Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

44. Chapel of the Madonna （Cappella Redemptoris Mater）

Chapter 44

Chapel of the Madonna (Cappella Redemptoris Mater)

V atican, Rome - Italia

April 21, 1957

(Death of Padre Santiago)

The crowd grew larger, and soon, the Vatican police, the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City, would arrive. Tristano needed to act swiftly to prevent panic and protect his parishioners from further danger.

“Fetch the Monsignor,” Tristano instructed the altar boy in an urgent tone. “Tell him everything you’ve seen. Everything!”

The boy nodded and raced off. Tristano turned his attention back to the scene, kneeling beside Saluda’s lifeless, mangled, and bloody body. The sight of the flesh and broken bones was horrendous, yet he had to remain composed. He silently prayed for the soul of the departed, knowing full well that the evil behind this was far beyond human comprehension.

Within minutes, the sound of sirens approached. The Vatican Gendarmerie arrived. They were quick to secure the area and disperse the onlookers. Two officers approached Tristano, their expressions a mix of concern and confusion.

“Padre Santiago,” said one officer, “…we need you to come with us. We must take you to the highest authority for questioning and protection.”

Before Tristano could respond, he glimpsed someone out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head, squinting against the sun. Standing away from the crowds, watchful, was Lucio Di Salvo. Lucio wanted to be seen, and almost dared Tristano to name him, to warn the others. He leaned against a lamppost with his hands in his pockets. He looked unfazed by those running past him toward the crime scene. His focus was solely on Tristano.

“ Padre? Padre? Did you hear us?” the officer asked.

Tristano could not speak. He was locked in an unwanted trance; Lucio had full control of him. Soon, the others faded away. That included the voices of the officers calling his name. All he could hear was Lucio.

“ Go with them. Confess it all, Father. I will come for you tonight, ” Lucio said.

The telepathic energy overcame Tristano. He began to seize. He collapsed in front of everyone, and the officers immediately attended to him as his eyes rolled back in his head.

“ Forgive me, Father… for I have no choice…and we will sin… ”

Lucio dropped his head and closed his eyes to shield his thoughts from her and the shameful lust that attacked him even now. She knew what he had done—how he had corrupted Padre Santiago and damned him to this life. He had been so lost and confused back then, forced to become his father, and envied by his brothers. The priest had counseled him, provided a refuge from his dark impulses, and even given him hope he could be saved. But Julia Brown had made it clear: he was damned the moment his father took him from that swamp, grooming him for the Draca.

Sebastiano had his pets. Marcello had his technical gadgets. Domenico had his greed and vengeance. What did Lucio have? Women he hunted and secretly loved to hunt, living a tortured existence of self-destruction and pain. The priest could have been a friend, someone to share the world of suffering seen through the eyes of the Draca like him. He needed a friend, but he knew as he looked at Tristan’s barely healed, scarred body. All he had done was create another slave.

Lucio’s mind raced as he tried to retrain his thoughts now that he knew she could read them. He had to give her what she needed while tending to the matters of the Fratelli . It felt like one problem after another.

The door to the room opened again, and Lucio glanced over his shoulder. Two women from the coven entered, their beauty exactly what he imagined Tristan desired. Both nodded, fully aware of the sacrifice they were about to make. And make no mistake—it was a sacrifice. It was like offering a jug of water to someone stranded at sea for weeks, parched and desperate. Who protected the jug?

Tristan wasn’t prone to violence unless provoked. One of the few vampires in the order who preferred donated blood over feeding on the unwilling. He had always shown restraint. But now he was on the brink of death, and in that state, only the Draca inside him could take control. He had to drink, and it had to be fresh.

Lucio sulked. He had damned a man of faith, a man who had offered him solace in his darkest moments. Padre Santiago could have been a beacon of hope, a friend who understood the torment of the Draca. Instead, Lucio had dragged him into the abyss. As he looked at Tristan’s weakened form, he felt a pang of regret and it vanished, as it often did. He was a creature of the night, and what was done cannot be undone.

The women undressed—the capu s who brought them into the room left.When Lucio glanced back to the bed, he saw Tristan's eyes were open. He stared at the ceiling, expressionless.

“You thought it was over? Bought a ticket on a speeding train to hell?” Lucio asked.

Tristan dropped his head to the right and looked at his boss. He then looked at the beautiful woman with voluptuous curves waiting behind his boss.

“I expect hell to be no different from this place. Why speed to get to a destination you’ve already visited?” replied Tristan.

“That is the better understanding, priest. There is no end to this hell, for me or you.” Lucio gave him a nod of respect. “Feed, get strong. We have work to do.”

As he walked toward the door, Tristan spoke. “I heard what you said to your brothers. The Fratelli cannot survive a war at this time, Lucio. I’m your consiglieri. Your friend. Change course. This is not what Julia Brown wanted for you. A war between you and your brothers can’t be for me.”

Lucio stood with his back to Tristan. He felt a tremor of regret. He loved his brothers. It killed him. They would never allow him to prove it. Now what he had before him was just as Julia Brown predicted. And he was powerless to stop what he intended to do next.

“You know me better than that, Tristan. My decision about war is not for you. It is all for her. Soon Father will know that I have her. I can’t prevent that. When he does, he will send my brothers in for her. I will not let her go, no matter who she thinks she is or isn’t. She is mine. ”

Lucio walked out.

Tristan again looked up at the ceiling. After Lucio’s departure, his irises dissolved into an amber glow, fiery in its depths. It wasn’t Tristan anymore, surfacing consciously. It was his Draca—and it was hungry.

