* * *
I still plan on going to the ward on Friday and seeing what’s going on with this Calabrese Center, but I’m no better off than I was before. I don’t want to go alone, because there’s a slim chance I’ll change, but I don’t have anyone to take with me. After stewing over it for a long time, I finally decide to take Josh. He’s always been loyal to me, and he could take me down if I turned into a berserker. I don’t tell Josh there’s a chance I might turn into a berserker, though. I just tell him I have something I want to check out on Friday night, and I need him for backup. He’s happy to come along.
We take the ferry into the city and then the subway to the berserker ward. I’m not sure where the people from the so-called Calabrese Center are going to show up, so Josh and I scour the building looking to see where the entrances and exits are. We discover there’s a ramp in the back for ambulances, so we position ourselves there, crouching behind a dumpster. By this time, it’s nearly midnight.
Josh is eating peanuts out of a plastic bag, which is making noise.
I glare at him. “Can you put that away?”
He offers me the bag. “What? You want some?”
I snatch the bag from him and put in my pocket. “We’re staking out a building here, Josh. The key is to remain silent and hidden. Not announce to the world we’re here with a noisy bag.”
Josh shrugs. “Can I have those back later?”
I’m exasperated. “Yes.”
We watch. We wait. Thus far, nothing is happening. I’m hoping that the ramp is the right place to be.
“Since no one’s here yet, couldn’t I eat my peanuts until they show up?” Josh asks.
I want to clobber him over the head. “No.” I check my watch. Two minutes until midnight. Would I be feeling weird if I were going to change? Sister Henrietta said it was completely asymptomatic. So, does that mean that there wouldn’t be any signs at all, even this close? I wonder if I should tell Josh that he might have to contend with my being a berserker? No, I shouldn’t. Because if I’m not a berserker, then it will just lead to a whole bunch of questions that I don’t really want to answer. I peer at the shadowy ramp nervously. When she said they came a little after midnight, what time did that really mean? Heck, it could mean one o’clock in the morning. I didn’t want to crouch here for an entire hour. Of course, if I became a berserker, then I wouldn’t be crouching. I swallow.
“You okay?” Josh asks.
I nod. “Totally okay.” I check my watch again. 12:01. I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s okay. I didn’t become a berserker. I really am okay. I smile at Josh. “I’m great.”
But we still have to wait nearly twenty minutes for anything to happen. Just as Josh is about to brain me if I don’t give him back his peanuts, an unmarked black van drives up the ramp. Two men get out of the front.
I recognize both of them.
One is Tommy. The irony. I wanted him to help me on a job which would have entailed spying on himself. The other is Max, another Calabrese.
Josh elbows me, his eyes wide.
I place a finger at my lips, indicating he should be quiet.
Tommy and Max slam the doors to the van and troop into the door to the berserker ward.
“What the hell is going on?” Josh asks me the minute they’re inside.
“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s why we’re staking this out. I have a feeling they’re going to take a bunch of berserkers somewhere.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“But you’re the boss. You should know what everyone’s doing.”
I give Josh a grim look. “Tell me about it.”
“Whoa.” He shakes his head. It’s like I’ve blown his mind. Like he’d never considered secrets could be kept this high up in the Calabrese family. “So are we going to have to follow that van?”
Crap. I hadn’t even thought about that. What’s wrong with me? Was I really so worried I was a berserker that I started acting like an idiot? Or am I just losing it? Maybe it would have been a good idea to bring my car into the city instead of taking the ferry. But I can never find anywhere to park. Even if I did have my car, it would probably be parked seven blocks from here, anyway. “Maybe we can stow away in the van.”
He raises his eyebrows. “With the berserkers?”
He’s got a point.
“You stay here,” Josh says. “When the van comes out, follow it to the curb. I’ve got this.” And he dashes off past the van towards the street.
“What are you going to do?” I call after him, but he doesn’t stop.
Great. Now I’m relying on Josh to do something that I don’t understand, and we’ll probably lose the van entirely.
