Deep Desire: The Deep Series, Book 1 (17 page)

“That it is.” The guard considered him for a minute. “I don’t think that would be a problem, since you’re a friend of Mr. Fedeltà. Come with me. Just let me know when you want me to let you back out,” he said, letting Adin through the gate.

“Thank you very much, Michael.”

“You’re welcome. Watch your step on the grass.”

Adin began walking at a leisurely pace. He headed for the mausoleum, wishing he had Donte’s night vision to guide him. At the same time he felt like a fool, like some teenage emo kid with a crush, cruising the cemetery with a broken heart. He could hear the water and smell it, and when he got to the mausoleum, he sat on the steps, just as he had with Donte. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sound of the night around him, the breeze whispering through the trees, the fountain trickling, the water lapping at the edges of the little lake. He could hear rustling in the bushes close by, and cars on Santa Monica Boulevard farther away. He tried to remember what it felt like to see all this as Donte saw it, crisp and clear and with all his senses enhanced.

Restless, he got up and began to walk again, stopping here and there to look at monuments. On one, a pot of rosemary tortured into a topiary in the shape of a heart caught his attention, and he ran his fingers over it experimentally. He continued to walk, wondering, at first in his mind and then aloud, if Donte would join him.

“Donte,” he said aloud, thinking of Sean saying,
“Call my name into the wind.”
“If I were to call you, would you come to me here?” He closed his eyes as he said this, and even through the impossibility of such a thing, it didn’t surprise him when an amused voice punctured the quiet of the evening next to his ear.

“You’ve changed your cologne, caro.” Donte fell into step with him as he neared the water. He handed Adin his
borrowed
tie, the one he had taken when they first met on the airplane. Adin took it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“My luggage left without me. It’s in Washington, and my scent went with it. My sister purchased this one. Like it?”

“Yes.” Donte picked up Adin’s hand and held it to his lips. “But there’s something else. Rosemary?”

“I touched a topiary on a grave. Rosemary for remembrance, I guess. Very Ophelia-esque.” Adin felt Donte’s smile on the back of his fingers. Donte let his hand down but didn’t relinquish it. They walked for a time, hand in hand.

“I find it impossible to believe that you’ve forgiven me,” Donte said finally. “I’m not sure I have forgiven myself.”

“It was a difficult choice. I’m still alive, or I’d have very different feelings about it.”

“How magnanimous you are in the face of a terrible betrayal.”

Adin thought about it. “Betrayal requires trust, Donte. I had admiration, interest, healthy respect, even fear, but trust?” He shook his head. “You told me not to trust you. You didn’t betray me.”

“I have spent a long time requiring myself to be wherever Santos is not, if you understand my meaning. I’ve dodged confrontations with him for centuries.”

“He told me.”

“Did he?” Donte considered this. “I’m surprised. I would have thought he’d keep his business with me a secret. He’s so ashamed of us. Ashamed of his father.”

Adin squeezed his hand. “I think he loved his father very much, and his feelings for you are mixed up with jealousy, anger, betrayal and superstition. He spoke about his father dying unshriven and buried in unconsecrated ground.”

“I guess you can take the man out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the man, caro.” The corners of Donte’s mouth lifted slightly.

“At any rate, when last I saw him, he told me his willingness to kill me wasn’t personal.” Adin led Donte to a memorial bench and sat on it.

Donte sat next to him, fussing with the crease in his trousers “Wasn’t personal,” Donte muttered. He looked over at Adin. “What are you laughing at?”

“Behold, it is I, Donte, remorseless predator of the night,” Adin mimicked. “Wait whilst I fix my trousers so they remain creased properly, and I shall show you.” Adin bent over laughing.

“I cannot help but feel that you mock me at your peril, Adin Tredeger.” Donte regarded him coolly.

Adin shook his head. “It’s no good anymore, you know? I’ve been inches away from dying at the hands of conscienceless predators, and I can spot a big undead lapdog when I see one.”

“You dare?” asked Donte, appalled.

“I dare,” said Adin, turning toward the vampire and throwing a leg over to straddle his lap.

“Adin—” Donte sputtered “—I cannot help you in the world in which you find yourself if you refuse to acknowledge…”

Adin kissed Donte soundly, on the mouth, dragging his tongue across Donte’s lower lip slowly and deliberately for effect. He caught it between his teeth and drew it out, letting it go with a
snap
.

“Donte, you mistake,” he purred, using Donte’s own accent, playing. “You cannot be expected to know this, but I am the apex of the academic food chain, and the scourge of students and nontenured professors alike.”

