Last Rites

by Danielle Vega

  Slowly, Francesca drags the knife across my belly. I hear the rip of fabric and lace and steel myself, eyes clenched shut, waiting for the pain.

  It doesn’t hit right away. I struggle to look down, and I catch a flash of red. My chest heaves with panic, blocking the blood from view. It takes a second for my nerves to flare as they register that my skin is being split apart.

  My brain screams: This is a test, this is a test, this is a test . . .

  I can’t make myself scream anymore. My mouth falls open, but all my energy has gone to dealing with the pain, trying to keep myself from passing out.

  They’ll get tired of this. I hope—I pray—they’ll get bored. They’ll stop, they have to stop.

  She slashes again.

  Again.

  They’re shallow cuts, deep enough to break the skin without doing any real damage. But the pain is like fire. Blood runs down my arms and legs and gathers on the table beneath me. As much as the cuts hurt, it’s the blood that bothers me more than anything. It’s sticky and warm, reminding me that it was inside my body just seconds ago.

  And now it’s pooling on the dirty wood. Forming a little stream that drips over the side and onto the floor, staining the dirt red.

  Francesca takes a step back, wiping her knife on her white dress. She studies me, one eyebrow flicked.

  “Please . . . stop.” My face crumples. I feel the muscles around my eyes and mouth spasm, unable to hold my expression together through the pain. A desperate, involuntary groan escapes my lips. “Please. I’m not a devil. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Francesca blinks, impassive. It’s like I’m not human. Like the pain I’m experiencing is a trick I’m playing on her.

  I swallow my fear and tilt my head up, meeting Francesca’s eyes. “You didn’t find the mark, did you? You know I’m telling the truth.”

  Francesca holds the knife out to Elyse. “We didn’t find it yet. But we will.”

  “My turn,” Elyse says. Something twisted flashes through her eyes. Yearning. Desire. “I will enjoy this, diavolina.”

  The blade rips the skin on my shoulder. It cuts into the patch of bare skin above the line of my underwear. It slashes into my belly button.

  The room around me seems to grow darker until I can’t see anything but heavy shadows. The floor tilts and sways. The fear I’d been trying not to feel hits now.

  There’s no way for me to pass this test. They’ll just cut and cut until there’s no more skin left. Until all the blood has drained from my body. Until I’m dead.

  CHAPTER 19

  The knife bites into my ribs. It’s just a nick, but I feel my skin separating around the blade, the hot gush of blood bubbling up to meet the wound. I open my mouth in a wordless scream. The sound that comes out of me is more animal than human.

  My scream fades, and Angelica’s chant rushes in to fill the silence. “Fíant táamquam púlvis ante fáciem vénti: et Ángelus Dómini coárctans eos . . .”

  Then—

  Cold metal moves up the side of my stomach. “I have been working in the butcher shop with my father since I was a little girl.” Elyse catches my eye, the corner of her mouth curling as she drags the knife over my body. She presses just hard enough to drive the edge of the blade into my skin without actually cutting it open. “One of the things he taught me was how to take a pig apart piece by piece, using only a knife.”

  I crane my neck, lifting my head to watch the line of red appear, raw and throbbing.

  She’s trying to psych me out. I won’t let her. If there’s no way to pass this test, then my only hope is to stay conscious. Reserve my strength. Wait for them to make a mistake.

  I remember a PE class years ago, the teacher barking at us to do push-ups.

  “Your brain will fail a thousand times before your body will,” she said as we struggled to pump our arms. I think of that now as my body burns and shivers. I tell myself, If I can keep my brain calm, my body will be okay. Right now, that seems like an impossible task.

  But I swallow and say, as calmly as I can manage, “Why are you telling me this?”

  I catch the edge of Elyse’s massive shoulder from the corner of my eye. It jerks up and down in a shrug. “I always wondered whether this would work on a person, too. Whether I could take someone apart piece by piece. Like they were meat. I guess we shall see.”

