Last Rites

by Danielle Vega

  Francesca slips her hands under my armpits and pulls me to my feet. Elyse and Angelica move in behind us, each taking an arm to hold me steady. Everything feels slow and clumsy and impossible. Francesca says something, but I can’t think past the pain pounding through me. Fight, I tell myself. But I can’t, not anymore. It’s over. I dig my toes into the ground, trying to hold myself steady.

  I sway . . .

  And then my cheek slams into the packed-dirt floor.

  Francesca’s face is suddenly inches from mine, candlelight reflected in her hateful eyes.

  “Diavolina.” Her lips curl lovingly around the word. “You have to get up now. We have so much more to do.”

  “Let me go. Please,” I beg. Pain rips through my chest, and then I’m choking. The stuff I spit onto the dirt is dark and tacky and tastes like pennies.

  Blood. I’m spitting up blood.

  Francesca’s laugh is light and clear. It doesn’t sound human.

  Angelica reties my ankles and moves on to my wrists. I can tell it’s Angelica—her small, nervous fingers give her away. She pulls on my bound arms, groaning, and suddenly I’m on my knees, doubled over. I feel the prick of a knife at my lower back.

  “Get up,” Francesca says, pushing the blade into my bare skin. There’s a part of me that wants to fall backward, lean into it, get this over with.

  Instead, I pull my legs beneath my trembling body, standing. My feet seem to move on their own, shuffling slowly along the dirt floor.

  A sharp jab from the knife. “Keep moving.”

  Francesca leads me back through the underground tunnel and into the church courtyard. A few Solo cups still litter the ground, and a devil’s mask sits next to the wall, its face creased and torn. Music pours through the streets. I pray for a group of partiers to stumble past. To find me, help me. But there’s no one.

  We walk past the long-dry fountain to a crumbling wall that marks the edge of the city. And then we’re pushing through a hole in the brick, standing at the foot of the hill where Lucia was sacrificed. The music sounds louder here. A steady beat pulsing through the street, vibrations tickling the soles of my feet.

  I could run toward the music, I think. It sounds so close. If I caught them off guard I could slip past, scream for help. I feel a little stronger now that I’m no longer in that stuffy underground room. I could still get away.

  As though reading my mind, Elyse digs her fingers deeper into my upper arms, bruising my skin. She pushes into my back, and I stumble forward, pebbles biting into the bottoms of my feet. Angelica hovers at my other shoulder, just out of eyesight. Her shadow stretches before her like a warning.

  We make our way through the trees and up the hill, Francesca trailing along behind us. I keep my eyes peeled for a chance to pull away, to run. But the trees are close around us, and I’m barefoot and beaten. I’d never be able to outrun all three of them, I realize.

  “Where are we going?” I mumble, defeated. My eyesight starts to swim. I’m going to pass out . . .

  Francesca smiles, not kindly. “You will see.”

  When I come to again, I’m in a packed-dirt clearing at the top of a hill, a tall, wooden stake protruding from the ground in front of me. The stake looks centuries old, the wood splintered and peeling. There’s a plaque in front of it, but I can’t make out what it says in the dark.

  “This is where they brought Lucia,” Francesca says, when she sees that I’m awake. She wipes an arm over her forehead to dry the sweat beading along her skin. “That little whore saved our village many years ago. Now you will do the same.”

  I swallow, hard. A cold gray lake appears through the branches. Thick white candles have been lined up around the water. Wax drips over their sides and spills onto the rocks below them.

  “How?”

  “It is okay.” Angelica gathers a strand of my hair in her fingers and pushes it behind my ear, gently. “You’re lucky that we’re doing this for you. This is how you’ll become right with God.”

  “We’re going to save you.” Sarcasm drips from Elyse’s voice, and a smirk curls the corner of her mouth. “It is time for you to be baptized, diavolina.”

  They’ve crowded in behind me, forcing me to the edge of the lake.

