Careful that no-one was following him, the young author had circled the block several times. Franka watched the security cameras with amusement. Seryph, her all grey familiar, purred contentedly in her lap.
Jacob Cross, the young author hired to write Franka's memoirs, took his normal seat in the small den off the library. He had not been through much of the house. The den was where Franka always chose to meet. There was always a fire going when he arrived, candles lit, and Renard would have his papers and pencils ready to go. Christina, the tiny British girl recently brought to the house, came into the den with a tray of snacks. "The lady will be with you soon. She's freshening up." And as quickly as she appeared, she was gone.
His thoughts drifted, wondering if they would finally reach the story of Franka's embrace. To his surprise the next person to enter was not the lady of the house, but the gentleman.
"Tonight you write and you listen. No questions, no prodding. Am I understood?"
"Of course Tybalt. I mean to cause her no more pain than what is already apparent in her stories." He had started to say more when Franka entered. She appeared to be having a day of leisure.Her long hair hung straight, free of its normal pins. She was in jeans and a grey hooded sweatshirt with a green animal paw painted on the front. As she passed him he saw 'OU Bobcats' printed on the back.
"Tybalt, really? How will we get an accurate telling if the man can't ask questions? I honor your concern, but this Rose is not a delicate flower. You'd do well to remember that." She kissed his cheek and moved to sit on the comfortable old couch by the fire.
He chuckled a bit, taken aback by her sudden appearance, but relieved that she was showing some of her old fire again. "Of course. 'Delicate' is not a word I would ever use to describe you, love. At times my concern overshadows what I know you to be capable of". He turned to Jacob and said "Do as the lady asks, then," a smile still on his face as he strode out of the room.
"So where did we leave off?" she asked Jacob, as if Tybalt had never been there.
"You were telling me about the first time you were with Adriano and your life with the Duke." Jacob was poised for the story he was about to get. Pen to paper and eyes on the woman casually strewn across the couch.
"I still miss him. Still love him, Adriano that is. I don't know that I could ever have loved my husband. We kept our affair quiet. If the Duke were to find out he would strip away the one thing that made my life worth living again."
"He seemed very pleased with himself. Adriano's presence had created a need deep within my soul. I don't think my darling Duke really knew what he was getting into. My interests were not just in art and running our home. Adriano encouraged me to take on a role in our business affairs as well. I had helped our father grow the profits of our farm and had a talent for managing people and money."
"Women of the time were not to be burdened with the weight of business, but my husband knew what he had. Behind the doors of the siting room where no one would question his manliness, we turned already profitable ventures into a small empire. It became that he never made a single decision without consulting me."
"Having finally proven myself to him, he also began discussing his other life. He went slowly, explaining how the mafia really worked and it's purpose. His role in it was quite large, overseeing most of the region. He told me of the others in the business, who did what and how. I helped him create cover stories, some of my best work." She laughed almost to herself.
"I was so carefree as a child. I truly believed everyone had good in them. And maybe they do. But maybe all of humanity fights the beast without even knowing it. Maybe the beast is not our curse, but everyone's. It would make sense for those of us walking in the shadows to be more connected to it, but for it to be in all of us, mortal and immortal alike."
"My daughter was born of that beast. The one that lurks within humanity. She was beautiful. No hint of the evils that created her. I may have been running our empire, but I was still nothing but a pawn to my husband. He decided we needed an heir, but for his own reasons he refused to father our children. He arranged for one of his employees to be her donor, but back then it wasn't as anonymous as it is now. I obeyed my husband and created that beautiful little girl. And then the world caved in."
"Not right away. We played the happy family for awhile. Adriano was wonderful with her, teaching her to dance and paint. I continued my duties, and the Duke went on as if she never existed. I hated him for that, for forcing me to create her for his social gain but paying her no attention. When she began to speak she called Adriano papa." Franka looked away from the fire for the first time and Jacob could see the blood stain of her tears. She pulled the little rag doll out of the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Slowly tracing the stitched lines, she continued.
"When she was about two, I decided I had had enough. I was no longer going to live as an indentured servant. I knew how to run our home and the estate. It would be a fight to keep our home, but I wasn't interested in living like that anymore. Adriano offered to help me, but this was my battle."
