by Kai Meyer
Mirella pointed to the megaphone. Rosa repeated her message. Once again, the only answer was the echo of her own voice.
Ahead of them in the dark, something hissed.
“Alessandro?”
The sound came again.
Mirella raised her gun, and the others held their pistols and machine guns at the ready. Behind the pipes and cables, the insect hybrid let out something that sounded like the distorted chirping of a cricket.
A sharp meow, then pattering and rustling.
Rosa’s voice sounded as if she had swallowed dust. “Alessandro, for heaven’s sake!”
“Quiet!” Mirella snapped at her.
Furiously, Rosa spun around to face her, but something in the Lamia hybrid’s grim expression stopped her in her tracks. Mirella’s lips silently formed two words.
He’s here.
The panther’s hiss was repeated, full of anger this time. A heavy body came down on something hard and resistant, and claws scraped over stone.
Beams of light groped frantically around. An outline shot out of the dark, guns were raised, and someone fired—but Mirella had swiftly struck the weapon aside, so that the bullets ricocheted off the walls. The leaping figure was Alessandro, and he seemed to be hunting something that Rosa couldn’t see.
Several voices cursed at the same time. Once again, Rosa heard pattering on the roof above her. A split second later she realized that the insect hybrid was still behind the pipes, and could not possibly be above her head at the same time. She looked up, saw a body with angular limbs, and was still flinging herself to one side when the Arachnid landed in the middle of the group.
Rosa hit the ground, rolled under the pipes, and just escaped the attack. Instantly, the creature turned against the hybrids. Rosa had never seen such an unequal fight. The Arachnid killed three of them with well-aimed blows from his hooked claws in the first few seconds. Throats and bellies were slit open before a single shot was heard, but in this cramped space the hybrids couldn’t fire at the Arachnid without hitting their own men.
Mirella was caught by one of the creature’s eight legs, flung against the Hunding, and disappeared in the dark. Rosa had not been able to see how severely injured she was. She herself was on the point of shifting to snake form; she could already feel the cold creeping from her chest into all her limbs, a defense mechanism that her body initiated involuntarily. But as a reptile her chances against the Arachnid were as poor as if she stayed in human shape.
Two more hybrids fell victim to the beast. Then a majestic roar sounded. Alessandro shot forward with a mighty leap, landed on the Arachnid’s hairy back, dug his claws into it, and sank his teeth deep into the spider’s body. The beast began to rage, but Rosa still couldn’t see anything clearly, only a twitching scene of chaos with too many legs, visible in the beams of the few flashlights still in use.
Once again someone opened fire. Rosa shouted in the direction of the noise, fearing that Alessandro might be hit. But then she saw that the marksman, an injured hybrid, was now lying under the Arachnid and pumping several bullets into the creature’s underbelly.
At the same time, Mirella reappeared. And as Alessandro moved out of danger with another leap, while Rosa fought off her own metamorphosis, and two hybrids staggered out of the line of fire, Mirella stood with legs wide apart and fired three rounds at close range into the ugly body of the injured Arachnid.
Rosa stayed where she was until it was over. When the shots died away, the creature’s distorted, ruined legs changed shape, and seconds later a man lay there, face down in his own blood, in as bad a state as his victims.
Thick smoke filled the corridor. Alessandro stepped out of it, in human shape again, naked and, so far as she could see, uninjured. The blood on him didn’t seem to be his own, and he was walking upright without any visible wounds. He was about to bend down to her, but she was already sliding out from under the pipes on the wall and almost slipped as she stood up, clung to him, and quickly embraced him. Then they both bent over the lifeless hybrids on the floor, searching for a pulse, any sign of breathing, listening in vain for groans or whispers. Mirella, the Hunding, and the others crouched down as well, while someone called for paramedics over the radio.
The stench in the corridor was barely tolerable. An acrid mixture of gunpowder, blood, and wounds settled in their lungs and eyes. No one spoke more than necessary. Mirella gave orders to separate the injured carefully from the dead. Footsteps and voices were heard from the far end of the corridor, as help approached.
