'I want to tell you a story,' Niko said in his soft, sing-song voice, gently clinking a cup of fresh coffee down in front of Star as he slid into the booth opposite her. The scent was comfortingly familiar and Star found her hands sliding around the mug out of habit.
'David will be here soon,' she said, glancing nervously around the dimly lit room. Little had changed since the last time she had been here, though a new corkboard had been put up on the far wall and had been obscenely plastered with missing posters. The sight turned her stomach.
'Oh, don't worry about David. Even if he did turn up to spoil our fun, he wouldn't be able to get inside.' He chuckled and took a drink of his own hot coffee. 'You know little of our kind, I see. Your – friend – has educated you little, bella.'
'Don't call me that,' Star complained.
'Why? You are as beautiful as your name. This I told you before. So beautiful in fact now that I have seen you again, I am seriously considering whether I should not keep you for myself instead of killing you as the sacrificial lamb you are. That may drive a thorn deep in David's side, to see you at my feet instead of his.' Niko grinned, leaning forwards as though conspiring with Star who pressed herself against the dark green vinyl of the booth in an attempt to keep her distance. 'But as I was saying,' Niko continued, shaking his head a little to clear it of thoughts of the beautiful girl kneeling at his feet – there would be time enough for that. 'We won't be interrupted by any of your friends because one stipulation of our kind, one of only a few, is that we cannot enter a place unless we have been specifically invited and I am certainly not likely to invite them. Not yet, anyway.' His beautifully white teeth gave Star the creeps and she lifted her cup to drink in an attempt to keep him from seeing how her hands shook.
'Tell me the story then,' Star said, setting her cup back down, hoping to stall him enough from whatever he had planned for her until she could at least try and work out a plan of what to do next, her heart sinking as she processed the fact that David was unlikely to burst in any moment to save her. This was something she would have to do herself. Niko seemed eager to talk, happily chatty now that it seemed to him she was entirely at his mercy, sure of hours and hours ahead of them so it seemed like a good idea to play on that until she could think straight.
'Ah yes,' Niko grinned again, resting one hand lightly on his chest as though touched she had remembered the start of their conversation. 'Let me take you to a place far from here, a land of gentle hills covered with lush vineyards and olive groves, soaked by the glorious Mediterranean sunshine. In a shallow little valley imagine now, if you will, a cool little hollow protected by the fierce heat by a cluster of lemon trees. Their scent hanging sharp on the warm breeze. A wide turquoise pool, it's surface broken only by a smooth grey rock, stretches out amongst the green grass deep in those shadows and a small white villa lies just behind this scene, its windows shuttered tight from that burning sun. It was there that I lived with my mate, a human girl, like you.
She was as beautiful as the moon rising on the silvered surface of a lake, with hair as black as night and eyes just as fathomless – again, like you. We lived in shadows, she sacrificed her love of the sun for me, to join me in my world of darkness and light up my life like Diana. I loved her because after so many hundreds of years of walking alone, she chose to walk beside me. But she didn't know who – what - I was. Somehow, for a year or so, I managed to keep that side of me hidden. I suppressed my appetite during the hours she slept, because no matter how hard she tried to walk forever beside me, her humanness would sometimes slip in between us and she would sleep late, late into the night.'
Star found herself captivated, the coffee cooling rapidly in her hands as she let his words wash rhythmically over her. Despite her earlier promise to herself not to be drawn in by his gentle Italian accent, she couldn't help it. Niko painted such a vivid picture she found herself swept away, leaning forward to find out what happened next. His eyes sparkled as he continued to weave his magic.
'I would feed on the endless supply of slaves my colony furnished themselves with, so I was never a danger to her. But I should have turned her, I should have made her mine before it was too late. I was young and stupid, believing I could keep her, this wealthy Senet's daughter, just as she was. But humans are fickle, especially women, and her attention was drawn to another. The heir of a nearby principality who wooed her with gems and gold, the real way to a woman's heart because they are as cold and inanimate as she.
