by Kai Meyer
She didn’t look at him.
“It’s not so bad,” she said softly. “It’s not bad at all.”
He sounded different now, as if he were finding it difficult to get the words out. “It’s not … not because of my mother,” he said with difficulty. “Or Cesare…”
She looked straight ahead, couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She didn’t know just why. But she couldn’t.
Not while it was happening.
“It’s only because of you,” he whispered hoarsely.
Then why, she wondered, numbed, isn’t it happening to me? I feel just the same, damn it. Why don’t I change?
His hand slipped out of hers. The fine hairs brushed her fingers once more. An affectionate caress, then they were gone.
The end of the road was coming closer, its shape forming in the bright, flickering light, against the blurred background of the ravine.
He stayed slightly behind her. There was a rustle of fabric as he stripped off his jeans and T-shirt before the change could wrench at the seams and fibers. She heard it, and still she didn’t look. She kept walking.
A scraping noise, then the sound of paws on the asphalt. Stepping lightly, on all fours, speeding up, catching up, yet still a little way behind her, just far enough not to enter her field of vision. But she sensed him, heard him, even smelled him.
She reached the jagged end of the road, sat down, and swung her legs over the edge, looking into the depths below, trembling, her mind in turmoil.
Why not me? she wondered. Don’t I feel enough? Do I still not like him enough?
Or was something else bothering him? Fear of something? His hatred of Cesare? Maybe a sense of guilt had brought on the change?
The paws were coming closer. Purring in her ears. The feel of his fur rubbing against her back, her upper arm. The hot animal smell, the wildness radiating from him. Sleek muscles under the pitch-black fur. An elegance that made her tremble.
He sat down beside her, very close, and leaned his beautiful panther head against her shoulder.
NIGHT RIDE
WHEN SHE HAD TAKEN the Maserati back to the garage, she went down to the front courtyard as if in a trance. The baroque facade of the palazzo was visible beyond the pine and chestnut trees: its tall windows, the gargoyles, the stucco overgrown with green moss.
The sound of an engine was coming up the drive, chugging through the olive groves below the property. It sounded like a lawn mower.
In fact it was a motor scooter, with Lilia riding it. She stopped the Vespa beside Rosa, right in front of the stone fountain, took off her helmet, and shook her dark red hair loose over her shoulders. It stood out like fire against her black leather jacket. Through the tumbling locks at the back of Lilia’s neck, Rosa thought she caught a glimpse of a tattoo.
“Ciao,” said Lilia, beaming.
“Ciao.” Rosa tried to return the smile. She was feeling melancholy, and most of all confused. The smell of the warm panther fur was still with her.
Lilia frowned. “What is it?”
“I …oh, I only went for a drive. In the Maserati. Very exciting.”
“I can imagine that. Any scratches or dents?”
Rosa shook her head.
“That was your father’s car, did you know?”
She sighed softly. “I wasn’t sure, no.”
“Zoe told me. She sometimes drives it herself. Because you Americans can’t cope with a manual gearshift.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
Lilia shook her head. “I was going to fetch her. Go for a ride together. We do that quite often, especially at twilight. Have you seen her Vespa?”
“There isn’t one in the garage.”
Lilia patted the broad saddle behind her. “Hop on and I’ll show you.”
Rosa climbed onto the scooter and held Lilia tightly around the waist. The next moment she was jerked backward as Lilia stepped on the gas too hard. Then she rode the Vespa out through the gate and into the inner courtyard of the palazzo. Once there she honked a few times, rode in a circle around the weed-grown flower bed in the middle, and finally stopped in front of a narrow door on the east side of the facade. A way into the cellars, maybe? Rosa hadn’t explored the underground part of the palazzo yet.
Lilia was looking around impatiently. “Where is she?”
Rosa shrugged and dismounted. “No idea. She was up there this morning.” She pointed to the second-floor window. “Maybe Florinda’s back, putting Zoe through the wringer.”
Lilia took out her cell phone. “Let’s see.”
