Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — Chapter no 30

I

Venice, Italy 1679

Two nights until Carnevale, and the city is bursting at the seams.

Carts rattle down the narrow roads and clog the bridges. Carriage wheels clatter over stone, the roads and houses overrun, voices filling the air as tents are raised and piazzas made ready.

The collective noise is more than enough to hide the sound of the girl struggling against Sabine.

She has just arrived, carried on the tide of traffic from Verona. Cities, she has found, make perfect hunting grounds. Places so busy, a handful of deaths will almost always go unnoticed. Still, she is careful. Never leaves more bodies than she can count.

Sabine’s fingers tighten on the back of the girl’s neck as her teeth sink deeper. She used to tell them not to be afraid, but that was so many, many years ago, before she learned how much she liked the taste of fear.

Bright, and bittersweet.

In her arms, the girl stops fighting.

Her heart grows sluggish before finally it falters, fails. Sabine sighs and lets go, watching as the body lands with a soft splash in the canal below, the sound swallowed by a commotion on a nearby bridge.

There is a blue silk ribbon in her hand, freed from the girl’s hair as she was drinking. Sabine curls the fabric around her finger, savoring the last echoes of the heartbeat in her chest.

“Quanta avventata,” says a voice behind her.

How reckless.

She turns to find a man she’s never met, leaning, arms crossed, against the wall. At first glance, he is a gentleman, his clothes rich and tailored to his form, broad shoulders, tapered waist. His eyes deep gray, like chips of slate,

his black hair neatly combed, a mustache curling like a second grin over his upper lip.

She didn’t hear him coming. A mystery, until the side of his mouth tugs

up, flashing a pointed fang.

Ah, she thinks.

He is not the first of her kind that she’s met since Hector and Renata.

There was a man with snow-white hair in Barcelona. A woman thin and coiled as a rope in Athens. A pair of sisters in Marseille. The older ones Sabine could not read, but the sisters were younger, their curiosity plain as pipe smoke on the air. And Sabine knew that if she crooked a finger, as Renata did that night, so long ago, they would follow.

But she didn’t.

The time for friends has come and gone. On the rare occasion when she covets company, she finds it, and afterward, the blood tastes brighter for the

time they’ve shared.

But Sabine prefers to hunt alone.

And so, each time their paths have crossed, she’s kept her distance. And each time, she felt their presence long before she saw them.

But this one has caught her by surprise.

And he does not seem intent on leaving.

“Posso aiutarla?” she asks—Can I help you?—the Italian rolling off her lips. She has been told she speaks it well, almost as if it were her native tongue. It is not hard to learn, when one has time. And Sabine has plenty of it.

His eyes flick past her, to the canal. The girl’s body vanishing beneath the surface.

“It is considered rude,” he says, “to make a mess in someone else’s house.”

Sabine looks around. “And yet, I do not see a house.”

Casually, the man unfolds his arms, and abandons the wall, rising to full height.

“You do not see four walls,” he says. “You do not see a roof. A door. But do not be mistaken. You are standing in my house.”

He ambles toward her as he says it, and as he does, a strange thing happens.

Sabine feels herself retreat. Not out of choice, or even fear. The air around

her thickens, then goes solid, that telltale hook of trying to cross a threshold through which she hasn’t been invited.

Again the man steps forward, and again Sabine finds herself forced back, until she feels the street drop out beneath her heels, the water sloshing against the canal walls below.

Indignation rises in her, but fascination, too.

“How?” she asks, boots balanced on the edge.

The stranger doesn’t answer, only looks up at the sky, as if considering the moonlit clouds. And then he turns his back on her and sets off down the road. The air relaxes, and Sabine takes a careful step from the edge when

she hears him call out, “Venga.”

Come.

She laughs, a cold sound sliding through her teeth, is halfway through telling him just where he can go without her, when the man glances back and smiles at her, almost warmly, and says, “That was not an invitation.”

A hand, invisible as the doorway, and just as firm, plants itself between her shoulders and she feels her body moving forward before her mind can think to hold it back.

Sabine understands then, that despite his easy manner, he is old.

Old enough she never heard him coming.

Old enough to lay claim to streets and open air.

Old enough to move her like a puppet.

The knowledge makes her skin prickle with a primal kind of fear. It has been such a long time since she was made to feel like prey, and she detests it, wants to tear this stranger open crotch to crown, wants to get away.

But more than either one of those, Sabine wants to understand.

To know how he has done it. So she can do it, too.

The moment she starts forward on her own, the hand retreats. But she can feel it, hanging just behind her, like a draft. Knows that if she stopped, or turned, or tried to leave, it would be there to catch her.

So she does not stop, or turn, or try to leave.

She catches up, and walks beside the man instead of in his wake.

To a passerby, they would appear a happy, handsome couple, on their way home. Sabine, in her fine dress, her hair a loose curtain of molten copper.