It didn't take much because he could give her something I never could – the sun, warm on her skin, gilding her pallid skin, tinting her black hair bronze and giving her a joy she had forgotten. I suppose she hadn't realised how much she missed that until he gave it to her, in the same way that I never knew I had a heart until she wakened it – coaxed and nurtured it and then crushed it like it was a tiny bug under her satin shoe. I had never felt real, physical pain until that moment. They ran, but I caught them both.
I taught them what real pain was like after that. Deep inside my cool stone villa I commissioned a chamber that would hold them both and kept them strung up on opposite walls so she could watch me destroy her prince. He didn't last as long as I had hoped, I had so much planned for him but he was weak. It gave me great pleasure to reveal to her just how weak he really was before I let him die. She, however, had spirit. Great, fiery spirit like you that kept her burning for at least a couple of months. I perfected my techniques in that room, I believe, honed my skills and stretched my imagination. You would not believe what physical pain a person can survive if their will to live is strong enough. By the end of it she was so broken, her once smooth flesh, beautiful face, marred almost beyond recognition. But I fixed her.
I did turn her in the end, only so that on our last night together I could pepper the room with tiny holes in the walls around where her feet were, then a few higher up around her thighs, her torso and her head. The room had been built deliberately to face the sun as it rose. The sun, as I'm sure even you know, bella, is deadly to our kind. It burns the skin, not like fire, but like radiation. Not enough to destroy you instantly, but enough to cook you slowly from the inside out, melting your bones and muscles before it melts the skin. Rosa burnt slowly, the sun's rays sliding up and up her body as it rose higher and higher in the sky, destroying her section by section as she clawed desperately at the chains that held her cursing my name and begging for a quick death.
I lay in my windowless room next door in the cool, blessed darkness listening to her die and promising myself that no human who ever crossed my path would ever leave me again. No one runs from Nikolai Di Peco.'
Star swallowed hard, her stomach churning as she realised having now heard what he was capable of, that her chances of leaving this place with her life were incredibly slim. Nico smiled gently, as though sensing her trepidation. He reached out to hold her hand.
'It's ok, mon ami, I will teach you soon enough how pleasurable pain can be.' He ran a fingernail lightly across Star's palm, scratching down to circle her wrist. 'Even Rosa enjoyed herself in the beginning, chained helpless and wanting, glorious in her nakedness as I bled her slowly.'
It was only when Nico raised her wrist to his lips and began to lap at the thin line of blood that beaded there that she realised it wasn't a fingernail he had scratched her with but a razor blade that glittered wickedly in his other hand. She snatched her wrist away quickly, wiping at the scratch as she saw his nostrils flare in appreciation at the scent.
'You deserve every flicker of pain Rosa inflicted on you, each stab in your heart if you could destroy the one you loved so easily,' Star retorted, her dark eyes flashing. She thought of all the beatings her father had inflicted on her over the years, confident that the emotional pain it had caused her hurt her far worse than anything he could cause with his razor blade.
'Perhaps,' he agreed. 'I often wondered this myself.'
'So let's just quit this crap talk and get on with whatever it is you've got planned. I've got a life out there I want to get back to.' Star shoved the now stone cold coffee towards him trying to sound braver than she felt, proud of the nonchalant tone she had somehow managed. Nico laughed, catching the cup before it could slide off the table edge.
'A life if I choose to let you live it. If I don't decide to end it or keep it. David sent you to me as a peace offering for me to do with as I please. You have little left out there to live for if he can cast you away without a second thought. You were just another fuck for him, easy come easy go. I bet he's just climbing off the next one right as we speak.'
Star felt a blush creep into her cheeks at his words, half from anger – though the anger was mostly directed at herself – but also from embarrassment. Despite the way her mind had been wandering over the last few days, nothing like that had ever happened between her and David. Between her and anyone, in actual fact. But she didn't want Nico to know that. She tossed her head in what she hoped would be an uncaring way.
