Dark Symphony (14 page)

 "You are not going into the passageway, are you, Antonietta? I heard enough to know that those passageways are dangerous. I understand lethal traps are built into the walls and floors."

 She slipped her hand along the bottom of the wall until she located the mechanism to open the hidden door leading to the narrow passageway.

 "The secret passageway is more than a means of escape to the sea," Antonietta said. "It has been used by our family for generations to store valuable antiquities that conquerors, governments, or even the church might covet."

 "With all the traps in here, are you not afraid you might take a misstep and be killed?" Byron didn't like the idea of Antonietta moving with her usual confidence through the darkened hallways, knowing sharpened blades were hidden for the unwary.

 Antonietta laughed softly. "The blades were removed many years ago, just for that reason. We no longer needed to escape into the sea when invaders were upon us, so for the safety of unwary family members, the traps were dismantled." She took his hand and smiled up at him. "It is quite safe. Come with me. I'm at home in the dark, and I won't let anything happen to you. There's something in here I discovered some time ago. To me it was worth more than all the golden treasures and artwork stored in the hidden rooms."

 "You are certain the traps have been dismantled?"

 "Yes. Even the Scarlettis had to come into the modern age." We even installed electricity here in the passageway. We needed it for the vaults as well as lighting. Her laughter was soft and inviting. How could anyone resist her laughter, least of all he?

 Byron took her hand and followed her into the dark passageway. She didn't turn on the lights in the hidden labyrinth of hallways. She didn't need a light, and it said something about how well she knew him that she didn't bother with one for him.

 "The night my parents died, I knew something was wrong. I woke up and could barely breathe. I called to them, but they didn't hear me. I ran up onto the deck. I could hear the sound of the clock ticking. Later, when I told Nonno, he said it was my imagination. But it wasn't. I knew there was a bomb on the boat. I jumped into the sea as it went off."

 The door swung closed behind them, locking them in the narrow passageway. It was pitch black. No light seeped its way into the maze of halls. It was so narrow, Byron's shoulders nearly touched on either side. "It is possible you heard it and felt it, Antonietta. Many people have built-in alarms and even a kind of radar."

 "For years I blamed myself. I left them there. They didn't come up on the deck when I yelled to them there was danger. I don't know why, but they didn't come." She led him through two sharp turns, steered him away from the wider of two passages. "That was the first time I ever felt the beast."

 Byron felt her fingers tighten involuntarily around his. He immediately pulled her close against his body. "You were a child, Antonietta, five years only. You barely escaped death yourself. As it was, you must have hesitated long enough to get caught in the blast."

 She ran her hand over his chest in a stroking caress, and her fingers were trembling. "I know that… now. Children tend to blame themselves. I turned back when I saw they hadn't come up on deck, and I screamed for them to hurry." For a moment she rested her head against his chest. "I was too small to climb up on the railing to get over the side, but I felt a power moving inside of me. It was growing and spreading. The night was so dark, there was no moon, and it was black. The sea was black. All of a sudden, I felt something moving under my skin, almost as if it were alive, and I itched terribly. And then I could see everything. Not like my normal sight—in a different way—but the night was suddenly clear. I heard my mother whisper to my father. She'd be right back, she was going to check on me. They thought I had a nightmare. But it was already too late. I leapt up on the railing. One single jump. It was so easy. And then the world went white, and then red and orange, and then black for me."

 Byron could feel the deep sorrow in her. It didn't matter that the events had taken place so many years earlier, they were as fresh in her mind as the day they happened. He held her tightly, buried his face in the fragrance of her silky hair. "I am so grateful you survived, Antonietta. I am sorry for the loss of your parents. You must have loved them very much." He reached to breach that ever-present barrier in her mind. Wanting her memories. Wanting to know what the power inside of her had been. Where it had come from.

