Alla Piazza By J.N. Kindig
Romantasy Short Story Challenge
1st place
J.N. Kindig
Alla Piazza
Synopsis: Raffaele Cavalli, the last surviving vampire in Firenze, commissions an artist to paint his portrait. When she’s kidnapped by the hunters determined to rid Firenze of its vampires, Raffaele must decide whether to wait until nightfall or withstand the sun to save her.
Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping (severe), blood/blood drinking (severe), implied torture (mild), body horror (mild)
If you’d like to see her again, bloodsucker, come to the piazza. Perhaps the mob will leave something of hers for you to lick from the stones.
Raffaele stumbled to the windows and drew the drapes back, clutching the ragged parchment in his hand. The Purifiers had left it on his doorstep and tied it with a gift: a length of rope, smooth and dark, woven from a lock of Lucia’s hair.
But we can’t promise much. We’re all eager to see Firenze cleansed of your kind. If she’s collateral, so be it.
Don’t tarry. The piazza, soon as you can.
Early morning light singed his skin. Raffaele dropped the drapes, cradling his blistering hand and hissing with pain. His brief glimpse through the window had been enough to verify the letter’s goad. He kept third-floor apartments. Over Firenze’s low roofs, he’d seen a crowd gathered in the square four streets away.
They were clever, to bait their trap at dawn. What lover wouldn’t come for her? But what other lover lived a life anathema to the sun?
He looked at his hand. The skin had healed, yet the scent of burning flesh lingered in his nose. Piles of ash, the remains of the others, sat still and cold behind his eyes. One by one, traps like this had been set for them. One by one, they’d been snared.
He was the only vampire left.
Fear writhed in him. He couldn’t abandon Lucia, but he couldn’t save her, not yet. The sun would see him dead before he found her—before a single Purifier found him. A pile of ash would be an honorable thing to become, for love, but a pile of ash would not save her. Raffaele resigned himself to the drawing room and waited for the day to pass.
***
Months ago, he’d commissioned Lucia to paint a portrait of him. Vampires had no reflection, so he’d found himself in the others: the sharp teeth of his sire, the flippant laugh of a fledgling, the red hair another said they shared. When Firenze’s vampires started dying at the hands of the Purifiers, he lost his companions. He lost himself. Looking into empty mirrors, seeing nothing—perhaps the Purifiers had already killed him. A portrait, however, his own everlasting image, would prove he was still alive.
He feared his bloodservant wouldn’t find an artist who’d agree to his terms, but Lucia Lomi had swept into his apartments with a demand of her own. As long as he agreed not to look at the portrait until she pronounced it done, she’d cloister herself in his rooms and paint by candlelight.
“But might I ask why?” She eyed the velvet drapes. “Natural light is better.” Raffaele gave his practiced answer. Better for a human to think him frail than bloodthirsty. “The sun makes me ill.”
“I see. Well, it’s no bother. I’ve become nocturnal myself, as of late,” she said with a casual wave of her hand. Her dark eyes appraised him in a way none other than a painter would dare to, lingering on his fingers, his shoulders, his mouth. Embers sparked to life in his chest. “I appreciate a patron who’s willing to indulge my bad habits.”
Dark-haired, sharp-eyed, silver-tongued. Beautiful. Raffaele wanted to do nothing but indulge her.
“May I touch you?” she asked later, when she’d unpacked her things and their work had begun in the drawing room.
He started. He’d watched her prepare the space, setting up her easel and positioning the candelabras for the best light. Her movements had been precise, focused, with nothing to suggest
things might so quickly devolve into impropriety—no hands lingering on a candlestick, no wanton glances at him over her shoulder. “I’m sorry?”
“To position you. I find it easier than giving directions.” The corner of her mouth quirked. “It’s nothing indecent, signore.”
The mellifluousness of her voice coaxed his embers into a building fire. “Whatever you need.”
Her fingers, surprisingly rough, danced on his jaw as she moved him, stepped back, moved him again. Part of the portrait backdrop was a marble column to his left. It was meant for him to rest an arm on, yet he dug his fingers into it so he wouldn’t reach for her. Nothing indecent, no—not yet.
“There,” she murmured, though she didn’t withdraw her hand. Lucia’s eyes dropped to his mouth. His fangs, though hidden, ached beneath her attention. “Beautiful.”
Every evening, they met in the drawing room. With every charcoal mark, every brushstroke, every time Lucia bit her lip in thought, Raffaele’s composure thinned. His bloodservant soothed his usual hunger, but Lucia stirred a ravenousness within him that routine feeding couldn’t sate. He needed her against him. He needed to break skin, needed her blood to rush down his throat. His fangs would mark her as his. Her blood would stain him in return.
They hardly spoke while she painted, leaving his thoughts dangerously free to wander. She dressed like a man, in trousers and waistcoats, but let her collars gap open to expose the hollow of her throat. It called to him. His fingertips ached from digging into the marble at his side.
When he fed from his bloodservant that night, Raffaele did so in the drawing room instead of his bedchamber. He pretended it was Lucia in his arms, her blood coating his tongue rather than his servant’s stale offering.
“Signore—”
He groaned, the fantasy ruined by the man’s voice. “Hush, I’m almost—” “Signore—”
“Perhaps you should listen to him.”
