Vanquished Read Free Page B

her fledglings entered the room silently. The young girl’s arms were full of white satin. She inclined her head to Aurora, who felt her throat actually constrict with unspent emotion.
    It was time.
    Aurora beckoned the girl forward, and the little thing held out the white gown. It was reminiscent of the style of the Spanish royal court when Aurora had been alive. Aurora had died in 1490, becoming a vampire to escape the Spanish Inquisition.
    With a sense of ceremony, Aurora disrobed, and the fledgling helped her don the heavy costume, slipping her arms into the white embroidered sleeves. Experiencing again the confinement of the small, stiff hoops that created the slender bell shape of the skirt, Aurora held herself regally, her posture impeccable.
    Then the servant helped her arrange her long, raven-black hair, entwining lilies in it as she piled it on Aurora’s head. When she was finished, Aurora fought the urge to glance in the mirror. She was more than five hundred years old, yet it still startled her when she could not see her own reflection.
    The dress was beautiful, and she knew that modern society would have assumed she was a bride, and not in deep mourning. The royal court in her time had favored white for funerals. It felt more appropriate to honor Sergio in that way than with the modern black.
    “How do I look?” she asked the fledgling.
    “Like a beautiful ghost,” the girl said with a faint smile.
    Better that than a corpse. Or a pile of ash scattering slowly in the breeze.
    “ Bueno , I’m ready,” Aurora announced, stepping through bits of brittle colored glass and vampire dust.
    The woman walked ahead and opened the door, and Aurora glided out. She descended a circular stone staircase to the main hall, where nearly two dozen of her most loyal followers waited. At her request they too had dressed in white, although they had opted for modern styles of clothing—suits and formal gowns. She didn’t begrudge them that.
    Leading the way, she left the house and walked slowly toward El Retiro Park. The others fell in step behind her, a funeral cortege, many carrying blood-red roses or lilies, others crystal decanters and simple glass jars filled withblood. Along the route some human passersby stopped to stare. Others fled.
    Aurora kept her eyes straight ahead, allowing herself to think more fully about Sergio than she had in years. Memories, both good and hideous, flooded her like a rushing river. Sergio had been magnificent and arrogant, passionate and unpredictable. He had been her one great love. He had also been willful, reckless, cruel, and insensitive. She had hated him as much as she had loved him.
    He made me feel so alive.
    Sergio had worshipped the dark god Orcus. Orcus no longer possessed active temples or followers. There was nowhere she could go to respect that part of Sergio. So she had chosen instead their favorite trysting spot in the city of Madrid.
    Inside the park, the procession wound to the Fountain of the Fallen Angel. Meant to depict Lucifer as he was being cast out of heaven, it had always been their private joke. The sculptor who had fashioned it had given the Fallen Angel the face of a very different Lucifer: their vampiric sire.
    Silently, the mourners circled the fountain. Emilio, an aged vampire Aurora and Sergio had both held in esteem, stepped forward, an ebony-and-maroon leather volume in his hand. He opened it and began to read the words he had written for the occasion.
    “Immortality—the greatest of gifts—must not be approached with trepidation. Life is not something to besipped, but to be grasped with both hands and bled for all its worth. This fire—this passion—sustains, nourishes, uplifts, illuminates all. We are blessed, not cursed, to understand, to taste the finest fruits of the universe.”
    He closed the book. “None knew this more than Sergio Almodóvar. Filled with bloodlust, the finest of killers, he was a vampire who knew how to live. Sergio himself