But at that moment, the door to the ramp opens. I move back into the shadows, so that I can see what’s going on, but no one can see me. The doors are like the doors in department stores, they slide open on motion sensors. They’re bigger than department store doors, though, so they open wide, to the width of the ramp.
Tommy and Max are wheeling a cage on wheels out of the berserker ward. Inside are seven or eight berserkers. They are reaching through the bars at Tommy and Max. They are snarling and screaming. They look dirty. Some of them have dark streaks on their faces. A few have bloody, broken fingernails, as if they’ve been trying to scratch their way out of somewhere. Sister Henrietta said they were knocked out until they could be picked up, but these guys don’t look it.
Actually, I wonder if drugs would even work on them. Benedetta magic works on the physical body, not the virus itself, because the virus is magic and magic can’t fight magic. If they can’t be subdued by magic, they probably can’t be subdued in any way. I shiver.
It’s kind of awful, watching these people caged up like wild animals. Tommy and Max seem pretty unconcerned with them. They just load the cage into the van, shut the doors, and get in the front.
The van drives off, and I do what Josh told me to do. I go to the curb.
There’s a car waiting there, the engine running. The passenger door opens. Josh pokes his head out. “Get in.”
I do, pulling my car door closed as we speed off after the van.
Josh grins at me. “Stealing cars is one of my talents.”
Josh follows the van, but not too closely. We keep it in our sights, even though there are cars between us. It’s pretty clear as we merge onto the interstate that we’re heading back to the island. Wherever these berserkers are going, it’s someplace close to home.
“So what’s going on?” Josh asks me.
“You know how charms cause the berserker virus?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Well, the Calabrese charms cause some kind of super strong berserker virus that doesn’t respond to any kind of treatment. And when that ward gets berserkers like that, they turn them over to Tommy and Max. And now we’re following them to see where they’re taking these berserkers.”
“So the family is using the berserkers somehow?” Josh asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But we’re going to find out.”
“And no one told you a thing about it, even though you’re the head of the family.”
“You got it.”
“You must be pissed.”
I laugh, watching the lights of the city out of the car window. “Pretty much, yeah.”
It takes a little over half an hour to drive back to the island. Once there, the van turns right and starts following the coast. There are fewer cars here, so we have to keep pretty far back to avoid being seen. When the van turns into a parking lot for a boat docking area, Josh says it’s too isolated for us to park there too. He keeps going past the dock and parks a little further up. We leave the car and trudge back to the dock.
The van is empty when we get there and there’s no sign of Tommy, Max, or the berserkers. I wander around the dock looking for them, swearing underneath my breath. How did we lose them so quickly?
They aren’t on
a boat. We’d be able to see that, if they were. All the boats docked here are silent and dark. They haven’t just walked off with a cage full of berserkers either.
It’s Josh who finds the manhole cover that’s been pushed aside.
“Into the sewer?” I say. “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think this is a sewer,” says Josh. “See how wide this is? It’s way bigger than your usual sewer cover.”
I peer into the darkness. It does look wide enough to fit the cage down. But there’s a ladder on the side. How did they get the berserkers in? “So they just dropped the cage of berserkers down there?”
Josh reaches inside the hole and shows me a pulley. It’s pretty old, but it does have a newer rope attached to it. “Maybe this was originally used to get equipment down in this hole. Whatever it was used for.”
We don’t have any other leads, so we descend down into the black pit. I go first. Josh steps on my fingers twice, but I manage not to cry out, because I don’t want to alert anyone who might be down here already to our presence. It seems like the climb down takes forever. It’s pretty frightening, because it’s dark underneath me, and I can’t see anything except the circle of the night sky above us. And it’s getting smaller and smaller the farther down into the hole I get.
But finally, after it seems like we’ve been climbing down into this hole for seventeen years, I begin to hear noises. Strange echoey sounds, thin and shrill, but unmistakably human. Yells, screams, grunts. Berserkers. There are berserkers down here. As I climb lower and lower, the sounds of them get louder and louder. There are a lot of berserkers down here.
