The Hidden Demon

by Monica La Porta

“I’ll be there.”

  “Good demon.”

  “Insufferable werewolf.”

  His laugh was contagious and made her feel all tingly. “Later.”

  “Later.”

  Ophelia took one of the shortest showers she had ever taken since the invention of indoor plumbing. She usually loved bathing under the warm jets and took her time to relax in her custom-made shower stall. She had called the same company who had built Alexander’s master bathroom and asked for luxurious jet heads and a Turkish sauna. She had bought a water-proof case for her eReader and sometimes spent hours sitting on the oversized bench anatomically shaped to cradle her long body. This time, she washed herself in less than ten minutes, a record. She didn’t bother to dry her mane, but shook her head and used a bandana to keep it in check. Passing by her kitchen, she gulped down a glass of water, then grabbed her helmet attached to the hook on the wall by the door, and left her apartment.

  Outside her building, she was received by flashes and fast-fired questions by a horde of journalists. First in line, and the most aggressive, Lena Chiosi.

  “How do you explain that offensive mural on the wall?” In her signature style, the woman had her microphone under Ophelia’s nose, then she pointed it at the building opposite them.

  Ophelia looked at the obscene rendering of a dark-skinned woman copulating with a being painted in red, sporting horns and a bifurcated tail. Satanic symbols and her full name were sketched all over the wall.

  “Is it true you worship the devil? Is Alexander Drako your High Priest? Are the triplets in any danger from their own father?”

  Ophelia was outraged at the journalist’s words and she had to breathe in and out for several counts before she could walk away from Lena Chiosi without smashing the woman’s head with her helmet. Followed by the crowd, Ophelia fought her way toward her bike parked in the garage on the opposite side of the street. Never had a few meters of road seemed so difficult to travel.

  Once at the garage entrance, Ophelia signed to Carmine, the burly man in charge of it, to close the gate after her. Fortunately, the garage had a second entrance that opened on a parallel road. Once she reached her bike, hands still shaking from her suppressed rage, she fumbled with her helmet before pressing it firmly on her head. The rumble of her Ninja’s engine vibrated through her body, giving her a much needed jolt of positive energy. A moment later, she was pushing on the accelerator and exiting the garage from the deserted side.

  With every meter of asphalt her bike devoured, she felt calmer. Uncaring for rules and regulations, she skirted cars, buses, other bikes, even people on her way. She passed left and right, collecting shouts and curses as she cut through the morning traffic jam. When she reached the portion of the Lungotevere bordering the Tiberina Island, she was finally in control of herself. She parked by the side of the road, and located Peter waiting for her on the middle of the bridge. She waved and he waved back. The sight of the demon smiling at her by the parapet was what she needed to feel better. She strolled toward him, looking forward to his company.

  “Ophelia.” Peter raised a thermos for her to see. “Hope it’s up to your standards.” He then gestured to the wrapped tray lying on the marble balustrade.

  She saw the double “M” printed on the waxed paper. “Mondi?” The most famous patisserie in Rome, and it wasn’t around the corner. It must have taken at least an hour for Peter to drive from Mondi to the Tiberina Island at that time of day. Unless, he had driven like a mad man.

  “Anything for my feisty coworker.” He bowed with a flourish of his hand. Then he uncapped the thermos and the smell of freshly brewed espresso wafted to Ophelia’s nostrils.

  She accepted the cup and the packet of sugar he offered her. Holding the cup with one hand, she brought the packet to her mouth and tore it with her teeth, then poured some of it in the cup, and finally sipped her coffee. “You are my savior.”

  He looked at her from under his long, black lashes, red sparks illuminating his face. “I know nothing about saving people, but if you want to sin, that’s my area of expertise.”

  “I’ll call you later then. Now, I’m in saintly mode.” She made an angelic face, but couldn’t bear it longer than a heartbeat and started laughing.

  “Thought so.” Peter pierced the paper and opened the tray for her.

