Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel (6 page)

BOOK: Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel
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Savina examined the lock and confirmed that it had been spelled. When she summoned her magic, a warm breeze picked up in the hallway. She murmured no words of incantation, merely tugged on the lock and pulled it open.

Those standing closest to the door moved aside to allow Dominique to make his way through. He knelt in his very modern black jeans and white T-shirt, the tail of his dark hair falling over his shoulder as he bowed his head.

“Forgive me, my queen.”

“Where is Dante?” she asked.

“I do not know, my lady.”

Renata nodded sharply and pressed him further. “What happened, Dominique?”

“We heard noises in your chamber hall, my queen. Dante went to check. When he did not return, I left my post in search of him. That is when they grabbed me.”

“How many of them, do you reckon?” Vasco rocked back eagerly on his heels.

“I do not know. They caught me unaware.” Dominique shook his head as if shaking away a buzzing thought. “At a guess, I’d say four of them. I did not see Dante.”

Iliaria cursed so heatedly that for a moment I thought she’d drive her fist through the wall. She did not, thankfully. “They are toying with us.” Her voice was an angry hiss.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I think she means,” Vasco said, “that because Dominique is unharmed and yet the Donatore do not remain so, that this has become a game of proving their ability to infiltrate our clan and hurt, or spare, whomever they choose.

“But what of Dante?” I asked. “Do you think they would have killed him just for sport?”

Iliaria considered my words. “I do not know,” she said. “Damokles hates vampires and murdered his own sister for being the lover of one. If that is any indication—”

“There is the chance that they are using him to gather information for further use against us.” Nirena stepped away from the stone wall and circle of light, sending a ripple of energy through the air.

“There is that,” Iliaria agreed.

Renata took rein of the situation. “The other Elders will wake soon. It will be easier to find Dante with more of us looking for him. Do you have a problem with restoring the Donatore before our Elders wake?” she asked Savina.

“No.”

We left the hallway of the purgatorio, for which I was relieved. My memories of such a place were not so terrible, but I had not seen it in two hundred years and didn’t much care to see it again. I remembered a man who had beseeched Renata when I had been held there. He had knelt on the rough stone. His face had been dirty and his eyes hollowed from lack of sleep.

“Please, great lady, I have a family to provide for, mouths to feed…”

I remembered her cold response.
“As do I.”

Whatever became of his family, I do not know, nor do I know what became of him. Like as not, he became nothing more than food in our bellies, as the Donatore were chosen with care and the man had been too desperate, lost in his concern for his family. Too desperate to survive meant he would’ve been all too eager to run away and return to the life and love he had known. For that reason alone, he would not have been chosen as Donatore. Those that became Donatore became such consensually and were, more often than not, mortals who had nothing to lose in the human world.

I did not know this, Piph,
Cuinn’s androgynous voice whispered, tempered with compassion. He was a part of me, my little fox, and when I remembered something, he shared in those memories.

It was a very long time ago, Cuinn.

Aye,
he said,
and though you serve her, you are not like her.

His words made me focus my attention on Renata.

Her magnificent eyes met my gaze and held it. The midnight fragments in her irises were nigh black in the dancing torchlight, shadowing the soft ocean blue flecks like Caribbean waters and a starry sky. The expression she gave me was unreadable.

I am not as strong as she is.

Nay,
Cuinn said,
’tis not that, Epiphany. You do not share the same cold practicality.

I severed the eye contact with Renata, afraid that she would hear.

For a long time, I did not understand it—her cold practicality. I did not comprehend how she could seem so cruel, and yet, she showed me compassion when I had not asked for it.

A hand touched my hair to tuck a curl gently behind my ear.

Light and dark run through us all
, Renata said.

Chapter Three
 

We made it safely back to Renata’s chambers, and she left Vasco in charge to oversee the Donatore’s restoration. Those that were not with his party overseeing the restoration stood guard in the adjoining room. Soon, the Elders would wake and they would need to feed. It may seem unusual to some, to take such great lengths to restore the Donatore. If the human world was nestled so close above us, why did we not just send the Cacciatori to hunt for more? Many of the Donatore have been with our clan long enough to have never known electricity or seen an automobile. They had been gathered throughout the years, slowly, cautiously, like lambs taken by unseen wolves in the night, to become our glorified cattle, our forever source. It would take many, many humans to replace their numbers to provide sustenance for the entire clan.

We didn’t feed directly from the Donatore. Their blood was taken every day and brought to us in a dining hall. It was all very civilized, all things considered. We didn’t know the Donatore as people, but as food sources.

If we wished to remain unbeknown to the world above, we could not hunt and kidnap mortals in such great numbers. We would have to replenish our crops slowly, which was impossible. Renata could only stay the Elders and Underlings for so long before they would go mad with thirst and seek the world above of their own accord. Driven by a lust for blood, they would be as animals. It would drive us into the mortal world, making us targets.

I had to admit, it was a clever plan. Damokles had hit us where we would be most weakened by the blow. If we could not restore the Donatore, I feared to think of what would happen.

All would be lost to chaos. The streets of Bolivar, the nearest city, would run red with blood. The Cacciatori for the nearest clan would inevitably seek us out and destroy us, one by one, in an effort to stem the chaos.

I fell back on Renata’s bed with a sigh.

“You are becoming more thoughtful in your age, cara mia.” Renata roused me yet again from my thoughts.

“What do you mean, my lady?” I asked.

She sat in front of her dressing table, and her reflection met mine in the looking glass. The smile that curled the corners of her sensuous mouth was knowing and mysterious.

