Dark Rapture (33 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Shaking violently from the chill rain and intense pain, Vince looked around. The steps of the twisting staircase were narrow and Francesco had to turn to the side in order to carry him up. The little light that shone through the sporadic windows was enough so that Vince could see. The walls were of roughly hewn stone, though time had blunted the corners and carved pocks in each one. Here and there in the crevices was an occasional sprout of greens, and more often than not, a thin web from one of the many spiders that traversed the walls.

The smell of rot and decay rose with each step Francesco took as he hurried to the top of the circular tower. It was unlike anything Vince had ever smelled before.

“Where are we?” Vince muttered wincing as each word beat another crucifying nail into his pounding head.

The staircase opened to a hallway.

“This is my home, Vincent. And now it is yours.”

His home? Fighting the pain was becoming harder as the minutes passed. This had to be some kind of a nightmare.

Francesco’s feet scraped across piles of rubble and broken shards of wood. Vince squinted, unable to lift his lids open any further. There were no pictures on the walls, nothing to decorate this cavern of horrors, and it appeared to be more of an abandoned castle than a home. Something from medieval times that he had only read about in books. And was this the dungeon? He was about to question Francesco but again the pain spread through his body, overtaking him in a queasy rush of bile to his throat.

Vince fainted in Francesco’s arms.

Awakening to mummifying darkness brought about feelings of suffocation. Vince blinked to be sure his eyes were open, becoming more frightened when he realized they were. His body rocked gently back and forth, a sign that Francesco still carried him. His mind spun and he remembered Francesco holding him in the back of the car.

“You said . . . you could . . . help me, Francesco. Where are we going?”

“The bedroom is just ahead. You’ll need to lie down and rest.”

His words were abrupt, as though his attention was elsewhere. When Francesco had said “I can help,” Vince had thought that he possessed some medical knowledge. But what were his plans now?

The urge to jump from the man's clutches and run back to the mansion where his friends awaited struck hard. Vince squirmed in Francesco’s arms in a weak attempt to wriggle free. But he couldn’t. Though the frequent spasms had subsided he was only able to hang in the man's arms.

The scuffling of Francesco’s feet across the stone floor came to a halt and he pushed against a wall, which moved easily under the weight of his shoulder. The straining of rusted hinges cracked through the darkness, bringing Vince back to awareness as they entered a room lit infrequently by flashes of lightning.

Vince squinted to adjust to the dim gray room. It was a shambles, though it did resemble a bedroom. The only piece of furniture was a four-poster bed in the corner, though only one post remained intact, the others broken in half and thrown in a pile on the floor. From the top of the unbroken post hung a limp gray piece of lace, torn and rotted from years of neglect. It billowed and arched as they approached as if acknowledging their arrival.

Francesco laid him on the bed and stood over him, a dark shadow backlighted by the window behind him. He still wore the t-shirt and jeans he had purchased in Minneapolis. A misfit searching to fit in.

It was then that Vince wondered if Francesco wasn’t more his own age of twenty-five years, instead of much older as he’d previously thought. Why was he so different, then? So out of touch with his own generation and so peculiar.

What was it about this man that piqued his curiosity so much? That drew him almost as if he had some sort of unearthly power over him? Vince found himself reaching out through the damp, putrid air, praying that Francesco would turn to him. Would sit beside him, soothe him with his voice, and chase the pain away. He wanted to know this man, inside and out. To belong to him somehow. To be accepted by him. Or if only…to be saved.

As if he had overheard Vince’s private thoughts, Francesco turned and took his hand. “Listen to me now, Vincent. And do not speak until I am finished. I know your pain and I am going to tell you about who, and what, you really are.”

Vince closed his eyes, feeling the bed sink as Francesco sat beside him. He wouldn’t speak; he didn’t think he had the strength even if he wanted to. So he nodded and waited for Francesco to begin.

“You will drink from me tonight, Vincent Lyons, and begin your new life. A life that has been with you since birth, a life that must now be realized before death takes you.”

The words entered Vince’s skull and floated aimlessly from one side to the other. It was becoming harder to understand what with the loud buzzing that had started. Something like
drink with me
. Well, that would be cool. A good stiff drink sounded great. Anything to kill the pain.

“Open your eyes, Vincent, and take what is rightfully yours. This is your legacy!” Francesco’s voice boomed with malicious pride. “You are a vampire, my child.”

Vampire?
Vince opened his eyes. The bloody hand that reached out for him was Francesco’s, his fingernails dripping with blood. He saw the man’s throat was torn open, the blood drooling down his black t-shirt.

Before he could comprehend what was happening, he felt the slippery fingers push his mouth open and spread across his tongue.

***

The wet lawn hampered her footsteps as Scarlet slipped and slid over to Sebastian’s inert body. Gary hung over him with the stick still clutched in his fist, Sebastian’s blood dripping from the split end.

Scarlet pushed Gary onto the ground and collapsed next to Sebastian to examine the wound. It had skimmed the top of his shoulder, pushing the flesh back to revel bone.

“Are you okay?” She took his head in her hands and turned it from side to side, searching for more injury. “Sebastian?”

He blinked his eyes open and shook the rain from his face. “Oww, yes, love, I’m fine. Just a little flesh wound.”

“Let’s go inside.” She helped him to stand and turned to Gary, not caring how angry she sounded. “You could have killed him! What were you thinking?”

Speechless, Gary shrugged and tossed the stick at his feet. His face was swollen and bruised from a few well-placed punches. “Sorry,” he muttered and followed the two inside.

“Let’s go upstairs and wash this off.” She pushed Sebastian toward the stairs but he held back.

“I’ll be all right, Scarlet. It’s you I worry about, you should be resting.”

