Blood Curse (18 page)

"I can't just let him die, Christian. He was barely weaned when he was taken from me the first time. Twenty-eight years I had to wait for the truth to come out, for him to know who his real mother was! Then I almost lost him again because of that demon Antonia!"

"Demon?"

Aria wasn't aware she had spoken until Seta's head whipped around, her eyes full of fury. The vampiress lunged for her but Christian's arm shot out and sent her flying across the room, her back hitting the far wall.

"Don't make me hurt you, Seta.” The warning look Christian sent the woman was a silent promise that he would. “I have too much respect for you to do it, and you know how I hate to resort to violence. Be respectful of the fact that you are a guest in my home, and while you're at it, you can stop blaming Aria. It's not her fault she was chosen to be Rialto's mate."

"What are you talking about?” Aria directed the question at Christian, no longer sure she could trust Seta. The woman looked as though she wanted to kill her.

"Explain it to her, Seta.” Christian crossed over to a set of cabinets built into the wall and pulled out a tall glass, following it with a bag of blood from a small refrigerator. “Care for some?"

"You know I prefer mine fresh,” Seta answered, looking at the bag with distaste as she rose from the floor.

Christian shook his head and punctured the bag with his thumbnail. He poured the contents into the glass. “Rialto is too weak to stop you from speaking now. Explain to her what is happening, and what must happen.” He turned to face Seta, taking a sip from his glass. “The Dream Teller has already visited her, just a few hours ago."

Seta's head whipped around. “The Dream Teller? What did she show you?"

Aria gulped as the vampire-witch crossed the room to stand over her. “She showed me the night Rialto changed over Antonia."

Seta's eyes smoldered. “Did she show you what happened when Antonia awakened?"

"No, but she said she went mad."

"She was a demon.” Seta practically spat out the statement, her fists clenching at her sides. “Something went wrong during the transformation. When you are changed over, you drink from your sire, sleep through the day, awaken at night and feed. The cycle is then complete. The sire wakes before you, but Antonia was already gone when Rialto opened his eyes that night. It was the screaming that woke him."

"Whose screaming?"

"The villagers.” Seta perched on the arm of a nearby lounge chair, encircling her arms around her narrow waist, her tanned skin an unusual pale color that sharply contrasted with her dark hair and clothing. “When we feed it is for survival. The blood and day sleep are our sources of strength. The blood empowers us, and the day sleep heals and revitalizes. Antonia wasn't just feeding for strength, as she should have been. She was slaughtering for sport."

"Her attackers,” Aria murmured, recalling the pain and humiliation Antonia had endured at the hands of the raiders. She'd wanted revenge more than she'd wanted to live.

"No,” Seta said, shaking her head. “She woke up evil. She raced through the night to the nearest village and sank her teeth into every human she saw. It was a massacre."

"She killed innocent people for no reason at all?” Aria looked at Christian for confirmation that Seta was telling the truth. The sorrow she saw in his eyes told her she was. “Why would she do that?"

"She was a demon, touched by the hand of Satan."

"How?"

Seta shrugged. “We don't fully understand our own origins, Aria. Antonia is still a great mystery to us. All we can figure is she was never meant to be one of us. It happens sometimes."

"What happened to her?"

"She was destroyed."

"By you?"

"I wish.” Seta gazed at her son for a long moment before she continued. “Rialto couldn't sense her when he awakened, which was odd seeing as how a sire and fledgling share a special bond that enables them to sense each other's whereabouts. He ran toward the screaming and found her laughing and dancing around a bonfire, dead bodies lying all around her, their insides ripped out. She was wearing the dress of one of her victims, not seeming to care that it was covered in the woman's blood."

As Seta continued telling the story, Aria felt herself being pulled away from her body until she stood in the village, watching as Antonia pranced around the fire, the white skirts of her bloodstained dress swirling around her. Her eyes were bright and wide, gleaming with a dark power that chilled Aria to her core. The woman's lips were stained with blood, and when she pulled them into a smile, Aria saw blood caked between her teeth like a red plaque.

