by Kai Meyer
Rosa wound her way forward, then shot up and landed on the back of the enormous bird. Her golden-brown scales rubbed against bristling plumage. She tasted strange blood, and cursed the fact that her fangs had no venom glands. She still had no idea exactly who or what she was fighting.
The owl let go of Quattrini, but could not attack Rosa with its claws or its wings. Rosa dug her fangs even deeper in the back of the creature, but could only scratch the skin. Her adversary’s protective feathers were too dense.
She was distracted when Alessandro, hissing angrily, was slung past another line of statues, collided with the wrecked remains, and lay there on his back for what seemed like never-ending seconds. The first owl emerged from the clouds of plaster dust and came down to ground level, wings spread like a cloak, obviously injured but not mortally wounded.
Rosa lost her balance, slipped to the floor, eluding another heavy beat of those wings, and was beside Alessandro a moment later. The front part of her body reared up to protect him, her snake’s skull a yard and a half above the ground. Her eyes went from one owl to the other; her hissing was more aggressive than ever before. She would fight for him to her last breath.
But then he moved again, struggled up, and was standing beside her.
The giant owls came no closer. One of them stood there in the haze of dust, feathers ruffled, chest heaving with the effort it had made. The other looked down at the judge, but did not strike again.
Quattrini was dead. Her eyes, wide open, stared into a void. Feathers and streaks of plaster drifted in the dark pool of blood around her body.
The first owl uttered a shrill cry, then rose from the floor and flew up into the rafters. The second followed, weaving slightly in the air, but then regained control and disappeared through the skylight and out of the warehouse. A moment later there was a clattering from above, as the owl reappeared in the skylight, snatched a pigeon neatly out of the air with one claw, and flew away with its prey.
Rosa and Alessandro stood in a column of light filled with falling dust and sawdust. After catching their breath for a moment, they returned to human form. They were both naked, and Alessandro was stained with the judge’s blood. Rosa quickly made sure that apart from a few scratches he was uninjured, and then, although unsteady on her feet, she hurried over to Quattrini’s body and knelt down beside it. Her eyes were drawn to the terrible wounds. She tried to look away; this was not how she wanted to remember the judge.
Alessandro swore. “Those were the Malandras.”
“Who are they?”
“Aliza and Saffira Malandra. Harpies. They’re sisters. No one likes to tangle with their family—unless it’s to hire them as contract killers.”
She looked up. “What happened to Festa and Moranelli?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the side door of the warehouse was flung open. Antonio Festa raced in, pistol drawn, drenched in sweat as if he himself had just had to fend off an attack.
“Those birds . . . totally crazy,” he gasped. “We must get to the church—”
He stopped short when he saw the two naked young people, splashed with blood, beside the motionless judge.
With a cry of rage, he raised the weapon. “Get back! Keep away from her!”
Alessandro was about to take Rosa under the arms to help her get to her feet, but she had already jumped up. “It wasn’t us.”
“Back!” shouted the bodyguard again. He walked slowly toward them and stared at the body. “What the hell have you done to her. . . . Oh, my God!” He groaned when he saw the wounds.
“It wasn’t us,” Rosa repeated as she and Alessandro took another step back.
“Flat on the floor! On your stomachs, hands above your heads!” He called to his colleague. “Stefania!”
The young police officer’s footsteps approached over the square outside. When she entered the warehouse, she stared first at Rosa and Alessandro, unable to make anything of their nakedness and all the blood. Then she saw Quattrini on the floor. “No,” she whispered. Several pigeons took off from the rafters and flew past her into the open air. “What have you done?”
“We were trying to help her!” Rosa strode angrily toward the two of them. “While you were outside there—”
A shot whipped through the air, left a notch in the concrete of the floor right in front of their feet, and ricocheted away, whistling.
“Not another step!” shouted Festa. “And lie down, you bastards!”
