Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

35. Facing the Truth

Chapter 35

Facing the Truth

H enderson, Nevada

April 14, 2018

(8 Days Before Death)

Lucio pulled her into his arms. He forced her to stay. He forced an embrace she clearly did not want. After a tense battle over control, she reluctantly lowered her arms and returned his hug. As he held her, Lucio felt his sanity teeter. No answers could penetrate the deep barriers in her mind. She remained impervious to the conversation. Yet, for a fleeting moment, the veil of her memory lifted, and she remembered the bite. He needed to refocus, to concentrate on saving his father and breaking the curse that bound them. Time was slipping away as he grappled with the true nature of what—or who—he was up against.

“Forget everything I said. I’m an idiot. I don’t know what I was saying. You will always be safe with me. Don’t go,” Lucio pleaded. “I had too much to drink on the plane. I’m just stressed about this meeting with my family, and I wanted to get closer to knowing you. But we’re close enough,” he sighed, his voice cracked with emotional defeat. The last thing in the world he wanted was to scare or hurt her.

Dolly lifted her head from his chest. Her gaze remained dazed yet focused. In her eyes, he saw acceptance, a subtle acquiescence to the comforting veneer of his lie. It pained him to see how readily she slipped into the spell as opposed to remaining with him in reality. Dolly’s defense was to push aside her concerns and doubts whenever things became too intense or frightening—and it worked. How else would a person deal with a multiple personality like hers?

Lucio kissed her. She became soft and accepting of him in his arms. The kiss she returned was soul-cleansing, purifying, and full of promise. With Dolly, he could just simply be normal. Why change that? Finally, he got a taste of freedom and a woman who could handle him if she chose to. Dolly smiled as if she read his mind and understood his acceptance of her.

“You are discovering a new part of your personality. You don’t know it, but you are. Of course, you don’t want to examine all of it at once. What we find out, we find out together.”

“You are a poet, Lucio,” she grinned.

“Forgive me for yelling and grabbing you,” he pleaded.

“Mmm,” she said. “Stop talking. Make love to me,” she moaned.

The biggest challenge with mortality for humans was the weakness of the flesh. As Lucio tried to maintain a connection with her, his body responded to her erratic and unpredictable ways by releasing him from his self-control. These physical cravings for her sex over her blood was a response to her essence, her melanin, her magic. And it exhausted and confused his Draca.

“Don’t stop talking,” she said and licked his chest.

“To me, you are a rare jewel, pure, untainted,” he said in French. “You’re yourself. I know that feeling. I don’t want to be the asshole to corrupt you,” he groaned in Italian as she stroked his painfully hard erection. He fell silent. He lifted her in his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Lucio pinned Dolly to the wall. His cock went up into her with a single thrust. A cry of relief broke from her lips, and she could feel her pussy walls constriction, loosen. With her nails impaling his shoulders, she clung tightly to him. She let her mind dissolve through the heatwave of passion burning down her defenses. She hated having to lie to him, to feign confusion because, in truth, he was right—she was battling an internal struggle that had plagued her for her entire life. Pretending it wasn’t eroding her sanity was her best defense.

The prospect of love dangled tantalizingly before her, and she yearned to seize it. His words, though laden with care, also carried her through an unwanted journey to self-realization. Lucio bit her, and she screamed. That she did remember, but she thought it was a dream because she was so scared at that moment. What if he was abusive like Tyrone? What if Russ was right, and Char was right? What if she was wrong again? She just couldn’t be wrong again. When she woke in his arms, there wasn’t even a scar. So where was the bite?

“You’re mine again,” Lucio moaned, “I don’t need anyone but you, Dolly. Just you.”

Dolly kissed his shoulder with his face buried against her own. The shock of the way he made love to her also grounded her. He was real. This was real. Not another conjuring of her fractured mind. She loved every moment. How his body dwarfed hers and his powerful thrusts rocked in and out of her was the sweetest torture she’d ever known. Her mind went blank. She was enjoying the fuck, and so was he. As she clung tightly to him, her legs remained locked in. She melted against him, disappearing. Her heartbeat skyrocketed. His broad shoulders were heaving as he fucked her harder and faster. She felt her pulse now beating in her throat and flashes of lovemaking with him the first night surfaced from the dark recesses of her mind. Dolly's eyes opened. He had bitten her before. It wasn’t her imagination. It was real. Lucio had bitten and almost chewed her. Scared and titillated, she shuddered through sexual memories of pain and pleasure all mixed in one, unable to deny her complicity or her cravings for the darkness. All the while, he kept her pinned against the sweaty steamy wall of the shower, fucking her into oblivion until she cried out her surrender.

After their passionate encounter, they shared a playful shower together. Back in his room, Lucio discovered Dolly had selected his fit for the evening, down to the watch he should wear. She removed the ring she had been wearing and slid it onto his pinky finger.

“It’s beautiful,” she remarked, holding his hand and admiring the black gem. She could perceive details she believed could only be seen under a scope, thanks to her enhanced eyesight, a gift from the changes within her.

She kissed the ring. “Isn’t that what they do for the Don in the movies?”

He removed the ring and returned it to her finger. “You wear it. I belong to you, not the movies.”

Dolly laughed. She smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. Lucio picked up his trousers and pulled them on. “I’m late. I really need to go.”

