by Kai Meyer
They walked along the fence on foot for about fifty yards and then reached a place where it had been cut neatly apart to waist height. Several small twists of wire held the incision together so that it couldn’t be seen at first glance. Alessandro removed them and held one corner back for Rosa to slip through.
“We’re such a couple of criminals,” she whispered.
“I recently donated a hundred thousand euros to the zoo.” Alessandro followed her in, and closed the gap in the wire netting again. “And one of my firms delivers animal feed on special terms.”
She made a face. “And let’s not forget what kind of animal feed it is.”
“That’s all in the past. Since the Carnevares got out of the disposal business, everything’s above board.”
It had taken a good deal of courage—and great difficulty—to give up one of his clan’s most profitable ventures overnight, so she merely nodded, and looked through the bushes on the inside of the fence at a path leading farther into the place.
“Aren’t there any night watchmen?”
“Yes, two,” he replied. “But they’re sitting in their lodge at the main entrance playing cards. One of them goes around every three hours. So we still have”—he looked at his watch—“two hours and twenty minutes.”
There were only a few lights on, here and there, inside the zoo. Several of the side paths lay in darkness, and the sounds of nocturnal animals came from a couple of the enclosures, but all was quiet in most of them.
They reached a place where two walkways met at a sharp angle. Like an arrow, they pointed to an enormous cage as high as a building. “Cesare financed that,” said Alessandro. “Probably the only decent thing he ever did in his life.”
The front of it had to be at least thirty yards wide. Rosa couldn’t see how far back the cage went on the inside. Two lamps illuminated the paved courtyard, but the light from them did not reach very far into the enclosure. Moving closer, she could tell that the ground sloped downward. Farther inside, there were angular rock formations, but she couldn’t see the lowest point.
Alessandro went over to the bars of the cage and breathed in deeply.
She wrinkled her nose. “You smell better.”
He had closed his eyes. In the dim light, she saw a black trail of fur rising from his leather jacket and up the back of his neck.
“This is what you call a controlled transformation?”
He opened his eyes again. “Come closer.”
She took another step, but stopped at arm’s length from the bars, remembering only too well the big cats who had hunted them on Isola Luna.
“These won’t hurt you,” he assured her.
Her heart was pumping an icy chill into her veins, but she went to stand beside him in front of the iron bars. Suddenly she didn’t mind the sharp, animal smell coming from the enclosure anymore.
“Can you see them?” he asked.
Her eyes were getting used to the darkness. Or was her snake’s vision taking over? Something down there radiated warmth. The interior of the enclosure was like a crater with graduated rocks, and niches and openings among them. Farther down, a pool of water lay as dark and still as if it were made of glass. On the left bank, the night had come together into a formless, dense heap of something.
“The pride,” said Alessandro.
“Won’t they pick up your scent?”
“Most of them are asleep. But look over there…and there.” He pointed to several places in the shadow of the rocks, and she realized that they had been under observation for some time. Big cats, as still as statues, sat on rocky outcrops. The longer Rosa looked, the more clearly she saw their eyes glowing in the light of the lamps on the courtyard.
“They’re keeping watch while the others sleep,” said Alessandro.
She moved a little closer to him, and he put his arm around her waist. She felt his muscular chest rising and falling faster, and pressing more firmly against hers. He put his hand under her long hair, stroked her neck. Could he sense the chill that was now reaching her lips? Her hands caressed his back, and she knew that panther fur was growing on his backbone under the leather jacket, spreading over his shoulder blades.
Smiling, she bent her head. “What were you thinking of doing?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“You lured me here,” she said with mock indignation, “in order to—”
“To show you how I’ve learned to control it.” The corners of his mouth turned down. “Only it won’t work as well if we do it right here.”
She returned his grin and let go of him. “So?”
“So I have to go in there.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Nothing will happen to me. They know me.”
Doubtfully, she looked from him to the motionless animals on the rocks. They seemed wild and untamed, even in captivity.
When she looked into Alessandro’s eyes again, they were glowing emerald green in the darkness, like the eyes of the big cats.
“You do understand, don’t you?” he asked gently.
She shook her head, but perhaps too soon.
Among the older Arcadians, she knew, there was a legend that the souls of their dead slipped into newborn animals of their own species, so that no Arcadian ever really died, but led an eternal life in an animal body, generation after generation. If that was true, there was a good chance that some of the big cats in this enclosure had once been human beings, ancestors of Alessandro and the other Panthera.
She shook her head again, incredulous but also fascinated. “They taught you how to do it?”
He nodded, but then added, “I haven’t mastered it perfectly yet. It works sometimes, but not always. All the same, we can learn from them.”
There was movement in the sleeping pride. One of the animals got up, strolled down to the water, and drank. Then it returned to the others and lay down on the ground again.
“Learn how?” she asked.
“By accepting that we’re like them. We have to give ourselves up to them. It’s a bit like meditation.” He shrugged his shoulders as if he found it embarrassing to discuss. “By becoming one with them.”
