Hearts Unleashed: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection

by C. D. Gorri

  Merda, she thought to herself, as the familiar tugging and pulling drew darkness over her eyes and swept her awareness away from the hard wood of the pew and the cold stone beneath her feet. She knew better than to fight the onslaught for fear of drawing attention to herself, and she gave herself up completely to the bleak horizon that rose up around her.

  October winds, strong and full of salt, drove a galleon hard on its keel into the churning, crashing waves. There was something off in her vision, though, for the winds seemed too steadily relentless to be entirely natural. The crew rushed about the deck and crawled along the rigging like frantic beetles, shaken but determined to hold on.

  It was strange to stand on this deck with the merciless wind ripping her hair from its pins and braids, surrounded by chaos and yet untouched and unregarded. She was not troubled by the fact she felt the physical sensations of her surroundings. That was a common enough occurrence in her visions. What caused her heart to pound was the sight of two people standing near the prow, as unmoved and unnoticed as herself.

  She crept closer, careful to hide herself behind the solid girth of one of the masts. Peering around it, she studied the two figures by the railing. One was a childishly petite woman with the palest golden hair, with perfectly rolled curls that bounced and danced uncaringly in the wind, even as the brilliant violet feathers in her velvet hat strained at the stitching. She wore a black lace veil that covered her face and wound an elegant trail around her neck. The veil alone probably cost six months' wages for Sophia, and she could freely admit she envied the rich fur trim on the woman's dark blue woolen cloak.

  The man was no less well attired, though he sported black from head-to-toe, from his faultless beaver tricorn hat to the full-length cape that snapped in the wind, revealing a dark suit with gold buttons and surprisingly worn boots. Whereas the woman's face was veiled, the man had no such disguise. He squinted against the wind, creating small, weathered creases at the corners of his eyes, and his full lips were set and hard. The sharp lines of his jaw and chin reflected just how hard he must have been clenching his jaw.

  He was obviously a powerful man, but just as obviously a dangerous one, too. It wasn't fair that he was also achingly handsome.

  "You are not happy," the woman said softly.

  "Am I ever?" the man replied.

  "You have moments of content."

  "True. But, it is a meager diet, and I starve for more."

  The woman said nothing, and for a few long moments, they both simply stood, looking out over the grey waves as if their line of sight alone could guide the ship to port.

  "We should be there soon," she said.

  "Oh, what joy is mine." The bitter sarcasm in the man's voice bit into Sophia's very skin.

  "Why are we going to Venice if it will not make you happy?"

  He shrugged, but the hand that rested on the pommel of his saber tightened convulsively.

  "You are irascible today." The woman gently prised his fingers from the handle.

  "That is a big word for my little moppet." A ghost of a smile played on his lips.

  "Brooding brutes require big words to get through their thick skulls," she retorted, tilting her face up at him.

  He smiled, and in that instant, his face was transformed. Years fell away, and light came into his eyes. It was a short-lived metamorphosis, though, as melancholia once more tugged his lips down and pulled his straight brows into a frown.

  "Come now," the woman teased softly. "You were almost there. I very nearly had you cheered up."

  "You are too good to me," the man replied sadly, shaking his head. "But, until I find what I seek, I can never truly be happy."

  "What if you never find it?"

  The wooden railing under his hand cracked and splintered with a deafening snap that Sophia heard above the roar of the waves. "I cannot accept that. I will not accept that. If I did, what purpose would I have? What would be the point of my existence? No, I shall follow my ill star until my promise is kept."

  The woman regarded him steadily, then nodded and walked away. Sophia lost her in the periphery of her vision, but she wasn't tempted to turn and follow the figure with her gaze. Everything she thought, saw, and felt was now centered around the man who now crushed the shattered railing with his bare hand.

  Power. Danger. Beauty.

  Three heady poisons now ran through her blood, and her breath caught in her throat. She tried to exhale slowly to calm herself but could only gasp once more as the man turned in her direction.

