“Achille?” Where was he? How many days had it been since his death? Had his son buried him? How had he come to rise from the grave?
What was happening?
The brimstone bargain? No. He had not fulfilled his portion of that wicked bargain. And yet...the sound of a violin had woken him from his eternal slumber.
He tapped his lower lip in thought and then was surprised at the feel of his skin and—he opened his mouth. He had teeth! All of them, in fact. They had all fallen out in the years before his death.
Looking at his hands, he marveled that the age spots that had once marked his flesh were not there. He pushed fingers up through his hair. It was long and tangled, but it felt soft, not dry from years of sickness. His face, too. The skin was smooth and taut. Had he grown young in his death? Impossible.
Again, the steady heartbeats prompted him to touch his chest. And then he beat a sound fist against his body. When had he ever had such firm, well-developed muscles as he now felt beneath the clothing?
What foul magic was this?
Was he alive? Was this his body or that of some creature? What diabolic magic had been enacted to conjure him from his very grave?
“It can’t be.”
He thought of the devil Himself. That wicked, foul beast. The ruler of Hell, or rather, as the creature had called it, Beneath.
“That bastard wouldn’t. He had made the offer to me so many times. Every time I refused.”
Many a night Himself had set the black violin before Nicolo’s old and decaying body and told him he had been born with supernatural power. Why must he continue to deny his birthright?
Nicolo had always denied that wicked magic. Many times over the decades he had performed, he had steadfastly refused the bargain Himself offered. Because he’d not wanted his son, Achille, to see him as a monster. For he knew that by drawing the bow hairs across the violin strings, he would become evil. A creature like the devil Himself.
Supernatural power or not, he could have never lived with such a selfish choice. Instead he’d used the talent that he’d honed since a young child. And even with death withering his skin and bones, he’d not the urge to accept Himself’s final bargain on his deathbed.
“Pick it up,” the Dark Lord had said of the black violin that gleamed with promise. “Play one song and you shall have it all. Your legacy.”
Never, Nicolo thought.
And yet, is that what had happened now? No, he’d not played the violin. He’d instructed Achille to ensure it was destroyed after his death. So how was he now standing before his final resting place?
Very much alive.
It was a rather fine-looking tomb, if he did say so. Quite a large pediment and a glorious monument to the maestro.
The maestro himself. A man now seemingly unhampered by age and time—even death—and feeling rather as if he was in his twenties again.
How much time had passed? Closing his eyes, Nicolo concentrated on the sounds, moving beyond the birds and weird rushing nearby to that minute rhythm. It wasn’t coming from a window or even a distant concert hall. It was coming from within him. From his very soul.
Did he have a soul now? Should not death have released his soul?
A profound thought.
A few simple notes had woken him. Not even a tune or melody. Bow across strings. Almost accidental, really. Yet those notes had sung to him. Calling him. Luring him. Gesturing with a coaxing finger for him to follow.
Achille must not have destroyed the black violin. Had someone found the instrument? Were they playing it right now? It had literally pulled him up from death. He knew that as he knew his heart beat now.
Nicolo turned about, lost in the odd sensation of being lured and yet feeling as if he’d just been reborn. His eyes fell to a nearby tombstone that detailed Marie Grace’s final rest taking place in 1920.
“1920? But that’s...”
He had died in 1840 after living fifty-eight years. A splendid life. A troubled life. A boisterous and desperate life. But he regretted none of it. For he had lived for his pleasure and had fathered a smart and kind son.
Had so much time passed then? Eighty years? The woman’s tombstone looked old. A corner was chipped, and soot and moss covered half the surface. It could be even later than 1920. Yet the idea of stepping into the world so far into the future was impossible to fathom.
Nicolo stepped forward and gripped the wrought iron fence encircling his tomb. Where must he go? How would he go? And with what means would he survive? And what would he do now that he’d risen from death? Would the violin continue to sing and lure him down the dark and evil path he had literally been born to follow?
The music grew more insistent, and his newly beating heart answered those desperate questions for him. There was only one thing he could do to ensure that bedamned bargain did not claim him. He must find the violin that had called him up from death. And destroy it.