Alessandro took Rosa’s hand and led her on, putting a finger on her lips when she tried to protest, and a few yards farther on pointed to a place where the corridor branched. At the end of a passage off to one side, there was an iron door. A very thin line of light was visible under it.
Alessandro nodded when she glanced at him. Rosa looked behind her, but through the haze she could only make out indistinct movements. She heard the voices of the others, saw the insect hybrid emerge from behind the pipes and disappear into the smoke again. They were now about thirty feet away. When Alessandro guided her into the side passage, the voices were suddenly more muffled. She felt calmer with every step she took beside him.
She knocked on the door quietly.
“Iole,” she whispered, her lips close to the place where the door closed, “it’s us. Rosa and Alessandro. You can open up.”
A dog whined on the other side of it. Inaudible voices. And then the snapping of locks, the sound of bolts being pushed back.
Iole’s face appeared between the door and the doorway. She was about to shout with delight, but Rosa was faster. Her hand shot out and closed Iole’s mouth. At the same time, she pushed her into the room. Alessandro followed them.
“Quiet!” she whispered as she stepped inside. She must be a horrible sight—and Alessandro was even more so, naked and stained scarlet from head to foot.
Sarcasmo raced toward her to welcome her. At the last minute, his nose registered the smell of fresh blood, and he swerved away from Rosa and rushed at Alessandro, licking him frantically.
“Traitor,” murmured Rosa.
Iole flung her arms around her, while Alessandro closed the door behind them. As he turned around again, he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun that was probably as old as the bunker itself. Cristina di Santis was aiming it at his face, while Raffaela Falchi, Iole’s private tutor, was pointing a meat knife at him with trembling hands.
Rosa cautiously pushed Iole away from her, feeling thankful that the girl kept her mouth shut. However, Iole seemed to have realized what was going on already. In any normal situation, Iole saw its slightly crazy side first, as if she went through life with a magnifying glass that enlarged only the oddities and curiosities for her benefit. At a moment like this, however, she was the first to understand the true state of affairs. Rosa would have liked to give her another hug for that alone.
But first she had to make sure that Cristina di Santis didn’t shoot Alessandro. Or that Signora Falchi didn’t thrust the steak knife into his chest.
“Listen,” she said quickly, although she rejoiced inwardly as soon as she looked at brave, grubby, pretty Iole. “The good news is that the men who’ve been keeping you holed up down here are dead. The bad news is that we don’t know exactly what to think of the people who killed them.”
Signora Falchi was about to say something, but Cristina got in first. With the same grim expression she’d had when she tricked Avvocato Trevini back in the Hotel Jonio, she reached her arm out sideways and placed her hand over the tutor’s mouth. Signora Falchi seemed as if she wanted to protest, but the dark looks on the faces of the others deterred her.
“Go on,” said Cristina. She lowered the gun and pushed Signora Falchi’s knife down with its barrel.
Rosa nodded gratefully to the young attorney. “They’ll be here any minute, so I have to keep this short. You’ve found something down here, haven’t you? Iole, you told me about papers, some kind of a
rchive.”
Iole grinned broadly. Her short hair was untidy and gray with dust after her days in the bunker. She had rings of dirt under her eyes, and like the others didn’t smell very good. “Over there,” she said, pointing to a wooden table behind which several banana boxes full of file folders, loose-leaf binders, and papers were stacked. A whole pile of others, a good half a yard high, lay on the table. A candle flickered beside them.
“You know what that is, Rosa?” asked Cristina, turning to Rosa. They had been on a first-name basis since she joined them on Isola Luna. It didn’t mean that they were bosom buddies, but at least they felt mutual respect for each other. Recently they had been able to spend several hours in the same house without going for each other’s throats.
A voice called out from the corridor. It wouldn’t be long now before it occurred to someone—probably Mirella—that Rosa and Alessandro had disappeared.
