by C. D. Gorri
He held out his hand to her. “Come to me. I will not bite.”
She wanted to laugh at his remark, but decided her response was best kept secret. She approached the bed but stopped out of his reach. “How did you find me? Well, my home?”
He smirked once more. “It is not hard to find what I want. I get what I want, my love. Have you not realized that?” He motioned his hand to her again. “Now, come to me before I take what I want.”
She raised her brow. “You would not dare.”
Before she could track his speed, Dorian grabbed her and yanked her down onto the bed. He moved her underneath him and pinned her wrists to the bed.
She gasped and wiggled underneath him. “No! Release me this instant!”
“Or what?” he asked with a smile. “Scream for help?” He leaned in and grazed his nose across her cheek and inhaled. “You do not want anyone to free you from me, do you?” She met his gaze once more and she tried to pry herself free again.
“Let me go.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You have been looking for me, have you not?”
“What?” she asked and held his gaze. “No. Yes,” she growled and pulled at her arms. “What does it matter if I’ve been searching for you?”
“So you were, then? Excellent.” He leaned in and kissed her on the lips.
“No!” she said and bit his lower lip.
He let a soft laugh escape and stared into her eyes. He licked his lower lip and Sophia stared at his tongue as he swiped across the cut. She shifted her gaze back to his eyes once more. “What do you want of me?”
He smiled. “I want you to remember me. I need you to. I need you, my love. I need you back by my side.” He kissed her cheek, then her jaw, and made his way to her neck. “I have searched centuries for you.” He kissed along her neckline to her collarbone, then over the mound of her breasts.
Dorian released her wrists and cupped her breasts with one hand, grasping her chin with the other. “I have found you after all of my searching, endless battles, I have found you, my love.” He kissed her and swiped his tongue over her lips.
She sighed into his mouth and wrapped her fingers around his arms. She kissed him back and opened her mouth for him. His tongue massaged hers and she moaned softly. She lifted one of her legs and wrapped it around his, bringing him closer to her. Dorian pressed himself against her, then moved his hips. The friction of his erection pressed against her and her vision of them flickered through her mind.
His hand moved to her throat and the contact with his skin felt remarkably cool. The other night, in the mask shop, he had been forceful with her, almost in a painful sort of way. However, here, in her room, he seemed oddly careful with her.
She wanted more of him, more of this. She moved tentative fingers to his chest and she began to unbutton his shirt. He kissed her neck and moved his free arm to her outer leg, pulling the skirts up. His chilled hand grasped the bare skin of her leg and pushed it up toward her chest. He leaned into her and moved his hips back and forth, as if they were making love.
She moaned softly and ran her hands under his shirt, feeling the coolness of his chest. His tongue dragged from the crest between her breasts to her ear. He nibbled on her and his breathing sent a shiver through her body in the most delectable way.
Suddenly, the door banged open behind them. Sophia screamed and looked past Dorian’s shoulder and found her landlady standing there.
“I knew you were nothing but a whore,” the woman screamed. “You will leave my premises immediately and not return.”
As quickly as he’d grabbed her earlier, Dorian jerked off the bed and faced the landlady. The woman’s face drained of blood, went white with terror.
Looking at the back of his head, Sophia sat up and furrowed her brows. What had Dorian done that put the fear of God in the woman?
The landlady began to scream incoherently and ran from the room. Dorian quickly followed her out the door. A loud knock sounded from the hallway, then silence.
Sophia ran out the door and found the woman on the ground, bleeding and blood on the wall next to her. Dorian had disappeared. She looked to her left, then her right, then back to the woman. She bent down and pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck, then shook her head. No pulse. Fear tightened in her chest and Sophia stood. She ran back to her room and grabbed a blanket. She tossed in the few items she owned, wrapped up the blanket, then ran from the room.
