Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel (46 page)

Vasco stood in the doorway with a wild grin on his face, a sword held loosely in his right hand. Cuinn pushed past him to enter the room.

“What’re ye doin’ just standing there?” Cuinn asked. “Get your arse up and go save your queen!”

As if in a daze, I blinked. Surely, I was dreaming. Iliaria had told me she’d return again, but she hadn’t returned to tell me anything of her plans or what our next move would be.

“Colombina,” Vasco said. “It’s time. We have to go.”

He strode into the room and grabbed my elbow to emphasize the importance of his words. I blinked and tilted my head as I followed him out into the hall.

“Where is she being held, colombina?”

“Vasssco, why are you here?”

“Helamina and Augusten refused to wait. We have to act now,” he said. “Damokles’s vampires can only hold the Dracule at bay for so long.”

A growl sounded from behind us. One of the Draculian guards sank low on all fours, as if ready to launch an offensive attack. His lips drew back in a snarl as he hissed.

Morina was suddenly between us and the Dracule. “Go!” she shouted. “Get her out of here, now!”

She was unarmed and I hesitated to leave her. Vasco used his grip on my wrist to steer me down the hall and I went.

“They’re thisss way,” I said, the ice in my limbs finally seeming to melt as I gained my bearings. Renata, I thought, finally.

Cuinn, Vasco, and I rushed down the winding halls and to the dungeon rooms where the vampires were being held. We had no trouble making our way to the dungeon itself, but as soon as we burst through the door, Damokles’s guardsmen were upon us.

Vasco was graceful and light on his feet as he rushed the Dracule in a blur, drawing his sword in an arch and slicing open his belly. The second Dracule set his attention on me and raised the two crescent blades in his hands.

“Traitor!” he spat the word at me and rushed me, giving me no time to think.

I reacted out of instinct when his blades crossed in a slashing motion near my midsection, leaping back in time to feel the disruption in the currents as his blades flashed past my stomach. I flexed my hands and unsheathed the sharp claws.

Our fight broke out in earnest. I was distantly aware of the rhythm of Vasco’s boots scuffing the ground and knew he struggled to cripple the Dracule that attacked him.

Cuinn started to move in front of me, to place himself between me and the Dracule, but I sidestepped him and charged.

The Dracule raised his blades to swing both at me in an arch and I slid between his legs on the stone floor. I caught the base of his tail in my hand and sprang to my feet as the vampires and cells around me blurred. I pushed off the ground and lunged for the Dracule’s back, using his own barb like a blade as I drove it through his ribcage. The Dracule gave a sharp cry and went to his knees. I pushed against the resistance of the furred body beneath mine, shoving the barb in as deeply as it would go.

In a red haze of fury, I lost myself. I slashed at the body beneath mine, tearing skin and fur with my claws as if I would dig a hole in his body to climb through. The smell of metallic blood filled the air and spurred my frenzy. The Dracule raised his arms to protect himself and I dove toward his neck, biting and tearing away the skin and arteries in a shower of blood. I thought of Renata and the vampires they had abused.

Someone touched my back and I turned, snapping and narrowly missing a pale arm.

“He’s dead, colombina,” Vasco said. “He’s dead. You can stop now.”

I blinked and gazed down at the motionless body beneath mine. A pool of blood spread out from his body like a blossoming flower. At some point, I had ridden him to the floor. My white hands and knees were covered in the Dracule’s blood. The taste of metal was everywhere inside my mouth.

I drew away and turned my attention to the vampires behind the bars of their prisons. Those strong enough and conscious enough to realize what was happening had moved closer to the bars, their eyes filled with an eager light at the scent of blood.

“We have to free them,” I said.

“Not yet,” Vasco said. “If we free them now we’ll have to fight them off of us.”

He gripped me by the shoulders. “Where is Renata, colombina?”

The two guards had emerged from Damokles’s trophy room and left the door wide open. I led Vasco and Cuinn through it.

