Human History (1485-1505)The year 1485 was rather unremarkable, historically speaking. The English king Richard III died while Catherine of Aragon was born. Leonardo Da Vinci invented his ariel screw. It was also the year that the small infant Adrina De Luca was born into the waiting arms of a wealthy aristocrat in Rome, Italy. Her mother, Chiara De Luca, died in childbirth, leaving the redheaded infant in the hands of four men: Her father, Enrico De Luca and three brothers. Drago, the oldest at 15, was learning to become a jewel merchant like their father. The twins, Matteo and Massimo, were next at 13. Massimo wanted to be a soldier while Matteo was more interested in studying.
Enrico was very protective of his only girl that reminded him so much of his wife. He gave her everything she asked for, but did not spoil her. She had to do her lessons just like her brothers. She was punished for bad behavior. She was taught compassion and manners and poise, as any young lady should. But she was also taught to read and write both in Latin and Italian. She memorized the epigrams of Martial and, much to her father’s dismay and her brothers’ delight, recite them at dinner parties.
She adamantly demanded that she be allowed to go to
Carnevale every year and in her fifteenth year, her father took her to the
Carnevale in Venice. Her birthday corresponded with the last day of
Carnevale, what the French call
Mardi Gras. So every year, accompanied by her father and brothers, she would go to
Carnevale dressed in a pretty taffeta gown and slippers with a beautiful porcelain mask.
The day before the start of
Carnevale and two weeks before her eighteenth birthday, she was sitting in the center of the Santa Costanza reading the
Histories by Tacitus. She heard a commotion, even all the way inside the old church. When she peered outside she saw a dark plume of smoke coming from the city. Unable to contain her curiosity, and feeling a morbid strain of fear, she rushed back. The source of the fire was her father’s villa.
Thieves had broken in and stolen everything of value, killed her father and her brothers, then burned the beautiful villa to the ground. She dropped to her knees at the sight, sobbing and wailing, cursing the men who had done this to her. The only thing she had left of her family were the early birthday presents Drago had secretly given her to wear to
Carnivale: three slender bracelets made of white gold and set with clear cut emeralds, two for her left wrist and one for her right, and a carefully tooled onyx pendant with the saying
Mors ultima linea rerum est or “Death is everything’s final limit” carved on the back which hung from a thin silver chain.
She took these and the money she knew her father had kept hidden under the stone of the entry way and made her way to Venice to stay with her father’s sister, Paola De Luca, a small, petite woman with a fiery temper. Adrina was put to work translating texts from Latin to Italian for Paola’s wealthy friends. During this time, Adrina met a strange woman. The woman’s eyes seemed to glow with an unearthly light and she walked with the grace of angels. Adrina and the woman began a slow friendship of sorts, though Adrina thought it strange that she only saw the woman after dusk.
On Adrina’s twentieth birthday, after the masks were removed and everyone went home to rest for Mass the next day, the woman asked her if Adrina would like to exact revenge on the men who took her family away. Stunned, but inflamed by the desire for vengeance, Adrina accepted. Thus, Adrina De Luca, a slender Italian aristocrat of twenty years became the slender, deadly vampire Starwind.