Donte kissed him back for a while, then pushed him away. Adin didn’t think he’d quite absorbed his shock.

“You have become unhinged.”

Adin smiled. “I have.”

He took Donte’s face between his hands, cupping it gently, framing it, and stroking Donte’s cheeks with his thumbs. He felt such an impossible tenderness he was unable to speak. Donte’s hands were on his back, under his jacket, caressing him, and suddenly he couldn’t decide where he wanted his own hands to be first. Adin pushed Donte’s suit jacket off and put his hands to the buttons of his shirt, as Donte’s elegant fingers went to his belt buckle.

“Donte,” whispered Adin, rising to his knees. This position forced Donte to look into his eyes as Adin cupped his face in both hands. “No vampire tricks. Tonight you’re just a man.”

“Yes,” Donte agreed, sliding the leather of Adin’s belt through the loops on his jeans. Adin took it from him. “What?”

“Just a man, Donte,” said Adin as he pushed Donte’s hands behind him and wrapped the leather around his wrists. He wrapped the belt around three times and buckled it shut, knowing that if Donte didn’t choose to be bound, he couldn’t be. He undid Donte’s own belt and then his trousers, freeing his cock in the process and holding it in both hands. Adin felt Donte’s eyes on him, hot with need.

Adin slid down until he was kneeling before Donte. His head descended, and he licked his way up the throbbing shaft and put his mouth around it. Donte hissed, and a number of startled birds flew out of a tree.

“Donte, no vampire tricks,” warned Adin.

“Wasn’t me.” Donte panted. “I pledge it… A cat, I think.”

Adin smiled and returned to his task. He licked Donte’s cock with the flat of his tongue and then teased his way past its defenses to the tiny slit on the tip. He wrapped his lips around it and bobbed down, taking Donte’s entire cool length until his nose was in the thick patch of hair at its base, and then changed to suction, drawing off with such protracted precision that Donte cursed his name and thrashed under him. Adin used his left hand to cup Donte’s balls and stroke the sensitive skin behind them, eventually teasing at Donte’s hole. Donte shivered in anticipation. He slicked Donte’s cock, then rose and kissed the man, absorbing his shocked gasp. Adin toed off his shoes, rid himself of his jeans, then straddled Donte and watched his eyes closely as he lowered himself.

“
Adin.
”

Adin felt Donte’s cock slip past the tight ring of muscle guarding his ass.

“
Yes
.” Adin whispered, his head tipping back. “Wanted this.
Wanted you
.” He rocked his hips and shifted, beginning to move.

“Yes, Adin,” Donte whispered. “
Yes.
”

Adin closed his eyes. This was for him
.
His moment to savor being alive when not so very long ago that seemed like an impossible outcome. He sought Donte’s mouth in a desperate kiss.

“Feel me?” Adin asked against Donte’s lips. He squeezed his ass tight and hard around Donte’s cock. He caught Donte’s head in his hands. His heart was slamming against his rib cage as he quickened the movement of his hips. Donte was rocking up into him, his hips coming off the bench to meet Adin’s ass as their coupling turned quick and dirty. Donte gritted his teeth and slammed so hard into Adin that Adin lost his breath in shocked gasps, air shoved out of his body by the impact, the force of Donte’s hips against his.

“Yes,” cried Adin between gasps. “Donte…
Fuck…yes
!”

He was coming then; hot spurts of cream ribboned onto Donte’s belly and his own. Adin’s ass tightened fiercely around Donte’s dick, carrying Donte over the edge with him. They grappled, shaking, until the waves of their passion died away.

Adin rocked slowly, milking any sensation he could get from their bodies. He slowly came down, breathing hard against Donte’s neck, his face pressing in for kisses and tiny licks of Donte’s salt-tinged skin.

“Mm, good…good vampire.”

Adin got up to slip his jeans back on, but remained silent and thoughtful while he tucked Donte back into his trousers, pulling him close, loath to lose contact. They continued to kiss while Adin unbuckled his belt from Donte’s wrists. He released Donte’s hands, then rubbed them briskly, although he could hardly imagine why, except it felt good to share his warmth and breath and skin.

Bumping his hips against Donte’s aggressively, he helped Donte back into his jacket.

“Behold, the power of the Amorous Academic; see me and tremble.” Adin licked at Donte’s ear, still teasing. He grinned and took a long, slow kiss. “You must not be afraid, caro. You must see you are helpless against my superior intellect.”

Donte sighed when Adin finally let him go. “What are you?”

