Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

19. That Melanin Poppin’

Chapter 19

That Melanin Poppin’

H ouse of Draca - New Orleans, LA

April 14, 2018

(8 Days Before Death)

“Boss?”

Don Lucio lifted his gaze from his laptop upon noticing Tristan at the door. He signaled for him to come in. Too many. His driver was known as a formidable enforcer within the organization, as well as Lucio’s most trusted consiglieri. As Tristan shut the door behind him, Lucio closed his laptop and offered him his full attention.

“It went down as planned,” Tristan informed.

“Collateral damage?” asked Lucio.

“None,” Tristan shrugged.

“The media?” Lucio inquired.

“The media and your team are all over it. We will release a statement from your office soon. Poor Deshawn did not survive the car crash on I-10. Lamont and his crew are at the station, giving a report. He knows what to say. The Triad ensured his obedience.”

“Be sure that I get the news delivered to me when I’m on the plane. I don’t want the details to alarm Dolly,” said Lucio.

“Consider it done,” said Tristan.

“Another matter. There is a local attorney named Jack Boudreaux; he’s out of Baton Rouge,” Lucio said.

“What do you need?” Tristan asked.

“He stole from her, hurt her, bad. I consider his actions unforgivable. Make sure that is understood. I also want you to check on a fundamentalist group out of Utah, a family by the name of Huntsman. The father of the family is the brother of Dolly’s adoptive mother, Lucy Young. I want everything you can find on a trust fund he is executor over. How has the money been spent? What is left in the trust? Everything you can find.”

Tristan lowered his gaze.

“Is that a problem?” Don Lucio asked.

“About last night. About her?” Tristan began.

“What about her?” Lucio replied.

“Boss, you had a heartbeat,” Tristan forced himself to say the rest. “How? How is that possible? I know your powers are greater than ours, but a beating heart?”

“I’ve been researching it,” Lucio pointed to the laptop. “The best I could find in father’s documents is some legend dated back to over 6,000 years ago. Last night wasn’t about blood, it was about melanin.”

“Melanin?” Tristan did a double blink. “But melanin is a good thing. It’s how we’ve been able to survive the sun. It’s why we choose women with deeper melanated skin as vampires.”

“Yes, you understand,” Lucio smiled. “There is an electromagnetic spectrum within melanin capable of absorbing light, converting it into magnetic energy, and if harnessed, it can have healing powers. That we know. That we exploit. Countless people with melanin have been sacrificed over the centuries in pursuit of this power. It was long dismissed by the Catholics and Protestants as a myth. Science ignores it. Papa ignores it. Considers himself a traditionalist, and those of us that want to be in the sun blaspheming. But it is our truth to want to be more than creatures of the night, and it is melanin that works much differently when tasted in a Chosen one.”

“Chosen?” Tristan frowned. “But there are none.”

Lucio smiled. “Yes. That’s what we thought. This knowledge predates even the dark magic of the Draca or Hoodoo and Papa Legba. It’s an aspect we’ve known about in the women but neglected. We have always thought the curse, and the cure, started with Julia Brown and her descendants, but what if it isn’t what she practiced but what was in her? Something beyond our understanding that father is keeping secret. I must delve into my father’s tomes back in Sicily, maybe even visit the Vatican. I need to understand more.”

“Did she try to kill you?” Tristan asked. “Did she know how to kill you?”

“Her blood, it is… wonderful and potent, and poisonous, but it’s also healing me. I can’t explain it,” Lucio said.

“Did she turn you?” Tristan asked.

Don Lucio nodded. “She did something to me. This morning, I woke up hungry?”

“To feed?” Tristan asked.

“No. Hungry. To eat. I had a breakfast of sausage, eggs, bacon, beignets, and all the juices I wanted. Ate it. Tasted it and was satisfied,” Lucio bragged. “It freaked the staff out to see me eating and grinning like an idiot.”

Tristan frowned.

