Page 6 of Cursebound
I hear a clatter and a thud in the background. “Did I interrupt snack time?”
“Nothing important,” he says. “More fast food takeout than a gourmet meal, if you know what I mean.”
Gourmet to Matteo means pedophiles, abusers of women, con artists who prey on the vulnerable, and anyone who would dare consider hurting a puppy.
He once kept a dog-fighting crew who tortured pit bulls chained up for a month, forcing them to fight each other over a chance at freedom that never came. He still has one of the dogs, Moonface, to this day. She suffered some kind of brain injury during her time in the pits, and she’s a little fucked in the head, but she would die for Matteo and vice versa.
For some of us, feeding is functional; for others, it’s tied to the pleasures of the flesh. Usually, it’s a bit of both. For Matteo, it’s a method of taking out the trash, and in New York, that well never runs dry.
“You there, Boss? In Liverpool? What’s it like? You been to Anfield stadium yet?” Matteo is a big Liverpool Football Club fan. One of the many quirks a guy picks up when he’s been ricocheting around the planet for two hundred years.
“No, I haven’t. I’m not here on vacation. Did you find anything else out for me?”
The circumstances around how I was sent here are suspicious—too sudden, too spontaneous. In order to blindly obey someone, you must trust them, and I’m no longer sure I trust the Don. It’s possible I never did, but I at least trusted he was acting in our best interests.
That’s why I asked Matteo to see if he could dig out anything more for me to work with. He’s good with the blood addicts and the human servants. The streak of compassion he possesses allows him to tolerate them a lot better than I can. And to everyone but him, they’re invisible, which means they make pretty good spies.
“Yeah. But not much that makes sense—it came from Freya, you know?”
Freya has been at the Firenze court for a long time, at least in human terms. She arrived when she was a young girl, brought there by addict parents who traded her for blood. I suppose there wasn’t ever much chance of her leaving after that. Who the fuck could survive in the human world after being fed on by feral vampires—not to mention the other horrors she was subjected to—while they were only a teen?
Predictably enough, she’s a bit like Moonface—a little fucked in the head, but loyal to those she loves. She’s also one of the Don’s favorite playthings, which sucks for her, but it grants her high-level access.
“Yeah. I get it. I’ll run it through the Freya filter. Now go on, it’s fucking raining here.”
“Okay, keep your panties on. From what she’s overheard, there’s some dude called Kurt with a K. Doesn’t sound like he’s with one of our families ’cause nobody knows much about him. Maybe one of those ambitious newbies, you know, gonna change the world order?”
I do know. The Old World vampires, the ones who were transformed before the Bargain was sealed, are dominant in our universe. We control all crime related to supernaturals, and a large chunk of the human stuff too. The human Mafia knows we exist, but only those at the top levels of their organizations.
They kick up a percentage of their profits, and they’re all good earners. In return, we let them exist and allow them to pretend they’re in charge. There are four main Cosca families, all with traditional allegiances to cities in Italy, as well as old but smaller clans from Ireland, Scandinavia, and Russia.
It’s been this way for a long time—back to the days when those Italian cities were one-horse trading posts and fishing villages—and it works. But every now and then, some punk thinks he can come along and take it from us. It’s always some fresh-from-the-turn asshole who has ideas bigger than his resources and balls bigger than his brains. They always get dealt with.
“So, Freya was vague on the details, and she got all caught up on other words that started with K and went into this huge list… kittens and kingfishers and kiwi fruit…”
“I get the picture. Move it along, Matteo.”
“Right. So, she has the impression that this Kurt fuck has amassed his own little army and is targeting the malocchio. No clue why. There’ve been rumbles that he’s deliberately Calling her, using pawns to drag her out over and over again until she’s running on empty and gets sloppy.”
“Like the Lombardi girl years ago?”
“Yeah. Except back then, nobody really knew who was behind it or why they did it.”
Anna Lombardi was her family’s Seer, and it did not end well for her. She was torn limb from limb while still alive, and her body parts were dumped on the grounds of her parents’ mansion. Apart from her head. That was thrown through their kitchen window, eyelids cut off and lips sewn shut. It caused a lot of trouble. The Lombardis blamed the vampires, which was totally logical, and for a while we were on the verge of all-out war.
It was actually the Capelli girl’s grandfather, Tomasso, who stepped in and made peace. And now someone is targeting his blood in the same manner? I don’t like it or understand it, and I don’t have a clue what Vincenzo and the Firenzes have to do with the whole mess.
“This Kurt—he’s definitely not one of ours? Because if he’s looking to take out the Capelli Seer, and Vincenzo sent me here to do the same… Well, the way things are right now, I wouldn’t put it past him to have some side action.”
“Yeah, me neither. But who fucking knows? Why would he send you if he already gave the job to this Kurt? Why is he messing with the Vecchissime in the first place? We all know they’re unpredictable sacks of shit as well. It could be one of them that’s behind this Kurt thing.”
“Maybe.”
I fall silent, unsure what to do next. It should be simple—kill her or take her back to him. I didn’t stay alive this long or rise to this much power by questioning every order I was ever given. Then again, I didn’t do it by being stupid either.
Everything about this feels wrong, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the decades. They’re screaming at me now.
Maybe I should try to contact Sophia. The Don’s daughter might have some insight, and she has proven multiple times that although she is loyal to her father, her priority is the Cosca. Or I could get in touch with Aidan. Aidan Flynn is Vincenzo’s consigliere, and he’s done good work for us. He’s been having doubts about Vincenzo’s behavior too, and it’s possible he knows what’s happening. He could have some information on how this malocchio came to the Don’s attention, why she’s dispensable. Killing her could start a war. And what the hell might be done to her if I go down the “kidnap” route instead?