Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Cisco
The rain started again not long after Mercy left. Wind howls through the cracks. Right now, the nave is an ocean. Black, bottomless, and dead.
Dead air. Dead wood. Dead silence.
My feet are slow to cross the floor as if I am wading against a violent, invisible undertow. I walk past the sanctuary and pause at the altar. The crucifix drifts overhead like a dead buoy. I turn, walk around the altar, and then continue down the aisle to the entrance.
Should I go after her?
No.
Yes.
She’s an adult. She’ll hate me checking on her. She’ll work it out.
Lascia dormire la notte, my father always said after he upset my mother—sleep on it. But the night never sleeps here. The crucifix is silent. And I keep walking, ribs aching, head splitting with want.
I am a priest sworn to celibacy, yet my cock is hard enough to break stone.
I am the Vatican’s finest exorcist, yet the devil is curled up, purring beneath my ribs.
I’m supposed to be praying for Mercy’s soul, but all I can think about is the taste of her skin, the slick, intoxicating heat of her mouth.
“Fanculo.” I strip off the cassock, toss the holy vestment onto the floor, and I wade deeper, past the front door with the key still in the lock. Just how she left it.
Icy wind cuts through the gaps in the old wooden door, tickling my bare torso.
It’s late.
How many hours ago was I in the archives? How long until dawn?
I try to count, but my brain’s a glitching radio.
It’s static on every channel. I don’t see rows of wooden pews; I see the ribcage of a ship, sunk beneath water.
Lightning flashes, bleeding through the stained windows to paint the room in a sickly, bruised purple—the color of the sky the day Maria drowned.
I close my eyes and summon her. Not my sister.
Mercy.
The way she looked at me beneath the water in the pool. The way she looked that first time we met, on the abbey front steps, her pink silk robe slipping off her shoulder and flashing lacy underwear.
She knows how to get under your skin. Knows how to make you want.
No. Not her. Not Mercy.
Hand shaking, I run it through my hair again, and again, like maybe if I rub hard enough, I’ll massage sense back into my brain.
I’m at the front of the church again, staring into the chancel, across the altar, and up at the crucifix. Hand slipping into my pants, I grip the rosary until the beads bite into my flesh.
It’s supposed to be my anchor, but now all I remember is the slick terror of the sea. Reaching for my little angel. I grab nothing but this rosary, and the fragile chain snaps.
Exhaustion threatens to take me under. The ground sways beneath my feet.
“Mea culpa.”
My prayer comes back to me threefold, and I can’t stand it, so I return to the oratory and collapse onto the red velvet couch.
Mea maxima culpa.
I curl into myself for relief from the hunger gnawing at my insides, but the position is torture against my demanding erection. Hard again.
Don’t do it.
Do it.
No.
You’ve already done it once. Right here in this room. Right there on the desk with her sweet, honeyed scent all over you. I’ll bet you can still smell it on your hand.
“Be quiet,” I groan and roll to the other side. It smells like dust and old things now.
Better.
You should leave without her. If your “friends” catch a whiff of what she does to you, it’s not you who will suffer.
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
It’s the family you left behind. Your mother, praying over her rosary in the empty osteria. Your father, bitter and toothless, clinging to his bella figura with every miserable breath. Your Nonna, still alive, still believing you can be something better than your uncle.
Becoming an exorcist kept Uncle Paolo behind bars. That was the deal, so my family can eat in peace, sleep at night, and pretend the world is clean despite being the hands that dirtied it. But he’s up for early parole.
I scoff.
Rome doesn’t give a damn about love, or faith, or salvation. They only care about the ledger. You owe them everything, and the price is yourself.
The ocean in my brain won’t shut up. Rain hammers the window, but at least it’s not the buzzing shush-shush of waves.
I close my eyes.
All I see is Mercy, eyes brimming with tears, lips raw from kissing, hands tangled in cloth and blood. I didn’t even get to bandage her thighs. She’s out there, probably in pain because she’s rushed off to help someone else before herself.
I want her. I want her laugh, her spitfire mouth, the way she jumps in to fight and never gives up, even when she’s outgunned. The way she looked tonight, fury and grief and something too big for words.
I want her, and it’s killing me.
Maybe I deserve to die.
Will she ever forgive me if she sees what I really am?
Will anyone?
Because it’s coming, and I can’t hide this forever.
I drag a hand over my face, scrubbing until the skin burns. I’m not going after Mercy. Not tonight. She needs time to cool off. To see it wasn’t her who did this. It wasn’t a sin.
It was just me.
Sleep eventually takes me, but I’m barely under when I wake again. It’s still dark, the rain hasn’t stopped, and someone is kissing her way up my stomach. Hot, hungry lips move along the bruised line of my scar, tracing edges of ink with her tongue.
The world is cold, and then suddenly, it’s fire, her body crawling over mine. Thighs straddle my hips. Wild hair everywhere. Pink silk sliding over bare skin and lace, just like the day we met. Floral and sweet.
