Page 73

I’m groggy, unfocused, severely dehydrated. I feel like complete crap, and that doesn’t improve when I hear the door open and his footsteps on the creaking stairs. He takes me in as he strolls closer, looking unbearably pleased with himself.

“Ah. I see you’re awake. You always were a glutton for punishment.”

“And you always were a spineless asshole who liked picking on little girls.”

“Come now,” he says, smiling at me. “You’re hardly a little girl anymore, are you? You’re a grown woman. One who has come to the end of her time, sadly. I must admit, I might even miss you when you’re gone, Rosa. You always amused me, surprised me. The world will be just a little duller without you in it. Though infinitely less dangerous.”

He reaches out, grabs my hair, and yanks my head backwards slightly. The pain is sudden and shocking, so intense that I almost pass out again. He glances at my exposed neck and throat, taking in the marks left by Luca’s fangs.

“I used to find this so disgusting,” he says, stroking my skin with one repulsive finger, “but now I, naturally enough, see the appeal. Perhaps I will drain you, darling Rosa? Kill you as I drink your life blood? Wouldn’t that be sweet?”

I manage to spit at him, which is a waste of precious fluids but satisfying. “I’m not dead yet, grandfather.”

He drops my head, backs off. Looks disgusted as he wipes the spittle from his face. “Not yet, no. Though I hope you’re not expecting your beloved to charge in here at the last minute and save you from the baddie?”

Something must cross my battered face, no matter how hard I try to stop it, because he laughs. It turns my stomach, that sound, acid rising in my gut.

“Oh no, no, no, dear child. Luca will not be charging anywhere ever again. I have made sure of that. As I said, he did my work for me. He killed the other Dons, and now I have killed him, and the world … well, the world is mine, isn’t it? The vampires will follow me because I am strong. The others will follow me because they are afraid. The humans? Well. Mainly, they will die, I suppose. There are far too many of them anyway. They’re like a plague on this planet, and it’s about time somebody administered a cure.”

I glare at him, refusing to believe what he says. Not the megalomaniac shit—I’m sure he believes all of that—but about Luca being dead. I’d know it, wouldn’t I? After everything we’ve been through together, every challenge we’ve faced, every battle we’ve fought? I’d know!

I try to open our mental link, but I’m struggling to concentrate. To focus enough to reach out. “He’s not dead,” I say firmly. “He can’t be.”

“Oh, I assure you he very much can be, Rosa. Would you like to see for yourself?”

He looks at his phone screen, messes around until he finds what he wants. Adjusts the volume, so it’s full blast. Before I even see it, I know it’s bad. Screaming, yelling, howling, crying. Breaking glass, roaring engines, gunfire. The sounds of pain and death and chaos. He holds the phone up, and I struggle to make my vision work. Everything is blurry, hazy. One of my eyes is swollen almost shut, and it takes me a moment to properly see.

When I do, my heart sinks. It’s a video of the court at Hell’s Kitchen. A battle royale, one in which the odds are overwhelming. There are thousands of monsters, all attacking, all bloody, all furious. They pack the streets like zombies, hordes of them, as far as the eye can see.

They swarm the first line of the Firenze guards, and my breath catches as I see Stefano run out to join his men. He screams, brandishes a machine gun, does some damage, but it’s not enough. There are too many of them, and he succumbs to their numbers. They cluster over him, and after a few moments, another vamp emerges from the scrum holding Stefano’s head aloft. I almost choke when I see it. Stefano, with his gravelly voice and his steadfast loyalty. His sneaky sense of humor, the kindness he tries to hide. Gone now.

I look on as the scene unfolds, the moments obviously captured on somebody’s phone, the angles jerky, the sound quality patchy. It’s enough though, enough to show me that defeat is inevitable. I catch a glimpse of blond hair but can’t make out if it is Donatella. I see wolves scrapping and tumbling. I see him. Luca.

Coated in blood, his face contorted with rage, battling his way through the masses. Tearing and biting and punching, silver eyes shining, taking down way more than any one individual should be able to. Tears sting my eyes as I watch, as he is overrun. A group of vamps stalk him from one side, and eagles attack him from another, pecking at his face with beaks and talons. I cringe as a long-haired vamp takes a bite from his shoulder, blood spurting from the wound. He whirls, fights, bites back. But more descend upon him, then more and more and more …

Eventually, he disappears. Swamped, buried. Engulfed. Like Stefano, gone. I am sobbing now, the tears pouring down my cheeks, the pain of my battered body nothing in comparison to my broken heart, my shattered mind. I stare at the screen for a few seconds more, praying for a miracle. For him to emerge. To see his beautiful face once more.

It does not happen.

“Hang on now, this is my favorite part,” my grandfather chimes in, chuckling.

I want to look away. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of watching, but I cannot tear my eyes from what I’m seeing. The vamp who bit Luca on the shoulder bursts up from the heap of tangled bodies and waves a fleshy lump in the air like a prize. A heart, bloody and red. A cheer goes up around him, and he throws it into the braying mob. It is devoured within seconds. No.

“Now, I don’t want to say I told you so,” my grandfather chimes in, looking at the images in deep satisfaction, “but … well. I told you so. He is dead. You will soon join him. And the new world will begin. I will start by exterminating the other Vecchissime. Their time really has passed, don’t you think? And after that, I’ll have to deal with the other vampire clans, I suppose. I know, I know, the Russians, the Scandinavians … hardly worth bothering with compared to the Coscas, but I do like to be thorough. And after that? Well, I have time, don’t I? All the time in the world. Unlike you. Unlike poor Luca.”

He makes a fake sad face, as though he’s bothered. As though he’s not the monster who orchestrated all this. Who has brought the chaos and the carnage and the fire. I hate him; with my entire broken heart, I hate him.

Maybe I should beg for my life. Try to escape. Fight him longer, fight him harder. There might be more for me to do—protect the other Vecchissime, rebuild, resist. Maybe I should do anything I can to survive—because where there is life, there is always hope.

Except … without Luca, I have no hope. And without Luca, I do not have a life.

“Kill me,” I mutter beneath my breath. “Please.”

“What was that?” he says, holding a hand to his ear. He heard me; I know he did. I mumble it again.

“Kill you? You’d like me to kill you, Rosa? Is that what you’re asking for?”

I glance up, meeting his eyes. Nod solemnly, ignoring the shooting pains in my skull, the kneecap that is collapsing. “Yes. You’ve won, nonno. Now I’m begging you … put me out of my misery.”