Chapter 4
ROSA
After getting the bemused and later inappropriately chatty girl into a cab home, we found a quiet bar still open. I have no idea why I agreed, other than the obvious reason: I really need a drink.
I am exhausted to my core, and now that the adrenaline of the night is fading, my usual state of melancholy threatens to return. I’m shaken up in all kinds of ways and quite simply don’t want to be alone.
It’s a stupid reason to be here with him, of course. I could be back at my hotel, letting one of those bored businessmen get lucky. I could go dancing or head to the airport and lose myself in the anonymous flow of humanity.
I could do any of those far more sensible things, but what can I say? I’ve never been particularly sensible. So here I am, gulping hard liquor while I fight tears and ignore what I’m feeling. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damn good strategy.
I drink, and I blank it all out, and I tell myself that it’s absolutely fine to be sitting at this battered little booth in this battered little bar while my mysterious companion makes a phone call outside.
Before he left, he bought a round of beer and brandy. Vampires can’t get drunk like humans can, but I’ve been told that if they try hard enough, they get a little buzz. Maybe that’s what he’s chasing.
He walks through the door like a dark storm and slides into the seat opposite me. His thick hair is still damp, slightly longer than it should be, maybe overdue a trim. There’s a shadow of stubble on his jaw, and both observations reinforce my belief that I’m dealing with an Old World vamp.
The vamps who have been transformed since the Bargain was struck are frozen in exactly the same state forever.
Their hair and nails don’t grow, and their bodies don’t change at all.
If they happened to turn during an acne breakout and had a zit the size of a planet at the end of their nose, they’re stuck with it for eternity.
Kids remain kids and the elderly remain elderly.
Old World vamps, though … Well, they’re different. They’re the elite. The ones from before. They do age, but very slowly. This guy looks to be in his mid-thirties, but he’s got at least four centuries on him.
His long fingers wrap around the shaft of his beer bottle in a way that has my temperature rising.
The way his wet shirt clings to him doesn’t help matters.
I gulp quietly and hide my reaction behind a sip of brandy.
The shirt will dry, but the damage is done.
I am already familiar with every ridge of his perfectly sculpted upper body.
I shake my head and look around the dimly lit bar.
Anywhere except at him. My eyes will be glowing, as they sometimes do when I’m excited for any reason, and I’m not sure how successful I am at keeping this pesky little lust problem under wraps.
Jeez. Maybe I should just fuck the guy and get it out of my system.
“Goths.” I nod toward the couple in the next booth, their skin whitened with powder, hair dyed black and back-combed, heavy on the eyeliner, and purple fishnet gloves on their hands.
He glances over and smiles. The human obsession with supernaturals is a constant source of amusement, perhaps more to vampires than any of us.
The man sitting opposite me is all burnished-bronze skin over a muscular, athletic body, as far removed from pale and tortured as possible.
He looks more like the lead in an action movie than a horror flick.
“They never pick on anybody else, do they?” he says, echoing my thoughts. “Always this fascination with the vampire, when sitting right here in front of them is a Seer. How old are you now, Rosa, bella?”
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it was rude to ask a lady her age, bello?” I retort, determined not to let him unsettle me.
He throws his head back and laughs, exposing the strong column of his throat, and I find myself wanting to sink my teeth into it. Being social with vampires seems to have negative side effects.
“The woman who gave birth to me was a maid, and I never knew her. She sold me to another mother—the one who raised me and trained me, and eventually transformed me when I was old enough to take to bed. And she wasn’t the kind of woman who worried about her age, believe me.”
I don’t worry about my age either, other than to disguise it.
I’m not immortal, but the Vecchissime bloodlines lend themselves to unnaturally long, healthy lives—like several centuries long.
I’m a baby by those standards, but I’ve appeared to be in my mid-twenties for the last eighty years or so.
It’s a challenge. There’s only so much one can credit to the revitalizing powers of Crème de la Mer, good genetics, and a Botox wizard.
“I’m old enough,” I reply, “to realize that we shouldn’t be making small talk. I know what you are. You know what I am. Why are we sitting in a bar having a drink like old friends?”
“Or new lovers?” A wisp of silver circles the black of his irises. That’s a new one on me, and I’m horrified when it makes my pussy clench.
