The Demoness of Waking Dreams (Company of Angels)

by Stephanie Chong

  “Why can’t you?” Violetta asked.

  “Why do you think?” Luciana snapped. “Use your head. I’ve killed people. A lot of people. Demons are not just allowed to leave when we feel like it. But you are. You should go.”

  “I’m not ready,” said Violetta defiantly. “I still have things to do here.”

  Luciana threw her hands in the air. “For the love of God, what things? There is nothing keeping you here except your own stubborn beliefs, and your own fear.”

  “There must be something we can help her do. Say goodbye, perhaps,” said Massimo.

  “No,” said Luciana. “We owe her nothing. More important, we have no time to deal with this right now. We have much more pressing things to worry about. If you didn’t notice, the angel is still out there. Watching us.”

  Violetta vanished, the wisp of her image trailing into vapor as she passed through the surface of the wooden door. Massimo’s gaze followed her, and a small frown pulled at the corners of his mouth. He tried to hide it, but Luciana saw something she didn’t like: the slight parting of his lips as he started to call after Violetta.

  “You,” she said, pointing at the Gatekeeper, “don’t call her back here. Don’t even think about her anymore. You’ve got to keep your wits about you. Love doesn’t exist for demons.”

  “Yes, baronessa,” he said quietly.

  “Forget the girl. Just let her go. We need to do something about this angel.”

  She peered out the crack in the draperies of Massimo’s window, wondering if this perspective would afford her a better view of Brandon’s hiding place. But outside, there was nothing but the empty canal, and across it, the crumbling palazzo sat dark and quiet. No movement.

  “I need to go out,” she said, shutting the curtain with a snap. “Being trapped in here is driving all of us insane. We must show the angels that we won’t be kept penned in like animals.”

  She could feel Brandon’s rugged energy from across the canal. Could almost feel as a palpable sensation the twitch of his hard muscles, the uncomfortable shifting of his big body. Itching to run, to grasp, to capture. To do.

  You could not force a seduction, she knew. Especially not with a man like this.

  A hunter must hunt.

  So give him something to hunt.

  Someone to hunt.

  “Brandon is a man of action—that is one thing we know for sure. Undoubtedly if I leave this house, he will follow. I cannot stay in here a moment longer. I need to remember who I am,” she said, more to herself than to Massimo. “I need to go hunt. And I will flush the pigeon out of his hiding place at the same time.”

  “Isn’t that taking an unnecessary risk, baronessa?”

  She smiled. “Not at all. It will serve two purposes. You know the expression in Italian—Prendere due piccioni con una fava. The English translation is literally ‘to take two pigeons with one bean.’ But the real equivalent is ‘kill two birds with one stone.’ That, my dear Massimo, is what I intend to do.”

  She smiled to herself.

  The English had such a violent way of expressing the same idea.

  But in fact, the English saying expressed precisely what she planned to do.

  * * *

  The sun had just set over Venice, casting the city into a dim light. Across the street, Brandon saw a shape flicker, the merest hint of a shadow moving. He leaned forward, peering closer. And saw the figure of the demoness leaving through the side entrance of the house, a hooded cloak drawn over her head. She looked around covertly, then made a quick dash into the alley behind the house.

  He jumped up, running across the bridge after her.

  He tracked her as she wove through the streets, her dark cloak trailing behind her. There was something different about her, Brandon thought. Something hesitant. Was she in doubt about what it was she wanted? And why had she left the house?

  She walked in halting steps. Stopped. He saw her enter a doorway.

  He followed the sweep of her cloak.

  She turned.

  And she wasn’t Luciana.

  The girl’s face was paler than the living.

  “Who are you? And where is she?” Brandon said, grabbing for her arm. “Where’s Luciana?”

  He found himself holding a fistful of empty cloak, the fabric draped from his hand as the girl pulled out of the garment entirely. She looked at him with an astonished stare, ghostly eyes flickering with slight anger in the dim light.

