for whatmenfear

[dominus]

A few contacts in Florence had got in touch with Ezio earlier in the week, warm invitations to stay, to tell them all about the lucky lady in his life. "When will we get to meet her?" Paola had asked with a smile and a wink, tipping her wine glass at him, not an ounce of age having diminished the madam's beauty.

"Soon," he assured her, assured everyone who put the question to him. Soon Sofia would be back in Italy to stay, soon they would start the next chapter of their lives together. What would happen then, he wasn't sure. It made him giddy with anticipation.

The nights were long, as they always were when he visited old friends, time spent catching up, reminiscing, making idle plans. One conversation, however, took a darker turn, made him set down his glass and take Paola's hands in his.

Someone was stalking her and her girls.

That was what had him out that night, chasing along avenues and alleyways, after the thing that had made Paola's shoulders shake with untold dread. It was a flash of streaming gold hair in the dark, a pulsing, red aura full of bile and malevolence, quick as lightning amid the grey drizzle. He should have called Vlad and his people in, shouldn't have gone alone, but Florence was his city, and the giggling creature whose steps he dogged had come after his people.

He cornered her in a garden, someone's prize roses snagging in their wet clothes when the chase became a snarling, vicious fight as she turned and came at him. It was over in seconds, when it seemed as though she'd up and vanished into the very air and Ezio, bewildered, backed into the side of a house to catch his breath, to regroup.

She pulled him over the roof as if he were a rag doll, cooed a name to him in a tender voice like mouldering silk, and sank her teeth into his throat.

Snapshots of his life came to the fore, blinding, unbidden, as if his nameless attacker were drawing them out of her own accord. Cristina smiling cheekily at him, haloed by the summer sun. His father and brothers, slain in the square not a stone's throw away. Mario, ever patient and shouting encouragement as he ran his nephew through training again and again. The look on Vieri di Pazzi's face when he found his schemes undone and a blade in his belly; the look of every man he'd cut down in revenge. The golden glow of the Apple, the frightening rush of power flooding his veins. Claudia, pleased with herself and her new business venture. Florence and Forli, Venice and Rome. Madrid, Istanbul. The faces of his apprentices; Vlad's warm laugh over countless glasses of wine; the first time he laid eyes on Sofia in the terminal and felt that incomprehensible draw toward her.

The thought that crossed his mind, wrapped in the memory of Sofia's smile, of her body fitting so warm and perfect in his arms, of her fingers laced with his, was 'I don't want to die.'

Not now. Please, not now.

The thing that had him, cradling his limp form to her like a mother coddling her baby, accepted.

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[whatmenfear]

A dull, insistent trill dragged Vlad from his sleep. It was one of those rare days that found him at home, burrowed beneath a metric ton of blankets, rather than snoring into whatever manuscript happened to be passing through his office that weak.

Reaching out, he groped blindly at the nightstand in search of his cellphone. 'This had better be good', he thought, his fingers closing around the slim plastic shape as he lifted the phone to his ear.

Whatever sharp retort he had at the ready -- 5:00 am was not a civilized hour by any stretch of the imagination, vampire or no -- died swiftly as soon as he heard Claudia's voice on the other end of the line.

"Ezio's missing," she explained, because while they knew one another they were hardly the sort to engage in casual conversations however much her brother was convinced that they conspired together in secret, and Vlad could hear how she was gnawing on the bottom of her full lower lip, worry creeping in at the edges of her otherwise calm exterior. This was the day she had been dreading since the day her brother had begun his quest for revenge.

Except.

Except that Ezio wasn't that angry, reckless boy anymore. He'd grown up, had learnt the hard lessons one learnt as you left your childhood behind, and things were... things were finally looking up.

Peeling back the covers, Vlad swung his legs over the side of the mattress, what heat he'd managed to gather during the few hours of sleep melting away like morning mist. It didn't matter, he had other things on his mind. "Tell me what you know."