The Wolf's Captive (7 page)

He cursed. He had
work
to do. His family was threatened; he didn’t have time to masturbate in the catacombs, no matter what barbarian demon struggled inside him. And the longer he spent on this investigation, the longer he was kept from finding
her
.

The rest of his passage through the catacombs was a blur. He didn’t need the intermittent torches to see; he could have navigated by scent and sound and memory alone, even if his eyesight hadn’t lit the narrow tunnels up as though it were day. He was sure he ran, and yet, he was breathing normally when he arrived at the wooden door, hidden in a secret hollow.

He found the unnatural depression in the wood and pressed. The door slid open with without a sound, still well taken care of after all these years. The sudden stream of light from the peephole was blinding, but he found he adjusted much quicker than a man should.

Jovan was alone, working diligently, as always.

Cesare slid the old framed portrait aside and stepped into the room. He was already halfway to the other man’s desk when Jovan noticed there was another man present. His father’s aide jumped, his hand clutched to his chest, his friendly jowls trembling beneath his thick white mustache.

“My Lord!”

“What news?” Cesare’s voice sounded gruff, alien—even to him. He tried to clear his throat, and it sounded like a growl.

Jovan still stared at him. It made Cesare uneasy. Jovan had known him since he was a boy; he was the one other person besides Avignon who Cesare personally trusted. Jovan had taken pity upon the Duke’s younger son and had shown him kindness when he most needed it, when everyone else treated young Cesare like a leper. And yet, now, he looked at Cesare with fear.

Cesare cleared his throat again, and this time managed to sound like a human being. “Jovan, I’ve had to sneak around like a thief to avoid tipping off Rickle. Tell me there is news.”

“Yes, yes,” the bureaucrat said, and shuffled some papers meaningfully. It had always been a comfort to him to organize the administration of a city. Cesare could see he turned to it now. “The letter appears to be genuine, written by the vintner. I compared the handwriting myself.”

“Fine. What about the intended recipient?”

“Captain Rickle asked me to keep that especially secret.” Jovan grinned, back in the comfortable world of court intrigue. “Apparently he thinks it might embarrass him if you were to find out.”

“Did he.”

“Oh, yes. He very much does not want you to know that the intended recipient in Torino, a wool merchant, is a frequent exchange agent for the Grimaldi bank. He was very clear on that point.”

“And how have Rickle’s investments in the Grimaldi bank fared?”

“I hear he’s bought another villa, my Lord.”

Cesare frowned. His father was one of those aristocratic men who favored ancient concepts of feudal loyalty, and viewed the kinds of power you could buy with suspicion and disdain. He had left the growing sphere of commerce wide open to the lesser families, preferring not to sully the Lupin name, and Grimaldi had taken full advantage of the opportunity. Cesare took the more modern view that any mortal life could be had—for a price.

“My Lord?”

“What, Jovan?” Cesare was already in motion.

“What action will you take?”

Cesare paused as the portrait slid open, revealing the dark entrance to the catacombs, which would take him almost anywhere he wanted to go. He had been right to make the gamble he had the previous night. He was sure the boy wouldn’t talk. No one need know he was going to take a prisoner. And then, afterwards…

“I’ve already taken it,” Cesare said grimly, and wasted no more time. He stepped into the passage and slid the portrait back into place.

He almost felt sorry for this traitor. If they had the information he wanted, this stupid plot would soon be resolved, and he could get on with his other hunt. That meant this traitor might be the only thing standing between him and the woman he wanted.
Needed
. His peregrine.

He held on to that thought, and resolved to keep it in the forefront of his mind. It might be the only way he could bring himself to interrogate a woman.

C
HAPTER 5

The Dance of the Dead was where Bacchanal came into its own.