  “If you’re talking about the baronessa, I have no idea. She went somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

  He looked at her closely, wondering why she had been inside Ca’ Rossetti.

  “What did they do to you in there?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that I need to finish what I have to do. And then I will find the light.”

  “That’s right,” he told her. “You’ve got to go into the light. They can’t hold you, you know. If you did nothing to merit damnation, you are not the property of the devil,” Brandon said.

  “Of course I know that,” the girl said, pulling herself up proudly.

  “Let me help you. Tell me what I can do.”

  She stared at him, sending a chill through him. She opened her mouth to speak, as though she had gotten a flash of clarity, had realized something of great importance.

  Then she vanished into thin air.

  I hope you find whatever it is you’re searching for, he thought.

  God knew there were enough lost souls wandering the streets of Venice.

  Brandon headed back into the night, resolving to take care of some unfinished business of his own.

  * * *

  As Luciana prepared to exit the palazzo, she looked out the window and saw the girl fleeing through the side door. And saw Brandon follow.

  I don’t even need to flush that pigeon out of his hole, she thought. The girl has done it for me.

  Smiling to herself, Luciana waltzed right out the front door, stepped into her boat and drove up the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco.

  The trip was a short one, and as she navigated her way up the canal, she wore a little smile on her face. Even after two and a half centuries as a Venetian, she never tired of this square, its beauty as stunning as when she had been a young girl.

  Ah, yes, it felt good to be out in the open air again.

  Back on the hunt.

  She docked the boat at a mooring post and headed toward the action.

  On this balmy midsummer evening, every table was packed in the big open-air square of the Piazza San Marco, every caffè full to capacity, crowds entranced by the many small orchestras playing classical music that wafted into the air. The vendors were out in full force, hawking every sort of Venetian souvenir to the hordes of tourists.

  Finding victims in San Marco is like shooting fish in a barrel, thought Luciana.

  She ordered a Cinzano and settled in to watch the crowd.

  Across the pool of crowded tables, a tourist fixed his half-drunk gaze on her.

  Tourists, she thought nastily, are more annoying vermin than the pigeons we worked so hard to cull. So perhaps I’ll do my civic duty tonight and rid Venice of one more nuisance.

  She smiled, enticingly. Waited for the tourist to come over.

  Over the past two centuries, she had heard every pickup line imaginable.

  “Hai da fare per I prossimi cent’anni?” What are you doing for the next hundred years?

  “Fa caldo qui, o è perchè ci sei tu?” Is it hot in here, or is it just you?

  “Tu sei il mio sogno proibito.” You’re my forbidden dream…

  What came out of this one’s mouth was no better than she expected.

  “Was your father a thief?” he said in English.

  “Yes. He stole the stars from the sky and put them in my eyes,” she said with a roll of those eyes skyward, toward the stars from which they were allegedly stolen.

  “You, too, are a thief, be
lissima. You stole my line.”

  “We Venetians are thieves at heart,” she said, leaning forward to give him a good look at her ample cleavage. She widened her eyes as she looked up at him, and made her voice very sweet as she said, “Half our treasures are looted from religious wars. The facade of our most famous basilica of San Marco is a miscuglio…a medley of stolen columns taken from foreign temples. Inside, its altars are decorated with jewels filched from other cities, other churches. Even the famed Horses of San Marco, the four bronzed statues, were so famously robbed away from the Byzantine Empire. Sì, even the body of San Marco himself was stolen, his remains thieved out of Egypt by Venetian merchants in the ninth century.”

  Tourists loved this story. Just as they loved finding an authentic Venetian.

  And like all the rest of them, this one ate it up.

  He pulled out the chair next to her. “May I?”

  “Only if you’re in the mood for trouble,” she said, running a suggestive finger along the edge of her neckline, along the top of one perfect breast.

  He laughed, his eyes almost popping out of his head. “On the contrary. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “However, a trip in the other direction can be easily arranged.”

