by Kai Meyer
Alessandro walked ahead. His hair had taken on a tinge of black. Rosa followed him, holding hands with Iole. She in turn had the dog’s leash wrapped tightly around her right wrist, and Sarcasmo stayed obediently beside her. She was all in black, which was unusual when she was so fond of white.
Cristina and Signora Falchi brought up the rear. They both wore jeans and dark T-shirts. The washed-out logo of a band was displayed on the tutor’s, encircled by stylized flames. Iole hadn’t been able to stop grinning since they all met up in the cellar; neither she nor Rosa had ever seen Raffaela Falchi in a getup like that.
Motion detectors switched on the lights as Alessandro approached them. Only at the end of the corridor was there still darkness.
“Not far now,” he whispered. “The generator house is about fifty meters south of the villa, level with it on the mountain.”
“Why aren’t the generators in the cellar?” asked Rosa.
“They’re gasoline-driven. The tank ought to be still full. My mother wouldn’t have all that in the house, so it was stored separately.” Gaia Carnevare had already feared for her life years before she died, and she hadn’t wanted to make things easier than necessary for her murderers.
As they passed the last motion detector, the lights came on, and the end of the corridor was visible ahead. Just before reaching it, Alessandro stood still for a moment, listening for any voices on the other side of the door.
Cristina, who had tied her black hair back in a ponytail, looked tense. Beside her, the tutor was white as a sheet, but Rosa hadn’t forgotten Raffaela Falchi’s determination as she kept the Hundinga under fire when they attacked the palazzo. She could be relied on in a serious situation.
Alessandro opened the door slightly and peered cautiously through it, then signed to the others. The coast was clear.
The two emergency generators and the huge white plastic tank almost filled the entire space. Iole kept Sarcasmo on an even shorter leash; the dog didn’t seem to like the smell of gasoline. He was restless, but he didn’t utter a sound.
The way out of the generator house wasn’t guarded, either. As the group stepped out of the small, square building into the open, two seagulls flew up, screeching. The group hoped that they wouldn’t arouse suspicion. From now on the five of them would converse only by signs.
To everyone’s surprise, the tutor brought a small pistol out of her fanny pack and took the safety catch off. Mirella had told them to hand over all weapons, and Rosa had told her, truthfully, that no guns were kept in the villa. But she really should have guessed that, after Signora Falchi’s feats back at the palazzo, she would be the one to have a pistol hidden in her baggage. Alessandro, however, cast disapproving glances at the gun and its owner.
Ducking low, they set off southward through the rocks. Alessandro led them through crevices and hollows between craggy gray stones and down the slope. There were no man-made paths here, no flights of steps or other tracks. If anyone sprained an ankle on the porous rock, their flight would be finished. Alessandro had told them over and over before they set off, until after a while Cristina exploded. He obviously thought all women were total idiots, she said, too stupid to put one foot in front of another. He had looked at Rosa for support, but Rosa had only grinned and shrugged.
Sarcasmo found the climb down through the rocks easier than the rest of them. Running, jumping, protecting Iole—that was all it took to make the dog happy.
Rosa kept her ears strained to pick up any sign that their flight had been seen. A siren on board the Stabat Mater, the howl of the speedboats by the pier, shouts and roaring from the hybrid guards. So far, however, there was nothing to suggest that anyone was pursuing them.
They had to force themselves to go on watching their feet, instead of looking back over their shoulders every few seconds. At any rate, there was no one there but the tutor with her pistol. If Signora Falchi stumbled and fired a shot by accident, maybe hitting Iole in the back—no, she couldn’t think about it. Go on. Don’t keep looking on the dark side.
After ten minutes they reached a set of steps carved into the rock. Rosa recognized the place. The stairs went around several bends, steeper and steeper as they made progress. Before every bend, Alessandro raised a hand to stop them. Then he went a couple of steps on his own, to make sure that no one was lying in wait or coming toward them.