“Okay!” She shrugged. “I guess I can’t come then.”

She removed his robe. He dressed and watched her when she went to the bed and seductively crawled over the mattress. She slipped under the dark sheets. “All of this will wait for you when you return, bad boy.”

“Yes, and I’ll be hungry too,” he flicked his tongue at the diamond tip of his fanged left tooth. Her smile faded. Once again, the memory of him biting her with fangs that were extended and tipped with diamonds during sex surfaced. Lucio winked before he was gone to the closet. He returned with the panty she left on the floor, sticking it in his pocket. He smirked at her once more and left. Alone in his room, Dolly lay there staring up at the ceiling. She closed her eyes and tried again to push the strange memory of him, the feeling of him, being something sinister from her mind.She could not.

Several hours later -

Dolly had a fitful sleep, her body tangled in the sheets as if struggling against an unseen force. She tossed and turned in her lover’s bed for what felt like an eternity. Each minute dragged her deeper into a void of nightmares. When she finally stirred, her eyes fluttered before they opened. She glimpsed a dark shadow slither from the edge of her bed. It moved with unnatural speed, disappearing into the shadows of the room. Her heart pounded in her chest as she sat upright, the icy grip of fear tightened her lungs.

“Hello? Lucio?” Her voice wavered, and the word hung in the air like a fragile whisper. Silence enveloped her, broken only by the faint light that filtered through the slightly ajar door, the very door through which the shadow had fled. The lamplight by the bed stood as a sentinel in the darkness, switched off and useless. With trembling fingers, she reached out and turned it on, the sudden brightness doing little to banish the shadows that lurked in the corners.

“Hello?” Dolly said, this time in a softer voice.

A wave of icy dread washed over her, and it chilled her resolve to the core. The bathroom door stood ajar, its darkness more profound and menacing than the bedroom’s. Its impenetrable blackness gnawed at her nerves. Though she was not usually afraid of the dark, Dolly knew this fear was different. It was justified. There was someone else there. She sensed it with a primal certainty that she could not dismiss. In a hurried daze, she tossed back the covers and slipped into Lucio’s robe. Her feet touched the ice-cold floor, sending another sliver of dread through her body. She shivered, convinced the air conditioning was set to an arctic chill. Rubbing her folded arms with her hands, she tried to summon warmth. Weren’t his security guards supposed to be close by? He had said they would be right outside the door. That recollection gave her a fragile sense of courage.

When she started toward the door, she heard the giggle of a woman from the other side of it. Dolly paused. Someone was waiting?

“Hello! Is someone there?” Dolly asked.

Dolly seized the door handle and yanked it open with a burst of desperate energy. Instantly, the light in the long, empty hallway flickered and died, plunging the passageway into a suffocating darkness. The eerie giggling echoed again, this time from deeper within the shadows, a haunting sound that sent a chill down her spine. Dolly squinted into the void, her eyes strained to penetrate the oppressive blackness. Her voice trembled as she called out, “Who is there?” The words seemed to vanish into the abyss, swallowed by the darkness that now surrounded her.

“Me!” a voice chirped back, its tone a chilled blend of glee and malice. Sheer fright swept through Dolly. It gave her heart seizures. She stumbled backward. Her instinct to flee overwhelmed her desire to confront. The voice multiplied, echoing maniacally down the corridor. “Me! Me! Me! Me!” Each repetition grew louder, and closer, as if the source was rushing towards her. The lamplight in her bedroom flickered once, twice, and then died, plunging her into complete darkness. The oppressive blackness seemed to close in around her, stealing her last remnants of courage.

Now the darkness was inside, enveloping her in its suffocating embrace. Dolly took several hurried steps back, her stomach clenched so tightly that bile rose in her throat. A claustrophobic wave of panic surged through her. It made it hard to catch her breath. The screams multiplied, a deafening cacophony that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Her voice, distorted and grotesque, bounced off the walls in a relentless, nightmarish chant: “MEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMMEMEME…” The relentless echoes pounded in her ears, driving her deeper into terror.

Dolly clapped her hands over her ears, desperately trying to block out the screams.

“It’s me!” a voice hissed from the left. She whirled around. She nearly lost her balance. Her vision swam with fear.

“It’s me!” echoed another voice from the right. She backed away. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm, each beat echoed in her ear like a drumbeat of doom.

“It’s ME!” the voice sang directly behind her. It mocked her with a sinister mimicry of her own voice. She spun around. She came face to face with a turquoise, blue-tinged visage. The ghastly dismembered face had eyes red and wild with madness. A twisted grin sliced across her features, exuded wicked delight and menacing intent. The sight of it sent a chill to her very bones. The face was hers.

“Boo!” the voice screeched.

Dolly jolted awake. A blood-curdling scream tore from her throat. Her bedroom door burst open, and two men rushed in, their presence a sobering contrast to the nightmare she had just escaped. But she didn’t see them; terror blurred her vision, her once-wet hair now a wild cascade around a face etched with torturous internal fear. She continued to scream, trapped in a horror that hammered relentlessly at her sanity. Even in the supposed safety of her room, with two big, strong, armed men, the horrifying presence lingered—an echo, a warning, a greater threat in her mind that refused to silence. She just kept screaming and screaming while the other version of herself, the one she could not deny, laughed maniacally in the depths of her psyche before Darlene transformed into her.