  He laughed at the odd statement, thinking it was a joke.

  Well, she thought. Can’t say I didn’t warn him.

  He flagged the waiter over and ordered two Cinzanos. When the drinks came, she thought about how easy it would be, what a subtle movement it would take to poison him. A slight squeeze of the fingers could decant a single drop of poison into his drink, too quick for his feeble human mind to even detect.

  Under the table, his hand rested on her thigh. Gave it a squeeze that made her want to kick him. Made her want to poison him right here in the square. To leave his dying corpse sitting in this metal chair, for one of the caffè waiters to find.

  But to do so would draw undue attention to herself. To take a risk that she couldn’t afford. Not right now.

  Instead, she stretched her face into a tight little smile.

  “Venice is so much more than a cliché for tourists,” she told him. “You come here for the festivals. Buy a carnival mask, drink some Prosecco. Tour the palazzos and the churches. If you consider yourself very stylish, you might have a Bellini at Harry’s Bar. But you will never get another chance to see Venice as the real Venetians know it. I would love to show you the secrets of my home. A part of the city that few other tourists have ever seen.”

  That part was no lie.

  Before the night was over, he would take a tour to the bottom of a canal.

  After all, how many tourists got to see that?

  She pulled the tourist toward one of the waiting gondolas, allowed him to help her into it.

  “Take a leisurely route,” she told the human gondolier, rattling off directions that would bring them within stumbling distance of her home. “Listen,” she said, leaning on the edge of the boat. “The gondoliers are singing barcarole, traditional folk songs. They sing all the time, but mostly popular songs from the South. ‘O Sole Mio.’ That is what you hear in the canals so often, and it is not even from Venice. But once in a while, you will find some who sing the old Venetian songs. How beautiful, no?”

  But the tourist wasn’t listening. He pawed her, clumsily running his hands over her, evoking nothing but disgust in her.

  Soon, she promised herself. Soon this will be over, and he will be lying underwater.

  Then, the most disturbing thought popped into her mind.

  She found herself wishing Brandon’s hands were running over her.

  Wished it were Brandon’s tattooed, muscled arms holding her. His beautifully curved lips brushing over hers, instead of this cretin human tourist’s.

  And when she opened her eyes, there he was.

  Standing on the rooftop of one of the old palazzos, high above them, staring down at them. Silhouetted against the night sky by the moonlight, and there was no doubt why he had come.

  Luciana gasped out loud.

  “What is it?” asked the tourist.

  “Nothing,” she said, stealing a glance upward.

  The angel was strolling along the rooftops as casually as any human might stroll along the Mercerie, shopping for goods.

  Neither of the humans below—not the tourist nor the gondolier—gave a hint of even noticing.

  In a flash, the angel was beside them, bearing down on them. He ripped the man away from her. Grabbing the front of his shirt, he stared deep into the tourist’s eyes. Quietly, Brandon said, “Get out of the gondola now. Forget you ever met this woman. Your little adventure is over. You will not recall any of this. If you ever try to remember what happened tonight, you will only remember wandering among the streets of Venice, lost.”

  The human froze for an instant, in shock as the angel bore down on him.

  “Go!” Brandon thundered, nearly pushing him clean out of the gondola.

  In the calm water, the boat rocked.

  For an instant, Luciana wondered if the whole contraption might tip into the canal, spilling all of them into the murky water. The tourist clambered out of the boat onto the fondamenta and took off without a backward glance.

  Expert with his long pole, the gondolier steadied his craft. He frowned deeply at his two remaining passengers and opened his mouth to complain, but Brandon cut him off before he could speak.

  “There’s nothing out of the ordinary here,” the angel said, staring deep into the mortal’s eyes. “Please continue rowing, and pay no heed to our conversation.”

  The gondolier hesitated and his eyes blanked before he began absorbing the suggestion. Then he complied, and they continued to glide along the canal.