“Just a man,” said Adin. “Just a flesh-and-blood, heart-still-beating human. Someone who loves you.”

Adin had no sooner said the words than he was dumped unceremoniously onto the ground by Donte’s sudden rise to standing.

“What?” Donte demanded.

Adin looked into Donte’s hard gaze just then and was sorry for it. “I love—”

“Don’t,” Donte spat. “Just stop it. You may mock
me, but not with talk of love. I have no place for this. I want no part of this. Don’t you
dare
come to me with herb-scented hands and think for one moment, for one second… Just—”

“Don’t think what?”

“Just don’t, Adin.” Donte raked his hand through his hair. “I don’t regret that you live. I’m sorry if I made you think there can ever be anything between us. Don’t imagine you could ever take Auselmo’s place.”

“I what?” Adin gestured helplessly around him. “You think I—”

“Auselmo’s shoes cannot be filled.”

Adin stared blankly at Donte. His words poured around them both like a bloodred rain.

Adin felt Donte’s anger but didn’t fear it. It had nothing to do with him. He watched Donte depart at a dead run, vampire-style. One minute he was there, and then the next Adin was as alone as though Donte had never existed.

Adin picked himself up off the ground, then slipped on his belt and shoes and readjusted his jacket. He took a turn around the memorial park in a numb sort of way, noting the different types of markers and the small tributes left by mourners, indifferently revisiting the pain and panic of what had become, arguably, the worst few weeks of his life.

Eventually he found his way to the gate and murmured a polite good-bye to Michael, who let him out. If the guard guessed at his mood, he didn’t show it. Adin returned to Deana’s car and drove it to her small home, then parked it carefully in the driveway just adjacent. By the time he found his bed, he was convinced that everything his life had become was merely a dream, and that in the morning he’d wake up and hardly remember it at all.

Chapter Eighteen

From the quiet of the cellar I can hear everything that goes on here. Somewhere above my head Renata still lives, and my sons. No light can reach me here, and yet still I can see every creature, cobweb and mote of dust in the air. I care not. I try, time and again, to go over the things I remember of the last day we had together, Auselmo, but the muddle in my brain begins to simmer, and events either seem too real or not real at all.

I remember supper. It was a caustic affair in which Renata’s friends engaged in their favorite sport, making all others at the gathering feel beneath their contempt. They were, I saw, taking particular delight in baiting your sweet wife. I felt your tension, saw her relief when you sent her away with her women. I saw that you appeared heroic in her eyes, and that she dreaded the evening to come. Numbly, I watched all of this as if it were a play unfolding before me, holding out hope that in the end I could find some way to save us all.

After the wine was served, you began to look distracted. That much I remember. And then it gets confusing, for my wine as well, I think, had been tampered with, and I sat stupefied as you began to sweat. Your face seemed pale to me, and I thought, I must get him to his family, and then I caught you by the hand and pulled you away from Renata and her friends, but… Now when I think upon it, all I see are faces that are twisted and shapeless. Gaping mouths and hard eyes and jeering laughter.

By the time we arrived at my private rooms, you were ill. Gasping for breath. I called for the physician, and then the priest, but nothing could be done for you. Nothing helped. I would not let them near you after that. I was like an animal. I would have torn them apart with my teeth had they touched you, so they eventually withdrew.

I said everything, did I not? I never stopped speaking to you, beloved. Never stopped telling you what was in my heart.

Dearest Auselmo, if you can haunt me…walk with me now. I slip alone into the darkness without you. I care for nothing. I held your body as it gave a last shuddering, gasping jerk, and then…oblivion. Your life, and mine, done, in a fraction of a moment’s time.

I refused to let you go. I prayed for my own death, and when Renata and her lover Delporrino entered the room, I thought, yes! Here is the answer; let them kill me. Let it be done forever. I begged them for it, for I was completely unaware that there was something far worse than death awaiting me at their hands. Renata’s cold eyes fixed on me as I held you in my arms, and their cruelty only reassured me.

What a fool I was.

I welcomed death but imagined it could not be at my own hand, or I should never have the faintest hope of seeing you again, my beloved. When Delporrino came after me… He tore at me with his teeth, and… I hardly recall what he did… I hardly cared as long as I could continue to hold you in my arms. Eventually, I was unable to stay conscious, and when I awoke…dear heaven…when I awoke, I understood where earthly man receives his notions of hell.

