“So,” said Cato from the pew. “What’s our next move?”
Tilting his head to the side, the Man looked past Louisa and shrugged.
“To be perfectly honest, this is not how I envisioned things going. Artemis was supposed to have been caught unawares. Alas.”
He parted his hands.
“That said, there is still something I find peculiar about her actions. She did not flee the city when she learned of your identity. Instead, she provoked me in my own home so that I would be distracted when her Spartoi attacked you. This—does not settle.”
“Why not,” Cato frowned. “You said she can’t kill me with her own hands. That’s why she sent them to do it.”
“Though you are poison to her, my son, she has a life expectancy absurdly longer than yours. She could have just as easily run out the clock—waited for you to grow old and die on your own.”
Dejected, Cato fell silent and bit the filter of his cigarette.
“Thus,” the Man went on. “The question must be asked—why does Artemis remain in Rome when it puts her in great peril to do so?”
An idea occurred to Louisa, simple yet biting.
“If there’s anything I’ve learned these last few days,” she said. “It’s that you Immortals love your plans. Maybe hers is more complicated than you realize. Maybe killing you is just a small piece of it.”
She arched an eyebrow, enjoying the irony.
“The wheel turns forever, no?”
“Indeed,” replied the Man. “But even if this is true. My query still stands. Why does Artemis remain? What is she playing at?”
Moving back to the pew, Louisa plucked up Leta’s backpack.
“I am Anastasi on my father’s side,” she said. “Polizia through and through. But you already know this.”
She turned, tossing the backpack to the Man.
“Police work starts with following clues—examining the evidence. Leta collected a great deal of evidence during her mission—photos, notes. Who knows what she might have learned? Perhaps you should be asking her for answers, and not us.”
Golden eyes flashing, the Man fixed Louisa with a luminous smile. In that moment, he became beautiful again, clean. Louisa faltered and felt a slight burn where his hands had already touched her, and a bloom of longing where they yet wanted to. She blushed and looked away.
“Careful with Leta’s stuff,” Cato grumbled, oblivious to the shifting atmosphere. “Not all of that is evidence. Some is personal.”
Lingering, the Man continued to peer at Louisa as if she were the virgin sunrise. She fidgeted uncomfortably and kept her eyes averted. With a chuckle, he brushed past, and sat down on the pew.
“Once again your nimble mind comes to rescue, Little Rabbit.”
He reached into the backpack and extracted Leta’s journal. Thumbing through the pages, he scanned each one quickly, his eyes moving from right to left, bottom to top. After a moment, he sat back and exhaled.
“Delos,” he said. “Do you know it?”
Turning to face him, Louisa forced a casual shrug.
“It’s a tourist spot in Greece, right?”
“Yes,” said the Man. “An island in the Aegean Sea.”
“What of it?”
The Man glanced at the page again and smiled knowingly.
“Leta writes that Mr. Hannity spent some time on the island, making purchases and bringing supplies to a small cabin.”
“Isn’t it just a bunch of old ruins?” Louisa asked. “Why go there?”
“Because,” said the Man. “Delos was the birthplace of a pair of Immortal twins.”
Cato looked up and frowned.
“Artemis was born there?”
“And Apollo,” the Man nodded.
He closed Leta’s journal and tapped it with a bloody finger. His smile grew wider.
“I believe I know why Artemis remains in Rome. She is looking for something I hid some seventy years ago.”
“What?” Said Cato and Louisa in unison.
“The body of her twin brother,” the Man returned. “She seeks to bring him home, so to speak.”
“You kept his body?” Louisa grimaced, disturbed by the idea of Apollo’s lifeless corpse rotten and defiled. “Why would you do that?”
The Man sat back, his face falling into shadows.
“Death is release,” he said. “A return. The Olympians—the children of Kronos, they were the first Immortals to be born on this world. Before their race came, the earth knew no immortality. As such, the very natural laws of which we spoke earlier have been subverted on their account.”
His eyes burned coolly.
“Plunge a blade into my heart, and I will trickle back to the place where I originated. Even if I were to find life again, even if I resurrect, I will be there and not here.”
