by Chloe Cox
After a moment, the glass slid aside and David’s unruly head popped out. “Lucia?”
Lucia opened her mouth, then closed it again. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. It seemed somehow unwise to shout, ‘My father’s been arrested, and I ran from the soldiers,’ in the middle of the street.
“Stay where you are,” David whispered down at her. “I’m coming down.”
She knew this was the smart thing to do, and she’d known she had to keep a low profile—Why else would she throw rocks at his window rather than knock on the door? Why else would she creep through back alley streets?—but somehow David’s caution made it all the more real. It was no longer just her own irrational fears. David was afraid for her, too.
All at once, Lucia felt very alone.
David came out the servant’s door on the side of the building, and hurried her back to the alley. He’d brought with him a hastily packed bag containing some food, some money, and, most importantly, the Bacchanal outfit, complete with mask, that she’d made with him the previous week.
“You think I have to hide?” She asked him.
“Soldiers came by to ask about your father, Lucia. He’s been arrested?”
She nodded, dumb.
“Do you know what for?”
“No. Do you?”
He shook his head. “It must be something to do with the Guild, or they wouldn’t have come round to my dad.”
Lucia began to gnaw at one fingernail, and David pulled her hand away. “Luce, I have an idea of who could help.”
Lucia grimaced. She knew what he was going to say, but she’d been hoping that the obvious answer was not, in fact, the right answer.
“You know the Ramoras handle the Guild banking. They know everything that happens with the Guild, even before my dad does. They have connections. Paolo might be able to help.”
Lucia collapsed back onto the now-familiar stoop. This was very bad. She thought of Paolo dangling helplessly from Lord Cesare’s strong hand, thought of the way he’d been so totally humiliated, thought of how she’d told him, “I don’t want you.” A bottle of the Duke’s Blend might not be enough to earn his good will and her father’s freedom. The stolen bottle weighed heavily in her satchel.
“I don’t think Paolo will want to help, David.”
“It wasn’t as bad as you think.”
She looked up at her best friend sharply. “You saw?”
He sat next to her and leaned his head into hers. They had been best friends as long as either of them could remember. Everyone had assumed that they’d get married, until Lucia started to tell people she wanted to be a warrior queen instead, and David realized he wanted a husband of his own.
David said, “He better apologize. He was awfully close to…”
“Don’t say it.”
“He knows all you’d have to do is find an oscario. There were witnesses. He’s lucky Lord Cesare—” David looked at Lucia’s face and promptly dropped that line of thought. “When I say I think he’ll want to apologize, Luce, I mean he sent me a note, telling me which party he’d be at tonight, and that he’d like to talk to you. Before the soldiers came around.”
Lucia wrapped her arms around her knees, her body involuntarily recalling all of the confusing sensations of the previous night. She’d been so full in the throes of Bacchanal, brimming with life, and she might have let Paolo do what he wanted, had it not been for the man in the mask of Winter. Just the thought of Lord Cesare tightened her belly, and the sudden pleasure was chased by the familiar fear of what motivated it. Now she couldn’t imagine anyone else touching her in that way, let alone Paolo, burgeoning monster and torturer of street boys. But none of that mattered. It was time to stop thinking about herself. Her father had been arrested, and most likely he was being held in the dank, dark pit of the dreaded Basiglia.
“Which party?” she asked, a flash of steel in her voice.
“We’re going to the Dance with the Dead,” David grinned, and handed her a delicate white mask.
CHAPTER 4
Lord Cesare was trapped. It was his own fault: he’d paused. This wasn’t something he would normally do en route to a secret rendezvous, but he’d been stunned by some chalked graffiti on the ancient walls of the catacomb, and had stopped mid-stride to stare at it dumbly. It was only just visible in the flickering light of a single mounted torch, but the longer he studied it, the more significant it seemed. It was a crude drawing of a wolf. He’d only just wrenched himself away with a reminder of how vital his current mission was, when he’d heard them coming down the tunnel.