'Ah, bella. Such a beautiful colour your cheeks are. It makes me so thirsty when you blush this way.' The silver razor blade glittered like a little fish as he passed it skilfully over his fingers, backwards and forwards hypnotically. His other hand reached out to cup her warm cheek and he licked his lips. Without warning Nico had snatched up her wrist again and bit down hard on her hand, his eyes rolling as he relished the sweet flood of her blood in his mouth.
Star let out an involuntary cry and lunged across the table for her coffee mug which she smashed hard against the side of Nico's head, the white china shattering on impact and sprinkling the table top like snow. Nico let go and sat back, wiping his mouth as Star examined the crescent moon shaped bite on her hand.
'You dick!' she cursed, hugging her hand to her chest and watching as Nico's sleek, snarling features smoothed themselves back into a handsome mask again. He laughed.
'You said you could take anything I could throw at you,' he countered.
'I didn't exactly say that. And besides, I wasn't ready for that one. All this talking,' she waved her good hand before dragging it through her loose brown hair. 'It's creeping me out. If you're going to bleed me out, just do it already. I can't stand the waiting, the constant second guessing.'
'But it's so much fun. And we've only just started.' Nico wiped a droplet of Star's blood from the Formica table top and sucked on it thoughtfully. 'We have so much time together, it would be a shame to waste it.'
Dwayne paced the main room again like a caged animal, running his hands helplessly through his long dark hair.
'Why the fuck would you think this is what David wanted?' he snarled again, for at least the fourteenth time in as many minutes.
'Because we talked about it, bruh, remember? When we were all on the beach and David was over sharing like we were at some rehab meet?' Paul had taken up his position on the lip of the fountain again, one leg bent and the other dangling down the other side, his head pillowed by his hands. 'David said the girl had to be a sacrifice.'
'The girl is my sister!' Dwayne roared, turning on Paul who didn't even flinch as David held the other man back. 'One of us!'
'We hadn't finalised the plan,' David interrupted in a cool, level tone he had mastered after venting his fury earlier.
'Well how was I s'posed to know that?' Paul asked innocently, lifting his head up enough to glance over at Marco who remained resolutely curled up against the wall without meeting anyone's eyes. 'Marco didn't know nothin' hadn't been finalised either, bruh. How many times do we got to say we're sorry, huh? We thought it was what you wanted. Am I right Marco?' Again Marco remained silent. 'I'm right, see.' Paul huffed and plonked his head back down again as Dwayne crossed the room and leant against the wall, palms flat on the smooth rock and his head bent.
'He could be doing anything to her, anything.' He punched the wall, leaving a smattering of dark blood from his knuckles, but not caring. He was beyond feeling pain.
'We don't know anything yet,' David said, lowly, sitting himself in his wheelchair-throne. It's where he often did most of his thinking. 'It's well past dawn, he could well be asleep. She'll have twelve hours to think of something.'
'Something like what?' Dwayne demanded, his eyes wild as he rounded on David and rubbed his busted hand absentmindedly. 'What exactly could Star possibly think of, being locked in a building with a psychopathic bloodsucker hell bent on killing her?'
'The whole place is still boarded up,' Marco muttered, joining in the conversation for the first time since David had tumbled back down the stairs clutching his burnt arm. 'The daylight won't affect him, it'll be as black as night inside.' Dwayne tore at his own hair and looked imploringly at David.
'There is nothing we can do until sundown,' he said, his voice gravelly with an emotion he tried hard to supress. 'Nothing except hope she's strong enough to outlast him until then.'
'Then what?' Dwayne demanded, finally giving up his pacing to rest by David, his back pressed against the rounded side of the stone fountain. 'What do we do then? He isn't likely to extend us all an invitation so we can join him.'
'That's exactly what he might do. Niko's flashy, he'll want to boast. He might keep her on the brink until then wanting to rub our faces in it.'
'What if he doesn't?' Marco questioned, finding himself unable to lift his eyes from the dusty ground again.
'Let me think,' David demanded quietly, squeezing the bridge of his nose with his gloved fingers. 'Just let me think, Goddamnit.'
