The Spider Dance

by Nick Setchfield

  Winter didn’t reply. He looked out to Vesuvius, which was wreathed in low cloud.

  Zerbinati casually pocketed the bullet. ‘The Russians told me there was a trade in the hearts of kings. They have intercepted such transactions, in places beyond even my influence. The Eastern Bloc, at least, wants to keep me alive.’

  Winter remembered Scratch Hill Junction. So that had been a Soviet operation. His instinct today had been right; that creature was in the employ of Kulganek.

  ‘Naturally I wondered who wanted me dead,’ Zerbinati continued. ‘There was an embarrassment of possibilities. But I should have known it was British Intelligence. You betrayed us all in the war. Operation Paragon was a disgrace to the Crown. A stain on your nation.’

  There was an edge to his voice now. Winter turned, catching something hard and unforgiving in Zerbinati’s gaze. This was an old, deep wound, that much was obvious.

  ‘But you were the last man I thought they would send to kill me.’

  Winter’s surprise betrayed him. ‘You know me?’

  ‘Of course I know you, Signore Hart. Though I confess I imagined you were dead.’

  Christ, thought Winter, hotly. His past would never let him go. It would keep him roped to that damned warlock forever.

  He stubbed his cigarette against the wall, the tip turning to sparks and ash in the blue gloom.

  ‘That man is dead,’ he stated, evenly. ‘He died quite a while ago, in fact.’

  ‘So I see. That man was un bastardo but he had a certain code of honour that you clearly lack. I had heard he disappeared after the war, somewhere in Africa. And so I wonder who is standing before me now, unwilling to recognise me. You have the face of the man I knew but none of his spirit. Just a hitman for his government who couldn’t even put a bullet in me.’

  ‘So why are you keeping me alive?’

  Zerbinati teased a smile at the edges of his mouth. ‘Oh, we’re not keeping you alive, signore.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Within the hour my men will come for you. You will be executed and in darkness your body will be taken to the sea and thrown to the waves. You may even provide sustenance for the predators whose presence in these waters is so debated.’

  Winter felt his blood turn cold. Zerbinati had made it all sound so plausible, so inevitable. There was a certain vertigo when you heard the facts of your own death set out. The odds were against him, he knew. But he wouldn’t react. He could win this moment at least if he showed he wasn’t afraid.

  ‘I thought I might become part of your collection,’ he smiled, indicating the glass-encased remains that lined the walkway, their shadows shrinking now as the sun met the horizon.

  Zerbinati turned to regard the parade of body parts. ‘My saints?’ he asked, amused. ‘I don’t think you’re quite qualified to join their number.’

  ‘It’s a remarkable hobby. Or is it some kind of death fixation?’

  ‘Not at all. I collect these martyrs not to celebrate death but to remind myself there is mortality in this world. I so rarely encounter it.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. You didn’t build your empire by keeping people alive.’

  Zerbinati considered this. ‘True. But I have given life, too, of a kind. Over the centuries I’m sure it all balances.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve lived too long, Signore Zerbinati. All that perspective can’t be good for you.’

  The undead man allowed himself the broadest of smiles. ‘Oh, I see. Your bullet was meant as a gift. Very well. This final sunset is my gift to you, or at least the man I knew. Savour it. I have no doubt it will feel exquisite. I’m told mortality sweetens everything.’

  He turned, the night air warming a fraction as he walked away. Winter heard the footsteps retreat across the marble but kept his eyes on the dark swell of the bay. There was no trace of sun on the water now. If there were sharks in the Tyrrhenian, chasing blood, they remained hidden in its cool black depths.

  He waited for the men to come for him.

  * * *

  The tunnel was intermittently lit. A succession of electric torches had been hammered into volcanic sandstone, drawing power from lengths of copper cable. Every twenty feet or so the light threatened to dissolve completely before the next bulb picked up the trail. The torches passed illumination to one another like a baton relay.