By the time Josh and I have gotten to the bottom, I’ve realized where we are. We’re in the abandoned subway tunnels. The ones I saw in the spell I did. This must have been where it was trying to lead me, but I ran into that dead spot and couldn’t get here.
There’s light around the bend in the tunnel ahead, shaky and red, like firelight. Josh and I creep forward through the tunnel towards the light. As we get closer, we go more cautiously, not wanting to be seen. At last we’re close enough that we can peer around the bend and see what’s going on, but we aren’t noticeable.
There are bars over the tunnel, from top to bottom. The bars are close enough together that no human could fit through them. Behind the bars are berserkers. Tons and tons of berserkers. I’ve never seen so many in my entire life. They gaze out with glowing red eyes. Most of them are either naked or only wearing shreds of clothing. They are dirty, with matted hair and long fingernails. They look like cavemen. Most of them must have been here for a long time. They push against the bars, shrieking and moaning, reaching their fingers out for Tommy and Max, who are standing outside the bars with the cage of berserkers they’ve brought with them from the ward.
Tommy’s holding a torch. He thrusts the fire at the berserkers and they back off, screaming.
Max goes to a small door between the bars, fishes a key out of his pocket and opens it.
Tommy threatens the berserkers inside the bars with the fire. They stay back.
Max wheels the cage up to the door. He opens it and pushes the cage so it’s flush with the door. Holding it in place, he uses the butt of large Maglite flashlight to prod the new berserkers inside with the others. They grunt and growl at him, but he’s able to get them inside.
Why would anyone want to keep so many berserkers down here? What could they possibly be used for? How are they being kept alive anyway?
I get an answer to that question when Tommy shrugs a large bag off his shoulder. He unzips it and pulls out bundles wrapped in paper. As he unwraps them and hurls the contents through the bars, I realize they are scraps from the deli—lunchmeat, breads, cheeses. He’s feeding them like they’re animals in a zoo.
I watch the berserkers leap on the scraps, fighting each other to get at the food. They shove pieces of salami and turkey into their mouths like they’re starving. I feel sick inside. This is wrong. These people might be taken over by the virus, but they’re still human beings. Keeping them here like this...
The new berserkers are inside, so Max wheels the cage away and relocks the door to the tunnel. Tommy throws the last of the food through the bars. He zips up his bag.
Josh touches my shoulder. “They’re getting ready to leave,” he whispers. “Should we go?”
I nod, casting one more glance at the berserkers, gnawing on the scraps of food that have been left them. They’re so pitiful. Then I see her.
Her hair is ratty and knotted into one huge dreadlock. Her face is covered in scratches and crisscrossed with scars. She looks skinnier than I’ve ever seen her before, and I can tell because she’s not wearing anything, so all of her ribs stand out starkly against her skin. But I recognize her anyway.
And before I can think, I’m hurtling forward through the tunnel, heading straight for the bars, yelling for her. “Mom!”
Chapter Fourteen
Tommy stops me, stepping into my path and holding me back. “What are you doing here, Olivia?”
I struggle against him, but Tommy is bigger and stronger than me. If I twist my neck, I can see around him, though. I can see her kneeling on the filthy subway tunnel ground, tearing away at the lunchmeat she’s holding up to her mouth. “Mom!” I say again.
Tommy shakes me. “Olivia.”
“Let me go,” I say to Tommy through clenched teeth.
Tommy releases me.
Immediately, I run to the bars, fall to my knees and reach through them for her. “Mom!”
She doesn’t look up. Her eyes are dull and mad, the same way Brice’s are when he’s gone through the change. She’s a berserker. She’s not the mother I knew. But she’s still my mother. And I can’t leave her here like this.
Tommy yanks me away from the bars. “Are you insane? They’ll grab you.”
I point at her. “That’s my mother.”
Tommy squints at her. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your mother’s dead.”
“No,” I say, “she’s not. Her coffin’s empty. She’s not dead. She’s a berserker. She’s been here all this time.”
Tommy looks at my mother more closely. He cocks his head. Then he lets out a long, whistling breath. “My God.”
