Written in Blood: A New Adult Vampire Romance Novella, Part Two. (The Unnatural Brethren Book 1) Read online

  Written In Blood

  A New Adult Vampire Romance Novella, Part Two.

  Silvana G. Sánchez

  Copyright © 2020 by Silvana G. Sánchez.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or undead), events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Selfpub Designs.

  Edited by Julie Cocaigne.

  DEDICATED WITH LOVE TO

  My husband, Eric.

  “When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create

  No trouble in thy breast.

  Remember me, remember me, but ah,

  Forget my fate…”

  Dido’s Lament.

  Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell.

  Contents

  Music suggested by the Author

  1. Dark Lullaby

  2. The Record of Evil

  3. Garden of Darkness

  4. Shades of Blue

  5. Vampire Tricks

  6. The Happiest Man on Earth

  7. The Curse

  8. The Beast

  9. Winterbourne

  10. The Physician

  11. The Raw Bloody Truth

  12. A Fickle Heart

  13. The Prodigal Son

  14. Welcome to Darkness

  15. One Last Lament

  16. Marmoreal Perfection

  17. The Pleasures of Deceit

  18. The Taste of Revenge

  19. Venetian Sky

  20. Sartie Mangiatori

  21. This is The End

  22. The Hero’s Call

  23. My Most Beloved View

  24. La Serenissima

  One More Thing

  CALL OF BLOOD

  Dido & Aeneas

  Call of Blood: A New Adult Vampire Romance Novella, Part One.

  Also by Silvana G. Sánchez

  About the Author

  Music suggested by the Author

  Spotify Playlist

  1

  Dark Lullaby

  In the early hours of the following afternoon, a lullaby pulled me away from my slumber. The voice singing was pristine and enthralling.

  I followed the melody, led by its spell. Amidst many callis, I blended with the moving throngs as yet another tourist; but I was not.

  My footsteps ceased at the calle's dead end. The voice called me from the highest window of a house. Looking up, I calculated it would make an easy climb. Compelled by my curious nature, I stepped on a few wooden boxes and then fixed my hands on the stone wall's crevices. My body weighed nothing. I clawed my way upwards in seconds, with no witnesses to my amazing feat.

  On the balcony's balustrade, I sat. Peering inside through the thin layer of white curtains, I caught a glance of her voluptuous figure. Sitting before the dresser in her bedroom, she was combing her long and wavy fair hair while staring into the looking glass. The harmonies which had inadvertently led me to her window took their source in her mouth; yet she remained oblivious to my presence.

  A voice brewed within my brain; its powerful command echoed in my skull.

  “Take her, now. Slam open those doors and seize her. Sink your fangs deep into her neck and drink that precious elixir flowing through her veins and arteries.”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  My hand touched the pane of glass. With eyes fixed on my beloved prey, the hunger pierced the pits of my stomach and a wave of pulsing pain reached my body's every limb.

  I pushed the door and it slowly receded beneath my palm. But then, I stopped.

  She moved away from the dressing table and reached for something by her side; something I had failed to see, hindered by my unnatural appetites.

  A newborn child slept in her arms as she hummed the hypnotic tune, a defenseless creature, whom I would soon leave orphaned as I was myself... The inviting fragrance of youthful blood filtered through the door's crevice, an irresistible wine that would quench my painful thirst. I needed that wine.

  I took one more step closer to my prey.

  The door creaked. Holding the child in her arms, she turned, and her innocent eyes landed on me. She pressed the child against her chest and her lips parted barely.

  In that moment, the room and its furnishings vanished; fields of white snow engulfed me with the sight of a frozen lake before me. Beyond, on the other side of the lake, stood the red fox. Its leg, trapped in the rocks; its eyes, pure and innocent, fixed on my own.

  “Kill it!” he said.

  The snow melted and the white panoramic drifted away as the veil of illusion fell. The fox disappeared, but the woman and her child stayed in its stead.

  “Kill it!” Viktor's voice echoed in the room.

  Another blow of pain rippled in my veins and arteries, coursing through my chest, reaching my fingertips, leaving unbearable soreness.

  I took a step back and leaped off the balcony's railing, landing on my feet with no trouble. And even though the hunger ripped me apart, I moved out of that callètte, leaving mother and child unharmed, though fairly frightened.

  Evening fell, and I had yet to serve my unnatural hunger.

  The moistness of the stone walls transferred to my fingertips as I moved down the desolated calle. The nautical fragrance in the air enveloped my senses and in one sweet moment, every worrisome thought encircling my preternatural brain dissipated into a delicious void where nothing mattered.