"Antonia? What have you done?” Rialto looked at the carnage around him, horrified. There were bodies of old men and women, younger adults, and two children. A woman, barely hanging onto life, crawled toward a baby carriage. The infant's cries were the only sound other than the roaring of the fire. If there were any survivors inside the nearby buildings, they weren't advertising the fact.

"I have feasted, my love.” Antonia answered with a wicked gleam in her eyes that would mystify the devil. Her voice was no longer sweet and soft. It had turned hard, deep, more like a man's. “Now that you have finally arrived you can join me."

"No, Antonia. This is not right."

Her eyes flared with anger. “This is what you made me, Rialto. Do you not remember the gift you spoke so highly of? I am now yours forever."

"You are not my Antonia!” Anger rose in Rialto's voice, but in his eyes Aria saw what he was really feeling. Guilt. He had created a monster.

Antonia laughed. “Of course I am. You made me, remember? Now, come. I have saved dessert for you."

Rialto watched as Antonia slinked toward the woman and the carriage, no longer poised with grace and sophistication, but instead moving like a jungle cat. A predator.

"Antonia, don't do it.” Rialto's eyes widened in fear as Antonia kicked the young mother aside and reached into the baby carriage. “Antonia, don't! Please!"

"Not my baby!” The woman looked at Rialto, her eyes pleading as Antonia raised the screaming infant into the air.

"Antonia, leave the baby alone!"

Antonia turned her head and stared Rialto in the eye, her own eyes dark with a relentless hunger that refused to go unsated. She laughed at Rialto and opened her mouth, baring her fangs.

Before she could sink them into the baby's soft flesh, Rialto was before her. He ripped the baby from her hands, knocking her out of the way with one arm while he gently placed the infant back into the carriage with the other.

By the time he turned, Antonia was lunging for him, her shriek piercing the still night air. He caught her effortlessly with one hand and held her away from his body.

"La colpa e la vostra”
The guilt is yours.
She hissed the words as her gaze bored into his.

"I'm sorry,” he whispered, carrying her toward the bonfire with tears in his eyes. Antonia looked into the flames, her eyes widening with sudden realization. Knowing what he was going to do, she shrieked and clawed at him, trying desperately to get out of his grasp, but with a quickness only an immortal could possess, he threw her into the fire and rammed a long stick through her chest, pinning her to the ground.

His tears fell like rain while she screamed and thrashed on the ground, the flames charring her skin. She managed to tear the stick from her body and stand just before the flames swallowed her whole, long enough to give him one last message. Even though it was spoken in Italian, Aria understood clearly.

"I hate you for what you are and what you've made me!"

Those were the words that wounded Rialto because they were spoken in the soft, feminine voice of the woman he had loved. He'd destroyed the demon he'd created, and along with it, he had destroyed Antonia.

She had parted from him with nearly the same words Aria had said to him earlier tonight. The guilt of knowing how badly those poorly chosen words must have hurt him snapped Aria back into the present. She gasped, opening her eyes to see Seta and Christian kneeling before her.

"Are you all right?” Christian asked, helping her to sit up. She rubbed the side of her head as it began to throb.

"What happened?"

"You tell us,” Seta answered. “I was telling you about Antonia, and you just fell over. Did the Dream Teller come back?"

"No. She wasn't there."

"She wasn't where?"

Aria shook her aching head, trying to clear it. “I was at the village. I saw what Antonia did, and I saw what Rialto had to do.” And she'd felt him, felt every trace of guilt and suffering which surged through him. He didn't even stop to acknowledge that he had saved a baby's life. All he knew was he'd killed Antonia and she'd hated him for it. The words she'd spoken upon her death might as well have been daggers, they'd cut him so deeply. Why had Aria used those same words?

She gazed at Rialto where he lay on the chaise, looking at peace while he rested. But she knew peace was the last thing he felt. He believed he had turned someone he cared about into an evil being, and then he'd killed her. He'd lived with that for hundreds of years, and now he was dying because he refused to follow his fate, a fate that somehow involved her.

"What were you talking about earlier when you said Rialto was fighting his fate? What's wrong with him?"