  “No.” My throat is still scratchy, and the word hurts to say. I throw my weight back, but the girls are laughing now, three sets of hands pressed into my shoulders and moving up my spine, pushing me forward. I tug at the ropes around my wrists, but they don’t give. “I don’t want to go—”

  I stumble and fall, the rest of my voice ripping from my throat. The nerves in my toes flare as my feet hit the icy water. The surface of the lake smacks into my face. I don’t have time to catch my breath. Water sloshes over my head, and then I’m sinking.

  I don’t have time to think about what’s happening as I sink to the bottom of the lake. The water above looks green and murky, the surface far away. Dirty water stings my cuts, making them flare with pain. My lungs feel like they’re about to burst.

  This is how I die, I think. I wiggle my shoulders, but my hands are tied behind my back. There’s no way to swim, no way to save myself.

  The lake is deeper than I thought it would be. I seem to sink forever. I stretch my toes as far as they’ll go, thinking I could push myself off from the bottom, but I feel only water. I kick wildly, but without the use of my arms, I can’t make myself rise back to the surface. I thrash against the ropes, and that seems to makes me fall faster.

  I don’t want to die down here, I think. I really don’t want to die. But my eyesight is already flickering in and out. My lungs burn.

  Desperate, I inhale a lungful of lake water, and everything in my head clouds. I start choking. I’m losing oxygen. It won’t take long for my lungs to give out, my body to fail. Everything is so dark . . .

  I yank at the ropes around my wrists. If I can get my hands free, I might be able to fight my way back to the surface before I fall unconscious.

  I pull my wrists apart until tears flood my eyes and the ropes make my fingers go numb. Still, they hold. My skin begins to tear. I feel the warmth of blood gather around my wrists.

  I gasp, accidentally inhaling more lake water. My eyesight starts to blur at the edges . . .

  And then, with one final, violent tug, I pull an arm free.

  For a moment, I seem to have forgotten what I’m supposed to do with it. It feels long and ungainly, half-numb from the rope cutting off my circulation. Then, desperately, I start to claw at the water around me.

  My head spins. There’s no air left in my lungs, no energy in my muscles. My arms and legs don’t feel connected to my body anymore. The water seems to press in on me, holding me down. Every movement is harder than the one before it.

  Tiny pinpricks of light hover past the surface of the water. I push. Kick. Claw. The lights grow closer.

  Almost there . . .

  And then, finally, I break through, gasping. The air tastes like it’s been coated with sugar. I swim toward the shore and lurch forward, falling to my hands and knees, half crawling, half swimming the rest of the way to land. A shadow falls over me. I lift my head.

  “I almost died,” I gasp.

  “But you didn’t die.” Francesca grabs a handful of my hair to drag me the rest of the way out of the water. “You were saved.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Goose bumps cover my arms and legs. Every brush of wind has me shivering and grinding my teeth. My skin has gone numb. I can no longer feel the bite of rocks against my palms or the sticks digging into my shins. I release a deep, hacking cough, spitting up lake water.

  “What’s the matter?” Francesca purrs, kneeling beside me. “Having trouble breathing?”

  “Please,” I gasp. Blood leaks from my body in a slow trickle, pooling between my fingers. “Please don’t—”

  “Breathe through this.”


  I realize, too late, that she’s scooping up a handful of mud. Elyse and Angelica catch me by the arms, holding me steady as Francesca shoves the mud past my clenched lips and into my mouth.

  The smell fills my nose and clogs my head. There’s cow shit mixed in with the mud, and the rank taste clings to my tongue and the back of my throat. I wrench my head away violently, and Francesca cackles, shoving more of it past my teeth and down my throat.

  My stomach clenches. Before I can stop to think about what’s going to happen, I double over, vomiting onto the dirt path. The puke tastes terrible, like shit and lake water and blood. A sharp acid taste climbs my throat, but I don’t stop. I heave until my entire body is empty. It takes me a long time to catch my breath.

  “Let me go.” I can still feel mud and shit on my teeth, coating my tongue, clinging to my throat. It’s my last, desperate chance at getting away alive. “I’m saved now, right? I repented and I let you baptize me. Now, please, you have to let me go.”