He raised his head. Lucia, robed, stood in the doorway. Her painter’s gaze ticked over the scene: the shrouded painting, the moonlight, the vampire and prey atop a backdrop of velvet and marble. Her throat bobbed. “He looks unwell.”
The bloodservant clawed at Raffaele’s chest. Raffaele let him go, his eyes on Lucia. Her chest rose and fell, steady instead of stuttering. He was used to wide eyes, gasps of fear, nightgowns fluttering as his prey fled—but Lucia was still. Poised. Didn’t she know to be afraid? She knelt and brushed her thumb through the red on his chin. “Just as I thought,” she murmured, before rising and returning to bed.
The next night, he went to the drawing room in a stupor. Her words had made rest impossible. How long had she known? Had she slipped away in the daylight and told anyone? Suppose she was only bait, meant to distract him while the Purifiers crept closer. They’d break down the door and catch him red-mouthed, and that would be the end.
She was lighting the ivory candles when he entered the drawing room, her back to him. “Signore,” she said, and was that warmth in her voice? “Shall we continue?” She turned and fixed a coy smile on him. The floor seemed to shift beneath his feet.
Lucia wore a dress.
Not just any dress, either—one more nightgown than day attire, one that framed her in lace and bared her shoulders.
His fangs extended of their own accord. Raffaele fought to keep his voice steady, to remember that she might be a threat. “How long have you known?”
“I wasn’t certain until last night,” she said, lighting the last candle, “but I thought something was strange from the start. You wanted me to stay here? Very well, most of my clients like their privacy. But most of my clients also want their portraits to be perfect, which means giving me the best conditions.” She winked. “Candlelight is terrible for painting.”
She motioned for him to take his place among the backdrop, but he remained where he was. A strange lightness fluttered in his chest. “If you found it strange, then why did you stay?” “I like a challenge.” She smoothed her hands over her dress, met his eyes through her lashes. “And I was curious.”
Not afraid, not gathering information. Simply curious. He laughed with the relief of it, though he didn’t miss how her eyes tracked his fangs. “And has your curiosity been satisfied?” “Almost.” She drifted closer. Her fingers twitched at her side. “You don’t know what you look like, do you?”
“No.”
She ghosted a hand over his mouth, questioning. Hesitant. Pity colored her words. “That must be lonely.”
It stung, to be known. “Incredibly.” It stung, but the pain was sweet. He took her hand in his and kissed her fingertips before pressing them to his fangs, answering her unspoken question.
She gasped. Just like that, he was thrust into shocking reality—the wondrous look creeping into her lust-dark eyes made him real. Seeing what he did to her made him real. “Are you going to keep me, then?” she whispered, angling her neck so her unbound hair fell away and bared her skin.
He wanted to, more than anything. He kissed the spot where her pulse beat beneath her ear, feeling it stutter and leap beneath his mouth. His fangs would break the skin easily. Quickly. She’d put up so little resistance, and yet—
“I just might,” he heard himself say. “But not yet.” An unknown heaviness settled in him, a desperate urge to wait. He cupped her cheek, ignoring the desire he knew was written across both of their faces. “There’s still work to be done.”
***
To this day, Raffaele had only an inkling of what had stilled his bite, something he’d never felt for a human before: protectiveness. Somehow, he’d known it would come to this. Though it was little comfort, he supposed he should be grateful for the foresight. Lucia was surely suffering in the Purifiers’ hands, and if they’d found bite marks on her—well. Vampires were not the only monsters in Firenze.
When he pushed back the drapes, the exposed light burned bright. The sun was still too high. There was naught to do but wait.
His portrait stood shrouded across the room. Two nights before, she’d told him it was nearly done, but she needed to buy more white pigment for the finishing touches. It was that errand that had seen her into the Purifiers’ hands. A prickle of curiosity mingled with his sorrow. He’d agreed not to look, but would Lucia ever return to give it her approval? Would he run
through the darkened streets only to find her corpse seconds before the Purifiers fell on him with their rosaries and stakes?
He could keep his promise and remain alone, or break it and live with a whisper of her. It was a question of which he could live with when the end came.
He strode across the room and tore the shroud away.
Something about it wasn’t quite right.
Everything he knew to expect was there: his shoulder-length red hair, his fangs, his pale skin. His eyes were a rich brown. His shoulders were broad, his clothes well-tailored. A hint of a smile played at his lips, which were full and free of blood.
No, it wasn’t his image that struck him as odd. It wasn’t until he lit candles to better see the portrait that Raffaele realized what it was. The flickering candlelight instead hung in stasis around the vampire on the canvas, bathing him in a warm glow.
Lucia had painted him, bold and unafraid, in sunlight.
***
The light was less at golden hour, but it still burned.
Raffaele stood on his doorstep and stretched out a hand. His skin blistered beneath the fading light. If he shifted so a long shadow embraced him, he healed.
The uncharted brightness of the sunlit world still sent primal fear creeping through him. The Purifiers followed in fear’s wake. Yet Lucia was there, too, waiting for him beneath the sun’s scorch. A pile of ash would not save her, but if he slipped between shadows, a pile of ash he might not become—but if he did, at least he would have done it bravely. At least he would have tried.
He summoned up the courage she’d seen in him and plunged into the dying light.