Silence lay over the inner courtyard. No ringtone could be heard behind any of the windows. Lilia shook her head and put the phone away in her jacket pocket. “Only her voice mail.”
“She must be out with Florinda.”
Lilia kicked the support of the Vespa down and slipped off the saddle. She firmly pushed the old-fashioned bolt of the door aside and looked back once over her shoulder. “I’m just so jealous of this thing.”
When she opened the door, Rosa saw that she had been wrong. There was no way down to the cellars behind it, only a dimly lit storeroom. Garden tools hung from hooks, or stood against the walls; the place smelled of earth and peat. When Lilia flipped a switch near the door, several lights came on. Something rustled in a corner, but whatever had made the sound was hidden behind an assortment of brooms and rakes.
Lilia pointed to a brightly polished motor scooter covered with transparent plastic film. She pulled this cover off to reveal a dream of a Vespa, all chrome and gold. The surfaces shone like mirrored glass. “Even the tuning cost a fortune!”
Rosa dutifully joined her. “Lovely,” she said, without much interest.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport! Sit on it.”
Rosa shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“Go on!”
“Zoe will kill me.”
“Sure, but only if she knows.” Lilia grinned. “And I don’t know who’s going to tell her.”
Rosa sat on the soft saddle, placed one hand tentatively on the handlebars, and with the other traced the curve of a wing mirror. The key was in the ignition.
“Well?” asked Lilia. “What do you think?”
“What do I think about what?”
“Going for a little spin. Anyone can ride one of these. Even you.”
She had once ridden an old motorcycle a few times around an outdoor basketball court in Brooklyn. The bike had belonged to a boy she hardly knew, but he loved to show it off. Rosa had managed better than expected, and finally he let her ride it once around the block. She brought it back again two hours later. The boy had been furious with her, but it had been worth it.
“Well?” said Lilia expectantly. “How about it?”
“I should at least ask Zoe.”
“She’d say no.”
Rosa raised one eyebrow. “That’s meant to convince me?”
“We won’t be out for more than an hour, maybe two. The landscape looks its best at sunset. I’ll show you a couple of places that’ll take your breath away.”
Maybe a little risk was just what she needed now. Kind of like shoplifting. She smiled to herself. Why not?
Lilia was already outside, running to her own Vespa. Rosa started Zoe’s scooter and followed her slowly out into the front courtyard. She glanced up at the windows once more, then rode around the bushes and weeds in the middle of the courtyard, trying the scooter out. It rode surprisingly well.
For the first time she felt at ease on her aunt’s estate. Probably because she was about to leave it.
In the evening twilight, they rode along the winding Route 124 to Caltagirone. Rosa kept seeing feral dogs on the side of the road, and once, when she came around a bend, she avoided hitting one only by lurching to a stop as it casually trotted across the road ahead of her. She had already noticed the skinny dogs, often seen sniffing around the garbage containers, from her drives in the area. She felt sorry for them, especially after seeing the fir
st few lying dead by the roadside. It would have broken her heart to hit one herself. After that she drove more cautiously, and was on her guard every time she rounded a turn.
At first Lilia was challenging her to keep up, but when Rosa didn’t go along with that idea, she rode ahead at a more leisurely pace. Halfway to Caltagirone, she turned right on a narrow road that wound its way north.
There were no houses here. Wild olive groves and cacti covered the hills. Darkness was rising like black mist from the valleys and the dried-up streambeds. Once, when the road forked, they passed a sign saying MIRABELLA 5, but Lilia turned right again. Rosa saw no more road signs for the next half hour.
She was riding without a helmet, and Lilia’s own was dangling from her handlebars. The air was full of the fragrance of olive and lemon trees, and Rosa’s long hair danced wildly over her shoulders. Once again she noticed the tattoo on the back of Lilia’s neck, and she thought she could tell what it was: the head of a snake rising from the collar of her leather jacket and reaching up to her hair at the back of her head.
