by C. D. Gorri
She was musing whether pastoral scenes were really passé when she casually ripped the wig from Abberley’s head and began strangling her with it. She had decided to suggest a lively scene from antiquity, perhaps the Choice of Paris, when she aimed a quick, vicious kick to Bellefontaine’s middle, not bothering to look down as she stepped on the woman’s windpipe.
Sighing, Mila wondered if the simplest thing to do was to buy a tapestry. She shook her head and turned her attention back to the two vampires.
It had been delightful to unleash her full strength, like stretching after waking up. Teaching Abberley and Bellefontaine might have cost her in terms of being disregarded and underestimated within the coven. However, in the absence of Dorian’s guiding authority, as the next oldest vampire, it fell to Mila to assert dominance over the others.
The sickening spongy sound of flesh wounds closing and the clicking of bones knitting together alerted Mila to the fact that Abberley’s and Bellefontaine’s wounds were already healing. She released them and re-pinned up a few pieces of hair that had come loose during the altercation.
“I am not afraid of you!” Lady Abberley gasped and spat, clutching at her throat. “You are nothing more than a stupid puppet in a game that you would never be able to understand.”
Finally, Mila spoke. “You would do well to remember that I am from Russia, where the wolves cut their teeth on human flesh and fear neither blade nor ice. The next time you choose to disrespect your elder and your better, they will not find even your bones.”
A burst of solitary clapping snapped and echoed down the staircase. She looked up to see Fanti descending, applauding her with a sly smile twisting his brutal scars.
“Brava, mia lupa russa,” he crooned. His glance flickered over to the two panting women. “Only a fool would anger such a magnificent, deadly creature as your Mila.”
She swallowed a surge of annoyance, not appreciating his fanning of these flames. Notoriety was not her aim. Nor did she particularly welcome Fanti’s appearance. Lady Abberley’s words about manipulation rankled because they were true.
Acting on anger—or even annoyance—was not the best strategy for survival, however. If there was one thing that Mila excelled at, it was survival. She had overplayed her hand with this violent little reminder, and she refused to compound her error by rising to Fanti’s bait.
She smoothed down her skirts, twitching them so the hem sat just so on the tops of her shoes. She felt Fanti gently grasp her elbow and guide her up the stairs and most likely to his private study, the same room where she had been given instructions and orders as if she was an ingenuous child.
Fanti ushered her into the study and closed the door behind him.
“They’ll listen at the keyhole, you know,” she said, wandering to the large, bronze armillary and tracing its edges with her fingers.
He shrugged dismissively and approached her. His hand came down on hers, stilling and trapping it against the cool metal. “Is it done?”
She nodded.
“Grazie, carissima.”
She didn’t bother responding. She simply stood there, waiting for him to make his next play.
“You resent me?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“I resent being run about town like a two-penny page.”
His lips twitched with a faint smile, recognizing the way her answer distinctly split her feelings about him and about what he asked her to do. “Did you like the palazzo where you took the girl?”
“I saw very little of it.”
“It does not belong to me, in any case.”
This surprised her, but again, she chose silence as her weapon.
“It belongs to Teodotto. He was the mortal you met earlier. He is a clerk for il Doge.”
“What is it to me whom he serves?” She made sure the disdain and boredom were clear in her voice.
“He is a lesson in how to feed from mortals without drinking their blood,” Fanti said, entwining their fingers and drawing her away from the armillary and over to a wall hung with a series of small portraits. The ones at the top looked quite old and faded, and the style of painting was stilted and archaic. Portraits in a more modern style hung side-by-side on the bottom row. “These are all the Doges of Venice, including our present, most esteemed duke. Only two of them ever knew I existed or met me personally. The rest…well, they were blissfully unaware that certain of their clerks did a brisk business with a vampire.”
She considered his words. “I suppose if you were resolved to stay in one place, you must involve mortals in your affairs to a certain extent. Is it not a tremendous risk, though?”
He laughed, the sound rich and beautiful, contrasting almost painfully with his scarred visage. “Indeed, dove, it is possibly the least risky way of trafficking with mortals. Enough gold will shut any mouth.”
“And, more than enough will open it wide once more,” she retorted.
“Yes, but it’s simple enough to shove a body in the lagoon and be done with it. You would be surprised at how few people are shocked to find the corpse of a clerk bobbing along with the tide. It is assumed as firmly as a principle of nature that they are scheming and corrupt. Therefore, it is merely seen as a bit of well-deserved retribution.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why do you tell me this? What does it have to do with Teodotto and your little commission for me?”
Fanti’s expression sobered, and he looked almost disappointed for a moment. “I had thought that…well, perhaps, that you would find such information useful for when…”
His voice trailed off, and he gazed intently at her. She turned her attention back to the portraits, uncomfortable with his scrutiny and knowing that she did not hold the authority in either coven to challenge him.
“No matter,” he said briskly, releasing her hand from his. “Suffice it to say that Teodotto has ambitions beyond his station, and he’s willing to use whatever means available to achieve them.”
“Even collaborating with a vampire?”