Alessandro touched Rosa’s arm. “Come on, let’s do as he says.” He crouched down and lay flat on his front. She could hardly suppress her indignation, but after a moment’s hesitation followed suit.
Stefania had sunk to her knees beside the judge, and was closing her eyelids with the palm of her hand. “Why did you do it?” she asked quietly, without looking at either of them. “She wanted only good things for you.”
“We had nothing to do with it,” Alessandro protested. “It was—”
“The birds, maybe?” Festa interrupted him. The bodyguard was never going to believe them.
Alessandro turned his head slightly until he could look Rosa in the eye. She was waiting for his signal. Changing shape in front of the police officers would be the easiest way out.
“Got the cuffs?” Festa called to his colleague.
“In the car.” Stefania couldn’t take her eyes off the dead woman. Her face was filled with grief and rage.
“Get them. I’ll keep an eye on these two.”
She shook her head, then rose to her feet and took her cell phone out of her pants pocket with her left hand. “I’ll call for reinforcements. Neither of us should stay alone until they arrive.”
“I can deal with them,” replied Festa.
Alessandro’s glance said, Wait a moment. Soon.
Stefania looked back at the judge’s injuries. “No one did that to her with their bare hands.” Her head swung around, and she stared at Rosa. “And what happened to your clothes?”
“They wanted to be rid of them,” said Festa, getting his word in first. It was easy to see that he would have loved to pull the trigger.
Rosa indicated what was left of Alessandro’s suit with a nod of her head. “And first we tore them to pieces in order to—in order to do what? Swallow them?”
Festa looked at the scraps of fabric. For all his tough attitude, it was obvious that Quattrini’s death had hit him as hard as his colleague.
“How about the owls?” asked Rosa. “You saw them yourself.”
The police officer inclined his head. “So?”
“Those damn birds were six feet tall!”
The bodyguards exchanged glances, as if they now really did doubt Rosa’s sanity. Could she be held responsible for her actions?
“Their totems,” whispered Alessandro. “The Malandras set a couple of ordinary birds of prey on them. Harpies can do that. The way you can talk to the snakes in the glasshouse, the way I can talk to the big cats in the zoo.”
Shit. This was not good.
“Watch them,” Stefania told Festa, tapping numbers into her cell phone, and after a last glance at Quattrini she went to the side door.
Alessandro made one more attempt. “Someone wanted it to look as if we had killed the judge.” He raised his head to look at Festa. “That’s why they didn’t kill us too.”
It wasn’t hard to guess the motive for the attack. Someone in the Alcantara or Carnevare clan was tired of taking orders from eighteen-year-olds.
“Shut up!” Festa sounded exhausted now. The aggression had almost entirely disappeared from his voice. He turned his head and called over his shoulder, “Bring those damn handcuffs back!”
The only sound was a faint rustling.
When Festa looked ahead again, he saw a black panther racing toward him. The big cat flung him backward and dug its teeth into the police officer’s wrist. Festa let out a cry, dropped the pistol, and was paralyzed by fear for several seconds.
Outside his field of vi
sion, Rosa became a snake and glided past a row of saints to the doorway. When Stefania rushed in, alarmed by Festa’s cry, Rosa was already beside the wall there, coiling herself swiftly around the bodyguard’s legs and up her body, wrapping herself around Stefania and then falling to one side with her. The gun was still in Stefania’s hand, but she was so tightly caught in Rosa’s reptilian coils that she couldn’t take aim.
Festa reared up under Alessandro, who let him rise a little way and then, with an impressive roar, thrust both his forepaws against the man’s rib cage. The police officer fell flat, and the back of his head struck the concrete floor. He immediately went limp, all resistance gone.
Alessandro returned to human form. His face was distorted with pain; too many metamorphoses, performed too fast, were draining his strength. Rosa had to concentrate to maintain the tension of her serpent body. Stefania would not struggle free, but she was still holding the pistol, and there was no way Rosa could get her jaws within reach of it.