Rosa stepped on the gas for a moment, until she drew level with Lilia on her left. The headlights of any vehicle coming toward them in the dark would alert them to its approach from a long way off.
“What’s that tattoo?” she called.
“I had it done in Gela, down on the south coast. Horrible town, but teeming with sailors.”
“Sailors!”
Lilia laughed. “Not what you’re thinking. Where there are sailors, you find the best tattoo studios … if those dirty holes can be called studios.”
“Why a snake?”
“And no anchor?” Lilia’s knowing smile was framed in her swirling red Medusa locks. “I know about it, Rosa. About the Alcantaras. And what you are.”
Her glance told Rosa she didn’t mean the Mafia. “Did Zoe tell you?”
“She kind of had to give some kind of explanation after I woke up in bed with a snake.”
“Oh.”
“Then Zoe hasn’t told you?”
“I didn’t know that you two were—”
“Florinda can’t know. She’d be beside herself.”
“Are you sure she hasn’t guessed?”
“Guess that the heiress to the Alcantara fortune likes women? If she did, all hell would break loose.” Lilia pushed her hair back from her face. “But you asked about the tattoo… I did it for Zoe. I’m not like you and her, but I … I would be if I could, if you see what I mean.” She laughed again, a little nervously this time. “If she were a vampire, I’d want her to bite me so that I could be like her. But it doesn’t work that way with your kind. So I had that snake tattooed over half my body, to show her that I …oh, hell. Rosa, you know what I mean.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sentimental nonsense.”
“No, not at all.”
“If you say you think it’s romantic, I’ll force you off the road.”
“But it is romantic.”
With a grin, Lilia swerved and drove toward her. Rosa easily avoided the other scooter and sped up slightly, until she was driving in front of Lilia through the deepening twilight. The first stars showed faintly in the darkness, and now and then Rosa saw a bat fluttering over the steep, fissured rocks.
She was touched, although she had thought she was beyond that kind of emotion. Sentimental nonsense, sure—although not what Lilia had done, but Rosa’s own guilt about it.
Lilia had gone to great lengths to show Zoe how much she loved her. Rosa herself had never considered tattoos proof of love, but the snake was more than a gesture, much more than a name inked on someone’s upper arm. Lilia had tried to turn into a snake herself for Zoe’s sake by the only means available to her, so wholehearted was her love. She had left a permanent symbol of her feelings on her skin, a proof of her love that Zoe would never have demanded, but had been given willingly.
Go ahead and cry, Rosa thought, furious with herself. But she smiled all the same as a single silly tear ran down her cheek, and she was glad that Lilia was behind her and couldn’t see it. If she, Rosa, could change shape like the other Alcantaras, then why hadn’t her stormy feelings when she was near Alessandro been enough to start the transformation? Instead, she had sat on the edge of the abyss in human form with him, feeling inadequate and terribly helpless.
Finally she had just got to her feet and driven away, leaving Alessandro behind at the end of the world, hoping he would understand and know what was troubling her.
“Rosa!”
Lilia’s call brought her back to the present. Several headlights appeared behind them in the darkness, disappeared around a bend, and reemerged on the next straight stretch of the road. Four single lights—motorcycles, then. They were much faster than the Vespas, and they were steadily catching up.
She wasn’t sure what warned her. The same strange, sinking feeling that Lilia obviously had, too.
“Do you know who they are?” called Rosa.
“No.” Suddenly all trace of Lilia’s carefree mood had gone.
“Suppose we simply let them pass us?”
Lilia shook her head. She accelerated and took the lead again. “Stay right behind me. And step on it.”
Around the next bend, Lilia swerved onto an asphalt path just wide enough for a single car. It led up the mountainside, winding in hairpin turns. They left the olive trees behind; the macchia grew as high as a man on both sides of them.
The motorcycles roared as they overshot the place where Lilia had turned off the road, then came back and followed the two girls up the mountain.
“Fuck, Lilia—who the hell are they?”