Two sets of footsteps.
Disaster. If he were seen, word would get out.
Cesare hated hiding, but was thankful for a youth spent exploring the catacombs. He’d found one of the hollows he remembered from childhood, which had been used for assassinations and escapes in the darker days of J’Amel, and wedged himself in.
It was a lot smaller than he remembered. Still, it was better than being discovered. He couldn’t be sure who had been responsible for what had happened in the mountains. If anyone had been responsible. If anyone could be trusted.
He thought of his dead men, and gritted his teeth.
Very quickly he realized that whomever had invaded his catacombs was not there for diplomacy, or even conspiracy. He recognized the man’s voice: one of Rickle’s men. The other voice, high and slurred with amberwine, was unmistakably female. Silently Cesare urged the couple on, but no luck; he heard the soft thump of flesh pressed against a stone wall.
“Michael, not here,” the woman said, laughing into the dark, but the sounds of wet lips and urgent breaths continued.
Damn Bacchanal, Cesare thought. He would be stuck here for a while, listening to them. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in a wave. His pulse grew strong, thudding in his veins with a relentless insistence, and Cesare realized he could actually smell them. Not here, he thought, half desperate. Not now. It had already been too long since he’d had a woman, less than a day after the rite, and he only wanted the woman who wouldn’t even give him her name. He was a man under a great deal of pressure. The least bit of heat…
Not so long ago, he would have fucked his way through all of Bacchanal, looking in vain for a woman with whom he could share all of himself, even his darker desires. But all of that was before the last mountain raid. Now he had a responsibility to make sure he never shared what he’d become with anyone at all.
And that…thing…that he had carried inside him since that raid wanted to fuck. Wanted to be free. He felt it stirring inside him at the scent of sex, felt it ache to come forth, felt the desire build within him: to fuck, or kill—to dominate something.
A low growl gathered in his throat. He clenched his fists and willed it down.
“Michael,” the woman breathed. There was the rustle of fabric, and the rhythms of breathing quickened. Cesare pressed his forehead into the rock. His dick swelled against his trousers.
“Michael, no,” she said again.
Cesare’s eyes flew open. Somehow, he could now see in the dark of his hollow, could make out the tiniest detail in the rough-hewn rock. And he could hear them, could hear the woman breathing as if she were by his side, could almost swear he could hear her pulse as though his head lay on her chest. It was fast, very fast. Because she was afraid?
“Stop,” she said. Her voice was urgent, but was it fear? Cesare’s senses were bombarded by sex; the scent was like a roar, a bright color that filled his mind to bursting. It was difficult to think past that. “Don’t…” he heard again, and what little remained of his critical mind seized upon that one clear detail: she had said no.
He stepped out of the hollow, intending to kill.
“…stop,” the girl said again, and Cesare saw the man she’d called Michael kneeling, his head buried under yards of heavy skirts, and the woman pinned helplessly, and happily, to the wall of the catacomb with her leg thrown over his shoulder. “Don’t…stop,” she breathe
d again, her eyes closed in concentration.
Cesare forced himself back into the hollow. He gasped, slamming his back into the solid rock, glad for the shock of it. It felt like a demon rode his back, had taken up residence in his chest, was driving him to do something terrible. He tore at his trousers, and his dick, already hard, sprang forth and demanded attention.
But that would only risk the worst.
The darkest part of him whispered that it wouldn’t matter if he let the beast out. He was the Duke’s heir. If anybody could kill a soldier and take a serving wench in a dark, lonely catacomb without fear of consequence, it would be him, demon possession or no.
“Shut up,” he growled to himself, and dug the fingers of one hand into the rock. The other gripped his dick like a vise, afraid to move.
The serving girl moaned, and Cesare thought he was lost.
Then he thought of her.