* * *
Sitting in the silver Audi with the windows rolled down, Summer glided her fingers over the leather violin case nestled on the passenger seat. Since discovering the instrument an hour earlier she’d been hearing the silvery whisper intermittently. It wasn’t a voice, more just a sound, a distant note on a violin. So far away that she had to lean forward and tilt her head to hear it, but she wanted to hear it. To answer it.
And that was strange. She likened it to her vampiric persuasion. Had she fallen under some weird thrall when uncovering the violin? If it really had come from the devil Himself any number of malevolent spells or hexes could be attached to the instrument.
The thought gave her a shudder. It took a lot to scare her. Devil’s magic was number one on that very short list. Demons ranked number two.
Her reflection in the rearview mirror showed a tired blonde with dirt smeared across her cheek and dust still cluttered in her hair. She’d driven straight from Paris to Italy and hadn’t slept since two days earlier. She required a few hours shut-eye each night. That’s what she was considering now as the car idled roadside at the edge of Parma.
She rubbed at the dirt on her chin, but didn’t bother when it smeared. She was used to being dirty. In her spare time she liked to work on cars, and getting greasy was part of the fun. Makeup and hair spray? Ugh. Leave the war paint for the girlie girls. Much to her ultrafeminine mother’s annoyance, Summer was a tomboy to the bone.
Probably another reason why the Retriever job fit her like a glove. She didn’t mind the tough work, long hours, travel or the dirt. And she really didn’t mind the creep factor.
Except when said creep factor was accompanied by a violin that played itself. But had it really? Or maybe the unconscious fear of evil she had was putting that freaky scenario in her brain. It could have been that she’d dropped the bow, the bow hairs had slid across the violin strings, and, voilà. A few random notes had sounded. Shouldn’t raise the dead or Beneath.
She hoped.
“Paganini’s violin,” she whispered with awe. “Nice snatch.”
Now to get it to Paris. Without falling asleep. A sip of blood should do the trick to keep her awake, so she’d keep her eyes peeled for a potential donor. Someone nondescript, young, not terribly attractive, but not a vagrant. She preferred mousey and bookish, actually. Though, considering what she did to them, she should probably go after criminals. But then, she argued that changing a criminal would only make him a worse danger to others. A normal person? With hope, they could handle the results of her bite.
There was nothing she could do about it, and she did have to take blood. Bags of blood from a blood bank wouldn’t cut it. A vampire had to drink blood with a heartbeat to survive.
Initially, she hadn’t realized what her bite did to humans. Her father, Vaillant, had been the first to notice. He’d gone along with her those first times when she’d come into her fangs at puberty and had taught her to stalk the shadows and take a donor without killing. Yet, her father had noticed that her donors were different after Summer’s bite. Some struggled with voices about them that they grasped for as if at insects. Others shouted out to nothing but the madness inside them. It seemed a condition that lasted for hours.
Over the years, her family had figured that Summer’s bite was somehow changing her donors. A little or a lot, depending on how large a drink she took from them. A long drink? The donor very possibly went mad. It had frightened her to know she had such an ugly power. And confused her. Why only her? Other vampires did not impart madness with their bites. Nor did her bite seem to affect the paranormal breeds. But she could hardly keep her blood drinking only to paranormals. Humans were so much more abundant.
Fortunately, she had a strong family support system and had learned to control her hunger as much as she could. Which meant taking only a small sip and then hoping the donor would be okay. Just a touch of madness.
It was no way for a vampire to exist. But it was her life.
What she wouldn’t give to be a normal vampire who could take a nice long quaff from a pulsing vein and then walk away, whistling a show tune.
Her job did make avoiding that emotional struggle a little easier. No time for empathy for others or personal-relationship woes. She kept busy. Focused on the prize. And never got involved with distractions such as families who may own the sought-after magical item, or humans who wished to challenge her for the prize, she, as a Retriever, had been assigned to obtain.
Life was basically good. And it would be much better when she dumped this weird, whispering violin.