“They’re in here,” I said. I flattened my ears and scanned the room for a set of keys to open the dungeon doors.

Vasco shot a question to me with a glance and I explained, “Keysss, we need keysss.”

“Nay, we don’t,” Cuinn said. He approached the first cell on the left and rose on his back legs. He opened his mouth and blew into the small keyhole. The lock tumbled open with a click and the heavy door swung open.

Vasco and I yanked the shackles out of the stone walls and lowered the kings and queens one at a time. Most of them were too weak to stand, let alone attack us for our blood. When we got to Renata’s cell, I went to her side and took her down. She fell into my arms, unconscious, and I took her weight, cradling her tall body against mine.

I turned to Vasco when he lowered the man across from her. “I think they’re too weak to get out without help.”

“Vasco,” a voice hissed from the steps as we emerged from the dark prison. Cuinn had unlocked all the doors, but we had not made it to the last two cells. I cradled Renata close to my chest as a figure descended the steps and stepped before us in a gown of white and gold like some terrible, demented angel.

A look of confusion crossed Vasco’s face as he didn’t recognize the dark-haired woman. She turned to me with an expression of venom I had seen her wear so many times before in open court.

“You,” she said. “I knew you were bad news.”

“Vasssco,” I said, “take Renata.”

“You won’t be taking
her
anywhere.”

The glint of a sword winked like a threat in the dark.

I drew back my lips in a snarl as Vasco took Renata’s weight.

“Want to bet?” I sank to all fours and growled, tail lashing behind me. “I think it’sss time we sssee jussst how permanent that new body of yoursss isss, Lucrezzzia.”

I lunged and she swung her sword to force me back. My claws ticked on the floor below me as I tried to find an opening in her defense. When I found it, I lunged forward again and Lucrezia deftly blocked me and drove me back again.

“I have no fight with you, Great Siren, if you step aside,” she said in a low voice that did not reveal the fear I smelled emanating from her. She was afraid of me. She was afraid of all of the Dracule. I remembered her fear when she had learned I wore Iliaria’s mark.

I used her fear to my advantage, taunting and testing her defense.

“Ssso you think,” I hissed and lunged again, this time catching her sword hand in mine. I used all my strength to slam her back against the wall. I took both her wrists in my hands and pinned her body with mine, slamming her sword hand roughly into the wall until her grip loosened and the sword fell with a clatter.

Inches from her face, I whispered, “I told you once, Lucrezzzia, to be wary of the powersss you chassse.”

She stared at me uncertainly, in a lack of recollection and recognition.

I drew back, still pinning her with my body so that she could not get a leg up between us to kick me off or cause me harm.

Against a Dracule, she couldn’t fight me off. I changed before her and felt the cruel smile that spread across my lips.

Lucrezia’s eyes flew open even wider and this time, she began to struggle. “You wretched little whore!” she spat.

“Ah, ah, ah,” I pushed against her and slid my mouth across her cheek. I nipped her skin, letting her feel the threat of my upper and lowers fangs. “He promised her to you, did he?” I asked. “You’ll never have her, Lucrezia. No matter how many bodies you find to call home, you will never, ever touch a hair on her head.”

She glowered at me, her eyes burning with the same mad power I had seen so many times at court. The same power I had seen her turn against Renata before Renata had killed her. The same power she had used on Dante and broken him with.

A growl built in my chest and beat against my ribcage. “I will take great pleasure in this.” In the space of a heartbeat, I released her right wrist and flexed my hand, driving my nails into the yielding flesh of her stomach.

Never, never in my life had I found pleasure in causing another pain. Never had I understood cruelty or the sweet rush of violence, the taste of vengeance. I had spent a great deal of my existence trying to avoid such things, trying simply to survive the cruelty and violent greed of others. In that instant, I relished her agony and screams.

