Prologue

Zagros Foothills of Mesopotamia

7,012 B.C.

            Clamping a hand over her mouth to stave off her own screams, Maltheria fell to her knees and hysterically prayed to the gods that they might save the very girl-child being sacrificed to them. “Vampiri,” she whimpered from the stone step she fell upon. “Mine own.”

The ziggurat temple’s high priest made a dismissive gesture with his hand, indicating to his minions that the altar had been prepared and that it was time to stretch the ten-year-old girl’s body out upon it. The child began to cry, her eyes wild with fear.

A dark formation of clouds coalesced in the daylight sky, casting dark shadows as far as the eye could see. When all was readied, the high priest held his arms up to the crowd assembled at the stone steps below and boomed out the ritualistic words so familiar to them all.

            “I offer unto you the life’s blood of this child in exchange for the life’s blood of the crops. May the gods be well pleased with this unworthy sacrifice and deliver unto us the rains.”

Maltheria’s eyes widened in horror at the sound of her daughter’s tortured scream. A wooden stake was driven through Vampiri’s heart, the blood of her innocent body gushing obscenely from the hideous puncture wound and dripping into a clay urn positioned below the slab of stone she had been strapped to. A horrific gurgling sound bubbled up from her daughter’s chest as her life’s blood poured from the hole, dripping a pristine red into the ritual urn.

“Vampiri,” Maltheria sobbed as her eldest son clutched her hand. Hysterical with grief, she shot to her feet and tried to break from her son’s grasp that she might do—she didn’t know what she might do, only that her daughter needed her.

“Mother, do not!” her son Malleus pleaded in a fervent whisper. “They will but slay you too. This you know.”

But Maltheria was beyond reason, beyond sanity. With the berserk instincts of an animal protecting her young, she snatched her small hand from her son’s larger one with a brute strength never before known to her and raced up the stone steps of the ziggurat. “Vampiri!” she wailed, tears tracking her cheeks, “Mama comes, daughter!”

A stinging blow to her face dealt by the high priest caused Maltheria to lose her footing and plunge directly toward her daughter’s lifeless body. Weeping, she fell on Vampiri just below the heart, her eye nearly impaled by the other end of the jutting pike.

The dark clouds overhead began to rumble, growing black as sackcloth. The moon and the sun merged as one, forming a solitary crimson stain in the black skies.

“Fool woman!” the high priest spat, hoisting Maltheria up from her daughter’s body by a jerk to her raven-black hair. He whirled her around to face him, then backhanded her so brutally that her nose broke and began spurting blood. “There will be two sacrifices to the gods this day,” his voice boomed out that the crowd below might hear him and learn from Maltheria’s interfering example. “An innocent and a whore!”

Jerking her back around to face Vampiri, the high priest shoved Maltheria toward her daughter’s draining body and draped her over it that their bodies formed a cross of broken flesh. Sobbing, Maltheria offered her executioner no resistance, preferring to join her youngest child in the next realm rather than to remain in this one without her.

The black skies began to rumble as the high priest turned again to face the crowd. He lifted a sharp dagger high into the air, preparing to offer up the next sacrifice. “I offer unto you—”

Thunder boomed down from the heavens. Lightning pierced the sky.

“—the life’s blood of ...”

The winds began to moan, as if ordering the high priest to cease his unholy incantation.

“... this whore—”

The villagers gasped and fell to their knees in fear as the crimson orb in the sky dimmed and the heavens dripped not of life’s water, but of blood. Malleus’s eyes widened in further disbelief as he watched his sister’s body slowly rise up into a sitting position, her head twisting to the right to regard the unknowing high priest whose back was to her.

“May the gods be well pleased with this unworthy sacrifice and deliver unto us—”

The high priest grunted as he felt an object shoot through his spine and make its way out the other side of his body through his abdomen. Gasping in the throes of agony, he glanced down to his belly and watched disbelievingly as a tiny hand emerged from his flesh and, lurching upwards, sought out his heart. His eyes wide, he cocked his head, swiveling it to see what stood behind him.

The girl. No longer a girl.

“Vampiri!”

Malleus raced up the temple steps toward his mother and sister as the crowd began to scream, his only thought to protect them. He came down on his knees before his sister, staring in disbelief at the surreal image of his sister. Her eyes lit up a dull green and her lips parted in a snarl to reveal two, sharp, pike-like teeth.

With inhuman strength, Vampiri’s fist shot out and punctured the high priest’s chest. His heart still beating, he gasped as she seized it from his body, snarling as she threw it to the ground like rubbish.

The high priest’s gaze clashed momentarily with that of the creature he had unwittingly made. He fell to the ground of the altar, dead.

Malleus wrenched his weeping mother away from the altar and bade her to take to her feet. One glance over his shoulder confirmed his fear that guards were coming. “Stand up, mother!” he bellowed as the blood from the heavens saturated them all. “Rise up that we might flee!”

Placing Vampiri under one muscled arm and using his other to support his battered mother, Malleus whisked them away from the ziggurat temple as fast as his feet could carry them. They disappeared into the blackened night, Vampiri’s mouth wide open all the while to drink of the nourishment the gods had provided her.

