The Demoness of Waking Dreams (Company of Angels)

by Stephanie Chong

  But no salesgirl manned the shop. No customers perused the displays.

  She looked back at Massimo, who merely shrugged as he followed her in. She led him into the back room, through the door and up the dark passageway.

  “Girls? Carlotta?” she called as she climbed the stairs. “It’s me, Luciana.”

  Nothing.

  No horrible nicknames shouted down from the floor above. No sound of women’s laughter rang through the large rooms, no raucous celebrations like the other evening. No soft murmuring of whores to their clients. Not even a whisper.

  “That’s odd,” she commented. “It’s very quiet.”

  Too quiet.

  At the top of the stairs, she stopped so suddenly that Massimo almost bumped into her.

  The brothel was a disaster. On the floor, debris lay scattered, the aftermath of a wild party. Empty bottles lay discarded, glasses broken and ground into the carpet. Tables were overturned, chairs broken. Bits of clothing were flung everywhere, even dangling from the banister above. The chandeliers lay shattered; their crystal prisms littering the floor like the leftover wreckage of a plundered treasure chest.

  But there wasn’t a person in sight.

  Not a body, not a limb, not a digit. Not a single hair remained of any of the girls.

  Not even a hint of ghost lingered, no scrap of a soul left behind.

  “Perhaps there’s someone upstairs,” she said, clinging to her last vestige of hope as she mounted the curved staircase. In Carlotta’s office, she made her way among more strewn bottles, navigating the upended furniture and the half-eaten trays of delicacies.

  In the middle of the lush carpet was a deep red stain.

  In the center of that stain lay a ripped silk garment, soaked in crimson.

  In the folds of that garment rested a single emerald earring, a bright green teardrop still wet with blood.

  Luciana took a handkerchief out of her pocket. She bent and picked up the earring, tying it carefully into the fabric. Pressed her fingers closed around it, as if she could squeeze some remnant of Carlotta out of that hard, old gemstone.

  A tear slipped down her cheek.

  “I wanted these earrings back,” she muttered aloud. “But not like this.”

  As horrible and backstabbing as Carlotta had been, she had not deserved this.

  Luciana slipped to her knees, bracing herself against the floor to keep upright. The urge to vomit washed over her in a wave, almost tipping her over.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Massimo, lifting her up by the arm. “We can’t risk becoming victims of whoever has laid waste to this whole establishment.” But there was no question in either of their minds. This was the work of Corbin Ranulfson.

  Luciana leaned against him to stand, shaking on her feet as she tucked the earring into her pocket. Massimo was right. She could not afford to stay here and mourn. “I will bury the only thing that remains of her. And remember her as she should be remembered.”

  They waited until after sunset, when the cover of night would help conceal their movements. The salt spray of the Adriatic misted Luciana’s face as Massimo chauffeured her to the outlying islands once again.

  Not to the wild, haunted dumping ground of Sant’ Ariano this time. But to the more civilized place Venetians took their dead. Where Venetians had been ferrying corpses since Napoleon had invaded and declared their traditional practices unclean, shocked at the habit of burying the dead within the city itself.

  Instead, the dead were brought here.

  To the island of San Michele.

  Named for the Archangel Michael, this cimitero had not existed when her family had died. Not the first time, anyway. To purchase this plot fifty years after their death, to build this memorial to her dead family…it was Luciana’s way of sending a clear message to the divine.

  Nothing is sacred.

  “Eternal rest is a myth,” she said to Massimo as he pulled the boat up near the entrance to the walled cemetery. “And anyone who believes in it is a fool.”

  Now, in the middle of the night, the burial ground was still. Stately cypress trees loomed overhead, guarding the silence of the dead. Luciana swept past crowded tombstones, past long stretches of white crosses and stacked mausoleums. Among the monuments she stumbled, overwhelmed for a moment by the masses of flowers laid atop the graves, by the scent of decaying petals, by the dank smell of foliage rotting in the heat of high summer.

  For a moment, she thought she might faint. She swayed and almost fell, catching herself on the cool face of a marble tombstone, fingers fumbling against its solid smoothness. Righting herself, she soldiered on.

  Massimo trailed after her, following slightly behind her in case she should collapse.

  Until she came to the place she sought.

  In the moonlight stood a solid block of old white marble, topped by a winged figure that might be angel or demon at this point, eroded by time into a grotesque creature. She bent, running her fingers over the grooves of the text engraved on the stone.

  Lorenzo Rossetti, 1727–1784. Padre.

  Maria Elena Rossetti, 1732–1787. Madre.

  Carlotta Rossetti, 1761–1783. Sorella.

  “Father, mother, sister.”

  An empty grave, an empty monument. The sole record of three souls whose human remains were lost, perhaps buried beneath the city’s paving stones, or perhaps in the public wells, as bodies of the poor often had been. Whose existence had been wiped out of human memory by the hand of the devil.

  Luciana dug a little hole in the earth and placed the earring into it.

  She said a silent farewell as she covered the small object with earth.

  “Now that earring will rest with two of the women who wore it,” she explained aloud to Massimo. “They were my mother’s before they were mine. And then Carlotta wore them. At least they stayed in the family.”

