She makes an annoyed sound. “I was talking about my friends. I have many of them.”
I blink at her. “Do you, now?”
“I do.” She cocks her head at me in a self-assured way. “Including one that is almost certainly in Barcelona on business and would happily let us use her apartment.”
“I, uh …” I stumble over my words. “Well, that would certainly be helpful.” Slick recovery. Not.
“Mm,” she says. Pulling a cell phone from her pocket, she begins to dial. She walks on, suitcase in hand, a picture of calm and elegance as she strolls the street. Someone answers and she starts to speak Italian so fast that I couldn’t catch up at a run.
I mentally flog myself for being so fricking useless. I used to be able to handle anything that came my way. Now I’m reliant on other people and my sister and … I feel my head slump forward and I stare at the sidewalk as I go along. Where did it all go wrong? When did I get in over my head? Not just this particular time. When did I get to the point where I became an official lackey, like Fintan O’Niall? Like Lorenzo Benedetti, if I had to guess? Because they were not the sort of guys who stepped out on their own.
Maybe I wasn’t either, though. I followed Hera, then I followed my sister. Before that, I was pretty much in the care of my family. Maybe I was really a follower who had convinced himself he was a leader because I could operate at a distance. But I was still following the whole time, really. Did that make me a weak person?
I look at the doctor, who is leading the way ahead of me. That fact—and my reaction to this entire situation—certainly doesn’t suggest that I’m a strong person.
How long have I just been following, content to do that, not caring that I wasn’t even in charge of my own fate? Years. Years and years. I tell myself I do it for the cause, because the cause was—is—good, but I don’t believe it for more than a second.
I just got saved by an old-school goddess, and now I’m being saved by Dr. Perugini. Women keep saving me. Which I’m egalitarian enough to not let bother me on a gender level. What bothers me is that somewhere along the line I’ve become a damsel in distress, incapable of solving my own problems.
Not good, Alpha Male. Kinda makes you Beta Male.
Perugini hangs up and tosses a look back at me. “Okay, I know where we can go.”
“Thank you,” I mutter, and I mean it. I’m not stupid enough to discard help offered at this point, especially because if I let Alpha Male run rampant and start swinging his cod around, it would do precisely dick to get me closer to my goal.
But it is at this point that I ask myself—for the first time, really—what is my goal?
Then it becomes clear in an instant: I have to stop Lorenzo, Fintan, and whoever is behind them from pulling off whatever they’re trying to do. Why?
Because I’m the good guy. And they’ve proven they’re not.
As far as answers go, it feels simplistic, but right. Who comes to a person’s hotel to kill them for no reason? They’re into something, up to something, and whatever it is, it isn’t a conspiracy to increase the sales of Girl Scout cookies. Although that would be delicious.
“Okay,” I say, still following Perugini, and she looks back at me curiously. “Let’s go get settled, and then we need to figure some things out.”
She stares back at me, her pace slowing slightly. She waits for me to say something more for a minute then speaks. “Such as?”
“I need to talk to Father Emmanuel again,” I say. “He’s got something more to tell. Maybe his guy is tied into this—whatever—scheme that’s going on. And I need to talk to Diana again.” I feel my jaw tighten. “She knows more than she’s telling, too.”
Her eyebrow lifts visibly over her glasses. “You seem more certain now than you were before.”
I almost stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “Really?”
“Si,” she says, but she keeps walking and turns her head to look straight ahead. “It looks good on you, this certainty.” She moves along, same stride as she’d had moments before. Same stride she’d had as we were escaping the hotel, actually.
Me? I guess that for the next few miles, my chest is puffed out and maybe I’m strutting a little. Maybe. Just a little.
19.
Anselmo
Anselmo lies still, enjoying the relaxed torpor of the greatly relieved. All his stress has been bled out, all his ill feelings are now gone. He thinks he can hear faint crying from the bathroom, the sound of a girl turned to a woman, but it does not intrude on his calm. He feels a sense of great release, considers getting a cigar and a brandy, and then he hears a door slam in the distance and a commotion rises down the hall.