Chapter 1

  La Spezia , Italy

September 3, 1610

            …Mother of God.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…

Count Dario Eduardo Giovanni absently handed over his cloak to a passing servant. The sound of mourning, of women weeping as they offered up prayers to Mother Mary, could be heard all the way from the main parlor to the hall where he stood. Curious, he followed the sound as he brushed off stray droplets of rain the cloak had not been able to conceal from the arms of his puffy, full-sleeved tunic.

            Upon entering the lavish parlor, which had been decorated with finery from as far away as Persia and Manchuria , the first thing he noticed was that the women weren’t the only ones weeping. Even his uncle, a man so stoic Dario had often wondered if he ever felt anything at all, was softly crying as well.

            Dario came up behind his mother and gently placed a large hand upon her shoulder. “Mama,” he murmured, "Che è successo?” What has happened?

            The dowager countess’ head shot up, realizing for the first time that her son had returned early from his business in the port town of Lerici . Placing her hand upon his, she took a deep breath and met his blue gaze so much like her own. “Dario. Dario,” she whimpered, “’tis glad I am you have returned…” Eleanora broke down and wept, unable to finish whatever it was she had been about to reveal to him.

            This wasn’t like his mother, Dario thought with a sense of trepidation. She wasn’t given to emotional outbursts any more than her brother, his uncle. Eleanora and Paulo had been raised by a cruel man given to tantrums and using his fists against his family. His children had learned to curb their tongues as well as their emotions from an early age.

His gut clenching hotly, Dario rubbed his mother’s shoulder in a soothing gesture as he inclined his head to Paulo. He decided if anyone would be able to inform him of what was going on it would be his uncle. His aunt, after all, was wailing as loudly as his mother. "Zio? Che è successo?” Uncle? What has happened?

Paulo glanced up, meeting Dario’s gaze. His eyes were bloodshot from crying. “’Tis your sister,” he muttered.

Dario felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him. His eyes widened fractionally, knowing as he did that a tragedy had occurred. His uncle of all people would not be crying otherwise. “What is it?” Dario bit out, paradoxically hating the suspense as much as he knew he would hate the enlightenment. “What has befallen Isabella?”

“Oh, Dario,” Eleanora cried out as she squeezed his hand. His mother’s voice shook as she met his gaze. "Mia figlia è morta.”

My daughter is dead.

His mother’s words might as well have been a kick to the gut, so devastating they were.

Nay! Dario thought. There must be a mistake. A huge, ugly mistake.

“But mama,” the count protested, his own voice doing a bit of shaking, “that makes no sense. She was but training under the countess in Vienna , learning to run a large estate for her betrothed.”

This was wrong, Dario thought with a chill of awareness. Certainly a mistake had been made. Young noblewomen did not die learning to do naught more strenuous than playing the flute and making small talk with visiting guests.

Eleanora held up a missive for his inspection. Dario removed his hand from his mother’s shoulder and took it. “’Tis written by Elizabeth Bathory’s own hand,” Eleanora sobbed. “The countess offers me her condolences for Isabella’s passing.”

Dario swallowed roughly, his eyes misting up as he unrolled the missive and read from the parchment. Elizabeth Bathory’s penmanship was so flowery and flowing as to seem a mockery to her own words of condolence. Mayhap ‘twas his own grief causing him to see things where they weren’t, but the feminine scrawl of the countess’ hand truly grated just now. It seemed too exuberant, too joyous with energy and vitality.

His nostrils flaring, Dario cursed under his breath as he hurled the missive across the parlor, shattering a Venetian vase when it struck atop the fireplace.

Eleanora gasped. “Dario,” she said gently, standing up to offer him comfort. “’Tis hard on all of us, my beloved.”

“Nay!” he bellowed, shaking off his mother’s touch. “Isabella was not so thoughtless as this, mama. She never, I repeat never, would have wandered from the estate without escort!” Dario’s hand balled into a fist. “Let alone been careless enough to fall into a river and impale herself upon jutting rocks!”

Paulo stood up with a sigh, his red velvet coat and white garter hose matching the color of his bloodshot eyes. “Dario,” he quietly offered, “what reason would the countess have to lie to us, son? She is a noblewoman of the finest breed and well you know this.”

“I care not of her breed or recommendation,” Dario snarled as he prowled to the other side of the parlor and snatched up the missive he had thrown but moments ago. “This is all lies,” he hissed, spacing out each word. “In my heart I know this.” His arm flailed about wildly. “Where is Isabella’s body?” he bellowed.

Eleanora dabbed at her eyes with a lacy kerchief. Her bosom heaved from beneath the snug fit of her expensive Parisian-made dress as she sucked in a breath and turned speculative eyes toward her son. That quickly she was restored, her usual formidable self. “What would you have us to do, my beloved?”

“Ella!” Paulo bellowed. “’Tis insane to accuse Elizabeth Bathory of—”

“I will travel to Vienna ,” Dario cut in, keeping the brother and sister from exchanging harsh words. He turned a perceptive eye toward his uncle and waylaid whatever Paulo had been about to say with an upturned palm. “I am not so daft as to accuse anybody of anything without proof, least of all a countess.”

Dario’s tanned olive features were harsh, determined. His jaw tightened as he regarded his uncle. “But make no mistake, Zio, I will find out what truly befell sweet Bella.”