Fratelli: Eternal Bloodlines (The Vampire Cartel #2)

53. The Rise of Domencio

Chapter 53

The Rise of Domencio

V atican - Vatican City, Rome

April 21, 2018

Midnight (Day of Death)

It was eerily quiet—too quiet. Not a single soul stirred in Vatican City, not even a stray animal. The distant hum of the wind brushed against the sacred buildings like a whispered prayer, casting shadows over the streets. The night seemed alive, charged with a presence no mortal could escape with their sanity.

Charmaine, the Protector of the Light, felt the weight of their mission in her bones and her eyes were drawn to Dolly, her goddess, the one chosen to lead them through this darkness to the light.

Dolly walked ahead, her posture calm, her face unreadable, as if she were a part of the night itself. It unnerved Charmaine how composed she seemed, knowing the dangers that awaited, and that they had lost Darlene. She reached out mentally to Tristan, Lucio’s most trusted consiglieri, who strode beside them. He was alert. His eyes scanned each crevice they passed in the alleyways.

“Are we safe?” Charmaine asked, with her telepathic powers. Her shared connection to her lover was barely a whisper in his mind.

“No.” Tristan’s response was curt, laced with unspoken concerns.

Charmaine slowed for a second. Her boots scuffed the cobblestone. Her body tensed. Dolly kept walking, unbothered. She appeared drawn by some invisible force. Tristan quickened his pace. He moved in front of them both. He blocked their path. His blue eyes pleaded, and he reservedly smiled.

“Out of my way,” Dolly commanded.

Tristan held his ground but lowered his voice. “I’m telling you; we must follow my lead. This isn’t something you can rush into blindly.”

“Lucio needs me,” she said.

Tristan's brows lowered with concern. “He’s alive. You feel him?”

“No. Yes. I can feel him. It’s not like before,” she replied. “He wants me to come to him.”

Dolly’s gaze was cold, her resolve unshaken. “There are no leaders here. I’ve lost my sister. I’m alone. I’m done with the games and the Fratelli politics. Lucio and I both knew what the stakes were. He can have me alive or dead. I don’t care. I’m going in. Alone. I will face the brothers myself.”

“That’s what concerns me. You not caring,” Tristan replied. “Lucio doesn’t want your sacrifice. He loved you before he knew you. That’s what Reno is. A place of safety for the supernatural’s that defend the light. A place even he couldn’t breach. Your brother is there. He waits for you. He needs you; he’s surrounded by the wolves and their territory. And Darlene is out there in the realm rooting for you to win.”

Dolly blinked, her eyes welling with tears. Tristan continued. “Marcello and Sebastiano will not welcome you the way you think. They won’t let you die and join Lucio. They will torture you for centuries, experiments that you can’t conceive. If we don’t set this up correctly, it could end in?—”

“Tristan,” Dolly interrupted, her voice cut through the night like a blade. “They already know I’m here.”

The air shifted. Tristan’s head snapped toward the shadows as two figures emerged from the alley, cloaked in darkness. His breath caught—he hadn’t even sensed their approach. Of course, they knew. He should’ve felt the moment the brothers arrived, should’ve recognized the change in the atmosphere. They were being watched.

Sebastiano and Marcello stepped into the dim moonlight, their expressions deadly, their eyes fixed on Dolly with a mixture of hunger and hate. Sebastiano’s fangs dropped first, gleaming in the slivers of light like daggers.

“There she is,” Sebastiano hissed in a voice that seemed ancient with evil. His tone dripped venom. His eyes switched to Tristan, then Charmaine, but settled hungrily on Dolly.

“I see her,” Marcello echoed, his voice quieter but no less lethal. The power in his statement sent a tremor through the air toward the trio.

Dolly felt a strange numbness settle into her bones, though her heart pounded against her breast. The resemblance to Lucio was undeniable—the sharp angular features, the dangerous grace in their movements. But unlike Lucio, these two brothers were a pure threat. After weeks of turmoil, of being hunted, manipulated, and tormented, it all led to this moment. She had survived so much and learned so much. The weight of destiny pressed down on her. Her sister should have been at her side for this battle. Fate had left her to stand alone.

If this was to be her end, so be it. She would not fall without a fight.

The brothers closed in.