Outside the window of Adin’s tiny yellow cottage, the blackness of night and storm swallowed everything except for brief, brightly illuminated snapshots of his front yard, impressed on him by flashes of lightning. The trees were bare and skeletal against the sky. Adin let the white lace curtain drop back into place. He picked up his drink and padded back to his overstuffed club chair, back to the work he’d disappeared into when it became clear he wouldn’t even be able to run or bike today, much less walk to the grocery store for supplies. His inability to return to the university for the fall term cost him some respect with the dean. That he cared very little hadn’t begun to worry him yet.

Time had passed slowly as he’d spent his days on the bike trails and his nights translating the remainder of Donte’s journal. He’d managed a routine of sorts, accomplishing the purchase of food, cooking, and caring for his home on automatic pilot. On days like this one, it felt warm and cozy, a haven against the things he knew were outside waiting that he’d never really seen before.

The fire popped beyond the ottoman where he rested his feet, the only sound besides the terrible storm.

It was months before I understood the truth of what I was.

In that time I was truly and completely mad. I drifted between our world and the new world without you in an agony of despair. Sometimes I forgot for minutes, hours even, that you were gone. I busied myself with drawing when I could get hold of something to draw on. I discovered the stone walls of my cellar prison could be marked with pebbles and begged these from my keepers, a terrified husband and wife whose family had served ours for generations. They would bring me things they thought might work sometimes. They were very kind and only kept me chained when I tried to harm someone.

There would be no harming myself. I was, it seemed, indestructible. Slowly, carefully, over time I began to see what I had become, and the grief it brought me as they procured people for me on whom to feed, I cannot tell you. It was in those first few months that I still killed by accident. Over time, I learned to feed without harming a human; indeed, I learned to give them pleasure. I didn’t apply myself in any way, I only…became inevitably, inexorably, far from human. As far from the human man you loved as can be conceived.

As time passed, I learned to live in darkness, feed without prejudice, and disconnect myself from everything and everyone that made me Niccolo. It was as if someone reached into my chest and removed my heart. Every single thing about me changed, except my love for you.

Renata put it about that I was ill, a polite euphemism for mad, and she was able to play queen of the castle for years without needing to sacrifice herself or my holdings on the altar of enforced marriage to yet another man. But I was learning what I was capable of, and Renata, for all her cunning, was completely ignorant of the conflagration of hatred I had buried within me, or the fact that my own confusion was fast evolving into a keen intelligence and feral, predatory instinct.

I began to leave the castle at night to hunt. There was very little else to do, and my keepers now were far more like friends and caretakers than jailers. They brought me a journal and once again, I was able to write. To draw.

Then one night, I saw how much time had passed—something I’d never considered. I was moving stealthily in the garden on an evening when Renata was holding a masked ball. Several people were coming and going from the stifling hall for fresh air, and I saw my son, now almost fully grown, dressed as Apollo. He caught a pretty girl to him for a kiss in the moonlight, and I thought, all this she has stolen from me.

I found Renata that night and killed her. I felt nothing when I left her lifeless body discarded like an empty skin of wine on the damp grass beneath my feet.

The number of phone calls Adin had received when he first arrived home in early autumn had trickled to a slow and steady once or twice a week from dear friends. Concern had turned to a judicious silence, broken by upbeat, friendly inquiries about the upcoming holidays. Deana continued to call every few days, letting him know subtly that she was certain other people had survived broken hearts and he would too. Invitations were still coming from friends who asked him to spend time in other parts of the world. Blind dates had even been mentioned, which had placed Adin firmly on the defensive.

As predicted, vampires were everywhere. Even on his beloved island, he seldom went out without meeting the searching eyes of someone who understood and acknowledged the difference between the man Adin had been and the one he was now.

Adin knew he was marked, and even if he never saw Donte again, that would be apparent to any of the undead forever. He didn’t know or care how it worked. Like innocence lost, he was without the ignorance that protected most men and women from the predators that walked among them.

For all that, however, Adin had few problems. He enjoyed the time off work, claiming health reasons backed up by his hospital stay in San Francisco, and even after that excuse wore out he didn’t choose to return. He was on unpaid leave currently, until after the Christmas holidays, and he wasn’t all that anxious to go back even then. He had nestled into the couch cushions earlier to read a book, but read the same paragraph over and over until he finally gave it up and picked up the remote control to turn on music. Lately, he was listening to a lot of Italian opera.

It has been widely rumored that a wild animal attack resulted in Renata’s violent death. As I write this, I wait for darkness. When Renata first brought me here and installed me in the cellar, I was weak, half-starved, and suffered from periods of delusion brought about by grief. Now, I know these chains are toys and I can break them, and my jailers more fragile than butterfly wings should I choose to harm them.