 "They were wonderful. You rarely saw one without the other. They were so close. They always seemed to have secrets. Come on, I want to show you this." She stepped away from him to tug at his hand. "I've never told anyone what really happened that night. I knew they would think I was crazy. I was born with the Scarletti ability to heal. And several of us are telepathic, although the ability is limited. I've never been able to communicate so clearly with anyone as I can with you." She stopped in the middle of the long passageway and ran her palm along the top of the wall. "When I discovered this room, it was covered in cobwebs, I don't think anyone had been here for years."

 Byron reached up to find her hand with his, to slide his fingers into the centuries-old depression to find the hidden mechanism for revealing the chamber. As the door opened, a light glowed from within, automatically coming on. At the same time a musty, stale air greeted them. Byron turned her away from it. shielding her with his larger frame while he blew into the room, at the same time creating a small wind with his arms. He waited until he was certain it was safe to breathe before he moved out of Antonietta's way.

 "How did you do that? I can do a few things, but I can't carry two adults across the cliffs and down that narrow, slippery trail to the palazzo. I swear our feet never touched the ground, and you were moving so fast the wind blew in our faces. I can draw on the strength of the beast, and sometimes, I can see images of heat, much like an infrared I suppose, but I can't do the things you do. Like I saw the other night when it scared me. It wasn't me seeing, but something else."

 She stepped into the small room. Byron followed her. It was no more than the size of a walk-in closet, long and narrow. And the walls were carved from floor to ceiling with a mixture of symbols, pictures, and ancient language.

 "This is the history of my family," Antonietta said. "Our heritage, what we are. And after Nonno showed me this room, I wasn't afraid of myself anymore." She tilted her head toward him. "And I would never be afraid of you." She waved toward the wall. "I give you the cat you were looking for last night. The Scarlett! cats."

 Byron stepped closer to the wall, ran the pads of his fingers over the intricate carvings in the same way she had "read" the images. There were pictures of jaguars, men and women half jaguar, half human, caught for all time in transition. The earlier carvings were crude but detailed. The later drawings quite beautiful as if great care had been taken in creating them. "This is amazing, Antonietta. Has anyone else seen this?"

 "No, I felt it was better to keep it to myself."

 Byron had to agree with her. The contents of the room would be very damaging to the Scarlettis and their position in society. But the carefully kept account of the Scarletti history was important to his people. His fingers flew over the wall, reading as quickly as he was able. "So this is the reason you do not fear my differences, and you accept them so easily."

 "I knew immediately you had to be one of the males, and your bloodline must be stronger even than mine." She took a deep breath and let it out. "I know you won't stay, Byron, and that's okay. It really is. I have no wish to be married. I'm quite content with my life the way it is. I've never considered a permanent relationship with a man. Taking a lover is a different thing altogether. For as long as you want to stay, I think it will work out perfectly for the both of us."

 He turned slowly, rested one hip against the carved wall, and folded his arms across his chest. There was a long silence. "So you will not mind when I leave you?"

 Antonietta heard the soft underlying growl in his voice, the snap of his teeth. A shiver went through her, and for the first time unease crept into her mind. Byron seemed an easygoing, courteous gentleman, with old-fashioned, courtly ways. She remembered the way her assailant had been flung backward, the distinct sound of bone snapping. How carelessly the body was thrown away from them. Byron had never even checked to see if the man still lived, he had known he was dead.

 "Well, obviously, I've read this many times. I understand perfectly the need for the male of this species to wander. I'm telling you I accept the inevitable and don't want you to feel bad about it." Even as she spoke, she took a small step backward, her hand going protectively to her throat. Her pulse beat frantically as if calling to him. The spot where he had left his mark the night before throbbed and burned.

 "There is an inevitable, but I doubt it is what you envision." He reached out casually, almost lazily, and circled the nape of her neck with his palm, drawing her toward him. She went reluctantly, taking one small step at his urging, then another until she could feel the heat of his body right through the thin barrier of her clothing.

 Both hands found his chest. "Why are you angry?"