She came back.
“Mercy…”
She shushes me, kisses the corners of my mouth, and licks at the cut she left on my throat. My cock is hard and straining, and, Cristo, this is what I need. What I would kill for.
I must be dreaming.
But she smells real. She feels real. I grab her by the waist, pull her closer, bury my face in her throat, and inhale.
Not right.
The scent is too sweet.
But she’s gone, sliding back down my body before I can grasp the thought. It doesn’t matter. She belongs to me.
Her hands find my zipper, her mouth at my stomach. She palms me through my trousers and mumbles something I can’t catch. Something about eating.
The devil in me wakes, stirs, and for a heartbeat, it’s not hungry for sex. It wants to unmake. To devour.
“Mercy?”
She rubs my cock harder. Pleasure explodes. I throw my head back, gasping for air. The sound of my zipper is obscene in the silence. Fabric slaps against skin, and then I’m out, shaft thick and throbbing.
Her moan travels in the dark, and then she has me in her hands.
But the smell, Cristo, it’s everywhere now. Too sweet. Almost like—
She takes me into her mouth, and my mind blanks, making way for Heaven. Wet, hot, perfect. Mercy sucks me down, deeper, swallowing like she’s starving. My hips snap up. I don’t care if I choke her. I want to ruin her face with it, want to mark her as mine.
Growling, I reach for her head to hold her in place. To fuck her mouth good. My fingers curl in her hair, and I freeze. It’s smoother than Mercy’s. Long, but shorter.
It’s not her.
A spike of horror shoots into me. I jackknife up and shove the woman away. She falls backward, off the couch, and onto the floor. Flickering candlelight spills through the open oratory door, landing on her face.
Madonna Santa.
Jasmine blinks innocently at me with black, inky eyes. Mercy’s pink silk robe falls from her shoulder, and my skin crawls. The devourer thrashes against my ribs, screaming for a meal. Recognition. Kin.
“It’s time to feast, brother.”
Brother?
She launches at me, climbing over the couch with unnatural speed. I try to shove her off. She’s light, but strong, and her mouth snaps at my cock like a trap.
I kick her off this time, harder. She flings off me with a yelp, landing on her ass and sliding through the door to the nave. Her robe splits open, and the scent is putrid.
She scrambles, but I’m on my feet now, tugging my trousers up, instinct screaming. The sense of black ants skittering up my spine spreads to my shaking limbs. This is more than familiarity that I sense in her. This is evil.
One hand fumbles for my zipper, the other digs in my pocket for the rosary. The zip jams halfway. I wrap my fist in the rosary, crucifix sharp and between my knuckles, then I stumble into the nave. Try not to trip over my falling trousers.
Jasmine is standing now, still grinning at me, still eyes black as a demon’s. Candlelight flickers and so does her face. For a fleeting moment, I see another face swarm beneath hers, just as it did on the window of flies. It’s hideous, perfect, male, and as pale as a ghost. And then it’s gone.
I furiously tug at my zipper again, advancing on her between two pews.
“What are you?” I growl. “How did you get in here?”
It’s sanctified ground.
“Same way as you. Through the front door.”
“You’re like me. But you’re not.”
Cazzo, why won’t my zipper go up?
Her lips curve at my struggle. “We should join our pieces. Broken shards are stronger together.”
“I don’t know what you—”
The church door bangs open, letting in a gust of apocalyptic wind and rain. Mercy stalks in, hair plastered to her face, oversized t-shirt wet and clinging to her curves, blood stains running down her thighs. The sword hangs in her hand, and smoke curls from the blade.
She sees Jasmine in her pink, silk robe, and fury darkens her expression. The sword glows. But then she sees me, cock barely put away, and time stops.
Air pulls as tight around me like a noose.
For a heartbeat, nobody speaks.
Mercy goes dead still.
For the first time, I glimpse the cold-hearted assassin they warned us about at the Vatican. It’s the kind of stare that says she’s already planned where to put the sword.
“It’s not…” My words die in my throat.
What am I supposed to say? Sorry, your friend tried to suck my soul out through my cock? Sorry, I let her? She was wearing your robe … I thought it was you?
“Didn’t take much, did it?” Jasmine cackles.
“Fucking bitch,” Mercy spits, and then charges down the closest aisle.
I yank my zipper up so hard that it finally unsticks, but I’m too late starting the exorcism rite.
Jasmine leaps over the pews and heads toward the exit, pink robe fluttering, stench of rot trailing.
She leaps like a ballerina across the wood, and then she’s gone, out of the church door and into the night.
Mercy pivots and chases after her. She doesn’t even look at me.
“Wait!” I shout, take a step after her, but then rush back to the oratory.
I shove a bottle of holy water into my back pocket, a prayer book into the other. I find a lighter and grab the purple stole. Then I run.