As she ran toward the headquarters for the Hunters, she barely registered the Signoras Long Nose and Bad Wig and Father Potbelly, staring at her. She was in desperate need to find Gavin, now, or at least take shelter in their stronghold.
As she crossed the bridge toward the Arsenale, thoughts of Dorian, the way he held her, kissed her, insisted she remember him. It was too much. The den was ahead and she ran harder, until a figure stepped out in her path. The woman from her vision, the pale woman, held her arms out and grabbed Sophia mid-stride, stopping her. The impact happened with such force, Sophia merely glanced at the face of the woman before blackness claimed her.
Chapter Sixteen
The mortal girl’s impact was the equivalent of being beaten with a feather.
Mila easily caught her, slipping her arm around the girl’s waist and propping her up to look like she stood upright. Angling her own body to hide the stunned woman’s semi-conscious expression, Mila proceeded to grab and uncap the filigreed vinaigrette bottle than hung from the chatelaine on her belt. She waved it under the girl’s nose, and as expected, the sour, abrasive smell jerked her fully back to wakefulness.
The girl’s eyes went wide at the sight of her, and oddly enough, Mila thought she saw a flash of recognition. It wasn’t possible, though. She knew that she had been hidden from the girl’s sight at all times, even when she had tracked Dorian through the streets back to the miserable flat in the wretched building the girl inhabited.
“Who are you?” The girl’s voice was raspy from fear, but the edge was softened by confusion.
“Who are you?” Mila asked calmly, her perfect mask of cool neutrality firmly in place.
“I’ve seen you before.”
“That is not possible.”
The girl let out a grating laugh. “Oh, all of you fools with what you believe is possible and impossible!”
“I believe a great many impossible things are more than possible, that they are, in fact, true,” Mila said mildly. “However, that is neither here nor there. What is your name?”
“You first!” the girl spat. She was a pretty thing for a mortal, with all that richly curling dark hair and eyes that flashed with anger. Still, Dorian had dined on greater beauties with impeccable charm and fine spirit, and all without running the kind of stupid risks that landed the coven in the kind of trouble it now was in.
“I am Mila,” she said with a shrug. It was a little enough thing to give this girl the first hit in the sparring match. It was a game she would not, could not win.
After a moment of staring at Mila as if to try to read some kind of motive or emotion behind the mask, the girl sighed and sagged slightly. “Sophia Marivic.”
Mila nodded noncommittally, though she noted that the last name was not traditionally Venetian.
“Will you walk with me, Signorina Marivic?” she asked coolly.
“Do I have a choice?” Sophia retorted.
“It’s not a question of having choices. It’s whether you are willing to accept the consequences of the choice you make.”
“What am I supposed to take from those words? I have no time for riddles.”
Mila glanced at the early setting sun of the fall afternoon. It would be dark soon. Time for the hunt. “No,” she agreed. “You do not have time for riddles. Walk with me.”
Without looking to see if Sophia followed, Mila set off in the direction she hoped was the right one. She could still see Fanti’s map of Venice quite clearly in her mind’s eye, but translating the flatness of a drawing into walls, corners, stre
ets, and squares had never been her strength. The sound of worn leather slippers scuffing against the stones behind her alerted her to Sophia’s compliance.
After walking a minute or two in silence, Mila said, “I am a friend of Dorian’s.”
Sophia stopped, and Mila turned to face her. The girl looked pained and pale. It was difficult to keep from rolling her eyes at the obviously lovelorn expression on the mortal. How many times had she seen that on some lady longing for Dorian?
But how many times had she seen that expression on Dorian’s face? Only once. Only here. Only with her.
“You needn’t worry,” Mila said evenly. “I assure you that I am his friend. I suppose you could say that I am his…ward. That is the term you use when someone very young is given into the care of another? Yes?”
Sophia nodded, curiosity and suspicion written in painful clarity on her face. Really, the girl must have been quite lacking in self-preservation if she couldn’t contain her emotions.
