Twenty-One
The Italian sun was boiling overhead.
Such a startling contrast to the frozen tundra of Alaska, Jane thought, as she relaxed deeper into the cushioned seat of the limousine. She was thinking of tangled webs, of best laid plans, of soaking in a hot tub, and gorging herself on a line of humans who were destined to die by her hand, once she got back home.
"I want to see my sister!" The shrill command broke into the tranquility of her previous revery.
Jane let out a slow exhalation. Breathing was not needed for her survival, but she had found, over the centuries, that the simple act of humanity centered her, when her nerves were taught and close to fraying.
She wore oversized sunglasses, the lenses were a deep black abyss, and when she turned to Kate, Jane hoped that the full effect of her glare was not lost underneath their veneer. "Of course, you do," Jane's voice was often spoken with little inflection. This conversation being no different. "How utterly unsurprising."
After the house in Denali, Jane had made sure to keep Kate and Irina separated. She allowed them to have a quick embrace, a few scattered words, but once they were on the plane heading back to Europe they were separated, and remained so, through the duration of the long flight—one of Aro's private jets, of course. And they continued to remain separated through the long car ride through the Italian countryside. Irina and two of the Volturi guards had taken the first flight out, while Jane and Kate had taken the second, departing two hours after the first.
"Why couldn't we go on the same flight? When can I see her again?"
Jane spoke slowly, enunciating each word with crystal clarity, her inflection devoid of any commitment. "So many questions." Jane knew this was a necessary inconvenience. She believed in the strength of their intentions, and she wasn't about to let some sniveling animal-eating twit from Alaska spoil all of her plans.
Kate countered, "Where has Irina been all this time? Have you been keeping her against her will?" Sparks crackled from her fingertips; the scent of burnt ozone filled the car. "Why haven't you allowed her to talk to us."
Jane remained silent, unmoved, across from Kate. Jane had endured hours of this on the plane ride and this further one-sided argument in the car ever since they landed, she had no intention of breaking now, or ever for that matter. She knew there was nothing Kate could do to harm her, as long as the need to see Irina again remained strong, she was perfectly safe.
Jane allowed her neck to loll slightly to the side, deeply bored by the situation. Had she been alone, she would have forgone the vehicle and ran the entire way. It would certainly be faster than this primitive form of travel.
They remained in silence for another hour, as the sun began to set behind them.
Jane could tell Kate was fuming in frustration and anger, it made her smile in delight.
Finally, Kate broke the silence. "What is Alec doing? Is this about the Cullen's?"
For Kate's part, she had never been particularly close to the Cullen's. Tanya, her eldest sister, had entertained an infatuation with Edward Cullen not long ago, an entanglement which was one sided, and never reciprocated on Edward' part. Kate and the rest had always been close with Esme, she, Tanya, and Irina had always viewed Esme as a long-lost sister, a bond which continued to this day. As for the rest of Esme's family, Kate had held in little regard, other than the fact that Esme would be pained by any of their demises.
Kate had wanted nothing to do with the conflict that Edward and Bella had created with the Volturi. Had Irina not played a significant role in that issue, Kate and her family would likely not have involved themselves. Preferring anonymity and quiet to any other state of being.
And they were finally starting to achieve that, with Garrett as the newest member of their family, before all of this had happened.
Their family would not be complete again, until Irina was reunited with them, and Kate was determined to achieve that end.
Jane offered her nothing, not even the briefest of nods to her inquiries.
Another hour past, and the car slide through the countryside in darkness now, rather than day. Jane remained unchanged. One thin leg folded over the other, arms crossed squarely against her chest.
Kate had been watching the road signs. Her Italian was rusty, but she still had enough to know they were not going in the direction of Volterra.
Jane seemed to sense Kate's unspoken concern. "We're not going to Volterra."
"Where, then?" Kate's voice was quipped. She was angry, but most importantly she was hungry, it had been too long since she fed, and the presence of the human driver working the car was driving her crazy.
Another hour in silence, with Kate, white knuckled, when the car finally began to slow. They had passed into a rural area in Northern Italy, close to the border with France. Centuries old trees loomed above them in the dark.