And him, with his broad shoulders, fingers clasped behind his back.

A handful of men stroll down the opposite side of the canal, and when

they spot Sabine and the stranger, one calls out, lifting the bottle in a way

that is half greeting, and half toast.

“Don Accardi!”

The man beside her smiles, waves, bidding them good night.

“Don Accardi?” she asks as they walk on. “Is that your name?”

“It is how I’m known, in Venice,” he says, “But you may call me Matteo.

And what shall I call you?” he adds politely.

“Why ask? Surely you are strong enough to pluck it from my mind.”

Matteo shrugs. “Perhaps,” he says. “But that would be rude.”

“Oh, that would be rude?” She sneers. “But forcing me to follow you—”

He tuts. “Am I such loathsome company? You are the one who came into my house—”

“It isn’t yours—” she counters as they cross a square.

“—and tossed a corpse in my canal—”

“Bodies are found floating every day.”

“The least you can do is be a decent guest,” he continues, leading her around a corner, “and walk with me—”

“I do not even know where we are going.”

“To my home.”

Sabine cocks a brow and says, “I thought all of Venice was your home.”

And there it is, again, that odd, affable smile. As if the entire thing amuses him. They pass beneath an arch, into a columned courtyard, a riot of wisteria blooming in the corners.

“Here we are,” he says, coming to a stop at last.

Sabine stares ahead. And then up. It is less a house than a palazzo. Three stories tall, its front as ornate as a church.

“Do you live alone?” she asks. “Or are there more of you?”

Matteo seems to weigh the words before he answers. “There are no others like us here.”

“Let me guess,” she says. “You scared them all away.”

“No,” he says. Then, “Only some.”

His boots echo softly on the courtyard stones as he approaches the front door, which is its own grand affair, wrought iron forming a half circle overhead, tendrils thrown out like rays of sun.

It swings open at his touch, and he strolls in, but as Sabine goes to follow, her body snags on the threshold. She finds herself pinned, unable to go forward, unable to retreat. She grits her teeth, good humor withering.

“You brought me all this way,” she says, “only to leave me at the door?”

Matteo tips one shoulder in the entryway. “Ah,” he says, clicking his

tongue. “I was afraid of that.”

“Do you intend to let me in?”

“I would, but I cannot.” And before Sabine can point out the absurdity of laying claim to an entire city but not the house in which he lives, Matteo lifts his voice a measure.

“Alessandro?” he calls out. “We have a guest.”

A moment’s silence, followed by the soft tread of bare feet, and then a second man appears at the far end of the hall. Elegant and young, honey- blond hair ribboning around his face, his eyes a shocking shade of azure blue—but it is the red that draws her gaze. His fingers are coated crimson, the color splashing up his arms, across his tunic, leaving flecks like freckles on one cheek.

“Did we interrupt?” Matteo asks, to which Alessandro gives a languid shrug.

“No,” he says. “I was just cleaning my brushes.”

So that is what he’s covered in. Not blood. Paint.

As he ambles toward them, Sabine realizes two things.

He is handsome, in a doll-like way.

And he is unmistakably human. She can hear the soft and steady turning of his heart, can taste his caution wafting down the hall.

“Have you brought home a stray?” he asks, at the same time Sabine mutters, “So you have a pet.”

Matteo looks between the two of them and laughs. “Alessandro Contarini, this is . . .” He trails off, waiting for her to introduce herself.

“Sabine.”

His mouth twitches. “How odd,” he muses.

“Is it?”

“I knew another Sabine once.” The words are a chip of ice between her shoulders, but, small mercy, he seems content to leave them there. “Go ahead,” he says, shrugging off his cloak. “Let her in.”

Sabine’s attention slides to the mortal in the hall. Matteo’s pet. “Yes,” she purrs, fingers rapping against the air, where they land as if on wood. “Go

ahead and let me in.”

The young man, Alessandro, studies her.

Not as a mouse studies a cat, but as an artist studies a subject, deciding

how best to capture it. Then he bows, one hand billowing outward in a flourish. “You are most welcome here.”

As he says it, the threshold melts away, and in a single stride, Sabine is in the foyer, and has him up against the nearest wall. Blood pounds beneath his skin, and she is still deciding whether to tear open his throat or use his little life for leverage when he is out from under her grasp, twisting behind her, as fluid as a banner in the wind.

By the time she turns, there are two lengths of steel against her skin, the first a blade beneath her jaw, the second a pistol just below her ribs. Sabine looks from the weapons to his azure eyes, so full of life.

Matteo hasn’t moved. He simply stands there, looking on, amused.

Then, as easily as he was on her, Alessandro steps away, the weapons vanishing into a holster at his back. And Sabine must admit, she finds herself impressed. Or at the very least, intrigued.

