1
EMBERLINE DIRAVELLO
I’d forgotten how black blood looked beneath the light of a full moon.
It spilled across the marble flagstones like ink, seeping out of the gaping hole in my father’s chest, spreading into a widening large pool while I stared helplessly at my stained hands, wondering how to save him.
Enzo DiRavello’s heart was gone, eyes blank and milky, flesh already cooling.
And no matter how hard I wished for a miracle, even the strongest vampire in the world couldn’t survive without his heart.
I was trapped in a parallel universe, where a sultry summer breeze off the lagoon rustled the leaves of the maple tree overhead, and the waters of Venice’s Grand Canal lapped gently at thefondamentaon the other side of our protective walls.
Inside these once-secure walls, I was suffocating, tears streaming down my cheeks as I faced two unspeakable truths.
My father was dead.
I couldn’t bring him back to life.
My lungs weren’t working enough to make a sound, my thoughts were a useless, panicked jumble, and my body was locked down in a prison of helplessness.
I have to move.
I have to warn everyone, we are under attack.
But my feet were glued in place, and I choked as another swell of bile burned a heated trail up my throat.
“Help,” I called, my voice strangled down to a reedy, thin whisper. “Someonehelp me.”
After my pitiful attempt to roust our guards, time dripped by as I checked again for a pulse, my hands slippery with blood. Blood, the only currency that mattered in our world.
Don’t be a fool, Emberline; he has no heart.But still, I checked over and over, hope overriding common sense.
A sob hiccupped out of me when a door crashed open, and footsteps sped across the flagstones. My uncle’s hand squeezed my shoulder like a lifeline to reality.
“Oh, mia dolce bambina, you should not be out here alone.”
Uncle Gio gently lifted me to my feet and tucked me into him, hugging me tight so I couldn’t see anything, except he was too late. The gruesome sight of my father’s corpse was seared into my mind forever.
“Let’s get you inside.” My uncle’s voice came from far away. “I’ll have the palazzo locked down immediately. Alert the guards. I don’t know how anyone made it past our wards. They’ve never been breached, not in six hundred years.”
I followed my uncle’s gaze and rescanned the tops of the high brick walls, taking in the details with a clearer eye, now that my shock was wearing off.
The red, blinking lights on the new security cameras were dark.
Cameras I’d installed, tested, and sworn would keep us safer than magic.
Magic hadn’t let us down. The house wards were firmlyin place, humming along the old stone as they had for centuries, ancient power snapping against my skin, yet there was a bloody boot print beside my father’s body. Proof someone had gotten past our protections and assassinated my father.
An assassination that would send shockwaves through our world of organized crime.
Throughmyworld.
“There is much to be done, Emberline.” My normally unruffled uncle was sweating, as if he’d run to get here.
“I must post guards, alert the Draconi Brotherhood and the Don… Marcello must know of my brother’s murder. In an hour, they will have the palazzo locked down and then…” He paused, searching my eyes. “Do not blame yourself, bambina. The cameras… your new security measures had nothing to do with this, I’m sure.”
My heart sank as I considered—for the first time—thatImight have caused my father’s death.