"Finally," Jane breathed, and for the first time in hours, she moved her head to look at Kate. "You may want to stay in the car," she revealed.
"Like hell," Kate spat, opening her door and stepping out in a blur. The cool night air hit her face and she smelt the dusty heat of the day lingering all around them. She smelt the piney fragrance of the trees, and the hot melt of caramel from the town a few miles down the road.
The human driver extricated himself from the car as well, walking silently and robotically toward Jane.
Turning, Kate watched as he craned his neck downward, allowing Jane to grab it quickly with one hand. "You may want to step back," Jane told Kate, bearing her fangs and sinking them like a hot knife through butter into the man's neck.
Immediately the air around them filled with the silken aroma of blood. Kate hissed, her mouth filling with venom, desperate to taste the man's blood.
Jane watched Kate struggle, guzzling loudly at the man's artery, smiling slightly, her lips curling enough to let drizzles of the precious blood spill down her chin. When the man was dead, Jane flung him away like a ragdoll, his body hitting the gravel with a hard thump, her red eyes were simmering in the night. "How long has it been?" She asked Kate, mockingly, "Since you've tasted human blood?"
Kate had trouble forming words. It had been decades since she'd last tasted human blood, but that did not mean she had readily come in contact with it since that time, or that she still did not struggle with abstaining from it.
"This must be very hard for you," Jane said, her lips were wide, revealing blood-stained square teeth.
Kate hissed again, her body alive to the need to feed, even as Jane spoke and moved, the scent of blood wafted off of her toward Kate. Gripping the side of the car, hard enough that her fingers caused five pointed dents into the sheet metal, she asked. "Where is my sister? Where are we?"
Jane lifted her index finger to the side of her mouth. Kate watched as Jane dragged the tip against the corner of her lip, catching a bit of blood that had pooled against her skin. Jane dipped her finger into her mouth and sucked on it languorously.
"These questions are encourageable," Jane said, her voice was devoid of emotion as it ever was. She began to walk down the pathway toward the trees. "Follow me."
Kate looked back at the body, both in longing, as well as concern. What if she were left alone with the corpse for just a moment, she could have the quickest of tastes…? What if a human stumbled across it?
"It'll be taken care of," Jane told her, not bothering to turn around to witness Kate's struggle. "And if you're hungry I'd be more than willing to provide you with a meal, if you're able, of course. There are more humans inside, you can take your pick."
Kate stiffened, following Jane down the long and dark path that winded downward. Eventually the darkness broke open to reveal an ornate mansion. It was the picture of an ancient Italian villa, with a tile roof and iron balustrades. It appeared from Kate's perspective on the lawn, that every light in the house was turned on, amber shadows flooding out across the night like a river that had burst its banks.
She followed Jane across the lawn, smelling, with each new step closer, the perfume of human skin and the fiery aroma of their blood. It was dazzling, as provocative as the shell of diamonds around a women's neck or the curve of an exposed breast.
When Jane stepped through the door, she flung her coat to the floor, stepping over it in her lazy haste to get through the entryway. The black cape gave way to a black dress, cut plainly and delicately against Jane's tiny frame. To Kate's eyes she was every bit a child, and she shuttered against the power that she knew Jane actually wielded.
A woman greeted Kate when she stepped through the doorway, and she noticed that Jane had not been spoken to. The woman was human, Kate could clearly smell it on her.
Another woman stepped forward from the shadows, holding a silver salver up at chest level, waiting for Jane to pluck the letter from the surface top.
She grabbed the letter, examining the wax seal with some perfidy before cracking it open with a long fingernail and perusing the contents within.
Kate watched her do this, puzzled.
Moments passed, and Kate watched Jane's back stiffen as she continued to read the letter. Finally, she sighed, as though bored or defeated. Kate had a hard time telling which. "You want to see your sister?" Jane asked, offhandedly. She seemed exhausted with the entire scenario, suddenly.
"Of course," Kate exclaimed.
Jane lifted a lazy finger slowly toward a closed door to the side of the house. "She's in there."
Kate took a hesitant step forward, the stopped herself, fearing that this was some kind of trap.
