by Michele Hauf
“Remarkable,” Nicolo said. “I have never seen the like.”
“Where did you put it?” Summer asked the witch.
He didn’t answer, only walked quickly down an aisle of items set upon steel blocks about waist high. Contained under glass, each had a digital keypad at the fore of the block.
“This time I bespelled it and fixed a warding lock on it before putting it in storage,” CJ called back. “Ah hell.”
He stopped before a glass case about the size that could easily contain a violin. Hands pressed to the glass, he then beat the clear surface with a fist. Summer arrived at his side. Inside lay a pile of black dust. Sulfur teased at her nostrils.
“The spell worked,” she whispered in awe. “It really worked. And yet...achoo!”
They met one another’s stares. CJ swallowed audibly. “What the hell?”
“I don’t know.” She felt another sneeze tickle her nose, but winced to suppress it. She looked at Nicolo and he shrugged, giving her an “it wasn’t me” look.
“You two should probably get moving if you had any idea to make a great escape,” CJ said. “You know Pierce will track you.”
Yes, with the tracking chip all Retrievers wore. It was designed as a means to locate them if rescue was necessary.
“Thanks, CJ. Just give us five minutes before you call the director.”
“I’ll give you as long as it takes me to return to my desk and pick up the phone.”
“Let’s go.” She pushed Nicolo ahead of her, and he raced back toward the main office. But as they arrived, she didn’t expect to find another visitor. “Achoo!”
Nicolo gasped. And standing before them, in all his demonic glory, was the devil Himself. And he held the black violin.
Chapter 19
The devil Himself turned his great horned head toward Summer. His eyes glowed red. Long fangs jutted from the upper corners of his leathery black mouth. Horns glinted as if hematite sheened by the oil lamp nearby. He shook his head at her. “I don’t like you, vampire.” His voice was sepulchral and icy. To Nicolo he asked, “Why is she here?”
“She raised me from the dead by finding the black violin.”
As he shook his head Himself’s horns swept the air, and Summer could almost see the cut marks in the atmosphere.
“What’s he doing here?” she demanded loudly. So she was panicking. And another sneeze was necessary. “Did you call him here, Nicolo?”
“I did nothing of the sort!”
“Take a care for greeting the old man, will you?” Himself said. He appeared in his natural guise before the two of them, black musculature, hooves, talons at his fingers, and those massive, deadly horns. His red eyes narrowed as he spoke. “I felt the disturbance in the universe when the violin was played a few days ago.”
“It wasn’t played,” Summer insisted. “The bow accidentally slid across a few strings.”
“If that is what you wish to believe,” Himself said cryptically. “I knew the violin’s voice would bring you back to this realm, my son. The bargain still stands. Won’t you finally accept your legacy and play?”
“Never,” Nicolo spat.
Behind her, Summer sensed CJ striding toward the office. His voice echoed down the hallway when he must have sighted them standing before their wicked guest. “Ah fuck.”
“This does not involve you, dark witch.” Himself gestured with one long black leathery finger. CJ was shoved out of the doorway threshold and into the hallway. The door slammed behind him.
Summer had not ever seen Himself in the flesh—that she could remember. She’d been a baby when he had kidnapped her to use against her brother, Johnny. He must be over seven feet tall. The horns gave him another two or three feet. His skin was leathery and muscled. A little Incredible Hulk-ish, but sleeker and black. At the ends of his fingers grew long ebony claws. He wore leather pants, and his feet were hooves.
His red eyes with snake-like pupils took her in. “So we meet again, Summer Rosanne Santiago.”
That he knew her middle name made her sick to her stomach. So much magic could be worked against a person with their full name. Not that she had any protection against diabolic magic one way or the other. It just made her shiver to know he knew things that others did not.
“I’d say it was a pleasure,” she offered, “but I’ve never been a good liar. Achoo!”
Himself sneered at her bombastic reaction to him. She didn’t know if it was the sulfur or just his overall horribleness. Whatever it was, it tickled her nose.
“Let her leave,” Nicolo said. “She is not involved in this.”
“I am,” Summer defended.
“Yes, you should go.” Himself gestured toward the door, but Summer stepped up beside Nicolo.
“I’m not leaving. And you’re not going to take his soul.”
Himself chuckled. A deep, rumbling tone that she felt stir in her gut. “Why would I want something my son does not have? And you know he is soulless, don’t you, Soul Piercer?”
“Soul P-piercer?” She’d never heard her condition named like that. But as she repeated the moniker in her head, it felt real and...she owned it.
“You pierce souls and give madness,” Himself said. “All while feeling guilty for it. Pitiful. You are of no importance to me. I have come for my son. I want to endow him with those gifts with which he should have been born.”
Nicolo stepped up to Himself. Even with his height he had to crane back his head to meet his father in the eye. “You have no right to direct my life merely because you bear some small part in my conception. Takes less than a moment to get a woman with child. But it takes a lifetime to be a father.”
“You are an insolent.” Himself tilted his chin up.