“Did all this belong to a man named Leonardo Mori?” asked Rosa. “Is his name there anywhere, on a folder or—”
“Those are typescripts of his tape recordings,” Cristina interrupted her. “He asked a whole series of people a great many odd questions. They call him by his name several times. Signor Mori.”
Alessandro hadn’t said a word yet, probably because he knew how little time they had. Rosa saw the excitement in his eyes. She, too, felt new hope, because it was Cristina who had read these papers. Cristina, who had a photographic memory, and was able to recollect every detail, however tiny.
“It’s about the Arcadian dynasties,” said Signora Falchi, joining the conversation. She had been in the Palazzo Alcantara when the Hungry Man’s Hundinga mercenaries attacked it, and knew the secret of the shape-shifters. In spite of that, however, it was a surprise to hear her mention the dynasties so matter of factly.
“The others know about everything I’ve read,” said Cristina, with a challenging look at Alessandro. “After all, we had to talk about something down here.”
The voices in the corridor were louder now. Were they calling their names?
“This is very important,” said Rosa hastily, “and whatever happens, the answer must be kept strictly between us. If anyone asks you later, you just looked at a few of the papers, but you didn’t understand much, okay?”
Iole smiled. “Acting stupid isn’t difficult when everyone’s always thought you were mentally challenged.”
“Did you find out anything about a shrine?” asked Rosa. “Information about an ancient tomb, a kind of a mausoleum of—”
“The tomb of Lycaon,” said Cristina.
“King Lycaon,” added Iole.
Alessandro broke his silence. “Is there anything about its location? Did Mori find out where the tomb was built?”
Cristina nodded. “Yes, he went there.”
Now footsteps could be heard, coming closer. Mirella called to them. She must have seen the candlelight under the door. Sarcasmo growled quietly.
“Where is it?” whispered Rosa. “Where is the damn tomb?”
“In Sicily.”
“More precisely?”
Sarcasmo began to bark.
“In a valley,” said Cristina, “near a village called Giuliana.”
Rosa’s heart missed a beat.
“Shit,” murmured Alessandro.
The iron door flew open into the room and crashed against the wall.
THE SHRINE
ROSA COULDN’T GET ENOUGH of the feel of hot water on her skin. Even after the last of the dirt and blood had disappeared down the drain, she let the shower run for a long time. The steaming heat on her body was wonderful, but she still didn’t feel entirely clean.
She had used up half a bottle of shower gel. The water had been running for twenty minutes. But her bruises and red marks couldn’t be washed away. Was she getting compulsive about washing? No sooner was she rid of her old neuroses than she developed new ones. What the hell, she thought, as she let herself sink to her knees in the jet of water and turn into the snake.
Her body lost its human shape as the skin roughened. All the outward features she didn’t like about herself—her thin legs, sharp bones, small breasts—simply ceased to exist. Her hair turned to strands of skin and tissue, fell around her shoulders and head, and merged with her amber-colored scaly body. Her tongue became forked, shot out of flat reptilian jaws. Her vision also changed; her surroundings were bathed in brightness as clear as glass.
Finally she lay in the shower as a snake, stretching and coiling in the water, and she couldn’t remember when she had last felt so good.
After a while the water ran cooler; the boiler at the villa had reached its limit. Rosa changed back and found that she had a new skin, free of bruises and cuts.
When she got out of the shower, Alessandro was standing in front of her. She wondered how long he had been there, watching.
“There’s a word for what you’re doing,” she said with an embarrassed smile as she reached for a bath towel and rubbed her hair. For the first time in days she could bear her own smell again; not even the artificially floral perfume of the shampoo bothered her.
Alessandro’s own hair was wet; he had showered in another bathroom in the villa. As she dried herself off, she admired the well-proportioned build of his body; he wore nothing except for a towel knotted around his waist. Her robe hung on a hook beside the door behind him.
