Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite by Anthology Page A

fare better.

    Drumming his fingers on the table while the old man devoured a steak and a plate of pasta, Romeo had asked him questions. His staff bustled everywhere, putting up canopies of white silk and lilies, dusting, sweeping. Polishing the silverware and the crystal. Preparing a sumptuous feast for her last meal as a human.

    When he was certain that no one would miss the toothless old signor, he had attacked.

    And now this . . . outrage.

    "Who poisoned his blood?" he thundered.

    Snarling, he let the body fall to the floor. Night's candles had all burned out; the oldster's face was as gray and pale as a dead rat, and his bones cracked as he hit the hard marble.

    Tomorrow night, he thought, staring at the drugged man's blank eyes, she'll feed for the first time. And I was about to suck down poison. If from my unholy blood, she takes offense . . .

    He rammed his fist into the wall as his fangs retracted. He was hungry and angry; was he, the lord of this place, to be denied a simple meal?

    "Romeo," Lucenzo said, bowing low as he approached. He was Romeo's lieutenant, and he had hopes of becoming a vampire himself. "What's the matter?"

    "Someone gave this man tetrodox," Romeo said.

    Lucenzo's dark Italian eyes widened. "Surely not," he countered. "Who would dare to do such a thing in your house?"

    "Who, indeed? Someone who has more will to be kind than to live?"

    "He must have had it before he came here."

    "Impossible. Where would he have gotten it?" He glared at Lucenzo. "Find out. And when you do, bring him, or her, to me."

    Lucenzo grimaced. "Romeo, it's one night before the Signora's birthday. She's not used to . . . there's so much she's had to adjust to. A death like that would shock her."

    "She knows what I am. What I do. What I'm like."

    But did she? He had explained. He had even fed in front of her. But he had softened all of it—using Lucenzo as a willing donor, whom he left very much alive. Swearing a silent vow that, with her at his side, he would return to the gentle hunt he had employed when he'd first been turned. Once more, he would become the soft youth he had been before her death—and not the angry, tormented—

    — Monster—

    "I won't kill whoever did it," he informed Lucenzo. "But there will be consequences."

    "Si," Lucenzo said.

    "And clean it up." Romeo gestured to the old man. "He's still alive. Take him back to his doorway. He'll think it was all a dream, with all that tetrodox in his bloodstream."

    "Of course," Lucenzo said.

    Romeo turned his back on the mess and slammed down the hall. Livid, he pulled out his cell phone. And there he saw his wallpaper picture of Claire, grinning at him between glasses of Chianti. Her hair was wound into two little topknots, and she was wearing the Italian Twilight T-shirt she had bought as a joke.

    His anger softened. In the past, he had used a poison very like tetrodox to paralyze his victims and numb them from pain. Friar Lawrence had taught him to distill it. But it had been a pain to make. He'd had to buy hundreds of gallons of the puffer fish derivative and store it in his crypt. And it fouled the blood and made him sick. Sometimes he hallucinated. So ultimately he had banned it, although he hadn't disposed of it. What if someone beyond the world of his villa discovered it, and traced it back to him?

    When he'd awakened that evening, he'd impulsively carried one gallon of the stuff from the crypt up to the kitchen. He'd thought to show it to Claire, as she seemed quite intrigued by the idea that seven hundred years ago, "she" had drunk poison to feign her own death. There were servants everywhere, preparing for Juliet's big night, and he had discussed using a sedative and painkillers for her transformation with Lucenzo. They'd chatted about the tetrodox in the kitchen within earshot of the cook and a dozen other of Romeo's staff. Maybe someone had gotten confused and thought he meant to use it on the old man. Still, one did not make