“Why not make silver bullets by the thousands, then?”
“My friend, because there is not so much silver to go around. The people used it for money in the early days of the war, when they needed to buy food for their families. Whatever they hoarded is not nearly enough. We use whatever we can get, but we have to make it count. Whenever new people join us, we ask for their silver.”
Giovanni thought his head would explode. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he would not have believed. He was a Thomas when it came to things like this. Maria always said, “You have to stick your hands in the wounds, just like Saint Thomas the Unbeliever.”
“How can you still have your faith after seeing…after seeing that?”
“Who says I still have faith?” The priest rubbed his tired features with a claw-like hand. “Well, I do, even if it’s not like before. I know things have changed in my mind. But I’m a Jesuit, and I can persevere through anything, as Jesus himself was able to do.”
Corrado had returned and heard the last part. “Have you told him yet? The worst part?”
“No, but I will now.” He sighed a long sigh, and Giovanni thought he heard the rasp of disease coming from him. “We learned that it’s much better to be killed by the beasts than merely bitten. A man bitten but not killed will inevitably turn into a monster on the next full moon.”
Father Tranelli shook his head. His brown eyes were watery.
“Dio mio.” Giovanni crossed himself. Startled, he realized he hadn’t done so in years. Not so much faith left for him, was there?
“This is why even the corpses were— stabbed and—”
“God forgive us, yes.”
He was reminded of what Corrado had said. “You spoke of the weapon. It was the blade? Something about the Vatican?”
“I was in Rome a year ago,” Tranelli said, nodding and rubbing his thinning hair, “but originally I’m from a small village about fifty kilometers from here. It— it was a village. Now it’s a butcher shop that has been closed a long time. The people there, they were my family and my flock, and this damned Werwolf Division went there and slaughtered all of them because of one shot someone, a boy, took at a German soldier. These hellish things, they were let loose in the town square, and by the time they were finished, there were thirty-eight butchered corpses. It was worse than what they usually do, line people up and shoot them.”
His eyes were haunted, and even in the half-light Giovanni saw the welling tears.
“This time they…they hunted them down and tore them to pieces, all for the sake of vengeance. When I heard, it was too late to save anyone from my family. The people I grew up with. Everyone was gone. All I could do was pray over what was left of their corpses, and hire men from the next town to dig a long line of graves. It was all I could do, you see?” His skin seemed feverish.
Giovanni nodded. He shivered, wondering if he was, himself, too late.
The priest clawed through his thinning hair. “But it wasn’t all I could do. I made a visit to the Vatican library. The Prefect is a friend of mine, and he has the keys to the secret archives, which almost no one is allowed to see. But I knew he is closely acquainted with the materials stored there, and their nature.”
He paused again. “Corrado, do you have wine?”
“No more for you, Babbo,” said the wiry partisan leader. “I need you almost sober, which means I need you the way you almost never are, eh?”
Tranelli licked his dry lips, and Giovanni wondered if that was the disease he’d sensed. Or if there was more. It was difficult to tell, because the priest seemed so used up, dried out, and desperate for a drink, that very likely any other physical ailments were covered up.
“Eh, va bene, figlio mio.”
Despite his referring to Corrado as my son, Giovanni doubted there was any love lost between the younger man and the haunted, religious one.
“You were saying,” Giovanni prodded. “About the materials stored in the secret archives.”
He wanted to act, to hunt for his son, but something about the priest made Giovanni want to listen to the rest of what he had to say. Despite his ragged quality and obvious need of drink, there was also an intensity in his words, in his look, that demanded Giovanni pay attention or he would never find his son.
Father Tranelli hunched over the rough table. “Yes, there are many secrets in the catacombs below the Vatican.”
He whispered, perhaps afraid the Germans would hear. Perhaps afraid something else would hear.
“You see, the archives are located beneath a modern building, but there is an area at the rear of the newer section where walls were breached, and the archives now include a long portion of the maze that makes up the fabled Roman catacombs. This area is under lock and key and watched over by armed guards, for the Vatican has acquired many books and other items in its history about which the world would be amazed and surprised to learn.”
Giovanni felt the weight of his worries, but the Jesuit’s story captured his interest despite the fear he felt for the life of his son. Instinctively he guessed that if Corrado lent weight to the priest’s story it must not have been a drunkard’s hallucination or illusion. Corrado was the most serious man his own age he had ever met, an intellectual whose haunted eyes spoke of a difficult past—and even more difficult actions to stomach. He was probably a Communist—their beliefs attracted serious young intellectuals like Corrado. Having seen what the Fascists and the Nazis were capable of, Giovanni was all for letting the Communists have a go. If the damnable war ever ended.
The priest licked his lips before continuing. Clearly, a drink of wine would have been in order. And maybe it was best Corrado had cut him off, for a single drink would not have been enough to dispel the aura of the things he had seen.
“I could bore you with a list of some of those things, many of them dangerous to our immortal souls, but I won’t. I’ll get right to the point.”
Like an omen, air raid sirens started their frightening wail. Tranelli closed his mouth. Dark, haunted eyes met each other across the dim underground room. Giovanni desperately wanted to hold his Maria’s hand, but she was at the far end of the space, helping care for two just-wounded men who lay bleeding on rickety cots.
