Ugo felt it first, as always, in his fingertips and his toes. With an electric tingle, his nails began to extend and harden. His metacarpal bones shortened and thickened. His thumbs retracted, pulling back and up, burrowing through the bones, then sprouting through his wrists as dew claws. Pain blazed along his spine as it thickened and bent. The follicles in his skin stung as the coat began to sprout. His skull began to elongate, pressing on his brain, reshaping and redistributing its mass. It pained him, not only in his body, but in his soul. He would, in a few moments, no longer be himself. He would lose all control, but it was not that so much he minded. It was that he would become that other, that alien he could never know.
An anxious growl began in his throat.
The wolf fell to all fours, muscle and bone and heart thrumming with animal energy. It paced the little cell, around and around, looking for an escape. Its tongue lolled and the hair along its shoulders bristled. Nothing about the cramped space made sense. Its nostrils pulsed, seeking something to orient it. Faintly, barely discernible under the smells of wood and steel and paint, came the distant scents of pine and soil. The wolf paced faster, wheeling this way and that, wanting out.
Ughetto, under the Countess’s authority, submitted to a carriage ride of many days that wound north over twisting roads to Firenze, on to Bologna, over the mountains to Vienna, and finally to the outskirts of Prague. He wished he could have bid Cesare farewell, but he was allowed no time. Their departure from Rome took place only hours after his confrontation with Leonino at the concert.
The Countess was bad company on a journey. She sat for hours without speaking, not even watching the scenery. She stared steadily at the opposite wall of the carriage, her black eyes hardly blinking, until Ughetto had to look over his shoulder to see if there was something of interest there.
He gave up trying to engage her in conversation after the first day. In silence, he watched the changing of the landscape as they clattered north. The soft hills of Lazio gave way to the tantalizing farmlands of Emilia-Romagna, then melted into the steep mountains of Trentino-Alto Adige. These, in their turn, sloped down into the Austrian river valleys.
They stopped at inns where it was clear the Countess was known. Fresh horses were waiting each time, and rooms were made ready. Ughetto squirmed under the anxious regard of the staffs of these places. The maids were round-eyed and white-faced. The innkeepers trembled with eagerness to serve the Countess, and even more eagerly hurried her on her way.
One night, as they ate an excellent meal of freshly baked bread and zuppa di agnello, Ughetto said, “They’re all afraid of you.”
Her eyes came up to his with maddening deliberation. “And so should you be.”
He didn’t shrink from her gaze, or the implied threat. Already he had begun to think of escape, of fleeing the carriage at some stop, to take his chances in the countryside. He kept his face as still as hers as he said, “I thought you meant to help me, Countess.”
“I do. And you will help me in return.” A faint gleam escaped her black gaze. “It’s all that protects you, my young friend.”
“From what?”
She laid aside her spoon. She picked up a napkin and dabbed at her mouth. Then, slowly, elegantly, she lifted her upper lip.
Ughetto stared. Her teeth were a startling white against her olive skin, and they shone in the lamplight like polished marble. Her canines were as long as the first joint of his thumb, and sharper than the knife beneath his hand. It was no wonder she never smiled, and spoke no more than necessary. It must have taken her years to learn to manage such teeth, to keep her lip pulled down over them, to refrain from revealing them at inopportune moments.
Stunned, he realized his own mouth was open. He closed it with a small moist noise.
She folded her lips together again and gave her mirthless smile.
“What—what are you?” His voice rose a little, babyish, wounded.
She picked up her spoon. “I am what I am,” she said. “Trust your eyes.”
She looked away from him, down at her bowl, as if what he thought, what he deduced, were of no moment to her at all.
He whispered, “Vampira.”
She only dipped her spoon into her soup and sipped it without making a sound.
The carriage stopped at last at a small stone house with a vine-hung wall behind it. The Countess stepped out as a huge man in the shirt and trousers of a working man emerged from the house. “My gardener,” she said disinterestedly.