“Then, if you accept I am Dorian’s friend, I beg you to heed my warning that you are both in danger.” Mila gentled her voice a little to cajole acceptance from Sophia.
“What kind of danger?”
A ghost of a smile played about Mila’s lips as she answered, “Hmmm, I cannot tell you. But I wonder if you shall prove recklessly headstrong and demand an answer, or whether you shall be sensible and know that it is safer for you not to know?”
“It’s not reckless to want to know the kind of danger I face!”
“It’s foolish to ask for answers that can be taken from you and used against the ones you love,” Mila snapped, putting the full force of her anger at this deadly tangle into her voice.
Sophia flinched, but continued to face her, tall and proud. “I can protect myself. I have done it all my life. I do not see why I need your help!”
Mila’s temper burned like the Bura wind that froze the vast steppes of Russia in winter. “Gamble with your life all you like. But are you so heartless that you’d consign Dorian to the peril that faces him because of you, or dismiss the danger to my own life because I warn you and am trying to save you both?”
Sophia looked stricken, then took several deep breaths to calm herself. She squared her shoulders and nodded. “What must I do?”
“Follow me,” Mila said, hiding her relief and resuming their walk. “I am taking you somewhere safe.”
“I have a safe place to go already.”
“With Signor Girard?” She laughed deliberately. “Ah, you are surprised that I know of him? Perhaps that will convince you that there are those who know enough about you to set whatever trap they please, and you would never see it coming.”
“How do you know of Gavin?”
The intimate, affectionate way the girl said his name irked her. She swallowed her unreasonable resentment and shrugged. “I am young, quiet, and easily discounted. People forget about me and tend to speak freely. It costs me little to listen, and even less to say nothing about it.”
“Is it…is it Dorian’s family who are the threat to us?” Sophia asked quietly.
“Aristocrats have no family, only relative degrees of enmity and advantage.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, for their coven ‘family’ were all aristocrats except for herself, and everyone always sought leverage. “And, do not think that I did not notice you trying to wheedle information from me, signorina. I do not tell you for your own good. If you are caught, you could be tortured for what they think you know. It only takes a little torture to prove that you truly know nothing. If you did have something of value to share, you would feel obliged to resist, and the more you resisted, the worse they would torment you. Now do you understand?”
Sophia nodded.
“We are almost there, so, take heart. You shall be safe soon.” Mila checked the streets and landmarks to verify the direction they were headed in. “I will even try to bring Dorian to you tonight.”
“You will? I will see my Dorian?” The sudden sparkle in the girl’s eyes and the hopeful lilt of her voice made Mila sick at heart. This insipid creature was what Dorian had dropped everything and everyone for? He had seen her and run after her without a second thought, leaving three hundred years of loyalty and devotion by the wayside. She would never begrudge Dorian true love, but did she not have the right to feel frightened and alone when he abandoned her?
“I said I will try,” Mila said coldly. “I offer no guarantees, and even if I can, it may be very late when I bring him.”
Sophia nodded eagerly, smiling gratefully at her. It was a smile that Mila had no interest in returning. Soon, they entered a quiet street and stopped in front of an imposing set of oak doors set into a wall that closed off a courtyard. Mila plied the heavy brass knocker four times. Within moments, a footman liveried in subtle greys and silver opened the gates to them.
“I am come at the behest of Benedetto,” she said, as Fanti had instructed her to do, leaning in to whisper his Christian name in her ear, a name that only a handful of people in the world knew.
“Enter, signora,” the footman replied, bowing them in. “All is in readiness.”
“Who is ‘Benedetto’?” Sophia whispered. Mila shot her a quelling glance.
The entry courtyard was small but clean and pretty in a nondescript fashion, much like the servant’s livery, and the façade of the building itself. Inside, there was an obvious air of luxury, with rare marble, gilt frames, crystal, and tapestries that must have been almost as old as Fanti himself.
“Who lives here?” Sophia wondered breathlessly.
