“That would have been rude,” she replied.
“Where have you been for the last week?” Rick asked. Information. He might die with it, but then again, maybe not. The urge to know everything about this woman was goading him into frank questions.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Personal business.”
Well, he hadn’t expected a straight answer. Not from her.
Ilaria turned on her heel decisively and strode to where he stood just inside the door. There was no predatory prowl in her step, like the last time she had been here, but the dress flowed away from her hips, revealing their sway, despite her stride. She stopped in front of him and looked up, craning her neck. “You should kiss me,” she declared.
“Such an offer,” Rick replied dryly. “However will I contain myself?” Yet despite her peremptory demand, his body was reacting to the idea of kissing her once more.
Rick moved away from her, deliberately putting space between them. “You have some explaining to do,” he told her. “Principally, what do you want? And why was it so imperative we come to this apartment?”
She licked her lips and glanced to her left, quickly. The shift of her gaze was instantaneous, but Rick spotted it and looked to where she had. There was a bookcase against the wall, there, under the high window. It was mostly empty for Roman had taken his library with him. But there were a few of Rick’s possessions sitting on the shelves, including a digital clock.
“You have somewhere else to be?” he asked her.
She shook her head, the long black locks of her hair shifting across her chest. “Why don’t you relax? Sit down?” There was an underlying note of urgency in her voice.
He crossed his arms again. “I am not moving from this spot until you’ve told me everything. It’s time to sing, Ilaria. You may have wanted me placed inside this apartment, but that works for me, too. I can deal with you in any way I want and no one will be the wiser. So unless you want me to start pulling you apart limb by limb, I suggest you start talking.”
She bit her lip. “My life is not my own, Pæga. I must be able to account for myself.”
“Obscure enough,” he replied. “Everyone, human and vampire, generally owes someone in their life an explanation for their actions. So tell me about your week, Ilaria. What have you been doing that was of higher importance than completing your assignment to take out Nathanial Aquila?”
But instead of answering, the focus in Ilaria’s eyes turned inwards. Her lips parted. “No,” she breathed.
“No?” he queried, half-amused that once more she had done the unexpected. He would have thought that pointing out her flaw as a professional sniper who had failed to take out her subject would have brought hot words tumbling from her lips.
Ilaria clutched at her head. “No, please….”
Doubt touched him. Doubt, and the cold fingers of dread. “Ilaria?” he asked, not sure she was even listening to him.
Her fingers clenched even harder, the tips driving into her skull. She screamed, and it was an agony-drenched sound that made the skin over Rick’s spine crawl. He leapt toward her and slapped his hand over her mouth. One scream might just be ignored, but the neighbors would quickly call the police if there was another. “Shh…” he urged her.
She was screaming into his hand. Worse, she was sinking down to the tiles, the strength leaving her legs. Rick followed her down, trying to support her fall while keeping his hand in place.
Then she began to jerk, her torso convulsing while her limbs flailed about. Horrified, Rick hung on to her as best he could, riding out the spasms. It was a long minute before she collapsed in his arms, her head against his shoulder. He could feel her trembling, which was astonishing for a vampire. It touched a chord of memory in him.
Slowly, he lifted her chin until he could look into her eyes. “Tell me,” he whispered.
Pain etched her brow and shadowed her eyes. “That was him,” she said. “He is displeased. I took too long to seduce you.” She looked away from him, down at her hand that lay uselessly against the floor, her fingers curled over her palm.
Cold fingers rippled down his back. “He?” he repeated.
“My meden,” she whispered, keeping her gaze from his.
Meden. The word came out of antiquity, but Rick knew it, nevertheless. It meant “master”. Sick horror touched him. “You are a slave?” he asked, his voice as low as hers had been. “Insculpium,” he said, dredging up the old words. “You are his zelpha. His slave.”
She brought her hand up to her temple. “He won’t wait much longer,” she murmured.
