Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Cisco
Wesley’s accented voice crackles through the handset. “Cisco. We’ve been worried.”
I now sit on the basilica’s grand steps, facing the piazza. “Ciao, Wesley. I have questions about Beelzebub.”
I hear him take a breath, but then rustling and interference travel across the line. Dominic’s thick, deep voice comes on next.
“What happened over there?” he asks in Italian. “I’ve had messages from new contacts in Rome.”
“It’s probably better for you that I don’t answer that yet.”
He pauses. “I need to tell you something—”
More rustling and interference.
“Give me the phone.” Raven’s voice cuts across Dominic’s. I hear his muffled protest, then a grunt as if he’s been winded, or punched. Two seconds later, her clear, unhindered voice fills the line.
“I did a reading on her belongings,” she says.
“Who?”
“Hannah.”
My pulse skips. “Has she returned?”
“No. I meant that I did a reading on what she left behind.” Annoyance clips her tone. “Before she came to the States, she was in Spain.”
“Yes, we—”
“Let me finish. The Hildegard Sisterhood keeps records of everything. Hannah was in Spain for years before heading to the States, but there’s no record of her being there before age fifteen.
This is normal for an orphaned Sinner. What’s not normal is that, when I did the psychic reading of her personal items, I didn’t see a little girl in Spain.
I saw her in Italy, at the beach in summer, surrounded by flies and gelato dripping down her hand. ”
“How can you be sure it’s Italy?”
A lengthy pause fills the line. “Because I saw you.”
My breath halts. “What?”
“I mean, you were younger. But I’m certain it was you.”
I drag my palm down my face, mind reeling.
“What personal items did you use for the reading?” I ask, tensing and bracing for her answer.
“Ballet slippers. Old ones. And a pink ribbon.”
The piazza grows very quiet, as if all life ceases to exist except for the buzzing swarm growing in my mind. I pull the phone from my ear and tap it to my forehead, trembling, trying to reject the reality.
Maria was a ballerina.
Raven is many things, including a liar. But in this, every cell in my body knows she tells the truth. Too many things haven’t added up since I returned to Rome. I even suspected this myself only moments ago.
Sound punches through the buzzing. The fountain is still running. Somewhere behind the church, a car revs its engine. Raven shouts through the handset to see if I’m still here.
But I’m not.
I’m back in Naples, that summer on the beach in my dream.
The sky is blue, not gray. The flies are thick.
The heat is forcing us into the gelateria.
Maria reaches for a cone, and the shopkeeper’s oily gaze drops to her mouth.
She doesn’t move when I tell her to go outside, and the delay cost the man his life.
She accused me of stealing the mark.
She went into the water.
Went down.
Didn’t come up.
I bring the phone to my ear and grind out, “Put Wesley on.”
Two seconds later, his voice filters through. “You all right, mate?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to send you pictures from an old book the Pope gave me. I need you to authenticate them. Translate them. Tell me if it’s what I think it is.”
I put the phone down and take snap after snap of the story I just read. I send them to Wesley and wait a few painstaking seconds for him to confirm receipt.
“Do you know what kind of supernatural powers Beelzebub has?” I ask.
“What’s going on, Cisco?”
“Just tell me. Please.”
“Okay,” he mumbles, then starts rattling off some things I already know about flies and decay.
He pauses to ask Thea to retrieve a book from a shelf.
They must be in the archive because a few seconds later he says, “Thanks, love.” Pages turn.
“Here. Beelzebub is an absolute authority in Hell—another name for Lucifer, or the Devil in some circles. He can surrender unclean spirits into his servitude at whim. He can cast out lesser demons—” He makes a choking sound.
“He takes sadistic pride in inciting holy men into lust and lawless deeds.” He turns a page.
“Shapeshifting. Mastery over insects, filth, and excrement. Um . . . what else?”
“Some call him the patron demon of Gluttony,” Thea says in the background. “Some say he’s Envy.”
“Bloody hell,” Wes murmurs. “He represents a hollow, all-consuming hunger that devours resources and spiritual purity. Shit. Cisco . . .”
“What? Tell me.”
“It says here that he’s so single-minded about destroying the world that he’s sickened entire bloodlines.”
I scrub my face. “Anything else? Anything about . . . other powers?”
“Some bullshit about fire and fury, the usual deception, then . . . here. What’s this, love?” I hear tapping down the line, a finger to paper perhaps. “Does this mean what I think it does . . . that he controls who is seen and who remains hidden?”
Thea’s tone is cold when she answers. “Basically, he can mind-fuck everyone into thinking someone’s not there.”
The buzzing in my head starts to roar, pushing against the confines of my skull.
My heart seizes in my chest. I force the next words out, already rising to stand. “I have to go. I need to see the photo at the osteria.”
“What photo?”
“The one of Maria as a child. I think . . . I think I need you to ask Raven if my sister is the girl she saw in the vision. Tell me if my sister looks like Hannah.”