The big man, thick-featured and dull-eyed, hardly looked at Ughetto before he turned to help the driver unload the portmanteaus and trunks roped onto the back of the carriage. Zdenka Milosch walked into the little stone building, Ughetto following. She walked straight on through the modest dwelling, which had stone floors and scattered plain wooden furniture. She went out a back door, Ughetto a pace behind her. They emerged into a garden so overgrown it seemed no light could penetrate the thick shrubbery and unpruned trees.
Ughetto looked about at the grounds and wondered if the gardener ever did any work. He saw, as they trod the moss-covered stepping stones of a narrow path, that they were now inside the circle of the wall. Hanging vines and drooping tree branches hindered their progress, and they walked in near darkness, though it was midday. When they came out into the open, all at once, a great house sprawled before them. Ivy shrouded its walls and even grew over the windows. Chimney stacks dotted the immense roof in a random pattern. Everything was dark: gray stone, charcoal tiles, bricks gone black with age. Even the leaves of the ivy were the darkest green Ughetto had ever seen.
His eyes were used to the generous sun of Italy, and he struggled now, in this watery northern light, to make out details, to make sense of what he saw. He followed the Countess’s narrow back up a set of stone stairs slippery with mold. They passed through a studded door of dark wood and into a foyer lit only by the dimmest of oil lamps.
Here she turned to him, her eyelids lifting briefly, then dropping, almost as if she were suddenly sleepy. “This is Kirska,” she said.
Ughetto started. A short, plump woman had appeared as if out of nowhere and stood silently waiting at one side of the foyer. He nodded to her.
“Kirska will show you to your room,” the Countess said. “I will see you at dinner.”
She was gone without further comment. The whisper of her bombazine skirt was the only sound in the intensely silent house.
Ughetto followed Kirska as she climbed a broad staircase, then navigated a maze of dark corridors. Every door was closed. Ughetto could hear no conversation, no noise of cooking or cleaning, no sound of breeze-stirred curtains or fires crackling in hearths. The air in the house smelled oddly rank, as if its windows had not been opened in decades. The whole combined to give a sense of the suspension of time, a place in which neither air nor sound could move.
Ughetto wished with all his heart he had stayed in Rome.
“Is your room acceptable?” the Countess asked when the gloomy Kirska had retrieved Ughetto for dinner.
He sat opposite her in an enormous, shadowed parlor. An abundance of sofas in styles of bygone eras filled the space. Heavy carved-wood chairs ranged around low tables or rested beneath what Ughetto assumed were meant to be candelabras for reading. None of them had been lighted. On the inlaid table between him and the Countess were three thick beeswax candles, flickering in heavy cut-glass candleholders. They were the only light in the room. A huge fireplace yawned behind the Countess, but no fire had been laid.
“The room is all right,” Ughetto said. “I’d like to be able to open the window and air it out. It seems to be painted shut.”
Zdenka Milosch nodded. “I’ll speak to Kirska.” She leaned back on the sofa and stared into the candle flames. Ughetto waited for her to say something else, but she seemed to have forgotten his presence.
A servant he hadn’t seen before, a scurrying little man with a face like a wizened mouse, came in with a drinks tray and poured Ughetto somethin
g in a wide-mouthed goblet. Ughetto eyed it, but didn’t pick it up.
After a pause, the Countess said, “It’s only cognac, Ughetto. You can drink it if you like.” By her tone, he could guess that she had no interest in whether he did or didn’t.
“When are you going to explain to me why I’m here?”
She emitted the tiniest, shallowest sigh he had ever heard. “Patience.”
“I’ve been patient for days, Countess Milosch.”
She closed her eyes. He decided they must be waiting for something, or someone. He picked up the goblet and tasted the liquid in it. It was indeed cognac, better than any he had ever had before. He tossed it off in a swallow and reached for the decanter.
Just as his fingers closed on it, a door opened at the far end of the long room. He pulled his hand back and peered through the dimness. He heard shuffling footsteps, and then, coming out of the shadows like wild animals slipping from their forest cover, came three figures.