Rest was the last thing on her mind. “I feel perfectly fine, Sebastian.”

They started up the stairs to Vince’s bedroom and crossed the floor to the adjoining bathroom. She couldn’t wait to hear an explanation for finding her brother and Sebastian rolling around on the ground in the middle of a rainstorm. She suspected from Gary’s silence that there was more to it than just brotherly jealousy.

Rummaging through the sparse supplies in Vince’s closet, she found a cloth and held it under a cool faucet, then found a bottle of alcohol in the medicine cabinet. “Take your shirt off.”

Sebastian complied, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub, and she pressed the wet washcloth to the wounded flesh on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch when she let the alcohol stream over his wound. His hair hung over his face, veiling the pain and his silence.

“Are you going to tell me what you and Gary were fighting about or do I have to read your mind? Must have been a hell of a reason for Gary to come after you with a wooden stake—oh my God! Does he know?”

“It was a tree branch,” Sebastian said quietly, and pushed her hand from his shoulder. “And yes, he knows. He came over to my place a few days ago and I had no choice but to tell him. I think he has accepted the truth, though as for liking
me
too much, well . . .”

“What did he say about me?” Would Gary accept her? Or would his disgust for her new lifestyle drive them apart?

“That feels better,” Sebastian peeled the cloth away from his shoulder. “It’s already healed.”

True to his words, Scarlet saw the wound had already closed up. She felt the tears well as her emotions were torn from her heart. “What if he hadn’t missed?” She knelt between his knees. “What if it had gone through your heart?”

Pulling her shaking hands onto his lap, Sebastian smoothed her wet hair over her shoulders. “He did miss,
cherie,
and that’s all that matters. Don’t think dreadful thoughts.”

“I’m so, I just can’t imagine—” Their eyes exchanged silent worries for each other. “Why were you two fighting? Is it because of what you did to me?”

“It’s Vince.” Sebastian fumbled with the pearls on her sleeve, leaving muddy fingerprints across her arm. “Francesco has him, I’m sure.”

“Vince? But how?”

“I don’t know. Vince arrived minutes after you got back. He was—” He swallowed.

“He was what? What’s going on, Sebastian?”

“He was in bad shape.”

“Another one of his headaches? I saw what they do to him. I hope he’s all right.”

He put his finger to her lips. “He was in agony from the blood hunger.”

She didn’t blink. Sebastian quickly went on.

“He’s a vampire, Scarlet. An in-born. His father was most likely a vampire, and as soon as he tastes blood he will be transformed. It’s been with him since birth. I’ve read through the diaries that Vince found in the crypt. Vampirism has been passed down the family bloodline through the centuries. His headaches have been a manifestation of the blood hunger.”

“But—”

“We left him in the garage for a few minutes while Gary was calling an ambulance, and by the time we went back out, he was gone.”

“And you think Francesco’s got him? But I don’t understand. I thought Francesco was after you. How did he get involved with Vince?”

“I have no idea,
ma cherie.
But I’m sure that he knows about the connection between Vince and the two of us. I fear he may be using Vince as a pawn in order to seek his revenge on me.”

“But that’s not fair. Vince has done nothing to him. Sebastian, we’ve got to help him. If Vince is a vampire like you say, and he has to drink the blood of another to become real, then we’ve got to get to him before Francesco does. There’s no telling what he’ll do to Vince.”

“Scarlet, I know, settle down. I will do everything I can to help him, I promise you. But there isn’t a thing we can do until we discover where Francesco is staying. And right now I’m more worried about you. You’ve been through an ordeal. I think you should lie down and rest.”

“No, I can’t. That is, I feel rested.” She
did
feel rested. Must be the vampire blood.

Scarlet sighed, remembering what she had just been through. “Sebastian, you can’t imagine how good it is to hear you speaking to me in English. My French has never gotten such a workout. Oh! Do you know that I ran into Francesco back in time?”

“Now that you mention it, I do recall Francesco being upset over your disappearance. He was quite taken with you.”

“Do you think he still remembers me?”

Sebastian pulled the loosened pins from her hair, watching the dark curls tumble to her shoulders. He smoothed them beneath his fingertips. “I don’t know,
cherie.
I didn’t. That is, I never wanted to believe.”

“Why didn’t you know it was me, Sebastian? I know it’s been a long time for you, but I still look the same.”

“But you don’t, my love.” He pulled his finger across her cheek and showed her the white powder that came off her skin. “Someday I’ll explain the events that happened to me after you left. I thought you were a witch. I thought you were an angel. But most of all, I tried to deny the love that I felt for you over the years and bury your image from my memories. I loved you so much and didn’t want to believe you could just disappear, leave me alone to suffer, when I knew that you loved me too. And then a part of me believed that you had tricked me, used me to gain my soul for the devil. But I know better now, don’t I?”

He kissed her pounding jugular gently. “Do you love me, Scarlet?”

“I do. But I had to go all the way back to the eighteenth century to realize it.” She sobbed against his shoulder, rubbing the smooth skin where just minutes ago the branch had cut through. “Oh God, I do love you. And I don’t ever want to lose you.”

“Don’t worry, my love. I will never leave you.” His sweet French-accented whispers comforted her as he spoke. “I know that you are the woman who transformed me into a vampire. And I am glad you made that choice. I promise myself to you forever, Scarlet.”

Sniffing away the tears, she gazed into his shimmering eyes. “Through eternity?”

“Yes, my love.”

The fear of almost losing him was calmed by his kiss, and nothing mattered anymore. She melted into him, surrendering to his love.

“Where’s Gary?” he whispered.

Between fervent kisses, Scarlet managed a few words. “He’s downstairs closing the windows, why?”