Fall of Darkness (The Chronicles of Darkness) (20 page)

Though the words were said lightly, Kate
sensed something beneath his words. Jealousy? It couldn’t be, they’d only just
met.

With a quick step across the room, Alexander
picked up a small white card from the counter. “The card reads ‘I’m still waiting.
All my love.D.’ Who is ‘D’ and what is he or she waiting for?”

Kate’s heart soared in her chest. Dominic.
He’d told her the truth. The fact that she’d spurned his love, all because he’d
been honest with her, made her burn with shame. He’d tried to warn her, but she
hadn’t listened.

His words at their parting echoed in her
mind. 
I’ll wait for you, cara, no matter how long it takes.
He waited
still.

The roses were Dominic’s declaration. He
still wanted her, even after she turned her back on him. Joy beyond measure
filled her heart. She could survive anything, even life as a vampire, so long
as she could be with Dominic.

Kate beamed at Alexander. “His name is
Dominic. We were… involved before this whole thing happened.”

It would be better to have the truth out
there. If Alexander was going to be around to teach her, he was going to have
to get used to Dominic. The idea of the two very dominant men spending time
together was almost comical. It was definitely going to be interesting.

Alexander eyed her inquisitively.
“Involved, really? How? Answer me this, Katerina----Why hasn’t he been here to
see you? I’ve met your roommate, Lindsey, and your friend, Guy, both of whom
flirted shamelessly with me, might I add.”

“Go with Guy, you’re less likely to get your
heart broken,” Kate cracked. Humor was as affective a defense mechanism as any.

Alexander didn’t miss a beat. He kept on
going. “I’ve met your adoptive family and a whole throng of hospital workers,
friends, and well wishers, but I have not seen or heard from anyone by the name
of Dominic. And I haven’t left your side, Katerina.”

            “Well,
we sort of had a disagreement… and I told him I needed some time,” Kate
admitted, shifting in discomfort.

            “What
did you fight about?”

            Anger
spread through her like wildfire. He had no right. “That’s none of your
business.”

            “Tell
me, Katerina. I need to know.” Alexander was once again the epitome of
masculine patience.

            “Why?”
Kate demanded in mutinous fury.

            “To
confirm my suspicions,” he answered calmly. “Please, just tell me. It may be
important.”

            “Fine,”
she sighed in frustration. “He tried to warn me about what I was, okay? I
didn’t want to listen to him. He didn’t have the same luxury of
incontrovertible proof to aid his case. At the time, I thought he’d lost his
mind.

“He said he would wait for me to accept
the truth, to accept him. Well, now I know and we can finally be together.”
Kate shook with anger, mortified that he’d forced her to divulge her
faithlessness to him. “I love him.”

Alexander released his breath in a low
hiss. His gold eyes hardened, glistening with barely leashed menace. “His name
wouldn’t happen to be Dominic Ridolfi, would it?”

This answer mattered for some reason.
Kate could tell by the way his whole body was drawn tight like the string of a
bow. She lifted her chin fractionally. “As a matter of fact it would.”

            “Do
you know what you’ve done? What he is?” Alexander raged at her, his golden eyes
flashing in anger.

Unabashed, Kate shrugged. “He told me he’s
a werewolf at the same time he told me I’m a vampire. I didn’t believe him at
the time, but now I do. He told me we’re supposed to be enemies, but said it
doesn’t matter to him. Well, guess what? It doesn’t matter to me either,” she
railed back.

“You would choose a werewolf over your own
kind? You will not betray us all, Katerina. I will not allow it,” Alexander
growled at her, thunderous fury breaking through his façade of cultivated
control. “Your precious Dominic conveniently forgot to mention the most
important piece of information. It seems he failed to mention one minor detail.
He was sent here to kill you.”

            “Never,”
Kate denied with vehemence. “You don’t know him. He would never hurt me. If he
didn’t tell me, it’s only because I didn’t give him the chance.”