“Ah,” I said. “You’ve been listening. Do you ever grow bored with that, my lady?”

She did not offer a response and instead set about unwinding the black strands of her braided hair. She brushed the glistening waves until they fell in a veil of silk to her waist. I stifled a warm shudder at the memory of her hair on my naked skin.

Renata laughed, albeit quietly. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I caught Cuinn’s amber fox eyes rolling lightly.

Vampires,
he grumbled.

Do not pretend I’ve not noticed where your particular interests lay, Cuinn.
You may be closer to my thoughts than I’d like, and I may not truly hear yours unless you direct them to me, but I am an empathic vampire and have sensed a stirring of curiosity in you.

Needless to say, Cuinn closed his yap.

I don’t know why, but he didn’t want me to tell Vasco. Oh, Cuinn pretended not to like him, and he’d never actually broached the subject with me. He didn’t have to. I’d gradually begun to notice the subtle change that took place in Cuinn’s demeanor when Vasco was around. Not all of the time, but every now and then, I caught it—the way he became just a bit more impish when Vasco was around. Almost…flirty.

My thoughts circled around one another like sparrows flitting in flight. I kept thinking of the Donatore. I hoped Savina had not boasted falsely when it came to her abilities.

When first I had come to the Rosso Lussuria, I had myself been under the impression that they were nothing more than mortal servants who did our bidding. It is not so, in reality. Yes, they are servants of sorts, and to many, no more than cattle, no more than food. For that reason, we lived in a sort of segregation; Donatore and vampires, adjacent and separate. In fact, the only mortal I had ever known to spend time away from the Donatore’s quarters had been Justine.

Justine.

I shut my eyes, blocking out the sight of Renata’s bedroom.

Shortly after Justine’s death, I had learned of the segregation. The only mortals the Elders, not the Underlings, had any contact with were those imprisoned in the purgatorio. The rest lived in their own underground community among other Donatore.

Which was how Renata had found me and how Rosabella, another Elder, had found her pet Underling, Karsten. Though Karsten was no more, taken by Iliaria when she was summoned to execute our kind. No one seemed particularly disturbed by his loss. Rosabella had been more horrified by the Dracule than distraught by his death.

It seemed as if such events had transpired months ago, but it had only been a little over a week. I had not forgotten that Rosabella had voted against me becoming an Elder, had not forgotten the look of disgust she’d given me when she’d found out I was bedding one of the Great Dracule.

Like so many other things, it was not easy to forget.

I never thought to ask Renata why she had chosen Justine.

The bed moved and the back of her soft hand slid across my left temple.

“I chose her to wait on you because she agreed and I felt you would find comfort in another human’s presence.”

“She agreed to wait on me at your behest, but did she agree to die for me when you turned me, Renata?” I had never asked it of her, ever.

“She knew what she risked,” Renata said, her expression cool and blank.

She traced my jaw with the tips of her fingers. “You have more questions,” she said, her touch tender. “Ask.”

“Did she serve you as I serve you?”

“No.”

“Did she desire to?”

Renata raised her shoulders in response.

“You are playing coy, my lady. She did your bidding thinking it would gain her a place in your bed, did she not?”

She leaned over me, bringing our faces close. Her hair enclosed us like a canopy.

“You are becoming entirely too adept at discernment, cara mia.”

Renata’s sinful lips were close enough that a breath was all it would take to close the distance between us.

“You played on her desire for your affections and then cast her to my fangs,” I whispered.

“I gave her what she wanted.”

“To die?” I asked.

“To be embraced by a vampire, no matter the consequences.”

Renata kissed me, and all thoughts of Justine vanished under the command of her lips. Her hand moved along my body, sliding between my legs and pressing against me. My hips rose at the contact and I moaned.

I broke the kiss, trying to clear my mind. “Should we be doing this now?”

Renata sank to her knees beside me. She caught my wrists in her hands and pressed my arms high up above my head to pin them to the coverlet.

“Can you think of anything better to do, cara mia?”

I groaned as her energy washed over me like a seductive wave that promised to drown me in the depths of pleasure. Her gaze was bright with power when it locked with mine. She was hungry for more than sex.

She kissed me again until my head reeled with desire.

“Take it,” I whispered. “Take me.”

Renata grabbed two handfuls of my tunic and tore it open down the middle.

“I shall, my sweet.” She eyed my body as if it were a delicious feast. The intensity of her desire and hunger made me ache pleasantly.

She bowed her head and her mouth moved on me again. Her kisses fell like velvet petals on my skin. She undressed me slowly, working every inch of my flesh with her fingertips and teasing me with a light caress of nails. She cupped my breasts and squeezed them, gently coaxing my desire from embers to flames.

She pulled me to the edge of the bed and knelt on the floor between my legs. I reclined on my elbows to watch her. She rested her arm along the line of my thigh and traced my inner folds with a faraway expression. The tip of her finger slid over that sweet spot near my cleft, and I gasped, my head falling back.

Renata kissed my thigh, barely a brush of lips, no more. I gazed down the pale line of my body to find her faraway expression had been swallowed by another. The look in her sky-ocean depths said one thing and one thing only:
Mine.

Always.
Whether I thought it or said it aloud, I don’t know. Renata bowed her head and set about claiming me with her mouth, licking and sucking until she reduced me to a mess of small gasps and moans.

I was close to that sweet edge. My thighs trembled as every muscle in my body contracted against the pleasure. I was on a precipice, about to fall—

BOOK: Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel
13.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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