He sighs once more, pulling the sheet from his form. He can hear the yelling voice of Lorenzo, and the tranquility that had settled upon him rises with his blood pressure. The boy is simply too wound up. He needs a release, Anselmo thinks, something to allow the coil that is pinched up his ass to let loose.
Anselmo reaches the door just before the first hammering knock heralds Lorenzo’s arrival. He pauses to allow the loud, thundering sound to conclude, and then opens it without so much as a robe on.
Lorenzo takes a step back, as well he should. Anselmo stands proudly, fully naked, and swings the door wide. “Yes?” Anselmo asks, as though the boy’s interruption were of no consequence.
Lorenzo looks vaguely horrified as he gives Anselmo an almost imperceptible look up and down. “You’re—” He cuts himself off before saying whatever is on his mind.
“I am what?” Anselmo almost smiles at this. He is aware of how this must look, and it brings him some small amusement, consolation for the nap he has undoubtedly lost with all this hubbub.
“Are you … well?” Lorenzo asks, keeping his eyes anchored upon Anselmo’s.
“Quite well,” Anselmo says with a sly smile. “You, on the other hand, my young friend, do not look nearly so well.”
“The attempt on Reed Treston, it did not … go well,” Lorenzo falters. “The woman with the bow and arrow, she interfered again.”
Anselmo can feel his brow pucker at this news. The smell in the room is decidedly unpleasant, he realizes now that fresh air is coming in from the hallway, and it stews in his nostrils. “Was anyone injured?”
Lorenzo shakes his head. “No. Fintan and I both made it out alive, but only barely.”
Anselmo presses his lips together at this, shaking his head. He is not accustomed to his orders failing to be carried out. “I have clearly sent a boy to do a man’s job.”
Lorenzo goes scarlet at the goad, as Anselmo knew he would. “I can do it, but I need—”
“What?” Anselmo asks, feeling an unreasonable rush of good humor, possibly driven by his recent release. “A rocket launcher? You have been thwarted twice by a woman with a bow and arrow. Apparently you are incapable of carrying out this modest task appointed you.” Anselmo shrugs his shoulders. “We do what we can, but you—you are showing me very clearly what you cannot do.”
“I can do it,” Lorenzo protests. “I can handle him. I have proven I can handle him—”
“You have proven nothing,” Anselmo says with a sigh. His afternoon is in tatters, but the fog of release is still mellowing him somewhat. “You have wasted days now upon this, and have nothing to show for it. I think it is time that I take a hand and show you how business is conducted.” He rolls his shoulders around once, limbering up, shaking off the torpor. “You have exposed our colleague, Mr. O’Niall, who was to remain in secret where he was, to this boy you have yet to kill. This is unacceptable, especially with the plan so very close to fruition.” Anselmo feels his face darken. “You have identified this Treston as a threat, yet have failed to kill him. Now, whether he was actually a threat or not, he has become one. I need days. Days to complete this business, to conquer and unify—” Anselmo feels the goodwill burning off, feels the rage rising. “No. We conclude this now. We take the train back to Rome, find this prick and end him.”
Lorenzo’s face is still slightly red. “And the woman? The archer?”
Anselmo waves at him, then turns, exposing his backside to his employee. “I have dealt with her before. Perhaps we will even kill her first. Nothing is allowed to stand in the way of what I have in mind.” He ignores the sounds from the bathroom and makes his way to his closet. Lorenzo does not dare to enter, as well he should not. “I will teach you, boy, how to handle a woman who gets in your way.”
He pulls a suit off the rack and begins to dress. He ignores the mess that coats his lower body, and steps into his five-thousand-euro suit. After all, the blood that currently coats his skin will be nothing compared to what he’ll have upon him once done with this business.
He ponders—just for a moment—wearing his cheapest suit instead. Then he remembers what will happen in only a few days, and decides that five thousand euros to prove a point is an inconsequential amount, and he continues to dress without giving it another thought.
20.
