Page 92 of Fratelli: Eternal Bloodlines

Sophie is dead,Shakespeare replied, his thoughts of vengeance extending to everything and everyone.

Where are you?Domencio repeated, his voice colder now.

Did you not hear me?Shakespeare’s response seethed with frustration.I said Sophie is gone… not dead. Worse, she’s something else.

Silence. The telepathic link buzzed with dark energy, a void that amplified Shakespeare’s pain. Blood tears welled in hiseyes, and he blinked them away as he leaned into his motorcycle. He remained reckless. He pushed it faster through the night. He needed distance—from Tristan, from everything. But vengeance drove him, and it couldn’t be denied.

How did she die?

What do you mean, ‘how’? You know how!Shakespeare’s mind recoiled from the mere thought of accessing the memory of Sophie’s death. Beyond his control, he was forced to tell Domencio the events of the evening that his master should have been able to extract from his mind.

The Guardian came to the club. She attacked me, and Sophie… Sophie wanted to protect me. It’s our fault, Domencio. She warned us. She had visions, and we ignored her. You cursed her. I never asked for it. I didn’t ask either you or Lucio for any of this! And now she’s in the vaults in the Venetian. Her body didn’t turn to ash. She didn’t resurrect. She’s not dead, but she’s not undead… She’s eroding because of the guardians’ magic.

Domencio’s pause was as sharp as a blade.

Where are you?

I am hunting him.

Hunting who?

Tristan! Tristan! Tristan!Shakespeare’s mental voice cracked with rage. You can feel me. You can see me! Why are you asking where I am?

And where is Tristan headed?

He’s escaped with the Guardian. He’s headed to the desert.Shakespeare’s thoughts were a tempest of emotion. He could feel Domencio’s presence and could sense the dark power that his sire wielded with little effort, a power that should have prevented all of it.

You chose not to inform me of these events? You choose to act without my approval. You chosevengeance over loyalty. Look at what happened because of it. Sophie was yours to protect, but once again, your pride became the ruler of your choices. What choice are you going to make now?

Shakespeare’s silence was heavy, laden with guilt and sorrow. Sophie’s death had struck deeper than he had ever imagined. Their history was tangled and painful. He remembered the past. How he met Sophie and Camille. Two half-sisters divided by race. Same father, different mothers. Sophie’s mother was Cajun like him. Camille’s mother was black creole, and her birth father was never mentioned or recognized. Shakespeare grew up in the bayou where secrets and sins ran deep.

1940– Houma, Louisiana

Sophie had been little more than a pretend sister to Shakespeare when they were kids, her crush on him a sweet nuisance he’d tolerated with a kind heart. But everything changed the day Sophie snuck him into the Manchac swamp to meet her sister and the Creole musicians starting their own band. It was the day he met Camille.

Camille lived with the other colored folk outside the Manchac swampland, where the land hummed with old songs and secrets carried on the wind. She was their songbird, her voice spellbinding, the heart of their gatherings.

In one of his poems, Shakespeare had written:

Her voice drifted through the humid night…

Carried on the bayou’s breath by her eternal light…

Driving away all things forbidden in the night…

When she sang, they all were free…

Everyone could just be…

The best part of the jubilee.

It was true: when Camille sang on the Chitlin Circuit with her brother’s band, the universe itself seemed to pause and listen. Before he became “Shakespeare” to the world, he was simply “Beaux.” They were both young when they fell in love—Beaux, with his worn overalls and bare feet; Camille, with her colorful dress cut from a feed sack, swaying as she sang. Their bond was deep and unbreakable, a wound to Sophie’s heart. Before Beaux came between them, the sisters had been inseparable, bound by secrets of their creation. But Beaux’s love for Camille shattered that, driving Sophie to a jealous fury he couldn’t have foreseen. For Beaux, it didn’t matter; he needed Camille. That they came from different worlds only heightened their passion—he, a Cajun boy who loved poetry and the saxophone; she, a Creole with caramel skin, a voice that could break hearts, and a spirit that burned with a rare magic.

With Camille, Beaux found his purpose. They built a life together, running a juke joint near the Manchac swamp, hosting shows and wild moonshine dances under the stars. Their love was the soul of that place. They became legends in the swamp, names whispered with envy and admiration. Even the authorities, who would’ve shut down any other joint, turned a blind eye. Camille had that effect on people.

But Sophie was always there, watching, waiting, her love for Beaux hidden behind a brittle smile. She’d kept her desire to be her sister’s equal, if not her replacement, locked away. Then, under a moonlit night, she met Lucio, a vampire lurking in the shadows of the juke joint. She was drawn to his darkness, the loneliness he wore like armor. Lucio’s allure was too powerful, his magnetic pull too strong. So Sophie introduced him to Beaux and Camille, hoping to unsettle their happiness, to spark jealousy in Beaux. But in the end, it was Beaux’s own ambition—his hunger for fame, for more than their simple life—that spelled Camille’s doom. Lucio’s offer of power and fame helda seduction that Camille couldn’t break. She was, after all, his greatest prize.

Sophie realized her mistake too late. A hoodoo priestess had warned of a dark force coming to claim the bloodline of Julia Brown, the ancestors of Camille’s family. But Lucio’s influence already wrapped itself around Camille and Beaux, blinding them. The night Lucio finally claimed Camille was the night everything changed. His brothers—Sebastiano and Domencio—descended on the swamp like a plague, and Camille was their prize, the key to breaking an ancient curse. One by one, Camille’s family members fell, each taken by one of the vampire brothers. Beaux woke to the horror too late; the truth struck him like a storm. Desperate for revenge, he tried to fight Lucio, but the vampire only laughed, allowing him to strike. Beaux’s counter blows were met with amusement.

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