Dark Rapture (61 page)

“You barely have your own home, let alone your own instrument,” Catrina stated. “You really should consider finding a nicer place, Bastian. That box you live in can hardly be called a home.”

“It’s not so awful, I’ve finally been successful in evicting all the miserable cats.”

“Yes, I wondered how a
man
could live in such conditions,” Rico pondered. “I tell you what, I have an available apartment across the Canalrizzo. It’s small, but a vast improvement over the cell you call home. I want you to have it and I won’t take no for an answer. I’ll have my servants move your things immediately.”

“That is very kind of you, Federico.
Grazie
. I only hope someday I will be able to repay—”

“In good time.” He clamped a hand over Sebastian’s arm. “But now, let us go over the guest list for tomorrow night.”

Sebastian’s eyes lit up. “Tomorrow? You’ve set things up so soon.”

“Oh yes, I never waste time. Are you pleased? Can you have a performance ready by tomorrow evening? I know it’s very soon.”

“Pleased? Well, of course, but…” Sebastian stared speechlessly at Rico and Catrina. Rico’s head rested gently on his sister’s arm, and again when the two were close their blue eyes merged them as one and Sebastian felt the intense urge to reach forward and kiss them both. And he did.

“Mmm, I believe he is pleased,” Catrina said. “Rico, you will invite the lovely lady I met the other day at the hospital?”

“Oh yes. She was a duchess, was she not?”

“Sì, the Duchess LeReaux.”
Sebastian’s entire body stiffened.

Catrina continued, oblivious to her lover’s shock, “She said she would be in Venice for a short while. It seems her sister’s husband, Don Vito Gilianni, passed on a few days ago. Poor woman.”

“You said a prayer for her, I trust?”

“Certainly.”

Sebastian listened intently as he struggled to keep a calm appearance about him. He didn’t know what to say. The Duchess LeReaux?
Angelique
? It couldn’t be.

“You must invite her,” Rico added. “And her sister. Though, I imagine the sister is in mourning…but didn’t you say that the duchess’s son was with her?”

Her son! Sebastian pushed the back of his head into the thick feather pillow and closed his eyes as Rico and Catrina conversed.

“Yes, I believe his name was Jacques. The duchess had mentioned he was on leave from Versailles to escort her to Venice.”

“Jacques,” Sebastian whispered. “But what about, er, the duke? Her husband?”

“Hmm?” Rico and Catrina both glanced to Sebastian as if the two had completely forgotten he was in their presence. “Oh, Bastian, yes, you are from Paris. Do you know the duke and duchess?”

Their inquisitive silence reached out and spread its long spindly fingers about Sebastian’s neck. He swallowed with difficulty.

“Er…no…no. You know, Rico, I’m not so sure about this concert after all.”

Rico’s brow arched and his face switched from inquisition to a strange concern.

“I’ve never performed for people I do not know,” Sebastian argued.

“Nonsense,” Rico said with a relieved shake of his head. “It has already been arranged. You can stay and practice today.” Rico stood. “Get dressed, Cat, there are some errands you need to run this morning.”

***

They left him to himself after the announcement of his concert. Rico had to oversee the arrival of a new shipment of paintings and tapestries, and Catrina had disappeared to heaven knew where. Though his mind had been a havoc, tormented with the mention of the duchess’s presence in Venice, Sebastian found he could not fight the pull of the vampire’s sleep. It was as if he were drugged. The arrival of morning had weakened him and though the adrenaline rush kept him awake through noon, as soon as Rico and Cat left, he fell into a slumber, waking hours later.

Alone and in a darkened room, Sebastian’s thoughts ran wild. The Duchess LeReaux. Angelique in Venice? No! How could he stop this concert from happening?

But oh, to see my
mere
again.

Sebastian’s heart yearned for the touch of his mother’s hand, the sound of her soft voice caressing his ear as she kissed him, and the comfort he always felt whenever in her presence.

You made a choice years ago, his conscience reminded. “Yes,” he said. And he knew it was best for both of them. If Angelique discovered the secret he possessed it would surely mean her death. She could never bare it.

Picking his things up from the floor, Sebastian quickly dressed. Finding a slip of blue ribbon on Catrina’s vanity, he used it to tie his hair in a queue and then headed downstairs to find Rico so he could discuss tomorrow’s concert with him. He would convince Rico he needed more time. Yes, he would give a concert, but later, after he could be sure Angelique was no longer in Venice.

He found Catrina in the portego dressing to go out, her personal maid layering her with a cape lined in thick gray wolf’s fur.

“Bastian, you sleep like death itself,” Catrina said as she slipped one hand into the muff her maid held. “I was going to wake you earlier but decided it would take an entire opera in full voice to penetrate your peaceful slumber.”

“I’m glad you did not.” He wondered how long she had stood over him, examining his sleep. Had she wondered why he barely breathed as a normal mortal would? He would have to take care not to put himself into such a position again. “I see you are going out?” He glanced down the narrow hallway, seeing the servants lowering the
felze,
a canopy-like covering, over the waiting gondola.

“
Sì
, but it is not a social visit. A young woman has recently taken quite ill and I’m going to tend to her.”

“Will you and Rico be taking her in?”

“
Si
, she is near death and has only her mother along with six other siblings. The poor woman can scarce feed her children let alone pay for the hospital. The girl will be in much better hands here with Rico and I. Tell Rico I’ll return later, will you?”

“Where is he?”

“Oh, he’s in one of his moods.” She waved a muffed hand and started toward the landing. “He received another painting today, it’s got him in such a stupor. Check the roof garden, you’ll find him there.”

Wondering exactly what Catrina had meant by Rico’s mood, Sebastian wandered into the patio room. It was enclosed on three sides by glass which allowed the winter sun in without the chill.

