Chapter Forty-Nine
I don’t know how long I weep into my knees.
But eventually the tears burn themselves out; Niccolo’s screams fade, settle in a deep, dark part of me I’ll return to in my nightmares. I blink away the dampness and lift my head.
The boat glides silently down the river, into a thicket of gray fog. Eerie wisps of fire undulate across the water. I lean over the boat’s side to get a closer look.
And scream.
There are people in the water.
Their visages are death-pale, a parade of grimaces. Their hands claw for me, shards of bone poking from splintered fingertips. I bolt upright. The boat wobbles, tipping to one side, water sloshing dangerously close to the edge.
I swallow and fix my eyes on the shore, trying to ignore the faces floating like weeds inches away.
Occasionally a darker, sinuous shadow swims beneath the boat, bumping the people out of the way. I clamp my eyes shut and wait for an eldritch horror to burst forth and demand a tithe to stop my boat with its awful power and shred my soul to pieces, but the water’s surface stays still.
As if I’m destined for someone else.
Something else.
A black palazzo emerges from the fog, a snarling, hulking beast of a building with sharp curved turrets and jagged-teeth walls. A long, lonely quay pierces the river before it.
A hooded cloaked figure stands at the very end.
My heart crawls into my throat. The boat drifts closer and closer. From this far away, I have to hope, I have to believe. ’Tis all I have left in this dark, forsaken place.
The boat bumps against the black stone. My lungs stop working. I couldn’t scream if I wanted to. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere else to go except the river filled with the dead. Their torn fingertips scrape the boat, as if they know I’ll join them soon.
The figure turns, face hidden in the hood.
But the light catches the bow of a smile.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Virgil.”
It’s Lupa. Beautiful, fierce Lupa.
She’s taller, sharper. More like the wolf I named her for. The hand she offers me is tipped in pointed black-painted nails. I stare at the paint, the practice unfamiliar and strange.
“It’s me, I swear it.” Her hand clenches into a fist, an expression almost like sadness flickering across her face. “I don’t know what you’ve gone through to get here, but I promise you’re safe with me.”
I don’t miss how she says with me, and not safe for now.
Her eyes are the same as before, the green gold of them brilliant behind dark pupils. I saw her ripped from the body she possessed, but she’s here waiting for me. I trusted her before when I shouldn’t have. Why shouldn’t I trust her in hell—when she’s all that I have?
I release a shaky breath and let her help me out of the boat. “I missed you.”
One claw grazes the back of my hand, too gentle to hurt. “Me too.”
With a soft, sibilant groan, the grabbing souls in the river fall back.
The black palazzo is the only object visible in the fog, as if it’s the only thing in this world. A gruesome feeling of being watched walks across my skin, but every window is empty. The feeling intensifies when we go inside.
I expected opulence, an overflowing abundance of gold and gems and marble statues of fantastical creatures dripping with flowers. The luxury of the Medici run amok.
Instead the corridors are cold stone. A horrible, teeth-grating chorus of squeals echoes through the emptiness. I wince at a particularly offensive high note.
“The devil insists the music is close to human.” Lupa looks embarrassed. “I can still remember what it’s supposed to sound like, but barely.”
The few portraits on the walls are ripped and fading. I linger before one that could be a Last Supper, except each person has been replaced by a monster. Wet oozes from the canvas, and the iron tang of blood fills my nose.
I shudder and pass underneath a chandelier made of bones. The candles drip thick rivulets of wax to the floor—wax that smells horribly of rendered fat. “Why does he bother? You remember enough to know this isn’t right.”
Lupa stops before a table made of polished, gleaming ice. It’s so crystalline, my own unsettled face peers back at me. But in the background, the chandelier is missing. There’s nothing but bare stone walls and barren torch brackets.
“Would you tell the devil he’s wrong when this is the alternative?” Lupa steps behind me.
And my heart thunders.
There’s a monster at my shoulder.
It’s made of writhing shadows and scales. Twice as tall as any human, too thin and skeletal to ever be mistaken for one even at a distance. Twin green-gold flames burn in its eye sockets. A pair of what could be horns curves from its skull, the tips vicious.
“This is who I am.” Lupa’s hand with its elegant, painted nails creeps over my shoulder. In the reflection, a horrible, too-many-jointed appendage with gold-green flames dripping from its claws drapes over my ripped, soiled doublet. One sudden jab, and the claw would pierce my heart.