"What I wasn't prepared for was that the man would not die. I tried every poison I could think of. I'd place things just out of sight so he'd trip and fall down the stairs. Not only would he not die, he was never hurt. I'd always known something was odd about him, I could just never place it. I had always figured his late hours had to do with the business he was in. Oh, to be so young and dumb again."
"I didn't want to involve Adriano, so I called on my daughter's biological father. I knew enough of his dealings to blackmail him. The money he was paid to keep his mouth shut about his fatherhood could easily find a new purse to line. And that was my mistake. His hands were ice around my neck, his breath chilled me to the core as he spoke. I remember it to this day. He told me I didn't know what I was fooling with, that I was being groomed for something great and was soon to throw it all away. He'd left several bruises on me. Adriano was furious. He stormed away from me that night. It was the first time I'd ever angered him."
"I avoided my husband the next evening. I didn't know what was being hidden from me, what I was being groomed for, but he wasn't the only one being deceitful, now was he?" She needed a minute. What she was about to reveal, she had never spoken to anyone other than Tybalt.
"A few nights later Adriano came to me. He told me my daughter's father was dead, he told me he feared for me, and then he told me the secrets that everyone had kept from me. It was hard to believe that vampires really existed. The town had been murmuring about it for years, my parents had never let us go far from the house at night. But I was an intelligent woman, how could I believe in tales used to keep children in line?"
"Much as my husband educated me in the mafia, Adriano educated me in the kindred. He revealed that he was a high ranking Toreador elder, and my husband a Giovanni. They worked together and that was why Adriano was brought into our home. He was to spend the time preparing me that my husband couldn't, but ultimately I was to be embraced Giovanni. The problem with this plan was that Adriano had grown attached to me and the Duke was not doing as well in Kindred society as he was in the mortal world. He was breaking traditions and making enemies."
"Everything I believed about the world had been changed. Everything I believed of Adriano and my life had been changed. The next few weeks were very tense. Adriano warned me not to let on that I knew, that I was already in danger and knowing this secret would bring it all crashing down. Somehow though, the Duke was catching on. He'd been warned of my plan to kill him before Adriano had disposed of the threat."
She laughed half to herself. "Can you believe how long it took that fool to realize I was trying to kill him? And even then it had to be spelled out. He stopped Adriano's visits completely. No more sneaking in to see me. Suddenly the guards were everywhere. But they didn't stop me. Not much does once I have a want that needs filled."
"I'd had enough of his abuse, his lies, so I went into the forbidden wing." She got up to pour more wine. "There are times I wonder if Beauty and the Beast has been based on us. I make poor Tybalt watch that movie all the time. So where was I? Oh yes, the forbidden wing. I had been obedient for the most part, only going there when invited, but I had a good idea of where his room was. Adriano had given me pretty detailed instructions on where to find him. So I snuck down the hall and found the door that lead to a series of stairs and halls. Eventually I found his casket. Before I even knew what I was doing, I had opened it and raised the wooden stake over my head."
"It was ripped from my hands. One minute he was there asleep in front of me and the next he had the sliver of wood. He was enraged. We fought. Somehow the stake was laying on the floor right in front of me. He had me on the ground, beating me. I reached for the stake and he broke my hand. The pain radiated to my core. I didn't make a noise. I wouldn't give him that satisfaction. That is the mistake that haunts me to this day.
"Little whore! Filthy, pathetic excuse for a wife!" he screamed at me. "If you won't give in to the pain, I will make it hurt more than you will ever feel again." He ripped me up by the high collar of my dress. He half drug me back up the stairs, banging my beaten body against the steps as we went. He ranted the entire way, bashing me into the hard walls for emphasis.
"I have had it with you and your games. You had so much promise. You could have been something great! I should have gotten rid of you when you were unfaithful. Sleeping with your teacher, trying to kill me, whining about that horrid child! She is nothing!" He smacked me for emphasis. "Nothing! She is there for appearances sake. The only thing that kept you alive was appearance. You could have died birthing that foul creature and saved us all. But no, you just keep going, keep pushing!" He smacked me again at this point. "I am done with your disobedience. If you are so intrigued with this dark world, you will see what we really are. You will see what you could have become. The power you could have had at your lips."
