Carpathian 00 - The Scarletti Curse

of our women and children will that place swallow before it is done?" Nicoletta demanded, her dark eyes flashing like flames with anger. "Must we pay our debts with our lives?"
    "Hush," Maria Pia insisted. "You go back to the villaggio. With this attitude, you should not accompany me."
    Nicoletta marched past the older woman, her back stiff, her slender shoulders squared, outrage in her every step. "As if I would leave you to face Signore Morte alone. You cannot save this one without me. I feel it, Maria Pia. I must go if she is to live." Nicoletta ignored Maria Pia's outraged gasp at her openly admitting to knowing something not yet revealed to them. She tried not to smile as Maria Pia solemnly made the sign of the cross, first on herself and then over Nicoletta.
    Mist was swirling up from the foaming sea, fine, sifted droplets of salt water curling around their ankles and clinging to their clothing. The wind was savage now, rising up off the ocean waves to slam into their small frames as if trying to drive them back. They were forced to slow their pace and choose their way carefully over the little-used path to the hulking palazzo. As they rounded the narrow, steep cliff jutting up from the sea, and the palazzo came into sight, the setting sun finally slipped below the horizon of water, thrusting a bloodred stain across the sky above.
    Maria Pia cried out, halting as the vivid color swept across the heavens, a portent of disaster and death.
    She moaned softly, trembling as she rocked back and forth, clutching at the cross she wore around her neck. "We go to our doom."
    Nicoletta put an arm protectively around the older woman's shoulders, her young face passionate and fierce. "No, we do not. I will not lose you, Maria Pia. I will not. He cannot swallow you as he has the others! I shall prove too strong for him and his terrible curses."
    The wind howled and tore at their clothes, raging against her challenge.
    "Do not say such things, bambino.. It is dangerous to speak such words aloud." Maria Pia straightened her shoulders. "I am an old woman; better that I go alone. I have lived my life, Nicoletta, while yours is just beginning."

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    "The Palazzo Delia Morte has taken mia madre and mia zia. It will not swallow you, too. I will not allow it!" Nicoletta vowed fiercely, hurtling the words back at the wild wind, refusing to bow down before its savage intensity. "I am going with you as always, and he can go to hell!"
    Maria Pia gasped her shock and blessed Nicoletta three times before proceeding along the path. The wind shrieked its outrage of Nicoletta's defiance, roaring through the pass, and dislodged pebbles that trickled down from above them, pelting the two women as they hurried between the two cliffs. Nicoletta circled the older woman's head protectively with one arm, trying to shelter her from the shower of stones cascading down around them as they ran.
    "Does he command the very mountains?" Maria Pia cried. Her words were whipped away from her and taken out to sea by the fury of the wind.
    "Are you hurt?" Nicoletta demanded, running her hands over the older woman, looking for injuries, her anger and defiance swirling together like the mist. She was gentle, however, her touch light and soothing despite the emotions seething within her.
    "No, I am not hurt at all," Maria Pia assured her. "What about you?"
    Nicoletta shrugged. Her left arm felt numb, but the rock that had hit her hadn't been particularly large, and she felt lucky to have escaped with only a bruise. They were on the palazzo grounds now, and overhead the clouds darkened and roiled like a witch's cauldron. Long, dark shadows sprawled everywhere, shading each bush and tree and statue as the mansion loomed up before them. It rose right out of the cliff, a glistening castle with its enormous tower reaching toward the heavens. Huge, heavy sculptures and smaller, more delicate ones dotted the grounds, which also boasted great stones carved into impressive barricades around the maze and gardens. Two huge marble fountains with gilded edges and heavily laced with winged pagan deities rose up in the centers of the rounded courts.
    Nicoletta and Maria Pia now made their way up an immaculate path to the castle door, the statues glaring at them and the wind continually battering them. The door was massive and intricately carved.
    Nicoletta studied the carvings for a moment while Maria