  The path threaded through cliffside rock, connecting a cellar trapdoor in Villa Tramonto to what Winter could only imagine was private access to the sea, some rocky inlet where a boat was doubtlessly waiting for his body. He could feel the ground beginning to level, losing the incline that had marked the journey so far. The stale air had a salt bite to it now, suggesting they were approaching water. The cavern’s mouth must open directly onto the beach, he realised.

  The men marched him ahead, keeping the pace brisk. Three men, two shadows. Salvatore and a pair of heavies assigned to security detail at the villa. Two of the men – the ones whose names he didn’t know – had guns in their hands. That narrowed the options for his death considerably.

  A bullet, then. Would they kill him on the beach? There was minimal chance of witnesses from the headland but maybe that was a risk they weren’t prepared to take. No, that bullet waited for him in this tunnel, any moment now. He was convinced of it.

  Again he tried to clear his mind, close his thoughts to everything, even the prospect of his own execution. He gathered his fists as he walked. There was fresh sweat on his palms. His breathing slowed as he focused. He had to remember how to do this. It would be his only chance.

  Flesh is memory. Bone is memory. Blood is memory.

  Winter heard the words in Alessandra’s voice and his own. As he did so he conjured the images he needed, as vivid as he could make them: the skeleton of Eugenio Franzeri, perched upon a chair in that house in Venice; the bones piled in a Normandy burial mound; the broken skull in its bridal veil, the one he had seen in the church on Via dei Tribunali. He made himself remember how those bones had made him feel. That surge of possibility in his veins, like the ink that had swirled on that Rorschach test in London, promising the gift of magic. Hart’s gift. The one he had tried to deny.

  ‘Keep walking.’

  Salvatore shoved him between the shoulders, pushing him through spills of cave water that rippled with electric light. The Italian’s initial fury at Winter’s betrayal of the brotherhood had soon turned to relish when he realised the kill would be his.

  ‘I said keep walking!’

  There was sea mist in the tunnel now, drifting past them, waist-high. The exit to the beach was close.

  Winter remembered his hand in that hotel room, twisting the glass as if it was molten. He saw the black liquid that had dripped from his fingers, burning through newspaper. He had magic inside him, buried in his body. All he had to do was summon it, command it, just as Hart had done.

  He heard the sound of waves. The crash of the water echoed through the cavern.

  What were those words that Alessandra had used, in that hotel in Pest?

  ‘You could have killed her at any moment, Hart, we both know that. All you had to do was cast a blood hex or summon a shadow scythe or…’

  A shadow scythe. He knew these words. They were part of him.

  Winter heard another sound. He placed it instantly. The hungry click of a switchblade, directly behind him. It had to be in Salvatore’s hand. A knife, then, not a bullet. He had seconds now, he guessed. A minute at most.

  He opened his fists and looked down. The sweat on his palms was the colour of ink.

  Salvatore placed a hand on his right shoulder. ‘You can stop walking now, signore.’

  Winter closed his eyes. A nerve began to beat on his brow, insistent against the skin.

  Magic is memory.

  He spun as the blade came flashing in Salvatore’s hand.

  The magic tore out of him, ripping itself from his pores.

  It was black and it was whip-fast and it was entirely without mercy, a vicious, si
nuous, scissoring thing that cut the men to pieces. Winter watched in horror as it carved through the bodies, cleaving flesh, dicing bone. He couldn’t pin a shape to it. Whatever he had unleashed was pure, razor-edged darkness, tall as a man.

  He backed away from it, from everything, from the strewn limbs and the scattered heads and the rock walls that were running with blood. He had to fight the urge to vomit.

  A shadow scythe. Christ, he had expected it to be the size of a knife, something he could take in his hand and use. How could he be capable of a thing like this?

  It waited above the men’s remains, pulsing and seething, a locus of unearthly energy. Winter stared at the glinting, spidery mass but it was impossible to comprehend, its angles pivoting and twisting out of kilter, as if it couldn’t quite map itself onto the geometries of this world. It didn’t belong here, Winter knew that much. He had wrenched it from some kind of hell.

