumed. I wonder if there are any sick children locked behind them?

  As they crossed the massive front room, Sebastian paused in the moonlight to look over the sleeping vampire in his arms. Catrina’s clothes had rotted to threads and her breasts, full and pink, pushed through strands of an ancient crimson dress fashioned in the style of the 1920’s. He felt an irresistible shock of desire as his eyes fell across her nipples, which were soft and shaded a dark rose.

  Her hair hung over his arm, a deep mahogany that reminded him of a velvet-covered book he once owned. Pale as snow, her face, though lightly flushed in the cheeks. He knew she needed more blood to regain full consciousness. He bit into his lip again and pressed them to her mouth.

  “Drink, Catrina,” he whispered and looked up from his kiss into Scarlet’s jealous stare. She tapped her watch and turned away.

  “It is Sebastian DelaCourte,” he said into Catrina’s mouth. “Please…don’t remember me as an enemy but as a friend who got tangled in one of your webs. You were young, you could think only of yourself. I…I hold no grudge now. I wish to help you.”

  It seemed she stirred in his arms and a tiny whisper escaped her pursed lips in a gurgle of his blood. “Lover.”

  Sebastian clutched her tightly and dashed into the night where Scarlet waited at Anthony’s car. It was a good thing they’d taken the Lincoln instead of the Porsche. “Give me your coat. Her clothes are falling to pieces.”

  Scarlet wrestled it off and tossed it to him, landing it across Catrina’s face.

  “Help me,” he insisted. “Don’t be so obstinate. Open the door, I’m going to lay her in the backseat.”

  Obeying mechanically, Scarlet stood by the door, bowing deeply as Anthony often jokingly did, and then closed it after Sebastian had deposited his new pet.

  “Would you like me to drive, master?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Oh, would you?” he replied sharply. “Give me the keys. I’ll drive. The mood you’re in will have us in an accident before we ever get home.”

  Scarlet stomped her foot into the loose pebbles on the drive. “My mood?”

  “Get in.” He paused, sternly looking over the hood of the car. “Or are you going to stay and wait for your lover? Perhaps he’ll bring a nice morsel home for the two of you to share?”

  Rage brightened her eyes to a brilliant emerald. A sight that had always filled Sebastian with desire. But a part of him slumped, falling deep into the pit of his stomach. I shouldn’t tease her so. I will regret this, I’m sure.

  “Would you prefer I did stay?”

  I don’t think I could survive without your presence. “No. I’ll need your help when we get home.”

  ***

  “How is she doing?”

  Scarlet bent over the back seat and flipped on the ceiling light. The reincarnated vampire shivered.

  It was amazing how Sebastian’s blood had so quickly transformed a bone-dry skeleton into a living, breathing woman. Vampire, Scarlet corrected her thoughts. Beneath the cover of her jacket, Scarlet examined the pink flesh rounded to smooth curves over Catrina’s hips and thighs. Her fingernails were long and ragged, which generally stopped growing last of all things after a vampire went into hibernation.

  “I think she’s scared.”

  “I imagine so, if she’s been locked away for any amount of time she may never have been in a car before. Does she look like she’s conscious, like she knows what’s going on?”

  Scarlet lifted the woman’s hair from her face to reveal one brilliant azure eye and one a dead gray. One is mine, the other my sister’s. A pale hand snatched forward, catching her sharpened nails across the back of Scarlet’s hand.

  “Ouch!” She slid back into her seat, sucking the blood from the back of her hand. “She clawed me. What kind of monster did you create?”

  “Stop blaming me for everything that hurts you.”

  He shifted into park and opened the door. “We need gas. You fill, I’ll run inside and pay.” He slammed the door and walked around to her window. “That is if you can handle something as complex as filling a gas tank without causing yourself harm. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you setting yourself aflame.”

  Scarlet thrust her tongue out at him as Sebastian stalked away. As he entered the tiny supermart a trio of teenage girls spied him. Knowing how he hated drooling fans, Scarlet got out of the car, smiling to herself. Serves him right, she thought, and shoved the pump into the gas tank.

  She glanced into the backseat, finding Catrina still shivered in a huddle, and eyed the service station again. Sebastian stood in front of the counter patting his pockets while a gaggle of wide-eyed teenage girls eyed him dreamily. He forgot his wallet. He never did carry money with him, finding it wasn’t necessary, for he had no need for it. Anthony was always the one who carried his credit cards.

  Pissed she had to go inside and bail him out, Scarlet stalked toward the supermart.

  ***

  “Ah, ladies.” Sebastian slipped away from the pawing young girls who waved pens and scraps of paper before him. “I’m sorry, but my girlfriend is here.” He slid over to Scarlet and stood behind her as she waited for her cash card to be swiped.

  “Your girlfriend is out in the car,” Scarlet muttered and stomped past the teenage girls. Sebastian followed, passing her by on the way to the car.