  “I love mini pastries.” She pointed at the small profiterole with a pistachio resting on the green icing. “Those are my favorites. How did you know?” She plucked one and laid it on her tongue, savoring the sweetness and the scent before eating the pastry.

  “I didn’t, but they’re my favorite too—”

  “And Mondi is one of the few patisserie that knows how to make them properly.” She moaned when she bit into it and the pistachio-cream filling coated her tongue.

  Peter’s eyes became the reddest shade yet, his tongue darted out to lick his lips as if he were eating the same pastry.

  Instinctively, Ophelia stepped closer to him as she grabbed a second pistachio profiterole and coaxed his mouth open with it. He opened his lips to accept the offering and his tongue caressed the pastry before swallowing it whole. She watched as he gulped it and followed its descent down his throat.

  Peter cleaned his mouth with a flick of his tongue, then he leaned forward to her side, and stopped mere millimeters from her right ear. “Are you going to eat me up with your big, round eyes, wolf?”

  “Never heard that line before.” She arched her eyebrow and straightened her back, but smiled at his joke. Her wolf approved with a small, joyous bark. You stop that.

  He took a small tart with a cherry lying on top of pink jam. “Next time, I’ll come up with something more original.” He gently reached for her mouth.

  “It’s okay, just keep on feeding me such treats and I’ll forgive your lack of imagination.” She opened her lips and closed them around the tip of his gloved fingers before he could avoid it. Several things happened at once. She felt that jolt of energy she had experienced before when he had helped her clear the wall in the magik tunnel, and her heartbeat doubled, making her feel lightheaded. But she also had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes change shade as a gasp escaped his mouth. Her victory didn’t last long though.

  He removed his hand as if she had burned it. The expression on his face changed, a darkness that wasn’t there before marring his handsome traits. “This game we play, we must stop.”

  Despite having decided early on he was off-limits and she would only flirt with him, she was hurt by his request. Lately, feeling rejected was becoming too familiar. “Let’s get to work.”

  “Good idea.” He wrapped the tray in its waxed paper and secured it with the silk ribbon it had come with. When he took the first step toward the hospital entrance at the opposite end of the bridge, she stopped him.

  She pointed at the Lungotevere road on their right. “I won’t leave my bike outside. I’ll park it at the underground garage and I’ll walk back.” She turned and walked away from him, only to feel relieved when she heard his steps just behind her.

  His legs longer than hers, he was by her side in no time. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Okay.” She led him to her bike and was rewarded by his low whistle.

  He walked around it. “A black Kawasaki Ninja 650R. Sleek and elegant. Perfection.” He had raised his eyes to hers to deliver the last compliment. “The only bike I can imagine you driving.”

  She was used to having her bike noticed on the road, but she had never been affected by praise of it before. Butterflies flying and bumping each other in her stomach, she opened the basket where she kept a spare helmet, waited for him to wear it, and refrained from helping him fasten it under his chin when his gloved hands didn’t work fast enough. “You can store the pastries there.” She pointed at the now-empty basket.

  Then, looking forward to make him feel as uncomfortable as she felt, she mounted her bike as she always did, rearranging her skirt higher so that she could swing her leg over the saddle,
and nodded at him from over her shoulder. “Ready?” She felt the bike lower under his weight. His jeans-clad thighs barely brushed hers, the naked skin on her legs set on fire by just that, only the mere promise of contact, but his hands didn’t reach for her waist. She figured he was grabbing the handle behind his back. Disappointment burned inside her, but she didn’t go faster than necessary to force him to hold onto her. She reached the garage under Castel Sant’ Angelo a few minutes later, having coasted the Lungotevere in no hurry.

  Walking through the Promenade, they had time to work the awkwardness out of the way by chitchatting.

  Peter kicked a pebble out of the way. “Barnes is having problems with keeping the human press under control—”

  “Speaking of which, I had an unpleasant surprise this morning. Someone spray painted the wall of the building on the opposite side of the road from mine with a graffiti starring the two of us, and Lena Chiosi and the rest of the gang converged on the scene like piranhas.”

  “I’m sorry. What was the graffiti about?”

