Peter heaved a sigh as he spotted his friend and hurried over to the table. Donata followed more slowly, scoping out the room as she went. Nothing struck her as out of the ordinary, but her neck felt vulnerable anyway. She was happier when they were all sitting down and she had her back to the wall.
The guys had gone through their usual hugging and shoulder-thumping routine, but Antonio seemed to have trouble hanging on to his typical smile. Donata glanced at Peter to see if he’d noticed anything, but her companion appeared to think everything was fine. Maybe she was just being paranoid. It had been a rough couple of days.
“So, Antonio,” Peter said after they all sat down at the wobbly-legged wooden table, “I can’t believe you found something so fast.” He grinned at Donata. “Didn’t I say he was the guy to go to?”
Donata smiled back. “That you did.” She turned to Antonio, who squirmed a little when she shifted in her chair and caused it to creak loudly. “Nice place you picked for us to meet. Any special reason?”
Antonio squirmed again, then rubbed his thumbs on the moisture that beaded up the sides of his glass of soda. Two beers sat on the table, awaiting their arrival. Peter flicked their caps off with his thumbnail and handed one to Donata.
“No reason,” Antonio said, his voice slightly higher than Donata remembered it being. “I know it is not so nice a place, but it is close to work. I hope you do not mind.” He wiped his forehead off with one hand.
Donata sympathized. With all the people in such a small bar, the atmosphere was hot and marginally claustrophobic. She shifted her chair again, scanning the dim room.
“What did you find?” she asked. The sooner they got the information and got the hell out of here, the happier she’d be. She was starting to get as twitchy as Antonio.
The priest pulled a small leather book out of his pocket, but hesitated before putting it down on the sticky tabletop. Peter gave a small smile and pulled out a handkerchief for his friend to lay the book on. Still, Antonio vacillated.
“So, mio amico, you found a good place to stay?” he asked. “Someplace nice?”
Peter looked at the book and then at Antonio. “Of course. I have been in the city many times. There are always plenty of empty hotel rooms. Not to worry.”
“And this place you stay, is it far from here?” Antonio’s knuckles were white around the edges of the book.
Peter exchanged a puzzled glance with Donata. “Not too far.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Can I see the book, Antonio?”
A bead of sweat ran down the priest’s face. “Of course.” He started to hold the book out, and a large drunken Italian wearing a huge wooden cross around his neck smashed into Peter’s chair, making the entire table rock.
“Maldestro!” the man yelled. “You make me spill my drink!” He glared at Peter, but the beer in his massive fist remained noticeably steady.
Donata eased her chair back from the table and raised an eyebrow at her cohort, who nodded slightly.
“I apologize,” Peter said to the man. “I didn’t intend to get in your way.”
The man didn’t appear to want to be appeased. “You spill my drink, you stupido Americano. You people think you can come to this country and do whatever you want.” He balled up one large fist. “I teach you better.”
Peter smiled up at the drunk. “I’ll be happy to buy you another drink, my friend.”
In answer, the man swung his fist.
But Peter was already on the move, ducking out and underneath the swinging arm. He gestured at Donata and Antonio to get up and started backing in the direction of the door—unfortunately all the way on the opposite side of the room.
“Oh, no you don’t, Americano.” The man gave a shark’s grin that displayed one gold tooth. “You are not to leave here in one piece, eh?” He was already aiming the beer bottle in his other hand at Peter’s head, throwing a wide arc of golden foam in the process.
Five other men, all different physical types, but dressed in the same uniform of jeans, tee shirts, and large wooden crosses around their necks, suddenly appeared from behind the first.
Crap on a plate, Donata thought. “It’s a setup,” she said to Peter. Crap on a plate with cheese.
“Ya think?” He responded calmly enough, but she caught his anguished glance at the table, where Antonio sat frozen, a guilty look painted on his cherub’s face.
Then the men were on them, and there was no more time for witty banter. Donata hit the floor to avoid the windmill punch coming her way, then pushed herself up off the sticky surface and stuck her hand in her jacket pocket. She grabbed one of the emergency spell bottles she always carried and pulled the stopper out while reciting the trigger words under her breath. Then she tossed the contents into the face of her assailant.
He wiped the fluid off his swarthy face and laughed at her. “You think we are not ready for you and your magic, Strega?” He held up the cross that hung around his thick neck. The leather thong was old and dark with years of sweat, but the oversized wooden cross itself gleamed as though it was newly carved. “They would not send us to deal with Il Demonio without our sacred protection.”
Cabal. Had to be. Hecate’s tears. Now they were in for it. Donata took a deep breath and tried to find the warrior’s zone her martial arts teacher was always talking about. Time to find out if all that practice was worth the effort.
The man let go of his cross and started toward her, one of his friends right behind him. Out of the corner of her eye, Donata could see Peter fighting off the other four with silent determination. There was already a bruise forming under one eye, and blood seeped slowly from a split lip.
“Well, puttana,” the man closest to her said, “I guess you should have brought something to fight with besides your evil Witchcraft, eh?”