The girl from the Dance of Seasons. The nameless girl, probably some merchant’s daughter, a nothing, except to him, and the rich banker’s boy who’d brought her. The one who reminded him of his peregrines, his beautiful, deadly birds. The one who’d fought back, bare-breasted and vulnerable, who’d had the nerve to defy even him, who ran from him in a way that tore at his heart and made him want to chase.
To hunt.
And, just as it had during the Dance, the thought of her…she didn’t quell the beast; she didn’t silence it. She made it stronger. But instead of something he fought from the outside, she tucked it away inside of him, made it flow, made it whole. Made it something that was part of him, instead of something he had to fight.
He held the thought of her high in his mind as his hand began to move of its own volition, hard and fast, and when he came hard against the ancient rock, he slumped back into his hollow, barely conscious, and fully spent for the first time since the Dance of Seasons. By the time he came back to himself and remembered the urgent task at hand, the couple was long gone.
He cursed. He had work to do. His family was threatened; he didn’t have time to masturbate in the catacombs, no matter what barbarian demon struggled inside him. And the longer he spent on this investigation, the longer he was kept from finding her.
The rest of his passage through the catacombs was a blur. He didn’t need the intermittent torches to see; he could have navigated by scent and sound and memory alone, even if his eyesight hadn’t lit the narrow tunnels up as though it were day. He was sure he ran, and yet, he was breathing normally when he arrived at the wooden door, hidden in a secret hollow.
He found the unnatural depression in the wood and pressed. The door slid open with without a sound, still well taken care of after all these years. The sudden stream of light from the peephole was blinding, but he found he adjusted much quicker than a man should.
Jovan was alone, working diligently, as always.
Cesare slid the old framed portrait aside and stepped into the room. He was already halfway to the other man’s desk when Jovan noticed there was another man present. His father’s aide jumped, his hand clutched to his chest, his friendly jowls trembling beneath his thick white mustache.
“My Lord!”
“What news?” Cesare’s voice sounded gruff, alien—even to him. He tried to clear his throat, and it sounded like a growl.
Jovan still stared at him. It made Cesare uneasy. Jovan had known him since he was a boy; he was the one other person besides Avignon who Cesare personally trusted. Jovan had taken pity upon the Duke’s younger son and had shown him kindness when he most needed it, when everyone else treated young Cesare like a leper. And yet, now, he looked at Cesare with fear.
Cesare cleared his throat again, and this time managed to sound like a human being. “Jovan, I’ve had to sneak around like a thief to avoid tipping off Rickle. Tell me there is news.”
“Yes, yes,” the bureaucrat said, and shuffled some papers meaningfully. It had always been a comfort to him to organize the administration of a city. Cesare could see he turned to it now. “The letter appears to be genuine, written by the vintner. I compared the handwriting myself.”
“Fine. What about the intended recipient?”
“Captain Rickle asked me to keep that especially secret.” Jovan grinned, back in the comfortable world of court intrigue. “Apparently he thinks it might embarrass him if you were to find out.”
“Did he.”
“Oh, yes. He very much does not want you to know that the intended recipient in Torino, a wool merchant, is a frequent exchange agent for the Grimaldi bank. He was very clear on that point.”
“And how have Rickle’s investments in the Grimaldi bank fared?”
“I hear he’s bought another villa, my Lord.”
Cesare frowned. His father was one of those aristocratic men who favored ancient concepts of feudal loyalty, and viewed the kinds of power you could buy with suspicion and disdain. He had left the growing sphere of commerce wide open to the lesser families, preferring not to sully the Lupin name, and Grimaldi had taken full advantage of the opportunity. Cesare took the more modern view that any mortal life could be had—for a price.
“My Lord?”
“What, Jovan?” Cesare was already in motion.
“What action will you take?”
Cesare paused as the portrait slid open, revealing the dark entrance to the catacombs, which would take him almost anywhere he wanted to go. He had been right to make the gamble he had the previous night. He was sure the boy wouldn’t talk. No one need know he was going to take a prisoner. And then, afterwards…
“I’ve already taken it,” Cesare said grimly, and wasted no more time. He stepped into the passage and slid the portrait back into place.