He was startled to find the good-natured, vibrant young man sulking in a chair before a painting. It was an ethereal, quiet piece that drew him nearer as Sebastian stepped onto the tiled patio.

In the painting, an angel with wings of white descended on streams of golden light to the earth. Sebastian could only stand and stare at the lovely picture that seemed to breathe a life of its own. He forgot his worries regarding his mother.

“Rico?” Sebastian placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

“Angels are so lovely, aren’t they?” Rico said in a peaceful voice. The crisp lace about his wrist slithered sharply across his azure damask
velada
as he placed a finger aside his cheek and another to his lips. “I am overwhelmed by them. I can never take into possession a painting of angels without falling into this deep, ineffable awe each time I sit before them.”

“The artist does have supreme skill in depicting his subject,” Sebastian observed.

He knew of Rico’s passion for angels but the man’s state truly surprised him. Here was a forceful, passionate man, master of his life and destiny, reduced to a wondrous silence by a mere painting, a facsimile of an angelic being.

Sebastian examined the painting again, thinking perhaps he had overlooked something. He himself was not sure if he was of the devil or still a child of God. There were many secrets he had yet to uncover regarding his vampirism. Hell, he wasn’t sure there were great hidden secrets or powers of the vampire. He was as close to human as a man could be if one overlooked the blood drinking and avoiding sunlight.

“I want to tell you something.” Rico gestured for Sebastian to come around the chaise and stand beside him. “You think I am out of my mind for acting so. But let me tell you…I saw one once.”

“An angel?” Sebastian stared at the painting with new wonder.

“I was twelve. My
madre
called me to her side on her death bed. She kissed my lips and begged me to bring Catrina to her. But I knew my sister would not come. Catrina had developed an aversion to death since mother was overtaken by the sickness. Catrina fears sickness and the weakness it creates in the body. She has shunned old people, grotesquely wrinkled and crooked with age ever since.”

“But if she fears sickness—”

“She never gets too near the children we take in,” Rico said quickly. “But they are young. She greatly fears
aging
, Bastian. Not a day goes by she does not gaze into her jeweled looking glass and pray the signs of age do not appear.”

“But Catrina is still so young.”

“Yes, I know. But the time shall come. And God help me—” Rico clenched the end of the chair arm “—I would do anything to change her future.”

His jaw softened and he released his grip on the chair. “Catrina is the world to me, Bastian, you must know that.”

“I do.”

“Yes. But I have seen our closeness unsettles you,” Rico said softly. “Our parents died when we were very young. We’ve been on our own since. I am Catrina’s brother, her father and her confidante. And she in turn is not only my sister but also mother.”

And lover.
Sebastian felt himself mouthing the words but he did not voice his suspicions.

“But as I was saying, I stood at my mother’s side when death took her. It was a peaceful end to a horrendous fight that had reduced her to bone and flesh. I was thankful for death’s mercy. I kissed her eyes—I still recall the putrid smell of her body—and then ran to the door. But I stopped, for one last look. It was then I saw the angel hovering above my
madre’s
right shoulder.

“It was a fascinating and lovely sight, this angel. Its wings were of softest white and its robes were brilliant azure—the color of the stone in this ring.” Rico absently twisted the ring on his finger. “It did not look to me, this heavenly creature, but I knew then all was well. My mother’s soul was taken by the angel that night and led to God’s hand.”

“Father expired two years later, he was in a constant drunken stupor after mother died. He drowned one morning in his own vomit. I found him stretched across a gondola, his pockets turned out by vagrants, a booze bottle wedged beneath his cheek and the bottom of the boat.”

Rico squeezed Sebastian’s hands before turning to the painting with an extended sigh. “Ah, but this is not the angel, either. I will not give up my search until I have found it.”

***

Rico stepped inside the sickroom, patting his waistcoat for a handkerchief, but found none . The surgeon had already been here this morning, and Catrina never ventured near the sick children for fear of contracting anything. Finding her here now caused him to race across the room to her.

“Catrina? No! What is this?”

She turned around, her jaw drawn tight and her eyes maniacally fixed on the object in her hand. She waved the lancet, the one used to bleed the patients of their infected blood, before Rico’s face.

“I need more.” She grabbed the silver bleeding bowl, clutching it possessively to her chest as she eyed the sleeping girl on the bed.

Their guest was sixteen years old. Having spent three months in the Hospital Venezia for an infection in her leg, it had gangrened and they’d amputated the leg, leaving her with an ill-cared-for, infected stump. Her color was pasty and her breathing had been weak when she’d arrived yesterday.

At the doctor’s orders, she was to be bled once daily to prevent the infection from spreading through her blood, though Catrina had instructed the surgeon to do it twice, once in the morning and once at nightfall.

Rico grabbed his sister’s arm and the knife slashed across his palm. “No,” he whispered harshly, pressing the wound to his mouth. He glanced to the patient to check that he hadn’t woken her. “She hasn’t had enough time to recover from the last bleeding. You must wait until this evening, Cat—”

“It isn’t enough,” Catrina whined, and pulled her wrist from Rico’s grasp. “There was barely enough there to color the bath water pink. I need more, Rico.” She dodged to the bedside, but Rico lunged quickly, grabbing her up by the waist and carried her kicking to the doorway.

She was like an addict in need of the precious drug. After reading about Erszebet Bathory of Hungary, Catrina had taken up her morbid daily ritual of bathing in the blood of virgins. It was rumored to possess youthful properties, which had sent Catrina running to the morgues in search of the newly dead.

After becoming accustomed to his sister’s eerie ritual, at Rico’s suggestion, they hired a surgeon from Germany, paid him well enough to keep his mouth shut, and began to take in dying girls by offering their family money in turn for allowing their children to die with dignity in a fabulous palazzo.