Arcadia Awakens

by Kai Meyer

  Someone shouted up on the first floor, someone else replied. A submachine gun chattered. More broken glass.

  “We have to move faster,” she managed to say.

  Soon his second foreleg was free, then the first hind leg. He tried to stand up, but she quickly laid her hand on his side, to tell him he must be patient. Only one chain now. And her last bullet.

  The shot blew the links apart. This time she thought she felt the sharp blast of the ricochet close to her temples.

  Alessandro leaped up, staggered, and collapsed again, almost burying her under him. At the last moment he swerved, scraped the cellar floor with his paws, and found his footing. He seemed to be standing upright now. His soft panther muzzle pressed against her throat, his hot breath sent a shiver through her. She had goose bumps.

  He purred quietly and then withdrew.

  All was suddenly quiet on the first floor above them. No more pistol shots, no further salvos of gunfire.

  There was a groan beside her. His transformation was beginning. Soon, shaking fingers felt for her. “Thank you,” said a hoarse voice that was not yet entirely his own. His fingers were much warmer than hers.

  And suddenly she felt his lips on hers, his hand gently placed on the back of her head. He was naked, she knew that without seeing him, and something was happening to her. What she had taken for goose bumps was really something else. Scales rustled now whenever she moved. The tip of her tongue touched his, and divided.

  A grinding sound came from the cellar door. Someone was turning the key in the lock.

  Rosa flinched, whether because of the noise, or because of what she might be changing into, she wasn’t sure.

  “I’ll see what that is,” said Alessandro. Now it was undoubtedly his voice, although it still didn’t sound quite right. His metamorphosis wasn’t complete yet. And what was she herself? A girl showing the first signs of turning into a snake? The cold inside her threatened to overwhelm her, spreading to every part of her body.

  When he moved away from her, her tongue changed back. Her eyes widened painfully and took on human form again. The rough scales on the backs of her hands smoothed out, growing together and merging into skin.

  “Alessandro?”

  “I’m on the stairs.”

  Swaying, she moved as if she had to get used to her legs. Her hand felt the cellar wall, her feet found the steps. She followed him up and noticed with relief that he was waiting for her.

  They went up to the closed door together. All was quiet on the other side.

  “Ready?” he whispered to her.

  “Not in the least.”

  She heard him laugh quietly, and pictured his dimples when he smiled, the sparkle in his green eyes.

  “There’s something else I have to tell you,” he whispered. At that moment the cellar door was flung open.

  PANTHERA

  ROSA BLINKED AT THE BRIGHTNESS. Morning sunlight was falling through the window into the former farmhouse kitchen. There were bullet holes in the walls, and motionless bodies lay on the floor.

  “Come out,” said the long-haired man who had opened the door. He was holding an automatic pistol in one hand.

  “Remeo?”

  He impatiently beckoned her out of the cellar. “Hurry up. Most of them are dead, but I don’t know about anyone down in the valley. Some of them may have stayed behind there.”

  Rosa stopped in the doorway and turned around. She reached out a hand to Alessandro. He had no clothes on, but nor was he naked. Black panther fur covered parts of his body, although it was visibly thinning out. The iron rings with the remaining links of chain lay around his wrists and ankles.

  His emerald eyes moved away from her to linger on Remeo and the gun in his hand. “What happened?”

  “He works for Salvatore Pantaleone.” Rosa stepped back and impatiently took Alessandro’s hand. “He’s on our side. Let’s get out of here.”

  Alessandro didn’t move. His voice was fully human again, but there was an odd note in it. “He saved you, Rosa. He has other plans for me. Isn’t that right, Remeo?”

  She whirled around and stared at the man with the gun.

  Remeo shrugged his shoulders.

  Her cheek muscles tensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Get out of the way,” Remeo told her. “No harm will come to you.”

  Instinctively, she moved in front of Alessandro. “Pantaleone’s given you orders to kill him?”