“Especially collaborating with a vampire. Who better to aid him and keep his secrets?”
“What does this have to do with the girl or Dorian?”
He chuckled and wandered back to the armillary. “It has nothing to do with Dorian, and in truth, very little to do with the girl as well. She is simply the means to an end.”
Mila’s thoughts were in a whirl. Fanti completely disregarded Dorian’s exposure to danger. Most likely, he had even less concern in placing her in harm’s way, and the errand with Sophia had been the first and simplest in what was to become a chain of chaos and destruction. She had to warn Dorian and this time, really make him listen. She’d probably have to find a safe place to stash the girl and keep her away from Gavin and the Hunters, at least until Dorian and the coven had left Venice.
“Hunt with me tonight?” Fanti’s voice was calm, and his offer casual, but something in the timbre of his words reverberated within her chest. She remembered the care he had taken with her, the ease with which he had procured her victim, and the gift of relieving her of disposing of the body. Now, she was forced to consider whether all that was nothing more than a bribe to make her more biddable to his will. Yet she could not refuse him outright without raising his suspicions. Then, there was Gavin, who wished to see her that evening as well, and who probably would have no compunctions in coming back to this palazzo and causing a scene that would endanger both him and her.
“Perhaps,” she said quietly. “There are things I must attend to before I hunt.”
“Of course. I shall wait for you here. Let us say until midnight. Meet me here by the last stroke of twelve.”
She nodded her consent, then fled.
* * *
Mila did not believe in God, or, on the rare occasion her faith in atheism faltered, she thought of God as a mean bastard.
For example, some mortals might thank God for the small mercy of being able to catch Dorian in his chamber before he slipped away again. But sh
e knew better, simply by looking at the set of his jaw. She had found Dorian only to be ignored once more. God was clearly a ripe bastard.
“You will not find her.”
He spun around at the sound of her voice. He looked surprisingly unkempt, for him. She supposed most mortal women and quite a few female vampires would believe him perfectly groomed, but she knew his tells. The cravat knot was not perfectly tightened. The shine on his boots was slightly dulled.
“Explain yourself,” he ordered, his expression instantly growing menacing.
“She is no longer at her boarding house.” Mila had given a perfectly correct answer in obedience to his command. If her answer did not satisfy him, that was unfortunate, but it was the consequence of attempting to intimidate her.
“Where is she?”
“Why do you wish to know?”
She was unprepared for the speed and force of his attack. He seized her by the arms and slammed her into the wall, his face less than a breath from hers. She felt no pain, the blow of the wall barely more than a bump against her shoulders. The pain in her heart, though, was breaking her.
“Where. Is. She?” Dorian showed his fangs in dominance as he hissed each word.
“Why should I tell you?” Anger flashed, bright and tinny, through the pain. “What is she worth? I will tell you what she is worth to me!” Mila felt her control slipping as words came tumbling out against her will. “She is worth nothing! You are blinded by her charms and care nothing for anyone else. She has made you foolish and forgetful of your duties and obligations.”
Dorian dropped her without warning, and she braced herself against the wall for balance. Worry, longing, and rage warred in his expression.
“You do not—cannot—understand,” he whispered, agony in his eyes. “She is everything to me.”
Mila regarded him steadily, her composure returning as she remembered Fanti’s and Teodotto’s plans from their strange meeting earlier. On the morrow, more ‘plague’ bodies would be found, and whispers of witchcraft would give birth to riots demanding justice. Thanks to Teodotto’s mortal politicking, the Doge would appear unheeding, then uncaring, and it would be Teodotto himself that brought Sophia as the penultimate culprit to the scaffold, to the eternal thanks of the Venetian citizens.
The astonishing results of these machinations would be a quiet coup d’état that established Teodotto as the true power behind the Doge and the grand puppet master of the Signoria, or whatever Venetians called their mercantile parliament. Fanti would have Teodotto in his pocket, and Dorian’s blatantly public dalliance with a mortal would give Fanti what he needed to evict Dorian and his coven without breaking the ancient vampire laws of truce and hospitality.
Mila’s only motive in all of this was to protect Dorian and the coven. She was not a sentimental creature, but Dorian was, and silly Sophia had inadvertently played upon this soft spot in his nature. He’d be devastated and difficult if things were left unfinished between them. Therefore, Mila decided to do what she could to form an emotional bulwark for him against the coming upheaval.
“I will tell you where she is on one condition,” she said quietly.
“Tell me!”
“My condition is this,” she continued, ignoring him. “You will swear to leave her one hour before sunrise.”
“Why?” Dorian approached her again, crowding and towering over her.
“She has had some trouble with her landlady.” It was always best to mix as much of the truth as possible with whatever lies one told. “I have found her a place to stay for the night while I fix her little problems, but she must be gone at sunrise. Therefore, you must be gone an hour before to ensure you are not discovered.”
“Why are you doing this? Why did you not come to me and tell me? You know I would have taken care of her. Finding her new lodgings would be simple enough.”
“Aye, but would you have given her a choice in the matter?”
