5
The dark blue powerboat was speeding through the inky darkness of the Venetian night, heading south, past San Clemente, towards a small island situated some distance from its nearest neighbour.
This island only covered three or four acres, and was dominated by a large and impressive Venetian mansion, a five-storey edifice in grey stone that sat at its highest point. Directly below the house was a substantial stone- built jetty capable of berthing perhaps a dozen powerboats. At first sight, the jetty seemed ridiculously large, but the lagoon provided the only means of access to and from the property.
Four other vessels were already secured to the bollards that edged the jetty, but the driver of the blue powerboat had plenty of space to manoeuvre. He brought the boat alongside the landing stage, put the gearbox into reverse, and expertly stopped the vessel close enough for one of the other men to step ashore. In moments, both mooring lines were secured and the engine shut down.
The driver assisted his two passengers in manhandling the rolled carpet on to the jetty, where they lowered it to the ground.
‘I think she can walk from here,’ one of the men said, unrolling the carpet and pulling Marietta Perini to her feet. The man with the taser checked her wrists were still securely bound, ripped off her gag, then aimed the weapon at her and squeezed the trigger. The girl shrank back as the evil blue spark jumped from one electrode to the other with an audible crack.
‘What do you want with me?’ she said, her voice trembling with fear.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ the man snapped. ‘Now, do exactly what we tell you, or-’ He triggered the taser again, then pointed towards the house. ‘Go up there,’ he ordered.
Marietta stared around her, at the small island with its grass-covered slopes, clumps of bushes and occasional small trees, and at the house itself. Beyond it lay the waters of the Venetian lagoon. Pockets of mist were drifting over the surface, driven by light breezes. She looked at the pitiless faces of the three men who had abducted her from the city of her birth. A surge of pure terror coursed through her body as she realized she was beyond help.
‘I have a friend,’ she said desperately. ‘I was on my way to visit him. When I don’t arrive, he’ll call the police.’
The man with the taser smiled at her, but it was not a smile of amusement. ‘I’ve no doubt he will, and I’m sure the carabinieri will make all the right noises and do their best to reassure him. But we left no clues, and nobody saw what we did. It’s as if you simply vanished from the face of the earth. The police will never find us, or you. And even if they did,’ he added, ‘it wouldn’t make any difference, because you’re not the first.’
Marietta stared at him, and then she screamed, a cry of terror that stopped only when the last vestige of breath had been driven from her lungs.
‘Feel better now? Get moving. We have people waiting for you.’
Marietta gasped for breath and stared round again, looking desperately for anything or anyone that might offer her some hope. But there was nothing.
6
‘A diary? You mean a vampire diary?’ Bronson asked. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I’ve only had a very quick look at it,’ Angela said, ‘but as far as I can tell it contains a list of dates and events, which is pretty much a definition of a diary, I suppose.’
‘So what are these events? If they’re written in Italian, you’ll probably need my help to translate them.’
‘Actually, I won’t,’ Angela said, ‘unless you’ve added Latin to your repertoire of languages. At the time this burial originally took place, Latin was still being used as an international language, and it remained the language of classical scholarship right through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even today some documents and treatises are composed in Latin, and of course it’s still the official written language of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican.’
She leaned forward and handed the book carefully to Bronson.
‘Our woman was buried in the first half of the nineteenth century. If she came from an educated and aristocratic family, which she probably did if her tomb is anything to go by, she might well have spoken Italian or a local dialect in daily life, but she would certainly have been able to read Latin, and probably would have used it for all her letters and written communications. Frankly, I’d have been amazed if the language in the book was anything other than Latin.’
‘So what have you translated so far?’ Bronson asked.
‘I haven’t had time to do more than glance at a few of the pages. But I’ve already found several references to blood, to its healing and rejuvenating properties, and in a couple of places there are descriptions of rituals that seem to involve drinking blood. I really think this might be a vampire’s diary.’
Bronson groaned. ‘Does this mean that our sight-seeing holiday is now going to be replaced by the two of us sitting in this hotel room translating a two-hundred-year-old diary, written by someone who thought she was a vampire?’
Angela grinned. ‘Of course not. This is just a curio. Nobody knows we found it, and it’s frankly of little or no interest to anybody except someone like me, or an historian specializing in that period of Italian or Venetian history. It’s pretty fragile, so what I will do is scan the pages into my laptop so that the text will be preserved, even if the book falls to pieces. Then I’ll take it back to London and work on it in my spare time. As far as I’m concerned, we continue with our holiday just like before.’
She looked across at Bronson. ‘Speaking of which,’ she added, ‘isn’t it about time we had something to eat? That bar of chocolate we shared on the island seems like a long time ago.’
Bronson glanced at his watch and nodded. ‘You’re absolutely right. I feel a bowl of spaghetti coming on. That family restaurant on the corner might still be open.’
‘Good idea,’ Angela said, standing up. ‘I’ll just nip down to reception and see if I can borrow their scanner, and then I’ll be ready to go.’
7
Marietta Perini walked slowly towards the double wooden doors set into the front facade of the grey stone house. Her senses were acutely sharpened by the terror coursing through her, and she noticed that the ground-floor windows, on the right-hand side of the entrance door, were brightly illuminated. Through the old glass, she could see a pair of elegant chandeliers, brilliant clusters of cut glass studded with tiny electric lights. And she could also see figures in the room, perhaps three or four men in elegant evening clothes, moving about and talking and drinking.
She took another couple of steps towards the doors, then felt a tug on her arm.
‘Not that way,’ one of her captors snapped, pointing instead to a stone path that ran around the side of the house.
Marietta turned down the path, wondering about the scene she’d glimpsed inside the spacious salon. It looked to her like an upmarket reception, a social evening, or maybe even a group of wealthy men enjoying an aperitif before sitting down to a banquet.
But that didn’t square with what was happening to her. The men who had abducted her in Venice were malevolent, evil, she was certain. Though it didn’t make sense, perhaps they were nothing to do with the elegantly dressed men in the salon she was walking away from. Maybe the people inside the property could be her salvation?
Marietta took a deep breath and screamed her heart out, a shriek of agony and terror that bounced off the walls of the house.