"It's not," Jane assured her, reading the thoughts on her face. "A trap."
Stepping through the doors, Kate didn't know what to expect. Everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours had been so strange. Even though she had seen Irina, face to face, twice now, there was still a part of her that could not believe she was truly still alive. She had so many questions.
Like Jane had been, there was a cloaked frame in the adjacent room. She stood, erect with her back turned toward Kate, facing out at the deep night beyond the window. The room looked to be a library, or a drawing room, the walls were lined with shelves and leather-bound tomes with their ancient spines facing out. There were also emerald green couches set up on opposite sides of the room, they looked to be made of velvet, plush to the touch.
When the cloaked figure in the room turned, Kate let out a gasp. It really was Irina.
Kate ran toward her, not slowing until her sister was trapped inside her tight embrace.
Irina clung to her as well, and a cry of delight and anguish escaped from her lips.
"Where have you been? What have you been doing all this time? Why didn't you ever try to get ahold of us?" Kate questioned, pulling back and placing both hands on either side of her sister's face.
Irina tried to explain, she shook her head, at a loss for words.
"I don't understand?" Kate pressed. "I watched you die…"
"I can't explain it," Irina finally spoke. "I felt myself die, but somehow, Aro brought me back."
"Aro?" Kate objected. "That doesn't make sense. Aro has several abilities, but bringing a vampire back from the dead isn't one of them."
Irina let out a strangled cry. Kate could see in her face that she was trying to explain what had happened, but she was unable to.
Kate shushed her, stroking her palm down the side of her face and her shoulders. "It's okay. We'll get through this; we'll take it one step at a time. I have to get you out of here, get you home."
"Laurent?" Irina choked.
Kate shook her head. "He died, sweetheart. You know he died."
Irina shook her head. "I don't want to go back there without Laurent."
Kate shuttered with irritation. After everything that was happening her sisters first thought was of that strange nomadic vampire who lived with them for a mere season. "Tell me," Kate went on, trying to distract Irina from her troubled thoughts. "Tell me what Jane and Alec want?"
"Tanya?" Irina whispered.
Kate's anger deepened. "They want Tanya?"
Irina shook her head, the look in her eyes reminded Kate of a frightened child looking for their long-lost mother. It had been centuries since their own mother had been killed, it had been decades since Kate had even thought of her.
Irina shook her head. Kate was struck again by how lost her sister looked. "They took Tanya."
Kate remembered back to the house in Alaska. To Tanya and Garrett.
Garrett…
They had both gone with Alec. Somewhere… To the Cullen's, most likely.
"Alright," Kate clarified. "Can you tell me where you've bene all this time?"
"Time?"
"Yes, time. It's been four years since we've seen you."
Irina tilted her head, eyes flashing. For the first time Kate thought she saw the glimmer of a spark that reminded her of the sister she once knew. Irina whispered, wistfully, "four years…"
"What do Jane and Alec want? Where had you been all this time?"
Jane's footfall in the entry way brought Kate up short. "This is absolutely charming."
Kate turned to face her. Jane was leaning against the doorframe, one arm bent lazily up as she held a goblet. It was filled with a deep red liquid, and Kate could once more smell the heady aroma of human blood. Under her other arm Kate could see the letter that Jane had read earlier tucked under her arm, Kate wondered what it might have said.
"Are you hungry, Irina?" Jane gestured to the crystal glass, moving her wrist lazily, letting the liquid slosh against the sides. The room was on fire with the scent of the blood.
Irina broke free from Kate's side, skipping at vampiric speed to Jane who was holding out the glass to her. In horror, Kate watched her sister bring the glass to her lips, gulping down the blood at a feverish pace.
Kate objected, but Irina ignored her. Once, Irina had been the most fervent amongst them about the wrongs in drinking human blood, but now…
Jane on the other hand, was smirking back at Kate.
Kate knew that Jane was playing with her, and no matter how many times she asked the same question, it was up to Jane to be in the right mood to tell her. "Where have you been keeping her all this time? What do you want?"
Jane reached her hand out to Irina. Kate watched the younger vampire stroke her sister's hair like a psychotic child.
