Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen) - By Joey W. Hill Page 0,39

for any move she made, any word she spoke.

When he’d apologized to her in the Rover, telling her he’d been an arse, Evan had echoed it in his mind. Yes, you were. Don’t take out your anger with me or the way the vampire world is on her, neshama. If you need a fight, I am right here. Always.

Always. What was it she’d said? A full sense of the servant’s soul, resting in their hand, to do with as they will. The servant’s complete submission to that idea. Their unconditional devotion to the vampire’s care. That is what they seek.

Her words had taken him back. Had it been 1754? He didn’t remember dates all that well anymore. They’d been on a hilltop overlooking Florence, the city bathed in moonlight, much like this. The vampire was working on a stark black-and-white landscape, not the usual thing for artists at that time. But Evan had been experimenting with those haunting contrasts even then . . .

“Ye want me to describe what?”

Evan gestured to the tree line. “I need you to describe the way the light hits the trees at sunrise. What it looks like, every detail that seems important. How it makes you feel. What it smells like, what it makes you want to do.”

Niall drew his gaze away from the nighttime view of Florence. It was so different from Scotland, everything warm, prosperous and colorful, the town full of intellectuals and laughing children. Earlier that evening they’d been at Ponte Vecchio. Evan had wanted to see the Pasquino, a sculpture of Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus. While Niall found it heroic and romantic, Evan explained it was based on a fragment of an ancient Roman sculpture. That fragment was simply a headless warrior the archaeologists had deduced had been supporting the body of a fallen comrade, because the shards remaining showed his hand upon a piece of the torso.

The spirit endures through the physical, no matter how time has decayed the original vision. It still inspires statues like this, an echo.

Niall turned his attention back to the pair of rabbits he was cleaning. He intended to prepare them for dinner, have them with the bread they’d bought in the last town. The baker’s wife had a generous bosom, gleaming like a pair of butter-glazed loaves, thanks to the perspiration caused by her ovens. He’d wanted to taste the damp salt on them, but he’d stopped at his imaginings. He didn’t dally with what belonged to another man.

“Pay attention, lazy servant.” Evan drew him out of the pleasant recollection. “Tell me how sunlight hits a tree.”

“How does that help you know how to paint it?” Niall’s tone was deeply suspicious, such that Evan laughed at him.

“Trust me, it does. You’re a hands-on man. You’ll understand it more after you see it. When the sun comes up tomorrow, think about it. Make notes. Practice your writing.”

Like most Scottish lads, Niall had learned his Latin and letters, but it hadn’t stuck that well, since he’d had little use for it before he met Evan. The vampire had tutored him, though, helping him improve such that now he could handle functional correspondence.

“I dinnae have to wait. I’ve seen the sunrise every day since I was old enough to help my da. It falls the same way that moonlight you’re looking at does it. Except, there’s more brightness. The greenness of the leaves, they melt with the gold summat, so you get both colors.”

He paused, thinking it through a bit deeper. “Ye start to see the outline of the trees, gradual-like. They’re dark against the dark, and then ye notice they’re becoming more defined, the sky a soft gray, like a cheetie’s fur.”

In the beginning, he’d been self-conscious about giving such descriptions, but then he’d learned Evan was evaluating his described emotional response to help paint the picture, not make Niall more vulnerable. That was when he’d become more confident with it, though Evan had embarrassed him by saying he’d finally found the poet in his soul.

“Ye feel a sense o’ sadness, because there’s always that in the gray predawn light. Your chest gets tight, and there’s a hitch in your wame, like something’s about to be lost, or something that was lost is so close ye might be able to touch it, there on that dividing point between light and dark. Then the colors start to change. It’s different every day. This morning ’twas a blue with some rose mixed in, and the rose