The staircase ended on a tiny plateau surrounded on three sides by rock. Beyond the other side, which had no security barrier, an abyss yawned, and the sea raged five yards below. Rosa liked this place; it had been a favorite of Alessandro’s mother. Gaia often used to come here to paint.
Alessandro led them through crevices down to the water, and then along a rocky shore. The waves broke on mounds of seaweed encrusted with mussel shells. Finally, they crept through a gap in a rampart, and then on down over a few more carved steps.
Ahead of them lay a white, sandy beach, the bay on the southern coast of Isola Luna.
The speedboat that had brought some of the attackers to the island was anchored a stone’s throw away from the shore: a pitch-black arrowhead shape, with a chromium rail. Rosa knew very little about such craft, but hoped it was as fast as it looked.
An inconspicuous inflatable dinghy had been beached on the fine sand. The men must have gone the last few yards to the shore in it.
Iole murmured, “They shoot people, but they’re afraid of getting their feet wet.”
“Or maybe of getting their guns wet,” commented Signora Falchi, waving her pistol in the air until Alessandro threatened to take it away from her.
They cautiously stepped out of the cover of the now petrified slope of lava rock and on to the broad beach. It had been artificially created years ago, when the island passed into the hands of the Carnevares. It lay in a crescent shape at the foot of the gray rock walls.
Rosa kept her eyes on the top of the cliffs above them. Why was no one guarding the speedboat?
They had covered almost half the distance down to the shore when Alessandro shouted, “Run!”
He quickly shifted to his panther shape. It was the first time Cristina had seen it happen; she stood there as if paralyzed.
At the other end of the beach, several hybrids stormed out from between the rocks. One of them went on all fours, but looked more like a human being than the Panthera hybrid running erect beside him, whose torso seemed to consist entirely of muscles covered with spotted leopard fur. His face was neither human nor animal, a distorted mask under which the skull had changed, but the skin of the face had not caught up with it. There were several openings through which bones and rows of teeth showed.
At first sight the other two were almost men, although one stooped like a hunchback, while the other’s stiff hips twisted his whole body first one way, then the other, with every step he took. He would have seemed the least dangerous of the four if he hadn’t been holding their only semiautomatic. The other three carried pistols, at least one of them loaded with tracer ammunition, for at that moment a shot was fired into the air, and exploded high above them in a ball of glowing white light.
Rosa pulled Iole along the beach with her. Sarcasmo overtook them and ran ahead on his leash, although not toward the boat but in the direction of the four hybrids.
“Let him go!” shouted Rosa, but Iole shook her head.
“Never.”
She hauled the dog around. He barked a protest, but obeyed. Cristina and the tutor were beside them; they all reached the water at the same time. Without stopping to use the inflatable dinghy, they rushed out into the breakers, making straight for the speedboat lying at anchor. They would have only a few yards to swim.
“Go on!” Rosa shouted at Iole. “Whatever you do, don’t stop!”
Then she let go of the girl’s hand, stood where she was, and looked around her at the guards racing up—and at Alessandro who, leaping for the hybrids at that moment with his panther body at full stretch, collided with the hybrid holding the semiautomatic and dug his
fangs into the creature’s throat.
The leopard-man roared and sprang at Alessandro with a movement that was not entirely animal, but not human either. He was too late to save his companion’s life, but he tore Alessandro away from the dying hybrid. As he bit into the panther’s side, the whole scene unfolded in front of Rosa’s eyes as if in slow motion.
With a scream of fury, she raced forward. Behind her, Iole called her name, and then she heard the two women as well. She could only hope they wouldn’t stop, but would somehow make it to the speedboat.
She took hardly any notice of the two hybrids coming toward her with their swerving, clumsy gait. She had eyes only for Alessandro and his opponent, who both landed on the ground, sending sand rising into the air.
Another warning shot was fired over the beach.