  “You again,” the demoness hissed at Brandon. She frowned deeply, leaning back on the velvet cushions of the gondola. Suddenly, she felt cold, the rush of adrenaline from the hunt seeping out of her, replaced by something else. The chill of exposure as Brandon stared at her. “You’re ruining all my fun these days.”

  “I’m ruining your fun? You’re the one invading my dreams, succubus.”

  “Zuccolo. You’re completely crazy,” she said. “I’m not a succubus. Why would I stoop to seducing men in their dreams when I am perfectly capable of doing so while they’re fully conscious?”

  “Then what did you do to my dream? How did you control it?” he demanded.

  Her brow furrowed in the moonlight, peering at him in the darkness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “What you dream is your own business,” she said, giving an exasperated sigh. “If you saw me in a dream, it was because you wanted me. Your unconscious mind is running wild. We can pick up where you left off....”

  She ran her hand up his thigh. And felt his entire body tense. Yet, he didn’t make a move toward her.

  “They’re your dreams, too,” he said quietly. “There are details that I’ve never seen before.”

  “Perhaps you’re simply imagining what my world would look like.”

  He grabbed for her wrist. She moved away, out of his reach. She leaned over the side of the gondola and trailed her fingers in the water, enjoying the flow of the cool water over them. Biding her time.

  “You think you can just grab me again, barbarian? Think. I’ll just escape, the same way I did the first time.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, too low for the gondolier to overhear as she spoke in the angel’s ear. “Besides, after our last little encounter in the flesh, I set up a little insurance policy. If I don’t return to my home by a certain time, my Gatekeepers have instructions to distribute a large amount of very lethal poison among the demon hierarchy. The results could be devastating.”

  She smiled, keeping very still and very calm.

  The trick to bluffing, she knew, was to believe your own lie.

  It’s partly true, she told herself. If I don’t ret
urn, in all likelihood, Massimo would do exactly what I said. He has all the knowledge he needs to master the art of poison by himself. Even if he is not quite ready yet.

  “You’re bluffing,” he said. “If you had a massive amount of that poison, you’d have used it by now.”

  “Would I? If you’re willing to take the risk, you can find out for sure,” she challenged back, staring deeply into his eyes. “If you don’t believe me, take your chances. Slap the cuffs on me. Haul me away.”

  “You wouldn’t dare release that poison,” said Brandon. “You know you can’t violate the rules between angels and demons.”

  “Rules are made to be broken. And if not broken, rules can be bent. Try me.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “You should consider joining our side,” she said, sliding her hand up his thigh, reaching upward. “I can feel something in you that’s not like the rest of them. Something dark.”

  She looked up at him, letting her eyes do their work on him. She could see him struggling with his lust, the turmoil in those gray-as-rain eyes of his. Saw him clench the muscles of his tightened jaw as he fought to keep his cool beneath that tough-guy exterior.

  “What will it take to get you to cooperate?” he said.

  “Why should I cooperate?”

  “Because you have the power to do the right thing.”

  “Don’t talk to me about the right thing. You don’t know what I’ve had to endure to get to where I am. You think Venice is beautiful and sacred. You don’t know the real Venice,” she said, her voice deepening into a snarl. “Can’t you feel it? This city is steeped in suffering and death. Not two hundred yards from here, prisoners were tortured. There is an entire museum full of weaponry and torture instruments. I can take you down into the prison cells attached to the Doge’s palace. We can take our own little trip to hell without ever leaving Venice.”

  “No, thanks,” he said, staring her down.

  “If you look closely, you’ll see the underworld drawn on this city. Etched in the architecture. Gargoyles and gremlins crouching in corners, perched on cornices and tucked into the shadows beneath the eaves. A satanic lion’s head is carved on a palazzo on the Calle Diedo. On the facade of the Ospedale Civile, the ‘City Hospital,’ there’s a sixteenth-century graffiti etching of a murderer holding a human heart after ripping it out of his own mother.”