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

helped me chase him into the woods.”
    “What about the girl?” said Daciana.
    She wielded a steel pipe over me when I was weak, as if she intended to kill me , Sergio thought.
    But she couldn’t do it.
    “I left her here,” he said.
    “So where did she go?”
    “Your guess is as good as mine.”
    “I can take a pretty good guess,” Daciana said. “Renata couldn’t risk leaving the girl alive. She must be dead, right?”
    “I don’t know,” said Sergio, lying yet again. He didn’t know where Nicky was, he didn’t know how she got out of here, but he knew with absolute certainty she was alive.
    He felt it in his heart. Nicky Bloom is alive and well, and I need to find her.
    “Come on,” Daciana said. “We don’t have long before daylight, and we have an entire villa to explore.”

Chapter 3
     
    In his time, Sergio had visited all the great castles of Europe. He spent time in the largest palaces of the landed gentry in England, Spain, and France. He watched as Daciana built ever-larger and more opulent mansions across the United States, every new immortal getting a custom-built home that was the envy of the Western World.
    He had never seen a home as magnificent as Falkon Dillinger’s.
    The laboratory occupied just a tiny corner of the estate, which covered an entire valley between peaks of the Alps. Strolling across the villa, Sergio and Daciana counted eleven buildings in all, each of them beautiful and unique. Together, these buildings encircled a magnificent courtyard and statue garden.
    Daciana spoke in open admiration of the place as they explored, every feature seeming to give her a new decorating idea for her own home. She was particularly enamored with the five-story library that stood adjacent to the lab.
    “A space designed for someone who has all the time in the world,” was how Daciana described the library.
    “Or thought he did,” Sergio added.
    The area just east of the library was of interest to Sergio. It matched a vision that had been in his mind for the past four months. A small clearing near the forest, plate glass windows on the surrounding buildings, and a silver sphere mounted on a pedestal in the center of it all.
    “Oh, look at this,” Daciana said, rushing at the same sculpture that Sergio had seen in Nicky’s mind. “This was his symbol, you know. Back when we all used wax seals to identify our correspondence.” Daciana circled around the silver sphere, lightly dragging her fingertips on its surface. “Falkon thought it was so amusing that he was a creature of the night who sealed his letters with a picture of the sun. It’s funny to say, but I’m going to miss him.”
    “One by one, your greatest enemies have fallen,” Sergio said.
    “Fortunately, there are always new ones ready to take their place. Keeps it interesting. Look over there. I don’t think we’ve seen that part of the lab yet.”
    Daciana was pointing at a concrete wing attached to the lab’s western wall. The wing looked to be a relatively new addition.
    “Come on, there will be a door on the other side,” Daciana said.
    As they rounded the west wall of the lab, they walked past a small brick house high on the hill above them.
    “Guest home, no doubt,” Daciana said dismissively. “A place this size needs at least one.”
    “Yes, of course,” Sergio said. He was relieved that Daciana showed no interest in the house. He had seen Nicky’s memory of this space enough times to know there was something significant about the little brick house on the hillside. He made a mental note to come back here later, at a time when Daciana was occupied.
    The concrete addition to the lab turned out to be a giant computer room. Row upon impressive row of computer servers, hundreds of them, all networked together, and attached to a single interface in the center.
    “Let’s see what happens if I turn this on,” Daciana said, shaking the mouse.
    The monitor came alive to a black screen with a blinking