  Ophelia had never blushed before a man, but she came very close at that moment. “Let’s say you were having your merry way with me.”

  He paused his stride and stopped before her, his eyes searching hers. “Was it crude?”

  “Very.”

  “I wish I had been there to defend you from those bastards.” He raised his hands as if he were going to embrace her, then slowly lowered them.

  “It’s okay. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.” She hadn’t felt the need to cry before, but she did now, yet she willed the tears away.

  He stepped closer to her, his eyes, the deepest gray-green, locked into hers. “I can see you are strong, but that doesn’t mean you must always fend for yourself. It was the two of us depicted on that wall, and I would’ve gladly smashed a face or two to defend your honor.”

  Ophelia was taken aback by the intensity in his look and in his words. Something deep inside of her cracked at the mention of her honor. “I’m not a frail virgin. And I’m afraid my morals are very loose.”

  “Would you ever betray a friend?” He canted his head.

  “No.”

  “Would you ever harm anyone without just cause?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Have you ever loved?”

  “Yes, I have.” Ophelia’s heart shrunk.

  “You’re a moral being then. Wish I could say the same for me.” Peter’s lips turned up in a sad smile.

  Again, she refrained from reaching for him. “Are you culpable of any of the above?”

  He shook his head. “The truth is I don’t know. I could’ve been a monster and I wouldn’t know.”

  Bits and pieces of conversations she had had during the years with Samuel came back. “I thought forgetting was a good thing. A friend of mine is cursed with perfect memory and I think it’s hard for him to accept his past errors.”

  “Samuel? Are you talking about the fallen?” Something passed through his eyes, like a greener flash, but a moment later, they were back to their neutral shade.

  She nodded, but didn’t add to it, not wanting the conversation to shift to Samuel.

  “I should’ve kept my broken wings and my memories like he did.” He resumed his walking and Ophelia hurried to keep his pace.

  She didn’t tell him she thought he got it all wrong. She knew it wasn’t her place, but she wanted to soothe his ache nonetheless. Unable to find the right words—she had never been good at that, always resorting to the healing power of physical touch—she found herself at a loss for what to do.

  They walked the last stretch of the Promenade in silence, each lost in their own private misery. Ophelia read all the inscriptions on the rock wall and admired the ancient ruins in permanent display along the trail bordering the subterranean River Styx. After the discovery of Laurentius’s villa, several other Roman villas and shops had been discovered during the last year. Depending on the race they belong to, paranormal archeologists were at work night and day, uncovering daily life scenes buried for almost two millennia.

  Ophelia passed before the ruins of the building that had been named “the Baker’s house,” for its three perfectly preserved clay ovens and tried to remember if she had ever visited that house when she had lived by the skirts of the Suburra so long ago. She wanted to ask Peter if he had been in Rome at the times of the Empire, but one look at him prevented her from doing so.

  They entered the Tiberina Island Hospital’s morgue by its lower-level entrance and had to let pass a mourning procession first. Death among the paranormals was seldom the result of old age, but rather from violence or suicide. The mourners were young faes, and Ophelia was reminded of the recent losses among the werewolf community. Only a few days earlier, two teenagers close to Quintilius had been killed one after the other and vampires were the main suspects. The two boys had been reckless, but they hadn’t deserved to die so young and their demise had hit the shifter community hard.

  As Peter followed a step behind, she entered the morgue with a heavy heart. The fact the bones she would examine belonged to a couple long dead didn’t lessen the unfairness of it all. After exchanging a few words with the janitor and donning a set of pearl gray scrubs she had thrown in her satchel at the last moment, she walked to the table once again.

  “They were the Romeo and Juliet of their time.” Peter had kept to the door, his tall frame against the jamb, his arms crossed before him.