He was certain she appeared to them as an angel.
Moments later the rumble of Allied engines reached them just before the rattle of anti-aircraft batteries and the rolling thunder of bomb drops.
Tranelli shrugged. “And so it continues. Where was I? Ah yes, the silver weapons.”
Giovanni leaned forward to listen, but he couldn’t help crying out inside. Where was Franco? Was he safe?
Ignoring the explosions of the Allied bombs, Tranelli continued.
“When I spoke to my friend, the Prefect of the Archives, and we discussed these cursed wolves and their aversion to silver, he showed me an old book—medieval, at the least—in which a mystic theorized that silver was a symbol of purity from time immemorial. And, as we all know, thirty silver coins were the payment Judas received for his betrayal of Christ.”
Giovanni almost snorted but caught himself. Until he had seen them, he would have reacted the same way if someone had told him werewolves existed.
“But the Prefect went even further than that, my young friend. You see, he told me that another book on his secret shelves contained the description of a pair of weapons fashioned from relics of the crucifixion. Someone was charged with smelting the thirty coins and using the silver to plate two daggers made from a metal spear-point. It was no simple spear, however, but the spear of Longinus, the centurion who stabbed Our Lord Christ while He languished on the cross. The Roman soldier later repented, when he realized his spear was blessed by its contact with the holy flesh. The silver-plated blades were specially intended to kill werewolves, which up to that point had been invulnerable to any weapon. Since then, all silver is abhorrent to wolves. The silver-plated weapons were matched with wood from either the Longinus spear, or from the true cross or from
both—the book was imprecise, as old tomes often are—which was then fashioned into scabbards for the daggers.”
“What’s the value of that?” Giovanni asked, interested despite his meager belief. In the distance, Allied planes pounded the harbor. He hoped this time, at least, they had found their target. Giovanni also hoped the German warships anchored there were taking a beating.
“One thing is that the sanctified wood seems to veil the silver’s presence, so a werewolf cannot quickly sense the imminent danger of a formidable opponent, making it easier to take one by surprise. The mystic further theorized that the holy weapon might be used by one man afflicted with the werewolf disease to fight and vanquish another, because he would be able to keep the blade close to his body without himself suffering the excruciating burns the silver would have caused him otherwise. The mystic called the dagger the werewolf’s werewolf killer.”
“Well, all this knowledge is fine and good, and your friend was certainly helpful, but what good has it done here?”
“After showing me the book, the Prefect went to a locked cabinet in this most secret of places, and from it he removed a wooden case which held both daggers. He gave them to me, my friend, and I have brought them to Corrado.”
“My God.”
“Yes, perhaps it is God giving us an advantage. Perhaps it is something older than God.”
“What does your friend think is the origin of these monsters?”
“My friend referenced the legend of Romulus and Remus, the babes who founded Rome—but more importantly, who were abandoned and later suckled by a she-wolf. Every schoolchild has heard this one, but there is an older, lesser-known legend in which the two male babes were not rescued, but were the offspring of the she-wolf, the result of copulation with a human. In this version, the babes Romulus and Remus were the first shapeshifters, and they passed on the gene to their own offspring. Perhaps the full moon’s influence on the night of conception has something to do with it. No one knows. But nothing could kill the cursed wolf-men until the Christ’s death led to the fashioning of the daggers.”
The priest spread his hands. “We may never know the true connection, if there is one, but we know that moonlight has an effect on the wolf-bastards—it seems to call the wolves when they are first made. And we know that since the day of the crucifixion the metal silver is their weakness. That’s all we care about.”
Outside, the all clear sounded, and the city came crawling out of its holes.
Endgame: Third Day
Chapter Fourteen
Lupo
Nick Lupo liked thinking back to when he only had a few, old secrets. Their influence had been bad enough, keeping him up nights and eventually lending him the label of tragic figure as people—mostly fellow cops—simply assumed he was weighed down by the tragedies in his life.
They were right, but had no idea that some of those tragedies had been caused by his own, occasionally simplistic solutions to problems. Invariably, his solutions had darkened his world in some other way and forged his bond with tragedy anew.
Recently he had been forced to create new secrets, to act in ways that were theoretically against his ethical code. But he had felt boxed in and found himself giving in to the temptation of the easy fix once again. He’d found that when you chose the easy fix, the complications didn’t arrive until later, bringing with them their own widening cracks of consequences.
He wondered what had happened to break—or certainly bend—the bond he and Jessie had forged under fire.
But when he thought clearly, he saw that she simply had responded to the trauma he had brought into her life by changing and giving in to her secret weaknesses.
It wasn’t all that different from what his response had been, though they had taken divergent paths.
The question was, could they force those paths to merge once again?
Jessie
She had taken to crying a lot when Lupo wasn’t around.
She would cry, and then a coldness would envelop her heart, and she would feel a draw, an attraction to the very thing she had once laughed Nick would never have to worry about.
After all, they’d discussed visiting Vegas once, but had given up the thought since neither was very enthused about it.
