Page 13 of Angel’s Flight (The Phantom Saga #4)

Another man emerged from the door that led into the courtyard and tossed his compatriot another vase.

The one who had caught it was wiry and fair, with a bowler hat perched on his head.

He would be easy to take in a fight, though he would be fast. The other man was huge.

He nearly filled the doorway, and he had a cruel look about him.

They had subdued a bear of a man like Vito, which meant they were extremely dangerous.

“Tell us where they are, or the next one we crack will be on his head!” the wiry one declared, holding the urn aloft.

“What are they saying?” Christine demanded in a fierce whisper, shaking in fear beside him.

“They’re looking for someone or something,” he replied hastily, his pulse racing. These thugs were clearly professionals when it came to intimidation and hurting people. Did Vito owe money to some unsavory character? Or perhaps...

“He’s not hard to miss, we’ve been told,” the large one mumbled just as the terrible thought occurred to Erik. “Tall and bony. Black hair and a mask. Who can miss that?”

“No one who lives here wears a mask! The husband – he is a veteran!” Mama Genco protested, her voice thick with tears. Erik’s heart seized with rage and guilt. This woman was suffering because of him. Either through ignorance or charity, she was trying to protect him.

“Did they say mask?” Christine gasped, grabbing Erik to hold him back now. “Oh God, are they looking for us?”

“They pay their rent and do not bother us!” Mama Genco cried, and the brute hurled the vase to the pavement next to her, missing Vito’s head by inches. Vito groaned and tried to move, but the wiry one pressed a foot to his throat.

“Oh, you’re awake?” the assailant sneered, leaning down. “Did you know you’re renting a flat to a monster?”

The word was like a spark to the dynamite inside Erik.

In the word, he heard echoes of hundreds of voices – his parents and his victims and those he had thought friends and those that knew him as an enemy.

Women and children, screaming at the sight of him, running away through the woods to summon the village to drive out the monster.

“Erik, no!” Christine cried, trying to hold him back, but she couldn’t contain him. She was wrong to even try.

Erik sprang from the shadows and seized the smaller man, unbalancing him and using momentum to hurl him against the wall.

“If he is a monster, then you should be more careful,” Erik hissed, meeting the man with a fierce kick when he rushed at him and sending him to the ground.

Mama Genco screamed, and Erik looked up to see the larger of the two barreling towards them.

Erik braced himself, driving his shoulder into the center of the huge man’s chest and knocking him back at the cost of the man grabbing at Erik’s face as he tore off the mask.

Good. It was easier to fight this kind of vermin when they were scared. Erik reared up, and the large attacker stumbled back, breath knocked from his lungs and face filling with horror as he looked on Erik’s deathly countenance.

“Devil!” he gasped and crossed himself.

“No, but I will be happy to introduce you to him,” Erik growled.

“Oh God!” Signora Genco cried as Christine rushed to her side and helped her away from the fray. Erik made the mistake of looking at the old woman’s terrified face and not Christine’s, and the horror he saw there sickened him. “What is he?”

“Erik!” Christine cried. He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye in time to catch the lithe man by the throat as he charged again.

Erik’s rage poured into his hand as it tightened around the man’s neck.

This man was the real monster. A common criminal sent to track him down like a dog.

Erik squeezed, and the man scrabbled at his hand and arm, trying to get away even as the air left his lungs.

Erik wanted to see the light leave his eyes. ..

“Erik, no!” Christine screamed, and he made the mistake of looking at her. He saw the fear and devastation on her face.

He couldn’t do this again. He would lose her.

The first blow struck him in the ribs, and the second one in his face.

It was the other man, breath and bravery recovered.

Erik ducked the third punch and forced the victim still in his grasp between them as a shield.

His friend knocked the other aside and out of Erik’s grasp, so that he fell unmoving on the ground.

Someone screamed as the brute struck Erik, and he finally hit back, using his speed against the larger opponent.

The man wound up for another blow, then howled in pain as the women screamed.

It took Erik a half second to see that Vito had recovered on the ground, grabbed a jagged shard of pottery, and drove it deep into the man’s thigh.

The assailant crashed to his knees, and Erik had a choice.

