Dérobé
There was a prolonged silence among the Pierét family the following night as Lizette stood facing her mother and father in the front parlor.
"Pardon? Non! Cela ne peut pas l'être!" Lizette broke the silence with forbidden words, she could not hold her tongue, though she knew it was not her place to speak. Nor did she have the
right to question her father's command.
"We set sail upon the morrow, Fille." Repeated the old frenchman, his weary eyes narrowed by the young maiden's inapropriate outburst.
Monsieur Pierét was not an elderly man, but in appearances he seemed ancient. His thinning hair was grayed and his face was deeply creased with wrinkles. His brow took a severe
expression when framing his deep-set eyes, imitating a bottomless river in their ominous depths.
Madame Pierét was a much younger, painfully attractive woman. Her hair was blacker than a raven's feathers, and in the rare occasion that one should find her with her hair out of its
tight loveknot at the nape of her neck-while taming the ebony locks before the mirror in her bedchambers-then their eyes would be stunned by its beauty and glassy sheen. Her
eyes,however, were such a unique and intense color, that it was next to impossible to correctly describe them. When exposed to the sunlight, they appeared a hazel-brown. But in the
shade, they were burgundy. And when they flared with anger, they burned with the intensity of a blazing fire. But in the heat of desperation and passion, they tore through one's soul as
they shone with the impossible intensity of a ruby. Lizette had inherited both these features, along with her mother's pale, ivory skin.
And the Madame's eyes currently imitated a firey torch, widened ever so slightly. Her lips pursed into a tight line. Her spine, while already so unnaturally stiff under the unforgiving
suffocation device that was her corset, straightened ever more. Her eyes widened as though shocked and offended by Lizette's questioning.
"Mais… mais-" Lizette was about to protest further when her mother stood, her hands folded tightly together.
"Lizette, non!" she hissed, her very prominent cheekbones highlighted in shadow as her thin face turned slightly upward in a very dignified and feminine manner. "Ai-je vous rien appris?"
She closed those impossible eyes and daintily touched a hand to her temple as though she felt faint. "Maintenant…" she said quietly after taking a brief moment to regain her composure.
"Leave your poor father to his arrangements now… as your father said, we set sail upon the morrow. Excuse me, dear." Upon excusing herself from her husband, she turned, with a grace
that even Lizette envied her of, and silently exited the room to go lie down, leaving Lizette alone with her father.
"Père… oh Père please!" Lizette cried whilst throwing herself at her father's feet. "Please Père! I cannot leave Florence just yet." She begged.
"Absurdité, fille. If I say you shall, then you shall. It is as simple as that, Lizette-"
"Oh but Père I cannot!" she pleaded, not meaning to interrupt him but so desperate so as not to leave Italy that she hardly cared for proprioty now.
"Que dites-vous jeune fille?" the old man's eyes narrowed in suspiscion as he watched her. "I should hope that this… this… Salvatore bloke has not manipulated your naïve mind?" the way
that he spat Damon's sir name as though it were a swear word in the midst of a Holy mass covered Lizette's body in gooseflesh.
"Père… s'il vous plait-"
"Non!" He has gone too far!" the old man exclaimed as he leaped from his chair in rage, throwing his hands up in the air as he began reciting a long string of well costructed profanities in
french. And his last words before he stormed from the parlor, leaving poor Lizette to weep in her misery, were "Vous n'êtes jamais à voir ce garçon Salvatore nouveau et c'est mon dernier
mot!" which were enough to make her heart sink…
"You are never to see that Salvatore boy again and that is my final word!"
Quatre mois plus tard…
…
…
…
…
…Four months later…
Taking in a deep breath, Lizette smiled out the window of the carriage. She had little money, and had left her reputation as a respectable young maiden behind her in Paris. Now all she
cared for was to be reunited with her Damon…
She had written him every two weeks over the past few months, with or without a responding letter from him. Which was normally the case, because Damon had responded to only the
first two of her letters, and then the communication had failed. She worried that perhaps her letters were not getting through, it was very likely afterall. But now she was prepared to see
him again. Leaving everything behind but a select few of the dresses in her wardrobe and the slippers on her feet.
It seemed to be taking much longer than it really was, she only now was just ending the seventeenth day of travel, but it seemed more like seventeen years. When suddenly… she saw
her destination…
There it was, the great manor still stood and was the same as she had ever known it. She was finally here… and in a matter of minutes, she would be once again in the arms of her
beloved Damon...
"Mademoiselle Greta!" Lizette was quite confident in saying that she had never been so pleased to see the ancient old woman in all her life as she hobbled out of the manor toward the
carriage.
"Signorina Pierét, no!" cried the servant woman, her face pale with distress. "Go back to your carriage! There's been an accident!" the old woman tried to shuffle Lizette back into the
buggy, even though her foot had not even touched the ground. But her words terrified Lizette.
"What is it? What has happened, Mademoiselle Greta?" she shoved past the old woman when she did not respond and ran to the door. "Damon?" she called, looking left and right as she
ran through the doorway. "Damon? Stefan? Anybody?!" she cried, all sounds muted out as she ran down the long, eerie corridors of the manor, her long traveling cloak billowing behind
her and her hair spinning loose from its knot in her distress. "Per favore! C'è qualcuno qui?" she cried in her heavily french-accented italian.
She tore down the corridor that led to Damon's living quarters and grunted as she nudged open the heavy, solid oak door and into the strangely eerie and lifeless room. The doors to his
bed chambers hung open, all the windows were closed-which they never were when the weather was fair as it was.
She ghosted toward the open doors, her breast heaving as she tried to catch her breath, though she had no memory of losing it. She saw the curtains around the four poster were all
closed and she stepped to the side of the bed. Her fingers slowly raised to draw the heavy fabric. She held her breath… and opened the curtains…
Lizette had trouble determining just where the blood curtling scream that tore through the manor was coming from. Just the sound of it wrenched at her heart as she drew the curtains
and gazed down upon the blood-covered body that lay before her on the bed. It wasn't until she looked at the deadman's face that she realized that it was her who had made the
scream. But as she fell to her knees, grasping at the man's icy hand, she had no trouble believing it.
The dead man before her, was her love. Her Damon… a puncture wound having pierced right through his heart. The blade having killed him lay beside the body… painted in the blood of
her beloved.....
"Damon!" Lizette gasped as she woke in a cold sweat, panting heavily. She turned to glance at the digital clock by the bed and sighed. 5:24 am. Relieved, she lay her head back down on
the pillow and stared at the ceiling for a while. It seemed like ages since she had had that dream… but it never failed to terrify her…
No longer feeling tired, she rose from the bed and grabbed a fresh towel that must have been set out by room service before she had returned from hunting the previous evening, and
heading towards the adjoining bathroom for a hot shower....