"You must find her much changed," Jane remarked.
"Yes, I do," Kate confessed.
"I can tell you that she is new to the world again, we haven't been keeping her in a jail cell, or anything like that."
Kate eyed her, dubiously.
"We, certainly," Jane went on, "Haven't been keeping her against her will."
"She's drinking human blood."
"Yes," Jane sighed. "It's so much better for her, it keeps her healthy. She's never objected to it, either. In fact, she's quite insistent, when we delay her feeding."
Kate struggled with the term 'feeding,' a vampire, by nature, was a hunter or huntress, they were not domesticated livestock to be fed. "Why don't you tell me what you really want, Jane?"
"That is the rub," Jane proclaimed, taking the empty cup from Irina. "Isn't it…? Naturally, we cannot tell you what's really going on here. And in all honesty," Jane continued. "I do not even know the full extent of the plan."
Kate interrupted, "But Aro does have a plan?"
"Aro has nothing to do with this?"
"How can that be?"
"With this," she gestured to herself, Irina, and Kate, the greater room at large. "He knows nothing."
"Then what is your plan?"
Jane smirked, her red eyes burning a hole into Kate with contempt. "What kind of villain would I be if I told you that?"
Kate didn't object. She didn't understand what Jane was hoping to accomplish by this talk and she waited for her to continue on her own, unprompted.
"Here is what I need from you," Jane started, speaking as plainly as she could. "You are going to go to Volterra and tell Aro that you want to join his coven."
Kate burst in. "I thought Aro wasn't involved in this."
Jane ground her teeth in frustration. "I already explained that he was not. Can I continue? Or should Irina and I leave now?"
"I'm sorry," Kate hung her head. "Please go on."
"You will join Aro's coven. You will tell no one where you are or what you are doing. You will write a letter to your family—your sister, Tanya, specifically, telling her that you want to travel for awhile but that you will return after one year's time."
"Garrett—?" Kate couldn't help herself from speaking his name.
Jane's fierce look made Kate startle, and she was immediately ceased with the burning fire of Jane's gift. She fell to the ground, grunting in pain, clutching her head. Irina let out a shrill scream, moving to go to her sister and Jane released Kate from her pain grasp. Jane turned her powers against Irina next, stopping her just feet before she was able to reach her sister.
Kate jumped to her feet, fingers sparking to fight back against Jane, but she was stilled when Irina buckled over in pain.
"Stop," Kate pleaded. "Stop. Please stop."
Jane relented, leaving Irina gasping against her sister.
"Let me be clear," Jane went on. "I don't care about your little boyfriend. Or for that matter, what you have to tell your ridiculous family. You will go to Aro in Volterra. You will join his coven. You will never speak about seeing myself or my brother in Alaska. It is your sole responsibility to forget everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours." Jane expected Kate to interrupt her again, but the women was clearly cowed by Jane's power. "After you have completed this, I will hand over Irina to you, and you and the rest of your silly family can live in peace. I will never trouble you again."
"What do I do once I join Aro's coven?"
Jane shrugged, exaggeratedly. "Whatever you'd like. Use your powers to your hearts content, give Aro a little show, he loves that. Drink human blood again. Fuck all the men and women you see. Whatever you want."
"But why? What do you hope to gain by having me do this?"
"It won't matter to you what I gain. But never speak to Aro about me or my brother, that is my last request."
"Have you left Aro's coven?"
"That doesn't matter to you. Do you agree to these terms?"
Kate thought it over, struggling. "I write a letter to Tanya, telling her that I plan to travel for a year."
Jane nodded.
"I go to Volterra. Join Aro's coven. Drink and fuck. Do whatever I want. You ask nothing more from me but this."
Jane tilted her head. "You will never speak of me or Alec to anyone. You will never speak about how we came to Alaska to collect you."
"And when will Irina be allowed to leave? When will I be allowed to leave?"
"After one year," Jane explained. "One year, or sooner. I will bring Irina to you when your task has been completed."
"You said, 'or sooner' how will I know? I don't understand what you want me to do?"
Jane shrugged. "I do not want you to do anything. Just go to Aro and join his coven."