  And looked right at her.

  Was it possible to drown while standing on a ship above the waves in a vision that could not be real? Because that was the sensation that consumed her. There was no air, no light, no sound. There was only him, and his dark gaze that was locked onto hers. The man did not move as he looked at her, but his eyes grew wider and more wild with every passing second.

  She shrank back, wordless thoughts of fear and flight beating a terrified tattoo in the back of her mind. Yet, she was helpless against the way the shock on the man's face turned to recognition, then once more to something predatory that whispered dark promises in the dead of night. Shadows began to tease the edge of her vision, narrowing it as if she was falling backwards through a spyglass. The last thing she saw was the man run toward her, reaching for her, but he was far away now and growing farther by the moment until she saw nothing at all by the blackness that engulfed her.

  “Signorina!” yelled the man next to her. He grabbed her shoulders and gave her an earnest shake. “Signorina! So help me, I will slap the madness from you!”

  Drawn from her vision, Sophia gasped and looked up to the man standing before her. The priest stared at her in silent horror. No man, woman or child had even a whisper. She glanced around her before she met the gaze of the man once more. She swallowed and a different kind of fear swallowed her heart.

  “Release me, sir,” she insisted as she tried to pull herself free.

  He held onto her firmer. “There is a madness in you, woman! The devil speaks through you! You, sir!” he yelled out and pointed to someone behind her. “Help me remove her from the service before she inflicts the devil upon us all!”

  “What?” she wanted to laugh at the outburst. “No!” Sophia screamed and tried once more to pull away from the man. He pushed her forward and held both of her arms in his hands. As she reached the end of the pew, her feet stumbled one over the other and the other man joined her side and gave her a hard yank up. Each man grabbed a forearm, bracing her under the pits. Sophia thrashed in their embrace as they carried her out, backwards, from the sanctuary. “They are coming!” she screamed. “Be warned, they are coming!”

  “Saints preserve us,” gasped a woman with a long, crooked nose as she crossed herself. “The child sees devils and speaks with their tongues.”

  Sophia knew this woman by sight from the mass they attended together and from sometimes crossing paths in the campo. She had nicknamed the woman Signora Long Nose, a habit from the first days and weeks when she was new to Venice and struggled with the language and bubbly, bobbling names.

  “She is from the mountains to the east,” said Signora Bad Wig. “They are not so civilized there, those Slavs. They live in huts with dirt floors and rut like pigs in shit. I am shocked that she comes to mass. Her kind are more likely to sacrifice a goat than partake of Holy Communion.”

  Signora Bad Wig’s words inspired a chorus of whispers and tittering. The priest, whom Sophia liked to call Father Potbelly, joined the group as they reached the entrance of the church. He signaled for the two men to release her, and Sophia couldn’t hold back her sigh of relief as feeling rushed back into her arms. She eyed the priest warily as he reached out to touch her.

  “Child,” he said gently, resting his hand on her shoulder. “I mean you no harm. But you are young and vulnerable, the very kind of soul that Satan longs to fill with demons and filth. You must pray, pray for the salvation of your immortal soul and the releas
e of your body from the evil that seeks to possess you.”

  Without warning, his grip on her shoulder grew tight and painful as he recited prayer after prayer in Latin. The two men took hold of her arms to keep her from fleeing as the priest became more impassioned in his prayers, grabbing fistfuls of her hair and yanking her head back.

  “Release me,” she insisted. “Release me this instant!” She screamed and thrashed in the grasp of the two men.

  The priest concluded his prayers, calmer now, but gazing at her sorrowfully. “Evil has taken root in the soul of this little one, but there is no possession yet.” He sighed. “It is only a matter of time, though, before the devil claims her for his own.”

  “I am neither evil nor possessed by the devil!” she yelled back to him, the men holding her, and the watching crowd.

  The men grumbled something incoherent. They pulled on her again and a loud bang erupted that resulted in the door of the church being kicked open. The people in the sanctuary crowded the doors, muttering amongst themselves.