Nicolo’s body flung backward. His shoulders hit Summer’s chest and she was pushed back, but they didn’t collapse to the floor. Together they managed to stand upright. Keeping her behind him, Nicolo held one hand back to touch her arm, and the other out before him. He splayed out his fingers in an intentional move.
The movement didn’t even disturb Himself, though the dark lord did smirk. “So you’ve some magic. Excellent. Your rebirth infused you with that gift, and you came into it with your rising. But it’s just a taste of all that you can become. Take what is yours, Nicolo.”
“And why would I want to become demon, such as you? To wield such power as to harm others, to maim and destroy them? I am a musician. My talent was natural. I can survive just fine with those skills.”
Himself shook his head. “You honestly believe that was a natural talent?”
“It was not from you! I practiced. Daily. Every day. Often for ten hours in one day. I practiced until my bloody fingers formed calluses and I could play a complicated composition on but one string!”
“My doing.”
“No!” Nicolo protested. “Never. If I did not accept what you had offered why would you give me a gift unknowing?”
Himself had no answer for that one.
“Mine.” Nicolo beat his chest with a fist. “All I have had was because of natural skill and determination. Nothing from you! Never!”
Himself pointed at Summer.
Nicolo stepped before her protectively. “You will not harm her. She is...” He swallowed, perhaps stopping himself from saying things he did not want to reveal to the opposition.
“I see.” Himself nodded. His wicked gaze dripped over Summer, and she shivered and clutched Nicolo’s shirt from the back. “I misjudged the timing. Perhaps you need a little more time before you can be properly compelled to your legacy. But you know, Soul Piercer, the more blood you take from a soulless being the quicker madness will befall you. Such a delicious pairing. And now a dilemma.” The devil actually affected a pout. “We will meet again. I promise you that. Good day to
you, my son.”
Once there, filling the air with his monstrous form, the next moment, Himself shimmered to but a flicker of light. A tiny spark ignited in the air then lit out. The sulfur left the room and the air even seemed to lighten.
“Are you all right?” Nicolo turned to face Summer. He looked her over, touched her cheek and brushed the hair from her face. Worry teared his eyes.
“Yes, I’m fine. But what about you?”
“I’m okay, as you say.” He kissed her, then kissed her forehead and held his mouth there. Holding her. Making contact. “Can we get out of here?”
“Yes, definitely. But Nicolo...”
“What?”
“He called me Soul Piercer. It’s true. Will I...” If she drank more from Nicolo would she be the one to turn mad?
“Lies,” Nicolo said. “Now we must leave.”
They found CJ standing outside the door, arms crossed and a grim look on his face. He didn’t say anything until Summer remembered she had made a deal with him that he wouldn’t call the director on her until he returned to the office.
“We’re leaving right now,” she reassured him. “Don’t call Pierce yet!”
* * *
Keeping her eyes peeled for Himself as she navigated the city in the car, Summer didn’t expect to see the horned Dark Lord out in the middle of a tourist crush. But she wasn’t thinking rationally, and her heartbeats still thundered from their encounter in the Archives. That had been a close call. Twice now she’d been in that bastard’s presence.
She did not want a third time to ever occur. Had she initially thought this retrieval mission would be easy-peasy? Mercy.
“Let’s go to Italy,” Nicolo said as she turned and drove down the street toward her home. “I crave to walk the earth of my home country. And we do need to get out of the city, away from your Acquisitions.”
“Sounds like a plan. We’ll hop on a train tonight and spend a few days crossing France and into Italy. Maybe it’ll put Himself off your scent, too.”
Nicolo offered her a doubtful glance.
She shrugged. “You never know.”
“I have noticed you are an optimist, Summer.”
“I live in a world where my kind have to walk in the shadows and not reveal themselves to anyone for fear of persecution or even getting slayed. I’m a minority, and we tend to carry a heavy burden merely by existing. So what else is there to do but try to see the bright side in things?”
“Will your director sack you?”
“I hope not. I really need this job.”
“Why so? Are you financially challenged? Summer, if it is difficult for you to afford my staying with you—”
“No, it’s not that. I’m well-off thanks to my parents’ setting up an account for me when I was a baby. The Santiagos are rich. We don’t have to work. But if I don’t have a purpose then what is there to do? Most vampires just...do the vampire thing. I don’t know how they can handle not having a job or hobby or something that gives them a feeling of purpose and accomplishment.”
“I understand. A purpose is important to a man’s sanity.”
“Right. I need the Retriever job because it does that for me. And I do my job well.” She sighed. “When I’m not screwing it up by hoarding a dead man away from the Big Guy.”
“If you had not found the violin I would not have been given this second chance. I know that we all should only have the one life to live. But what has happened must have happened for a reason.”
“Everything happens for a reason. I believe that. So you here, in my life? It was meant to be.”
“Destiny?”
“For sure. I like the idea of the train ride. We’ll get a sleeper car.”
“We don’t sleep.”
“We don’t, but we do other things in a bed.” She winked.
“Can we bring along the electric violin? I want to practice.”
“Uh, sure. I’ll give Domingos a call and make sure he’s cool with it. He owns other violins. I know his girlfriend, Lark, is a violinist as well.”