  He did not answer, but stood silently by, his face as still and white as stone.

  “One way or another, I will avenge her death,” Luciana swore. “This act will not go unpunished.”

  “Do you really think you can best Corbin, baronessa?” Massimo asked quietly.

  “I have to try,” she ground out.

  “The question is, who do you hate more? Corbin or the Company of Angels?”

  “I hate them both equally. And so I must try to avenge myself equally on both of them. But you’re right. We must pick our battles, Massimo. And since the Company is our most pressing concern, we will concentrate our efforts there. But mark my words. The time for a reckoning with Corbin is coming.”

  She and Massimo turned at the same time.

  Behind them stood the angel. His gaze tracked to the disrupted earth at the base of the monument, then upward to read the names on the stone.

  “Irony of ironies, for a demoness to consecrate her family on holy ground,” he said.

  “You angels are such wimps. None of you have ever raised so much as a whisper about it in all these centuries. Where is your precious Michael now?” she hissed.

  “He may not be here,” said Brandon. “But I am.”

  “And why have you come? To torture me? There isn’t any point. Isn’t it enough that she is gone?”

  “What happened?” he said.

  She reached out, touching the last name on the monument, fingers drifting over the engraved grooves. The explanation stuck in her throat. She only managed to shake her head as a single, angry tear slid down her cheek. She swiped it away.

  “You can put a stop to all of this, Luciana,” he said. “I can help you.”

  She was so tired, so weak. She wanted to believe what he said.

  “Come with me now, only for a little while. There must be somewhere we can go. Where we can talk, just the two of us.”

  She sagged forward, bracing herself against the monument, leaning on the strength of the old stone. She, who prided herself on her strength and her ability to survive, felt so fragile now. Dried out like the petals of the dec
aying flowers left on the graves around her. As though she might break apart at a single touch.

  Turning to the Gatekeeper, she said, “Massimo, leave us. Take the boat and go home.”

  “Baronessa?” he said.

  “Go,” she said, waving him away. Then she said to the angel, “Yes. There is a place.”

  * * *

  In the boat, Massimo worried.

  He watched the Guardian take the baronessa away in another boat, toward the Lido.

  Briefly, Massimo contemplated following, but thought better of it. Although the Gatekeeper worried for himself, he worried for the baronessa more. She had suffered through much. Things no one ought to bear.

  What she was doing now, Massimo had no authority or desire to question.

  Let her have her moment of happiness with that angel, the Gatekeeper thought. Love has no place among demons, but at least she might know a moment of peace. If only a moment.

  * * *

  Luciana took Brandon to the Lido, the long stretch of sandbar where tourists sunned themselves, packed as tightly as sardines washed up from the Adriatic. Now, at night, the beach was deserted and lit only by a few flickering lights.

  As the boat veered along the shoreline, she looked behind them, to the receding lights of Venice sparkling in the distance. The city floated like an illusion, like a dream. Like a hallucination.

  Am I really awake? she wondered.

  As Brandon steered, she ran her fingers along the muscles of his arm.

  In no dream had he ever felt so real. In no dream had she ever felt so vulnerable.

  Please. Let me have a little time with him. Just a little…

  Luciana did not know to whom the words were aimed.

  She only knew that her most fervent wish was to be here, with him.

  Anywhere, with him. Without the Gatekeepers and the rest of the Guardians watching, she and Brandon could be alone. If only for a moment, a stolen little bit of time.

  She directed him to a place where they pulled the boat up on the sand. She slipped off her shoes to walk across the beach, retrieved a hidden key near the front door of her little summer villa.

  “This really is the place where I come to be alone with my thoughts,” she said as she unlocked the door.

  “The last time you said those words—” he began.

  “I was lying. Not this time.”

  She led him inside, standing in the doorway of the place that had lain dormant for years. She opened her mouth to tell him how her sister had finally been destroyed, after centuries of hard survival at the brothel. But all she wanted to do was forget. To fill the void in her gut—the big, black, gaping hole of fear and grief that threatened to swallow her from the inside out.

  “Luciana, you’re in a fragile state of mind,” he said, holding her at arm’s length. “I don’t want to take advantage of that.”

  She looked up at him, choking back tears. “I need you. I need this.”

  His hands were in her hair, tilting her face up toward him. “No more illusions. Just us.”

  He kissed her, the force of his passion bearing down on her so fast she no longer had time to think. On the cool floor of the villa, they were on each other, inside each other. Without language, without words. Without hesitation. Skin sliding on skin, muscle pulsing against supple muscle. Water lashing on rock. Waves breaking on sand. Two forces of nature, so physical and so violent in opposition. Yet so dramatic and so beautiful in their joining.

  Rain falling on fire, clashing together to make steam.

  Afterward, she traced a finger over his shirtless chest, mapping the tattoos covering his arms and torso. Slowly, she followed the lines etched in ink, the dragon’s head curving over his heart.

  “Do they hurt, these tattoos of yours?”

  He shifted a little under her touch, but said, “No.”

  “I want to know more,” she said, tracing the edge of a gray feather along the trapezius muscle at the top of his shoulder. “Tell me about this one.”