I am leaving this night. My decision pains me, for I have longed to see my son take up the seal I held, and that my father held before me. He is fine and worthy, and may be considered as safe as any man now that Renata lies in her grave, although I am sure that Delporrino plans vengeance and might possibly target him. I have vowed on my son’s life to hunt Delporrino down like the animal he is and see that he ruins no further lives.

Auselmo, best loved in all the worlds, I will travel to your home and see your family once more, and then I depart Italy for the East. The world is now the smallest place, it seems. I have always dreamed of travel; yet in those dreams I was never alone.

I carry you in my heart and in that way you shall share immortality with me. As I imagine the future, it stretches out before me unending, and I move through it with no more conscious thought than a body jerking convulsively at the end of the hangman’s rope. I move. I exist. I am. And yet, I do not live. Tonight, I slip the final bonds of mortal life. The only thing I choose to carry with me besides you, beloved Auselmo, is this journal.

Kyrie eleison; Christe eleison; Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.

Adin closed his eyes, refusing, even in his mind, to name the reason for his malaise. Christmas was only three days away, and with it, the realization that he was spending it alone, by choice. He was giving himself this one last hurrah of self-pity, and after New Year’s, he would return to the world of the living. He picked at a scone he’d made that morning for breakfast, admiring the way he’d rolled and cut it into a bell shape for the holidays, when the phone rang.

“Tredeger,” he said, after locating the cordless phone deep in the soft innards of his chair.

“Adin?” Boaz.

“
Boaz.
What part of the world are you calling from?”

“London. Mr. Santos is enjoying a very Dickens Christmas.” Boaz hesitated. “What’s going on up there in Washington? I hear you’re having some weather.”

“Yes, it’s raining hard. Little cold. Nothing we can’t handle.” That could be the understatement of the year.

“Did you get the package I sent you?” Boaz asked.

“Yes.”

“And the miniature? Donte wanted you to have that. He thought—”

“Did Donte really send that to me? Or was that you?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t mine to give,” said Boaz uncertainly. “Did you read the rest of the journal?”

Adin pressed his lips together into a tight line. “Yes. I did.” The pain and rage he’d felt as he read of Donte holding his dying lover haunted Adin’s dreams. “Thank you.”

“Good. When I didn’t hear from you—”

“I’m sorry. I should have acknowledged your gift. I thought Sean would tell you I got it.” Adin held the phone to his ear with one hand and sipped a whiskey with the other. “Look, did Santos…? What exactly did Santos say when he read
Notturno
?”

“He was very contemplative. He didn’t say much of anything.”

“I see.”

“I sensed that he sees his father in a different light now. He hasn’t made a move on Donte yet. I can’t tell if he plans anything in the future, but so far—”

“Why are you still with Santos?” asked Adin irritably. “Do you sell your loyalty to the highest bidder? I thought you were the quintessential family retainer. Santos nearly had me killed. I know in the grand scheme of—”

“The best way to work for Donte is to see to it that he doesn’t come into contact with Santos. I’m in an excellent position to assure that.” Boaz hesitated. “Have you seen him?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Who?”

“Him, and don’t think you’ll trick me into saying his name,” replied Adin. He was
not
going to do it.

“You think you can’t say it, don’t you? It doesn’t work that way, Adin. Saying his name isn’t what brings him to you.”

“It’s brought him in the past.”

“Coincidence. You mustn’t be afraid of Donte, Adin.”

Adin was annoyed. “What do you know about it? I’m not afraid.”

“Refusing to say his name? Like he’s Lord Voldemort or something? Adin, you are
so
afraid to say his name.”

“I am not afraid to say it. Donte Fedeltà, Boaz,
Donte
. It’s not as if seeing him is my worst-case scenario. Are you satisfied? Niccolo Pietro di Sciarello.”

“Oh yes.” Boaz laughed. “I’m satisfied. Quite. Merry Christmas, Adin.”

“Merry Christmas.” Adin hung up the phone, cursing. His bell-shaped scone seemed to have lost some of its charm, and he picked up the plate to take it into the kitchen. Once there, he got down one of his finer china teacups. Edward was fond of saying, “A pricey teacup always means a better cup of tea,” or something shallow like that.

Outside, the weather was foul. Tree branches slashed the air, rattling like bones. No time went by without flashes of lightning illuminating his drenched and stripped garden, and the thunder was giving him a headache. He watched as a particularly immense fork of lightning cracked the blackness of the sky and caught sight of Donte standing in the shadow of a winter-barren maple tree.