The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) Read Online Free

could expand the clan’s reach overseas.”
    “Perhaps,” Sergio said. The topic made him uncomfortable. Coronation was tied to Nicky Bloom who was tied to the lie he had told his maker. “Come on, let’s go have a look.”
    They descended to the valley floor and approached the mansion at the center of the villa. Sergio gave a single kick to the tall doors. The wood splintered at the lock and the doors swung open. They stepped into the foyer.
    “Quite a bit different than I remember it,” Daciana said, looking at the large entry room that greeted them. There was a chess board atop a stand made of marble. Daciana approached it and put her finger on the black queen.
    “Where is Renata now?” she said.
    “I don’t know. Finding you and tending to Falkon have required the full of my attention since I arrived in Italy.”
    “We’ll find her soon enough,” Daciana said. “I hope she has gone back to Washington. I want to see the look on her face when she sees that I am alive and well. I will make her talk before I kill her. I want to understand what madness came over her that she thought it wise to betray me.”
    Daciana explored the living space at the front of the house, then Sergio led her through the main hallway and down a flight of stairs. They came to a metal door that was locked shut, but had a keypad above the handle.
    “While I don’t claim to understand Falkon and Renata’s motives for holding you prisoner,” Sergio said, “I believe it had something to do with what was happening in here.” He punched in a code on the keypad, the same code he had used to free Daciana from her prison. The door opened and they stepped into Falkon’s laboratory.
    Or rather, what was left it. The floor was a mess of broken glass, papers, and wires. The prison cells where Falkon once held a dozen feral vampires were sitting open and empty. A cold wind blew into the lab through a broken window on a high wall.
    Daciana smiled as she looked over the remains of the lab.
    “What on earth do you suppose was happening in here?” she said.
    “Horrid, miserable creatures,” Sergio said. “That’s what I found in this room. Feral vampires. Falkon was doing something unspeakable in here.”
    “Really?” Daciana whispered, approaching the prison block, her eyes open in wonder. “That cagey fool was actually trying to do it.”
    “You knew of his ambitions?”
    “The last time I spoke with Falkon on friendly terms was some seventy years ago,” she said. “At that time, he was convinced humans were on the verge of achieving immortality for their entire race. He said we were entering an age of science, and it was only a matter of time before people solved all the great problems of the world, including death.”
    “Funny that he would be so interested in such a topic,” said Sergio, “considering that death was not a problem for him.”
    “Falkon was a strange soul,” said Daciana. She stepped into a prison cell on the bottom row and took a deep breath through her nose. Then another. She smelled something.
    Curious what it was, Sergio stepped into the cell directly next to her and inhaled deeply.
    He expected the odor of feral vampire, but that wasn’t what he smelled at all. In this cell, on the bottom left corner of the block, where it appeared the glass wall hadn’t been raised, but rather, broken out, Sergio smelled something lovely. The smell was charged with memory. Memory of a mysterious girl at the Homecoming Masquerade. Memory of a chance meeting underneath the Penbrook Theater where he allowed the girl to look into his mind. Memory of a strange encounter in this very room, of a beautiful girl standing above him, holding a length of steel pipe in her hands.
    He didn’t understand what was happening. When he arrived at Falkon’s villa looking for Nicky, he found her in a spare bedroom of the mansion. But his nose was telling him that she had spent time in this prison block.
    Not just his nose. His whole