  “Of course he has,” said Alessandro, behind her. “This is his best opportunity to eliminate the Carnevares. It’ll look as if it happened during the shoot-out. No one will think of this guy turning on his own people, still less would anyone suspect Pantaleone. They’ll pin the blame on Cesare.” He tried to put Rosa gently aside, but she didn’t budge from the spot. She was standing in the middle of the doorway, with her back to Alessandro and the cellar stairs.

  Remeo didn’t move a muscle. He looked at her as if she were some package that he had to deliver before he would be paid.

  She stared at him with all the determination she could summon up. “Pantaleone wants me to lead the Alcantaras for him. He won’t dare kill anyone who’s under my protection.” It was a bluff, but she had to gain time somehow.

  “He’s the boss of bosses,” Remeo contradicted her, “and you’re only a child. You’ll forgive him. Now, get out of the way.”

  She lunged forward and struck him in the face. It was not a move that could seriously stop him, but it took him by surprise. Cursing, he dealt her a blow that swept her aside, and raised his pistol.

  Rosa collided with an overturned table. Beyond it, legs were sticking out, the lower half of a lifeless body. A pistol with a silencer lay beside it.

  Fundling’s gun.

  Remeo fired at the cellar doorway. Alessandro was faster. The leap with which he avoided the bullet carried him out into the room. Even in midair he was changing into a black shadow, and he landed on all fours.

  Remeo swung his firearm around and shot for the second time. The bullet grazed Alessandro and made him stumble. His leap just missed Remeo.

  “Remeo!”

  Rosa was holding Fundling’s pistol. She took aim.

  For a moment Remeo looked at her, frowning. But then he pointed his gun at Alessandro again.

  Rosa pulled the trigger.

  The pistol clicked. The magazine was empty.

  She cried out furiously, braced herself upright where she had landed on the floor, and flung the useless weapon at Remeo. He ducked without taking his eyes off the panther. Alessandro was bleeding from a wound in the neck. The first shot had grazed him; the next would go home.

  The panther leaped off the floor. Rosa saw the huge cat as if in slow motion, carried through the air several feet along the wall before springing off it and toward Remeo, who swung his gun around again. Alessandro was racing at him, panther jaws wide-open.

  Before Remeo could fire, he was knocked backward by the weight of the impact. Alessandro landed on him and dug his panther fangs, with a crunching sound, into the man’s face. Remeo’s features disappeared between his assailant’s jaws.

  Rosa crawled over to the lifeless Fundling. His clothes were drenched in blood. There was a wound on his forehead.

  Remeo’s screams died away behind her. Alessandro let out a wild panther howl, triumphant and desperate at once.

  She didn’t want to see what he had done to Remeo. Instead, she felt frantically for Fundling’s wrist, tried to find a pulse, and failed.

  But yes—there was a pulse! It beat very faintly.

  Fundling must have barricaded himself into the house to keep Cesare away. He could have had the same orders as Remeo from Pantaleone. Or perhaps he had done it all for her. Finally, however, Cesare’s men had stormed the place. They hadn’t been expecting another traitor to come up behind them. Remeo had probably been able to pick them off one by one at his leisure. One lay dead at the entrance to the room, another out in the corridor.


  “Fundling’s still alive!” she called to Alessandro. “We have to help him.”

  But the panther didn’t seem to hear her. He let out another roar, turned away from Remeo’s body—and leaped in Rosa’s direction.

  She ducked. Alessandro, passing over her, collided with something else—something as large and powerful as himself. The force of the collision carried both creatures to the floor, only just missing Rosa and Fundling. Rosa staggered back, and realized, at that moment, whom Alessandro had attacked.

  A lion with a shaggy mane was digging his claws into the panther’s coat. The big cats were biting each other, rolling over and over, snarling and roaring. They crashed against the wall, crushing a chair under their weight, yet they would not let go.