"We arrived at my daughter's room and fear finally gripped me. What was he going to do to my baby? I tried to fight him, but he just laughed and threw me into the room. I mustered all the strength I had to charge at him. He shoved me down and grabbed my chin. Staring at him with pure hatred in my heart, he kissed me and my body began acting on it's own. He handed me a dagger and I moved over to my crying baby. Tears. I remember feeling the tears on my face. I remember every fiber of my being fighting, but not being able to stop it." Franka moved to standing by the window. Her emotions seemed to feed the storm outside. "I plunged that dagger into my baby. I killed her. I vomited right there beside her bed. The one pure thing in my world. The one pure, innocent, beautiful thing, and I killed her. And he just laughed. He just stood there and laughed. He told me that he could bring her back. That he could give me the power to bring her back. The rest of the night is just flashes. He left me there in a heap of vomit, tears, and despair."
"I remember Adriano appearing. I remember him bathing me. I remember questioning him, how was he there? From what I was able to put together, Adriano had killed my husband. He had arrived to check in on me and my daughter and found me babbling. I know he left me there. I know there was a fight somewhere in the house. It took me the better part of a month to come back to myself. Adriano had taken over the estate. He removed all of the old staff and brought in his own. I felt safe for the first time in years."
"Adriano and I took walks in the garden each night. Somewhere around the first month of coherency I asked him to make me like him. I wanted that power and I wanted to avenge my daughter. No beast so foul and cruel would ever get away with that again. He spent another month educating and questioning me to make sure it was really what I wanted. And when I'd passed his test, under the roses and a beautiful moon, he embraced me."
"I lived as the lover of the Toreador Primogen and the Duchess of our land. No one questioned the change of my rule. Adriano had worked a lovely cover story for my husband's death and I was able to do what many women of the time could not."
"I think that is all for tonight. Please, have Renard bring Tybalt to me on your way out."
And with that, she left for her quarters and Jacob left to sort out the nightmare he had just been told. Renard met him in the hall as always. "They keep many dark secrets. That was just the beginning. You'll need to be a tough soul to hear the horrors seen in their unlives."
Jacob Cross, the young author hired to write Franka's memoirs, took his normal seat in the small den off the library. He had not been through much of the house. The den was where Franka always chose to meet. There was always a fire going when he arrived, candles lit, and Renard would have his papers and pencils ready to go. Christina, the tiny British girl recently brought to the house, came into the den with a tray of snacks. "The lady will be with you soon. She's freshening up." And as quickly as she appeared, she was gone.
His thoughts drifted, wondering if they would finally reach the story of Franka's embrace. To his surprise the next person to enter was not the lady of the house, but the gentleman.
"Tonight you write and you listen. No questions, no prodding. Am I understood?"
"Of course Tybalt. I mean to cause her no more pain than what is already apparent in her stories." He had started to say more when Franka entered. She appeared to be having a day of leisure.Her long hair hung straight, free of its normal pins. She was in jeans and a grey hooded sweatshirt with a green animal paw painted on the front. As she passed him he saw 'OU Bobcats' printed on the back.
"Tybalt, really? How will we get an accurate telling if the man can't ask questions? I honor your concern, but this Rose is not a delicate flower. You'd do well to remember that." She kissed his cheek and moved to sit on the comfortable old couch by the fire.
He chuckled a bit, taken aback by her sudden appearance, but relieved that she was showing some of her old fire again. "Of course. 'Delicate' is not a word I would ever use to describe you, love. At times my concern overshadows what I know you to be capable of". He turned to Jacob and said "Do as the lady asks, then," a smile still on his face as he strode out of the room.
"So where did we leave off?" she asked Jacob, as if Tybalt had never been there.
"You were telling me about the first time you were with Adriano and your life with the Duke." Jacob was poised for the story he was about to get. Pen to paper and eyes on the woman casually strewn across the couch.
"I still miss him. Still love him, Adriano that is. I don't know that I could ever have loved my husband. We kept our affair quiet. If the Duke were to find out he would strip away the one thing that made my life worth living again."