The first woman approached the bed with a grace that made Tristan notice. She had been trained to be cautious. Delicately, she removed the tattered, burned clothes that had once melted to his skin. Now nothing but ash and remnants of fabric were there. The second woman walked around the side of the bed, her approach as mesmerizing as her beauty. She eased herself onto the bed to the right of him, her touch gentle but persistent as she ran her hand over his barely healed torso.

The Draca closed his eyes, the hunger within him insurmountable. Never in his cold, dead life had Tristan thirsted for any mortal more. When the Draca inside of him opened his flaming golden eyes, her mouth was just inches from Tristan’s. Her skin was the color of peaches and cream, smooth and flawless, and her kiss tasted like his favorite dessert wine when he was mortal. The same—smooth and flawless. Her long scarlet red hair cascaded around her face and over her shoulders in lustrous waves, and her large blue eyes, ringed with auburn lashes, pooled with desire. It wasn’t just from him but from the spell a Draca cast when it bound another to it for feeding. The unspoken agreement made the blood sweeter. What he wanted from her might be too much for one woman to survive, and he wished to spare this beauty any pain. Unfortunately, the wishes of the damned never came true.

When her lips brushed his and his mouth was slow but parted and opened, the Draca inside of Tristan slipped forward to ensure he tasted her as well. When Tristan’s mouth opened, the drying blood from Lucio’s veins that once coated his tongue dissolved from the wet heat of her saliva in their slow kiss. Nice and easy she went, a seduction the man in him craved. Her naked body rubbed up over his hard, battered one. Tits and curves, both voluptuous and soft, covered him with tenderness.

Tristan returned the kiss with fervor. His nostrils flared and though Tristan kissed her, it was the Draca inside of him who inhaled the spice smoldering from the sexual heat stirring between her thighs. Tristan rolled the woman over to her back, so gently she must have felt as if she was placed upon clouds. His hand on her ass squeezed it, then pressed her pelvis down and shifted her up against his erection as his knees parted her thighs wider. The second woman eased over the bed to join them, and his inner Draca approved. Peaches and cream was the woman beneath him, and Tristan thrust his cock deep into her. Immediately, a fragrant smoke added a raw, primal note to the symphony of smells surfacing from the sexual tryst. His body transformed from partially burned to miraculously healed. There was the delicate sweetness of her mingling with the earthy, musky undertones of skin on skin.

The Draca ran his tongue over her neck and tasted sweat, tinged with the faintest hint of salt. Her blood was just beneath. A river of nutrients his Draca so desperately needed. Tristan hadn’t realized his fangs were extended nearly the length of a sabretooth because he was so caught up in the rapture of making love to her and feeling all the pleasures of mortal sex. A distraction by his Draca to take over and claim her with little resistance from him.

Tristan fucked her nice and easy, restoring his manhood, and his inner strength enough for the feeding. While the other woman ran her sexy curves up and down his back. He became the savage that lived with him and fucked the one beneath him faster and faster. The one on his back parted her legs to rub her wet pussy over his clenched buttocks as she held on to him. She kissed his shoulders and moaned in harmony with his conquest when Tristan’s fucking intensified so much it threatened to throw her off him. She held on. The woman beneath Tristan cried out, now crushed pleasantly by the weight of them both.

Without further hesitation, the Draca sank its fangs into her throat. At first, as tender as Tristan could. The woman on his back did her sexual moves and slipped her hand between them to ease her finger into his anus. The first groan of discomfort came from the woman below when Tristan was pushed further away and his Draca fed. Instead of blood-sucking, the beast chewed through her throat and elicited the most agonizing death scream from her.

Tristan was powerless to prevent it. He used all of his returning power to enter his victim’s mind and silence her pain and fears. He hated what his creature made him do. He knew that any woman Lucio brought to him was part of the order and had signed on board willingly for the sacrifice. Still, he hated his cursed actions. The other woman finger fucking his ass and licking his shoulder was so enchanted by the Draca she did not hear what was happening beneath her. The Draca fucked, sucked, chewed, and drank the woman beneath Tristan dry. Once done, the Draca lifted Tristan’s head fully restored, every drop of blood absorbed without a trace of the crime on Tristan’s mouth.

The Draca was now in full control. It impaled his next victim with supersonic speed. With a swift switch and flip of her to have intercourse with her from behind. The raven-haired beauty worked her pussy in circles as he squeezed her clit and enjoyed her. She felt marvelous. He felt alive. The virginal tightening heat of her pussy walls and the steamy wetness it released was beyond sensory appreciation. It had now become a primal stimulation. Several times his cock slipped from her after several thrusts of his hips, opening her up. He entered her mind and realized that she had only been fucked once or twice, and that was over ten years ago.

At 32, she joined the order following her disillusionment with her life as a showgirl in Vegas. She took a vow of chastity, hoping to be accepted and mated by a capu . His brethren had passed her over many times—saved to be savored for the neediest in their brotherhood. Ripening her for the more nutritious feed. Her body was untouched, her blood untouched. She was as virginal at 32 as a freshly offered bride ten years younger. She was the cream of the crop, and he took all night enjoying her before growing strong enough to cage the Draca within him and spare her life.

Fully satiated with one dead beauty and another sleeping peacefully in his arms, he drifted to sleep.

When Tristan woke, he was alone. During the night, while he healed, the men who worked for him had come for the girls. He’d never see the raven-haired beauty again, but he hoped the messages he left in her consciousness—to run from the coven, to hide from the things that lurk in the night—stuck with her. But deep down, he knew. There was no hope for the damned. No running from fate.