The head lowers beside my face, more ghostly flames spilling from its jaws. “The devil insists we pretend to be something we’re not. Something mortal. Half-forgotten memories of beauty are the only thing left to us in this place.”
I want to turn away from the ice. I wish I’d never seen Lupa like this so I could picture her as what she pretended to be instead of what she truly is.
Except… Lupa never turned away from me during my ugliest moments, and I won’t do it to her now. I bend to kiss the scaled knuckles on my shoulder, slipping my hand up beneath them and braiding the fingers through mine. A pulse of gold shudders through Lupa’s true form from the point of contact.
Only then do I turn away, toward the face she’s chosen to wear tonight.
“That’s not true. You have me now too.”
She tilts her head, surprised. Then a close-mouthed smile. “Leonardo was right. You can be very sweet.”
There it is again. The telltale whisper down my neck that there’s something she’s keeping from me.
Lupa ushers me into a chamber and closes the door. Even the window doesn’t look out at anything: only a swirl of gray beyond the mullioned glass. There’s nothing inside but an old, battered chair. On the ripped cushion, a large tortoiseshell cat—Fifi?—lifts her head and glares.
’Tis the sight of Verrocchio’s cat that finally lets the truth sink in.
I’m in hell. With Lupa.
For an odd moment, it feels like I’m standing beside myself, separate from my body. I watch my back thud against the wall, see my unsteady fist in my sweaty curls.
“The girl you possessed died. Did you know what would happen to her?” I hear myself say.
Lupa slowly bends down to my level, her radiant eyes catching mine and holding. “Yes. I swallowed her soul to walk on earth. I was always a demon, even when I couldn’t remember.”
Does a wolf mean to kill? It’s the question Leonardo asked me so long ago. I run my tongue along the back of my teeth and nod. I don’t like her answer, but I understand it.
Lupa gently nudges the cat aside and motions for me to take the chair.
“When I returned here, so did my memories. I’ve seen countless demons leave and come back filled with stories of art, of poetry, beauty, and love.
I didn’t understand until I was there myself that they’d seen it all from the corners.
They hadn’t lived it. They had spent years in your world, but learned nothing of what it was to be human.
” She strokes the cat’s fur, glancing out the window of nothingness like it might become a view if she looks long enough.
“Taking that girl’s soul felt unsporting.
Each time a bargain-maker asked me for magic, it was unsatisfying.
Tricking a soul from a mortal is quite different from tormenting one who deserves to be here.
” She reaches up to graze the space behind her ear—the memory of a scar. “You helped me see why it felt wrong.”
“Me?”
“After we became friends, I felt a foreign stirring in my mind. A memory from the girl whose body I had stolen. Her name was Maddalena. She was married against her will and fought to escape her husband.” She traces the phantom scar again. “But not before he hurt her.”
My hands clench on the armrests, a tension I feel down in my very core. I can guess what happened next. She heard rumors that the Medici could solve her problems. They promised her the world and destroyed hers instead.
Just like they did to my brother.
Tears fill my eyes again.
Deep in the palace, there’s a long, ecstatic scream. I bolt away from the door, gasping. My fear is an overflowing cup, drenching me with cold. I’m feeling too much, and the demons know, but the way Lupa’s looking at me now tells me that it’s right. I’m doing exactly what I need to do.
“No soul should be trapped in hell unless they deserve it.” Lupa’s illusion slips, and I flinch seeing the dark, scaled flicker of her true shape.
It only lasts a blink, and then her gold-green eyes are back on mine.
“The devil’s power comes from these ill-gotten souls, but it’s as corrupt as his methods.
This crumbling castle. Our monstrous forms. He says we’re beautiful, but I still remember what real beauty is.
I still remember you.” Her hand curls over mine, a deep smoldering fire in her eyes.
“When I left that girl’s body, I remembered why I wanted to come to earth. I remembered what I’d set out to do.”
A force slams the door.
“Bring the mortal to me!”
My hands fly over my ears, but the voice rattles my brain, my very soul. It hurts. Tears sting my eyes.
Lupa falls to her knees, teeth gritted, bits of her dress dissolved to reveal flashes of sinew and bone beneath. “Your Majesty, I—”
“Now!”
The roaring pressure disappears. Lupa straightens, her glare harder than iron. “He knows you’re here now.”
I don’t need to ask. I already know.
The devil wants me.