  The city slept, and but a few murmuring voices my vampiric hearing did perceive. I picked them up with no difficulty. From the violent collection of old debts and new within many taverns, to cries of prodigious ecstasy the wind carried from brothels that lay miles away.

  Amidst the clashing sounds, a voice outshined any other. It spoke a name. I heard it distinctly and quite near to where I stood.

  “Rinaldo... Rinaldo, come back to me!”

  My steps came to a stop.

  As I followed the trail of sound and crossed a few canals, the voice became louder and clearer. A foul stench lingered in the air; the streets, dirty and polluted by human waste.

  Before the open door, I stood quite still for a minute.

  “Rinaldo...” she cried in a low murmur.

  I pushed the door open, making a low creaking sound, only to discover a room immersed in pitch darkness and her shadow standing before the window, motionless.

  I stepped inside and Marietta turned around, locking her reddened eyes on me.

  “What do you want?” she said in a hasty chant of Italian.

  “Marietta...,” I mused, surprised to have found her so unexpectedly. But then, perhaps I had searched for her all along; perhaps my vampiric new senses had led me to her doorstep, knowing of my pending promise to Valentina and my secret wish of turning into that heroic figure I once had thought attainable.

  “Signore?” she said, recognizing my voice.

  “Yes. It's me.”

  I moved closer to the window, avoiding the filtering beams of moonlight, concealed under the shadows at all times.

  “How did you find me?”

  I wished I knew.

  “That doesn't matte
r,” I said. “I have to tell you something. Your child waits for you in Rome.”

  “Valentina?” she mused, amazed.

  “She sent me here to find you,” I said. “She needs you.”

  “I can't leave,” she mumbled, stripping all importance from the subject. “I cannot leave him in their claws! They have him, Sartie Mangiatori!”

  My patience was running thin.

  The soft penetrating scent of her pulsing blood lingered in the air and penetrated my nostrils, filling every inch of my lungs. Somewhere in the depths of my soul’s unnatural darkness, the hunger stirred.

  “Yes. The Shroud Eaters... I know!” I know they are real, I wanted to add. “Marietta, forget about Rinaldo. He's dead. He's been dead for a long time.”

  “No! No!” Despair, not madness, tainted her cries. She clung to my jacket, all but falling on her knees. “That's a lie!”

  An excruciating wave of despair sank into my being, filling every inch of my soul. I could not breathe. Her despair clung to me and added to my own. It overwhelmed my senses and clouded my thinking. Tears loomed in my eyes. Soon, I would fall on my knees and weep too if I did not put an end to it.

  “Enough!” I said, removing her hands from me.

  In one quick move, my hand slid beneath her jaw and fastened around her neck. I lifted her body in the air and slammed her against the wall, close to the window. My face drew near hers and a beam of pale blue light landed on my eyes.

  “Listen to me, and listen well,” I growled. “The Shroud Eaters will not stop until they find you. And when they do, they will kill you!”

  My eyes fixed on hers as I fought off the strong desire to rip her jugular apart with my bare teeth.

  “And do you know how I know this?” I hissed. “Because I am one of them!”

  Her widened eyes quivered with fear, and she made no other sound but a quiet whimper.

  “You will leave Venice, you will return to Rome, and you will find your daughter! You will tell Valentina that her father is dead and that you missed her and love her dearly. And you will never, ever, leave her again!

  “Do you understand?” I said in Italian.

  A flash of my fangs did enough to secure her promise.

  As soon as she nodded, I released her from my lethal grasp and her shuddering body slipped down against the wall. Crouched in the corner of the room, Marietta took her hands to her lips and sobbed.

  For her sake, I turned to the door and left the house as quickly as I could. My thirst was becoming more threatening with each passing minute, more so than I had ever anticipated or ever knew.

  No more than a few steps away from that dilapidated home, I stumbled upon the calle's dead end at a small dock with nothing but sea for miles before it.

  Evening had fallen long ago, and the black veil of the night covered every inch of the starry sky. But far from falling into contemplation of the masses of multicolored gas, my eyes landed on more appealing subjects.

  Three young men, drunkards all, were standing by the dock, locked in battling alcoholic conversation.

  Their ongoing complaints and senseless intoxication made them unaware of the vampire approaching them.

  “Buonasera,” I mused as I got closer to my prey.

  Their innocent faces glared at me, bemused beyond their senses, careless of my motives as I stopped before them.

  I smiled. And with a hint of my deadly fangs, I announced to each one their irrevocable fates.

  It was over all too quickly.

  I walked down the humid calle, leaving three corpses behind, drifting somewhere beneath the darkened sea.

  2

  The Record of Evil

  Killing came as a natural skill for me.