Alessandro felt for the pulse of Festa’s carotid artery, breathed a sigh of relief, and took his pistol. Rosa’s serpent head was up in the air right in front of the policewoman’s face. There was pure horror in Stefania’s eyes.
Alessandro went up to them, took the gun from Stefania’s hand, and told Rosa, “Keep hold of her a moment longer.”
He went back to Festa, stripped his jacket off, and searched for his keys. He hurried out into the square with them, but soon came back with the handcuffs from the police car. He cuffed one of the unconscious Festa’s arms to the litter for carrying one of the statues of saints, and came back to Rosa, who loosened her coils enough for him to handcuff Stefania’s wrists together behind her back. Then he pointed her pistol at their prisoner.
Rosa dropped to the floor and changed back, in less of a hurry than before in an effort to keep the pain within bounds.
“What are you, for God’s sake?” asked Stefania hoarsely.
Alessandro ignored her. “We’ll have to take her with us.”
Rosa stared at him. “Where?”
“She called for reinforcements. Festa will tell them a load of confused stuff about a panther and an attack by birds, which may gain us a little time. He wasn’t watching when we changed. He’ll probably have one hell of a headache when he wakes up, and he won’t be entirely sure what happened to him.”
“You’re not human,” whispered Stefania.
Alessandro seemed to be on the point of giving her an explanation, but then let the subject drop. He turned back to Rosa. “They’ll be searching the whole island for us within an hour.”
“We can’t run away from the entire police force of Sicily. Romeo and Juliet, sure, but now Bonnie and Clyde, too?”
“You’ll have to turn yourselves in,” said Stefania.
“We never touched a hair on the judge’s head,” Rosa snapped at her. “And that’s the truth.”
“Then you’ll be able to give proof of your innocence.”
Alessandro assumed a scornful expression. “Your people have been looking for something they can pin on us for months. This will be low-hanging fruit to them. I can tell that you believe we killed her.”
“We can’t take her with us,” said Rosa.
“No, it would be abduction,” the policewoman confirmed.
A smile was playing around his mouth. “We’re Mafia, remember?”
“I have no idea what you two are. At least you’re not stupid. And it would be damn stupid to make me go with you. The police come down even more heavily on hostage-takers than—”
“Than on the alleged murderers of a judge?” He waved the idea away. “Just be quiet, okay?”
“Alessandro,” Rosa said imploringly.
“I’m not going to prison,” he said firmly, and managed to sound gentle in spite of everything. “Certainly not for something I didn’t do. You aren’t either, I’ll make sure of that.”
“This isn’t just your decision, it’s mine as well.” She went over to the place where she had changed shape the first time, doing her best not to look at Quattrini.
Rosa’s clothes lay there intact, the advantage of being a Lamia. With shaking fingers, she put on her underwear and the black dress. Fortunately she hadn’t chosen high-heeled shoes this morning. She could already see herself in the papers in her mourning outfit: Mafia Princess on the Run. Gorgeous.
Then she hurried back to Alessandro, took one of the pistols, and gestured at the motionless Festa. “Put his clothes on. I’m definitely not going anywhere with you like that.”
He managed to smile and gave her the second pistol as well, confident that she would keep Stefania at bay, then set about removing the police officer’s jeans and T-shirt. Finally he put Festa’s leather jacket on. None of the garments fit him perfectly, but they were better than nothing.
“First we have to get out of here,” he said.
Stefania’s tone of voice was increasingly insistent. “Our people will hunt you down.”
“One more reason to get away from here.” He gently touched Rosa’s arm. “If we can show her that the Harpies exist, maybe she’ll help us.”
Stefania nodded in the direction of his gun. “And you think that’s the way to persuade me to trust you?”
Rosa scrutinized the young police officer. Her face showed what a shock the judge’s death had been to her. And who could tell what would happen after she’d had time to think about the transformations?
