Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

for her.”
    He said nothing, but picked up his suit jacket and stepped out the door toward his rendezvous with the demoness.

Chapter Fifteen
     
    “S inging inside La Fenice is like being inside a diamond,” a famous diva had once said.
    The opera house’s interior sparkled like a diamond. A gold-and-crystal chandelier flowered from the sky-frescoed ceiling. The velvet-covered seats and tiers of mirrored boxes ascended in layers of gilded splendor. The acoustics allowed the bright, beautifully polished voices to ring through the theater with matchless clarity.
    Like being inside a diamond.
    Trapped inside something beautiful and glittering, yet hard and lifeless.
    That was what the phrase meant to Luciana.
    In the Royal Box across from center stage, the demoness sat in the very heart of this diamond, looking as flawless as a gem in her white silk gown. Every operagoer milling in the seats below and the boxes around her craned their necks to get a look at her. Of all the things that sparkled inside La Fenice tonight, Luciana shone the brightest.
    Yet, all she could think of was death.
    She ignored the open stares of her fellow operagoers, not seeing them. The fluttering scores of richly dressed Venetians and tourists who had come to the opera in their summer evening clothes. Drifting layers of cleverly designed chiffon and jewels draping the women. Crisply ironed white linen beneath the dark suits of the men.
    One day, sooner than they think, each and every one of them will die.
    No matter how beautiful.
    They all admired her, of course. They coveted her beauty and the exclusivity of her place. But what these mortals thought made no difference to her.
    None of them could alter fate.
    Not their own. Not hers. Not Brandon’s.
    And she hated this feeling. Of being exposed. A sitting duck.
    A pawn of men.
    “With the devil as my witness,” she muttered under her breath, “I will never let this happen again.”
    She looked at the program, blindly browsing through its pages. La Traviata.
    Of course, she thought. The opera with a heroine named Violetta.
    Luciana had seen this opera dozens of times, with numerous stars over the years, each more brilliant and more lucid than the rest. In the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. At the Met in New York. At La Scala in Rome. At the Opéra Bastille in Paris…
    But never waiting for a man like this.
    She set her gaze on the stage, listening to the music and losing herself in the world of the opera. She loved opera not only because she adored the beauty of the singers’ voices. Not only because she loved to sink into the richness of these stories she had watched so many times, and knew so well.
    For Luciana, opera was like traveling backward in time. Through music, she felt as though she could almost return to the past. To a time when she had been innocent and unhindered by the knowledge that death touched everything. Untouched by the reality of being a bringer of death herself.
    There was only sound.
    When the door opened behind her, a strange sensation throbbed in her chest, a kind of ache she remembered from human life. Something like regret.
    She had felt many things before a kill.
    Fear. Elation. Anger. A desire for vengeance.
    But never anything like this.
    I have no choice, she told herself. I must perform my duty.
    * * *
     
    Inside the opera house, Brandon felt her dark energy smoldering. Unsettled. He tracked that energy up to the second floor of the small opera house, where he could feel the sensual pull of her, simmering.
    He entered her box through a small door. Closed it behind him.
    Alone, on a red velvet chair, sat the demoness.
    His first impression was that he had slipped into another era, two and a half centuries ago. Before his eyes a vision of Luciana drifted. Of the demoness as a very young woman, still human, attending the opera with her family, happy amongst the companionship of others.
    The mirage glimmered for an instant and then evaporated, shifting back to the present.
    She turned slightly toward the noise of the door, but did not meet his eyes. Her luxuriant, curling hair was upswept, leaving her shoulders and back exposed. Her dress, elegant, bias-cut white silk, poured like water over her bare skin. Along the long column of her throat, he saw her throat tighten, his heightened awareness of her tiny swallow, a motion so subtle, yet so sensual. He wanted to reach out, run his fingers along the length of her neck.
    In a dream, he might have done