Kate was glad she had a logical
explanation for Dominic’s possible omission. She had to believe in him, he was
all the hope and light she had left to cling to in this terrifying new world.

            “Dominic
Ridolfi is a ruthless killer, the deadliest of all lycan kind, and their most trusted
assassin. He is more of an animal than he’ll ever be a man,” Alexander growled.

            “He
is not. If he was a cold-blooded killer, I would know it.”

            “Tell
me, Katerina
,
how did you meet this dog you so adamantly champion? How
has he gained your unwavering loyalty and affection so quickly?” Kate couldn’t
decide which was sharper, his tone or his leonine eyes. He looked every inch
the ferocious jungle cat she’d thought he resembled.

            “He
saved me. He wouldn’t have done so if he wanted me dead,” she argued, feeling
jubilant, her victory assured.

            “So,
a werewolf who would benefit from your death just happened to be there when you
needed help. How convenient. Why do you think he came all the way from Europe
to Chicago? To save you? To date you? Think about it, Katerina.”

The walls of her defenses sustained a
minor crack at the foundation, his words rattling her resolve like the blows of
a battering ram. Worded that way, it did sound a bit farfetched.  Several
questions about her rescue had gone unanswered, forgotten amid her gratitude
and infatuation. They didn’t seem to matter then, but they did now.

The attack happened at almost four in
the morning, in an isolated parking lot for hospital employees. Why was Dominic
there? How did he find her? How did he drive off three men by himself? Why
didn’t he take her in to the hospital for treatment? Or call the police?

Dominic had said her attackers fled when
they saw him. Not totally unbelievable, but a stretch. Especially since three
male bodies, mangled beyond recognition by a wild animal, were found in the
woods later the same week. Kate remembered seeing it on the news. A werewolf
could’ve done that.

Alexander must’ve sensed her weakness. With
deadly precision, he delivered the fatal blow that brought the whole thing
tumbling down. “Ridolfi killed your parents.”

Kate gaped at him in horror. Her
parents? Dominic couldn’t have. He wasn’t old enough? Or was he? He was an
immortal, after all. She had no idea how long he’d been alive.

He’d known an awful lot about their
deaths, but said he hadn’t known them. Was that true? It was hard to know. He’d
lied about so many things, Kate found it difficult to sort the truth from his
lies.

Her heart sank as each puzzle piece fell
into place. No, Dominic wasn’t crazy, but he was still a liar. It was all a set
up, a trap to gain her trust. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
If your enemy happened to put out, even better for you.

Brimming with indignity, Kate quaked with
self loathing over her foolishness. She’d been willing to trust him again. What
an idiot. In an elaborate plan to kill her, Dominic had seduced her to get
closer.

Angry sobs wracked her body as tears
streamed down her cheeks. Alexander came to sit on the edge of the bed bedside
her. Wrapping his strong arms around her, he rested his cheek against the top
of her head as she cried into his shoulder.

Strangely enough, Kate found comfort in
his embrace. Though she wanted to hate Alexander for his part in her pain, she
needed a friend right now. She’d lost so much today. Her humanity, her life,
and what little had remained of her fragile illusion of love.

“Why?” Kate choked through tears.

“You know why,” Alexander said, gently
wiping the salty streams from her cheeks with the tip of his finger.

“No, I don’t,” Kate insisted. “I want to
understand.” 

Alexander’s face would’ve put champion
poker players to shame as he contemplated his answer. When at last he spoke, it
was with hushed fervor.

“You don’t know how very special you
are, Katerina. You were born to the house of Cacciatori, the oldest and most powerful
vampire line. Royalty. You are the most precious treasure to our kind. Not only
as a Cacciatori, but as the lone heiress prophesied to bring peace and
absolution to our kind.

“As the Cacciatori heiress, you are our
hope. The werewolves would do anything to extinguish that hope. I cannot defend
your Dominic’s actions, nor do I wish to, but he was only acting in the
interest of his family and kind.”