Though Nick had remembered a fantasy trilogy by Tim Powers, a favorite author, whose novel Last Call dealt directly with the unseen magic of destiny and chance swirling around the city of Las Vegas.
When he described it like that, she’d joked, maybe it would be fascinating to go. But then they’d had their shares of trouble, and gaming casinos on Indian lands had begun an incredible rise.
When her tribe had hustled through a vote to build a casino and hotel complex, it had seemed a mistake. But slowly and surely, the call of the lights—like the sign in the desert that lies to the West, she thought, channeling Eric Woolfson’s lyric—had eaten into her.
And now she had a problem.
And it was aimed directly at the heart of their relationship.
Damn it, Nick Lupo, why do things have to change?
Lupo
The call came in while he was driving, so it wasn’t a problem swinging by to pick up DiSanto.
“What about your meet with this guy you had me check out, the spook?”
Nick tapped his fingers on the wheel, keeping beat to a song only he could hear. It was a song by Fish, the big Scotsman who’d once fronted Marillion. “Credo” had a Peter Gabriel vibe, and he liked its percussiveness. He wanted to dial it up on the iPod, but he didn’t.
“Nick, you listening?”
Lupo grunted and lost the beat.
“Hey, is that how it’s gonna be? You and secrets again? Like the animal attacks in Wausau? Like the weird terrorists and mercenaries that always show up in Eagle River when you’re there? And let’s not forget serial fucking killers! Uh, Nick?”
Lupo glanced at him and caught a glimpse of Ghost Sam in the back seat, comfortable despite its limited dimensions. His friend’s ghost seemed amused by Lupo’s discomfort. He glared at the ghost in the mirror.
“DiSanto,” Lupo started patiently, “it’s just a bunch of weird coincidences. Remember, this is ‘Weird Wisconsin.’ We’ve had Dahmer and Gein, and Al Capone and Dillinger, and American Motors and—”
“Don’t condescend,” DiSanto warned, a finger extended.
“I’m not, I’m just saying we have our share of the bizarre here, so it’s not unusual some of it follows me around. Half the people in Eagle River swear they’ve seen UFOs. Doesn’t mean they’re nutcases or hiding something.”
He glanced in the mirror again. Ghost Sam was gone.
Talk about the bizarre following him around.
Lupo double checked and figured the lit-up squad car in the street was indication enough they were in the right place.
“Homicide, Lupo and DiSanto,” he told a uniform he didn’t recognize. There were a lot of them lately. They flashed their badges and the cop pointed at the house, a modest duplex, well kept. His face was drained of blood.
Shit, here we go again.
Lupo led the way inside the front door, where the smell assailed his human nostrils and tickled his Creature’s.
Christ, it’s another one. Same thing.
It was a slaughter scene, body parts spread all over, blood splatters like pop art on the cream-colored walls, and the wolves.
The wolves.
The lady’s name meant nothing to him when another cop read it out of his notebook, but Lupo already knew what the message was and for whom it was meant.
The elderly woman had collected wolves—anything wolf-related. There were wolf figurines, wolf prints, wolf photographs, wolf tapestries, wolf rugs, wolf decorative plates, wolf collector cups and mugs, and even a small but impressive library of nonfiction wolf books.
First a vic named Lenny A. Wolf.
Wolf Liquor.
Then a woman whose hobby was wolves.
What the fuck does he want, and why kil
l innocent people?
The bastard was insane. Could he be insane? What if a shapeshifter had lost his mind, literally?
Maybe he was conflicted and wanted sympathy.
“Jesus, Nick, not again,” DiSanto was saying, as he surveyed the damage and the butchery.
They did their thing, checking the scene for any obvious points of entry. No windows were broken. No sign of forced entry anywhere. The door was intact, so she either knew the caller or trusted him. Lupo didn’t say it, but it was clear to him there were bite marks on the remains. He found a puddle and sniffed it. Sure enough, another marking. He wasn’t sure what the techs, who were swarming over everything, would think about it, but it didn’t matter because he knew what it meant.
Lupo also noticed DiSanto looking at him strangely after examining gnawed remains. He’s spotted the teeth marks, too.
Lupo wanted to punch a wall. There was no telling what this guy wanted to communicate to him, and no one could guess how many dead innocent people it would take him to either back off or make a move against Lupo.
As if he hadn’t felt guilty enough, here was another wacko targeting him.
How long before Jessie became a target?
Mordred
Far away from where Lupo was now receiving his newest message, Mordred was waiting in his van, the side door slightly ajar. He had covered his sensitive surveillance equipment with tarps and had handcuffs, a gag, and a syringe ready.
When David Marcowicz stepped out the side door of the downtown precinct house and walked his bow-legged walk down the street to whatever bar or diner he frequented, he was on a path that would take him past the door.
At the right moment, Mordred slid the door open with a crash and leaned his large-framed body out of the van, snatching up the smaller man as if he were a mannequin. One of his hands was a wolf’s paw, its claws long and sharp as knives. The glasses slipped sideways, the eyes widening in disbelief—and terror. Before the studious doctor could even begin to utter a scream, the long needle had pierced his neck, and whatever the syringe held was making its way to his brain with nary a roadblock.
Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4) Page 18