  Rosa took Fundling under the armpits and dragged him to the door. One of the two dead bodies was barring their way; she would have to move it aside first. In the room, the panther and the lion were fighting savagely, striking out with their claws, each trying to tear the other’s throat to shreds.

  Rosa tugged more and more desperately at the corpse in the doorway. The man was too heavy. And the other dead man still lay in the hall.

  Her eyes fell on a submachine gun. But if she used that, she might hit Alessandro and not the lion.

  At last she managed to haul Fundling out of the room and into the corridor. She found another pistol there. She picked it up and staggered back to the doorway.

  The two big cats were still locked in furious battle in the ruins of the room. The lion’s left eye was closed, with a trail of blood passing over it. Rosa tried to take aim with the pistol, but they were both moving too fast. Even at such close quarters, she risked hitting Alessandro.

  Furious, she stuck the gun in her waistband and turned back to the dead man at the front door of the house. With an effort, she pushed the body far enough aside to allow her to pull Fundling past him and into the open air.

  The morning sun was still low in the sky, casting long shadows over the farmyard. Several bodies lay dead in the dust. One of them had been flung over the hood of one of the Land Rovers by the shot that killed him. A black Jeep, its doors open, stood beside the two other vehicles. The car radio was quietly playing a song that seemed familiar to her. “My Death.” Or maybe something Italian.

  As soon as she had hauled Fundling’s legs out of the doorway, the kitchen window exploded. Lion and panther fell out into the farmyard in a shower of broken glass and splintered wood. Cesare landed on all fours, Alessandro on his side. The lion looked up, fixing his gaze on Rosa.

  She fired the pistol.

  The bullet struck Cesare’s flank and threw him aside. He staggered, turned his mighty head around, roaring, and looked at Rosa with sheer hatred.

  Wounded as he was, he was still heading toward her, about to pounce.

  Alessandro intercepted him as he sprang, colliding with him sideways and bringing him to the ground. Once again they landed in the dust, a fighting tangle of limbs. The panther’s paw robbed Cesare of his remaining eye. His terrible roars made the farmyard echo. His back legs collapsed under him, and then he sat there striking out helplessly with one paw, while the panther prowled watchfully around him.

  In the end it was quick.

  Alessandro pounced, sank his teeth into the lion’s neck, and tore his throat out. Cesare’s head fell heavily to the dust, the mane sticky with his own blood.

  Silence fell over the farmyard as the corpse transformed. The shape of the gigantic lion changed back into the body of a man. Rosa looked away as the lion’s coat receded from the wounds and exposed human flesh.

  Breathing heavily, Alessandro crouched over his adversary and waited until it was over. Then he threw back his head and let out a roar of triumph. Rosa shuddered.

  She wanted to go to him, but something held her back. Fundling’s rib cage was rising and falling so slowly that she could hardly see its movement. He urgently needed a doctor, and she wasn’t going to give him up, not after all he had done for her, whatever his motives.

  Music was still coming through the open door of the Jeep, a nostalgic, sentimental song, as if the final credits were about to roll over this scene strewn with dead bodies.

  The panther lowered his head. He looked down at the dead man, and Rosa wondered whether, at this moment, Alessandro felt satisfaction because his mother was avenged.

  She dragged Fundling over to the Jeep, and with the last of her strength heaved him into the backseat.

  The panther turned his head and looked at her, sad eyed. She waited, giving him the opportunity to come over to her.

  He stayed where he was.

  The pain in her breast was worse than any of her bruises and abrasions, and it hurt more with every heartbeat. “Go to your people,” she said tonelessly. “You’ve done it. You’re their new capo now.”

  The key was in the ignition. When she turned it, the music stopped and then immediately started again.

  The engine faltered and jolted as she got the hang of the manual gearshift. In the rearview mirror she saw Alessandro at the beginning of his transformation back into human form—and maybe the end of what had been between them. Fundling’s condition gave her no time to find out.

  Farther downhill, on the gravel track up the slope, she found Iole and Sarcasmo. The girl had let the dog out of the car, and now he was asleep beside her in the bushes, his head lying peacefully on her lap.