  “Yes, they must’ve kept their story a secret from the rest of the world.” Interracial love was accepted nowadays and there were a few illustrious examples—like her immortal friend Marcus who had married Diana, a vampire—but some paranormals still looked down at such couples. At the times when those two kids had lived, falling in love out of one’s race was considered taboo, especially when one of the two wasn’t able to procreate. Throughout the paranormals’ history, there had been so many marriages where one of the two was paid to keep up the façade, while the true companion acted as the tutor or the ancilla of the house. She shook her head at the hypocrisy of her society, then, with a sigh, turned on the recorder, and started examining the remains once again, hoping to find whatever had escaped her the previous visit.

  At first glance, she knew she wouldn’t have much to add to what she had found before. “What preserved the vampire’s body?” She took a step back from the metal table on which the couple was still embracing, dreading the moment she would tear them apart. “A drug? An enchantment?”

  “We could ask Caelum.”

  So deep in her thoughts about the couple, Ophelia was startled by Peter’s voice echoing in the cold and empty chamber, where the high ceiling and stainless steel furniture made any noise sound ominous. Plus, she wasn’t used to have anyone around when she worked. Usually her questions were strictly personal, for her to go back to them when she listened to the recording of her sessions.

  He walked closer to the table. “My friend the warlock. We could ask him if he knows anything about magik ever being used to preserve vampire remains.”

  She frowned. “Never thought that could be possible, but I suppose if I were a witch, I wouldn’t want to divulge that kind of knowledge outside of my circle.”

  “It’s worth a try in any case.”

  “I think so.” She had paused the recorder when he had interrupted her. Now she pushed “on” and waited a few seconds before resuming her observation. “Look into magik rituals.” Her eyes on the male’s skeleton, she noticed how it seemed to lie heavily to the side as if he had shouldered her or kept her head from touching the ground, and their combined weight had lowered both down. She followed their united forms from his to hers, and leaned closer to study the girl’s clavicle. Then she examined the humerus. A moment later, she was back to studying the clavicle and gently moved the bone to get a better look at the scapula. Sometimes, assessing damages on shifters’ skeletons was difficult, their bones were broken and reshaped on a monthly basis and external fractures beca
me just another jagged line in their bodies’ landscape. “The girl suffered a trauma, probably only a few days before she died, but I can’t determine how since she was already healing.”

  ****

  “Let me.” Peter removed his gloves and moved to the girl’s side. He waited for Ophelia to make space for him. He knew he hurt her by refusing to touch her, but he wouldn’t chance initiating contact, not even by mistake again. He was still trying to lessen the effects of seeing and feeling her mouth around his finger. Having to avoid touching her during the bike ride hadn’t helped matters. If anything, he had wanted to circle her waist tightly and press her back to his chest, encompassing her long and mostly naked legs with his. When she had raised her skirt to mount her bike, he had almost growled out loud and begged for mercy. Instead, he had lowered himself behind her, sat in the most uncomfortable position to avoid touching her, and endured the long and slow cruise around the Lungotevere as every single muscle in his body cramped and desire flared up.

  “Go ahead.” Ophelia retreated to the corner, her body straight, her eyes on him.

  He closed his and prepared for the suffering. His naked hand brushed the girl’s clavicle, following the shape of her shoulder from the front to the back.

  Pain. Pain. Pain. Mother learned about Valerius. She had a servant follow me into the night and he caught us embracing. We weren’t doing anything. Valerius was only holding me. We hadn’t seen each other for days. He had been punished and left to starve for two weeks by his sire and was weak. I only wanted to feed him. Mother came and jerked me away from Valerius. She commanded the servant to hit me with a cane while she cried. She said she had never been so humiliated in her life. One of her children, a vampire-lover. She locked me in the cellars, saying I should repent and atone for my sins. I won’t renounce him. She said our love is unnatural. She called it perversion. I love him. She screamed I wasn’t her daughter anymore. Pain. Brother threw me against the wall, then kicked me out of the house and barred the door. I begged. I was scared. The sun was out. Brother had known Valerius wouldn’t be there to defend me. Mother and Father hung the mourning veil on the windows. The pack came and finished what Brother had started. They hurt and soiled me. Inside and out. They call me names. Valerius heard me screaming and woke. When he arrived, the pack was done with me, but I didn’t let him leave to avenge me. I only wanted him with me.