Reed
I call Father Emmanuel about five times in a row before he picks up. Dial, listen to it ring, imagine “Happy” blaring in his chambers at the Vatican, hear it go to voicemail, and repeat. When he picks up, it’s with a voice that’s worn, tired, and hushed, and I feel more than a little empathy for him. “Hello?”
“Father Emmanuel,” I say, pacing the wood floor of Dr. Perugini’s friend’s apartment. It’s a sweeping sort of place, high ceilinged and sophisticated, the sort of thing they’d charge you ten billion dollars for in New York. “It’s Reed Treston.”
“I know who it is,” Emmanuel says, still whispering. “What do you want?”
“I need a name,” I say. “Of the guy who’s being sheltered.”
I can almost hear him shake his head over the phone. “I can’t … I mean …”
“Fine,” I say. I anticipated this. I got the sense from Emmanuel that in his previous life, squealers were not looked upon favorably. “I guess I’ll just have to expose Fintan O’Niall on my own, then.”
There’s a predictable moment of shocked silence. “How did you know?” he asks at last.
I take it easy on him and spare him the whole truth that he’d just confirmed it for me. “I ran across him earlier today. Nasty guy. He’s definitely doing some criminal stuff.” Yes, I tricked a priest. At least I knew his power wasn’t telepathy.
“I find no relief in this,” Emmanuel says. “I would rather have been proven wrong.”
“What made you suspect him to begin with?” I ask.
There’s a moment of silence on the phone. “I caught him coming in one night over the wall, and his hands were red with blood.”
I think about it for a beat. “Are the metas not allowed to come and go as they please?”
“No,” Emmanuel answers. “Sanctuary comes with the price of secrecy. Once they leave, they are out for good.”
I chew that one over for a second. “You could just tell on him.”
“He has … connections,” Emmanuel says wearily. “I just don’t want to …” His voice trails off.
“Yeah,” I say, and somehow I know what he means, even though it’s a pretty vague statement. “Blowback and all that. Well, he’s definitely into something outside your walls. He’s teaming up with some unsavory folks.”
“How unsavory?” Emmanuel asks. Now I’ve piqued his curiosity. “Like mafia?”
That one triggers a thought that I hadn’t really considered before. “Maybe,” I say. “I don’t know how organized they are, but it seems like they’ve got a plan and a purpose to what they’re doing.” I kick myself for not thinking it earlier. This is the country where La Cosa Nostra came from, after all. Italy has a mafia. It has a huge damned mafia. Which would probably love to have a super-powered enforcer on hand. God knows they were up to their eyebrows in meta help with Omega before that organization got snuffed. That left humans in charge of organized crime in Italy again, and Lorenzo—
That bastard.
“I’ll look into it and get back to you,” I say abruptly, hanging up on Emmanuel before he can say anything else. I want to crawl inside my own head—or at least the internet—and start figuring this out. It’s all supposition, sure, but what the hell job connects Lorenzo to Fintan, who’s hiding in the Vatican? Why is he still hiding? Who are they working for? Could it be related to organized crime?
My gaze swivels to Dr. Perugini, who is watching me from the couch, one eyebrow cocked. She’s not got her sunglasses on anymore, but I’m still wondering what she’s thinking. “Tell me everything you know about the mafia in Italy,” I say, and pocket my phone.
Her eyebrow climbs even higher. “You might want to take a seat,” she says and makes a faint gesture to the sofa across from her, “because this subject? This could take all night.”
21.
She runs me through a laundry list of organized crime families so long I can barely keep up. It’s detailed, and yet it’s still pretty surface level. I stop her after ten minutes, holding up my hand as my head swims. Names like, “Sacra Corona Unita,” “Camorra,” and “’Ndrangheta” stick in my head like parsley in teeth. “Okay,” I say to her, “so there really is a pretty big mob tradition in Italy. The movies didn’t get that wrong.”
She shrugs. “It’s not all bad, but they are certainly here, as they are everywhere. Things have gotten better since the new prime minister made opposing them part of his platform.”