He almost felt sorry for this traitor. If they had the information he wanted, this stupid plot would soon be resolved, and he could get on with his other hunt. That meant this traitor might be the only thing standing between him and the woman he wanted. Needed. His peregrine.
He held on to that thought, and resolved to keep it in the forefront of his mind. It might be the only way he could bring himself to interrogate a woman.
CHAPTER 5
The Dance of the Dead was where Bacchanal came into its own.
The Dance of the Seasons was the exclusive, official opening, but the Dance of the Dead was open to all. The ancient J’Amel Cemetery became a strangely vibrant necropolis, a place where death mingled with life and the glittering socialites of young J’Amel competed to throw the most decadent parties. The tombs became private rooms, bands of musicians played on the roofs of mausoleums, and the most devout came painted in dye that glowed in the dark, infused with pulped and boiled jellyfish from the deepest parts of the sea. Over it all stood Father Ash, gaunt in his head-to-toe grey paint and stark white mask, the host of the living who wished to mingle with the dead, elected each year from the ranks of the Charonic Bacchanal Society. Displease Father Ash and he would send an oscario after you, which is like summoning a demon to do one’s dirty work.
Not much displeased Father Ash, except to see the living not taking proper advantage of life.
Lucia had always avoided the cemetery during Bacchanal, afraid that if she ventured too close she would be pulled in, unable to make herself return to the boring rhythms of normal life. Such were the stories told to mischievous children and Bacchanal virgins.
Tonight, however, Lucia thought it wise not to wear her virginal armband. Instead she’d don her white mask, adorned with the feathers of a dove, and hide in plain sight. The satchel she slung over her shoulder and clutched protectively—containing, as it did, the bottle of the Duke’s Blend, and thus her potential ruin—made this more difficult than it might have otherwise been.
Paolo had sent David a drawing of a certain tomb, one that housed an ancient father of J’Amel, one of the men who piled stone on top of stone and drained the swamp back into the sea. He had warned of secrecy, even in a note, which struck Lucia as either a little dramatic, or a very bad sign for her family’s
future. Still, she reminded herself, the locations of the right parties, the passwords to the right tombs, and knowledge of how to navigate the catacombs that connected it all beneath the city—these were all a kind of currency during Bacchanal. Being at the right party, with the right people…well, masks didn’t hide everything. More than one ambitious young thing’s fortune had been made on top of a tomb or down in the catacombs.
It was all in who you knew. And Lucia realized she knew practically no one.
“How do I look?” she asked.
David rolled his eyes. “You know you look beautiful. Paolo’s not going to be able to say no to anything.”
It took a moment for Lucia to take comfort in that. And then she realized it had taken a moment because she hadn’t been thinking about Paolo when she asked about her appearance. She’d been thinking about all the very important people who tended to go to these underground parties, and whether a certain Wolf would be present.
She was filled with sudden anger. It was as though Lord Cesare had invaded her mind and set up camp, and she’d never be free again, not her body, which would belong to Paolo—she shuddered—or her mind, which evidently belonged to a Lord who had probably already forgotten her. He hadn’t even touched her. Just that look had been enough.
“Luce?”
She shook her head, and reminded herself that her father had been arrested, and was suffering in the belly of the Basiglia, and the future of her entire family depended upon her ability to win the goodwill of a young man of very questionable character. “Let’s go,” she said.
The high walls of the cemetery did nothing to stop the flow of music, and Lucia heard several warring bands on their approach, each banging their own rhythms on the traditional Bacchanal drums. But nothing prepared her for the sight of the Dead, dancing.
It was the conceit of Bacchanal that all those who entered the cemetery were metaphorically dead, and the existing bonds of life, with their obligations and restrictions—the sorts of things that might discourage someone from fully indulging in the temptations of the season—were severed completely within the cemetery walls.