  Something in Francesca’s face changes. The anger in her eyes dims, her lip twitches. For a moment, she reminds me of the girl I met my first night here—the cool bartender who gave me free shots and welcomed me to Cambria.

  “Please,” I say again.

  “Do you really think we just wanted to baptize you, diavolina?” Francesca is shaking her head. “Why would we bring you to this holy place and save your soul for nothing in return?”

  “We aren’t saints,” Elyse adds. “You owe us.”

  “Please, you must understand, Lucia saved our village,” Angelica adds solemnly. “Every terrible thing she did before that moment was washed away by her sacrifice. She was a hero. You are a very lucky girl. The people who live here will remember you forever.”

  It reminds me of the first time we met, back in the church. “You are very lucky; the candle did not burn you.”

  My eyes slide off Angelica’s face, moving to the stake at the center of the clearing. For the first time, I notice the stack of twigs and firewood piled up beside it.

  My eyesight doubles, and the world splits into two. Everything blurs.

  Angelica says, “You will be a hero, just like Lucia.”

  I’m shaking my head, my movements frantic and jerky. I can’t make myself believe what she’s saying.

  They’re going to tie me to that stake. They’re going to watch me burn to death.

  I thrash and flail, but it’s no use. My muscles are spent. Even when I connect with Elyse’s shoulder or Angelica’s arm, I don’t have the strength to put anything substantial behind the hit. My blows glance off them like a flat stone skipping over water.

  Elyse drags me over to the stake and shoves my back against the wood. Splinters dig into my skin, tearing at the remaining ragged fabric of my teddy. Angelica twists my hands behind my back and reties my bindings while Francesca watches from a few feet away. Her face looks ghostly in the flickering red-and-orange candlelight.

  My voice escapes in a series of sputters. “Francesca, think about this. It’s murder. You’re murdering an innocent—”

  She snorts. “Innocent? You are diavolina. The baptism may have washed away your sins, but it doesn’t change what you are.”

  She lights a match. Firelight dances in her black pupils, flickering over her sharp features and twitching mouth. Fear hits my stomach like acid. I suddenly wish I were back in the lake, that I hadn’t bothered pulling my wrists free and kicking back to the surface. Drowning seems almost merciful compared to death by fire. I picture the smoke and the flames and . . . a sob chokes up my throat. This is going to hurt. Tears start rolling down my cheeks, cool and wet against my hot skin.

  I close my eyes a second before Francesca tosses the match at the bundle of sticks near my feet, but I hear the sound of the flame catching. Whoof.

  My muscles go rubber-band rigid beneath my skin. Smoke seeps past my lips and creeps up my nostrils. It strokes my cheeks, trying to find more ways to crawl into my dying body. It itches the back of my throat and sinks into my lungs. It rubs its gritty face against the cuts hatched along my arms and legs, making them throb.

  I hold my breath until I can’t take it anymore, and then I release a deep, hacking cough, the ropes holding me upright as I pitch forward. I’m no longer in charge of my limbs; they jerk and twitch all on their own. I feel feral, wild. An animal fighting for its life.

  The fire is so close. Just inches from my toes. I can practically smell my flesh baking, my hair singeing. After everything I went through at the institute, everything I went through before, it seems so horribly, painfully wrong that my life should end here.

  A scream rips up my throat as I imagine my skin going black and flaky, fire eating away at my body . . .

  There’s a noise just beneath the crackling flames. Shouting, I think. Or laughing.

  I blink wildly, tears pouring down my cheeks. I wish, more than I’ve ever wished for anything in my life, that I were at home right now. That I could wake up in my own bed, my mom waiting at the door, ready to fuss over me like she always used to when I had a nightmare. I wish I’d never met Harper and Mara, never come to Italy. The want is so deep, so strong that it steals what’s left of my breath.

  The smoke has turned the air hazy, blurring the figures on the other side of the fire. They look like mirages.

