The Lost Centurion (The Immortals Book 1) (6 page)

“That was your punishment?” She felt the loss of his touch right away.

“Oh, no.” He chuckled. “I was told my Greek teacher had quit because I wasn’t worthy of his tutelage. It stung more than a whipping.”

“You must have had a rich youth.” The idea of a private teacher sounded decadent, although the whipping part was horrifying.

“My family was wealthy.” He played with the jar, tossing it from one hand to the other, his head tilted her way. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“How was your youth?” In one of the many passes, the jar ended between Diana’s legs. He reached between them, but didn’t even brush her skin.

Her breath caught in her chest. “I was happy when I was a kid. I lived with my grandmother and she was good to me. She died too soon and I went back to live with my mother.”
And her boyfriend who liked young girls.
Suddenly, the need to be hugged was too strong to resist and she leaned toward him.

His arm encircled her shoulders and she rested her head on him. “Was it bad?”

She didn’t want to tell him about the nightmare she had endured for ten years. Somehow, he understood her silence and caressed her arm. She existed for a moment out of time, a perfect harmony surrounding her thoughts. When she started shaking, she was the more surprised of the two. Following the uncontrollable trembling came the coldness seeping her will to live. She felt all her strength leaving her at once.

“You’re hungry, little thing.” He shook her until she acknowledged his words. “I guess I’ll be your cow once again.” He offered her his wrist.

She looked at the proffered gift, a vein throbbing underneath his skin, calling to her, and her mouth watered. She leaned and took his hand in hers, her senses in overdrive, but at the last moment, her fangs already unsheathed, she raised her eyes to him.

“It’s okay. Go ahead.” He smiled and she felt like a monster for using him.

Hunger as she had experienced only once made her stomach cramp and she doubled, shaking and sweating. He pushed his wrist to her and caressed her head. Diana closed her eyes, asked him to forgive her, and closed her mouth over the vein, only she couldn’t bring herself to cut his skin.

“What’s the matter?” His hand was still stroking her head and a new set of shivers accompanied her trembling.

“I can’t bite you.”

“Yes, you can.”

She leaned toward his hand. “I don’t want to.”

“Then you leave me no choice but to open my wrist for you.” He reached over her to open the top drawer in the nightstand.

When Diana saw the sharp edge of the knife he had picked up, she felt like fainting. The feeling almost became reality the moment he took the blade to his skin and pressed down. “No, please, don’t. I’ll find a way to feed myself that doesn’t involve mutilating you.”

He stopped and turned to look at her. “What do you have in mind?”

She worried her bottom lip. “Maybe I can track down a few of my old clients. There were two or three who were… adventurous. I remember they liked role playing and sometimes asked for—”

****

He shot to his feet. “Absolutely not!”

Her eyes became wide and she jumped back, then scooted toward the headboard, a pillow already hugged before her chest.

He wanted to take back the harshness from his command, but images of Diana biting and feeding from other men went straight to his head. He turned to face the wall and the closed curtains. The room was too small and the air was stale. He yanked the curtain open, then unlatched the venetian blinds and let the breeze from the early morning in. “I can’t risk letting your nest know you’re alive by feeding from humans. Sooner or later, rumors would start.” He couldn’t bear the hurt he knew he was putting on her face and stood by the window, his eyes on the barges down at the riverbank, but not seeing anything. “I still need you to lead me to Claudius.” He gave her his wrist. “You must feed because I’m going out.”

She reluctantly bit him and lapped at the two punctures, then suckled for a few seconds before stopping when he emitted a choked sound. As an electric current had shot them both, they jumped to the opposite direction.

When, a moment later, he conquered his racing heart and turned around, she was clutching the pillow like a shield once again. Her eyes were big and liquid, but she wasn’t crying. He couldn’t stay in that room a moment longer.

“I must leave and I can’t be worried about you trying to escape while I’m out.” He marched toward the curtains, then grabbed the heavy cotton cords used to tie them to the wall. “Those will do.” He walked to the head of his bed. “I’m sorry.” He silently asked for her hands.