"He seemed very pleased with himself. Adriano's presence had created a need deep within my soul. I don't think my darling Duke really knew what he was getting into. My interests were not just in art and running our home. Adriano encouraged me to take on a role in our business affairs as well. I had helped our father grow the profits of our farm and had a talent for managing people and money."
"Women of the time were not to be burdened with the weight of business, but my husband knew what he had. Behind the doors of the siting room where no one would question his manliness, we turned already profitable ventures into a small empire. It became that he never made a single decision without consulting me."
"Having finally proven myself to him, he also began discussing his other life. He went slowly, explaining how the mafia really worked and it's purpose. His role in it was quite large, overseeing most of the region. He told me of the others in the business, who did what and how. I helped him create cover stories, some of my best work." She laughed almost to herself.
"I was so carefree as a child. I truly believed everyone had good in them. And maybe they do. But maybe all of humanity fights the beast without even knowing it. Maybe the beast is not our curse, but everyone's. It would make sense for those of us walking in the shadows to be more connected to it, but for it to be in all of us, mortal and immortal alike."
"My daughter was born of that beast. The one that lurks within humanity. She was beautiful. No hint of the evils that created her. I may have been running our empire, but I was still nothing but a pawn to my husband. He decided we needed an heir, but for his own reasons he refused to father our children. He arranged for one of his employees to be her donor, but back then it wasn't as anonymous as it is now. I obeyed my husband and created that beautiful little girl. And then the world caved in."
"Not right away. We played the happy family for awhile. Adriano was wonderful with her, teaching her to dance and paint. I continued my duties, and the Duke went on as if she never existed. I hated him for that, for forcing me to create her for his social gain but paying her no attention. When she began to speak she called Adriano papa." Franka looked away from the fire for the first time and Jacob could see the blood stain of her tears. She pulled the little rag doll out of the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Slowly tracing the stitched lines, she continued.
"When she was about two, I decided I had had enough. I was no longer going to live as an indentured servant. I knew how to run our home and the estate. It would be a fight to keep our home, but I wasn't interested in living like that anymore. Adriano offered to help me, but this was my battle."
"What I wasn't prepared for was that the man would not die. I tried every poison I could think of. I'd place things just out of sight so he'd trip and fall down the stairs. Not only would he not die, he was never hurt. I'd always known something was odd about him, I could just never place it. I had always figured his late hours had to do with the business he was in. Oh, to be so young and dumb again."
"I didn't want to involve Adriano, so I called on my daughter's biological father. I knew enough of his dealings to blackmail him. The money he was paid to keep his mouth shut about his fatherhood could easily find a new purse to line. And that was my mistake. His hands were ice around my neck, his breath chilled me to the core as he spoke. I remember it to this day. He told me I didn't know what I was fooling with, that I was being groomed for something great and was soon to throw it all away. He'd left several bruises on me. Adriano was furious. He stormed away from me that night. It was the first time I'd ever angered him."
"I avoided my husband the next evening. I didn't know what was being hidden from me, what I was being groomed for, but he wasn't the only one being deceitful, now was he?" She needed a minute. What she was about to reveal, she had never spoken to anyone other than Tybalt.
"A few nights later Adriano came to me. He told me my daughter's father was dead, he told me he feared for me, and then he told me the secrets that everyone had kept from me. It was hard to believe that vampires really existed. The town had been murmuring about it for years, my parents had never let us go far from the house at night. But I was an intelligent woman, how could I believe in tales used to keep children in line?"
"Much as my husband educated me in the mafia, Adriano educated me in the kindred. He revealed that he was a high ranking Toreador elder, and my husband a Giovanni. They worked together and that was why Adriano was brought into our home. He was to spend the time preparing me that my husband couldn't, but ultimately I was to be embraced Giovanni. The problem with this plan was that Adriano had grown attached to me and the Duke was not doing as well in Kindred society as he was in the mortal world. He was breaking traditions and making enemies."
"Everything I believed about the world had been changed. Everything I believed of Adriano and my life had been changed. The next few weeks were very tense. Adriano warned me not to let on that I knew, that I was already in danger and knowing this secret would bring it all crashing down. Somehow though, the Duke was catching on. He'd been warned of my plan to kill him before Adriano had disposed of the threat."