She pulled into the garage and clicked the door button to close it behind them. Getting out of the car, she grabbed her cell phone. “I’m going to find us some train tickets. You hungry?”
“Terribly. After you’ve told your witchbox where we wish to travel, can you tell it to bring us some food?”
“I can order in or you can run out and look for something on your own. Try out the GPS on your witchbox.”
“I can do that. You get us tickets for the train. Might I borrow your plastic card as well?”
She pointed to her wallet on the counter. “Just slash and sign. You can sign my name. They won’t look.”
He kissed her. “I admire you, Brightness. You stood strong before Himself.”
“Maybe I’m too stupid for my own good. I need to know more about the soul-piercer thing. I’m going to call Verity after I get us tickets.” She kissed him. “Bring back pizza.”
Chapter 20
Summer was able to purchase train tickets, take a shower and fix the pickup in the violet violin by the time Nicolo returned with reasonably warm mozzarella-and-basil pizza. A half a slice was more than enough for her. They ate without mention of their encounter with Himself earlier. Yet that elephant had joined the other elephant, and while they weren’t necessarily walking around it anymore, they both knew if they poked it with a stick, it would rage at them.
Verity called to confirm that Soul Piercer made sense in Summer’s case. It was not necessarily a vampire, but could be almost any sort of paranormal who had the ability to pierce a living soul and alter it within the body. For good or for ill.
That news should have devastated her, but oddly, Summer felt relief in finally having a label for her strange condition. But that didn’t mean she had to embrace it. Still she must remain cautious when taking blood from humans.
Verity did mention that a Soul Piercer’s bite would do no harm to the soulless. And she reiterated that Summer believed Nicolo was a safe bite for her.
Safe, but at what risk to herself? Himself had said she would go mad by drinking from the soulless. She didn’t want to think about it.
An hour after the empty pizza box had been trashed, they boarded a night train to Milan. Summer lay on the down-filled duvet, listening as Nicolo experimented with some harmonics and pizzicato on Domingos’s electric violin. It had an adjustment to play acoustic, so it didn’t matter that she’d fixed the crackle. A few notes here. A bowed scale there. A jumpy allegretto run, and then a smooth and lingering dance between two strings.
Genius creating. She could listen to him constantly. How lucky was she?
“You’ll need a new name,” she said.
Without stopping bowing, Nicolo said, “I know. But I am attached to the one I currently have.”
“You can still be Nicolo. Maybe just the one name? Single-named entertainers have always been popular. There’s Beyoncé and Cher, and Madonna and Usher.”
“I could live with that. And for my identification papers?” Violin between his chin and shoulder, he adjusted the tuning on the E string.
“You could take any last name that interests you.”
“I’ll think on it. Nicolo and Summer, touring the world.”
“And Summer? I don’t think so. I mean, I’d be thrilled to play with you, but I am not on your level by any means.”
“I can match my playing style to yours.”
The man could make a dig about her lacking talent sound so sweet. “That’s okay. I feel the stage isn’t big enough for anyone but you.”
“I have not so much an ego.”
“I think you do.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps.” Then he lilted into a delightful scale that combined bowing and pizzicato
. Abruptly, he set the violin on his lap. “I should like to play with your brother’s troop on stage.”
“It’s called a band. And really? Hmm...”
“Yes, but I’d like to give the electric guitar a try. I know their songs.”
Of course he did. He had the ability to recall the complete song after only one listen.
Summer put up her feet on the wall at the head of the narrow train bed. She’d gotten a single sleeper, knowing that the double sleepers had bunk beds. And she wasn’t about to sleep alone—or sleep, for that matter. She smoothed a hand across her stomach, beneath the T-shirt, and sighed.
Nicolo tapped her thigh with the bow. “I want to play you.”
He moved onto the bed beside her and glided the tip of the bow along her hip and up to lift her shirt. He was careful not to run the actual bow hairs over her skin. They would be rough with rosin. Summer lifted her hips as he pushed up her shirt higher to reveal her breasts, and then he flipped the bow so the glossy wood back of it slid over her skin and just under her breast. The sensation of the sleek wood touching her skin heightened her desire. Not that it needed heightening. She was horny, no denying it.
The surprise of his tongue to her skin just below her naval made her shudder and grip the duvet. “Yes,” she moaned, wanting him to reply to that sentence with a long and lingering answer that needed no words.
He unzipped her jeans and tugged them down. But before following the denim downward, he glided up to nudge her shirt up as he kissed the underside of her breast. His tongue lashed just a breath away from her nipple. He straddled her with his knees, the brush of his leather pants against her mons luring her hips upward to seek the friction, but too quickly he moved.
Summer closed her eyes and focused on the heat trail of his tongue as it tasted her skin and twirled curves and ended here and there with kisses that seemed to read an imprint of her very pores upon his mouth. He moved lower, yet just when she thought he would kiss her apex and wet her clitoris with his mouth, he instead moved to the side. His nose softly coasted over her. Kisses there and then there gave her giddy shivers.