Once again Rosa went over to Quattrini, touched her cold forehead, and then, tenderly, her right hand. Finally her glance fell on the judge’s little pendant. Hanging on its narrow chain, it had slipped to the floor between her head and her shoulder, and was lying in the blood there. Rosa took it between her thumb and forefinger, and briefly thought of looking inside. Instead, she undid the clasp, rubbed the medallion clean on her dress—not on the judge’s coat, she felt that was important—and put it around her own neck.
Finally she stroked the dead woman’s hair. “Thank you for everything,” she whispered.
When she rose to her feet, she felt the gazes of the others resting on her. Stefania looked unsure of herself, while there was understanding in Alessandro’s eyes. Rosa let the pendant slide down inside the neckline of her dress, and felt it warm on her skin.
When she was back beside him Alessandro gave her a quick kiss. He smelled of fresh blood, and against her will the snake stirred inside her.
“Let’s go,” she said.
IN THE MOUNTAINS
“IT’S MY FAULT,” said Rosa after a while. “I made Trevini stop my people from drug trafficking. He warned me that they wouldn’t like it.”
And that wasn’t all. She had put an end to the human trafficking of the African refugees on Lampedusa, and she had tried to limit the arms deals. As she saw it, those were the rightful decisions of the head of a clan. But to the clan itself, that meant betrayal. Now she was paying for it.
“It’s just as likely that the Carnevares were behind it.” Alessandro was sitting at the wheel, driving the black Porsche down a narrow mountain road into a wooded valley. “A lot of them would like to be rid of me. Cesare was the most honest of them; he never concealed the fact that he thought the family would be better off without me. The rest of them are only just crawling out of their holes now.”
Stefania was sitting on the backseat, handcuffs on her hands and feet. They had found another pair in Quattrini’s car and put them on the policewoman before they left. She didn’t say a word about the transformations. Maybe you learned that kind of thing at the police academy: Keep calm, however weird the situation.
“Tell me something,” she asked from behind them. “If your own families want to get rid of you as soon as possible, why didn’t you listen to Quattrini and opt out of it all? What good does it do you, being the target of a horde of contract killers? Is it the money, all that luxury? Expensive cars like this? I don’t understand.”
Rosa didn’t really understand too well herself. She had
originally come to Sicily to put a few thousand miles of the Atlantic between herself and her past. But she had found the past waiting for her on this island. Instead of overcoming the trauma of her rape and abortion, she had had to face her family history. After the murder of her aunt Florinda, she had found herself head of the clan whether she liked it or not. And that wasn’t all: She had found out about her grandmother Costanza’s greatest crime, her secret pact with TABULA. It was like a family curse. Finally, Rosa had discovered that her father Davide, who she had thought dead for years, might still be alive and, if so, had personally ordered her rape by Tano Carnevare. Last, but by no means least, was her inheritance as a member of the Arcadian dynasties, her entirely unexpected ability to take the shape of a gigantic nine-foot-long snake.
The whole damn Atlantic hadn’t been wide enough to make her forget her old problems. And now she was saddled with a vast number of new ones, all because of her family and its origins. So Stefania had asked a good question. Why was she doing this to herself? Why hadn’t she called it quits long ago and left Sicily?
She supposed she’d probably already missed the moment when she could have jumped off the moving train. Probably on the day when she first looked into Alessandro’s emerald-green eyes. And not in her wildest dreams did she think of sacrificing her love for him. Not even in exchange for a life without the Mafia—a life without him.
Was that the answer to Stefania’s question? Or just one answer?
Alessandro had another. “My father allowed my mother to be murdered,” he said. “Then he was killed himself, by those he trusted most. That’s the only reason I became capo of the Carnevares. And now Fundling is dead, too. I can’t simply give up, or there would never have been any point to it all.”
In the shifting light and shade of the lonely road through the woods, Rosa looked across at his handsome face. Maybe that was the one facet of his character that she would never entirely understand: his vehement insistence on the fact that he must lead the Carnevares. That it was both his birthright and his duty. He had fought so hard to reach that position.