At first he was not sure they were people at all. One was a shapeless form in a hooded cloak of a type not seen in two hundred years. Another was draped in a dark robe tied at the neck, its hem trailing on the carpet. The third wore trousers and a jacket, with a cravat swathing his chin and neck. They moved slowly into the faint circle of light thrown by the candles, and there they stopped, staring at Ughetto.
He stared back. Their features were hard to discern in the faint light. But he could see that each had long, gleaming canines protruding from the mouth, extending over the lower lip, arching down to press into the chin.
Ughetto’s belly crawled with horror. He stood up abruptly, knocking the table with his leg.
The Countess opened her eyes and turned to the three dark and terrible figures. “Ah,” she said as if there were nothing unusual at all in this grim sight. “Ughetto. Meet my brethren. The elders.”
Ughetto sniffed at the smell that came with these creatures, the unmistakable stench of decay. Instinctively, he understood that while Zdenka Milosch was far older than she appeared, these others were old beyond belief. That they walked, and breathed, was beyond his comprehension. It seemed impossible that they had once been human. He had no wish to greet them, certainly not to touch them. He didn’t want to be in the same room with these ruins.
One of the ancients, the one in the hood, drew a rasping breath. With an inclination of the head so slight it was almost imperceptible, a voice rattled from beneath the dark fabric. “Too young.”
The Countess, astonishingly, laughed. The harsh sound startled Ughetto, and he turned to look at her. Her lips were parted, and her own elongated teeth caught the candlelight with a brief glimmer.
“Anastasia,” she said. “Compared to you, everyone is too young.”
An angry hiss escaped the hood, and Ughetto flinched.
The Countess said, “Pay no attention, Ughetto. That is Anastasia, and despite her appearance, she is past hurting you, at least while I am here. The others are Eusebio”—she pointed, and the one in the jacket and trousers bowed slightly—“and Henri.” The creature in the robe shifted his body in what might have been a nod of acknowledgment or could have been a spasm of pain.
Ughetto set his jaw, and gave his most elegant bow. “Che piacere,” he said, untruthfully.
“And now,” the Countess said, rising from the sofa with the fluid movement of a girl, “we will go in to dinner. Afterward, we will explain to our new young friend what we need from him and what we will give him in return.”
Ughetto, suppressing his aversion, offered the Countess his arm. Her lips curled in that tight, cold smile. She laid her thin, icy fingers on his sleeve and pointed to a door at one side of the parlor. Together they led the way out of the room.
The ancients followed. Ughetto felt them behind him, creatures of nightmare. He couldn’t repress a shiver of revulsion. Beside him, he felt the Countess’s hand quiver with a silent laugh.
26
Chi a una sola è fedele, verso l’altre è crudele…
If a man keeps faith with one, he is cruel to all the others…
—Don Giovanni, Act Two, Scene One, Don Giovanni
Domenico picked up the phone on the desk a dozen times, his finger poised above the keypad, but then set it down again. There were people he could call, in London, or in New York, to replace Benson and Marks. There was a plentiful supply of those willing to do anything at all to win a chance at near immortality. But since Ugo had escaped, it hardly seemed worthwhile. Ugo was the one and only link Domenico had. Until he had a new idea, or Ugo turned up, he didn’t know what to do next.
He knew from the diary that there was a place, a great house somewhere where the elders lived. He imagined it as an elegant, quiet dwelling, a villa perhaps, or an old European castle, where the elders lived their long, long lives in seclusion, sending people like Ugo out to do their bidding. Of course they had to feed, but he thought they must have people brought to them, easy targets. Certainly the Countess Milosch, opera patroness, a member of the nobility, would not go out into the streets like a tramp. Nor would she allow anyone into La Società who would.
Benson and Marks hadn’t had a chance of achieving entrance into La Società, even if that—that creature, that beast, hadn’t torn them to shreds in the basement room.