“I have to get her out of there,” I say. I turn to Max. “Give me the keys.”
Max doesn’t move. He is staring at my mother too. “That is Gianna, isn’t it?”
“It’s low,” says Tommy. “Even for Lucio, it’s low.”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s a real bastard.” I go to Max. I hold out my hand. “Give me the keys.”
His hand goes to where they’re attached to his belt loop. “You can’t go in there. You’ll be killed. They’re crazy.”
“I don’t care. She’s not staying in there. I won’t let that happen.”
Max shakes his head furiously. “Tommy, talk some sense into her.”
“This must be a shock, Olivia,” says Tommy.
“Shut up,” I say. I dive for Max’s keys, but he steps out of the way.
Instead, I fall flat on my face on floor of the subway tunnel. As I’m scrabbling to my feet, I notice something that’s been set down on the ground. The Maglite. I scoop it up, and advance on Max, brandishing it over my head like a weapon.
Max must see something in my expression he doesn’t like because he backs up. Then he stops suddenly, and swallows hard.
Josh peers at me over Max’s shoulder. “Last I checked,” says Josh, “Olivia was the boss. And I think when the boss gives an order, you’re supposed to listen.”
Shaking, Max unclips the keys and hands them to me.
What did Josh do to convince him to do that?
“Don’t shoot me,” Max says.
Oh. Josh has a gun. Josh is handy. I’m glad I brought him along. “Thanks,” I say to him.
He grins. “Don’t get killed in there, huh?”
Right. As I go to the door to unlock it, a group of berserkers rushe
s forward. They wrap their fingers around the bars and howl at me, snapping their teeth. I bring the Maglite down on their fingers. They whimper and pull back. It gives me just enough time to unlock the door and slip inside, pulling the door closed after me.
I swing the Maglite in a large arc, thudding it against flesh and bone. But the berserkers have surrounded me. Benedetta spells aren’t supposed to work on these guys, but there was a bit of spell that worked on Brice last time, wasn’t there? I let the words tumbled out of my mouth. “In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the Saints, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil!”
The berserkers all pause for a moment, slack-jawed.
I use the moment to hurl myself past them towards my mother. I can see her ahead of me, still eating her meat.
It only works for a second. They’re moving again the minute I’m past them.
One takes hold of my heel and sends me sprawling on the floor.
Before I can move, at least ten of them are on me, hands holding limbs, teeth against my flesh. I feel several sharp jabs of pain. I’ve been bitten.
I lash out with the Maglite, cracking it against the skulls of the berserkers closest to me.
They yell and let go of me.
But there are still so many, and I can hear the sounds of feet scrabbling towards me. More are coming. “St. Michael the Archangel,” I manage, “defend me in battle.”
Another berserker sinks its teeth into me. I look down and see that there are at least five of them worrying at my skin. I’m bleeding, and it hurts like crap. “Be my protection, O Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the divine power of the Most Holy God!”
That stuns them. They all go motionless again. They release the teeth they’ve clamped onto me.
I kick out at them, knocking at least two down and slam the Maglite down on the heads of two more.
Free for at least a moment, I crawl to my mother.
She doesn’t even look up from her food.
I grab her arm and tug her towards me. She looks up at me with blank eyes. Then she rakes her nails across my cheek and lets out a strangled howl of rage.
The other berserkers seem to hear this as a rallying cry. They echo it, and then they’re coming for me again—more than before. Thirty or forty of them are converging on me, their arms outstretched. They growl and roar. They grind their teeth together.
My heart thuds in my chest. This was probably a really stupid idea. Maybe I am going to die in here. I pull my mother against my body, so that her back is against my front. I clamp my fingers into her shoulders and back up towards the bars. I figure if I have the bars against my back and my mother as a shield in front of me, I can inch back to the door and get out.
The only problem is that I’m backing through a crowd of berserkers, and they all seem to want to rip me apart.
Hands snake out to grasp my arms and fingers. Teeth break into my shoulders and neck. I cry out. I don’t know how many are on me right now, but it feels like hundreds of bites at once.