He could end this and kill him now or help the man who had just saved them when he had no reason to.

Erik rushed to Vito and heaved him up from the cobblestones, carrying him to the entrance.

His mother helped him in as Christine slammed the door behind them and bolted it shut.

They were safe, but it wasn’t over. Erik watched through the peephole as the men in the street struggled to their feet and glowered at the locked door.

“It’s not over, monster!” the huge one cried. “There will be more coming for you! The one who wants you pays well and won’t be denied a prize!”

Erik let out a shuddering breath as he watched the men retreat. He didn’t want to look away even when they were no longer visible. He didn’t want to turn to the people cowering next to him in the entryway who had seen him for what he was in all the most terrible ways.

“What did they say?” Christine asked first, voice small and shaking. Erik turned to her and met her eyes, ignoring how Mama Genco winced when he did.

“They were here for me,” Erik replied grimly. “We have to get out of Florence.”

Paris

“Y ou’re late,” Darius scolded the moment Shaya opened the door to their flat.

“I told you I planned to observe as long as I could after the performance,” Shaya countered, and Darius shook his head, ever tolerant.

Shaya didn’t mind the concern. Darius’s fussing came from a place of love, and his admonition was as welcoming as the smell of tea brewing and the cozy furnishings of the home they shared.

“Was there anything to observe?” Darius asked as Shaya removed his coat and Astrakhan cap.

“There is no love lost for Halévy among the audience, which I can’t blame them for. The talk in the salons was mostly of business and politics and who was sleeping with whose wives.”

Darius squinted at him. “What else are you not saying?” Of course he knew. He always knew.

“There was also discussion of the robbery and beating of a patron by the name of Tremblay. It’s shaken everyone,” Shaya confessed with a sigh. “It happened close to the Opéra, and Tremblay has been unable to describe the attacker because he was surprised from behind.”

“That doesn’t sound like Erik. And robberies happen even in the posh neighborhoods.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself, and why I was late.”

“You lingered in the street around the Opéra, hoping to catch this assailant at work again,” Darius surmised, and Shaya nodded. “And you were unsuccessful.”

“I’m probably just being paranoid.” Shaya shook his head and sank into a chair by the fire. “You’re right about me needing some other pastime. Though I refuse to write a memoir – that’s for old men.”

“And you are, of course, young and vital,” Darius chuckled. “Maybe this is something to keep you occupied.” He produced an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Shaya. It was a telegram.

“What on earth?”

Shaya didn’t receive a great deal of correspondence. His few friends were in Paris and his remaining acquaintances in Persia didn’t often write. He only knew of one person who might be contacting him. A person he had immediately tried to contact a week ago.

He tore open the telegram and read:

From the offices of Tissot and Garibaldi, Geneva

Dear M. Motlagh,

Your letter and the enclosed letter directed to the client of M. Tissot were received today. We regret to inform you that no correspondence to M. Tissot or his clients can be managed or answered at this time, as M. Tissot has taken unexpectedly ill.

Regards.

T. A. Martin

Shaya reread the missive, trying to control the twisting, suspicious feeling in his stomach.

“What is it?” Darius asked.

“I wrote to Erik last week – or attempted to. I sent a letter to the solicitor in Geneva.”

“I know, you wouldn’t stop complaining about how much it cost to get it there quickly.”

Shaya scowled. “The office replied to say that the solicitor has taken ill and no letter can be forwarded. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“You used to say that, with Erik, nothing was a coincidence,” Darius replied slowly. “This means he can’t be reached to answer any questions, and we don’t know where he is.”

“It wouldn’t be like Erik to harm his solicitor or avoid me now,” Shaya argued automatically. “I have a terrible feeling that someone else is looking for him, and the list of people who want to find him is very long.”

Florence

C hristine finally began to cry as the carriage rounded the bend, and the place that might have become a real home left her sight.

Signora Genco and her son had been kinder than they had any right to be in helping them pack and summon transportation but had also made it clear that the two of them were no longer welcome under that roof after all the evil they had brought. Neither she nor Erik had argued.

“Why didn’t you tell the driver to go to the train station?” Christine asked, trying not to let her voice crack.