She ran on, trying to skirt around the two armed hybrids, whose main goal must surely be to keep the fugitives away from the speedboat. Except that they obviously had other orders, and knew that Rosa and Alessandro were the only two who mattered.
Halfway toward him, the hybrids cut across her path. She realized, a second too late, that she would never get past them in human form. One was now standing with legs apart, pistol in both hands, taking aim at her. The other called out something, a final warning, but it was drowned out by the sound of the shot.
Would a transformation also cure broken bones? But the bullet hit not her but the hybrid with the gun. It tore him off his feet and sent him toppling into the sand. His companion looked angrily from Rosa to the water, and now she, too, turned that way.
Raffaela Falchi was standing among the breakers, holding her gun in both hands. She fired for the second time. The shot missed the hybrid in front of Rosa, but made him duck, as if he seriously thought that would help him to avoid a bullet. It was a reflex, but it gave Rosa precious time. As she saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Iole and Cristina were heaving Sarcasmo on board the speedboat, and Signora Falchi was lowering her gun, she threw herself against the hybrid and pushed him back. She had not yet fully shifted to her snake form, but her fangs came out of her distorted mouth like needles and punctured the man’s throat at his carotid artery. He stayed down on the ground, screaming, while she got to her feet again with a leap and ran to Alessandro and the leopard hybrid.
More figures appeared behind them both, standing out against the dark rocks. Yet more emerged from a crevice, spilling out on to the beach, some swift and light-footed, others so heavy that they sank into the soft ground underfoot up to their muscular calves. They must have been patrolling along the lava cliffs above when they saw the struggle on the sand.
A blow from Alessandro’s panther claw tore the scarred openings on the leopard-man’s face farther open. The pain made him incautious when, after a moment to get his breath back, he went for Alessandro again. Alessandro, however, dove away from the attack and dug his claws into his adversary’s back. There was a terrible crack as the hybrid’s backbone snapped. Roaring, the creature sank into the sand. The panther stood over him, and before the other hybrids came up, or Rosa could reach the two of them, he dug his teeth into his opponent’s side.
“Watch out!” cried Rosa.
The next attackers were not so reckless as to tackle Alessandro directly. Instead, two of them threw a net over him. A third was carrying a metal rod with a horseshoe-shaped end, and when he touched the raging panther with it, electric shocks ran through the supple big cat’s body, making him collapse.
Rosa shouted Alessandro’s name as he turned back into human shape under the net. For a second, she was sure that he was dying, that the shift back had brought on his death. But then he reared up, ignored the hybrids surrounding him, and looked past them straight at Rosa.
“Get out of here!” he cried. “Don’t . . . come any closer.”
She was less than fifteen yards now from the hybrids who had left the main pack and were running toward her. It was her last chance to turn back, but she couldn’t leave him lying there alone with these creatures. She took two or three more steps as her forked tongue passed over her lips, licking off her victim’s blood.
“Run!” shouted Alessandro, as the device administering the electric shocks approached his bare skin again. Rosa was sure that she also heard him call out something else, although the roar of the hybrids almost drowned it out, and she couldn’t see him any longer.
“Go to the hospital!” he cried in a strained voice, and then something that sounded like find.
She completed the change into her snake form and coiled her way swiftly out of reach of the hybrids’ claws. At the same time, however, more shots were fired over the beach, maybe from the tutor’s pistol, maybe from the hybrids’ guns. Rosa glided over the sand, eluding feet and paws, and then, at last, she realized that she could no longer reach Alessandro.
There were too many of them. And if there was one thing that would have sealed his fate, it was her own capture. They were valuable to the Hungry Man only as a couple.
She couldn’t see him anymore; she could no longer hear anything, she only felt the sand grating under her scaly skin as she changed direction and made for the breakers. The hybrids followed, trying again and again to grab hold of her, but she escaped them with her winding movement, swept two off their feet with her tail, severed the Achilles tendon of another with her teeth, and suddenly felt the water spraying around her.
