Interlude: Cavatina

  Interlude: Cavatina

  Tal Bauer

  Tal Bauer Writes

  This novel contains scenes of mature sexual content.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material or electronic form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning, uploading, emailing, distributing, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, Tal Bauer.

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 9781723993916

  Copyright © 2019 Tal Bauer

  Cover Art by The Cover Collection © Copyright 2019

  Published in 2019 by Tal Bauer

  United States of America

  This one is for y’all.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. Vatican City, Rome

  2. Manama, Bahrain

  3. McLean, Virginia

  4. Vatican City, Rome

  5. Manama, Bahrain

  6. McLean, Virginia

  7. Vatican City, Rome

  8. Outside Austin, Texas

  9. McLean, Virginia

  10. Houston, Texas

  11. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  12. Outside Austin, Texas

  13. Moscow, Russia

  14. Washington DC

  15. Wyoming

  16. President’s Day

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Tal Bauer

  Introduction

  Cavatina: A solo in the midst of a larger composition

  Interlude: Cavatina gives you a glimpse into the holiday lives of every romantic couple I’ve written to date.

  For some, this is a brief and happy check in. For others, this is a glimpse at their ongoing adventures.

  Each couple’s story is independent of the others. And, though they all appear together in this novel, each universe remains separate and distinct. The Executive Office and the Hush/Whisper universes are not connected. The A Time to Rise universe also stands on its own.

  Readers may not be familiar with every couple or have read every novel. It is perfectly okay to read only the couples you care to.

  If you choose to read a couple’s interlude you haven’t been exposed to before, fear not! I have taken care to keep certain details back in case you are inspired to pick up one of my novels you haven’t had a chance to try yet.

  The couples and their novels referenced in this book are:

  Cristoph & Alain from A Time to Rise - Vatican City, Rome

  Adam & Faisal from the Executive Office series - Manama, Bahrain & Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Kris & Dawood from Whisper - McLean, Virginia

  Tom & Mike from Hush - Washington DC

  Sergey & Sasha from the Executive Office series - Houston, Texas & Moscow, Russia

  Jack & Ethan from the Executive Office series - Austin, Texas & Wyoming

  I hope you enjoy this brief interlude with your favorite characters. As always, it’s you who keep these stories alive. Thank you for all of your support.

  Tal Bauer

  2019

  1

  Vatican City, Rome

  African Blackwood ash and soot clung to Cristoph’s fingers.

  Clumps gouged deep under his nails and turned them black, and smudges made rivers in the whorls of his fingertips. He scrubbed his hands raw under the solitary lightbulb over the kitchen sink, trying to get the last remnants of a banished wraith burned out of existence off his skin.

  Happy laughter from tourists milling in St. Peter’s Square flowed into the apartment, carried on a draft. Frigid air sluiced up his arms, almost like the wraith was still fighting him.

  Cristoph sighed and pitched forward, gripping the sink edges as he closed his eyes. The icy water splashed, the uneven spatter and flow like a crazed drum beat, the wild syncopations of his exhausted mind.

  “Here.” Luca slid a cup of coffee across the warped counter and hunched over his own, the steam rising to his weary face.

  A year ago, when Cristoph first laid eyes on Luca Bader, Luca had been a man cut from marble, a commanding force to be reckoned with. He was built like a Roman god, with a chiseled jaw and shoulders that spread for days.

  Now, shadows lived in the hollows of his cheeks and beneath his eyes, smudged into the furrows and caverns of his exhausted face. His strength had shifted to an ever-present exhaustion that seemed to mirror the exact pitch of Cristoph’s soul.

  Cristoph turned off the tap, the old pipes rattling, and rubbed at the cursed ash lingering on his skin. “How many risings so far?”

  “Nine this week.” Luca squeezed shut his eyes and then opened them wide, as if trying to force the morning sunlight into his brain. “Wraiths are rising all over the city.”

  “I can’t take another night like this.” Cristoph slumped over his coffee, too tired to even drink. He breathed in the steam trying to inhale the caffeine.

  “Or another day,” Luca groaned.

  Advent had arrived in Vatican City. Three weeks before, a hundred-foot-tall Christmas tree from Poland had arrived via train, addressed to the pope himself. Overnight, Christmas descended, the giant tree going up in St. Peter’s Square and strung with decorations and enough bulbs to turn the square as bright as day, even in the dead hours of the night. A life-size nativity circled the tree and the obelisk. Tourists and pilgrims flocked to Vatican City, more than doubling the daily visitor count. Only Easter saw more visitors to the Holy City.

  The whole season put a strain on the Swiss Guard and the Vatican police. Everyone was pulling triple shifts and trading duties here and there to catch a few hours of sleep. In the years past, when Luca was second in command of the Swiss Guard, Luca had been a force of nature that kept the halberdiers going. There were rumors he’d even quietly stood posts all over the Vatican when the newest enlistees couldn’t keep going under the bruising holiday schedule. He’d been tough, everyone said, but also kind, in his own quiet way.