“Cisco?”
“I’ll send you something in a few minutes.”
I hang up, and then I run.
Two steps across the piazza, gunshots fire, cracking loud enough to pierce the buzzing in my head. Another crack echoes across the vast space. At first, I don’t know which direction it comes from, but then I see people fleeing.
The hunger in me surges, instincts sensing the sin before my eyes catch up.
The sound comes from the direction I’m headed.
From where I left Mercy asleep.
Crack!
Crack-crack-crack!
My feet pound the pavement, faster and faster. Everything I pass is a blur. Every sound is a buzzing roar. I only have eyes for the osteria ahead. The front door is wide open. It’s dark inside.
Outside on the terrace, the tables and chairs are as I left them, upturned and untouched.
Shots were fired. People are running. But the bodies aren’t outside the osteria.
Without thinking, I burst inside, following the sense of evil.
My first steps across the threshold slip on something wet, and I skid.
My hands slam onto a nearby wall for support.
Lungs burning, heart pumping, I don’t need to look down to know it’s blood.
The metallic tang in my nose is strong enough.
Phantom black ants skitter up my spine. Someone approaches me from behind.
Footsteps squelch, and the cold, hard press of a gun’s barrel presses against the back of my skull.
“Nice of you to finally join us, Francesco.” It’s Uncle Paolo’s unmistakable, rough Italian. “We’ve been waiting a while.”
I will myself to calm down, to hold in the darkness from obliterating him. I let it out too soon with Jasmine and the cardinals. I should have taken my time to feast. Should have gone slow through the sins, to hunt for the truth.
Pray for them now, the hunger urges.
No.
Mercy.
She comes first.
“Where’s the American?” My voice sounds foreign, like it belongs to another person.
“Sit.” The barrel nudges my head. “It’s time we had a little family meeting.”
My fingers curl into fists. I glance down and to the side, finally seeing a body. Uncle Vince. Further into the restaurant, shadows move.
Three more of Paolo’s men stand behind my parents and a distraught Aunt Rosa. Nonna and Nonno. Enzo. All the cousins. He’s rounded up every Angelotti faithful to Marco. But no Mercy.
“I won’t ask again,” I grind out. “Where is the American woman staying with me?”
Shadows ripple beneath my skin. Spiked and jagged horns grow in size along every thread.
Paolo scoffs. “I should kill you right now for your betrayal, but I won’t. Not if you do as you’re told.”
“You of all people know you cannot survive me, Paolo. Don’t be a fool.”
“You won’t risk your family.” He shoves the gun into my head, jerking it aside. “How many of us do you think you can stop before a bullet gets loose?” He sniffs. “You see, I had much time to think in prison. Time to think about how to beat you before the shadows come. It all comes down to—”
“To what?” I laugh, short and bitter. “To loyalty? To family duty?” I slowly turn until the barrel is at my forehead and press into it.
“Perhaps twenty years ago, you would be right. Even two weeks ago, you might have been right. But there is only one person who can stop me now, and she is not in this room.”
Thudding and banging come from upstairs. It could be a ransack. Or a fight.
Now! the hunger demands. Pray for the sinners!
It takes all my willpower to stop the shadows peeling from my skin and reaching out.
Paolo sees the tendrils unfurl toward him and hover. He remembers now that they can move fast, too fast for a trigger finger to beat, and he swallows.
“We have the American,” he confesses. “She’s alive. Think rationally.”
“Who is we?” I step forward, crowding him backward with my head pushing against his gun.
He stumbles into a chair, glances over his shoulder, and corrects his balance.
“Boss?” one of the thugs calls out, hesitant.
Paolo turns to him, but I click my fingers in his face.
“Don’t look at him,” I growl. “Look at me.”
“Francesco.” He gives a nervous laugh. “You won’t do it. Think of your family.”
The natural light in the room begins to wane, as if the sun is setting.
Sweat forms on Paolo’s skin. I smell urine. A hurricane shrieks in my head, but somehow, I can still hear everything else with crystal clarity.
“Who. Is. We?” I repeat.
“She told me this would work. Ha ha. It was her idea. All of it.”
Maria.
He must mean Maria.
Elena breaks away from my father’s grip, heedless of another thug’s gun pointed at her head.
“Don’t you dare hurt her, Cesco. Don’t you hurt my angel,” she shouts.
Air whooshes from my lungs in a rush. That one sentence confirms everything. I hang my head, eyes closed, shoulders slumped.
Everything goes quiet. Dark. A void except for my thoughts.
I could shout at my family, throw their selfishness in their face, tell them to be grateful for all that I’ve done to help them, tell them to be ashamed of their sins.
I could tell them to run, to save themselves, but Mercy was right. Whether or not they’re pawns or willing, greedy participants is irrelevant.
The prayer falls from my lips like water.
“Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.” Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.
There’s more, but I have only one fuck left to give, and it’s not for them.
“Amen.”