“You do,” Mila said. “At least for tonight.” The girl looked gob-smacked at the announcement, and Mila once more fought the urge to roll her eyes. “This is a…safe house. Certain travelers sometimes require anonymity along their journey, and for those who can afford it, places such as these exist to serve them. Every amenity is available here, and you are welcome to enjoy them all.”
The footman led them up several flights of stairs until they reached a corridor that Mila assumed contained the guest chambers. He unlocked the last door on the right, murmured that he would send a maid to attend them, bowed and left.
Mila ignored the splendor of the room. She had seen its ilk a hundred thousand times over. What she needed now was to impress a few last things on the girl.
“It’s beautiful!” Sophia exclaimed.
“I am leaving.” That got the girl’s attention, and she stared at the vampire with wide eyes. “As I said, if I can bring Dorian, it will be late. You had best get some rest now while you can. I will return tomorrow, hopefully with more information and a plan for what to do next. In the meantime, there are two rules you must follow. If you break them, I cannot be responsible for your safety or that of Dorian’s.”
Sophia’s expression turned solemn but nervous.
“You must not try to send word to anyone, not your landlady, not your priest, not family, not friends, and especially not Gavin Girard. To do so would only add him to the list of those in danger.” Mila watched the girl’s reaction, and the fact that she would be cut off from Gavin seemed to increase her nervousness. Sighing, she added, “If I can, I will find Signor Girard and tell him that you are safe and where he may find you after tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” The words were soft and honestly said.
“The other rule is that you must not, under any circumstance, leave this house. You have freedom to wander within its walls, but it is only that gate that keeps you safe. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Sophia said and smiled sheepishly. “Frankly, I am so tired from these past few days that I cannot see myself wanting to do much of anything except find out how soft that magnificent bed over there is.”
Mila gave her a wintry smile, nodded, then left.
At the gates, she met the footman once more. He bowed, awaiting her instructions.
“You are not to let the signorina leave the premises,” she said.
“But what if she orders me to open the doors?”
The footman’s calm serving façade cracked slightly under Mila’s icy gaze.
“Then, stop her,” she replied. “Consider yourself a gamekeeper tonight.”
“A g-gamekeeper, signora?”
“I am a hunter. She is prey. That makes you my gamekeeper.”
The footman’s face turned ashen as he nodded and hurriedly opened the gates so she could pass out into the falling shadows all around.
Chapter Seventeen
While it was not necessary to breathe, it often felt good to do so, especially when the weighty ropes of intrigue twisted tighter around her ribs with every hour.
Mila inhaled deeply, blocking her mind from automatically analyzing every scent. She only wanted the sensation of air, of freedom, of choice. She attempted to be as unobtrusive as possible when she slipped in through the side door of Palazzo Fanti. She desired only shadows and solitude until she could find Fanti himself and tell him her task was accomplished. Fate, however, seemed to be peeved at her of late, for instead of Fanti, she found herself face-to-face with Lady Abberley and Madame Bellefontaine at the foot of the staircase.
“Regardez-vous bien,” Madame Bellefontaine chanted in a sing-song voice. “The lost little lamb returns without her shepherd. Where might he be, hmm?”
“You know what happens to lambs when their shepherds disappear, right?” Lady Abberley giggled darkly. “The wolves appear.”
“And then it is pouf for the little lamb. Tellement triste.”
Mila was almost grateful to them. She had been in desperate need of a counter-irritant, and they were exactly the thermogenic she needed. One thrust of her arm smashed Lady Abberley into the steps with a satisfying crack of her skull against the marble. Ugly, old, black blood rolled over the stone in roly-poly clots and blobs. Mila’s second blow sent that French bitch crashing back against the frescoed wall. She felt a little bad about staining the lovely pastoral scene with Bellefontaine’s blood, but perhaps he might be willing to overlook the damage in favor of the opportunity to update the painting with a new style.