  Commandant Luca Bader was almost a different man these days, Cristoph heard the guards whisper. He’d gone quiet. He’d turned away. He was distant, and wasn’t involved in soccer or the canteen anymore. Maybe it was everything that had happened over summer, the rumors said. The gruesome deaths in the Vatican, including the former commander, Commandant Best. Maybe it was the yoke of failure hanging around Luca’s neck. Everyone knew he’d been summoned to the Holy Father’s summer residence, alone, and had come back undeniably, unequivocally different.

  If only the men knew, Cristoph thought. If only they had any idea at all.

  He and Luca had found an equilibrium of sorts. He wouldn’t call them friends. But Cristoph had at least gone from wanting to gut-punch the man, to take him on in a no-holds-barred back alley brawl, to sharing coffee at dawn.

  Discovering that every dark nightmare, every haunting, every nefarious spirit—from revenants to vampires to Lucifer himself—existed could bring men together.

  Cristoph had found out about the darkness, the etheric, and the Veil beyond before Luca had, though. He’d found out from Alain Autenburg, his mentor and—at the time—the only Knight Templar under orders by the Holy Father to protect the world from the darkness.

  A frenzied night of demonic attacks against the Vatican, Alain’s kidnapping, and a fight against twin demons summoned by an archbishop working in concert with the devils, and everything changed.

  Cristoph was now the appointed Knight Templar. He hadn’t been knighted by the Holy Father or given any special ceremony like Alain had. Cristoph’s promotion into the secret order of the Resurrected Knights Templar had been a bureaucratic thing, a piece of paper in his file, and a stumbled-over oath. And then back to work, back to Alain’s abandoned office and his dusty tomes and old fi
les and everything Cristoph still had to learn. He’d had one day and one night of training, before—

  At least that was one more day and night than Luca.

  Cristoph watched Luca’s shoulder blades rise and fall through the dirty cotton of his undershirt. Why Luca insisted on coming with him on his hunts was still a mystery. Luca was the commandant of the Swiss Guard now. He was supposed to lead the men, work hand in hand with the Holy Father, jet off to all the countries the pope visited as his personal security man, his closest bodyguard. Luca seemed to prefer to let Major Ewe live in the spotlight while he spent late evenings with Cristoph hunched over medieval books and ancient scrolls, learning spells and rituals and crawling through Rome’s underbelly carrying the ash of a crucifix, blades carved from vampire bones, and wormwood staves as they hunted the dark creatures rising around them once more.

  Cristoph jumped when Luca spoke, Luca’s voice rumbling as it echoed off the countertop and muffled between his arms. “Do we have any idea why the dramatic rise in activity?”

  He thought Luca had fallen asleep. He shrugged. He knew twenty-four hours’ more information than Luca. Nothing in those twenty-four hours would tell him why wraiths and ghouls were suddenly running rampant around Rome, seemingly popping up overnight.

  “Have you asked—”

  “If he were here to ask, I would,” Cristoph snapped.

  Silence. “He hasn’t come back?”

  Cristoph kicked at a torn corner of the kitchen’s old linoleum. “You’d think he’d want to help.” After all, hadn’t Alain wanted to spare Cristoph? Keep him away from the Knights and the battles against the etheric?

  Didn’t Alain want him anymore? He’d come back to the Vatican, at least, and he’d said—

  “I wish Lotario were here.” Cristoph forced thoughts of Alain away. “He’d know what to do.” He’d know what to do about everything. Alain, the risings around Rome. What to do, and how to stop feeling like he was playing tag with a ghost, chasing someone who never wanted to be found.

  As always, at any mention of Lotario, Luca flinched. He turned away, shutting down, his face going flat as marble, still as death. “Any word?”

  “He’s still at the monastery. Recovering. He may never leave. The abbot says he’s in seclusion and refuses to see anyone. They’re having a hard time breaking the curse.”

  Luca swallowed. Cristoph watched his jaw clench, the muscles bulge.

  In the courtyard below the Swiss Guard’s barracks, one of the sergeants called the morning shift of halberdiers to order. The click of boots striking cobblestones echoed, followed by a bark of orders, a call and response. Major Ewe’s voice followed, encouragements to the guards, congratulating them on their fourteenth straight day of duties and nonstop shifts.

  “I need to get down there,” Luca sighed. “I’m filling in for the Apostolic Palace. The halberdiers there are about to collapse. Too many visitors for the Holy Father.”

  “You’ve already collapsed.”

  Luca snorted. “Apparently, I like the punishment. I like when it hurts.” Again, he flinched, his pupils contracting so suddenly, so painfully, Cristoph almost asked about it. There was something there, something that had happened to Luca, beyond the discovery of the darkness and his new self-imposed role as Cristoph’s still-learning assistant.

  But Luca wouldn’t talk about it, and Cristoph had never asked.

  He let Luca keep his secrets. He didn’t need to know. They weren’t friends, weren’t connected beyond their duties. Whatever Luca was dealing with, it had nothing to do with Cristoph.

  * * *

  One tiny blessing came with Cristoph’s new duties. As the sergeant assigned to the banal-sounding Special Projects of the Vatican Swiss Guard, he wasn’t required to stand post with the rest of the halberdiers or the officers. Instead, Cristoph spent his morning hunched over the rickety desk in Alain’s closet of an office. Somehow, Alain’s office was still a complete piece of shit, even after the Swiss Guard rebuilt the barracks after being blasted apart in autumn.

