Page 6

Chapter Six

Tinoro and I catch up to the women where the brothel basement becomes the Roman sewer system. On the other side of a stone arch, under a grate that’s the only source of light, four women wait for us.

Lucia scans the ceiling, her round face sliced into lines of shadow. “It stinks down here.”

“It gets worse this way.” Isabella indicates a long passage under a row of grates with a thumb-width gulley carved out of stone in the center of the floor.

Without a word, we all follow her. She walks with a brutal efficiency, gray hair coming out of its ties. Tinoro and I take defensive positions without discussing it. He’s up front with Isabella. I stay in the back. Paolina falls in with me.

“Why don’t you look worried?” she asks after one particularly long scream from above that ends in mama.

“I can cower in the corner and weep if you like.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean then?”

We cross under a grate, and the last grid of daylight falls on her face. I may not look worried, but she does. She isn’t prone to unwarranted concern.

“You’re always so relaxed. Nothing bothers you and you’re still this way. We can smell the fires. And listen, do you hear the screams?” She points upward. “Every time we pass under one of these fucking holes in the street.”

“Ignore them.”

“How can you? Listen. They’re children. ”

“I have no choice. I cannot save them. All I can do is stay down here, with you, and her, and your two friends, and him. If I don’t want to hear you scream, there is no outside. It doesn’t exist. There is only this tunnel. Now go!”

I shove her ahead of me, but she doesn’t go two steps before shooting more panic over her shoulder.

“What if they’re not satisfied? What if they burn Rome and love it so much they move south? Isn’t that where your son is? Naples?”

He and his mother are just north of my home city. Is that any safer? Will they pass that town by? Or will they hit it the way they stopped to loot Viterbo and Ronciglione before sacking Rome?

“Hush.”

“Will you worry then?” she insists.

“I said hush !”

Tinoro has stopped and put his finger to his lips, but not because I told Paolina to hush. He hears something. I hear it too. A scraping and scuttling. A splash in sewer water.

Someone.

“Rats,” says the innkeeper, and of course she’s right. We're in a sewer. What else could it be?

“It’s getting dark,” Lucia says. “It’s creepy.”

“Did anyone bring light?” Agata asks.

We all look at each other, and it becomes clear no one brought a candle. This tunnel will be as black as pitch very soon.

We huddle against a wall and quietly pass a loaf between us as the screams continue above. We piss into the center stream and the water takes it away. The light from the grate dims and dies. Street water drips through it into the rivulet. Paolina falls asleep on my shoulder.

I have to get to Laro. A message, at least. Jacqueline may despise me, but she will protect her son.

The scuffling of rats isn’t accompanied by their usual squeaking and skirmishing.

I’m sure I hear the slow breaths of a man, but it could be the water or the whoosh of the fire consuming Rome.

It could be a vibrational aftermath from the screams that weave in and out of the cloth of suffering.

I wiggle out from under Paolina and grab the knife from her waist.

“Show yourself,” I whisper into the dark. “We won’t hurt you.”

I’m lying, of course. I’ll hurt him in a heartbeat.

I step forward, under the grate. Street water falls on my face, then my shoulder. The light from above flickers yellow. More fire, bright enough to light the way, but too cold to dry the stones around it. We should get up and go once I prove to myself there’s no one else here.

Knife out, I creep to the next shaft of light.

“Show yourself,” I repeat.

I hear it again. A single breath in the shape of a sneer.

But when I get to the next grate, there’s no one there. My wrist interrupts a drop from above, and the line it makes on my skin is too dark.

It’s not water running down from the street. It’s blood.

“I forgot how beautiful you can be.” The man’s voice jolts me. His Latin is twisted into a dialect I have never heard before. I hold out the knife, ready for something I may see too late. “Especially in fear.”

“Show yourself,” I hiss, still hopeful no one has to wake up for this.

“I don’t take orders from pretty trinkets.” The voice comes from above me, which is impossible. But there’s something… then, as I step back, looking up, he is behind—between me and the rest of my party. “And you are the prettiest I’ve ever seen.”

No scent. No heat. But there. How?

I face him and lunge with the knife.

At least, I intend to. I am sure I have. But I can’t. Don’t. He’s beyond my reach.

The shadowed figure breathes deeply, as if savoring a scent.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“You intrude on my home?” He’s to my left. But when I turn with the knife, he’s to my right. “My rest? And ask who I am? You’re not worthy of my name.”

He’s above. A trick of the sound.

But a flame flares through the grate. The light bounces off the stones and he is above me, clinging to the ridges in the ceiling, naked, white skin and protruding bones, cock dangling. His head is bald, but his body has the hair of a man.

“You’re right. We’ll go.” Still brandishing my little knife against this wraith, I step away.

“So much blood. The smell of it woke me from a long sleep.”

“We’ll leave you alone.”

“Don’t run, little pretty.” With a movement so fast it seems to outrun the air, he takes the knife.

I am open-handed, unarmed, and so are the people sleeping at the end of the passage. They should be awake so they can defend themselves, but again, I am too late. I open my mouth to wake them.

“Hush,” the man says, dropping to the floor to put his finger on my lips. There’s a black signet ring at the base of his fourth finger—the only thing he’s wearing. “Don’t ruin it when it’s been so… very… long.”

His touch is repulsive, and yet, it is pleasing, because he wants it. I am under some kind of spell.

I can shout for Tinoro.

But this creature says hush, so I cannot.

I can bite off his finger. But I am in awe of it.

My mind is being conquered, looted, plundered. It’s an empty eggshell, smashed in when a deafening report claps against the stones and a blast of light fills the chamber.

The creature goes down with a hole in its gut, and I suck in a gunpowder breath.

“What the fuck?” Tinoro lowers my weapon and stares at me, while Paolina does the same with a smoking fuse in her fingers.

The other three women hover around the supine man and speak from a hundred miles away.

What just happened?

What is it?

He’s huge.

It’s a man, stupid.

It is no man .

“I don’t know what happened,” I answer a question Tinoro hasn’t asked.

“You weren’t moving.”

“I can’t explain it.”

“This ring might be worth something,” Isabella says of the dead man’s black signet, reaching for it.

Paolina grabs her hand and pulls it back before she makes contact. “It’s not dead.”

It ? Not he ?

Crawling on the ceiling. Emptying my mind. Moving so fast he’s invisible.

She’s already taken all the clues and drawn a conclusion. This is not a man.

“Bullshit.” Lucia reaches down to tug off the creature’s ring.

“Lucia,” I cry. “No!”

I lunge for her, but the monster is faster than a thought. He lifts her too high to reach. By some defiance of gravity, he pins her to the ceiling with him, sucking her throat while Agata screams. Tinoro stands there, eyes wide, hands gripping my arquebus, saying “No, no, no.”

The creature’s in ecstasy, rubbing his body against Lucia’s while he works his jaw against her throat. A few seconds later, Lord help us, she is in ecstasy with him. I know what her pleasure looks like. Lucia is gone to us.

This is our moment, and it’s all we’re getting.

“Run!”