Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

2. Don Vittorio

Chapter 2

Don Vittorio

S yracuse, Sicily

April 21, 2018

(The Day of Death)

Don Vittorio walked into the night. He roamed the dark cobblestone streets of Syracuse, deep in thought. Before sunrise, he retired to his cliffside, palatial home’s shadowy emptiness, less than half the Master he once was. In his ailing state, he had to summon the use of a cane to keep from exhausting himself. The gift of the Draca had promised immortality, but it was now a lie—a gift he’d forsaken when he accepted the dark bargain from Papa Legba and the descendants of slaves in Frenier Parish.

His story was as old as time.

Don Vittorio had easily grown bored as the head of La Cosa Nostra in Southern Europe. Before the turn of the twentieth century, he set sail for France and then Haiti, which inevitably brought him to Texas in search of a Chosen One, then eventually, New Orleans. There, he fell in love with several mortals, but none as beautiful and dear as his Marie who’d he’d become obsessed with later. Several decades later, slavery ended, but the sharecropping and subjugation of the natives and blacks in the region lived on. He indulged in the turmoil and angst in the southern states freely.

Don Vittorio convinced himself that he had a soul the moment he first laid eyes on her. She rebuked his advances for another suitor, whom he promptly dispatched to a painful death. She was his. That fateful decision led him to more choices with grave consequences. His quest for mortality, driven by his desire to be worthy of her love, guided him to Julia Brown and her deity, Papa Legba. Through their intervention, he gained the ability to father Marie’s sons. But in an act of cruelty and trickery by the hoodoo god, his true nature was revealed.

Marie’s dying wish transformed the boys, born from an unholy union, upon discovering his monstrous nature. The boys were still human on that night he claimed them from Manman Julia. He nurtured them into adulthood, only then bestowing upon them their family’s legacy. Upon reaching thirty, each son willingly embraced the Draca.

A century since the witch’s spell, he understood he was no longer frozen in time. The curse was upon him. One hun’red years from ta’dey, one hun’red years from ta’night. Dere would be one, only one, and he be de worst of you, and de bringer of death. You made it so. I made sure you see, and you know!

Upon entering his bedchamber, with its shadowy walls, black curtains, and shelves of ancient tomes from his days as a feared ruling member in the Senate, he sensed another presence. The Don ignored the threat. His predatory instincts that protected him against danger were no longer trustworthy. The Draca was weakening within him, and it made him paranoid.

It didn’t matter. The night entered the room with him, its darkness enveloping him as he breathed it in. Before the moon would descend, rise, and descend again, his children were to reunite with him, each having scoured the earth for a remedy to Julia Brown’s curse. Leaning on his cane, he moved towards the warm blood-bar, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of rebirth. He was not tied to Sicilia in his origins. Over the centuries, he had adopted various identities—Celtic, Mongolian, Romanian, Spanish, Sicilian—living many lives. Yet, everything changed when he encountered Marie.

“Father?” a voice emerged from the darkness. “Do you not see me?”

“Why are you here, ahead of you brothers,” replied Don Vittorio.

“They are not the answer. That is why,” said his son.

The Don let go a soft sigh of agreement. He poured a glass full of human blood into his crystal goblet. It lapped, coated, and filled to the brim. He savored the warmth of the liquid as it went down his throat. He felt measurably better, but not by much. To feel whole, he’d need to drink from a thousand bodies in the night. The thirst was never-ending.

“Does it hurt, father? The true death that Julia Brown has placed upon you?”

“Are you mocking me?” Don Vittorio replied.

“Lucio betrays you. He has found the cure. He has had it for quite some time. He lets you suffer. He keeps her a secret. Do you know why?” asked the voice.

“Her? A chosen one?” the Don asked.

“Yesssss,” hissed his voice.

The Don gripped his crystal goblet tighter. The witch prophesied his boys could and would turn on him and each other in the end. And sometimes in their failure to find him a cure that he feared it to be true. Lucio had called in a return to their home, to Sicilia. He had found the answer. Vittorio had all his faith in his firstborn of four.

“Did you hear me, father?” asked the voice of his son.

“If this is true, why is she not before me? On the eve of my death? Where is my salvation if my firstborn has turned away from me? Is there no loyalty among you? Born from the same womb and you act as if I did not sacrifice my Dra?a to give you life!” Don Vittorio snarled and threw his goblet at the wall, splattering it with crimson-red blood.

“ Maybe salvation isn’t yours. Maybe the prophecy is accurate. I am your true born son, Padre. Only me! ”

“I have four sons,” Don Vittorio argued. “You four are the one!” He whirled on his child and saw him in the moonlight. It broke his heart to see before him the truth. “What kind of madness is this?”

“YOU HAVE ME!” His progeny yelled. His son flew at him from the ceiling, attacking with lightning speed. The Don, once a master of savagery and death, narrowly avoided the brunt of the attack. Surrounded by a vortex of black smoke, father and son waged a fierce battle, crashing through walls and ceilings in their fury. The Don finally grasped the old witch’s warning—the heavy burden he and his sons would bear.

As his power waned and his flesh was ripped away, splattering blood in every direction, he endured the torment he had inflicted on countless others since his curse began. In these last moments, Don Vittorio’s thoughts weren’t with Marie’s tears upon discovering his true nature, but with Julia Brown’s laughter when he claimed his boys. Which son was this before him? Into what had he transformed?

Dere would be one, only one, and he be de worst of you and the death of all your sons…