Seta and Christian helped her into a chair before Seta knelt on the floor in front of her. “First, Aria, I want to say I'm not really angry with
you
. I'm just . . .
angry
.” Christian nodded his approval before crossing over to the sofa, watching them while he drank from his glass of blood. “If I ever lost my son . . .” Seta's voice trailed off as she gazed mournfully where Rialto lay.

"I understand, Seta.” The vampiress may have looked like a teenager, but her eyes, when cast upon her son, were old and heart-wrenchingly sad. She was a mother, and from what Aria could tell, a very loving, protective one. “You said he was stolen from you?"

"Yes.” Seta's eyes closed briefly and she let out a sigh. “His father was Count Roberto Garibaldi, a very sophisticated, rich Italian nobleman. I was just a stupid servant girl, too taken with fairy tales and daydreams to see that he was using me. My grandmother tried to warn me and later . . . the old hag came to me in my dreams."

"The Dream Teller?"

"Yes, but I didn't listen to her or my grandmother. I thought Roberto loved me and, blindly, I allowed him to use me. All he wanted from me was what his wife could not give him—a son. Once Rialto was weaned, he stole him from me, and when I tried to fight for him, Roberto beat me and threw me off the cliff in front of his castle."

Aria gasped in horror. “How did you survive?"

"I went over the cliff and landed in the arms of a vampire who was sent for me. The Dream Teller, one of the oldest witches known, had told him to be there and to give me the option of living or dying."

"He changed you over?"

"Yes. I was so severely beaten I would have died before morning had he not, and I couldn't accept death then. I had to make sure my son was all right."

"But you didn't take him from the castle."

"No. He was a mortal child and needed to be raised by mortals. I couldn't go out in the sun, and during the day sleep there are periods where vampires can't move as our bodies heal and replenish themselves. I couldn't raise a mortal child. And my mortal family were all servants to Roberto's family. They couldn't raise him, and I couldn't risk them knowing I was alive. They would have thought I traded my soul to the devil."

"You never left him though, did you?"

"No. I watched over him for twenty-eight years, only speaking with him on rare occasions when I knew we wouldn't be bothered. I didn't tell him who I was until the right time presented itself."

Aria smiled to herself, knowing her mother would have done the same, putting her child's needs before her own and at her own emotional expense. A sharp stab of sorrow sliced through her chest. With all the confusion and excitement of the past few days, she had managed to step away from the constant mourning she'd been drowning in, but with just one simple thought of her mother, the pain came back tenfold. Before she could blink it back a tear fell from her eye.

"Aria, child, what is it?” Seta's eyes were full of concern as she wiped the errant tear away with her fingers. Aria couldn't help laughing, however weak the sound was.

"I'm sorry. It's kind of weird hearing you call me child when you look so much younger than me."

"You'll get used to it as you meet more of our kind,” Seta said with a compassionate smile. “It just takes a little adjusting."

"More of you are coming?"

"You'll meet more after you're . . .” Seta trailed off, looking at Christian, silently conferring, before turning back to look at Aria with a seriousness that wiped away any trace of a smile. “What Christian and I were talking about earlier, Rialto's fate, involves you."

"The Dream Teller said he was dying. Can I prevent that?” Aria searched Seta's eyes for the answer she craved. She nearly cried out in elation when Seta nodded. “What's wrong with him now? Why is he so weak and pale?"

"He tasted your blood and now he is addicted to it. He has tried to feed from other mortals since he tasted you, but their blood was sour. In desperation, we even tried giving him the blood of his sire.” Seta looked at her wrist, rubbing a thumb over the pulse point. “He can't even stomach my blood, which is virtually the same as his own."

"So that's why we were both sick. But I'm better now. Why?"

"The mortal blood in you cured your ailment. Rialto doesn't have that advantage. He will steadily grow weaker and weaker until he is utterly defenseless. Just tonight he passed out and I had to carry him here. The day sleep will replenish some of his energy, but as far as his strength, it will wane through the next night and the next night and so on. I don't know how long he can survive if he keeps losing his strength so rapidly."

"But if he drinks my blood he'll be fine, right?"

"It's not that simple. He will become more dependent on your blood the more he tastes it, unless he does what fate intends."