The bathroom was on the second floor of the villa. Its exterior glass wall reached smoothly from the ceiling to the floor. A few yards lower down, the gray slope of lava rock, creviced and precipitous, fell away to the sea. Although the glass was slightly clouded with condensation, the morning sunlight bathed all the faucets, fittings, and mirrors in gold. Like Alessandro’s skin.
“I didn’t want to wait any longer,” he said.
Amused, she raised an eyebrow. “Now? Here?”
“I didn’t mean that,” he replied, smiling. “We have to talk about Giuliana.”
“Giuliana no longer exists.” She went on drying her long hair. “The valley disappeared under a lake when a dam was built. Cesare and your father did all the work on it.”
She hadn’t been in Sicily long when her sister, Zoe, took her there. From the dam wall, they had looked at the depths below, to where a lake had swallowed up a whole village—and allegedly its inhabitants as well. It was said that the Carnevares had been given the contract to build the dam, even though no one had any use for the water or the energy that it produced. The project had brought millions upon millions into the clan’s bank accounts. According to official sources, the inhabitants of Giuliana, who had protested against the clearance of their village, had been resettled in Calabria. Yet there were persistent rumors that the Carnevares had silenced them and sunk them into the lake created by the dam, along with their houses.
Alessandro was aware that Rosa knew the story of the villagers’ murders, but he had dismissed the whole thing as a modern legend.
“If Lycaon’s tomb does exist,” said Rosa, “or even a single stone is left of it, then it’s all buried deep in that lake. I’m gradually starting to understand what made Cesare tick. He was a bastard, but he was also an enemy of the Hungry Man. And whatever really happened in Giuliana—the reason for building the dam was obviously not so much the money your clan made out of it as trying to stop the Hungry Man’s attempt to seize power for a second time.”
He was leaning against one of the marble sinks. In the mirror, she could see his muscular back and had to tear her gaze away in order to look into his eyes. She liked those even better, the only green thing in the sterile room.
“Up to that point maybe it all makes sense,” he said. “Cesare and my father turned the valley into a lake to make sure that the site of the tomb was inaccessible forever. But there was one thing they didn’t take into account.”
She put the towel down and examined her long hair in the mirror. It looked like an exploded bale of hay. “And that was?”
“The possibility of an upheaval with
in the clan. Enabling the Hungry Man to gain influence over the Carnevares.”
“How long would it take,” she asked, “to get a lake like that to run dry again? A year? Two years?”
“Four months.”
“Only four months?” She shrugged. “Still, that gives us at least four months to think something up—”
“Four months ago, one of my capodecini came to me and told me how bad the whole Giuliana story was for the image of our firms. You and I talked about it, too, but you didn’t believe me when I said the people really had been resettled.”
“Are you saying that—”
“I wanted to find out what really happened. Maybe I’d even have done it myself, sooner or later, without anyone else bringing my attention to it. I didn’t need a permit. The land on both sides of the river belongs to my family.”
“Wouldn’t a few phone calls to Calabria have been enough?”
“It was also a matter of ending all the talk. I wanted people to be able to see, with their own eyes, that there’s nothing but abandoned houses down in that lake.” He hesitated for a moment. “If there is nothing but abandoned houses there.”
“So the whole lake has been drained now?”
He nodded. “I haven’t thought about it for a couple of weeks, but the water ought to be out of it by now. I’ve looked at the construction paperwork from when the dam was built, all the applications and permits. Not a word about any archaeological finds or excavations. If there was anything there, then no one recognized it for what it really was. Maybe only a few stones, some kind of rubble that no one thought important.”
“And you think the Hungry Man is behind it? Through his middleman, he gave you the idea of draining the gravesite?”
“Could be possible. But I wanted to know whether my father was a bigger bastard than I even thought.” He looked down. “Whether he and Cesare were mass murderers.”
“Is that why you never told me about it?”
“First I wanted to know whether there were any bodies down there or not.”