The Dance of the Seasons was the exclusive, official opening, but the Dance of the Dead was open to all. The ancient J’Amel Cemetery became a strangely vibrant necropolis, a place where death mingled with life and the glittering socialites of young J’Amel competed to throw the most decadent parties. The tombs became private rooms, bands of musicians played on the roofs of mausoleums, and the most devout came painted in dye that glowed in the dark, infused with pulped and boiled jellyfish from the deepest parts of the sea. Over it all stood Father Ash, gaunt in his head-to-toe grey paint and stark white mask, the host of the living who wished to mingle with the dead, elected each year from the ranks of the Charonic Bacchanal Society. Displease Father Ash and he would send an
oscario
after you, which is like summoning a demon to do one’s dirty work.

Not much displeased Father Ash, except to see the living not taking proper advantage of life.

Lucia had always avoided the cemetery during Bacchanal, afraid that if she ventured too close she would be pulled in, unable to make herself return to the boring rhythms of normal life. Such were the stories told to mischievous children and Bacchanal virgins.

Tonight, however, Lucia thought it wise not to wear her virginal armband. Instead she’d don her white mask, adorned with the feathers of a dove, and hide in plain sight. The satchel she slung over her shoulder and clutched protectively—containing, as it did, the bottle of the Duke’s Blend, and thus her potential ruin—made this more difficult than it might have otherwise been.

Paolo had sent David a drawing of a certain tomb, one that housed an ancient father of J’Amel, one of the men who piled stone on top of stone and drained the swamp back into the sea. He had warned of secrecy, even in a note, which struck Lucia as either a little dramatic, or a very bad sign for her family’s future. Still, she reminded herself, the locations of the right parties, the passwords to the right tombs, and knowledge of how to navigate the catacombs that connected it all beneath the city—these were all a kind of currency during Bacchanal. Being at the right party, with the right people…well, masks didn’t hide everything. More than one ambitious young thing’s fortune had been made on top of a tomb or down in the catacombs.

It was all in who you knew. And Lucia realized she knew practically no one.

“How do I look?” she asked.

David rolled his eyes. “You know you look beautiful. Paolo’s not going to be able to say no to anything.”

It took a moment for Lucia to take comfort in that. And then she realized it had taken a moment because she hadn’t been thinking about Paolo when she asked about her appearance. She’d been thinking about all the very important people who tended to go to these underground parties, and whether a certain Wolf would be present.

She was filled with sudden anger. It was as though Lord Cesare had invaded her mind and set up camp, and she’d never be free again, not her body, which would belong to Paolo—she shuddered—or her mind, which evidently belonged to a Lord who had probably already forgotten her. He hadn’t even touched her. Just that look had been enough.

“Luce?”

She shook her head, and reminded herself that her father had been
arrested
, and was suffering in the belly of the Basiglia, and the future of her entire family depended upon her ability to win the goodwill of a young man of very questionable character. “Let’s go,” she said.

The high walls of the cemetery did nothing to stop the flow of music, and Lucia heard several warring bands on their approach, each banging their own rhythms on the traditional Bacchanal drums. But nothing prepared her for the sight of the Dead, dancing.

It was the conceit of Bacchanal that all those who entered the cemetery were metaphorically dead, and the existing bonds of life, with their obligations and restrictions—the sorts of things that might discourage someone from fully indulging in the temptations of the season—were severed completely within the cemetery walls.

On a patch of grass just inside the walls, Lucia spied a mass of flesh, tangled limbs and buttocks bouncing in the air, belonging to…she couldn’t even tell how many people, many of their masks having fallen off in the melee. A crowd had gathered round, cheering, drinking amberwine, and shouting out suggestions. Lucia looked away, surprised to find herself somewhat embarrassed. David only chuckled, and led her farther into the land of the dead.

The cemetery wasn’t a planned city; it had grown up organically over the thousands of years of J’Amel history, until the city at long last decided to wall it in and impose some sort of order on the place. The oldest graves were nearer the center, and organized vaguely by dynasty or government. The tomb that was to host Paolo’s party would be somewhere closer in, but there was no map. And there were plenty of distractions along the way.

There was the giant man, wearing the mask of an antlered stag, who stood naked on top of a tomb, stroking his enormous, glistening cock for the benefit of a wondering crowd gathered below. There was a small group of Severille slaves, lined up and positioned with their legs spread, who their masters gave away to any passersby. And finally, when they had wandered their way to the center of the cemetery, and David had gone off to locate the exact tomb, there was their friend Marina.