She laughed half to herself. "Can you believe how long it took that fool to realize I was trying to kill him? And even then it had to be spelled out. He stopped Adriano's visits completely. No more sneaking in to see me. Suddenly the guards were everywhere. But they didn't stop me. Not much does once I have a want that needs filled."
"I'd had enough of his abuse, his lies, so I went into the forbidden wing." She got up to pour more wine. "There are times I wonder if Beauty and the Beast has been based on us. I make poor Tybalt watch that movie all the time. So where was I? Oh yes, the forbidden wing. I had been obedient for the most part, only going there when invited, but I had a good idea of where his room was. Adriano had given me pretty detailed instructions on where to find him. So I snuck down the hall and found the door that lead to a series of stairs and halls. Eventually I found his casket. Before I even knew what I was doing, I had opened it and raised the wooden stake over my head."
"It was ripped from my hands. One minute he was there asleep in front of me and the next he had the sliver of wood. He was enraged. We fought. Somehow the stake was laying on the floor right in front of me. He had me on the ground, beating me. I reached for the stake and he broke my hand. The pain radiated to my core. I didn't make a noise. I wouldn't give him that satisfaction. That is the mistake that haunts me to this day.
"Little whore! Filthy, pathetic excuse for a wife!" he screamed at me. "If you won't give in to the pain, I will make it hurt more than you will ever feel again." He ripped me up by the high collar of my dress. He half drug me back up the stairs, banging my beaten body against the steps as we went. He ranted the entire way, bashing me into the hard walls for emphasis.
"I have had it with you and your games. You had so much promise. You could have been something great! I should have gotten rid of you when you were unfaithful. Sleeping with your teacher, trying to kill me, whining about that horrid child! She is nothing!" He smacked me for emphasis. "Nothing! She is there for appearances sake. The only thing that kept you alive was appearance. You could have died birthing that foul creature and saved us all. But no, you just keep going, keep pushing!" He smacked me again at this point. "I am done with your disobedience. If you are so intrigued with this dark world, you will see what we really are. You will see what you could have become. The power you could have had at your lips."
"We arrived at my daughter's room and fear finally gripped me. What was he going to do to my baby? I tried to fight him, but he just laughed and threw me into the room. I mustered all the strength I had to charge at him. He shoved me down and grabbed my chin. Staring at him with pure hatred in my heart, he kissed me and my body began acting on it's own. He handed me a dagger and I moved over to my crying baby. Tears. I remember feeling the tears on my face. I remember every fiber of my being fighting, but not being able to stop it." Franka moved to standing by the window. Her emotions seemed to feed the storm outside. "I plunged that dagger into my baby. I killed her. I vomited right there beside her bed. The one pure thing in my world. The one pure, innocent, beautiful thing, and I killed her. And he just laughed. He just stood there and laughed. He told me that he could bring her back. That he could give me the power to bring her back. The rest of the night is just flashes. He left me there in a heap of vomit, tears, and despair."
"I remember Adriano appearing. I remember him bathing me. I remember questioning him, how was he there? From what I was able to put together, Adriano had killed my husband. He had arrived to check in on me and my daughter and found me babbling. I know he left me there. I know there was a fight somewhere in the house. It took me the better part of a month to come back to myself. Adriano had taken over the estate. He removed all of the old staff and brought in his own. I felt safe for the first time in years."
"Adriano and I took walks in the garden each night. Somewhere around the first month of coherency I asked him to make me like him. I wanted that power and I wanted to avenge my daughter. No beast so foul and cruel would ever get away with that again. He spent another month educating and questioning me to make sure it was really what I wanted. And when I'd passed his test, under the roses and a beautiful moon, he embraced me."
"I lived as the lover of the Toreador Primogen and the Duchess of our land. No one questioned the change of my rule. Adriano had worked a lovely cover story for my husband's death and I was able to do what many women of the time could not."
"I think that is all for tonight. Please, have Renard bring Tybalt to me on your way out."
And with that, she left for her quarters and Jacob left to sort out the nightmare he had just been told. Renard met him in the hall as always. "They keep many dark secrets. That was just the beginning. You'll need to be a tough soul to hear the horrors seen in their unlives."
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