  I squint, trying to make out their faces, but my brain can’t make sense of what it’s seeing. First there are two figures. Then four. They merge together like shadows.

  The fire is loud in my ears, spitting and crackling. A log shifts, sending a shower of red sparks exploding before me. This is it. The stake won’t hold me up for much longer. The fire keeps creeping closer . . .

  And then—

  “Bella!”

  Giovanni. A flare of hope catches and dies in my chest. Giovanni can’t be here. The smoke is making me hallucinate. A sob bubbles up my throat. I must be close to the end.

  “Bella, I am coming!”

  I blink, and for a moment I think I can see the pentagrams painted across his bare chest. They glow by the light of the fire, beads of sweat rolling over them. Then the flames press in closer, and the image breaks apart.

  The hazy figures are moving now. Spinning wildly, hands clasped together. They’re dancing. This, at least, is a small mercy: to spend my last moments thinking of Giovanni, believing he came to save me. I almost smile as I watch them, the heat burning the moisture from my eyes. I blink and blink, but I can’t make them focus.

  Something tickles the bottoms of my feet. I don’t dare look down, even as the warmth grows, becoming white-hot needles pricking at my toes, tongues of fire licking my arches. I imagine my skin bubbling. Turning black. And then the pain flares out, like a candle dying, and I realize the fire has fried my nerves. My feet are burning, but I can’t feel them.

  I curl my hands into fists behind my back, focusing on the edges of my fingernails digging into my palms. Tiny moon-shaped flares of pain. The feeling grounds me, reminding me that I’m still alive. For a little while, at least.

  I hear muffled grunts. Thuds. A shadowy figure jerks away from the dance, arms flailing. I see a flash of silver—a knife.

  I squint into the flames, understanding washing over me.

  They’re not dancing.

  They’re fighting.

  “Giovanni?” My voice is hesitant. The hope has flickered to life inside of me once more, but I can barely let myself trust it. Smoke crawls down my throat, making me cough. “Giovanni?”

  “I am coming, bella—”

  I hear a grunt and, through the haze, watch a figure slam into the dirt. Three other blurry shapes gather around him, reminding me of animals circling prey. The fire makes them look huge, their shadows stretching into the sky, their eyes monstrous. I see a flash of teeth, the glint of a knife. A leg swings forward, slamming into his gut.

&nbs
p; “Giovanni!” I shout again. But it’s no use. They won’t let him near me.

  They’ll kill him first.

  CHAPTER 22

  “Giovanni!” My voice goes hoarse as smoke rushes into my mouth, coating my tongue and throat. Choking, I try again, “Gio—”

  My cry subsides into a fit of hacking coughs. Francesca and the others have surrounded Giovanni. I can just make out the shadowy circle of their bodies, kicking something curled on the ground. I hear the sound of their feet thumping into his body, his low, desperate grunts.

  I have to help him. I curl my toes into the twigs and use the leverage to press my back into the stake, trying to create as much distance between the fire and my skin as possible. It shoots higher, red flames dancing wildly against the night sky.

  Giovanni reaches for Francesca, trying to pull himself to his feet. She stomps down, and I think I hear something crack.

  “Giovanni!”

  I lunge forward without thinking, so desperate to get to Giovanni that I momentarily forget about the ropes binding my wrists and the fire crackling beneath me. A spark of red jumps from the woodpile to my knee, and I feel a sudden, sharp singe of heat. I scream, but the flame dies the second it comes into contact with my skin. Then an ember pops, leaping to the spare bit of lace near my shoulder. A curl of orange licks the ropes binding my arms.

  I feel the sizzle of heat, followed by a sudden hiss that tells me the flames have died.

  I’m still wet from the lake, I realize. I can feel the flames pressing against my skin, but they can’t light, not like they would if I were dry.

  I blink a few times, trying to gather my wits despite the black wall of smoke surrounding me. My wet skin might win me a few more minutes, but I already feel the moisture being burned off me as the fire creeps closer. I don’t have much longer. If I’m going to get to Giovanni, I need to act fast.