Lucia watched, transfixed, while Marina, naked except for a little green mask that did nothing to hide her identity, straddled a man with the
papier mâché
head of a stallion and rode him hard. The man lay on a smaller tomb, a waist-high stone marker of moderate wealth, and Lucia could see Marina’s knees redden from the friction with the stone. She didn’t seem to care. Her friend’s body shone with sweat, her muscles contracting in a rhythmic tide, her hair swinging gently across her face. As Lucia watched, another man, lean and hard, in a matching stallion’s mask—a twin?—came up behind Marina, balanced at the edge of that tomb, and grabbed her breasts. Marina cried out with relish, and arched her back to give the second stallion greater access to her chest, her hips working furiously below. Lucia stared as the second man began to tease Marina’s nipples, wondering what he would do next. She was ashamed of her ignorance, and the inexperience at its foundation, and yet her sex began to throb, and her nipples tightened beneath her relatively modest dress. Lucia suddenly felt she was wearing too much clothing, but there was nothing for it now. As she felt the blush begin to spread on her cheeks, she was glad of the white mask that hid most of her face, and, for once, of the satchel she clutched in her arms.

The man behind Marina removed his hands, but only to press on her back, pushing her forward, down onto the stomach of the man fucking her from below. She half-turned in surprise, but he pushed her back down. The man below her compensated for her sudden lack of leverage, increasing his upward thrusts, and Marina once again seemed to fall into blissful rapture.

Lucia watched, wide-eyed, as the second man spit into his hand and smeared his saliva on Marina’s tender, exposed asshole. The man below her seemed to know; they were twinned, working in tandem. He wrapped his arms around Marina, holding her down, and stopped thrusting. Marina seemed to wake from her daze at that; she started, but was held fast, and the man behind her positioned the tip of his swollen cock at her puckered asshole. She understood. Even from where Lucia stood, she could see Marina’s momentary shock and fear, could see her friend’s body briefly stiffen. But the man below her rolled his hips, his dick still thick inside her, and Marina gave in, nodding once and folding down onto his chest and presenting her ass to his brother.

He took it.

Marina yelped as he forced the head of his cock past the tight ring, her back briefly straining against the locked arms of the man who had her pussy. The second man was fully in quicker than Lucia would have thought possible, moving inside Marina in shallow thrusts, building slowly to deeper, harder strokes. Marina grunted, and when the man below her began to move his hips in time with his brother, both of them thrusting in and out of her two holes, an animal cry welled up from deep within her throat and tore across the cemetery.

Lucia felt a pang of her own desire, of wetness creeping between her legs, and her mind flashed back to the Wolf. Lord Cesare. It was as if her body were intimately connected to him, body and mind tethered to the unattainable image of Lord Cesare Lupin, scarred and strong, standing guard above her half naked body in the midst of chaos. She turned away from the sight of her friend’s ecstasy, more in sadness this time than in anger. Would she think of a man she would never have every time she felt the pull of sex? Think of Lord Cesare, and then think about all the demons he raised in her, all the ways she felt her physical desires betrayed her idea of who she was? She wasn’t a slave, and yet she wanted to be owned by him. It was a curse, to want only someone she’d never even touched, only to have the rushing tide of her desire for that man followed by an equally strong countercurrent of fear. Every. Single. Time. It was insane. It was completely unfair.

She looked at Marina again, whose screams were continuous now, filling the cemetery. Lucia couldn’t imagine herself being so vulnerable, so open, with anyone.

I wouldn’t have to worry about any this in a convent
, she thought bitterly. But she was aware, in the corners of her mind, that the dark desire that she feared would betray the rest of her pride—the thing that compelled her to turn to the Severille, to thrill at humiliation, to want to be owned and dominated—was getting stronger. Everywhere she looked was some form of sex; everywhere was Bacchanal. And every time she felt her pussy come alive, the thing inside her grew stronger.