“Can’t you guess?” The path was even steeper here, and Lilia had to look ahead. “They like to hunt in packs.”
“Carnevares?”
The very next moment Tano caught up with them.
AMPHITHEATER
HE PULLED UP BESIDE her on his motorcycle, leaning far forward and wearing black leather and a black helmet. When Tano turned his face to her, Rosa recognized him by his eyes.
She couldn’t avoid him. There was nowhere to turn off the mountain path. The slope fell steeply to her right, and Tano kept pace with her on her left. His three companions were riding close behind her, all in dark leather, with their faces hidden under shiny helmets. Their bikes made a horrible noise as they roared the engines for fun.
Lilia was still ahead, going farther and farther up the mountain. She looked back over her shoulder several times, stone-faced. It would have been easy for the four Carnevares on their motorcycles to force the two Vespas off the trail and down the slope. But they weren’t attacking the girls yet, just following them, and Tano’s eyes showed Rosa that he was laughing behind the visor of his helmet, enjoying his power over her.
Rosa gripped the handlebars more firmly. Over and over again, in her nightmares, she had relived what might have been done to her after that party in the Village while she lay unconscious somewhere, to this day she had no idea just where. She had seen men’s distorted faces in her mind’s eye, she had felt their sweaty bodies, heard laughter and hoarse groaning.
Secretly, however, she thought it could have been quite different. Teenagers feeling bored after a party. Maybe a dare, or a gang initiation. And suddenly she didn’t know which would be worse: these four Carnevares doing what the unknown strangers back in New York had done, or Tano tearing her to pieces with tiger claws.
He’s trying to scare you, she thought. Just like that night in the forest. He wants to frighten you into getting out of Alessandro’s life, that’s all.
But then she saw his eyes again, with that greedy gleam in them, and she recognized it as the look of a wild beast who saw her only as his prey. They could have stopped here to get it over and done with. But Lilia was still riding on ahead, and Rosa herself wasn’t ready to give in, however pointless her flight might be. She and Lilia hadn’t the ghost of a chance, and every yard they rode only postponed the inevitable.
The trail forked again. To the left it
led still higher up, and on the other side it ran in a wide curve that disappeared on the other side of the mountain. Lilia turned right, and Rosa followed. Behind her the others roared the engines of their motorcycles, but Tano wasn’t bothering with their games. He stuck close beside her, and every time he glanced at her, his eyes were laughing: cold, silent, pitiless laughter.
Ahead loomed a high wall of rough-hewn sandstone. A single olive tree, hunched and twisted, stood in front of it.
They raced past the wall and the tree in a close-knit, noisy group, and found themselves in a wide, open space, a huge notch cut out of the mountain ridge. From up here, you could catch a swift glimpse of the moonlit landscape, and to Rosa’s left, tiers of seats rose up the slope in a semicircle.
An ancient amphitheater.
One of the many Greek ruins on Sicily, most of them now restored and open to visitors, but some, like this one, neglected and fallen into oblivion. Weeds grew on the tiered stone seats, as tall bushes swayed in the wind like expectant spectators.
Lilia raced to the bottom row of seats, where she braked sharply and started toward the tiers on foot. But one of the motorcycles accelerated, and the rider slammed on his own brakes, cutting her off as dust and pebbles sprayed up under his tires. Lilia swore.
Rosa gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, ignored Tano—and stepping on the gas, she rode straight for the bike barring Lilia’s way. She braked at the last moment, but the Vespa hit the motorcycle hard enough to knock it aside. The rider yelled inside his helmet as he fell under his heavy bike. Rosa was flung out of her own saddle, grazing her elbows as she fell, but got to her feet again at once.
Lilia took her chance and ran past the fallen motorbike, and then up the steps between the tiers. Rosa was going to follow, but Tano and one of the others had already caught up with her. The other boy barred her way, while Tano put down the kickstand of his bike and got off. He grabbed Rosa by the arm. He was still wearing his helmet, and so were the others.