“I haven’t eaten a meal that didn’t taste like cardboard in seventy years. It was because of her. And get this! From my bite, she can see. She healed herself when she healed my bite from her throat. The Draca had just a small sample of her and nearly drove me insane with thirst,” Lucio said. “There was a chance that she could have killed me. She brought me close to death, a mortal death. She made me feel pain and suffering. Gave me my heart again so I could die human.”

“She was screaming you were a demon, a monster,” Tristan reminded him.

“It’s complicated,” said Lucio.

“I’m really confused about this one, boss. I expected for her or both of you to be dead. I didn’t expect you to be giggling over breakfast,” said Tristan.

“This?” Lucio pounded his chest. “It is real. It happened. One taste of her and my life started again. We don’t know what the curse is from Julia Brown. Me and the brothers have come close to finding one, or another who was promising, but no one ever survived a night with us. The real true one, to cure me, them, father, is here with me now.”

“Do you think this healing is permanent?” Tristan asked.

Lucio felt his chest again. He could already feel the heat of his body temperature slipping away. And he knew his heart was no longer beating as it once was. He assumed that soon the privilege of eating with her and drinking with her like a man would go on forever. He realized it would not.

“Does she know? What you are, what you seek? Does she?” Tristan asked. “She seems oblivious to me.”

“No. That’s the beauty and the curse of it all. She’s like this beautiful goddess wrapped up under another beautiful goddess. I can’t explain the duality. There are two of her, just as sure as they are three of my brothers—but she is one. Dolly is who you see; Darlene is who attacked me last night and who saved me. She warned me not to try it again. But I don’t know if I can resist the temptation.”

“So, you’re saying Darlene set her other self-up to be sacrificed to you on purpose? Dolly woke up to find you in that state, bleeding from her neck. She doesn’t know Darlene exists?” Tristan asked.

“Yes, I think that is what I’m saying. A split personality, but supernatural.” Lucio shook his head. “Darlene stopped the Draca from killing Dolly. I thought she was going to finish me, too. When I was healed, Darlene was gone. Dolly was in bed, whimpering and confused. Her mind nearly slipped into a catatonic state, but I pulled her through it. I bathed her, soothed her, and rubbed the trauma from her, and when she relaxed, so did I.

I wanted to make it up to her so bad, everything I’ve done, I wanted to atone for, including my Wanda. So, I did my best. I danced with her; I whispered to her, and I made love to her like a man, not a monster. I felt whole, complete. She wasn’t food or a conquest, she was… my… my… mine.”

“Mate? She was your mate?” Tristan asked.

Lucio scoffed. “I’ve never taken a mate. The one time I tried, it ended in disaster.”

“Tell that to the women hanging on the wall in Scarlet Hall,” Tristan said. “Each one, boss, you worshipped until you could not control the Draca. It will be the same for her. She is a key to unlock the curse, not a Goddess. Not the Chosen. Vittorio has wiped the Chosen from the universe. She is food.”

Lucio shook his head. “I was confused, seeking a cure, but with her it’s different. I would have let her kill me last night.”

Tristan was stunned to silence. Neither Lucio nor his brothers ever showed this level of weakness. And though he knew he was trusted as consiglieri to Lucio, he had no doubt that Lucio would rip his throat out if Tristan repeated a word of what he confessed. The daughters of Julia Brown were sacrifices or a possible cure, but none of them should be considered a mate. That was Lucio’s rule put upon him by his father. His boss broke the rule when he let Wanda escape. Tristan vowed to prevent him from doing it again.

“You can’t keep this a secret from the Fratelli? If they knew, if they suspected what she could be… they will hunt her down and tear her to pieces to save your father. And you--”

“No one will touch her!” Lucio dropped fangs. He turned his lethal gaze toward Tristan. “No one.”