 He was smoldering with anger, with the thought that she was certain he would leave her. That he would want to leave her. That she seemed totally accepting, even grateful that he would leave her. Byron made an effort to tamp down the seething cauldron of emotions. That way lay disaster. "What it says on this wall is that a group of women and children arrived, seeking sanctuary. There were a few males, old mostly, or very young, but the women had no men to protect them. They wanted permission to live on Scarletti land, under the protection of the Scarletti family. They were foreigners, come from a distant land with strange ways. It is said these women had tremendous psychic abilities. They were telepaths. Healers. And all of them were shape-shifters."

 Antonietta nodded. He wasn't holding her in place, his fingers were very light, almost gentle around her neck, but she still felt the tension vibrating in the air between them. 'The picture clearly shows a large cat of some kind."

 "The Jaguar," he supplied. "I have heard of this species. They are all but extinct. The males refused to stay with the females, and eventually the females took on human husbands. The bloodline thinned over the centuries."

 She nodded her head in agreement. "I feel the cat inside of me at times. Warning me. I have an acute sense of smell. I'm blind, yet at times when the wildness inside of me is growing, I see in colors of red and yellow and white. Heat images. I thought when you smelled the cat last night perhaps one of my cousins is the same, and I'm not such a freak. It's true, Byron. This is the reason the Scarlettis made a bargain with the women in the village. They wanted the gift of the Jaguar people for their own. Some of the Scarletti men intermarried with those women, and some have the blood strong and some don't. I read the wall carefully. You are so correct about the men leaving. The women were willing to stay with humans because their males never stayed. They got them pregnant, and they left, even during times of war and hunger and plague. So the women turned to our race for companionship and love and a family."

 "As they did in other places as well," Byron said.

 "In the old days, women had few rights and little protection, but in the world today, we're quite capable of caring for our children and providing for them. I have a good life, and I never expected to meet someone I was so attracted to. Honestly, Byron, I'm just saying I didn't expect nor want a lover for more than a short period of time."

 His breath escaped in a long, slow hiss of annoyance. "Unfortunately, that is not what I expect or want, Antonietta. I am not Jaguar. My people do not leave one another for reasons of convenience or wanderlust. We mate for life. For eternity. I do not want less, nor will I accept less. You have much to learn of who and what I am." His dark gaze roamed possessively over her face.

 She could feel the impact, the intensity, as his gaze burned over her. She was immediately reminded of the suffocating darkness she lived in. Alone in the close confines of the room, it was too late to remember she knew very little of this man standing so close to her. She knew nothing of his family or his heritage or even his heart. He was always alone and very quiet, very polite, but he could be shockingly violent in an instant if need be.

 "Who are you, Byron?" Her voice came out a husky whisper of fear when she needed her confidence most. "Tell me who you are then. Tell me what you are. If not Jaguar, like me, what are you then?" She held her breath, pressed her hand to her somersaulting stomach.

 Byron's thumb tipped her chin up. She felt his breath on her face. Warm. Inviting. His lips skimmed the corner of her mouth. Velvet soft. So persuasive her heart leapt. "I am your life mate. Keeper of your heart as you are the keeper of mine." The words were whispered against her eyes. His lips trailed down her face to find her mouth again. Soft. Insistent. Feather light, yet with all the power to rob her of breath. Of speech. Of sanity. Her brain refused to think of anything other than wanting him. Having him for her own.

 His words sounded foreign and even formal, but it still didn't stop her from turning her mouth up to his. Of wanting him with every cell in her body. Byron. She had dreamt of him for so many lonely nights. Erotic, passionate dreams of wild sex and heights of pleasure she didn't believe really existed. His lips crushed hers, and he was devouring her, his mouth hot and male and exciting there in the dark of the hidden room where the bizarre secrets of her ancestors decorated the wall.

 They simply melted together, two halves of the same whole. There was fire and electricity. There was a curious rippling of the earth beneath their feet. He pulled her closer, fit her body tightly against his, imprinting his every muscle on her soft flesh. He knew how she would feel, all soft curves and mesmerizing heat. The flood of passion welling up in her to meet his darkest cravings. Byron had known almost from the moment he had heard the first exquisite note of her music.