She didn’t move. “Do I have a saying in this?”

He shook his head.

“Then do your worst.” She raised her hands, united them at the wrists, her palms up, and a defiant look on her face. “You are not so different from the rest of humanity as you like to think.”

He tied her wrists before her and secured the cord to one of the bedposts. Then left, went to the bathroom looking for a bucket, but didn’t find any. Next, he went to the kitchen where he found a colorful plastic bowl he decided would do just fine.

When he presented the bowl to her, she raised one eyebrow. “For the popcorn?”

Marcus gave her a puzzled look.

“Never mind. I thought you might want to entertain me.”

He almost laughed at her joke. “I could be out for a while, and even as a vampling, you still have physical needs.”

“Well, aren’t you a caring person?” Despite her flipping tone, she blushed.

He left before he would do something he’d be sure to regret later. Once out of the house, Rome welcomed him in its chaotic embrace. Sounds, colors, and smells assailed him, and Marcus thought that was exactly what the doctor had prescribed. He sprinted into a moderate jog that soon became a run. He let his legs reach the point of fatigue, hoping he would exhaust his body and get rid of her scent at the same time.

Three hours later, ache pervaded his every action, but Diana sprawled in his bed was the only image he saw with his eyes opened or closed. It didn’t matter how he punished himself, his body was still reacting to her on a level he hadn’t thought he would ever experience again. When his treacherous heart would have pushed him back home to her, he sprinted to the opposite direction. The sun was high on the horizon, casting the tall buildings with the most brilliant white light, when he breathlessly stood before Alexander’s gym.

His friend had opened his boxing place in the fifties and then hired people over the years who would pass for the owners of the historical place. Several great boxers had trained under Alexander’s personal tutelage. The gymnasium hadn’t changed much since its inception. Alexander had bought a garage in the heart of Trastevere and added mats and mirrors and the few items needed to train his athletes.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” It was Alexander’s usual greeting for Marcus. He held the double door open for him, then led him to the corner where he had his accounting studio—no more than a shallow alcove where once wine was stored. “You look like shit.”

“Thank you.” He ducked his head so not to hit the lower ceiling.

Marcus couldn’t understand Alexander’s devotion to that place. He could have bought any real estate in Rome besides the Vatican, yet he had kept that hole all those years unchanged. Not only had the garage-turned-gym been small to begin with—there was barely enough space to park a car, but it had been built by excavating the tufa rock sediment under an apartment complex, and Alexander used to wax poetic about how the temperature inside never reached the summer highs outside, even without a destructive air-conditioning system. From previous visits, sixty years before, Marcus knew how freezing and damp the gym was during wintertime.

“Care for an espresso?” Alexander had the moka already prepared on the camping stove he had wedged into the rock.

“Yes, please. I could use some.” Marcus sat on the frail-looking white folding chair, adjusting its legs between the grooves on the terracotta tiles to give it stability, but it still rocked.

“So, what did you do with the vampling?” Alexander reached for a shelf on the wall and took down two small espresso cups and the matching saucers.

Marcus looked at the flower décor on the delicate china his friend had laid on the mosaic table and raised one eyebrow. “She’s fine. Don’t worry about her.”

The moka hissed and spat some coffee from its spout.

“As in ‘you took care of her once and for all’ kind of thing?” Alexander turned off the gas and gave him his back while he cleaned the spilled coffee from the white stove.

Marcus closed his eyes and breathed slowly for a few counts, then opened them and sighed out loud. “She’s a woman, you idiot. I’d never—”

Alexander pivoted on his heels, moka in one hand, coffee-stained rag in the other. “Is she a woman now?” The hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his lip. “Last time I checked, she was a vampire in the making.”

“She still is.” Marcus took one of the cups and raised it toward the moka.

Alexander poured the espresso for him, then proceeded to add a spoonful of sugar.

“Make it two, thank you.” Marcus reached for the silver spoon on the linen napkin elegantly arranged on the table.

“One of those days. I see.” The smile reappeared on Alexander’s face. He obliged Marcus’s request and deposited the cup back on the saucer resting on his palm.

