Arcadia Falls

by Kai Meyer

  The sacristy windows were another matter. It would take a little while to remove the gratings over them, but they were on the first floor and more easily accessible.

  “They don’t have much time left.” She urged the others away from the porch. “They could have only found out this quickly that I was here from the police. Probably from the same informant in the anti-Mafia unit who has the judge on his conscience. So they’re certainly not the only people on the way here. The police ought to turn up soon, too.”

  Raffaela shot Lorenzo a furious glance. “You’re such an idiot!”

  He still didn’t look as if he knew whether he was on the right side. The black cars outside the church had obviously not inspired confidence in him.

  Rosa took the pistol out of her jacket pocket again. “Do you have any more of these?”

  He shook his head.

  “Lorenzo,” said Raffaela forcefully, “if you do—”

  “No, damn it!” he shouted. “I don’t have any other guns.”

  Iole was holding the guitar in both hands like a battle-ax. Rosa drew her closer. “You stay with me. No matter what happens.”

  Cristina frowned. “Where are they? They ought to have been here long ago.”

  As if they had needed only that cue, there was a vigorous knocking at the door. Like someone hammering on it with the butt of a pistol.

  “We want Rosa Alcantara,” called a muffled male voice through the wood. “We’re not interested in the rest of you. If you hand her over, no one will be hurt.”

  “Sounds okay to me,” said Lorenzo.

  Raffaela hit him. Rosa was starting to see what had gone wrong between the two of them.

  He cursed, then stepped out of range of her and moved his lips soundlessly.

  “Piss off!” called Iole to the Carnevares outside.

  “Nice of you,” said Rosa quietly, “but that guitar won’t do you any good if they get in here.”

  Thoughtfully, Cristina looked from the porch to Rosa. “Suppose it wasn’t an informant? You said this man Thanassis has access to satellite pictures. Couldn’t he have seen where we came ashore? It would be simpler for him to set the clans on you than send his own people here.”

  That sounded logical—and probably meant that the hybrids would deliver Alessandro to the Hungry Man even without her, as long as they were sure that the clans would capture Rosa themselves. “That would suggest,” she said, thinking out loud, “that the guys out there have no idea the police are also on their way here.”

  Cristina nodded.

  Rosa looked all around the church, in search of a way out. The three cars were probably occupied by a team of twelve. Some of them would certainly be prowling around the building in the shape of big cats.

  “Can we barricade ourselves in here until the police arrive?” asked Raffaela.

  Iole shook her head. “They’d arrest Rosa, and she’d never get to—” She interrupted herself, glancing suspiciously at the musician. “She’d never get to Alessandro.”

  Lorenzo leaned against a loudspeaker as tall as he was. “But the rest of us would probably survive.”

  “And who says the guys out there won’t simply shoot the cops down?” Once again, Cristina was calm personified.

  The knocking on the door came again. “Two minutes to go,” called the man outside. “After that we’re coming in.”

  Rosa’s eye fell on the bell rope beside the porch. “Does that still work?”

  Lorenzo nodded.

  She went over to the rope, picked it up in both hands, and tugged at it with all her might. High above her in the little belfry on the front gable of the church roof, the bell tolled. First quietly and irregularly, then with a stronger, louder sound.

  “What’s the point of that?” inquired Lorenzo.

  “I suppose there’s no way up there from inside?” she asked. The belfry was too small to have a flight of steps going up to it, and served only as housing for the big bronze bell.

  “If anyone has to get at the thing, it can only be done from outside with a fireman’s ladder,” he said.

  She let go of the rope. “We have to find out what they’re doing.”

  A siren sounded far away, probably at the other end of the village.

  “Here comes the damn cavalry,” said Lorenzo happily.

  A little later, blue lights flashed behind the clouded window panes. Then shots rang out.

  “Here we go,” whispered Rosa.

  She shifted into snake shape within seconds, slipped out of her clothes, and grasped the bell rope in her teeth as hard as she could. She had never tried anything like this before, but it was their only chance of getting some idea of the situation outside the church.

  With crazy speed, she coiled her reptilian body around the rope and climbed up. It was much easier than she had expected. Very soon she reached the vaulted roof of the church, six or seven yards above ground level. Here the rope disappeared into a rectangular shaft, just large enough for her to get through. She wound her way onward and upward, through cobwebs and clouds of dust, and soon reached the bell. It hung in a small chamber with open rounded arches facing all four points of the compass. The floor was covered with bird droppings and feathers. When she shifted back into human form, she could feel both under the soles of her bare feet.

  In the red glow of sunset, she straightened up just enough to be able to look down over a stone parapet into the courtyard of the church. Twelve or maybe fifteen yards below her, shadowy figures were locked in a fierce exchange of gunfire.

  The new arrivals had not driven up in patrol cars but in two BMWs, one black and one silver. Rosa had been followed by them both more than once in the last few months. They were from the vehicle fleet of Quattrini’s anti-Mafia unit. The dark BMW was usually driven by Antonio Festa.

  The dead judge’s assistant, his colleague Stefania, and three other officers of the Special Commission had sought shelter behind the cars and were firing their automatics at the Carnevare clan’s hit men. The latter crouched behind the three Mercedes, which they had drawn up in a semicircle outside the church.

