Page 49 of Unbound

“Has this ever happened before?” I ask abruptly, sick of all the “what ifs” and the “maybes.” “Is there, like, an instruction manual or some kind of case study?”

“No,” Bruno replies, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Though that doesn’t mean I can’t find something that could inform us. As far as I know, in answer to your first question … no. This hasn’t happened before. And I’m not sure why it’s happened now. If your Luca is indeed the rightful heir to the d’Argento legacy, then how did he survive the killings? Again, I stress, I always believed this to be a fable, folklore, but from the few accounts I have, it was brutal. Their home was large by the standards of the day, a town in the Tuscan hills. Santa Lucia, I believe it was called. Nothing exists of it now, not even a ruin, so complete was the destruction. Before that, it sounded a vibrant place—a market, stables, farms, a church.”

I’ve never pictured witches in church, but then again, I’ve never pictured witches in my boyfriend either. This is all so weird.

“Every living soul was wiped out. Every building burned. Every animal slaughtered. Total devastation. It was like it was never there. Nobody survived it.”

“Except maybe they did,” I say quietly. “Luca.”

I can’t even begin to picture those scenes. The death, the pain, the carnage. How old was he when it happened, I wonder? Was he that little boy from his vision, or was he a teenager? Did he see it all? He must have been terrified, witnessing the death of his parents, the death of everything he had ever known. Maybe it’s a blessing that he cannot remember. We’ve always assumed he can’t recall his human life because of some supernatural reason, but what if it’s simpler than that? What if that whole experience was so traumatic that his poor young mind simply shut down, buried it so deep that it couldn’t harm him anymore? Maybe it was his only way of coping with what had happened.

Minnie and Bruno continue to chat, sharing theories, considering hypotheticals. There are still too many questions. I know we’ve only just arrived, but already, I’m impatient. I don’t want to be here, in this charming house on this magical island, with this kind but deeply sad man. I want to be with Luca. I don’t care what he is, who his family were, or how interesting more academic minds than mine are finding this whole situation. I just care about him.

I leave them to it. Pour myself a coffee and walk out into the gardens. Stella follows me, and I smile as she investigates a rosebush like she’s never seen it before. This place really is something, and I take a moment to enjoy the sun on my skin, the sound of bees buzzing around the lavender. The scampering paws of the curious dog. My schedule has become more nocturnal recently for obvious reasons, and this is pleasant. There is a lot to discuss, a lot to understand, but I can give myself a moment to relax.

Naturally enough, just as I dare to think the ‘R’ word, the world goes insane. My amulet flares into violent heat, its touch searing the skin of my chest. Danger. Big, huge danger. I drop my coffee cup, and it smashes on the stone steps, the porcelain shards scattering. The dog goes mad, barking and running around frantically, and a piercing scream tears through the serenity.

I go into a crouch, have a stake in my hand within a second, scanning the gardens for the source of the threat. Except I’m looking in the wrong direction. It’s coming from where I least expected it—the house.

A body hits my back with a hefty thud, knocking us both to the ground. Fingers claw at my face, the breath leaves my body, and my forehead clunks hard against the stone of the terrace. I black out for a split second, and when I come to, I’m on my back, and there’s a knife at my throat. It’s pressing down hard enough to break the skin, but I don’t panic. It’s not like I haven’t been in these kinds of positions before. I’ve spent my whole life fighting; it happening here was just a shock. It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have relaxed, not even for that second.

I stare at the woman who has me pinned down. She’s older, with wild tangled hair and a furious look twisting her face into a feral snarl. She looks completely unstable, but she’s also not a vampire. Not a shifter, or a wolf, or any of the other creatures I’d normally suspect of an attack like this. No. She’s almost-but-not-quite human. This is Veronica Lombardi, Bruno’s wife. He really undersold it when he said she wasn’t well.

I suck in a breath and speak very carefully. As you do when a knife is pressed to your neck.

