“But not me. Oh no.” She took a step away from the open violin case. Staring hard at the bow, she waited for it to move of its own volition. It didn’t flinch.
Dashing to the case, she slapped the lid down and rebuckled the latch. Then, tucking the case under her arm, she raced down the dark hallway, fleeing toward the cool morning daylight.
For once, she’d creeped herself out. And the last thing she needed was to be accused of playing a violin that would put her in league with the devil Himself.
La Villetta cemetery; Parma, Italy
“Hexensohn!”
At the sound of the guttural accusation, the man sat up—and banged his forehead on the stone directly above him. He pressed a hand to the flat surface. Solid and cold. He pushed. It didn’t move.
He opened his eyes to...no light. Darkness muffled. And cold, so cold. Sucking in a breath, he couldn’t feel his heartbeats.
But he didn’t panic. The realization that he was trapped inside a container was only a minor distraction. What disturbed him was that he was aware of his thoughts. And that he was thinking. Again. After...
His death.
Sitting up in a panicked lunge, this time his forehead did not connect with stone, but rather, he felt a sludgy resistance as he rose upward and moved through the stone. His body ascended with little effort until his hands and shoulders felt the warmth of sunlight on them. Slapping a hand onto a hard surface, he levered his body up and out until he sat upon a stone monument.
“What in all...?” His shoulder bumped a stone pedestal, and he leaned against it. Not relaxed, by any means, but more getting his bearings. He sat up off the ground a few feet, one leg dangling over the edifice. Columns surrounded the area, and around that, a black wrought iron fence. Had he just risen from a sarcophagus?
Hmm... Looked like a fancy monument to someone long dead. Could it be his own? He had died. The knowledge was instinctive and ingrained. A certain fact. And he recalled that last, painful, gasping breath so clearly. Had it only been just yesterday?
A deep breath took in his surroundings. The air smelled of mildew and jasmine flowers. Birds twittered nearby. And the weird rushing sound of something unfamiliar not far off. Gasping out a breath, he pressed fingertips to his chest and realized his lungs were taking in air. He breathed? But how? He— Wasn’t he dead?
Something had sung to him. Called him. Summoned him with that vile curse hexensohn. It meant witch’s son, and he’d hated it once and already hated it again. Yet accompanying the curse he had felt the music. The pure and rapidly bowed tones from an instrument that had once facilitated his very livelihood.
Glancing about, he took in the close-spaced tombstones and nearby mausoleums. He sat in a cemetery, upon a large tombstone. And that startled him so that he slid off the stone sarcophagus, stood, wobbling as he stepped a few paces, and then turned to study the bust placed upon the pedestal where he had just risen. He narrowed his eyes. The face and hair on the bust looked familiar. Though it wasn’t life-size, perhaps a bit bigger. Had he ever appeared so...regal?
“Not me. Can’t be,” he muttered. “I’m dead. This is a dream. Some means of Hell torture. It has to be. No one comes back from...”
His eyes took in the area. The entire monument he stood within was about ten feet square with eight columns, two supporting each corner of a massive canopy. Wandering to the edge and stepping down onto the narrow strip of loose stones circling the structure, he turned and looked high over the front of the canopy.
And he read the name chiseled into the stone above. “‘Nicolo Paganini.’”
He grasped his throat, marveling at the sound that had come from him. Because... “I could not speak for so long.”
Years before his death he’d lost the ability to speak. It had been miserable, and he’d to rely on his son, Achille, to press an ear to his mouth so he could hear the barely imperceptible sounds he’d made and then interpret to others.
“Achille?” Where was he? How many days had it been since his death? Had his son buried him? How had he come to rise from the grave?
What was happening?
The brimstone bargain? No. He had not fulfilled his portion of that wicked bargain. And yet...the sound of a violin had woken him from his eternal slumber.
He tapped his lower lip in thought and then was surprised at the feel of his skin and—he opened his mouth. He had teeth! All of them, in fact. They had all fallen out in the years before his death.
Looking at his hands, he marveled that the age spots that had once marked his flesh were not there. He pushed fingers up through his hair. It was long and tangled, but it felt soft, not dry from years of sickness. His face, too. The skin was smooth and taut. Had he grown young in his death? Impossible.
Again, the steady heartbeats prompted him to touch his chest. And then he beat a sound fist against his body. When had he ever had such firm, well-developed muscles as he now felt beneath the clothing?
What foul magic was this?
Was he alive? Was this his body or that of some creature? What diabolic magic had been enacted to conjure him from his very grave?
“It can’t be.”
He thought of the devil Himself. That wicked, foul beast. The ruler of Hell, or rather, as the creature had called it, Beneath.
“That bastard wouldn’t. He had made the offer to me so many times. Every time I refused.”
Many a night Himself had set the black violin before Nicolo’s old and decaying body and told him he had been born with supernatural power. Why must he continue to deny his birthright?
Nicolo had always denied that wicked magic. Many times over the decades he had performed, he had steadfastly refused the bargain Himself offered. Because he’d not wanted his son, Achille, to see him as a monster. For he knew that by drawing the bow hairs across the violin strings, he would become evil. A creature like the devil Himself.
Supernatural power or not, he could have never lived with such a selfish choice. Instead he’d used the talent that he’d honed since a young child. And even with death withering his skin and bones, he’d not the urge to accept Himself’s final bargain on his deathbed.
“Pick it up,” the Dark Lord had said of the black violin that gleamed with promise. “Play one song and you shall have it all. Your legacy.”
Never, Nicolo thought.
And yet, is that what had happened now? No, he’d not played the violin. He’d instructed Achille to ensure it was destroyed after his death. So how was he now standing before his final resting place?
Very much alive.
It was a rather fine-looking tomb, if he did say so. Quite a large pediment and a glorious monument to the maestro.
The maestro himself. A man now seemingly unhampered by age and time—even death—and feeling rather as if he was in his twenties again.
How much time had passed? Closing his eyes, Nicolo concentrated on the sounds, moving beyond the birds and weird rushing nearby to that minute rhythm. It wasn’t coming from a window or even a distant concert hall. It was coming from within him. From his very soul.
Did he have a soul now? Should not death have released his soul?
A profound thought.
A few simple notes had woken him. Not even a tune or melody. Bow across strings. Almost accidental, really. Yet those notes had sung to him. Calling him. Luring him. Gesturing with a coaxing finger for him to follow.
Achille