"There must be more?" Kate objected.
"There is no more. Just that."
"And when you bring Irina to me, we will be free to go?"
"Free as long as you never speak about this bargain between us."
Kate felt the need to decide quickly. She could read Jane's impatience with her and the entire situation.
One of the women from before strolled into the room, approached Jane with a bowed head.
"She," Jane pointed at the girl who stood behind her. "Is here to drive you to Volterra. What is your decision?"
Kate went to her sister's side, pulled her farther away from Jane.
"I don't see what else I can do," she explained to Irina. She didn't bother to keep her voice down; Jane would hear her no matter how low she kept her voice. "Do you want to come back to Alaska to be with me? To be with Tanya again."
Irina shook her head quickly, a girlish smile spreading across her face. Kate gripped her sister's shoulders. Irina was altered from how she had been before, but Kate couldn't even begin to comprehend what must have happened to her sister between the time she had last seen her on the snowy mountain side in Washington to now.
"Will you be alright until I can see you again?"
Jane interrupted them. "She'll be fine, as she has been since I inherited her."
Kate was struck by Jane's choice of words. Inherit. Who had she inherited Irina from? Aro? How is that Aro had brought her back from death?
Jane stamped her foot, irritable. "The driver is waiting," she pressed.
Kate looked back at Jane, giving her a harsh glare. She hugged her sister, her embrace both a reunion and a departure. She could make no sense of the plan that Jane had preposed to her—join Aro's coven, become a weapon in his long arsenal of vampire's that dealt out judgment to the rest of their kind. Leave Garett and Tanya and the others… Drink human blood again without fear or guilt. Finally have her family whole and intact at the end of this travail.
She kissed Irina on the cheek, feeling the whimper of her sister deep in her bones, as she pulled away.
When she passed Jane in the door way, on her way to the door she said, "If you hurt her—in any way, I will destroy you, Jane. Power for power, an even fight."
Jane raised an eyebrow. "Your power is nothing compared to mine. You know that. Don't make threats you can't execute."
Kate couldn't deny the truth of that. She would need to be close to Jane to use her power to its full affect, but she could wait years, or centuries, if that came down to it. She would do anything to protect her family.
Before departing, Kate gave Irina one last sad glance. Irina raised her arm and waved at Kate's reseeding form. Her movements were as dejected as a child waving to a departing mother.
Jane waited for the car to rev its engine and pull away, sending up shards of gravel in its wake, before she dropped the crystal goblet and let his shatter to the floor. One the humans hurried to clean up the mess, forcing Jane to walk around her as she departed from the room. Bored, always so bored, with it all.
Irina stared at her back while she walked away.
"What now?" The voice was clipped, changing in pitch and tone from only moments ago.
Jane continued to walk away, though her pace was slow, dangerously, like a wild cat, strutting around, rather than moving in any kind of calculated way. She grasped the folded letter that had previously been tucked under her arm, letting her fingers smooth across the textured surface.
It was some of the most expensive parchment that you could buy, Jane was not surprised.
"I didn't catch your name before," Jane said.
Irina's voice deepened, changing completely to a more masculine tone. As Jane approached the base of the stairs. "Radomir, my name is Radomir."
Jane turned back, looking at the form that had once been Irina but was now a full-grown man, towering over her. His hair was dark, hanging in tight curls over his forehead. He was watching her with a hungry expression. "It's astonishing that my brother sired someone with powers such as yours. I believe you are his only child, and look how you turned out. Able to change your physicality at will, to become anyone you want, whenever you want."
"It's not as easy as that," Radomir objected.
"Oh, I know," she told him. Recalling the complex ritual of blood taking that enabled him to change into a long dead vampire woman. Or any other vampire, for that matter.
"Did I do well?" He asked.
"Well enough." Jane was climbing the stairs slowly. Radomir know that each of her movements were calculated and intentional. "Kate knows that something is strange about all this, but she believes you are in fact her sister."
"What happens now?"
Jane scoffed. "You wait."
"Wait?" Radomir's tone was biting.
"Yes," Jane continued, offhandedly. "Wait until I need you again."