  In my recently acquired condition as a vampire, I understood its high value and necessity. I felt no remorse because, by word of my maker, I had no other choice if I wanted to live. In those brief moments of my introduction to the Dark—as he had called it—Dristan had conveyed me a powerful sense of peace. And also, I could not deny the unparalleled pleasure my victims’ blood granted me as it filled my mouth and satisfied my dark desires in more than one way.

  Down narrow humid callis, I hunted my prey with a gargantuan appetite. I had finished off three, bought a new set of clothes and gone on my way home before the evening had set.

  It was as I strolled by the Grand Canal's embankment that the thought dropped into my head. With much haste had I steered my steps towards her and had not stopped once to consider that three days had passed since I had seen her last. Three days since our evening together. Whatever sense of abandonment or deception Alisa had experienced after my disappearance eluded me.

  “How could I have been so stupid?” I mumbled as I reached the palazzo's front gates. They were open. I entered the garden and opened the door and immediately became aware of the rooms' stillness. I grabbed a candlestick and ran upstairs with such speed it made me dizzy as I reached the stairway's upper landing. I had to stop for a while and then climbed the next set of stairs, with more care this time.

  In all probability, my absence had wounded her, and I was about to find out just how deeply.

  The wooden door creaked and receded under my hand as I touched it. I had not planned the words with which I would beg for her forgiveness; all I knew was that I had to see her once more, and everything else mattered little.

  White linens covered her bed and every piece of furniture, except for one, her dressing table.

  I moved forward, my heartbeat echoing in my ears; it was hard enough to restrain my breath to its normal pace. And now I stared at the one thing capable of sending my soul soaring high above the clouds, or down into the pits of despair.

  The pearl choker stood on the otherwise empty table.

  I reached for it, and with watery eyes, I recognized it as the sign of her departure. There was no note, no letter of farewell—nothing.

  She was gone.

  I fell on my knees, my mind raced to find a solution to this unexpected turn of events. Myriad questions reverberated in my skull, but the one that hurt the most obliterated all others.

  Have I truly lost her?

  The floorboards creaked behind me.

  I turned fast and narrowed my eyes as I glanced at the room's threshold. My senses adapted quickly to the darkness laying overhead; the details of her green dress became clear, as did the white linens she carried wrapped around her arm.

  Terror filled her eyes as I drew the light near. She took a step back.

  What did she see?

  Could she tell I was no longer human? Could she see beneath the veil of darkness and death surrounding me and know what I had become?

  “Scusi, signore...” she mused. “I only returned to retrieve my—”

  “What, those linens? I believe they belong to me...” I said with haste. I had no time for petty domestic nonsense.

  I had caught her stealing, so what? For three days I had been a vampire and already had a far better record of evil than her. Steal all you want, ragazza!

  “Go ahead, take them... I care nothing for them,” I mused as I passed beside her.

  “Grazie, signore! Grazie mille!” She knelt and tried to kiss my hand.

  “No, please,” I said as I freed from her hands. “There is no need for it. But tell me, how long ago did Miss Lockhart leave?”

  The woman rose from the floor. “They left this morning, signore.”

  “They?”

  “Miss Lockhart and Mr. Pritchard.”

  Her answer weighed on me as a ton of bricks. Pritchard was back in the picture, again. Oh, how the thought of easing his way to the gates of hell crossed my devilish mind!

  “They left this morning...” I whispered.

  “Si.., tornarono in Inghilterra.” They returned to England, she said.

  Why would they go back? If anything, I would have thought she would carry on with our itinerary; they should be leaving for Florence, not England.

  “Prego,” I
said and then gave her a few coins. How lucky she was. Had I not fed earlier...

  Sheets of paper danced in midair. Books waved their tattered brownish pages high above as I pulled down the entire shelve.

  I roared in frustration.

  None of that tantrum did a thing to appease my anger.

  I sat on the fallen bookcase and ran my fingers through my hair.

  Life had moved on without me. I hated it. I hated that her waiting for me had been confined to no more than three miserable days. And most of all, I hated that she had run off with him.

  Pritchard… who was he? A man of wealth, titles and luxuries beyond my reach? No. That might have been once, but not anymore.

  Within minutes, I reached the spiral staircase and entered the secret room. The vast sight of gold and riches astounded me once more. I filled a fistful of gold coins, emeralds, and rubies.

  This was mine. It was real. I had won the battles I had fought for years in my boyish dreams of adventure. For once, I was the pirate, and I had the treasure all for myself.

  But beyond any sense of accomplishment having these riches granted me, I found within them the means to an end.

  Dristan's signet ring shone in the table's corner. I picked it up and slid it on my finger.

  “I will find you,” I whispered.