  There was something else, too. He sensed that the thing was intelligent. A malign, animalistic intelligence that had relished killing those men. Hart could have stopped it; Winter had no chance.

  He took a step forward, not daring to take his eyes from it. The presence quivered as he approached, spitting black sparks, tiny shreds of shadow. Winter could tell the thing resented him, knew that this wasn’t its true master.

  He had to get rid of it. He couldn’t leave it here in this city to kill again.

  ‘Come to me.’

  He had found the words instinctively. They felt like a muscle memory on his tongue.

  ‘I said come to me.’ This time it was a command.

  The thing flinched from him at first. It sputtered and hissed, reluctant to leave the bodies. And then it shifted in the air like a swarm.

  Winter took a breath and shut his eyes tight as the entity approached. He felt magic clustering on his skin. It was oily and it was hot and it seeped inside him, finding its way back into his bones. He shuddered as his flesh absorbed it, every impulse in his body screaming to cast it out again.

  He waited to open his eyes, concentrating on the sound of the sea, trying to match his breathing to the crash of the tide. His heartbeat finally began to slow.

  His eyelids flickered open. The ungodly thing he had summoned was gone. He was alone.

  He glanced at his palms. His sweat was clear again.

  Winter took a final look at what was left of the men. He was startled to see Salvatore’s eyes were still moving in his severed head, furiously tracking him. The vampire’s mouth was set in a rictus, the canines extended, blood sloshing between the lips. There was no throat to give it a voice.

  Winter turned and sprinted through the rest of the passage. The end of the cavern was just ahead and he could already see the lights of the bay beyond the maw of rock.

  He exited onto a secluded strip of beach, far below Villa Tramonto. The quiet cove nestled in the base of the cliff, hidden from the coastal road. In front of him a wooden jetty led to the water. There was a speedboat tethered to it, the streamlined hull rising with the waves. It was the boat that had been waiting for his corpse. It would also be his means of escape, he decided.

  The keys. He needed the keys.

  With a sigh Winter ran back into the cave mouth. He ransacked the men’s pockets, his fingers not quite quick enough to escape his revulsion at searching body parts. Salvatore’s eyes burned at him, a good five feet away from where his torso had fallen.

  Locating the keys Winter raced to the jetty, untethered the coupling line and jumped into the speedboat. Edging behind the wheel he slid the key into the ignition and pumped the shift lever. As he gunned the throttle the engine responded with a roar that vibrated through the entire chassis.

  Winter tilted the wheel. Gaining speed the boat tore across the bay, cutting a white trail in the dark water.

  23

  Winter knew he had to get out of Naples.

  He was operating on pure survival instinct now, one that overruled any need to find answers to Operation Paragon. The Shadowless controlled this city, every street of it, every nook in its crumbling, mazy slums. Once they discovered the fate of Salvatore and the other men they would come for him, and they would find him – and this time they would take his life. It had become a question of honour. A blood vengeance.

  Britain would be the safer option, at least for the moment. Don Zerbinati had said that London was beyond his reach – but now he had all the motivation he needed to infiltrate the capital, hunting down his failed assassin. And he would turn the city over, that much was certain. Winter would have to go to ground elsewhere. Keep his head down in Cornwall or the Lake District. Maybe even Wales. He anticipated he would be watching over his shoulder for the rest of his days.

  He had ditched the boat in the rocky shallows that ran alongside Via Francesco Caracciolo. His money and his passport – everything he needed to escape Naples – waited in the small steel safe in his room at the Grand Hotel Vesuvio. He would discard everything else and flag a taxi to Capodichino airport, catching the next plane to England. Flight or fight response, they called it. He chose flight, at twenty thousand feet.

  Another thought struck him as he crossed the promenade, weaving between the waterfront traffic and triggering a blare of horns. The Erovores would not be happy. He had failed them, wasted and lost that precious bullet, all to pursue a private agenda that even now he was abandoning to save his own skin. The Glorious, he assumed, would find that exceptionally hard to forgive. And more than that, he was walking evidence of a plot to kill the leader of I Senz’Ombr. They’d be minded to erase him, just as a precaution.