“May the Force be with you, and all that?”
“Roughly speaking.”
He ran his fingers through her hair, and then lightly stroked her arm down to the wrist. His hand reached for hers. “The Hungry Man and the others who miss the old times, all that killing and hunting…they make us forget that Arcadia isn’t only about barbarism and bloodshed. There’s also something else. Something…beautiful.”
“And I’m supposed to stand around here while you go in?”
“You can come with me if you like.”
“I had all the Panthera I needed in New York.” She felt his hand, sensed his skin on hers. “Well, more or less.”
He kissed her, then let go of her and moved along the side of the cage. “Wait here.”
She was about to follow him, but then she stopped and just watched him go. “Whatever you think.” She looked for the chill she had just been feeling and was surprised to find that it had worn off.
In the darkness, she heard hinges creak as a door opened in the side of the enclosure. She couldn’t see him now, but somewhere keys turned in locks. The entrance was locked again, and she heard his clothes rustling as he took them off.
He appeared a little later, naked, on the top circle. The eyes of the big cats on guard followed him, but they didn’t leave their stations. A leopard, sitting closest to him as he passed, purred quietly.
Stepping steadily and surely, Alessandro climbed down the rocks. Rosa bit her lower lip, but realized that she felt no fear. As he had asked her to do just now, she trusted him entirely.
The light from the courtyard turned his body to bronze. His muscles rippled beneath his skin; only on his back was it covered by the black hair of his panther coat. The fur was not spreading any farther. Alessandro had his transformation under control.
&
nbsp; He didn’t have to climb now; the rocks were laid out like a wide spiral staircase, and he followed it patiently down. Rosa was watching every step he took, every supple movement of his muscles on his upper arms and thighs, his chest, the sharply defined musculature of his stomach. Once, just once, he looked up and smiled at her. Don’t, she thought. Concentrate.
Down by the water, several of the animals raised their heads, picking up his scent. A lion growled softly, but not aggressively, more like he wanted to calm the other members of his pride. She realized, for the first time, that down there all the species of big cats were lying close to one another, tigers next to lions, leopards beside panthers. Why was there no competition among them? No struggle to establish dominance?
She thought of the snakes in the greenhouse of the Palazzo Alcantara. She had been into it only a couple of times, and had never again experienced the place as intensely as on her first visit. But there, too, different species of snakes lived in close quarters. Boa constrictors and pythons, adders and vipers. Venomous cobras and other reptiles side by side.
Alessandro reached the bank of the little lake. The pride was lying on the other side of it. Without hesitation, he went toward them along the edge of the water.
The big cats got up. Only a few at first, then all the rest in a single shadowy ripple of movement.
He walked into the middle of the pride.
Its leader was waiting for him at the end of an avenue that the others formed for him. Alessandro and the lion stood facing each other as if they were of equal rank. As if the lion did not have the power to tear the boy facing him limb from limb within seconds.
They looked at each other for a long time, while the pride stood around them, motionless. Rosa placed her hands on the ice-cold bars of the cage and then passed her face between them. Spellbound, she looked down into the depths.
Alessandro changed shape. Not explosively, like Mattia in Central Park, but in a fluid, elegant transition from one form to the other. There was nothing unnatural or alarming about his transformation. One body turned into another, and there was a beauty about the shift of shape that brought tears to her eyes.
Alessandro sank to the ground, all panther now. He and the lion crossed the short distance still between them, lowering their heads as if to exchange whispered words.
After a while they moved apart again. Alessandro rose, stood on his hind legs, and shifted back into human form. He turned his face to Rosa, and even in the darkness she saw him smile. He calmly raised one arm, beckoning to her. She was going to shake her head and step back, and then she realized that she was on the other side of the bars already. She had slipped through in her snake form without even noticing the transformation.
The lion roared. A tiger on top of the rocks stood still to let Rosa pass.
Alessandro came to meet her, leaving the main pride of big cats and moving to the foot of the rocks. Patches of fur were passing swiftly over his body like electrical discharges, twitching over his arms, his thighs, covering his hips and moving away again.
Like a torrent of amber, Rosa flowed down the rocks. She reached him, wound her way up him, coiled around his limbs, her scaly skin caressing his muscles, his hair, his entire body. In her embrace he turned back to panther form, and the sensuality of that movement filled her with icy bliss.
THE AVVOCATO
THE SUN WAS BLAZING above the sea, its rays sparkling on the rotor blades of the helicopter, which had come to a halt. It was standing on the landing pad below the hotel while its engines cooled off. The pilot sat in the cockpit, leafing through the Gazzetta dello Sport.
Rosa stood higher up, on the terrace of the Grand Hotel Jonio, her hands on the wrought-iron balustrade, looking down the steep coast at the gray-blue water. Far below, train tracks ran along a narrow strip of land between the rocks and the breaking waves. A small, red-roofed station building rose from the bleak rock. The old town center of Taormina lay on the plateau to the left of the hotel, six hundred feet above the sea and the railroad.