The Abyss —

Domencio pressed on through the darkness, though it seemed endless, a void that swallowed everything—light, sound, even his sense of self. He didn’t feel his body anymore; it was as though he no longer existed in a physical form. And yet, something inside him knew he was moving. Fast. His heart, no longer beat, still its dark echo of power hummed within him.

Love may have been the guiding light, but the nightmare he had slipped into was real. The hellish underworld he’d followed her through clawed and snarled at him. Arms reaching from the inky black to seize him as if he were prey. It wasn’t the fact that he’d murdered his father to save her, or that he’d doomed his brother Lucio, just as the old seer Julia Brown had foretold one of Vittorio's sons would. Darlene was slipping away from him, lost in this monstrous realm. And now, perhaps, lost to him.

Suddenly, he heard it. Soft. Fragile.

Sniffles.

Domencio stopped. He strained every inch of his remaining power to listen. His senses sharpened. The weeping was faint but unmistakable. Her.

“Darlene?” His voice, raw and desperate, echoed up through the void.

“Domencio?” The reply came back, weak, broken. “Are you... here?”

His heart surged.

“Darlene!” Domencio growled. He spun wildly in the endless dark, trying to lock in the sound. He could feel her, smell her, hear her, but there was nothing to touch, no ground beneath him, no sky above.

“Help me, Domencio!” The voice pleaded.

The frustration, the agony of it all, made him mentally sharp. Rage exploded out of him in a torrent of dark energy, shattering the suffocating blackness around him. A blast, like a mushroom cloud, erupted from his very core. The shockwave returned him to something solid—something real. And then, he was lying on cold marble, his right hand clutched the ancient gem.

The weeping continued, louder now.

Domencio lifted himself off the floor. He pushed against the cool stone. His gaze shot forward. There she stood. Darlene was no longer the vulnerable, naked girl Papa Legba had torn from reality. She was in the same black dress she’d worn to tempt him—the one that made her look so devastatingly beautiful. Her back was to him, her shoulders shook as she wept into her hands.

“Dar... lene?” Domencio’s voice trembled, unsure if this was real. Had he found her? Had the gem brought him to her? He had so many questions.

She didn’t turn. The sobs continued.

“Darlene, it’s me. I’m?—”

The weeping shifted, changed, and turned into soft rippling giggles.

Domencio froze. It wasn’t weeping—it was laughter. Twisted. Childlike.

Darlene spun around suddenly, her face alight with wild mischief, and lunged at him. “Boo!” she shouted.

Domencio staggered back, stunned.

Darlene exploded into laughter, doubling over as if it was the funniest joke in the world. “I fooled you! I fooled you!!”

“What the fuck is this?” Domencio muttered, eyes wide with disbelief.

Darlene ran at him again, but this time, instead of attacking, she leaped into his arms, wrapping herself around him, her laughter ringing out with unsettling joy. She kissed his face, each petal soft kiss playful and sweet. Her hands cupped his cheeks. And then he remembered. That was her favorite game in the void as kid. She would jump out of the dark and yell “Boo!”

“I knew it! I told Dolly—you were mine. You would come for me! I knew you loved me!” Darlene bragged.

Domencio’s confusion deepened, but his instinct was to hold her and protect her. “Darlene, what the hell is going on?”

Before she could answer, a slow, mocking clap reverberated through the air surrounding them. It came loud as thunder. Domencio stiffened. Darlene slipped down from his tall frame. She stood in front of him, her eyes glowed with innocence and mischief.

“Well done, Darlene,” came the low, deep voice from the shadows. “You kept your promise.”

Papa Legba emerged. He walked upright, but his hand held tight to the top of his cane. His painted face split into a grin of dark delight. Trailing behind him, like a shadow, was Darlene’s soul—a hollow, pale version of her, expressionless and empty.

Domencio’s stomach twisted with betrayal, his chest tightened in disbelief. “Darlene?” he growled. “What have you done now?”

She didn’t turn. Her gaze was locked on Papa Legba.

“Shut up, Domencio. I’m the boss. Let me handle this.”

Papa Legba chuckled. His cane tapped the ground with rhythmic finality. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he said and stepped closer. “You thought we had a deal? You thought handing over Vittorio’s wayward son, the prodigy, the grand prize for the Supreme Draquria, would pay for your soul.”

