Beneath the Skin

9 BENEATH ANCIENT SKIES

ROME, ITALY

March 25

RENATA ALESSA CORTINI STEERED her Vespa along the narrow cobblestone streets, weaving almost without thought around pedestrians, tour buses festooned in bright colors and carnival lights, cars, scooter clusters, and compact delivery vans. Her black D&G sunglasses protected her eyes from headlight glare.

Giovanni’s hands rested on her hips, a light touch, and warm. He still hadn’t said anything. She wondered if he thought she was joking. In his place, she would’ve thought so, might’ve laughed, might’ve told him to stop wasting her time.

Might’ve asked for more stories and dreams and fancies.

He told such wonderful tales.

She did not.

In her heart of hearts, Renata loved fairy tales and mist-woven myths, had from the first night she’d curled warm and blood-fed in her blacksmith père de sang’s thick-muscled arms as he told her stories of magical True Bloods—the Fola Fior—and of the mysterious Elohim.

Stories she’d passed on to her little Caterina as bedtime tales.

Ah, but now her little love, her strong and practical daughter, her graceful death-dealing ballerina, had returned the favor and gifted Renata with words magic-dusted and glimmering with endless possibilities, words wrapped in sharp, crisp truth.

The Bloodline still holds, Mama, and a myth from the ancient past now walks the world. I’ve seen him.

Fallen and True Blood, cara mia? How is it we never knew of his existence?

Because monsters seized him the moment he was born and hid him among even more twisted monsters who fed upon his beauty and tried to shatter his spirit.

And did the monsters succeed?

No, I think they failed. I was given to him as a meal. He could’ve drained me, let me die. He didn’t—even though he was still hungry, still burning, still needing. He asked my name instead and left me to return to you. But he’s hurt, Mama, and damaged. And he’s being hunted.

Let me tend to that, cara mia. You tend to the things you do so well, mia ballerina scura. Serve Dante Baptiste heart and soul. Guide him true. Win his trust.

Renata glided the scooter between two white delivery vans with only inches to spare on either side. Their drivers, berating one another as incompetent, unworthy to even spit-shine the other’s boots, paused in their mutual insultathon long enough to give Renata an appreciative once-over.

“Ritorna, bella,” one of them called after her. “Una bella donna merita un uomo, non un ragazzo.”

“Ciò è allineare!” Giovanni shouted. “Sapere di c’è ne?”

Renata laughed. “You put yourself down too with that one.”

“Worth it.”

“Perhaps you are just a boy, and a silly boy at that.”

“I haven’t been a boy in centuries.” Giovanni’s fingers tightened on her hips.

“Perhaps.”

<Is Caterina certain?> Giovanni sent.

<Of the True Blood? Assolutamente.>

Tourists in straw hats, fingering the cameras dangling around their necks like rosary beads, stared at her, shaded faces startled, whenever she buzzed past with a polite tap of her horn. Romans never even looked up, stepping aside instinctively.

The warm evening air fluttered her hair, chiming through her silver and amber earrings, and lacing the delicious smells of herbed fish, roasted tomatoes, and garlic through her curls.

<I have difficulty believing this young True Blood is also a Maker.>

But he was fathered by one of the Fallen. The things Caterina saw him do …> Renata lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. <I know of no other explanation. No other way that this child could turn one, let alone dozens, of the Fallen to stone.>

Silence. Giovanni’s finger tapped lightly against Renata’s hip as he mulled over this latest bit of information. Careful, her fils de sang, each thought viewed from all sides and angles like a jeweler peering at an unpolished gem. She tamped down her impatience and let him think.

As she zipped her scooter into the tourist-thronged Piazza di Spagna, she eased off the throttle and guided it into a parking lot on the east end of the piazza. Parking between two smart cars, she switched off the engine.

“She is mortal, our Caterina,” Giovanni said, his lips close to her ear, his breath warm. “Perhaps she was tricked, an illusion woven into her mind.” His hands slid away from her hips. “If the boy really is True Blood, he might be capable of such a thing.”

“Might be, sì, but why would he bother?” Renata stepped off her scooter, smoothing the gauzy violet bohemian-style smock she wore belted at the waist over her black leggings. Her gaze fixed on Giovanni. “He’d been drugged and tortured for hours by deluded mortals hoping to use him.” Fury burned through her, hot and deadly, a summer sun at high noon. “He was exhausted.”

“And you know what it takes to exhaust a True Blood, sì?”

Renata stretched her five-two frame erect and lifted her chin. “Perhaps I do.”