  After a pause, he said, “That was the first one I got, just after I died. I was shot in the back. My flesh exploded, torn into a thousand shreds. When I was sent back to earth as a Guardian, the tattoo was there. A constant reminder of what had happened.”

  “Not every Guardian has such markings,” she said.

  “The Archangels wanted to remind me of what I’m doing here,” he ventured. “Maybe they thought I had a higher chance than the other Guardians of straying.”

  Maybe they were right, he thought.

  “Most of the tattoos depict different Assignees I’ve had over the years,” he said. “In some form or another. Some of the animals represent the spirits of people I’ve helped.”

  “Am I supposed to end up there, too?” she wondered aloud. “Perhaps after you’ve dealt with me, there will be a spear through this dragon’s head. That’s what you were sent here to do, wasn’t it? Destroy me.”

  She said it as a fact, not a question.

  One that he denied, shaking his head. “I told you, I came here to apprehend you, not to harm you. And I have obviously not been successful at capturing you.”

  “But you were successful at every other assignment you had. Isn’t that right? You’ve saved hundreds of people. Maybe thousands,” she said, stroking his skin.

  “I wouldn’t say I saved them. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. All of my human Assignees have saved themselves. I just showed them the way.”

  You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. Brandon’s words circulated in Luciana’s head. She wrapped herself in a blanket and went outside to sit on the beach, looking out into the darkness of the Adriatic. He came up behind her, kissed her shoulder as she looked out to sea.

  “Tell me what happened to your sister.”

  “Corbin killed her,” she said, not knowing what else to say. “He wanted to hurt me, and he knew where to get me.”

  “I want to know everything, from the beginning,” the angel insisted.

  “You already know about me. You were given a file on me, were you not?”

  “I don’t know your side of the story. I want to hear the words from your own lips.”

  “That’s a very long story,” she said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Begin at the beginning,” he told her. “I want to hear everything. Especially why you hate Julian Ascher so much.”

  She sighed. “The beginning. If you insist…

  “I was born in 1756, the daughter of a rich silk merchant in a city blooming with gilded lilies. Surrounded by the pleasures of festivals and Carnival, showered with gowns and jewels supplied by the wealth of my father’s silk trade. My sister, Carlotta, was five years younger. I loved her, even though she could be very spoiled and sometimes acted like a brat.

  “All of Venice celebrated in those days, but the city was going downhill. After its military and political position slipped, trade began to decline. Our father invested everything he had in a shipment of silk from the Far East that he thought would bolster our family’s depleted finances. The ship sank, and we lost everything. Our parents panicked.

  “I was seventeen years old when our world of luxury was torn apart. Little by little, the house was stripped. First it was the Tintorettos and the Tiepolos, and then the antique furniture. Then the silver services and the Murano glassware. Our mother’s jewels, our father’s collection of pleasure boats.

  “Our father ordered me, ‘You’ll have to marry, and soon. We’ve no time to spare.’

  “The man they picked for me was my worst nightmare, a man who knew our family through my father’s business connections. Old, fat and degenerate. I had feared him since childhood—he had been leering at me since early adolescence. Since our youth, Carlotta and I had secretly nicknamed him ‘il vecchio pedofilo.’ ‘The old pedophile.’

  “When I heard the news, I cried for three days, sobbing without end on the silk carpet of my bedchamber. My mother tried to bols
ter me, saying, ‘You’ll ruin your eyes if you cry like that, darling. Then your husband-to-be won’t want you at all, will he?’

  “I hoped that would be the case. Fleetingly, I contemplated slitting my wrists or disfiguring my face. But ultimately, I was too afraid of God to carry out such a death or even to harm myself.

  “‘It’s either marry or go to work in the Arsenale,’ my father joked, referring to the famous shipyard where workers were employed to build Venice’s naval fleet. ‘Or you could become a courtesan.’ When I realized he was only half joking, I cried even harder.

  “In the end, I realized I would have to find another way.

  “I went to the Redentore Church and lit a candle. On my knees, I begged in prayer, ‘Please, God. Send me a way out of this. Give me a sign.’

  “On the way home from the church, I saw Julian Ascher sauntering beside the Grand Canal. I thought God had answered my prayers.

  “As it turned out, he had not.

  “I loved Julian. Even though I was in a desperate situation, my heart was pure. But Julian used me. He took my virginity. Then he discarded me like a broken piece of glass, a trinket that had outlasted its novelty. The last time I saw him before he departed for England, I wept, begging him to take me with him. He refused. He left me to fend for myself.

  “Although Julian had already left the city, the rumors spread. Venice is a small town, and it was even smaller back then. Soon the whole town was chattering about it, and il vecchio pedofilio found out that I was a ruined woman.

  “The only people who had not heard about the scandal were foreigners. I found an Englishman named Thomas Harcourt, who seemed like a fine prospect for a husband, although in reality I knew nothing about him. I was a good enough actress that I could counterfeit love, enough to fool him into thinking I was a virgin. That part was easy. A little slit of my hand, a few drops of blood on the sheets. Harcourt did the gentlemanly thing and married me.