  Something snapped. Scarlet stopped, clenching her fists at her sides. “You know, Sebastian,” she blurt out, causing him to stop abruptly in his tracks in the middle of the pumping port.

  He turned around with a now what? look on his face. So damn sexy, even in his anger.

  “I think I’d like to settle this right here and now. You’ve been treating me like grave dirt for the entire night and I need to know where I stand with you.”

  “Grave dirt—” he approached her calmly, his fingers steepled together before his chest “—I enjoy. I have never betrayed you in the time we have been together, and I will not tolerate it from you!”

  “Fine! I never wanted this false relationship in the first place.”

  “False?” She could feel his breath on her lips as he spoke. “How can you call the love I have given you false? The undying devotion, the constant care and nurturing. I have given you everything you have ever desired, Scarlet, yet you repay me by sleeping with another man.”

  “I did not! Why
won’t you believe me? I never desired immortality,” she said, her anger causing her to leave his misconceptions as they were.

  “And did I?”

  Frozen by his stare, a trance of memories floated before Scarlet’s eyes. The truth was far stranger than any fiction novel could ever record. Sebastian had taken her mortal life from her without her consent. But she had actually been the one to take his mortal life from him first.

  After living the vampire life for less than a week she had been kidnapped back through time where she discovered a pre-vampire Sebastian, a young boy of nineteen with hopes of marrying and beginning a new life. And she, in a selfish move with hopes of returning to her own time, had changed him into a vampire to insure she would spend the rest of her life with him.

  Had she had made a mistake?

  If he could actually believe she would want Vince over him, then so be it. She wanted nothing to do with a man who had so little trust in her. She glanced away from his accusing stare.

  “She’s gone!” Scarlet raced to the car where the door hung open, exposing the empty back seat.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Vince crossed the marble floor and fell into a thick reclining chair of softest rust suede. Rico followed suit, spreading out on the matching couch and pushing splayed fingers through his hair.

  “Where’s the van?”

  Rico stretched and sat up. “Blake and Rowdy are out scamming for blood, as Blake would say. I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

  “Damn, I could use a nice warm body myself.”

  Vince’s thoughts took him to Scarlet. She hadn’t wanted to make love on the rooftop. He should have never attempted it. God, you almost raped her! Damn, she was so enamored of Sebastian. But she let you kiss her. You were so close. No. She had still been slipping on the edge of blood rapture; she hadn’t been of sound mind at the time.

  So I’m a bastard.

  But she needed me. I know she did.

  Vince glanced over Rico’s closed eyelids and slack jaw, thinking the guy had already slipped into a light sleep.

  He mentally kicked himself for pushing things with Scarlet, he would have liked to find out if she had come up with any leads regarding the diary. She would never give him the time of day now. If only he hadn’t been thinking with his cock instead of his heart. Though, admittedly, sometimes it was hard to determine between the two of them.

  Vince’s stomach lurched painfully. The constant feeding he’d conditioned his body to withstand would never let him forget when it was time for sustenance.

  “Come to me,” came the soft whisper from the couch.

  Rico held out a hand, jeweled in blue and silver, steady and calm like the heart that had beat beneath his breast for two centuries. Seeing Vince’s reluctance he tilted his head, inquiring softly. “Have you never taken from your own sex?”

  Rico’s question immediately brought Francesco’s wicked sneer to Vince’s mind. His ill-regarded blood master had told him more than once that he preferred men and women equally. The memory of Francesco’s hands touching him so casually—yet so letcherously, now he thought of it—made Vince’s skin crawl.

  He looked to Rico, sitting there silently, patiently. He would drop his hand and forget his offer immediately if Vince refused him. Rico was that kind of man, he would never push or force someone into anything.

  The thought of touching another man...in an intimate way…

  Vince pressed his back into the chair. But this wasn’t about sex, this was about nourishment. The blood hunger needed to be answered.

  He knelt on the floor by the couch. As he leant to Rico’s neck the brut, cedar smell of the man’s flesh tempted Vince to kiss lightly the vein before tasting his blood. He closed his eyes, inhaling the essence of Rico’s blood, finding it much the same as the attraction a woman’s perfume worked on him when he wanted her badly. He pulled away the soft strands of mahogany hair, slipping his fingers around the back of Rico’s head, and bit deep, opening the vein in a hot gusher.

  The older vampire cradled Vince against his chest and moaned softly as the powerful sensations of blood release coursed through his body.

  When Vince finished, and the swoon painted a silly blood grin on his face, Rico pulled him up into his embrace and latched onto his vein.

  “Yes,” Vince whispered and melted into the vampire’s fatherly embrace. He was accepted without question by this man. He could do no wrong, and would expect the same from Rico. He finally had family.

  Rico pulled his teeth abruptly from Vince’s neck. He sniffed the air as a bloodhound does when searching for its prey. The blood had renewed his tired senses and he was back to his normal self. “Something’s wrong.”