"But you said—"
"I know what I said," she silenced him with a look. "Now leave me. I want to be alone."
The staircase was opulent, and Jane distracted herself by noticing all of the intricate details in the wood paneling. The villa was nearly three hundred years old, with part of it dating back to much older. It had been whispered, prior to Jane's purchase of it, that Cesare Borgia once stayed there, for a fortnight, with a caravan of kidnapped nuns. His ghost was said to haunt the orchard beyond the yard, searching at sword tip, for a lost, unnamed enemy.
Jane liked the story, as she enjoyed all misunderstood villains of history.
The uppermost floor was her own sanctuary, barring the human slaves who doted on her in the hopes that she might one day turn them into a child of the night, like herself.
Before anything else, Jane went to the fireside, already lit by one of the slaves upon her request. An odd choice, she knew, on such a stifling day, but Jane had always preferred natural fire or candle light to electricity. She took up the letter once more, her fingers dragging over the black waxy seal print—one long curved V, for Volturi or vampire or for the iconography of a fang, she didn't know, but natural Aro had his reasons.
She let her eyes drift down the words one more time, committing them to memory. Aro's compositions were always so flowery, stinking of his obsessions and his plans. It would not be unusual for him to devote page after page to the shape and coloring of a particular flower.
Regardless, there was nothing new here, nothing of greater significance, or anything that would give them away. She let the parchment drop into the fire, and she watched, contentedly as the edges frayed and then blackened, waiting until all trace of it had been consumed by the flames.
Her work, she felt, was done for now, and she wanted to spend the remainder of her night playing.
Jane moved from hallway to bedroom to library, the third library in the house, and from there she went through a secret door behind one of the shelves—a new addition to the house, built specifically to be sound proof.
Once the door opened, she heard the stifled whispers.
Vlad (the young man's real name, which she had learned from his deep throated yell in a nightclub in Minsk, a name that brought an ironic smile to her face, even now,) was squatting in his cage on one side of the hidden room. Jane did not need the light to see by, but Vlad, and the women, did. She let the door shut quickly, letting the light from the library slide away harshly, while, slowly; ever so slowly, Jane meandered to the side table and lit the gold enameled candelabra. One butter yellow candle after the other, until the entire sconce was aflame. She lifted it, held it up close to her face so Vlad could once again gasp at her red eyes, then she held it farther aloft from her to examine him. He was gaunt, as she liked her men, but not so much so that he would whither completely—a toy offered limited amusements when dead, but alive, there were so many more possibilities.
"And how are you today?" Jane asked. She smirked delightedly when he did not answer, but she could clearly see the terror in his eyes. Despite his bravado, he could not conceal that.
Jane turned away from him, stifling a giggle when she heard him run against the bars, as he did every time, she came to visit him, in yet another desperate attempt to free himself.
She had kept him here longer than she usually kept her playthings, but she enjoyed him too much to let him go, just yet. On any other night she would be tempted to put herself in the cage with him, let him try and attack her, let her use her powers on him until she stifled and groaned. Just last week she had gone in, left him curled in the corner of the cell, shaking hands covering his tear-stained face. She had gotten nude after that, loving the feel of the cool stones against her skin. He had pleaded with her—objecting that she was only a child, a little girl, that he could not, that he would not. It was astonishing how close pain and pleasure were and how easily she could manipulate his revulsion into ravishment.
On the other side of the prison, for that was what she had built here, a prison of her own design and making, the other cell beckoned, bars gleaming in the candlelight.
"Leave her alone!" Vlad yelled, his voice scratchy and hoarse. Offhandedly she recalled that he had not been given water until before she had left for Alaska.
The closer she got to the cell, the clearer her query appeared. The woman, whom Jane had taken to calling Chiara, even though that was not her name, shivered against the opposite wall. She was nude, as Vlad was, but Jane allowed Chiara to eat and drink to her hearts content. Full breasts hung lustily from her body, while her pregnant belly jutted out, obscenely from her diminutive frame.