Roaring noise surrounded her as she shot into the waves, and soon she was hidden from her pursuers. She needed air, but she stayed below the surface for the time being, feeling as if the sea were her natural element.
A yard and a half below the surface, she shifted back to human form, lost her sense of direction for a moment, then found her way back into a horizontal position and began to swim, almost blinded by salt water, but strongly enough to make progress. She couldn’t think, couldn’t think of him, because all her senses were bent on survival.
The roaring sound around her was louder now. As she surfaced, she drew air into her lungs in panic. She vaguely saw something blurred in front of her, something tall and black, not ten yards away.
Raffaela Falchi was kneeling above the silvery ladder leading from the rail of the speedboat down into the water. Iole joined her, but the tutor made her go back. Meanwhile, Cristina had started the motor. The propeller of the speedboat was swirling up foaming water.
Rosa looked over her shoulder, saw the outlines of the hybrids against the white sand, turned around, and swam on. The tutor had seen her now, called her name, and waved the pistol in one hand.
Suddenly, even before she realized that she had reached the boat, Rosa was holding the bottom rung of the ladder. With a desperate effort, she hauled herself upward.
Someone seized her wrist. Moments later, Signora Falchi pulled her up on board, away from the rail, while the motor howled, the hull reared up, and the speedboat shot forward out of the bay and into the open sea.
Rosa faintly saw Iole’s face and heard her voice, and at the same time the tutor’s voice and the excited panting of the dog. She turned over on her side, lay there, and looked back at the shore. Salt water was stinging her eyes, or maybe tears, but she could see again with pitiless clarity.
The hybrids in the breakers were staring at the speedboat as it raced away. There were even more of them at the foot of the cliffs. They were carrying a motionless body that no longer put up any defense, no longer called to her, was being carried away like something with no will of its own, no strength left. No life.
INCONSOLABLE
FOR THE FIRST TIME in days, he wasn’t near her. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, couldn’t touch him whenever she wanted.
The others were with her, Iole and the two women, but they might have been vague shapes behind a wall of opaque glass. Their voices hardly came through to her, existing outside her narrow world of fear and rage and grief.
Everything around her was in black and white; nothing seemed to have color anymore, not the sky or the
sea. Wrapped in a blanket, she huddled on a seat in the stern of the speedboat, her hair tangled by the wind, her skin pale as death, her breath rattling in her throat. She didn’t speak, and if the others said anything she didn’t listen.
Sarcasmo nudged her with his doggy nose a couple of times. She patted him mechanically, and wished it was panther fur under her fingers. But he wasn’t giving up; he stood on his hind legs, put his forepaws on her shoulders, and licked her face. She hardly noticed.
“We’ve lost them,” Rosa heard Iole saying, her voice muffled and far away. They must have been followed. It was a slight relief to know that there was no one coming after them now, because it also protected him. It was so absurd—their separation meant that he was safe. If the hybrids had captured both of them, they would probably be on their way to the Hungry Man by now.
But the memory of his last glances at her, his voice shouting, was like a noose constricting her throat, slowly throttling her a little more with every mile between them.
Cristina was now steering the boat toward the north coast of Sicily, but the movement required to look forward would cost Rosa too much strength, and didn’t seem worth the trouble. They would arrive some time or other. Something or other would happen. She didn’t care about that.
Then, however, the sound of the motor changed, the airflow was weaker. She heard curses and firm footsteps. Suddenly, someone was standing in front of her. And the palm of a hand slapped her face so hard that her head tilted to one side.
She opened her mouth and hissed like a reptile.
Cristina di Santis glared furiously at her. “Pull yourself together, for heaven’s sake!”
Without exerting herself at all, Rosa felt her fangs growing.
“And don’t you dare turn into a snake!”
Another hiss, although she had merely meant to tell Cristina what she could do with her good advice. She tried again, and once more nothing but the snake’s hiss came out. She gave up, pulled the blanket closer around her, and laid her face on her knees.