Domenico shuddered, thinking of it. There had been blood everywhere, streaking the walls, running in dark rivulets across the cement floor. He had made it to the door with the wolf snapping and slashing behind him, and only barely made it out. Marks, hearing Benson screaming in agony, went rushing past him into the room and threw himself straight into the jaws of a violent death. The noise had been ghastly. Domenico had raced down the hallway to get away from the tormented howling, leaving every door open in his haste. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to face the torn remains of Marks and Benson. He fled the area as swiftly as he could, abandoning the rented Fiat, leaving the carnage to be found by someone else.
They had been misinformed about Ugo. Their intelligence was, in fact, backward. Ugo’s herb didn’t trigger his transformation. It prevented it.
By the time he understood that, it was too late. Regrettable, especially for Benson and Marks. Naturally, such an end had been waiting for them in any case, one way or another. The diary made it clear that such as they would never be allowed to join the select few. Still, Domenico regretted the gory circumstances. The whole thing had been rather embarrassing, actually. And now he was back where he had begun.
Domenico turned away from the phone and went to the bathroom to shower and dress. He couldn’t be late for the curtain.
Under the pleasant sting of hot water, he remembered his first sight of Zdenka Milosch at the opera, standing alone in the lobby of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. She looked like royalty herself: tall, thin, beautifully dressed in a silky black gown. Her haughty black gaze forestalled anyone who might think of approaching her.
There had been a rumor in the circles Domenico haunted, a story that one of the elders was in the city, had been seen at the opera. He had followed several women in those days, hoping for a clue as to which was the one. He had a feeling, when he spied the hawk-nosed Countess for the first time, that he had found her at last. And when he followed her out of the theater doors and into the street, he saw a slender young man, little more than a boy, really, open a car door for her, then slide into the backseat beside her.
Domenico had the license, and he had the name of the car service. It was easy to find the car and ridiculously simple to claim he had come in search of an item left behind by the Countess. It was a stroke of the purest luck that left a strangely bound book in his hands, forgotten—or dropped—on the leather seat.
What had not been easy was tracking her across London. A rash of missing maids and two or three unexplained bodies in the city made the final connection. Domenico’s special gift—his real talent—was persistence. In divining that Zdenka Milosch was the one he sought, his persistence paid off. He soon learned that
the slender boy he had seen was in actuality an enigmatic man named Ugo, a lover of opera, evidently a servant of the Countess. Domenico followed Ugo to try to reach the Countess, and in a second burst of happy fortune, was present when this strangely youthful man, standing in a shaft of moonlight in a London garden, transformed into a great gray wolf and bounded off into the darkness.
But Domenico was not surprised by good luck. What could have been luckier than to lay his hands on Zdenka Milosch’s diary, and to find Mozart’s name in it? Surely, he often thought, it was not so much luck as it was destiny that had led him to this point. How foolish it would be to waste the opportunity!
Domenico climbed out of the shower and rubbed himself dry. He admired his lean body in the bathroom mirror, his flat belly, his sculpted jaw. He didn’t want to lose any of it. He wanted to stay just as he was, not too young, but not at all old. He would remain strong, healthy, capable. And if that meant others less persistent, less committed than he, had to pay a price, so be it. He could live with that.
Live nearly forever.
27
Finiscila, non soffro opposizioni!
Have done, I won’t be argued with!
—Don Giovanni, Act Two, Scene One, Don Giovanni
The opera opened with a minimum of trouble. Octavia forced aside her worries over Ugo and immersed herself in her rôle. Brenda’s Donna Elvira surprised her with its vigor and commitment. As usual, Masetto and Zerlina received enthusiastic ovations. Nick Barrett-Jones sang exactly as he had sung in every rehearsal, without nuance or depth of meaning, but without errors. Peter’s performance, of course, was a delight. Octavia hugged him before the curtain calls and told him so. Their applause was satisfying, and the alternate cast, coming backstage from their seats in the house, was generous in its compliments.
Russell and Octavia rode together in a limousine to the Ristorante Romani for a private reception. In a back room, tables were laid with linen and silver. Candles in hurricane glasses flickered everywhere. Colorful dishes of grilled eggplant, gamberoni, and tiny rounds of artisan cheeses filled a sideboard. A waiter circled the room with a bottle of champagne and a tray of glasses.
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