Still lounging on her scooter, Giovanni regarded her with light-filled hazel eyes. His short, tousled, burgundy-dyed locks highlighted his handsome face with its long Roman nose. His lips curved into a wicked smile.

“Perhaps you do at that, bella.”

Renata waved an elegant dismissal with one pale hand. “Sexy smiles and rote flattery, Vanni mio? How disappointing.”

Giovanni swung off the scooter and stood in front of her. Tall, at least compared to her, just a shade under six feet. His jeans and midnight blue sweater fit him well, revealing a trim, athletic build.

Taking her hand, Giovanni raised it to his lips. “Bella,” he murmured, his lips warm against her skin. He smelled of the sea, this eldest son, of brine and sand and deep, restless waters. He looked at her from beneath his dark lashes.

“Have I disappointed you?” he whispered, his lips caressing her captive hand.

“Many times,” Renata said, her voice tender. She tugged her hand free. “But I love you still, mio figlio. That never changes.”

But as for her trust, that was another matter entirely.

Giovanni glanced away, his gaze skimming over the crowds perched on the Spanish Steps and ringing the low, boat-shaped fountain in the piazza’s heart. Golden light gleamed on the Trinità dei Monti and its twin bell towers, glittered like jewels—ruby, sapphire, and emerald—upon the water in the gurgling fountain.

The sweet smell of azaleas and sugar pastries perfumed the night.

Soon, very soon, they would hunt and dine.

Giovanni slid his hands into his pockets. “When are you telling the Cercle?”

“Not yet,” Renata said. “I’d like to keep this matter just between us and Caterina. Keep it in the family. For now.”

A smile flickered across Giovanni’s lips. “Ah, sì. You want to make sure that Caterina hasn’t been deceived. So you admit the possibility.”

“I admit no such thing.”

“Say Caterina is right, that this Dante Baptiste is not only a True Blood—”

“Fathered by an Elohim high-blood,” Renata tossed in.

“Sì—so not only a True Blood, but a Maker as well. Say that is all true.” Giovanni’s gaze came back to Renata, his eyes brimming with reflected color—gold from the church and ruby and emerald from the water, purple and deepest blue from the lingering twilight. “Whose hands do you most want to keep this True Blood out of? The Cercle de Druide? The Parliament of Ancients? Or Le Conseil du Sang?”

Renata felt a smile curve her lips. She always benefited by allowing Giovanni room and time to think. “Perhaps all three,” she said.

“I have a feeling the Fallen might be a bigger concern,” Giovanni said. “They will try to claim him.”

“They tried once already and failed. Dante Baptiste seems quite content to turn the aingeals to stone,” Renata said. “Perhaps his actions—if true—will buy us time. Dante belongs to us. He was born vampire.”

“Sì, mia signora,” Giovanni murmured. “Born vampire and born Fallen. We shall have a fight on our hands. A holy war.”

“Are we ready to wage one?”

“With the Fallen? No. Not as divided as we are. The Cercle can call upon the mortal nomad clans and they would join our fight, cara mia, but we vampires …” He shrugged. “Both the Parliament and the Conseil will scheme to get ahold of Baptiste.”

Renata agreed. Each vampire faction would slaughter the others for the opportunity to use and manipulate a True Blood, let alone what the youth truly was.

A creawdwr. Powerful and precious. Ready to be molded by whoever claimed him first—vampire or Fallen. And it would be vampire if Renata had her way.

“We shall keep him safe and secret for the time being, sì, Vanni mio? This True Blood principe needs time to heal, to recover from all the evil done to him.” The fire burning within her heart flared to life. “And those responsible shall be dealt with.”

“Has anyone asked him what he’d like to do?”

Renata considered for a moment for effect, then said, “No, I don’t think so. But he’s too young to know what he wants. He’s a child in need of guidance. We will help him decide what is best for him.”

Giovanni shook his head, a smile on his lips. “Of course.”

Renata looped her arm through his. He looked at her, his face bright beneath the piazza’s lights, warm with humor.

“Shall we dine, mio ragazzo bello?” she asked.

“Sì, my beautiful Renata, we shall.”

Arms linked, Renata and her eldest, her thoughtful Giovanni, strolled into the piazza proper and, mingling with the tourists crowding the steps, selected their dinner.

When she returned to her white stone and evening-cooled apartment later that night, she would place a few very important calls.

And those who refused to obey would soon find someone at their door bearing a final message, one delivered by a hungry and ruthless stranger. A message that would include all within the household—innocent or otherwise, family, friends, or lovers.

A message that wouldn’t allow survivors.

Your time has come to an end. Arrivederci.