Cortigiana (A Vamp Life Prequel) by Jez Strider

strange
look of surprise. “I was too rough.” He mumbled, “It should have
healed quickly.” Realization dawned on him slowly and then he was
on his feet with my head cupped in his hands. He leaned it to the
side to examine the injury.
    “ Gods, it is the Black
Death.” He let go of me and shoved me suddenly. I stumbled
backward. His voice grew louder, angrier. “Of course you have the
plague. You are a whore and have been working the filthy streets
after I told you it was strictly forbidden! One of the reasons I
asked you not to lay with other men was because I heard about the
early cases of the epidemic.”
    “ No, Master Dante! I swear I
have not. The only time I left the house alone was to visit my
mother and I stopped by where my relatives lived. The… the door had
a red mark painted on it.” He came toward me and I cowered away,
expecting to be hit.
    “ Giulia let you do
that?”
    I flinched at every word
spat at me. Lie, Evelina. Lie. The memory of the bodyguard’s beaten face caused
me to speak truthfully. “No. I snuck away.”
    “ Then you have signed your
own death sentence.” He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward
the front door. His personal gondolier stood outside. The man’s
eyes widened at the display.
    “ Please. I am scared. I do
not want to die, Dante. Please!” I screamed.
He pushed me hard and I nearly toppled into
the canal. “All you had to do was love and obey me, Evelina. Was it
too much to ask?” His back turned on me and I leapt at his feet,
grabbing for an ankle with one hand and catching a shoe with the
other.
    “ I love you. I do. You
cannot leave me to die.”
    “ Yes, I can.” Aggressively,
he shook his foot free of my grasp and walked into the house. The
gondolier helped me into the boat as I wailed and cried. I was left
alone with nothing but the clothing on my back, dropped off in the
exact place I didn’t want to end up. With the low class, old, and
used up prostitutes of Venice.

Looking around, I could now see the toll of
the plague. Everything became clear to me when the blindness of
love and the protection of my wealthy master were gone. In the city
of masks, no one wore them anymore except the pizzicamordi. When
the gravedigger wearing a hooked nose mask passed me, I backed up
against a building with a gasp. As if his appearance hadn’t been
unnerving enough with his tarred cloak and gloves, the eerie ting
of bells around his ankles warned every one of his presence.
Fear, more than curiosity drove me to follow
the horrifying man. I could even smell the faint scent of the
lavender antidotes that were in the nose of his mask. He caught me
tagging along and turned around.
He looked me up and down. I covered the
wound in my neck with my dress and clasped my hands together so he
couldn’t see my darkened fingernails.
    “ Go home. We are
transporting victims to the Lazaretto hospital and this is no place
for you.”
    “ The island, sir? Can they
be cured?” I asked, desperate to live, clinging to the faintest
hope.
The man glanced around before lowering his
voice. “I am afraid it only delays the inevitable. We need them out
of the city. Return to your master or I will inform him of your
excursions when I have the time.”
    Gravedigger knew who I
was. Gravedigger .
With his outfit and job, what other name did he need? Death was
coming for me and Gravedigger would be there to either burn my
corpse or toss me into a mass grave on one of the islands. The
vision of my inevitable demise caused my limbs to freeze
up.
    “ Of course. I pity those
with the… affliction.” I turned away from the harbinger of death
and ran until I was out of breath. The coughing started up again
and wouldn’t stop. My hand rested against a building and I bent
over to try to regulate my breathing. The run hadn’t even been that
far.
    “ How much?” A voice from
behind me asked.
An increasingly familiar odor made my
nostrils flare. Rot. Death. He was infected. I turned around