  Unceremoniously tossed from the steps, Sophia landed abruptly on her backside, the roughness of the ground scraping her back and bottom, as well as the palms of her hands. She would be bruised later. The men stared down at her, shaking their heads and dusting their hands off. One of them closed the doors, closing her out of the church. She stood and dusted herself off, holding her chin high. A few passersby stopped and stared at her. She glanced at them, then back to the church.

  “Your lot would not know if the devil were sitting upon your face!” She turned and left the edge of the church with a slight limp in her step. She fumed and growled as she shook her head.

  “Are you well, madam?” called someone to her left. She glanced over and found a few men and women standing with their carts for the late-morning post-church crowd. She looked them over and without a nod or answer, she looked away and continued home.

  She glanced down at one of her gloved wrists and scowled at the ripped lace fabric. The cream lace now tainted with dirt and her own blood, she yanked it off and shoved the garment in a pocket in her skirt, pulling her cloak closer around her. She crossed over a few bridges and turned down an alleyway; the corridor typically not a place to huddle in the evening. She worked at a tavern not far from the Rialto and arrived home in the early hours of the morning. Once she reached home, the tiny living area provided her a roof over her head, and somewhere to keep dry and warm. She’d hoped for more in a living space, but for now, this fit her wages.

  She pushed her way through her home and closed the door, then leaned upon it, closing her eyes. The morning’s events continued to unfold, over and over.

  The ship.

  The man.

  The strangling.

  Her screaming.

  The church fools throwing her out.

  She opened her eyes and sighed, then sat her belongings down and made her way for the wash basin. She pulled out a few salves to clean up her hands and hoped her skirts had not torn during the toss-out.

  “Just as well,” she told herself.

  Once she applied the salve and placed a bandage around her palm and wrist, she made her way to her room to clean up herself and her clothing.

  “Gavin should hear of this, and when he does, he will not be happy.” Gavin Girard, her most trusted friend in the city. She thought about how he might react to what had occurred at the church and her vision. He was one of few who appreciated her gifts.

  She loosened the cords of her corset and pushed the busk enclosures together, then removed it. She twisted her skirts around and found the fabric had indeed ripped in a few places, as well as been stained with dirt.

  She growled and forcefully removed the skirts and threw them on the floor. Tears burned her eyes and she covered her face with her hands. After a moment, she shook her head and palmed the tears away. She inhaled and held the breath for a moment, then let it go.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” she muttered, and marched over to her small, battered trunk. Pulling out her needle and thread, she sewed closed the rips made in the fabric of her skirts.

  She’d mended enough lace in her time to know just where to sew to cover the abrasion. She wiped off the evidence of debris and nodded to her work. She did the same to her lace gloves and dressed herself once more.

  She smoothed down her hair, having no idea if it had become disheveled during the altercation. A mirror was an unheard-of luxury, and without the correct angle of light to make the window reflective, she had no way to check herself. Wetting a cloth, she cleaned up her face, and then set forth to find Gavin.

  She would explain the vision using her old, leather bag holding her scry bones to figure out who these strangers were and if the threat of evil fell upon them.

  And why the man in the vision could not only see her, but touch her as well.

  Chapter Two

  Twilight fell over Campo St. Benedetto, and Sophia pulled her cloak tighter around her body as she raced through people walking between bridges. She felt a shiver from the cool air and the fright from church clung to her. These days, people seized on any excuse to find blame. Their anger and fear ran close to the surface. Only two months prior, a small epidemic of cholera had swept through the city, leaving the usual deadly and degrading devastation in its wake. Rumors of restless imperial Hapsburg regiments to the north did nothing to help the general nervousness that clung to the town like a grey miasma.

  She took herself from a brisk walk to a jog as she raced across the city from Cannaregio to the Arsenale, where Gavin lived. She needed to speak with him about her vision, about the possibility of this evil making landfall upon their domain. When she finally arrived, she banged her fist four times against the door and leaned into it, breathless and terrified.