He drew on his cigarette.
“Yet, the Olympians were born upon this earth. Elysium, though a place for the dead, is but a breath away. Turn your head, and you will see it. It is all around you, occupying the same space. If Apollo were to cross the barrier—some call it a river, some a gate, some a tunnel—then he would be half a heartbeat away from finding resurrection. I kept his body buried in foreign soil—my soil, to hinder such aspirations for as long as possible…”
Louisa absorbed this statement with a calmness that spoke volumes of how deeply the last few days had impacted her sense of the world. Either she was coming unhinged, or she had simply evolved to suit the complexities of her new reality. In the end, who was to say which was better.
“So where is the body?” Cato grunted, standing with noticeable improvement to his leg. “If that’s what Artemis is looking for—we’d better beat her to it, right? I mean—one of them running around is bad enough, two seems much worse.”
The Man nodded in agreement, yet Louisa could see a secret in his eyes. There was something he wasn’t telling them, something important. Flicking his cigarette into the depths of the shadowy church, he rose.
“The crypt where I dumped Apollo’s corpse is not far from here. Artemis will be waiting.”
Turning from Louisa and shielding his gaze, he moved away toward the rear of the church. Following after him, Cato zipped up Leta’s pack and pulled it over his shoulders.
“What do you say?” He asked, holding his hand out. “Ready to finish this?”
Louisa took it, and put on a weak smile.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m with you until the end.”
LII
Mr. Hannity peered through the scope of his Windrunner at a cemetery across the street. Nestled between a private garden and an austere opera house, it had high walls that vanished amid leafy vines. Beyond the gates, a somewhat crooked plot of land sloped uphill like an arrowhead. Radiating out from a broad-brimmed oak tree, a handful of burial mounds domed the shady ground, while at the top of the hill, a time-worn mausoleum sat bathed in sunlight.
Shifting his view, Hannity dropped the Windrunner to the gates of the cemetery. Standing guard just inside, Notus and Boreas waited with weapons at the ready. Though both were visible to any people, or polizia who might pass by on the street, none did. In fact, it was as if the entire block had vanished from the collective consciousness of the city. Cars and foot traffic turned off at the nearest intersections, and police helicopters in the sky wheeled away as if touching upon a dangerous electrical current. Only Hannity and the brothers seemed immune, cloaked as it were in the blanket of Artemis’ strange and wicked powers.
Hannity lowered the Windrunner and rested it across his knees. With his good hand, he found his cigarettes and lit himself one. Dead on the couch behind him, the owner of the third floor apartment made no objection to his smoking indoors. Tightening and loosing his injured hand, Hannity took long drags of his cigarette and watched droplets of blood dot the floor.
If he ever got the chance, he was going to repay Cato and his bitch for what they had done to him. Never in his life had he wanted to kill two people so badly.
Had it not been for Artemis, appearing to take command, he likely would have burned Rome to the ground block by block just for the chance to watch them both fry.
In the graveyard, a shimmer of movement caught Hannity’s attention. Emerging from beneath the canopy of the oak tree, Artemis came into view for the first time since leaving Notus and Boreas at the gates. Hannity balanced his cigarette on the windowsill and shouldered the rifle to gaze through the scope. Even from this distance, framed only in the circle of his sights, she was more magnificent than seemed possible. Like white noise, the image of her filled Hannity’s mind, making him forget his anger. No longer dressed in her damaged battle armor, she had transformed herself back into the perfect vision of a divine huntress. Bow and a quiver in hand, she strode toward the mausoleum.
Wanting badly to be with her, walking at her side, Hannity poured his love into the scope of his rifle. Turning, Artemis found his eye and nodded. He was exactly where he needed to be, exactly where she wanted him to be. The Vecchio and his friends were on their way, and it was Mr. Hannity’s job to insure that none of them set foot in the graveyard alive—especially Cato Fin.