Rick caught her wrist and held her arm still. He slid his fingers up the length of her arm to the high biceps, but he didn’t find what he expected to find. Of course, he mentally chided himself. She defies expectations, always. What his fingertips found, instead, was the hard edge of a metal band. He curled his fingers around the band and drew it down her arm from under the sleeve of the dress. It took effort for the band clung tightly to her arm.
Then he lifted the sleeve and bent to peer at the flesh of her arm.
The scar was white with age, but the edges still looked bubbly, like they would have been when the brand formed. An inverted “V”, with the dot within, to represent a drop of blood.
“Who is your meden, your master?” Rick asked. His voice was hoarse. Pity and fury were fighting for supremacy in his system.
“We share the same master, you and I.”
Heru.
“He isn’t my master,” Rick countered instantly. “But I would have known if he had inscribed someone. You and I have never met. How did he hide it from me?”
“I was Wulfson’s.” She looked up at him and he thought he saw shame in her glance. “You know the old words,” she added. “Do you know how it goes if your master dies?”
A fresh burst of horror spread through him, chilling him. “Heru killed Danich Wulfson. He inherited you as a prize of battle.” The sick feeling drove him to his feet. He began to pace.
Ilaria remained on the floor, her legs bent, one arm propping her up. The bronzed band circled her wrist. It was covered in minute carvings that gave it a filigree look. The sleeve of her dress had fallen back over the brand. “I used to believe that Danich was an unfeeling monster. I know better, now.” Bitterness dripped from every word she spoke.
Rick swallowed. His heart had escaped his control and was running heavily and hard. His breathing picked up to compensate. He pressed his fingers against his temple, much as Ilaria had just done. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but it seemed that his head was beginning to ache. It had been centuries since the last one, so surely he was talking himself into it. “How did Danich inscribe you? When?”
Ilaria’s head still hung, her hair falling about her face. Shame? Sadness? Both, most likely.
“I was a civilian resistance sharp shooter, during the Great War,” she said, her voice weak. “I was good at it and the cadre would send me across the country, for the difficult assignments.”
“Across Italy,” Rick clarified.
“They sent me to northern Italy, to Piave in the mountains where the fighting was the worst. It was 1918 and the war was nearly at an end, but the Germans were still entrenched. There was a German officer they wanted me to kill. He was a privileged blond brute of a man, who tortured Italians in the most vicious ways. Few survived his interrogations. So they wanted me to deal with him.”
“Danich,” Rick concluded. “Passing as Aryan.”
She pressed both hands against her face briefly. “It was a long shot. A very hard shot, but I knew I had hit him. He went down. I saw it.”
“They caught you,” Rick guessed. He could already figure the rest of it. “They brought you before Danich.”
“He was alive. Completely uninjured. It scared me. But he was impressed by the shot I had taken. He said he would not discard such a useful tool.” She hesitated and Rick saw her lick her lips. “He turned me. Four of his officers held me down and h
e made me drink from him. As soon as the turning was complete, he performed the insculpium. The inscription. I had no idea what he was doing. The words were strange.” She gave the smallest of shrugs. “After that night, I understood exactly what he had done.” And with a convulsive jerk, she pushed the band up her arm and slid it back into place, hiding the brand. “I had to test you, to see where your loyalty lay.” She sat up and brushed off her hands. Now she was able to look him in the eye. “Heru sent me to you, but I have not told him you are not his. I needed to know if I could trust you.”
Rick didn’t ask why. He knew why. He knew without a shred of doubt that since she had become Wulfson’s zelpha, she had spent every moment searching for her escape.
Ilaria seemed to sense that he understood, for she gave a small smile, barely a lift of her full lips. “You have given me my first hope that there is a way to find my freedom.”
“You overestimate my abilities,” Rick replied.
But she had stopped listening again. Her hand thrust out, propping her up, as the other clutched at her head. “Please…!” she cried.
Rick crouched down in front of her. “What does he want?”