He grinned wider, and the twisted features of his face shifted into a grotesque mask. “That’s what Julia Brown thought, too. And now she’s my pet.”

“I’m not Julia Brown,” Darlene spat. “And Domencio isn’t the favorite dummy. Lucio is!” Darlene smirked in triumph.

Legba frowned.

“I didn’t give him to you. I brought him here for me.”

Papa Legba’s laughter filled the air again like a rising, swirling storm cloud. His laughter rumbled. A wind stirred the dark fog swirling around them. The heavens opened up into a glacial nebula. Darlene didn’t laugh or react to Legba’s display of power. However, Domencio did. He feared for her the most as he looked up at what the deity could summon. Why would she play games with this beast? As much as he loved her wit, her logic was almost childlike. She stood fearless and proud. He had to smile secretly at her display of strength.

“You don’t have my soul,” Darlene said, her voice deadly calm.

Legba’s laughter faltered. He slammed his cane into the ground, and the marble flooring cracked in several directions, some of it falling away and dropped to an abyss beneath them. The earthquake spread and rocked Domencio. He had to think of something or they would both be sent into the darkness.

“Enough of this bitch!” yelled Legba.

The words had barely left his lips before Darlene’s power surged through her. A blinding wave of dark energy shot toward Legba. It threw him onto his back. The sheer force of it seared Domencio’s eyes, sending him stumbling back across the splintering flooring beneath him.

Legba groaned. He and Domencio both struggled to sit upright as Darlene’s power blew a heatwave of supernatural energy through them.

“Don’t you ever call me a bitch!” Darlene stepped forward, her form smoking with the dark energy she had unleashed. “That is not my soul, you maggot. You big dummy!”

Domencio blinked, his vision returning just in time to witness something incredible. The figure that looked like Darlene—her doppelg?nger—moved at last. It wasn’t Darlene. It was a shapeshifter, an indigenous woman with tribal markings across her bare skin.

Darlene beamed with triumph. “Those cult people thought they could bind me, break me, fool me into becoming something for them. I played them. I played you. I told you I was smart!” she shouted, and another energy blasted through Domencio and Legba. Both men hollered in pain.

“I don’t belong to this world, Legba. I’m not here for your games. I’m here for Domencio. He is mine . And I need your dark power to defeat the Draquria and free Lucio. Because He is mine!”

Legba scrambled to his feet, but Darlene was faster. She hit him again with another blast of energy, not to destroy him, but to drain him. Domencio watched, helpless, as the great deity dropped to his knees. His bones crunched and twisted in awkward angles. He writhed and rotted before his eyes, his body breaking down, eroding like crumbling ash.

As Legba’s power funneled into her, Darlene rose, glowing with an eerie brilliance. Her hand shot out, grabbing her doppelg?nger, and with a terrifying force, she absorbed the shapeshifter back into herself. The darkness that surrounded them lifted, revealing the bones and ashes of what remained of Papa Legba.

Domencio stood on what remained of the surrounding flooring. Most had crumbled and dropped away, except for the elevated pieces that held him and the remains of Legba. The black void was back. Beneath them, the underworld growled and howled with beasts that reminded Domencio of the feral. He was terrified to look down. He stared up at Darlene.

“Release me, Domencio!” Darlene’s voice rang out in his mind.

“I... I can’t. I came to save you,” he stammered aloud, confused.

She laughed softly. “I know. You came to release me. Just as I knew you would. I’m taking his power, freeing the souls trapped here. But if I don’t escape soon, I will become him. You have to release me!”

“I don’t know how!” he shouted, panic rising in his chest.

“Yes, you do,” she whispered telepathically, her voice calm. “You’re my savior, Domencio. You proved it when you rescued me before, when you were trapped with your dragon and I was trying to defeat it. Remember Domencio. You became the superhero. Save me again. And let me go.”

His gaze dropped to his hand. The gem glowed. It pulsated with energy. The same energy that had brought him here.

Without thinking, Domencio launched himself toward her, grabbing her by the waist, holding her tight, and withstanding the pain of contact with her boiling-hot powers. Darlene grinned, wrapping her arms around his neck as light exploded from the gem. Together, they shot upward into the nebula, ripping through the dark realm, leaving nothing behind but the bones and ashes of Papa Legba.