LIII
Just as he had done on his first day in Rome, Cato followed the Benefactor through a winding track of deserted alleys and side-streets on their way to a mysterious destination. This time however, much was different; he was different. Like the wound on his leg, he’d grown numb to uncertainty and doubt, numb to fear.
Louisa on the other hand showed a signs of all three. Walking beside Cato, she kept glancing at the Benefactor, her eyes narrowing as if seeing something that Cato did not. When the Man turned down a short lane ahead of them, she held back and took Cato’s hand.
“Wait,” she said in a hushed voice. “Are you really sure this is what you want?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Cato replied.
Pursing her lips, Louisa seemed to struggle for the right words, but couldn’t find them.
“Look,” said Cato with a smile. “I appreciate your concern—I really do, like, a lot. But, Artemis needs to be stopped—she has to. You said so yourself. And besides, if it was the person who killed your brother, you’d do the same thing. Wouldn’t you?”
Louisa turned her face away and nodded, but her expression remained one of conflict. Half-suspecting she knew something he didn’t; Cato found it a little odd that he wasn’t really that curious what it might be. Instead, all he truly wanted at this point was to finish what he had started, what Corallina and the Man had started.
“We should keep moving,” he said. “We’re so close to the end now.”
Waiting for them around the corner, the Benefactor hovered near the mouth of the alley. There, where it intersected with an empty street, thick shadows met sunlight and the air sizzled with a tangible current.
“Is this it?” Cato asked, joining him.
“Yes,” said the Benefactor. “My suspicions were correct.”
He drew Cato’s attention across the road to an archway set back in a stone wall. Partially hidden within, two figures, identifiable by their pale skin and blond hair, stood guard.
“Shit,” swore Cato.
“What about Hannity?” Whispered Louisa. “Where is he?”
“Afoot,” the Benefactor returned. “Probably guarding Artemis. I can smell the blood and Adamantine on him.”
Pulling the Uzi from beneath his jacket, Cato checked to make sure he had a full magazine, then clicked off the safety.
“What now, Dominus?”
The Benefactor continued to eye the archway, his fingers curling into fists.
“I will clear a path for you, my son,” he said. “But you will need to move quickly. Artemis may yet abandon her plans. We must hope that her desire to find Apollo’s bones outweighs her sense of self preservation.”
He stepped from the alley.
“Hold it,” Louisa hissed, extending the gym bag full of guns. “Don’t you want a weapon?”
Ginning with dark delight, the Man shook his head.
“Thank you, but no. I prefer the old ways.”
…
Flashing toward his enemies, dry lightning on a bright day, the Man from Rome entered the slipstream where time moved at a crawl. He struck, and both Spartoi—Boreas and Notus, were sent tumbling into the street. Guns lost, they snarled like wolves on their backs. Stamping his heel, the Man pulverized Notus’ hand beyond use, then kicked him through the gates into the cemetery. Rounding on Boreas, he met the boy just as he rose to his feet. With a blow that would have killed a horse, he sent him straight back down to the ground again.
In the cemetery, Notus picked himself up and let his mutilated hand hang, dripping at his side. With the other, he pulled a pistol from a holster and opened fire. The Man pressed off, sailing high into the air, high over the gated archway. Pistol bucking, Notus tried to track his arc, but it was no use. When the clip ran dry, the Man landed and seized the boy by the throat, hurling him back into the street.
Again, Boreas was struggling to rise, but this time it was Notus who knocked him down, crashing to the pavement. Together they sprawled, outclassed on a level they would never understand. Hungry for the kill, the Man marched toward them, murder in his heart, his veins, his bones. Closing in, he made to strike, made to rend limb them from limb and bathe in the warm wash of blood. And yet, before he could, a loud crack split the air, and a stab of hot metal struck him in the chest.