  But Rosa also saw the Panthera to one side of the skirmish, where the bushes and rocks cast deep shadows. From above, she made out two lions prowling toward the police officers in a wide arc from the west while a panther, a leopard, and a gigantic creature that might be a Bengal tiger were approaching the four men and one woman from the east.

  She shouted a warning to Festa and Stefania, but her voice was drowned out by the staccato exchange of gunfire. All the cars had already been affected, the windows shot out, undercarriage perforated. One of the Carnevares was hit, and the next moment so was a police officer.

  She shifted shape, made her way over the parapet, let herself drop to the slope of the church roof, and glided down to the gutter along the west wall. She followed it without entrusting her full weight to the crumbling metal gutter, to the point where the sacristy met the wall.

  It was three yards down to the roof of the garage annex, but her supple serpentine body sprang back so softly that she hardly felt the impact. She slid down a drainpipe to the coarse stones outside the church.

  The shots were deafening, and smoke drifted over the plateau. Rosa stayed close to the wall, and out of the corner of her eye saw two big cats behind the bushes looking for a way through to come up behind the police officers.

  Keeping close to the ground between the stones and the grass, she was all but invisible. When she reached the cover of the building, she saw the backs of five men who had taken cover behind the Carnevare car. Two more Mafiosi had been hit, and were lying on the ground. One was still alive, pressing a bloodstained hand to his throat. The others were firing in sequence, trying to divert the attention of Festa, Stefania, and the other officers from the Panthera stealing up behind them.

  None of them noticed the snake gliding past them and under one of the cars. From this vantage point, Rosa could also see the two BMWs behind a wall of smoke. Muzzle flashes
flared, while the police themselves remained shadowy silhouettes.

  She had broken into cars in New York to go joyriding through Brooklyn. Those had been rickety old things, as decrepit as the apartment buildings in Crown Heights. There had never been a brand-new Mercedes like this one among them. In the dim light, she searched the underside of the car for cables and pipes. Covers and trimming protected the sensitive technological devices, but there were still plenty of openings to the engine compartment through which she could push her snake’s head. Tough plastic and layers of rubber offered resistance to her teeth, but she had soon bitten through several cables. The nauseating taste of oil and gasoline coated her tongue, but as long as she didn’t swallow any, it wouldn’t hurt her.

  She was almost deaf from the sound of bullets striking the vehicles when she cautiously slid along over the ground to the next car. Here, too, she bit through electric cables and piping. She could only hope that some of the really important connections were among them.

  When she moved on to the third car she was almost discovered. One of the Carnevares taking cover behind the wing noticed her; when she looked up their eyes met. His eyes were those of a cat, although his body and features were human. In alarm, he opened his mouth, straightened up slightly—and was hit by a bullet that blew his skull to pieces from the eyebrows up.

  Rosa pulled her snake’s body under the car. From here she could guess at the other big cats from vague movements over the ground, heading for the place where the police were taking cover behind the swathes of powder smoke.

  Rosa set about sabotaging the third vehicle as well. When she moved back into the open, the ends of cables were dangling from the engine like creepers torn loose from their supports.

  Once again, one of the Mafiosi cried out and collapsed. When she looked back, she saw him lying on his side. His dead eyes, wide open, stared out from under the car as if he had seen Rosa as he drew his last breath.

  There were about fifteen yards of open ground between the Carnevare cars and the two police vehicles. Heading straight across that distance was too dangerous. She had to try to approach from the side.

  Her sense of time was letting her down. It felt like an eternity before she finally reached the silver BMW. The two cars were parked at an angle to each other, forming a broad V-shaped opening out on the facade of the church and the Carnevares. Stefania Moranelli, Antonio Festa, and the two other surviving police officers were crouching behind them, firing in rapid sequence.

  Rosa had just coiled her whole body under one of the cars when she saw the Panthera stealing up out of the milky smoke, approaching their human prey from behind. None of the officers had yet noticed the five big cats.

  She could warn them only if she shifted back to human form. The BMW was low-slung, but even in her human shape she was slender enough to fit under it. However, it was an effort to initiate the metamorphosis in such a cramped space.

  “Stefania,” she shouted. “Behind you!”

  She could see only the policewoman’s legs, but from the jerk that ran through Stefania, Rosa saw that she had heard her.

  “They’re coming up from behind!”

  Stefania flung herself around and instantly opened fire on the big cats. Her first bullet hit a lion and killed him. The others were racing up toward the four police officers—and Rosa, who had returned to snake form. She could no longer see what was going on, she only heard screams, shots, and the roars of predators.

  While the humans and the Panthera clashed only an arm’s length away from her, she randomly bit through the first leads she saw.

  She had really intended to put the last car out of action as well. She thought better of that when she moved on from the first BMW to under the second, and saw one of the police officers pumping bullets into the tiger. Then the policeman’s feet disappeared from her field of vision, and she realized that he was retreating into the car.