“Veronica. Why are you doing this?”

She grips my hair with her other hand, tugs at it painfully. She is not one of life’s natural fighters, but that doesn’t mean she can’t hurt me or even kill me. “Because you are part of him,” she replies, hissing the last word. “His flesh and blood. It’s because of you Capellis that my Anna was killed …”

Fuck. She genuinely looks determined now. Like saying it out loud has confirmed it—Tomasso planned the death of her daughter, I am genetically related to Tomasso, therefore I am responsible. Or maybe I’m simply the one she can get her hands on. She’s driven by pain, by grief, by understandable anger. I feel sorry for her, but I cannot let her kill me out of pity.

“No,” I reply. “I am not part of him. He betrayed me too, Veronica. He betrayed us all. I’m going to find him, and I’m going to kill him. For Anna, for me, for Paola. For all the innocents that have died because of him. This I vow to you.”

There’s a split second where I think she’s going to go for it. A moment of rational thought flickers across her face but is quickly chased away by her bloodlust. In my peripheral vision, I see Bruno running from the house, a look of horror on his face and Minnie at his side. My witch friend gives me a “What should I do?” look, and I shake my head a touch. Enough for that knife to sink a fraction deeper and for me to feel warm blood trickling down my neck.

Predictably, just when I thought things couldn’t get more chaotic, Luca barges into my mind. Rosa! What is happening? he bellows, the sound reverberating around my head.

I’m okay, I tell him. I’m fine. Nothing I can’t handle, but stop distracting me.

I close the connection and go back to the erratic lady on top of me. Her hair is dangling around my face and her breath stinks. I feel huge amounts of sympathy for her, this once renowned Healer who has had her whole life derailed, but I cannot let that blind me to how dangerous she is. I don’t want to hurt her, but I might have to. Minnie could blast her away with some kind of witch-bomb, and I can feel heat building in my own body as the threat builds. Fuck, I could end up incinerating her, without even meaning to.

Bruno knows some of this. He knows Minnie has power, and that I am a trained killer. He knows that it is not really me who is most at risk: it’s his wife.

“Please!” he begs, his voice anguished. “She is sick … forgive her …” The dog barks, as though agreeing.

Fuck it. I know he’s right, but it’s much easier to say that when you’re not about to get your vocal cords sliced. “Veronica,” I mutter. “Get off me. You need to get off me before you get hurt.”

“No! I will do to you what he did to her … I will take your head, your tongue, your eyes. I will kill you!”

She laughs, and it’s something straight out of a horror movie. Okay. This has gone on long enough, and I’m way too warm. I raise my hands, see sparks flying. I make my palms into cups, and at exactly the same time, I slap both over her ears with as much strength as I have. The result is instantaneous. She screams in pain, rolls off me, lies clutching her head and moaning. She’s disorientated, stunned, off-balance. The knife has already clattered to the earth, and my amulet is no longer hot.

Sadly, the rest of me is. I jump to my feet, desperately scanning around me. Bruno, Minnie, Veronica. The constant moving blur of the damn dog. I can feel the power surging inside me now, boiling up, racing through me like hissing steam. I’m less distressed and angry than I have been when this happened before, but I still don’t know how to stop it. How to control it. If I don’t let it out, then I will be the one who explodes.

I let out a cry of frustration, whirl around, and aim my hands at a poor innocent rosebush. One minute it’s looking all pretty in pink, and the next? A burning chunk of mangled greenery. The dog yelps, sniffs the air, and runs back into the house.

I stand and take some deep breaths. Stare at the blaze, and then at my hands, now blessedly back to normal. This really is an absolute bastard of a power, and it’s exactly what I’m scared of doing when I’m around Luca. Or for that matter anybody, because while flames quickly become fatal to vamps, being hit by a blazing fireball doesn’t do anybody much good, does it?

“And that,” I say to Bruno as he stares at me in amazement, “is the other thing I need some help with.”