I rub my hands over my face. “This is the sort of thing Omega was so good at. Sliding into places and corrupting officials through fear and bribery. Taking over rackets, or at least demanding a percentage to allow them to operate without interference.”
She gives me a squint. “Omega? The group that Kat and Janus were part of?”
“Yeah,” I say, “Crime was their raison d'être. It was what they did, using their meta powers to put fear and terror into everyone they could squeeze a buck out of.” I run a hand through my hair, brushing it out of my eyes. “Hera broke from them, founded Alpha after they started down that path. She opposed them all the way up until we had a bigger threat.”
Perugini’s face is stony, masklike. “Why?”
I blink in surprise. “Why, what? Why did she oppose them?” The doctor gives me a slight nod. “Because she believed in a higher duty. That we weren’t just given power so we could prey on people, control them, make money from their vices and weaknesses.” I felt my voice get soft. “I thought everyone who was in Alpha believed in that.” I think of Lorenzo and Fintan, and I taste bile in the back of my throat. Their betrayal stings, which is funny, since I didn’t even really know them all that well. I picture Hera and imagine her reaction to this. It’s not pretty.
I think about Diana—Artemis—whatever—Goddess of the Hunt, and I try again to fit this puzzle piece in. She’s an assassin? Some sort of hired killer? But she’s helping me. In all my time with Alpha, I had never heard of anyone like her. That doesn’t preclude the possibility she was secretly part of the group, but somehow I doubt it. Alpha didn’t tend to tread in the killing realm unless we had to, anyway. She kills like it’s nothing.
I put my head against the back of the couch. It’s leather, it’s comfortable, and I think—not for the first time—about just going to sleep for a while. My head is spinning, though, and I wonder if I’ll be able to calm down enough to even rest.
I rub my eyes and turn my gaze back to Dr. Perugini. There’s a balcony that overlooks the street below, and I realize the curtains are open. Fortunately, there’s no one on the roof opposite, but it tumbles to mind exactly how much worse I am at operational security than my sister is, and I kick myself again.
“What is this?” Dr. Perugini asks, and I glance at her.
“What is what?” I ask, a little confused.
“This thing you do with your face,” she says, and scrunches up her nose in what I assume is an impersonation of me. It’s not flattering to me, but it looks kind of cute on her.
“I
dunno,” I say, “probably frustration.”
“It is not a good look,” she says, shaking her head. She stands and walks toward the only bedroom before I have a chance to recover enough to ask her about sleeping arrangements. She shuts the door, and I’m left staring at it.
I want to jump right to the idea that this is a metaphor for my life, but it feels too easy. There are doors in my face, sure, but if my sister were here, she wouldn’t be despairing. Hell, she’s probably off on an adventure of her own at this very moment. Craziness is abounding, souls are being drained, enemies are mounting an attack on her, old friends are betraying—
Okay, I’m projecting.
Even I’m aware of my inner monologue gaining a disproportionate amount of angst. We won the battle against the worst enemy metakind had ever seen, and now I’m left to deal with the fallout of some slackers who have betrayed everything I stood for when I joined this fight. I may have navigated a long path since the day I first started working for Alpha, but it stings, even without a bro-close relationship with Fintan or Lorenzo. They’ve pissed on everything I believed in, and I’m taking it personally. Ever have someone say something that just goes against everything you believe? It feels even worse when it’s not on the internet.
I’m stewing in my own juices when the bedroom door opens again. I start to say something to Perugini and then shut up when I realize she’s not wearing a stitch. Nothing. Nada.
She stares at me coolly, long fingers against the door frame, and one leg crossed over the other, arms positioned just so in order to leave an aura of mystery that is not lost on me even as my brain defaults to teenage-boy mode. “Well,” I say, articulating the first and only thought that comes to mind, “you’re not getting into the Sistine Chapel like that.”
She smiles and makes a sound in the back of her throat that feels almost like the beginnings of a laugh. Then she makes a beckoning gesture with her forefinger, and I realize I’m standing at attention. Then the rest of me stands a moment later, and then my brain shows up to ruin the day.
In the Wind (Out of the Box Book 2) Page 8