But she did not hear him. Her eyelids were almost closed, the sliver of pupil beneath muddy with pain.
Rick took her face in his hands. “Hold on, Ilaria. Just hold on. There’s something I have to do, but I’ll be back.” He had no idea if she heard him or not. He flexed to his feet and grabbed his keys. As he shut the apartment door, he looked at her once more. She was sprawled on the tiles, just barely holding herself up. Her body began to shake as he looked back.
Rick shut the door and leaned his forehead against the frame. His head was pounding now – there was no mistaking the pain. It brought back all the fear and hatred that had been his life back then.
With a growl, he shoved himself away from the door and hurried to the elevator. Miring himself in a wash of self-pity wouldn’t help Ilaria.
If she could be helped.
* * * * *
Winter took a bowlful of the chili and a spoon through to the front office, where Sebastian was hunched over the innards of something digital, a soldering iron in one hand and solder in the other. There were widgets and gizmos spread all over the table next to his elbow. Dominic had gone for the day so Sebastian had the room to himself. There was a Mozart symphony playing softly in the background, and one of Sebastian’s favorite TV shows running on the monitor to his right, the volume just a little bit higher than Mozart’s “Jupiter.”
“I don’t know how you can split your attention three ways like that,” Winter confessed, putting the bowl on the table in front of him.
Sebastian straightened up with a grimace, pushing his hand against the small of his back. “I don’t, really. I focus on just one, but I switch between them a lot.” He glanced at the bowl. “What time is it?”
“Nearly seven. I ate an hour ago.” She nudged the bowl. “You must be hungry.”
“Starving!” Sebastian confessed, sounding surprised.
He reached for the bowl, and Winter grabbed his hand. “Wait,” she murmured, sliding her awareness into his body. She found the stressed and inflamed tendons and muscles in his back and soothed the irritation away. She converted the lactic acid into harmless chemicals and dispersed them.
“God, that’s good,” Sebastian murmured, with a muffled groan. “Better than massage. Your abilities have become awe-inspiring, my wonderful one.”
“Thank you.” She let his wrist go, so that he could pick up the bowl.
The front door opened and closed with a jarring thud and footsteps sounded on the tiles in the passageway. Sebastian lowered the bowl and raise a single brow.
Winter shook her head. She didn’t know who it was, either.
Cyneric strode into the room and stopped, three feet inside the door, taking them in. “I need help,” he said flatly.
Winter had never seen him looking so disheveled…and ill. His eyes were bloodshot, and his normally sleek hair was in disarray. It looked like he had been running his fingers through it. But the bloodshot eyes concerned Winter. Vampires normally had no blood or bodily fluids to spare to create swelling or bruises or other normal human reactions to injuries and irritations. “Are you…alright?” she asked.
“You look like you have the world’s best hangover,” Sebastian observed.
Cyneric swallowed, his jaw rippling. “I am fine,” he said flatly. “Where is Nial?”
“Behind you,” Nial said, stepping into the room. “I heard the front door close. What’s happening?”
Cyneric raked his fingers through his hair, impatiently shoving it out of the way. Then he pressed his fingertips against his temple. It was a quick, tiny movement, and Winter suspected he was not aware of the telling gesture. She moved toward him. “You’re in pain,” she said.
His gaze flickered toward her, then he focused on Nial. “I have Ilaria Scavo in my apartment. She’s Heru’s slave, Nathanial. His zelpha. She’s inscribed.”
Nial seemed to freeze. His motionlessness was his way of hiding his shock. Fear made Winter change directions. She stepped over to Nial’s side and took his hand, looking up at him.
“Gods above…” he breathed. “Insculpium. I thought that evil was long gone.”
“What is a zelpha and what is insculpium?” Sebastian demanded.
Winter could see and feel Nial’s horror and a growing anger. She looked to Cyneric. “What is this thing you’re talking about?”