The cup clinked on the plate and a few drops of coffee landed on Marcus’s shirt and pants. He dismissed the incident with a shrug. “You rarely see anything worth a damn.” He raised the cup to mock-salute Alexander, who, still smiling, mock-saluted him back.

“So, where is she?” Alexander brought the cup to his lips and drank the content in one prolonged sip.

Marcus tilted his wrist in controlled circular motions to make the coffee swirl around the edge of his cup. “At my place.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” Marcus pressed one finger over his right eyelid, hoping the dull pain throbbing underneath his eye wasn’t one of the harbingers of the migraines he sometimes experienced. He deposited cup and saucer on the table.

Alexander stared at him. “You’ve a kidnapped vampling every vampire in Rome is looking for and are keeping her in your house?”

“How do you know they’re looking for her?” Marcus straightened on the chair and the sudden movement derailed it from the groves in the floor.

Alexander’s left arm shot outward to grab Marcus’s elbow. “The nest hasn’t been subtle about wanting their vampling back. They’ve sent word out that there’s a substantial reward for anyone who can give them the vampling’s whereabouts.” He refilled his cup, took a look at Marcus’s, threw the now-cold espresso in the sink—a big sea shell jutting from the wall—and poured a new cup for him. “They want to be sure she is executed.”

“But why? What did she do to the nest? She doesn’t even know what’s happening to her and never asked to be turned into one of them.”

“I’ll ask around about that. But you must promise me you’ll get rid of her.”

Marcus looked into the black liquid he was letting cool again.

“Please, tell me you didn’t sleep with her.”

Marcus put the cup on the saucer, and raised his eyes to Alexander. “I’d never sleep with a vampire.”

Alexander didn’t flinch at his tone. “Well, we’ve already established she’s a woman though.”

“I won’t give her back to the nest. I need her to find Claudius.”

“You need her alright.” Alexander adjusted his frame on the chair, tilting its back against the wall. “Be careful, my friend.”

Marcus stood and moved his chair out of the way. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

“I will.” Alexander raised his right arm above his shoulder before him, palm down, fingers united.
“Ave,
centurion.”

Marcus reciprocated the formal salute.
“Ave,
Alexander.”

In times like these, he missed his days as a military commander. Ordering soldiers about was tedious, but he had always known what was wrong from what was right. Now, he was keeping a vampling jailed in his house and he wasn’t sure what was right anymore.

After two thousand years, he felt tingles running up and down his spine at the idea of going home. He started walking, but it would have taken hours to reach Milvio Bridge even at a fast pace, so he hailed a cab. Fists tightly wounded in his lap, he watched as the taxi driver navigated the midday traffic. Marcus counted the red lights they encountered and yelled at the car in front of them if it didn’t sprint away as soon as the green appeared. He asked the driver to make a brief detour on the way to the house. The man told him he wanted ten percent more for the stop, and Marcus promised him double the fare if he could drive faster. The man laughed and hit the accelerator in response.

Once he reached his building, he ran the stairs four at a time, two plastic bags swaying from his hands. He almost sprained an ankle, but powered through the steps without breaking his pace. He opened the door to his bedroom without thinking what frightening sight he must have offered.

****

Diana could barely keep her eyes open, but heard Marcus before he entered the room. From the ruckus he made, it seemed he opened the door with his shoulders and then barreled through it, only stopping before the bed. When she finally managed to remain awake for more than a handful of seconds, he was staring down at her, his eyes shining with a light too intense to bear.

She was weak. The hunger overpowered her, her senses muddled by a longing for blood that would have ashamed her had she been in possession of all her faculties.

“Little thing?”

A throbbing vein at the base of his collarbone was all she could see. She thought she could smell the scent of his blood and screamed in frustration.

“Are you with me?”

Diana closed her eyes, her mouth wetting at the mere idea of plunging her fangs into his throat. She wanted to bite his skin and drink his blood. She wanted to feel him, his essence, inside of her with an intensity that was growing by the moment. At the complete mercy of her senses, her back arched toward him. “Please.”