Page 37 of Unbound

Vincenzo was always fascinated by people’s brains. He once told me he’d like to open up Tomasso Capelli’s skull and see what was inside. I guess that’s what he did here, along with every other kind of perverted exploration that got his interest. It’s that boredom thing again—he lived too long and saw too much. He was like an addict, constantly having to chase his next high. Or in his case, not even a high, just anything that moved him. He was rotting from the inside out, and he needed more and more to stimulate him in any way.

Carlos, I’m guessing, was more than happy to provide subjects for his master’s experiments. At least some of them would have been female. I close my eyes, blanking it out. I did not do this, did not cause this, but I have to accept that I looked the other way for too long. I ignored the evil that was all around me, because I’d been raised to be one of them. All I really remember is them, their casual cruelties and deeper depravities. I was loyal to monsters, and maybe that means I am one myself.

“Fuck,” says Aidan, gazing around. He rubs his eyes, looks exhausted.

“Yeah. We let this happen.”

He nods sadly. “I know. But now Firenze is different. We’ll make it different. Never again.”

I wonder how true that is. How far away any of us vamps really are from becoming fiends. Is it about control, genetics, psychology? Are some of us, like humans, just born bad? Or is it age—the relentless passing of the years sucking out our souls?

I kick the gurney, and it ricochets off the opposite wall. It crashes into a shelving unit, which wobbles and then falls. Jars fall from it, smashing, foul-smelling medicinal liquid spilling out and soaking up into the dirt floor. Organs. The jars were all full of human body parts—hearts, lungs, brains. One that contained sliced-off breasts, another filled with eyeballs. Even for a fiend, it is a lot. Aidan says nothing, and neither do I.

We move on to the next small chamber. Both of us know this is where the living thing is. Probably vampire, if it survived all this, but who knows? The smell is so unearthly down here that I for one can’t tell. We share a nod, both on our guard.

Treading carefully, our feet crunching on yet another carpet of bone, we find a wall lined with chains. Silver chains, which can be agonizing for vamps, wolves, and shifters alike. I can handle silver, but with broken skin—the type you end up with when somebody chains you like this—it is agony. The chains we first see are empty, apart from one which still contains a hand. Jagged marks around the wrist, fingernails all pulled off. Something was in so much pain and desperation that it bit off its own hand to escape.

I raise the flashlight, and we find it. Him. Right in the corner, barely alive. Completely naked, starved, his rib cage so prominent you can see each individual bone. He turns away from the light, a slight hiss escaping a mouth that has no lips, no teeth. Strips of skin have been flayed from his shoulders, and one ear has been sliced off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire so close to death but still clinging on.

He could have healed from all that damage if not for the starvation. I’d be surprised if human blood has entered his system for years, or maybe just the occasional drop to stop him actually dying. Alone, hungry, in pain. On the very edge of death.

Aidan kicks his brogue into small heaps of dust on the floor. His face is grim. It’s the remains of the other hostages, the ones who for whatever reason didn’t last as long as this guy. So much for using the Roma men to make a statement. All that’s left is this one skeletal creature.

There’s a crash and a curse from behind us, and I turn around to see the foreman of the work crew standing there in his hard hat. The stupid fuck has no idea what he’s just jumped into. No idea that he’s a walking food bag for the emaciated monster chained to this wall. He staggers towards us, drawn to the light, and the prisoner comes alive. He lurches against his chains, clattering and struggling, howling with need. The skin is stretched so tightly across his face that it starts to crack and tear, sloughing off and leaving exposed bone.

The foreman freezes. Stares. Immediately pisses himself.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Aidan mutters, sounding more Irish than usual. “Give me strength … I’ll deal with this, boss.”

“Right. And get him some blood.”

He guides the terrified workman away from the dark corner. One of his men has set up a ladder, and Aidan hustles him out. I hear him telling them all to stay away for now, to take a break. To go to the bodega on the corner of the block, where they’ll all be guests of the Firenze for free food and drinks.

I approach the shadow of a vampire, see him sag against his chains as the human is taken out of his reach. “You don’t even have fangs,” I say. “What were you planning to do?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers, the words a barely there rasp. “Suck on him really hard?”

It’s so unexpected that I laugh out loud. He might have been sliced, diced, and starved, but he still has a sense of humor.

“I’m Luca da Firenze. Don of the Firenzes.”

He manages a weary shake of his head, the effort wiping him out. As his head falls down, his chin clanging against the bone of his chest, I notice a crisscross pattern on the top of his bald skull. I glance up, see a little metal square. The grid that Yvonne talked about. The one that could bring direct sunlight into the place.

“Nah,” he mutters. “The Don of the Firenzes is Vincenzo and that asshole he hangs with.”

“Not anymore. They’re both dead. You must have noticed nobody’s visited you a while.”

“What can I say? I’ve not been paying attention to my diary. Every day is the fucking same. But yeah … I suppose you’re right, now you mention it. I don’t know how long it’s been. I don’t think too clearly anymore. They’re really dead?”

“Well and truly.”

A strange noise rattles through him, like a cough or a choke. I realize he’s actually laughing. “Bravo, then, Don Luca. I could kiss you. You did the whole damn world a favor. So, you’re going to kill me now?”

“I don’t know. Who the fuck are you?”

“Roberto. I think.”

I put it together in my mind. Of all the Roma hostages, this kid—I know he’s only a hundred or so—was the most valuable. Adopted son of Don Luigi’s capo. The one I was planning to kill, stick his head in a box and send it home to daddy. Now, I have no fucking clue. It seems a shame to end someone who’s fought so hard to stay alive.