Chapter Sixteen
In the Prince’s experience, coincidences were rare. That was why he flew with great speed to Jane’s building.
It was possible another woman had evaded the feral because of a talisman. It was possible a policeman other than the one he’d seen following her had been killed.
He wanted to ensure she was safe, although he took great care to conceal his movements. He didn’t want to draw more attention to her and he certainly didn’t want it known that some relics had no effect on him.
Maximilian and his allies would have declared the Prince’s tactics paranoid and unnecessary. But there was a reason why his coven had lasted so long. There was a reason why his principality was safe, while others around the world were threatened or even destroyed. He kept his secrets secret.
What humans did not know about, they couldn’t fight. Certainly they couldn’t recruit the coven’s enemies without knowledge of the coven itself.
There’d been a time when he and his kind were well-known in Europe and had not lived in secret. Then came the Black Death, poisoning their food supply. His brethren had shrunk in numbers, some being destroyed in their hungry, weakened state while others quit Europe for unblighted parts of the world.
Then the Curia had emerged. It was a mysterious group, formed by human beings, but wielding limited supernatural powers. It had tried to eradicate his kind and had waged a war against them. When the war ended, neither side won, although both claimed victory. The uneasy truce that emerged between the European covens and the Curia required the covens to live underground, in shadowy, secret societies. Any public exposure was perilous.
With the rise of the Enlightenment and the triumph of science over the supernatural, first-person accounts of encounters with his kind became stories, and the stories eventually became myths. The Curia intervened to protect the public from what lay hidden in their midst only when provoked. The covens did their best not to provoke it by attracting attention.
Thus, the Prince jealously guarded his city, even to the point of killing to secure it. The feral and its witnesses threatened his world, as did whoever escaped the feral.
And if it were Cassita . . .
He surveyed the piazza from the building next to hers.
He could have chosen a better vantage point, that of the church nearby. But despite his ability to walk on holy ground, he couldn’t do so unscathed. He tended to avoid the pain, unless it accompanied his daily triumphal climb to the top of Brunelleschi’s dome. And he only visited the dome before the sun set and his brethren awoke.
From his vantage point, he could see the police. They’d cordoned off an area in front of Jane’s building, erecting tents to stave off the rain. He saw one of the officers wheel a black Vespa toward the tent. The Vespa looked familiar.
Keeping to the shadows, he leapt to the ground at the back and walked to Raven’s building. He unlocked the back door and swept inside, out of the rain. The stairwell was illuminated but empty.
Brushing the rain from his blond hair and face, he held his breath. The woman in the apartment next to Jane’s had cancer. He’d smelled the stench before and it was most unpleasant. He didn’t relish inhaling it again.
As he gazed at the staircase, he contemplated cutting off the electricity to Jane’s apartment.
Truthfully, he both wanted and did not want to speak with her.
He wanted to shake some sense into her and force her to leave the city. But he also wanted to ascertain that she was safe and that she hadn’t volunteered any information to the police. These goals would be difficult to achieve without speaking with her and, he admitted ruefully, frightening her.
When he’d saved her life that night, over a week before, he had no idea his very existence would change—that he would be forced to come to her aid again and again.
She needed to leave the city. For her own safety and for the security of his principality, she needed to flee Florence and never return.
Within minutes, he’d cut off the electricity to her apartment and unlocked her door, slipping inside.
He moved through the kitchen, purposefully making a few muted sounds. He wanted to announce his arrival, but softly, so as not to frighten her. By what he could hear of her heartbeat and breathing, he knew she was awake.
As he walked toward the bedroom, she began moving.
“Are you injured?” he whispered in Italian.
He knew she wasn’t. He could smell her blood, of course, but the scent was muted. She didn’t have any wounds and there was no indication of tears, either.
His Cassita had not cried. He took pride in the fact.
He paused for a moment, listening to her struggle to breathe as quietly as possible. But to no avail.
He entered her room.
Just as his foot crossed the threshold, she leapt from behind the door, swinging something in the direction of his kneecaps.
He jumped, evading the object.
She swore as she swung in vain, pitching forward on unsteady feet.
When he landed, he pulled what turned out to be her cane away from her, breaking it in half with a loud, angry crack. He threw the two pieces across the room, ignoring the sound of them striking the wall. Then he pulled her against his body, so they were chest to chest.
For a moment he stared. Having her in his arms provided a tangible distraction, as did her large, unseeing green eyes.
“Let me go!” She struggled, pushing against his shoulders.
“I came to see if you were hurt. Clearly you aren’t.”
“I said, let go!” she shrieked, pushing and kicking at him with all her strength.
With a loud curse, he held her more tightly, lifting her off her feet.
Now they were close, very close. He could feel her breath on his face and if he moved a few inches, her lips would be his.
Instinctively, he moved toward her mouth.
“You came back,” she managed to say, breathing roughly.
“Yes, Jane.”
“You’re hurting me.”
The Prince paused, eyeing her attractive mouth.
He placed her on her feet and loosened his grip, but did not let go. His arms encircled her, pressing their bodies together from shoulder to thigh.
He brushed the hair from her face.
She turned her head. “Don’t touch me.”
Now he released her.
She tried to get as far away from him as possible. Disoriented in the darkness, she tripped and fell.
The Prince watched in horror as her forehead caught on the metal frame of the bed. The tang of her blood sliced through the air.
She cried out in pain.
He was at her side in an instant, crouching beside her. “Let me see.”
Raven didn’t answer, holding her hand to her wound.
He pried her fingers away and swore.
“Don’t move.”
He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and walked to the bathroom, where he soaked it in cold water. When he returned, she was still sitting on the floor, stunned.
“This should help.” He placed the cloth to her forehead.