Page 34 of Fratelli: Eternal Bloodlines

Liora was helped to her feet. Carmen looked at Lamont, confused but relieved that he had made the choice with no encouragement from her.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Liora saw the backpack on Russell’s lap. She smiled. Lamont glanced back at Russell, who was confused and wary.

“Your sister’s back. They are in the suite. She’s not feeling well. We need to get upstairs,” said Lamont.

“What? Dolly is hurt?” Russell asked.

Lamont nodded. “Come with me. I’ll take you both to her.”

Chapter 15

The Wonder Twins

Bellagio - Las Vegas, Nevada

April 17, 2018

(4 Days Before Death)

“Darlene?”

Together they had saved Lucio, but at what cost? When her sister’s hand slipped from hers and she lay completely still, Dolly panicked. She picked up Darlene’s badly injured body and brought her into her arms. She sobbed. The tears that flowed were endless.

“Please, please wake up. Please. Please.”

“What are you doing?”

Startled, Dolly's head whipped to the right. Darlene stood behind her. Not as the six-year-old in her arms, but as the woman Dolly knew her to be. When Dolly looked down, she noticed young Darlene was no longer cradled near her breast. It was a version of her. She wore the white shirt and jeans she’d chosen to put on when they left the canyon. A version of her on the bed in the hotel suite with blood spittle all over the front of her white shirt.

“What is happening?”

“I dunno,” said Darlene.“Do you remember when I told you about that vampire? The one that is the father?”

Dolly nodded.

“I think this is his place. We need to leave,” Darlene whispered.

The girls saw the darkness shifting. To them, it appeared thick, alive, scaly, like a coiled snake around them. It got tighter and closer.

Dolly laid the version of her she held back down into the darkness. It moved swifter like smoke and washed over the physical body they both had departed from. She looked at her sister. “I don’t understand any of this.

“Me either,” Darlene whispered. She knelt at Dolly’s side. They stared at the Dolly who lay before them like a sleeping beauty. “Is that how Lucio sees us now? He must be so scared for us.”

“For you, he doesn’t want me,” mumbled Darlene.

“That’s not true. You heard him say it,” Dolly said.

Darlene rolled her eyes.

“He has always said we need to accept that we are one,” said Dolly.

“We aren’t one,” said Darlene. “You are you and I am me.”

“We saved Lucio as one. And now look. She… that’s who he sees, Darlene. He sees us as one. Maybe we are? Maybe that is the key to all of this.”

“No, I dunno. What does it matter? I think she’s dead. And that creepy ass vampire is here. I can feel him. He’s coming for us.” Darlene looked up at the smoke shifting down closer to them. “I think we’re trapped in him. This is his hell.”

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