  In silence, they drove north.

  ZOE’S MESSAGE

  ROSA AND IOLE SAT side by side on plastic chairs outside the entrance to the operating room. The young man at hospital reception had promised to look after Sarcasmo.

  A uniformed security guard stood a few yards away, keeping an eye on them both. The loudspeaker system was calling for a doctor to go straight to surgery.

  Iole was wearing a red bathrobe over her white dress; one of the nurses had given it to her. Someone must have left it behind at the hospital. It was several sizes too big for Iole, who had rolled up the sleeves and wound the belt three times around her slender waist so she wouldn’t trip over the ends of it.

  “I don’t know anyone who drives as badly as you,” she said without looking at Rosa.

  “My first time using a stick shift.”

  A doctor hurried past them and through the connecting door to surgery. A notice on it said HOSPITAL PERSONNEL ONLY. For a moment, looking through the crack in the doorway, Rosa saw men and women in green coats hurrying about between the operating rooms.

  “Do you think he’ll pull through?” Iole asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why isn’t he dead, with a bullet lodged in his skull?”

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  Iole turned her head to look at her. “What are you? I mean, what do you do?”

  “Not so many months ago I was still at school.”

  “Then what?”

  “Something happened, and I stopped going.”

  “I’d have liked to go to school,” said Iole, lost in thought. “But now I’m stupider than everyone else because I missed out on six years.”

  “You’re not stupid.”

  “I don’t know anything at all. Only stuff off television. The name of the girl assistant in the blue dress, why the anchorman on the breakfast TV show doesn’t like to travel by subway, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re free now. You can catch up on it all.”

  Iole thought that over. “I’ll probably just stay home watching TV. I know how to do that.”

  “We’ll find something else for you to do, don’t worry.”

  “I can’t go to school. I’m fifteen. I’m not going back to fourth grade.” She smiled, but her eyes were serious. “Everyone would think I’d had to repeat a year six times running.”

  Rosa put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “Everyone would want to hear you tell exciting stories. What it’s like to be kidnapped by the Mafia.”

  “Not exciting, for a start.”

&nb
sp; “No.” Rosa sighed.

  “What happened? I mean, to keep you out of school.”

  “I was pregnant.”

  “In love?”

  “No, only pregnant.”

  “Oh.” For a moment Iole seemed to be wondering whether it would be all right to ask more questions. “But then where’s your baby? At home?”

  Rosa shook her head.

  “Did it die?”

  “I’m not sure if it was ever really alive.”

  “It hasn’t missed much not watching TV, anyway.”

  Rosa gave her a smile. Iole shyly returned it.

  A quiet signal sounded. “’Scuse me,” said Rosa, taking the cell phone out of her jeans pocket. After their arrival at the hospital she had called the judge. Quattrini and her team were already on their way from Catania to Palermo, right across the island. It would take her ninety minutes by helicopter. Quattrini had said two hours at the most.

  At the moment Rosa was not interested in the possible consequences of her call. All she knew for certain was that she was going to hand Pantaleone over to justice for his orders to kill Alessandro, and she had said so to Quattrini on the phone. “I’m standing by our agreement. We’ll talk when you get here. But keep the police off our backs until then. Can you do that?”

  Yes, she could, Quattrini had assured her. On the condition that Rosa and Iole didn’t move from the hospital.

  “Okay,” Rosa had said.

  “Can I count on you this time?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’d like you to swear it.”

  “I could be keeping my fingers crossed and you’d never even notice.”

  “Swear on your aunt’s life.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. On the life of Florinda Alcantara.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she had replied, “I swear it. If I’m lying, may Florinda burn in hell . . . not that I can promise you they’d want her there.”

  Now, an hour later, she was staring blankly at the cell phone.

  Iole realized that something was wrong. “What’s the matter?”

  Rosa did not reply. Her fingertip was hovering over the keypad, but she still hesitated.