Blood and Gold - Anne Rice [159]
“Yes, Marius, I shall do it,” she answered drowsily, her head leaning against me. “I shall be so happy.”
“I shall give you all the money you require for it. And Vincenzo will carry out your instructions. Only tell me when you would have this take place.”
I looked into her eyes as I spoke and then I kissed her, and though I did not dare to give her the smallest taste of my blood, I breathed my cold breath into her, and I pierced her mind with my desire.
Meantime, with my right hand I reached beneath her skirts and found her sweet naked secrets and easily moved them with my fingers, which inflamed her with immediate and undisguised desire.
Amadeo was confused.
“Kiss her,” I whispered. “Kiss her again.”
He obeyed me, and soon had her ravished with his kisses.
And as my fingers tightened and caressed her, as his kisses grew more fervent, she grew bloodred with her cresting passion and fell softly against Amadeo’s arm.
I withdrew, kissing her forehead as though she were chaste again.
“Rest now,” I said, “and remember you are safe from those evil kinsmen, and that I am in your debt forever because you kept Amadeo alive until I could come.”
“Did I, Marius?” she asked me. “Wasn’t it his strange dreams?” She turned to Amadeo. “Again and again you spoke of wondrous places, of those who told you that you must return to us.”
“Those were but memories caught in a web with fear,” said Amadeo softly. “For long before I was born again in Venice, I knew a harsh and pitiless life. It was you who brought me back from some thick margin of consciousness which lies just this side of death.”
She gazed at him, wondering.
How he was suffering that he could not tell her what he was.
But having accepted these words from him, she allowed us to, in the manner of common attendants, help her with her disheveled dress and hair.
“We’ll leave you now,” I said, “and of the feast we’ll make our plans at once. Allow me to send Vincenzo to you.”
“Yes, and on that night I promise you,” she said, “your house will be more splendid than even the Doge’s palace, you will see.”
“My princess,” I said as I kissed her.
Back to her guests she went, and off we hurried down the stairs.
In the gondola, Amadeo began his entreaties.
“Marius, I can’t bear it, this separation from her, that we can’t tell her.”
“Amadeo, say nothing more to me of this!” I cautioned.
When we reached the bedchamber and locked the door, he gave way to terrible tears.
“Master, I could tell her nothing of what had happened to me! And to Bianca I would always tell all. Oh, not the secrets of you and me or the Blood Kisses, no, but of other things. How often I sat with her, and talked with her. Master, I went to her so often by day and you didn’t know it. She was my friend. Master, this is unendurable. Master, she was my sister.” He sobbed like a small boy.
“I cautioned you on this, did I not?” I said furiously. “And now you weep like a child?”
In a rage, I slapped him.
And in shock he fell back away from me, but his tears flowed all the more.
“Master, why can we not make her one of us! Why can we not share the Blood with her?”
I took him roughly by the shoulders. He didn’t fear my hands. He didn’t care.
“Amadeo, listen to me. We cannot give way to this desire. I have lived a thousand years and more without making a blood drinker, and now you, within months of your own transformation, would make the first mortal for whom you feel inordinate love?”
He was crying bitterly. He tried to free himself from me, but I would not allow it.
“I wanted so to tell her of the things I see with these new eyes!” he whispered. The blood tears spilled down his boyish cheeks. “I wanted so to tell her how all the world is changed.”
“Amadeo, know the value of what you possess