“Cut it out.” I keep my voice as steady as I can. “Or I’m leaving.”
“Not if I don’t want you to,” he murmurs, his tone deceptively gentle as his hand streaks out, a blur of motion, and traps my fingers.
To anyone looking at us casually, it would seem like a romantic gesture—a loving touch.
I know differently because of the effortless pressure he exerts on my flesh, the painful grind of skin and bone as he flattens my hand to the tabletop and keeps it there.
“You go when I tell you to go,” he growls. “When we’ve had a chance to talk.”
“Talk then, for fuck’s sake!” I say, exasperated and hurting and infuriatingly excited by it all. Who knew I had a bossy-vamp fetish? Not me, that’s for sure.
“You swear too much.” He releases my hand and leans back.
I rub my sore wrist and glare at him. “What, for a woman?”
“For a dock worker. I’m sorry if I hurt you.” He stares at the wrist I am massaging as he speaks, and I get the feeling that he actually means it. This guy is quite the trip.
“You’ve been having the Call more and more often, no?
” he says, snapping back to business. “Been facing more and more vampires you needed to put down? I’m guessing you’ve been feeling that amulet of yours a lot more than usual, that your visions have been more powerful.
That maybe there isn’t room in your head for anything else. ”
It isn’t a question, but I nod anyway. He’s right, and I’m intrigued as to how he knows.
I mean, I haven’t even talked to my family about it yet.
I need to soon, because I’m feeling the burn of it all.
There are only three Seers left alive to police the rogue vamps and suddenly a lot more rogues.
Rogan was just the latest in a way-too-long line of targets.
My visions have always been more vivid than the other Seers’ for some reason, and while that makes me a more effective tracker, it’s also a much bigger head-fuck.
I feel their sick pleasures, their perversions.
Their euphoria as they rape and feed and kill.
It’s the way it works for me. My mind is flooded with all of it, and I have to let that flood drown me before I can swim back to the surface and be of any use.
Except I’m starting to understand that I might just drown one of these days. That there’s only so much one mind can take.
I don’t waste time confirming that he’s right. “Why the sudden uptick in monsters? Has something changed on your side of the barriers? Have all the blood banks closed down? All the addicts got clean?”
Even as I ask, I know it can’t be that simple.
This isn’t about food. There’s never any shortage of that.
The human world is full of the weak and forgotten.
Bring me your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses, and I’ll show you a bunch of victims with fang marks on their bodies.
It’s nature, and most vamps do it only to survive.
“As I’m sure you know, Ms. Capelli, this isn’t about supply and demand. When do you get Called? It’s not for every vampire killer, is it? It’s only for the special ones.”
The “special ones” who enjoy death and pain far too much. The scum of the vampire world—the serial killers of their reality.
“Yeah. And sometimes I can go months without seeing anything that needs my attention. But recently? Constant.” It has been nonstop. A never-ending whirlwind of psycho vampire action invading my head. No wonder I’m tired.
“As I said earlier. Your life is at risk.”
“Okay,” I say eventually, staring at him over my almost-empty glass.
“That may be true, but I still have no clue why that is your business. I’ve also noticed that you seem to know a lot about me, Mr. Mysterious.
How about, before we go any further, you answer a few of my questions.
Your name for one. And why it is that you’re taking so much interest in a Capelli Seer when most of your kind would happily see me dead?
” I keep my voice low, a whisper to anyone else, and inaudible to the goth couple nearby.
“My name is Luca. Luca da Firenze.” He stares at me intently, as though waiting for some kind of reaction. He’s wondering if that name means anything to me.
Luca. Out of Florence. The Florentines are the oldest of the Coscas, which is pretty much the sum of my knowledge.
The Coscas are immensely powerful gangs that some say are older than the Vecchissime.
For all intents and purposes they resemble the criminal empires of the humans but come with a lot more secrets.
And a lot more bite. Even I don’t know much about them, other than their reputation for brutal ruthlessness.
It doesn’t give me much fresh information. I already knew he was Old World. I could tell that from the hair, the stubble, the tattoo. The easy way he switches between charm and violence. He’s had centuries to perfect it.