“Slavery,” Nial said, his voice thick with loathing. “But vampires have stepped up the game compared to human slavery – and that was bad enough. It’s called Insculpium – Latin for ‘inscription’. The practice of insculpium died out centuries ago, or so I thought.”
“You thought the practice of keeping a narish was extinct, too,” Winter reminded him.
“Apparently, my confidence was based on wishful thinking,” Nial said, his tone infinitely bitter.
“If it uses Latin nomenclature, does that mean it goes back to Rome, Nial?” Sebastian asked. He moved around the table he had been working on, and sat on the edge, his arms crossed. Winter recognized the deceptively casual stance. Sebastian wanted to comfort Nial – he’d recognized his distress. But he wouldn’t do it in front of Cyneric, because he didn’t like him and only trusted him because Nial did.
“Back to Rome and further back than that. It was one of the original vampire customs,” Nial responded.
“Zelpha,” Winter said. “That’s Turkish, but I don’t remember what it means.”
“It means,” Cyneric replied, “that to be a zelpha is to suffer the most ignoble and pointless existence to which a sentient being could be subjected. You are made to do the most unspeakable acts, at the behest of your meden – your master. There is no relief. No sleep. No escape. Your meden knows exactly where you are at all times. Their mind and yours are linked, but it is a one-way link. You have no idea when your meden will choose to invade your mind.” His tone was scathing, filled with an emotion that Winter thought might be fury. He shifted on his feet as if his words were stirring up even more emotions that he wasn’t showing. And again, he touched his temple.
“Your meden can sense where you are, and he can feel what you’re feeling, when he wants to,” Rick continued. “If he doesn’t like what he thinks you’re doing, he can deliver pain. It is a pain you will never forget. It sears your mind like blistering steam and radiates out into your body along nerves you didn’t know you had. You will writhe with it. Rather than suffer that excruciating agony, you will do anything your meden demands of you. They will use you in every imaginable way and some you cannot imagine.” He drew in a breath, his gaze skittering around the room. “To be a zelpha is to lose your pride, your self-respect, your confidence and every value you hold dear. It is misery personified.”
Winter stared at him. The emotions rolled off Rick in waves. It was the first time she had ever seen him moved beyond mild frustration.
Again, he pressed the tips of his fingers against his temple. Hard. But that didn’t disguise the tiny tremor in his hand.
“I can help you,” Winter told him. She moved closer to him. “You’re in pain. I can help, if you’ll let me.”
His dark eyes skewered her. “It is not the pain I need your assistance with.”
“Whatever,” she said. She waved toward the door. “Let’s go into the lounge, where you can sit.”
“Very well.” Moving stiffly, he turned and left the room.
“Íosa agus Mhuire, máthair Dé!” Sebastian whispered almost before Rick was out of sight. “Did you see him? Did you see how angry he was?” He stood up from his lean on the table. “That’s a first. I didn’t think he had the capacity to feel anything.”
Nial’s smile was warm and reminiscent. “You thought that about Garrett, once, too.”
Winter looked through the empty doorway into the passage beyond. “What I’d like to know is where he got all that from, about what a slave experiences. If – what did you call it? Inscription?”
“Insculpium,” Nial replied. “It means the same thing.”
Winter nodded. “If it really did die out thousands of years ago, then how does Rick know about it?”
“The twenty thousand dollar question,” Nial said. He nodded toward the door. “Go and help him, coniunx. The answers will come eventually.”
Winter walked out of the office area and into the lounge, on the other side of the passage. Rick was sitting on the Ottoman, his elbows on his knees. He was massaging his temples and the area around them with stiff fingers, kneading hard, but dropped his hands and sat up as soon as she stepped into view.
“Headache?” Winter asked.
“I need you to help me provoke a memory,” he said.
“You need help to remember something? You?”
He scowled. “It is a memory I was more than happy to lose, but now I have need of it, and I cannot recall it fully.”
“And you need this memory to help Ilaria?”
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 17