  My breath comes in short bursts. My mind spins inside my head, throwing up image after image. That small knife separating my skin like tissue paper, sliding into the joints between my shoulder and arm with a pop. I picture Elyse angling the blade away from her, and I hear the sick, wet sound of muscle and skin tearing as she carves my arm away from my body . . .

  My chest heaves. I can’t quite inhale.

  “Please,” I force out. “You won’t find anything. I’m not—”

  Elyse shuts me up with a swift jab to my shoulder. The blade sinks too deep, too fast, and air rushes out of my lungs, like a punctured balloon. The room around me swims in and out of focus.

  This is it, I think. My shoulders tense up. I hold my breath . . .

  Francesca raises her hand. “Abbastanza.”

  I don’t recognize the word, but Elyse moves away from me. Blood runs down my arms and legs in ribbons. I can’t stop shaking. It feels like there isn’t an inch of skin on my body that hasn’t been poked or sliced.

  They’ve failed, I think, desperately. They didn’t find anything. They couldn’t have found anything . . .

  But I know it doesn’t matter. They won’t let me out of here. If I want out, I have to get myself out.

  I blink, my eyelids sticking together for a moment before I manage to force them open again. I can no longer tell the girls apart. Elyse’s dark, hateful eyes merge with Angelica’s twitchy ones. I can’t tell if the sneering lips floating above me are Francesca’s or not.

  It’s a while before I realize that Angelica has stopped chanting. When I manage to separate their faces, hers is the one that comes into clearest focus. She’s angled toward the door, head tilted. Something catches and flares in her eye: fear.

  She says something urgent in Italian and jerks her head toward the tunnel.

  The silence in the small room pulses as the rest of us go quiet, straining to hear what Angelica hears. After a moment, I catch it:

  Creaking. Slow and steady, like footsteps. A slice of a laugh. Low, echoing voices.

  “Help me!” My voice bursts from my mouth like a desperate thing, shrill and cracking. This is it. My one chance at escape. I thrash against the ropes holding me to the table, no longer caring how badly they pull at my wrists. “Please! Help me! Help—“

  Elyse’s hand comes down fast, whipping my head to the side. My ear slams into the wooden table, sending it rocking. Pain pulses through my bones.

  “Shut up,” Elyse snaps, cracking her knuckles. But her voice is quiet, and her gaze slides off me, moving back to the tunnel.

  The voices have gone quiet. The footsteps are slower. They heard me.

  I stretch out my jaw, but I don’t dare scream again. Elyse has tightened her grip on the knife, and she’s got her body angled toward me, as though she’d like nothing better than to sink the blade into my chest. I glance, desperately, at Francesca. She’s the leader, after all. She’ll tell Elyse to back off. To wait. But Francesca doesn’t do anything.

  Angelica says something in Italian, and Francesca spits back an answer. Her eyes are massive, her teeth working hard at her lower lip.

  She says, “They can’t find her here.”

  “So go talk to them, make some excuse,” Elyse says. Her fingers curl around the handle of the knife, possessive.

  Angelica’s eyebrows go up. “Alone?” she says, voice high with nerves. “But why would Francesca be here alone on festival night? They will know she’s hiding something.”

  More
creaking from above. A hushed voice.

  “You’ll come with me.” Francesca jerks her chin at Elyse. “We will make something up.”

  Elyse glances from me to the knife. “But—”

  Francesca releases a sharp reprimand in Italian, and Elyse closes her mouth. Nods.

  “Angelica, you stay here.” Francesca looks down at me and licks her lips. “But wait outside the door. It is bad luck to be alone with the devil. She lies.”

  Angelica straightens. “I know not to listen to the devil’s lies.”

  Francesca leans over me. She’s trying to keep her expression calm, like everything’s under control, but I can see the fear streaked across her face. She anxiously tucks a strand of green hair behind her ear. To Angelica, she says, “If you are sure. But be careful. Don’t listen to anything she says.”

  I want to laugh, but the pain prickling over my skin keeps me silent. I roll my lower lip between my teeth to keep my mouth from twitching. This is it. They’re losing control. It’s my chance to get out.

  “We will be back,” Francesca says to me. “If you say anything, if you scream again, we will kill you.”