  The panther swept up. With one long leap, he chased into the vehicle after the man. Rosa could feel the heavy impact as the car rocked. Another shot, then a roar of torment, and the bloodthirsty snarling and snapping of the big cat. One leg dangled, twitching, in the gap between the ground and the vehicle; the man’s shoe was torn away, his foot twisted. Blood trickled from his leg.

  Rosa looked back at the church, where the Carnevares in human form were still crouching behind their cars, leaving the massacre of the police officers to the big cats.

  When she turned around again, she was no longer the only one to have taken refuge under a car. While she lay in snake form underneath the black BMW, Stefania, bleeding and exhausted, had crawled under the silver car beside it. One of the Panthera was about to follow, but without further ado the policewoman took aim at his skull and pulled the trigger. The big cat went limp, and his metamorphosis into human shape set in at once. The corpse was far more massive than Stefania, and was squeezed tightly between the car and the ground, which meant that he shielded her from the eyes of the other Panthera.

  At least one of the officers was still alive. Rosa heard him firing, then saw him for a second—before he was buried under the Panthera.

  That was the moment that she used. At high speed, she wound her way out from under the car, and in through the back door of the BMW beside the dead police officer’s motionless leg. The panther had inflicted severe injuries on him before rejoining the other Panthera. Rosa had to glide through sticky blood, but all she felt was wild elation. It frightened her, but at the same time she welcomed it.

  After she had her entire reptilian body on the backseat beside the dead man, she looked around. No one was following her; the Panthera hadn’t noticed her yet. In animal form, they were far too busy tearing apart the body of the last police officer.

  This time her change back to human form hurt. Too many metamorphoses in too short a time, leading to the sense of strain and the adrenaline surges coursing through her body. Even as she returned to human shape, her eyes fell on the dead man’s face. It was Antonio Festa. She felt nothing, no pity, no anger, certainly no triumph. She had little time left to think at all. The windows of the car were soiled, but all the same, anyone looking into it from outside could see a naked blond girl who had apparently materialized out of nowhere on the backseat.

  Working frantically, she set about pushing Festa’s body out of the car. It was easier than she had feared to move him over the wet leather upholstery, and a little later his head hit the ground. Rosa risked one last look at the three Panthera busy with the other corpse. Stefania couldn’t be seen from here. With luck, she would still be lying under the second car, which offered the best cover at the moment.

  Impossible to close the car door quietly. With a jerk, Rosa slammed it shut. She didn’t even have to look to be sure that the Panthera had noticed.

  She hastily squeezed between the seats to reach the driver’s seat in front. Festa’s blood was all over her, and her fingers felt as if they had been dipped in syrup. The key was in the ignition. The police officers had come under fire from the Carnevares so abruptly on their arrival that no one had thought of taking it out.

  She activated the automatic lock, and the doors locked all around her.

  With a crash, the leopard landed on the hood of the car in front of her. Dark red blood dripped from his muzzle, and there was bloodlust in his eyes as he stared through the windshield at Rosa. His skull was less than a yard from her face, but the glass was still between them.

  The lion appeared at the side window beside her, let out a roar, and struck the door with his paw.

  Rosa instinctively flinched away, throwing herself half over the passenger seat. She opened the glove compartment, hoping to find pepper spray or a truncheon.

  A sturdy flare gun lay there among chocolate bars and crumpled paper. Rosa opened it, and found a single cartridge in the barrel. As she was about to snap the gun shut again, a bullet struck the side window at the back of the BMW. It had been hit several times already, and this time the shot almost wrenched the
glass out of the frame.

  Rosa could have shot one of the Panthera, turning his head into a fireball, but then she would have used up all her ammunition. As the leopard’s paws struck the windshield, and the lion worked on the driver’s door—where was the panther?—she threw herself across the passenger seat again, opened the door just a crack, took brief aim, and pulled the trigger.

  The tracer bullet raced above the ground in a low trajectory. Rosa closed the door again and looked through the window at the Carnevares’ cars in front of the church entrance The men behind them were on their feet, one of them laughing contemptuously.

  But she hadn’t been firing at any of them. A few sparks were enough to set the grass under their vehicles on fire. She had bitten through the connections supplying the engine with fuel, and for some minutes now the tanks had been pouring out their contents on the ground. The Carnevares would have caught the scent of the gasoline long ago if they hadn’t been so intoxicated by the smell of blood in the air.

  The next moment, a wall of fire rose in front of the church, and a wave of flames shot out of it.

  Three explosions at almost the same time. The vehicles were torn apart by the blast, their parts flung away, while the men fell back against the church, human torches. One of them stayed standing, six feet tall, sticking to the masonry of the wall, where he burned like a bonfire.

  The lion was no longer at the driver’s door. The leopard had been flung off the hood of the BMW, but was already struggling to his feet. Rosa turned the key in the ignition and roared the engine.

  Something banged into the passenger window. Stefania was hammering with her fist on it, barely recognizable under a mask of blood and dirt.

  Rosa reached over and opened the door. The policewoman slipped in, her breath rattling in her throat, and slammed the door shut. “Drive!”

  The lion collided with the driver’s side window again. Rosa stepped on the gas. The leopard was lying on his side in front of the hood. She rammed him, and felt the wheels drive over him.