Donata gave him her wickedest smile, causing him to take an involuntary step backward. “I guess you’re right.”
She moved toward Antonio, still sitting glued to his chair, and shoved him under the table. He might have set them up, but she still didn’t want to see him get hurt. As she pushed him down, she reached into her boot and pulled her knife out of its built-in sheath. Magic was unstable and occasionally backfired. A razor-edged piece of steel, on the other hand, could always be depended on.
Her opponent’s eyes widened at the sight of the long, vicious blade. She took advantage of his momentary shock and sliced a long, deep hole into his abdominal muscles. He dropped to the floor, howling in pain. His companion pulled out a knife of his own and made a rude gesture in Donata’s direction, which she ignored.
Instead, she grabbed a bottle of wine off a nearby table hastily vacated by its occupants when the fight broke out. She tossed it clumsily with her left hand, not taking the time to aim. The man facing her ducked it easily and grinned at her, his stringy mustache bobbing. His grin vanished, however, when Donata followed up her phony attack with a real one and kicked him squarely in the nuts. Hard. The knife dropped out of his hand as he grabbed himself and fell to the floor beside his friend.
Donata let out an involuntary yell of triumph and was slightly appalled to discover she was actually enjoying herself. She turned to Peter and saw the same unholy glee on his face. What a pair they were. Two of his adversaries were also down, one of them in a heap that spoke of unconsciousness. The other clutched an arm that bent in the wrong direction, a jagged end of bone sticking out from the break.
Then, as if in slow motion, she saw the large man who had started the fight pull a gun from under his jacket. Apparently he’d decided it was time to give up on maintaining the illusion of a common bar brawl and just get the job done. He swung the pistol around in her direction.
Donata could see everything so clearly. The dark stubble on the man’s livid face. The scraped skin of his knuckles as he pulled the trigger. The shocked look on Peter’s face as he saw the gun go off.
; Then there was a large explosion of noise and confusion. Donata felt herself hit the floor, driven down by the impact of a large body barreling into hers. Had she been hit? She waited for the pain, but it didn’t come.
Instead, Peter pulled himself up off of her prone body and surged into the air with a single powerful motion that thrust him across the room and into the space in front of the two remaining attackers. He let out a roar that echoed through the raucous bar, silencing the patrons who had been enjoying the fight, and promoting a swift exodus by many through the nearest exits.
Those who remained watched with awe as he picked up the two men by their necks and bashed their heads together with a meaty thunking sound. His eyes gleaming black, he held them up, their feet dangling helplessly off the ground as he let loose another bellow of primal fury. Around the area where his fingers wrapped around their necks, there was the faintest smell of roasting meat.
Donata finally got her breath back enough to stagger across the floor to where Peter stood. She placed one hand on a rigid, muscular arm and spoke quietly into his ear.
“Peter.” There was no response, and one of the dangling men let out a pitiful moan. “Peter. You’re killing them. You have to let go.”
He gave a ragged sigh, and the uncanny glow faded out of his eyes. With obvious reluctance, he opened his fingers and dropped the men to the floor. Across the room, one of the drunker women started applauding and then stopped abruptly when her date yanked her out of her chair. Donata stifled a laugh. To be honest, she felt a little like applauding herself.
Sirens sounded in the distance, closing fast. Time to go.
“Come on,” she said, still pulling on his arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.” She looked around at the bodies strewn at their feet. “I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to have to explain this.” That would really go over well with the Chief—creating an international incident while a guest of a country she wasn’t even supposed to be in. No thank you very much.
Peter hesitated, then started to move. In the opposite direction of the door.
“Just give me a minute, okay?” He walked over to their former table, where Antonio still crouched, partially hidden behind a cracked wooden chair.
Peter held out one battered hand. “It’s all right. You can come out now.”
Antonio began to get up, then froze, a horrified look on his face. Donata followed his line of sight and swallowed hard when she saw what he was looking at: blood, running freely from the large and ugly hole a bullet had torn in Peter’s side.
Chapter Sixteen
“Peter.” Donata forced his name through suddenly numb lips.
He turned his head in her direction and frowned at her. “I hear the sirens, Donata. This will just take a second.”
She shook her head frantically and pointed down at his side. “Peter. You’ve been shot.” She couldn’t believe that after all her years as a cop, this was the first time she was seeing someone bleed from a gunshot wound. She’d talked to plenty of dead crime victims who’d been shot, of course, but that was a very different thing from watching someone she liked gush red in front of her. For a moment, she almost felt faint, then got a hold of herself.
She grabbed a wad of napkins from a nearby table, trying not to think about what might already be on them, and stuffed them into the gory wound on his side. They immediately turned bright crimson.
“I’m okay,” Peter said impossibly, although his large hand replaced hers and held the damp paper against the hole. His breath came hard, but otherwise, he seemed unaffected.