Stopped short, the Man blinked his golden eyes in confusion. Another crack echoed, followed by a second blinding hit. Staggered, he fought the effects of a violent internal shockwave. Nearly forced from their sockets, his eyes bulged and blood spurted from his ears. He tried to leap into the air, but a third shot caught him in the stomach, grounding him. He fell onto his hands and knees, pain flooding in, useless, needless pain. In another instant, the Spartoi were above him, each one flashing down with knives that sunk into his flesh like claws. He roared and swiped at them with an arm. From above, the crack of a rifle sounded a fourth time and the corresponding bullet ripped through his cheek and out the base of his skull. Wet Ichor gushed from the wound, yet instead of weakening the Man, it served to reinvigorate his thirst for survival. Throwing himself at the nearest Spartoi, he swung the pale whelp high over his head and slammed him down on the pavement with a crunch.
Behind him, a different gun entered the melee, Cato’s Uzi spitting fire up the side of an apartment building. Whirling around, the Man saw where he was aiming, saw Hannity standing in a third-floor window with a sophisticated sniper rifle in his hands. Half lunging, half falling, he intercepted yet another shot, this one marked for Cato, and shoved him out of the way. Ichor spewed in a glittering mist, as Hannity’s bullet found the Man’s neck, shredding flesh and chipping bone. He reeled once more and was set upon by Boreas—ever the opportunist. Knife dancing and cutting, the boy jabbed at the Man, driving him toward the center of the street where Hannity could make an easier target of him.
…
With the first crack of Hannity’s rifle, Louisa had seen the situation for what it really was—an ambush. With the second, she had located the source of the attack, a widow high up the apartment building across from the cemetery. When the third and fourth shots had sounded, she was already in motion.
Stealing into the building, Louisa charged up the stairs. Clutching the shotgun in one hand, she stuffed the Kimber into the waistband of her jeans. On the third-floor landing, she slowed and peeked around the corner. Outside, Cato’s Uzi rattled dully; followed almost at once by a bang so close its concussion stirred dust from the ceiling beams. Moving down the hallway, Louisa stopped when she spotted a door with a boot print, almost comically stamped upon its painted surface.
She pumped the shotgun and readied herself for the breach. A sixth shot erupted from within the room, different from the others. Louisa slammed back into the wall amid a spray of splinters and acrid smoke. Dropping the shotgun, she doubled over and slid to the floor. Wider than a
tennis ball and jagged around the edges, a smoldering hole in the flimsy door marked the spot where a bullet had torn through on its way to her gut. Louisa groaned and tried to stand but her legs were unstrung. Tasting blood in the back of her mouth, she coughed and nearly blacked out from the pain.
A shadow moved behind the hole in the door, and the knob turned. Mr. Hannity filled the blurry frame, clutching a 1911 in his good hand, and smiling at Louisa with dead delight.
“Well, well, well,” he chuckled. “Would you look at this? My lucky day.”
He kept the weapon aimed at Louisa’s face and kicked her shotgun further down the hall. Inside the apartment, his sniper-rifle leaned against the windowsill, no longer filling the air with its booming shots.
“Remember me, girlie?” He said. “Remember this?”
Holding up his left hand, Hannity displayed a glove caked with dried blood and deflated where two fingers should have been. Despite the frozen pain, which grew like winter in her guts, Louisa forced herself to smile defiantly.
“Hope you weren’t planning on taking any piano lessons,” she said.
Hannity sneered at her, eyeing the spreading pool of blood on the floor.
“I should have killed you back at the hotel,” he muttered. “But I guess that’s what I get for being a nice guy.”
He hefted his 1911 and grinned.
“At least now I get the satisfaction of adding another kill to the count…”
Coming forward, he pressed the warm barrel to Louisa’s forehead, and put his finger on the trigger. There were shouts on the street, and Cato’s Uzi flared, shredding bullets into the apartment and making Hannity turn in surprise. Sensing her opportunity, and knowing that she would never get another like it, Louisa acted.
Just as it had upon the steps of Santa Æmelia, time slowed around her. Too focused to notice or care, Louisa swept her hand up and batted the barrel of Hannity’s pistol away. He squeezed the trigger, but the shot was bad. A gust of shimmering heat escaped the barrel, carrying with it a slug that cut a spiraling path through the cloud of propellant. Louisa ducked the impact and drew her Kimber.
The Man From Rome Page 29