Page 134

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three

LUNA

The screaming is really annoying, especially when I’m trying to figure out whose face is next to Carmine’s. It’s even more annoying when the headache sits down and crosses its legs as if it’s not going anywhere until that shit stops.

Is that Laro’s face?

I blink hard. My eyes are as sandpapery as my tongue.

My wrist throbs. The space between my shoulder blades hurts too.

And the screaming.

Someone has to turn down the TV before I go bang on their door.

God, I feel really good right now.

The unknown face disappears from my view, leaving me alone with Carmine.

“My love,” he says. His eyes are puffy and red. I’ve never seen him this pale, and he is, after all, a vampire.

“Hey.” I get up on my elbows. The room swims a little. Not a lot. Doggy paddle lap around the pool. I laugh at my joke since I’m the only one who heard it.

“Take it easy.” He helps me up.

“The screaming.” My neck is sore, but I can look around enough to find myself in that same fucking dungeon. I can feel the air from the broken grate above. There was a bad thing here with us.

“It’s fine.” Carmine looks over his shoulder. “You’re fine.”

“What happened? I remember hitting a guy in the balls and… is he still screaming over it? Wait.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them again. The guy was never screaming over it.

Carmine falls back into a sitting position, leaving me with a view of the naked man-creature-vampire, Manod, on his knees, mouth open to the heavens. A blond man in shredded white jeans and T-shirt watches as it shakes its shoulders, making the knuckled stump sway back and forth.

One of those tiny fingers has a black ring on it.

I sit up. The creature’s not on his knees at all. The floor is devouring him. He’s being sucked down into the earth itself.

“The ring will not be worn by one who isn’t worthy?” I repeat words he’s said, but I don’t really know what that means.

“Once you try and you’re refused,” the man in white says, “don’t even try to trick it.” He has no emotions. He must be a vampire, which reminds me. There were three of us.

The man turns to me just as I ask, “Where’s…”

Laro.

He has his father’s lips and jaw. The blond, as well as the cleft in his chin, must be courtesy of that bitch from Versailles.

“Hello, Luna,” he says.

“You turned out handsome.”

Without answering, Laro turns to watch the old vampire die.

“What happened?” I ask.

Carmine’s looking at me as if I’m the only thing in the entire world and points at the black knife lying in a streak of blood. “Nazario told me it’s restorative. It restored my son to what he should have been. And you… your neck was broken.”

I touch my throat. There’s no pain. No wound. Nothing.

Manod has stopped screaming and is now sobbing as the stones eat him down to the dick—gulping as if they’re alive, and starving. He tips into an angle. It’s disturbing to see, but Laro watches closely, as if waiting for something more to happen.

“I can’t see Laro’s emotions. Is he still… you know… a vampire?”

“Yes.” He puts his hand on my cheek. “Are you all right?”

“I feel fine. Achy all over but generally okay.” I point at the crying vampire sunk down to the armpit. “Better than that guy.”

Carmine smiles. He blinks hard and tears fall from both eyes. He wipes them away quickly and sniffs as if that will cover it up. “I thought I lost you.”

“Better luck next time.” I squeeze his hand. He doesn’t squeeze back.

Manod goes silent when his jaw is sucked under. The misshapen hand at the end of his shoulder and half his head are the only things sticking out.

“Luna.” He turns my face away from the horrifying sight and onto him. He’s looking at me with wide-eyed wonderment. He’s too old to look at anything this way. “I won’t allow you to die.”

“It’s kind of an eventuality.”

“Not for you. Not for us. We don’t go in one direction.”

He means what he says. He wants to make sure I cheat the most basic human fate.

“You’re freaking me out.”

“There was never a moment I started loving you. There was only a moment I realized it.”

These are big words for big emotions, and it’s been a long day. I can’t digest it all.

“Prove it.”

He takes my face in his hands and kisses me as though this is a normal place, in a normal time.

He kisses me deeply, so that I taste what I cannot see outside the liminal—that he loves me.

I knew that, but I didn’t know that the taste of love could change, grow deeper and more complex.

I didn’t know it could thread itself through every other aspect of a person’s emotional life, so much so that taking it away would shatter them.

There’s a clink of metal on stone, like a heavy coin dropping and bouncing. I open my eyes and pull away. Manod is gone. Laro bends down to pluck the raven ring off the floor.

He pauses, fisting it, and I wonder if he wants to be king.

“See if it fits,” Carmine says. Laro looks up, wide-eyed, as if his father has lost his mind. “You’ll only get swallowed if you force it.”

Laro spreads open his fingers. He flips his hand to see the palm, seeming frozen at the sight of his own hand.

“Huh,” he says, sounding curious and pleased.

“Man hands.” I lean forward to stretch my knees.

“It might fit.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Carmine didn’t want it back.

“Might.” Laro shrugs and passes the ring to his father. “Get it on before someone else tries to take it.”

Carmine considers the black circle in his palm, then closes his fist, but does not put it on.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I’ve never been better.” He takes my wrist. “Open.”

I open my hand. With a shaking arm, he drops the ring in my palm.

“Keep it safe, Strega.” He closes my hand into a fist. “Let’s get out of here.”