  Vince slumped to the floor, rubbing his neck, and licked his palm clean of his own blood finding it delightful to wallow in the swoon this time. “What do you mean, man? This is about as right as things have ever been—“

  Rico soared past Vince. “Come.”

  Saddened his enjoyment of the swoon was being so abruptly terminated, Vince staggered to his feet and they floated down the hallway and into the darkness.

  Rico paused at the t-turn. “My God. No!” He raced further into the darkness and, with Rico’s blood in his system, Vince was able to follow by tracking the man’s scent.

  “What’s going on, Rico? I don’t understa—” Vince plunged right into Rico’s side. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t got the bloodhound thing down yet.

  Rico’s breath chilled over Vince’s lips. “Don’t you feel it? I know you can. You’ve said to me before that you’ve noticed the heaviness, the sad feeling that comes over you when you’re down this way.”

  “Yeah, but—” Vince made a sensory check of his surroundings. The hallway was silent, save for Rico’s accelerated breathing. A faint whiff of cedar tickled his nose and something else that seemed a bit rancid, and it was very cold. “Hmm…it does feel a little different, not so murky—the air—”

  “That was her!” Rico pulled Vince’s hand along with him as he thundered forward into the darkness. “I’ve always been able to feel her presence. I’ve kept her near me even though I knew that I can never be with her again. Vince, something is wrong! I can’t feel her anymore.”

  They landed three steps and Vince heard a door crack open. It seemed to him it was very heavy for Rico was only able to move it slowly as stone groaned and scraped against stone.

  Rico clutched Vince’s hand to his chest and pulled him close. “Hold tight to me so you don’t stumble in the dark. This is the pit, Vince, you know what we’re going to walk through.”

  The pit. Yes. Blake had explained this was where all the bodies were disposed. A fact that had never disturbed Vince until he stepped inside the chilling hollows of the stinking pit.

  “Oh God!” He couldn’t see a thing, which was good. The smell brought the bile to his throat.

  Rico squeezed his hand. “There’s a door just ahead.”

  In the next room a stream of early dawn light filtered through the window in the wall where he noticed the bars and glass had been forcibly removed.

  “A candle,” Rico commanded. “Out in the hallway. Quickly!”

  Vince blindly rushed back the way they had come, realizing half way the room he was in was peopled with dead bodies. Pressing his hand over his nose and mouth, he rushed to the steps and grabbed a candle from an iron bracket on the wall and then reluctantly stepped back across the room.

  “Rico?”

  “Right here.”

  Rico’s hand touched his elbow and Vince gave him the candle. Seconds passed before a small yellow glow encompassed the pair. Vince stood back, holding the flickering light as Rico approached the vandalized sarcophagus. The room instantly filled with the loudest, deepest wail that Vince had ever heard.

  “Nooo!” Rico clung to the stone mount, his body slumping against it in defeat, his knees buckling. “Someone has taken her, Vince. She could have never gotten out on her own. I made sure of that.”


  Not sure what was going on, Vince picked up a thick length of chain that had been strewn over the coffin lid and dropped it on the floor. The rising dust made him to choke. “I don’t think I’m following you here, Rico. Christ!” He gagged, as a deep breathe pulled dust and the noxious odors into his throat. “I take it your sister was in the coffin. But why would someone want to steal a dead body?”

  Rico’s breath came out in fervent pants. “Why would you assume she was dead?”

  “Well...you said you’d lost her years ago. And…if she was in a coffin—” The light bulb exploded above Vince’s head. “Ooookaaay. I think I got it now.” He couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized it before. “Are you telling me your sister was a vampire, too? But why—”

  “Catrina” —Rico stood tall and reached for Vince, laying a shaking hand on his shoulder— “was my blood master. She created me. It’s a long story.” He swallowed and used Vince’s shoulder to rest against. “But you must know I have never loved another as much as I love her, Vince. Even in her confinement my heart has stayed true to her.”

  “Well, I can understand, she was your sister—”

  “We were twins,” Rico explained. “Born into the world from a shared womb we grew to share everything in life. We were two bodies who shared one heart, one soul.”

  He turned to the coffin and pressed his palm into the cold, barren stone. “You can’t imagine how hard it was for me to lock her away. I grieve her absence daily, and caress her presence as well. Vince, whoever took her away from me—who would have done this? Whoever did this does not know what they have on their hands.”

  Vince pulled his t-shirt up and pinched it over his nose. “What do you mean?” he said nasally. “Why did you lock her away?”

  “I simply had no choice.” Rico heaved a great breath and leant against the sepulcher, the rancid smell seeming not to bother him. “It was earlier this century, perhaps about 1920 or 1921. She was mad, Vince. The nightmares consumed her until she could no longer determine whether they were real or the life she lived was nightmare.”