“Well,” says her host, “now that you’ve met . . .”

And with that, he strolls off into the house, leaving them both to follow.

Sabine trails Matteo up the palatial stairs, which give way onto a wide hall, studded with open doors. He gestures to the first one on the right. “This room, I think, has the most extraordinary views.”

He leads them into a salon, high-ceilinged and marble-floored, lit by an ornate chandelier. A massive multipaneled window fills one wall, and paintings fill every other, some portraits, and others scenes of life, and while Sabine has never taken much interest in the arts, she can see the talent in the movement of brush, the light that seems to bloom behind the canvas.

Alessandro gestures to the red splashed across his front, and excuses himself so that he can go clean up, while Sabine drifts to the windows. Her host was right about the view. From here, all of Venice seems to stretch out at her feet. At the same time, if she turns her head just so, she can see Matteo, ghosted in the glass, the good mood dropping from his face.

“I meant what I said, Sabine. This is my home. And I will not have you

make a mess of it.”

He drifts forward as he speaks.

“If you wish to stay, then you may do so as my guest, and I will be your gracious host. But you will live as I do, by a certain set of rules. There will

be no skulking about in shadows, no victims stolen from the street and cast in the canal. I will show you how to savor every soul you take. How to claim space, and bend minds, how to enthrall, enchant, and masquerade.

How to be the last one they think of when the bodies go missing.”

His hand settles on her shoulder.

“I will show you how to live, better than you ever have before.”

Sabine lets her gaze slide back to the water, the bridges, the city’s sculpted buildings like shadowed prints against the sky, a handful of windows lit even now by candlelight.

“A rousing speech,” she muses dryly. “But if I refuse your patronage?”

Matteo sighs and reaches past her, rests his hand against the window glass. Beyond, the first light has just begun to tint the sky.

“Then you best go now,” he says, “and be on the road to Rome by dawn.”

There is neither hope, nor menace, in the words. As if he does not truly care which path she takes, only that she takes one. As if the choice is hers.

And it is—at some point, the spectral hand has vanished from her back, and Sabine knows then that if she turned to go, there would be nothing to impede her.

Matteo withdraws as a shape twitches in the doorway.

Alessandro has reappeared, dressed in a clean open-collared tunic, the paint scrubbed from his hands and face, the skin there pink from scouring.

Matteo goes to him and lays a kiss gently on his shoulder, a gesture at once so simple and so intimate.

So unlike Sabine, who found the shape of her own urges in the dark and thought that was the only place a truth like hers could live. That it was something to be shrouded. Yet here these two men are, together, and she does not need the ability to feel Matteo’s mind to know that there is more than simple lust between them. She sees it, in the way her host’s expression softens, the way his gaze lingers on the other man.

Love.

As terrible and bottomless as hunger.

She wonders what it’s like.

“Good night, Sabine,” says Matteo absently as he and Alessandro slip into the hall, but his voice, soft as it is, wafts back toward her as he goes. “If you do decide to stay, it is a spacious house. I’m sure you’ll find a room that suits you.”

Moments later, she hears a heavy door swing closed. An old lock turn.

And she is alone.

It is nothing—she has been alone a hundred years, has managed well enough, forgone every chance, when it arose, to fall in step with others like her. And yet, she lingers at the window, watching dawn creep forward as she considers what to do.

Whether to stay, or go, or spite him. She should go, of course. Her curiosity is piqued, but she is not one to bend beneath the weight of other people’s rules. Least of all a man’s. And who is he to be making such demands on her? To drag her here and then deliver ultimatums?

But the air—in the end, it is the air that sways her. The way it bent around her in the street, turned solid as a door. The way she was forced back, over a threshold that wasn’t even there save for his whim, his will. Sabine wants to know how Matteo did it.

I will show you, he said, and she will hold him to his word.

And then, she will do whatever pleases her.

After all, he exacted no oath, made her promise nothing. Besides, she thinks, as she turns her back on the glass and crosses the elegant salon, fingers trailing over curtain and molding and painted wall, she has only just arrived in Venice, and does not have a place to stay. At least, not one as fine as this.

She finds three bedrooms, besides the one whose doors are locked, the one with a human heart beating beyond, and chooses the largest at the end of the hall. Its walls are stamped with wild vines, their edges filigreed in gold, its curtains thick enough to blot out every trace of light. And a four- poster bed seems to grow straight out of the floor, dark wood branching at the top into a kind of canopy. It is extravagant. Ornate.

It is exactly to her tastes.

Sabine slips off her boots, and lets her bare feet caress the silk rug, kiss the marble floor. A small plume of dust rises around her when she sinks onto the lavish bed, but she does not care. And by the time the sun rises, she is not on the road to Rome, but instead buried under fine sheets, and dreaming of doors that all give way beneath her touch.

OceanofPDF.com