Antonio staggered to his feet, one hand held out beseechingly. “I am so sorry, my old friend. When I looked for the book about this curse, my superior came to me. He told me you were wanted for stealing Vatican treasures and were to be arrested by the police.” His deep brown eyes filled with tears, and his voice was a ragged whisper. “I know you are not always dealing within the law, and so I believed him. I swear I did not know that they would try to hurt you.” His gaze flew from Peter to Donata and back again. Cynical as she was, Donata didn’t doubt his heartfelt apology. She had no idea what Peter thought; his face was set in lines of pain and stoicism.
“I understand,” Peter said to Antonio. “You did what you felt you had to do. I forgive you.” He turned to leave, shoulders rigid.
Antonio negotiated the few steps that separated them and hugged Peter with desperate intensity. Then he gave a sob and ran out the door.
Peter looked after him bleakly, took Donata’s arm, and steered her toward the back of the bar.
“Time for us to leave too,” he said. “I’m pretty sure this place has a rear exit that lets out onto an alley. If we go through the back ways, we should be able to make it to the guesthouse without being spotted.”
Donata let herself be pulled along, but spared a glance for the wound on his side. “Shouldn’t we be going to a hospital? You’ve been shot!”
Peter grunted. “I’m fine. And I don’t think we want to be anyplace too public right now.”
Donata dug in her heels as soon as they had traversed a couple of streets away from the bar. “At least let me get some bandages or something,” she hissed. Her hands were stained with blood from her attempts to keep pressure on the wound as they ran.
“Let’s get back to the room in one piece. Then we’ll worry about bandages,” Peter said. And grimly refused to discuss it again until they had slunk their way up the back stairs and into their tiny refuge.
Once inside the door, Donata ran to the bathroom for towels and filled a pitcher from the kitchen with warm water. Blinking back tears of fear and frustration, she shoved Peter into a chair, pulled off his jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt. When she saw what lay underneath, she let out an involuntary gasp.
Peter gave a chuckle, only slightly tinged by bitterness. “Apparently I’m not that easy to kill. Even when my oldest friend is lending a hand.”
Together, they looked down at the tanned skin of his left side, already healing over as they watched. The torn edges of the injury slowly knit together, the skin puckering and reforming, with only a thin scar at the entry and exit sites to mark that he’d ever been shot.
“Great Hecate,” Donata breathed. “I can’t believe it.” She used a damp towel to wipe away the dried-on blood, feeling limp with relief.
“I guess being half Dragon is turning out to be a good thing after all,” Peter said with deceptive lightness. “Remind me to thank my father if I ever meet him.”
Donata’s stomach clenched with guilt as she thought of the things this man had gone through in the past few days, all because she’d come into his life. If there had been any way to take it all back, she would have. But even Witch that she was, she didn’t have that kind of power.
“I’m so sorry, Peter,” she said. “For everything.” She slumped down on the chair next to him. “And it was all for nothing.”
He shook his head—“Not for nothing”—and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out the small leather-bound book Antonio had brought to show them. “I’m pretty sure they never meant him to give this to us—just use it to hold our attention long enough for those Cabal goons to get the jump on us.”
Donata’s mouth dropped open. “But . . . how?”
Peter’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “That last hug he gave me before he ran out. He shoved the book in my pocket, when no one could see.”
“So he really was trying to help you, despite everything?” She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the swing from treachery and betrayal to handing them the information they needed so badly.
“I don’t think he knew what they intended,” Peter said. “Antonio was always all about following the rules and doing the right thing. I guess, in the end, he decided that giving us the book was the right thing.” The anguish in his eyes made Donata want to weep.
Peter laid the b
ook down, gently, on the table in front of Donata. “I hope the answers we need are in here,” he said. “God knows the price we paid for it was high enough.”
Then he went to stand in front of the living room window that looked down on the bright lights of the city of Rome. He stayed there, unmoving, until the dawn broke over the hills, and never said another word.
* * *
The next morning, they got back on the Casaventi family jet and winged their way back to the States and the problems that awaited them there. Not that it mattered much; it seemed those problems were following them wherever they went.
Donata had gone to bed not long after their return to the guesthouse, although she’d spared a few minutes to run out and buy food for the silent Peter, knowing his Dragon metabolism would need fuel for all the healing it had done. He hadn’t even acknowledged it—or her—when she’d come back to the rooms, but there was nothing left but a few crumbs when she woke up in the morning.
They’d packed and left the chintz and their effusively polite landlady behind them with little regret. Peter probably only said two or three sentences during the entire process, and now, two hours into the flight, he sat staring out the window, deep in thought. Donata left him alone. She’d done enough damage already. Without speaking, they’d tacitly agreed to put off looking at the book until they were on the plane home.
Finally, Peter got up and fetched some snacks from a cabinet toward the front of the plane. Stiffly, he laid them on the table where Donata sat, a high-carb peace offering she was happy to accept. She toasted him with her water bottle, liberated earlier from the same place.
“You okay?” she asked.
Peter shrugged. “I’m . . . adjusting. Lots of changes in a short time. And I don’t much like change.”
Donata opened her mouth and started to say, “That’s—”
Veiled Magic Page 14