Tristan stepped back at the flash of fury in his boss’s face. He put up his hands and nodded obedience. “I wasn’t implying they would. I was just reminding you of the danger. Because the danger is here. We have little time. Three years left before the curse is fulfilled, yet your father is decaying as if the curse is upon him now.”

“I’m aware. Have I not made saving Papa my life’s work?” Lucio mumbled.

“Yes. Maybe it’s time to speak with the professor. Time is not a rule to follow for the hoodoo. Your father’s clock is ticking, he predicts an apocalypse in eight days. He is rarely wrong. That is why we are completing our plans for Reno,” Tristan reminded him.

The Don turned away and calmed himself. He looked at his hands. The temperature of his body was as real as the blood coursing through his veins, not the darkness that the Draca filled him with. And though he knew he should shut up, not reveal any more of his emotion, he could not stop his confession: “When it was over she lay with me, held me, trusted me as if I were just an ordinary man. She forced away the trauma of what Darlene and I put her through and kept me close. And when she woke, she smiled up at me, thinking it was just another night. She wanted normal things, like a job, hope, and my attention. Not my destruction.”

Tristan stared at his boss in disbelief.

Don Lucio tossed a look back at his consiglieri, reading his mind. “I’m telling you, I’m in love, not crazy!” He nearly laughed instead of taking the insult to heart. He said the words again. “I’m in love!”

“You think that’s funny?” Tristan frowned. “It’s dangerous. Think of your vow. The one you swore to. The one you taught me. Think of the curse.”

“Fuck the curse. Hear me! What happened to me is inexplainable. It’s exhilarating. She’s fantastic. I’ve never in my life met anyone close to her. Not even Wanda. Never! I’m in love.”

Tristan struggled to understand. He also feared deeply for his Don’s sanity. Shakespeare had mentioned another issue with the brothers, the part of the warning that Julia Brown gave. Among the four, one would go insane and betray the others. That he would become the deadliest of all. That ultimately, he’d rise as the true bringer of death. Could that be the apocalypse the professor keeps preaching about? If his brothers got any inclination that Dolly/Darlene existed, they’d rip her apart for her heart and feed it to his father.

“I have to go to Vegas. She’s coming with me. I can’t risk her being alone, especially with her split personality condition. The Darlene in her is dangerous and calculating. She knows who I am, she knows why we hunt them. And I think she is hunting us as well,” said Lucio.

“Your brothers will smell her from the plane; they will know who she is just as you did. Plus, it sounds like you don’t know what you’re dealing with. You just admitted that she could play you boss to get to your family.”

“She could be all those things, and I don’t care. You do not know what last night felt like with her. If any of my brothers even glance her way…. Maybe, if I can get to father’s tomes and read up on this lineage. Maybe I can help her control her powers. I believe it traces back to ‘the first people’. Something our Father has taught all of us. Or maybe it was Julia Brown who mentioned it. I don’t know, but I must figure it out. I could save her, and us. I could cure us all and have her… as mine.”

“You must stop speaking your truths to me. Especially if your intentions differ from the Fratelli,” Tristan warned. “I’m not like you. I’m not immune to your brothers.” Though Tristan walked as one of the undead, as Lucio’s consiglieri, he had privileges from the blood oath. He was not a Master vampire like those chosen by the Draca. He was not unbeatable. Lucio and his brothers had powers that could reach into the minds of mortals and read every secret. He had shared too much.

“If she is the cure… then prove it, fast, and be careful,” Tristan warned. “But if she isn’t, you must not turn against the family for her. You did for Wanda. Don’t make that mistake again.”

“Whatever she is. Whatever I find! She is not a sacrifice. Are we clear? You and I will protect her with our lives. Make the vow,” Lucio said.

Tristan gave him a bow of obedience “ Lo giuro sul Draca. ” He then turned on his heel and left, with Lucio’s commands echoing in his head. He could not counsel against the decision any day forward. He was forced to repeat in his head.

“She is to never be touched,” Tristan muttered. “Protect her with my life.”