She tried to fight me and I thrust my arm forward, pushing my fingers more deeply inside her. The meaty brush of her organs caressed my knuckles, the intimate glide of blood like a woman’s desire on my skin. I twisted my arm and pressed it higher, another scream, and another. Lucrezia’s body writhed helplessly, her eyes rolling back into her head as if she would faint. I felt her beating heart, the meat thumping rapidly against my hand. I curled my fingers around it and pulled. Veins and other things ripped and popped, fraying and tearing as she screamed so loud I feared my ears would burst with the sound.

I drew her heart out of her chest and stepped back as she fell to her knees.

Lucrezia’s hands rose to clutch at the wound. Her mouth opened as she gasped for air, as her body struggled to survive without its most vital organ.

Though I had pulled her heart free of her chest, the blood-slicked gob continued to beat in my hand. I went to Vasco and my queen and held Lucrezia’s heart up between us, ignoring the startled expression he wore.

“Wake her, Vasco. Wake her with the blood of Lucrezia’s heart.” Obligingly, he took the heart from me and I turned back to Lucrezia.

Cuinn sat some feet away from Lucrezia’s feebly struggling form. “You want me to gnaw off her head?” he asked, craning his neck and glaring at her. I hadn’t known the Fata had a taste for blood, but I had a feeling he’d enjoy chewing her head off.

“No,” I said. “No, I have better plans for her, but I will need your assistance.”

“Gladly, lass.”

I grabbed a handful of Lucrezia’s hair and jerked her away from the wall. She raised her hands in protest, but the blood and organ loss had made her too weak to defend herself.

I dragged her up the stairs and into the center of the room between the prison cells. I released the clutch of her hair, letting her head fall to the stone floor.

“Open them, Cuinn.”

One by one, he forced the barred doors open with his magic. The vampires gazed at me uncertainly, their hunger warring with their fear, as if they thought it was some sort of trap.

“Come, my lovelies.” I gestured to Lucrezia at my feet. She shook her head from side to side, her eyes pleading with me not to do what I was about to do. I held her gaze and said coldly, “Your dinner awaits you.”

I turned my back and heard the
clink-clink
of the vampires’ shackles as they emerged from the cells. Lucrezia somehow found breath to scream when they fell on her. I glanced back to see the mob of starved vampires moving like one beast on top of her.

One of the vampires, the female with straw-like hair, shuffled forward on her knees. When she knelt a few feet away from me, she bowed her head.

I nodded at Cuinn, who moved cautiously behind her and broke the hold of her shackles.

“What will you when this is done?” she asked me, blood smeared in a half-mask across her lips and chin.

“Take her head,” I said whilst the others continued to feed in a frenzy to break their long fast.

The girl smiled fiercely before tilting her head in another measure of respect. “It will be done, Great Siren.”

I watched as she rose to her feet and peeled the vampires off Lucrezia to gain hold of her head. The vampires didn’t fight her; they simply shifted and moved like a pride of lions on a carcass and found another place to feed. One of them licked the blood from the stone floor and another raised her head, her nostrils flaring animalistically as she began to crawl toward the fallen Dracule. She dragged the Dracule’s body into the cell, leaving a trail of blood behind as she offered the blood left in his body to those in the cell too weak to stand.

The straw-haired woman twisted her arms and I heard the sick crack of Lucrezia’s spine as she ripped her head from her body.

I descended the steps to find Renata stirring in Vasco’s arms. He sat on the floor with her upper body cradled in his lap. Her lashes fluttered open as she reached up to grab a handful of his shirt.

“Epiphany,” she whispered my name and I sank to my knees beside them.

“I’m here,” I said, touching a lock of her wavy hair with bloody fingers. “I’m here, my queen.”

I took the heart from Vasco and asked Cuinn, “Can you do something with this?”

“Aye, I can.”

I set the heart in front of him. Renata’s hand curled around my arm and Vasco and I helped her to her feet.

Cuinn’s eyes narrowed and a plume of smoke rose from Lucrezia’s heart. A small flame ignited before it consumed and scorched the heart, leaving nothing but ashes behind. The smell of cooked meat permeated my senses.