  You’re going to kill me anyway, I think as she storms from the room, Elyse trailing at her heels. Angelica flinches and darts out of their way. I hear the pad of their shoes hurrying up the tunnel’s dirt floor.

  I turn my head to the side, studying Angelica. The candlelight turns her skin gold. Her dark curls look angelic beneath the thin film of white lace.

  She’s different from the other two. Crazy and pious, but not violent like Elyse. I think of how sweet she was when I first met her at the church. How she offered me her chair and acted concerned when I burned my wrist on candle wax. If any one of them might let me go, it’s her.

  “Angelica,” I whisper.

  She flinches, dark eyes darting over to me. “You are supposed to stay quiet.”

  “You know I’m not a diavolina, Angelica.”

  She taps her fingers against the spine of her Bible, her movements fast and jerky.

  “They never found a mark,” I plead. “I’m innocent.”

  She licks her lips, eyes moving up, toward the ceiling. Someone upstairs has started playing music. The sound seeps through the dirt, trembling in the air around us.

  My chest constricts. Now it doesn’t matter if I scream; they’ll never hear me over the music. I swallow, my eyes darting toward the door. I’m running out of time.

  I say again, urgently, “I’m innocent. What you’re doing is wrong.”

  Angelica hisses, “Diavolina lies.” The cruel twist of her voice raises the hair on the back of my neck. “Francesca was right. It is dangerous to be alone with you.”

  She presses her hands to her ears and hurries into the tunnel to wait by the door, where my demonic lies cannot reach her.

  This is it. For a moment, I can’t breathe. Then the air in the small room sharpens to a knifepoint. This is my chance to escape. I glance at the other door, the one that leads deeper into Cambria’s underground tunnels. I have maybe five minutes before one of them comes back. Maybe less.

  The ropes around my wrists feel tighter all of a sudden. I give a gentle tug—testing—and pain like fire shoots down my arm. My shoulders ache. I dig my teeth into my lower lip, focusing on that sharp pain so that I don’t obsess over the deep, dull throb in my arms. I twist. Sharp fibers dig into my skin, and something burns through my bones.

  The candlewicks seem to spark and grow, flames stretching up the sides of the wall. Their shadows look like wild, reckless things. I pull harder. Twist and squirm. It might be my imagination, but the ropes holding me to the table seem to loosen. I release a shallow, desperate gasp. Come on.

  A voice booms through the tunnel, sending the hair on my neck straight up. It came from above. Laughter? Screaming? I can’t tell. It bounces off the packed-dirt walls, turning into something unrecognizable. I’m running out of time. Any second, all three of them will be back down here with me, tightening my restraints, laughing at my futile attempt at escape.

  I yank my arm down, pulling until tears spring to my eyes. A taste like copper fills my mouth, and blood gathers on my tongue, thick and hot. I bit straight through my lip.

  I pull harder.

  Something’s happening above me. I hear the heavy thud of footsteps. A laugh. Voices rising and falling.

  And then, closer—

  Squeaking. Like rusty hinges.

  I go still, listening. I feel a shift in the energy of the room. A prickle in the air. There’s something down here with me.

  The squeaking comes closer. I twist my head to the side, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. The shadows on the wall twitch with movement. My skin starts to crawl as I realize what it must be. The sweat on my chest goes cold.

  “No!” I say in a hard whisper. I rock back and forth, shaking the table to try to scare it. “Go away!”

  I know the second it climbs onto the table’s legs, its claws sending tiny vibrations shuddering through the wood. I want to shout for help, to beg Angelica to come back and scare it away. The only thing that stops me is the knowledge that I’d be giving up my one chance of escape. I hold my breath, craning my neck.

  The rat crawls onto the table between my feet. Its fur is albino white, like it’s never seen the sun, red eyes glistening like drops of blood. My breath catches in my chest, and my heart goes hard and slow, like drumbeats. The rat rises to its hind legs and lifts its face, nose twitching. That’s when I realize:

  It smells me. This thing has come for my blood.

  “Go!” I hiss. I yank at my restraints. My movements are jerky and desperate now. I no longer care about ripping skin or yanking my shoulder out of its joint. I just want out.