Kate stared blankly past him. She didn’t
want to be the only hope for a race of vampires, had no desire to be important
in their world. All she wanted was her own happy, little world back.

“Do you have Dominic’s phone number,
Katerina?”

“In my cell phone, why?” Kate asked,
eyeing Alexander warily. Her stomach twisted into knots at the thought of
hearing Dominic’s voice. Kate couldn’t handle that. Not now, probably not ever.
“I don’t want to talk to him.”

Alexander shook his head. “I would not
expect you to,” he promised. “If you will allow it, I would like to instruct
Mr. Ridolfi to wait no longer. He needs to know you’re no longer blind to the
truth about him.”

What could it hurt? It seemed a bit
childish, having a surrogate big brother yell at the guy who pulled her hair,
but so what? The arrogant jerk wanted to kill her anyway. “Sure, go ahead,” she
consented, attempting indifference with a shrug of her shoulders.

Alexander picked up her phone and
toggled through the contacts. With a tap to the screen, he put the phone to his
ear. Dominic answered after the first ring.

“Ciao, Dominic,” Alexander greeted, his
voice sharp steel, gloved in satin.

He paused, listening to Dominic’s
response. A ferocious cat’s grin spread across his face. Kate strained to hear
the husky velvet voice on the other side of the line and her heart fluttered
involuntarily. She quickly squashed the urge to snatch the phone from
Alexander’s hand.

Was it possible to love someone and hate
them at the same time? It had to be. Kate was pretty sure Dominic was living,
breathing proof it was.

The conversation continued in a
different language, presumably Italian, which Kate wished she’d had the chance
to learn. Whatever was said, Dominic sounded incensed as his deep voice rumbled
from the speaker of her phone. Alexander’s melodic voice became more animated
as he continued to verbally spar with Dominic. With a musical laugh, Alexander
bid Dominic farewell and ended the call.

“What did he have to say?” Kate asked,
failing to mask her raging curiosity.

“He told me to burn in Hell,” Alexander
scoffed.

“Oh, anything else?”

“Well, it was a bit more colorful,” he chuckled,
“but no, that’s pretty much it.”

“So, what now?”

Tomorrow would come whether Kate liked
it or not. She would still be a vampire and Dominic would still be a liar.
Unless, she woke up to find this all to be one huge, devastating nightmare, she
needed a game plan.

“We need to leave here, immediately.
It’s not safe if Ridolfi knows you’re here. Besides, you might eat the help,”
Alexander added with an evil grin. He crossed the room and started pulling her
personal items out of a cupboard.

“Wait. What about my anemia? Won’t I
need the blood transfusions?”

“No. I’ll teach you to hunt. The
transfusions were enough to keep you alive, but they can’t fully satisfy your
thirst. You need to feed.”

“You want me to hunt? People? Drink
their blood? I won’t do it,” Kate protested, crossing her trembling arms over
her chest. People definitely qualified as food with faces.

“Yes, Katerina. You will feed. You have
to. Why fight it?”

“I won’t do it,” she insisted,
straightening her shoulders in resolve. “I’d rather die.”

Alexander’s face was granite. He opened
his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut. Chewing the inside of his lower lip,
he appeared to be counting in his head. Or contemplating the solution to world
hunger for all Kate knew, but he was clearly struggling to recover his
unraveling patience.

Patience returned, he spoke with quiet
reason. “Please try to understand.”

“No, you need to understand,” Kate
countered, feeling far from reasonable. Her diet was nonnegotiable. “I won’t
drink other people’s blood.”

Alexander’s eyes narrowed into angry
golden slits. “Do I need to call the nurse again? Please, allow me. I would
love to demonstrate how truly willing you are to feed,” he taunted, all semblance
of patience gone.

Kate stiffened at the thought and shook
her head in refute. The bastard didn’t fight fair.

He lifted a golden brow at her in
question. “No? Then don’t push me, Katerina. We don’t have much time.”