  The building looked like any other worn, stone edifice in the city―unless one looked closer. Heavy shutters sat forbiddingly over the upper-level windows, and there were no windows at all at street level. The door was a single piece of solid oak. Over the lintel hung a small bronze dragon bearing the initials ‘S.M.’ Sophia was one of the few who knew that this stood for Saint Marcellus of Paris, who had slain a dragon as one of his many miracles.

  There was a reason the building bearing the dragon of St. Marcellus was so fortified. St. Marcellus was also the patron of vampire Hunters, and the order of Hunters that had grown up around him needed places of secrecy and security from which to operate.

  The interior of the safe house was spare, with solid but simple tables and benches, and a large hearth that took up a large part of one of the walls. The Hunter who had opened the door waved her inside, and she heard the rattle of lock and chain behind her. A few Hunters sat huddled around the table closest to the fire, nursing tankards of hot wine mixed with honey.

  “Where’s Gavin?” Sophia called out as she stepped further inside.

  Heavy footfalls echoed through the tavern from someone running. The bass pounded the wooden floor and a tall, young, good-looking man with dark, spiky hair cropped short entered the room; Gavin Girard. His auburn eyes widened as he stared into her own. The clothes clung to his thick body and a sweat patch formed on his chest.

  “What has happened, Sophia?”

  She cut him off before he finished his sentence. “No, come closer.” She waved him over. Sophia glanced around the room and found the men watching her. She cleared her throat as he stepped closer. He placed his palms upon her biceps and leaned into her.

  “Are you alright?”

  She nodded, then shook her head no. “I had a vision, Gavin. Something of a fright!” She recounted what she saw; the men with the crates, the premonition of evil that came with their presence. She thought about the man in her vision, and looked at Gavin. As she opened her mouth to speak of it, she changed her mind. “What am I to make of this? Are they bringing a plague?” A chill visibly shivered through her body.

  “Shh,” Gavin told her and pulled her into his embrace. He hugged her close and rested his che
ek upon her head. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” He paused for a moment. “When will they arrive?”

  She pulled away from him and dusted down her top as if to dust off debris. “What would your ladies of the evening say, Gavin, if they were to catch you this way with me? Hmm?” She held her chin up and lifted a brow. “Day after tomorrow.” She took another step back, putting space between them. Gavin had made known his intention to court her, but Sophia never returned his feelings; she felt nothing other than friendship. That didn’t stop him from flirting outrageously with other women, but she knew his heart would always be faithful to her.

  She lowered her gaze. She teased Gavin to no end about his dalliances. He presented himself as the worst kind of rake and rogue, and more often than not, never cared what anyone thought.

  One of the older Hunters in the room chuckled. Gavin glared at the man, then looked back to Sophia. He nodded and crossed his thick arms over his broad chest. “Right, then. We’ll meet our newcomers head-on, with Hunters ready to fight, if necessary.”

  She wondered, if she were ever deemed a menace, if the Hunters would be as quick to defend her as they were to protect the people of Venice. They were happy enough to use her ‘gifts’ to their advantage, but it wasn’t so long ago that her kind were beaten and burned in mountain villages and city squares.

  Barely fifty years had passed since the last witches in her village had been accused in the heat of anger, tried in the crucible of ecclesiastical fear, and executed in haste. Some children were told stories of imps and goblins to get them to behave, but all Sophia could remember were the whispered warnings of her grandmother against letting her gifts be known.

  At first, Venice had seemed too sophisticated and forward-thinking to be prey to such foolish fanaticism, but after today’s events in the church, there was little doubt the people of Campo St. Benedetto thought her insane, or one of the devil’s children, if not both.

  Gavin took her by the elbow and pulled her toward one of the candlelit corners. He pulled a seat out for her, then sat next to her. “Tell me more about this vision of yours.”