  He flipped through Alain’s old records, year after year of Decembers that tracked the hauntings and risings and etheric attacks throughout Rome. Every year, there was a dramatic rise in activity starting around late October. One year, Alain had plotted the activity along Rome’s ley line. He squinted at the mess of Xs spread across a map of the city, scattered near a bright red ley line bisecting the sprawl. Was there something there, something about the line? Why now? Why December?

  He jerked as the antique phone rang, the clatter of brass bells and old squeaking gears shattering the stillness of the stone office. “Sergeant Hasse,” he answered.

  “Sergeant, it’s Detective Conti.”

  Angelo, their counterpart in the Italian carabinieri, on secret assignment to Special Projects, Paranormal Security. Angelo and Alain had been friends. Cristoph had met the man once, before—

  “How can I help you?” He’d never quite lost the discomfort he’d felt around Angelo. Angelo had held onto him that entire night, after everything had gone wrong and he’d fallen entirely apart in Angelo’s arms. The only thing Angelo had ever said about that night was how wrong Cristoph had been. What have you done to him?

  Angelo, it seemed, hadn’t figured out how to speak to him, either. He grunted before he spoke, cleared his throat. “I got a report of some cases in Trastevere that I think is in our area of expertise.”

  Paranormal. Etheric. Unnatural. “What’s going on?”

  “Handful of cases of locals found drained.”

  Drained. “Of what?”

  “Everything. Blood, soul, energy. Their husks are found in the backs of alleys.”

  Cristoph’s pulse pounded. “Any bite marks?”

  Angelo hesitated. “Not that we’ve found.”

  “A soul drain sounds more like an incubus or a succubus.” Cristoph shifted. He’d fallen victim to an incubus, had almost been consumed by one. Alain had saved him at the cost of falling victim as well. He still remembered the white-hot heat, the searing intensity of kissing Alain as they had tried to consummate their incubus-induced lust.

  When they finally had made love without the incubus’ control, it had been far, far hotter.

  “Can you send over the information? We’ll take a look.”

  “Will do.” Angelo paused. “If you… need any help, let me know.”

  “Thanks.” Angelo hadn’t offered to come out on a hunt with Cristoph, not yet. “I appreciate that.”

  Angelo grunted and hung up. Cristoph’s computer chimed, and an incoming email from Angelo flashed up, autopsy reports and scans of photos coming in from three crime scenes in Trastevere, across the Tiber from the Vatican in old Rome. Cristoph pulled his coffee closer and opened the images, blowing up the photos as large as he could, checking everywhere for bite marks.

  His stomach clenched.

  * * *

  Luca’s eyeballs felt like they’d been sanded down, rubbed with broken glass. He blinked hard, shifted his weight from foot to foot. Why had he offered to fill the day-long shift inside the Apostolic Palace, guarding the door to the Holy Father’s apartments?

  Thankfully it was a slow day. The Holy Father was taking a day of rest, ensconced in meditation and prayer in his study, and visitors were forbidden.

  That’s why Luca had agreed at the time. He could stand guard alone, give the team of halberdiers who had stood their posts for two weeks straight a break. Let them sleep for six uninterrupted hours before they had to fill in for the rest of the holiday posts scattered across the Vatican at all hours of the day and night.

  He’d paced the length of the gilded hallway, stared at every speck of paint on the enormous seascape mural. He’d tried to sit and relax his weary muscles, but he’d started to nod off. No more sitting.

  Ice seemed to flood down his spine, a wash of cold that felt like his bones were stripped bare. Electricity arced between his molars, and the scent of air burned after a summer storm filled his no
se. He tasted dirt and snakeskin. The hint of rot.

  He froze. His heart pounded, suddenly wild. Adrenaline coursed through him, bathing his body, firing his muscles, his brain. He was alert, awake, instantly.

  A soft sigh from the darkness. “I can hear your heartbeat.” The voice was no more than a whisper, breath raked over ancient parchment.

  Like every time he heard his voice, Luca’s entire being lurched, the center of himself yanked toward the creature who spoke. “What are you doing here?”

  Alain slipped from the darkness at the end of the hall. He stood in half shadow behind a statue of a saint beseeching God. “You’re alone.”

  His heart shouldn’t thunder. He shouldn’t react like prey, cornered by a hunter.

  But that’s exactly what he was.

  Alain’s sulfur yellow vampire eyes gleamed from the shadows, the unblinking stare of a predator.

  “Are you here to see the Holy Father?”

  Alain shook his head.

  He should step back. Walk away. Put distance between him and Alain. He should move. His hands clenched, nails digging into his skin, into his palms, until it hurt. The pain reminded him of Cristoph. “Why don’t you go home? To Cristoph?”

  Alain flinched, whispering away behind the saint’s statue. His gleaming eyes peered between the curve of the saint’s arm, the bend in her marble elbow. “I can’t. Not like this.”

  “Why are you here?”