AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I have no idea.”
“Well.” He fluffed his collar once more, his eyes looking around, not wanting to leave the paintings.
“The sooner you go, Dr. Lovell, the sooner you can return to them,” I teased.
He nodded, walking up the stairs, muttering to him, and I faintly heard him say, “I need to call Ernest. He will lose his mind. Ha, serves him right. Steal my job, and now I have unknown genuine masterpieces. Hahaha.”
Shaking my head, I moved to my desk, making sure I had my dry brush, Q-tips, cotton balls, as well as my chemical kit. Carefully, I lifted the sheet from the painting, and even though I wasn’t really breathing, I felt the need to stop altogether to stare at the dominance the scene demanded. It reminded me of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting Pollice Verso, the infamous Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, moment between the victorious gladiator and jeering people within the Colosseum, the defeated gladiator under the heel of his sandals.
However, in this unknown painting, the victorious warrior did not have sandals, nor even armor, all that he wore was a bloody, tattered cloth, most likely done by the lions under his feet instead of another person. The crowds were not jeering, but some were running, others had their hands down. It didn’t look like the Colosseum. It was a similar area of some kind, but that was less important to me than the look of confusion, shock, and horror on the crowd’s faces.
I looked back at the warrior with shoulder length, wavy hair, and bright eyes that looked murderous, despite having killed all the lions. The Roman spectators in the stands came to watch blood get spilled; why would they have been horrified by it?
Because it didn’t get spilled. The answer came to mind, and I immediately looked back to the bloody, tattered clothes he wore. Underneath them, I could see his perfectly sculpted white muscles and his smooth skin, but I shouldn’t have been able to.
He should be harmed.
There were six dead lions at his feet.
His clothes were nearly ripped from his body.
He had no weapons, no armor.
No matter how much luck or skill he had, it was impossible that he wasn’t hurt. And if the painter wanted to make him a sort of god, the crowd would have been praising him. Instead, there was terror.
I glanced at the lions and leaned forward into the paintin
g. Sure enough, on their necks and chests, were bite marks. He had drank from them.
“He was a vampire,” I whispered slowly as the story came together in front of me.
The crowd watched a man drink the blood of the beasts and clearly saw the rage in his eyes, specifically directed at the viewer. I checked the position of the Colosseum; his eyes would have been looking toward the Emperor.
“This is…amazing,” I whispered to myself, reaching for my Q-tips, moving to test the corner of the paint, trying to understand how I needed to treat and clean it. Wait.
Had the painter witnessed or imagined a vampire?
I paused with my Q-tip held away from my face before slowly turning around and eyeing the vast collection around me.
The only reason for someone—who was not European royalty—to have all of this, especially in America was if they’d collected it over time…a lot of time.
“I’m cleaning a vampire’s art collection.” I realized and instantly wanted to put everything down and leave it the hell alone.
Vampires were territorial about everything. Permission to do anything to their belongings was not just proper manners, it was the only way to prevent having your head ripped off.
Whoever it was sent them here to be cleaned, so that had to be permission, right?
I thought about it for a second, and because I was a chicken, I put my supplies down, taking off my gloves to reach for the office phone. I dialed Simone. Part of her new job meant she had to be on top of all incoming art. She had to have found the information by now.
Better safe than sorry.
“Dru, I was just about to call you. Are you with the paintings?” Her frantic voice came on the line.
“Yes,” I said, not sure where else she thought I’d be during work hours. “Did you leave?”
“No, I’ve been searching for the submission data for those paintings.” She sighed, and I could hear her ruffling through what sounded like stacks upon stacks of pages. “I don’t understand. For us to get them, they must have filed with the museum sometime last year. I remember getting all the data for every other art piece cataloged, but those are just gone.”
“Simone breathe.”