  The rat falls back on all fours with a shudder that vibrates through the table. It’s huge, the size of a small cat. I try to kick it away, but the ropes around my ankles hold tight, and my feet just flop back and forth, useless. My neck aches from the strain of holding up my head.

  The rat crawls up to my calf. Sniffs.

  “No!” I try to kick, but all I manage is a twitch of my big toe.

  The rat sinks its yellow teeth deep into my flesh.

  It’s different from the knife. Then, the pain was immediate, white-hot and burning. The hurt flared for a brief, terrible instant before fading to a throb.

  This is worse. I hear the wet smack of teeth long before the first dizzy wave of pain washes over me. This pain isn’t clean; it’s gnawing. I release a strangled cry and let my head drop back to the table, the fight seeping out of me. My stomach clenches. Nausea climbs up my throat. My body jerks—trying to fold in on itself—but the ropes hold me tight.

  I need to get out, I think, desperate. I need to escape. They’re coming . . .

  But I can’t make myself move. For long, grainy stretches I fall in and out of consciousness, the wet slap of the rat’s tongue echoing through my head. Then, just when I think the darkness will pull me under, the monster’s teeth sink into new flesh, jolting me awake with a fresh flare of nerves.

  This is what it feels like to be eaten alive.

  I don’t hear the sound of footsteps, don’t realize someone’s in the room with me until I see Angelica leaning over me, shooing the rat away. The table shifts as the creature leaps to the floor and skitters back into the tunnel.

  And then: a cool hand on my cheek. I struggle to open my eyes through the pain.

  Angelica pauses to find the right words. “Are you okay?”

  “Please.” My cheeks feel damp—I’m crying again. I lock eyes with Angelica, trying to find the humanity within those deep pools of black. “Please, I promise you I’m telling the truth. I’m innocent. You have to let me go. Please.”

  Angelica tilts her head, studying me. She’s not a sadist like Elyse, I tell myself, praying it’s true. She’
s not blinded by jealousy, like Francesca. She knows that what they’re doing is wrong.

  Slowly, Angelica moves toward my wrists. A moment later I feel fingers working through the ropes around my hand.

  “Grazie,” I sputter, gasping. The tears come hot and fast now, relief cooling my pain like a salve. My chest heaves with sobs. “Grazie. Thank you. Oh God, thank you.”

  The rope falls away, but Angelica doesn’t let go of my hand. I feel her fingers pressing into my palm. She twists around, holding my arm up to my face like she wants to show me something. I blink, confused.

  “Shh,” she murmurs. She takes a candle from the floor and tilts it over my wrist, sending a single drop of wax onto my skin.

  “Shit!” I try to pull away, bracing for the pain, but it doesn’t come. After all that torture, the wax feels soothing. Like a salve. After a moment, Angelica brushes the drop of white wax off my wrist, angles my arm toward me. The skin below is pale and perfect. Not the slightest hint of red.

  “You see?” she says, gesturing. “No burn.”

  My voice feels thick. “So? What does that mean?”

  “It means we have found your devil’s mark,” Francesca says from the doorway. “Now we know that you are diavolina.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The room around me shifts in and out of focus, the air shivering like heat coming off a sidewalk. Dazed, I drift from consciousness to sleep and back again. The crosses hanging from the walls seem to peer down at me. How did I end up here—trapped and confined just when I was finally free? Maybe Francesca and her friends were right. I guess it’s easier to believe that—to believe I deserve this—than it is to believe that terrible things sometimes happen for no reason at all.

  The crosses flicker in the candlelight as I struggle to keep my eyes open.

  Angelica and Elyse work their fingers through the bindings at my ankles and wrists. Angelica’s movements are careful—almost gentle—but Elyse seems to relish digging her nails into the wounds the ropes left in my skin. I attempt to lift a hand and swat her away, but I can’t manage to raise it more than an inch or two before exhaustion floods up my arm, leaving my muscles heavy. Shadows zip across my eyesight, but I can’t tell if they’re real—something moving in the corners—or a product of my imagination.