  Christ. He had manoeuvred himself into a crossfire between two of the most powerful and resourceful criminal factions on the planet. And both sides would be coming for him now.

  And then there was British Intelligence. London wouldn’t let him go that easily either, not now that Paragon was reactivated. He had royally screwed this up.

  There were rats in the gutters tonight. Winter caught them darting between the wheels of parked cars, nimble flashes of grease and fur. He had never seen them in this street before but for a moment he felt a kinship with the verminous little sods.

  He reached the cool, cream-and-honey frontage of the hotel and crossed reception, taking the stairs to the fifth floor, two at a time. He would simply remove what he needed from the room and disappear. No time to check out. The moment he cleared passport control at Gatwick, Anthony Robert St John Prestwick would cease to exist, the identity shed like so much dead skin.

  He hovered outside the door to 503. Cesare had seen that passport, cast his eyes over that name and number. Given the reach of the Shadowless there was every chance he had tracked down this room already, had known its location for weeks, in fact. Winter calculated the distance from Villa Tramonto, estimating how soon they might have discovered his escape. The timing and the geography tipped in his favour. There was no chance they could have reached this room before him. But he would have to be quick.

  Winter twisted the key in the lock, lingering in the corridor as the door swung against the wall. He wouldn’t put a hand to the light switch, not yet.

  He peered inside. The maid had been and gone; the bed was a temple of starched linen, fresh pillows neat against the headboard. The glass door that led to the balcony was open a fraction, just as he left it every morning, hoping to cool the heat that made any locked room in Naples unendurable. The tall muslin blinds swayed in the night breeze. There was a dim mutter of traffic from the promenade, broken by the sudden, exhibitionist roar of a motor scooter.

  Winter turned on the light and made for the wardrobe that housed the safe. As he did so he glanced at the bathroom door. The maid had left it ajar.

  He looked closer. Something had snagged at the very edge of his vision. The tiniest glint of light, catching a reflective surface. The mirror, maybe, or the blade of his razor.

  He nudged the door an inch wider. Instinct almost made him reach for the pistol that had been taken back at the vil
la.

  A familiar, quartz-like eye stared back at him out of the shadows.

  Winter had no time to brace. The man in the midnight-blue suit came cannoning out of the room. The impact threw him against the wall, smashing the breath from his chest.

  A pair of lean, bloodless hands lifted him by the lapels. He felt his feet surrender the ground. And then there was a crunch of bone on glass as his head was slammed backwards. Winter’s scalp was suddenly wet with blood. The shattered frame of a painting fell in pieces to the floor.

  His opponent gave a smile like a mouthful of needles. The translucent eyes narrowed, relishing the moment. The creature clearly remembered their encounter at Scratch Hill Junction.

  Winter was flung across the room. He had been aimed at a rosewood table and it cracked in half as his body hit it, sending a vase of wax flowers tumbling to the ground.

  Winter seized the vase even as he struggled to drag air into his lungs. Twisting across the carpet he struck it against the wall. Now he held a jagged rim, sharp enough to inflict some damage. He scrambled to his feet as the man in the midnight-blue suit loomed over him.

  He took a swing with the broken vase, targeting the eyes. He barely scraped the face. A cold, moist fist clamped itself around his wrist and squeezed until the carpal bones threatened to shatter. Winter dropped the vase, his fingers shuddering in agony.

  Again he was hurled across the room. This time his face smacked into hard plaster. For a moment all he could see was a volley of stars, exploding on his retinas.

  He tried to rip the magic out of his body again, willing the nerve above his eyes to start beating. But he had no time, no chance to focus. His assailant had already snatched the back of his jacket. Still dazed, Winter found himself hauled into the bathroom, seeing his own blood spattering the carpet beneath him.

  His head collided with the sink. He was granted half a breath and then the man rammed him against the marble a second time, deadening Winter’s senses until a numb, black nothing filled his mind.

  The image of a skull swam out of the darkness. He tried to lock onto it but it was gone.