I clench my teeth against the pain and try to keep moving backward.
But there are too many of them. I can’t fight against the strength of their sheer numbers. They hold me in place. They shriek and bite and scratch.
I wonder how long it will take to kill me. I’m bleeding a lot now. How long does it take a human to bleed out? Part of me hopes it’s not too long. I don’t know if I can handle watching myself ripped to shreds.
Fingernails claw at my back. Teeth bite into my waist.
I scream.
There’s something infinitely more terrifying about the biting happening there. My soft skin. My vital organs so close.
“They’re killing her,” I hear Josh’s voice outside the bars.
“You can’t shoot them. Lucio will have your head,” says someone—Max or Tommy, I’m not sure.
“She’s his daughter!” Josh is saying.
But, I know that my father probably wants these berserkers more than he wants me. The thought of that, of my father’s coldness, how he turned my mother and left her here, sends fire running through my veins. So St. Michael’s not doing much for me, is he? He’s the vengeful angel, so it seems appropriate, but maybe the berserkers don’t need to be fought as much as they need to be healed. So... “St. Raphael,” I say through gritted teeth, “glorious archangel, prince of the Heavenly court, angel of health, heal and cure the victim of disease, in the name of Christ our Lord.”
The berserkers don’t seem to notice I’ve said anything. There is another bite, this time on my back.
“St. Raphael,” I scream in pain, “of the glorious seven who stand before him who lives and reigns, angel of health! Heal the many infirmities of the soul and all the ills which afflict the body!”
Suddenly, three of the berserkers with their teeth in me pull away, their hands on their heads as if they’re in pain.
I shout the prayer again, louder.
More pull away.
I keep saying the prayer over and over until I get my back against the bars.
The berserkers are now all moaning, clutching their heads. My mother is doing it too. She thrashes against my grasp, but I pull her with me while she does it.
I repeat the prayer again. I’m close to the door.
As I’m fumbling to open it, a berserker runs for me at full speed. He grasps the bars behind my head and puts his face in mine. His eyes look desperate, but more lucid than most of the other berserker’s eyes. When he breathes in my face, his breath smells putrid and rotten.
He makes a strangled sound somewhere in this throat. It’s not a growl or a scream. I don’t know what it is.
I shrink from him, still struggling to open the door. I say the prayer one more time, right into his face.
“Kill me,” he slurs. His eyes focus on me. He is pleading.
I open the door. I back through it. My mother and I fall on the floor together, outside the bars.
Josh is right there, holding the door closed against any of the berserkers who might try to follow me through. “Keys!” he yells.
My mother turns her body on top of me, her limbs flying out. She snarls at me.
I fumble in my pocket for the keys, which I slide across the floor to Josh.
As he’s locking the door back up again, I struggle with my mother, holding her teeth away from me until I can get to my feet. Then I drag her to the cage that Max and Tommy brought in with them and shut her inside. She throws herself against the bars, shrieking.
“Look, Olivia,” says Tommy, “you can’t just take her. She’s a berserker. She’ll—”
“She’s my mother,” I say, although when I look at the whining thing in the cage, I have to admit she looks very little like my mother. She barely looks human. I wipe sweat off my brow, and my hand comes back bloody. Surveying my body, I see that I’m bleeding all over the place. The berserkers really did a number on me. I look at them, packed behind the bars in the tunnel. They look so pathetic. “Why is he doing this? What does my father want with all these berserkers?”
Tommy folds his arms over his chest. “Well, for one thing, he used them to take care of Vincent for you. I guess you’re not grateful about that.”
Vincent. Suddenly, everything about that situation comes crashing into place. That’s why Tommy didn’t seem so surprised. That’s why he wasn’t worried about killer berserkers on the loose. I remember the way his body looked, and I shiver. “It was kind of overkill, don’t you think?”
Tommy shrugs. “I thought he was sending a message about what would happen to people who messed with you.”
The Toil and Trouble Trilogy, Book One Page 37