Dorian blinked in surprise at her words, and she continued, “The girl fancies you, but fancy is a far cry from trust. If she came to you for help, you’d do what you wanted, which is to place her where you wished, that you might find her at any time. But she is not the kind of girl who happily becomes a mistress with nothing more to do than laze about and wait for her lover.”
The porcelain clock on the mantel chimed, and the position of its gilded hands reminded Mila that crucial time was slipping through her fingers.
“I am helping her so that she will have the time to learn to trust you,” she said, the lie tasting vaguely bitter on her tongue. “But you must trust me and do as I say this night.”
Dorian gazed probingly at her for a long moment, then nodded, the angry set of his shoulders relaxing slightly.
“One hour before sunrise,” Mila reminded him.
“I swear by the blood I made you with,” he said solemnly.
She whispered the address of Teodotto’s secret palazzo in his ear, and then, he was gone. She was alone.
Again.
Chapter Eighteen
It was rare that Mila ever felt hurried or harried. Her existence was usually nothing more than well-regulated drifting in obedience to Dorian’s wishes and whims, punctuated by the simple pleasures of feeding and visiting new places.
Now, as she hurried along to the rendezvous point she had set with Gavin via a quick note carried by a cheeky-looking urchin, she reflected that the past two days had held more excitement than the last two decades together. She decided she did not like it. Peacefulness and a modicum of boredom was much preferable.
The city was full of dancing firelight and sound. Mortals had returned from their toil, and now was the hour where wine and ale flowed freely, giving rise to shouted jokes, tuneless singing, bawdy giggles, and the occasional confused fisticuffs over some triviality no one remembered the next morning.
Mortals, Mila decided, lived and apparently enjoyed living hurried, harried, and exciting lives. She was glad that apart from this aberrant visit, she no longer faced such a short, frenetic life.
Smoke. Screams. Hoof beats and shouts. The metallic swing of a blade. The distant howl of a wolf. Cruel laughter. Terror as a living weight crushing her chest.
Dorian’s eyes.
She clutched at the damp, cold stone wall as the memory threatened to topple her high tower of forgetfulness. She ferociously forced the scraps of image and sound back into the dungeon of her lost soul, straightening her shoulders and moving forward with a determined step. Now was not the time, not, with the fate of Dorian, herself, and Gavin hanging in the balance.
Soon enough, she reached the meeting place of the tavern. She tried not to look with disfavor on the urchin’s suggestion of such a location, but it was difficult when the respectability of the taproom kissed the knuckles of seediness. Still, she was not here for the public room with its boisterous patrons, laughing riotously under their fashionable black masks. Instead, she made her way to the back, where a bored-looking man in threadbare livery silently questioned her by raising his eyebrow.
“Gavin Girard expects the Snow Maiden,” she said quietly, and the man cracked a salacious smile and opened the door to the back room, sweeping her a mockingly courtly bow.
Her feet faltered on the threshold, overwhelmed by the smells of the windowless room. The heady sweetness of beeswax candles and heavy spiciness of perfume barely covered the sour scent of sweat and the stale muskiness of old arousal and spilled wine.
She stopped breathing immediately, making sure her bosom rose and fell in a simulacrum of respiration. With a clearer head, she scanned the small tables where gamblers crowded together. Men and women from the nobility down to the meanest shop clerk threw their fortunes to the wind in anonymous places such as this. Around the perimeter of the room were settees and chairs, where those who desired more privacy in which to discuss terms and settlement of debts.
Finally, in the corner furthest from the open hearth, she saw Gavin. He was nursing a glass of red wine, but he seemed
to feel the moment she laid eyes on him. He looked up at her, a grin cracking apart the frown on his face. He was immediately by her side and guiding her back to the settee he had secured for them.
“I did not think to see you tonight, signora,” he said, pouring her a glass of wine from the clay pitcher beside him on the side table.
Mila shrugged and accepted the glass. “I made no promises either way.”
“Which is most maddening, when what I want most are all your promises.”
She snorted at his extravagantly seductive manner. “I would not give them only to break them.”
Gavin’s jovial expression grew serious as he studied her. “No, I don’t believe you would break a promise, once given.”
He reached out to touch the black lace of her veil, and she gently pushed his hand away. She had not fed yet, and even firelight could not warm her skin. Through the speckling of the lace, Gavin’s eyes glittered, and she had to fight the urge to inhale deeply, to take in the scent of leather and cloves she knew clung to his skin.
Instead, she reached back to her cold purpose and pulled it forth once more, as if it could douse firelight and dim desire.
“Sophia is a lovely girl,” she said calmly, painfully aware of the sharp way he stiffened and narrowed his eyes at her. “I was glad to be of help to her after the little contretemps with her landlady.”
“What do you mean? What happened?” Gavin spoke quietly, and for once, Mila was glad for his careful instincts and immaculate training as a Hunter. There would be no scenes in public, nothing to give either of them away.
“She was turned out,” Mila explained. “But I found her a place to stay for the night, and I shall help her again in the morning.”
“Why was…” His words died away as he rubbed his jaw and frowned at her. “I think you had best explain everything.”