Rosa was wearing a three-quarter-length leather coat, black boots, and a close-fitting Trussardi dress. She had tied her blond hair back in a ponytail, hoping that it made her look sterner and older. If there was one thing she had learned from Florinda, it was to dress well for business meetings. She wanted Avvocato Trevini to see immediately that she was the head of her clan, not an intimidated girl who had let his video lure her here.
Behind her, she heard the sharp click of stiletto heels on the marble of the terrace. Rosa waited until the sound stopped directly behind her, then turned around.
“The avvocato will be here in a moment,” said the young woman who had come out of the hotel to join her. Contessa Cristina di Santis—Trevini’s new assistant, confidante, who knew what else?—was descended from the old Sicilian aristocracy, as Rosa’s secretary had found out for her. She had studied in Paris, London, and Milan, earning her doctoral and law degrees in record time. There was no di Santis clan in the Mafia these days; it had been almost entirely wiped out in the 1980s by the Corleonese. Its last few members had a good amount of wealth of their own, but no longer kept in active touch with Cosa Nostra.
With one exception. As Trevini’s assistant, Cristina di Santis accepted the rules of the Alcantara clan.
Rosa’s rules.
“The avvocato asks me to say he is very glad that you have come to see us, Signorina Alcantara,” said the young attorney formally. “He is extremely sorry that his state of health makes it necessary for him to keep you waiting for a few minutes.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Rosa untruthfully. The delay was nothing but an attempt at harassment. Trevini had been asking for weeks for an appointment with her, and now that she had come to Taormina, couldn’t he turn up on time?
“If I can offer you some refreshment—”
“Thank you.” Rosa did not take her eyes off the other young woman, deliberately leaving it to the contessa to guess whether she meant yes or no, and watching the way Cristina di Santis dealt with the uncertainty.
The contessa was half a head taller than she was, black-haired, slender, but with all the curves that Rosa lacked. Her raised left eyebrow suggested that she was sizing Rosa up. She seemed to be waiting to test Rosa seriously, and then she would show this stupid, full-of-herself American girl how contempt was expressed stylishly here in Europe.
None of this surprised Rosa. In a way, she could totally understand it. What did surprise her was the contessa’s reaction when the soft sound of rubber tires on stone announced the attorney’s arrival.
An expression of diligent civility appeared on the contessa’s face. Like a robot without any personality of its own; as if her emotions had suddenly been extinguished.
Careful not to show any irritation, Rosa turned to the old man in the wheelchair. This was the third time she had met the Alcantaras’ attorney, the gray eminence of the clan, and once again she thought that he was like a certain actor, though try as she might she couldn’t think of his name. She didn’t remember seeing him in any movie; she just had a sense of him staring down at her from a screen, larger than life. Not that there was anything about Trevini to intimidate anyone at first sight. He was an emaciated old man, he had been confined to a wheelchair since childhood, and he was blind in one eye. Threat and intimidation didn’t look like that in Mafia circles. Yet there was an aura that followed him, surrounded him, came into a room with him, and lingered in the air out on this terrace.
“Signorina Alcantara.” The corners of his mouth moved, merging with his countless wrinkles. “We meet again at last. I am so glad to see you.”
The wind off the sea swept Rosa’s ponytail forward over her shoulder, but the avvocato’s white hair was untouched by the draft. Maybe he had put gel on its few remaining strands to keep it in place. His lips were narrow and colorless, as if he were parting scar tissue when he smiled.
She went to meet him, with a surreptitious glance at her two bodyguards standing motionles
s in their black suits at the edge of the terrace. She was already regretting that she had let Alessandro persuade her to take the men with her.
She offered Trevini her hand. “Avvocato.”
“You received my message,” he said.
“You haven’t replied to my questions about that.”
“Because matters call for discussion face-to-face.”
She took this ploy with a good grace. “And that’s why I’m here.”
“Will you come a little way with me?” He steered the wheelchair along the balustrade of the terrace. The contessa was left behind.
Rosa walked beside the wheelchair for some twenty or thirty yards, until they were out of earshot of anyone else. “I haven’t seen much of my business managers and the other annoying people who usually harass me whenever they have the chance,” she said. “Since I came back from the States, they’ve left me alone. I assume I have you to thank for that.”
“I am sure that you value a little rest after such a strenuous journey.”
“What did you tell them? That from now on you would be making the decisions on all economic matters?”
“Is that what you’d prefer?”
She had some difficulty in not letting the milky membrane over his right eye distract her. “What do you think my grandmother would have done, in her time, if you had gone over her head like that?”
He smiled. “I certainly would not be here any longer.”
With a sigh, she grasped the balustrade and looked out at the sea. A few isolated yachts were cruising off the coast. Even in February, Taormina was not entirely free of tourists. There was hardly another place in Sicily as popular with foreign visitors as this town high above the water.
“I hate what you’re trying to do here, avvocato,” she said quietly. “I’m sure you think it’s stupid of me, but I just don’t like it. Not you, or your cheap tricks, or the whole damn thing.”