Chiara's face had been plastered all over the Italian media outlets, the young pregnant woman had been reported missing by her beleaguered husband, equally as young and handsome as his breathtaking wife. Jane had found it amusing how, at first the husband had been believed to be involved in his disappearance, but now, the television media proclaimed him to be their darling, each teary-eyed interview brought the public more and more to his side.
Jane spoke to the girl in her native Italian, "How are you fairing Chiara, my little beauty?"
The candlelight danced over Chiara's skin, jumping with each frightened exhalation on her tiny frame. Jane normally didn't do things like this, she liked her toys easily discardable and forgotten once enjoyed, but when she had seen Chiara, something had sparked in her. The tiny frame, the swollen belly, the doe eyes.
Chiara whimpered, "Please, that is not my name. Please let me out. I'm about to give birth. Please? I need a doctor?"
She was correct, Jane knew, just a few more weeks, at most, and the labor pains would start. Deliciously, Jane hoped she would be here to truly witness it. If not, she would have to insist that one of the human slaves come up here to record it for her. She wanted to watch, watch this female be ripped apart by pain. Her mouth watered at the thought of the strangled screams and hungry sobs.
Jane clenched her legs together, tightly.
Jane explained, "Don't worry, my beauty. All will be well." There was a tray of food uneaten at the edge of the cell, apples and cherries, bread and cheese, and a large tankard of goat's milk undrunk. "You have to eat, Chiara. You have to keep your strength up."
"Leave her alone!" Vlad thrashed against the bars again.
As far as Jane could tell he spoke no Italian. When Jane communicated with him it was in Swedish or his native Czech. In another less complicated life, she imagined that her beautiful Chiara and this Vlad might have been lovers, but as it was, they clearly were not.
Chiara was pleading again, desperate for release. When she realized that once again it would be futile, she started to plead for clothing again.
"I like to look at you," Jane confessed. "Vlad," she gestured at the caged man behind her, "I believe, likes to look at you too. Besides, nudity shows off your form so perfectly."
"What do you want from us?" Chiara said. Her voice wobblily with tears.
Jane responded, her Italian thick and smooth, "Maybe this," she gestured at Chiara and then back again at Vlad, who was staring at them, perplexed. "You and he just like this is exactly what I want."
Chiara cupped her abdomen. Jane could hear the erratic staccato of her heartbeat as well as the gentle flutter of the fetus'. A boy, most likely, Jane thought. Her belly distended so low.
"You want to steal my baby," Chiara snarled. Words garbled behind tears.
"Steal?" Jane was affronted. "No, Chiara," her voice turned more soothing. Jane paused, reluctant to reveal herself. She needed Vlad for the next part of her plan, but Chiara was more of a whim, a delicious fantasy that she liked to play out every decade or so. She shrugged, absently. She would likely be gone by the time the little woman's labor started, let alone progressed enough to birth. "I want to watch you writhe on the floor of this cell," Jane's eyebrows raised, and she continued, "alone."
Chiara shuddered.
"I want to watch you pace, huffing. Gritting your teeth. I want to see you white knuckled against the bars. I want to watch the blood pool around your thighs and ass while you start to push. Maybe you'll be standing, maybe you'll be squatting. Now, well, now that you know all of this, you'll try very hard to be quiet, even though the pain will be excruciating. Back breaking pain, and even though you will try very hard, you will scream." Jane licked her lips. "And that's what I want. I want to hear you scream."
Jane snuffled the flames from each of the candles, one by one, letting her fire linger against her skin to show Chiara—to prove to her—Jane's otherworldliness, as though her red eyes had not been enough.
"I want to see how long it takes before I open the door to drain all the blood from your throat. I want to feel the pain languishing in your blood when I take it out of you. You might even deliver the baby by then. Sometimes I can hold myself back long enough for that, but other times…" Jane recalled all the other times, one corner of her mouth curling up at the rapture of those captured memories.
"Well, either way," Jane shrugged again. Snuffing out the last of the candles. The room erupted in blackness again. "I'll eat the baby if you last long enough to push it out. The young have the sweetest blood… like, honey…"
The door out of the hidden room slid open, the light from the interior of the house spilling in like golden silk. Chiara screamed when the door closed, and the room once again, erupted in blackness.