by Kai Meyer
The beasts were approaching Jessie’s hiding place. The girl couldn’t see them, but she probably smelled them, heard the crunch of frozen foliage and twigs under their paws. But Jessie stood there, frozen to the spot, behind the trunk of the oak tree, not daring to move.
Only her eyes were turned toward Rosa, over a distance of some twenty-five feet, pale pearls shining in the darkness. A pleading, terrified glance.
A hand was placed over Rosa’s mouth from behind and forced her down, into the shelter of the edge of the slope. A whisper in her ear, almost inaudible: “There’s nothing you can do for her.”
As if she had no will of her own left, she let him lead her down the hill. She knew he was right. But she had just turned her back on a stranger who, in those few seconds, had begged Rosa for her life.
Down at the foot of the slope she tore herself away from the man, ready to scale it again and intervene after all, shout at the Panthera that she was the only one they really wanted, the Lamia they hated so much.
Except that that wouldn’t change anything.
Up in the darkness, Jessie began to scream.
The man leaped after Rosa and hauled her down again. “If you don’t come with me, you’ll die,” he hissed at her, still with that dangerous feline growl in his voice. She thought it attractive in Alessandro, merely menacing in this man.
She wanted to resist, contradict him, run to help the girl.
But she did none of those things. She just stared at him, feeling something die inside her, maybe her pity, maybe only her brief moment of desperate courage, and then she nodded.
“This way,” he whispered, and ran into the tunnel ahead of her. “Come on.”
She followed him, hoping that Jessie’s screeching and howling would lessen down there, but instead it was amplified. Many growls and much feline mewling mingled with it as the Panthera quarreled over their prey again, and then, as before, an animal roar silenced them. It did not sound as fierce and barbaric; more domineering. A short command in the language of the Panthera, and immediately there was quiet apart from Jessie’s weeping and pleading.
The sounds that finally silenced the girl almost brought Rosa to her knees. The noise of snapping and tearing echoed through the tunnel, as if the Panthera were feasting down here in the shadows, right beside Rosa.
The man seized her again and pulled her along. “They’ll kill us both if they catch up with us.”
“You’re one of them.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Why are you helping me?”
She might have expected anything, or nothing. An ally of Alessandro, one of his informers in the New York branch of his clan. Or one of the Panthera wanting her all to himself.
But not this.
“Because of Valerie,” he said quietly.
She asked no more questions, but only ran faster now, away from the sound of the angry jaws snapping behind her.
They reached the other end of the tunnel, turned down a path branching off, and ran along the bank of a small lake. Then the man pulled her after him, by the arm, into the undergrowth. It didn’t grow so luxuriantly here. They were near the edge of the Ramble, approaching the well-tended, neat, and tidy part of the park.
In the cover of a line of trees, the outskirts of a little wood, he stopped and looked out at the open terrain beyond. He was still naked, and by the light of a nearby lantern she saw that he was trembling. Now that he had no panther coat to protect him, he was freezing like any ordinary human being. Neither of them would last much longer.
“Is that East Drive?” she whispered. Ahead of them, beyond a narrow snowfield, lay a paved road, entirely empty.
He nodded. His lips were blue.
“But you’re heading for somewhere, right?” she asked doubtfully.
“Not far now.” He looked right and left, then back over his shoulder. “Run!”
They left the protection of the shadows under the trees. Rosa’s steel-toed boots left deep prints in the frozen snow, while he ran across it barefoot as if part of him were still a cat.
“Are they following us?” she asked.
“They won’t stop to eat their fill until they have you all. Then they take all the prey to a place where they divvy it up.”
They crossed the street, and Rosa thought of following it south. He saw the way she was looking, and shook his head. “There’s a barrier where this road meets Terrace Drive. You wouldn’t get far. Not in human form.”
“What’s your name?” she asked, as they reached the trees on the other side of the road. The trunks were much farther apart here, and there were few bushes.
“Mattia.”
“Carnevare?”
He nodded again. “You’re Rosa.”
She was going to ask how he knew, but he got in first. “Valerie,” he said. “She sometimes talked about you.”
Behind them she heard a triumphant roar as the pack streamed out onto the snowy field.
THE BOATHOUSE
THE SWEAT ON ROSA’S forehead was icy cold. Her face felt numb. She was running eastward with Mattia through the trees, while the Panthera chased after them.
How much longer before the effect of the serum wore off? Five minutes? Seven? There were no general rules; every Arcadian reacted to it differently. She could be bound to her human form for another ten minutes or more.
And who knew whether she’d be able to force herself to change shape? She just had to hope that the transformation would set in when danger threatened.
Out of breath, they passed the statue of a man sitting on a bench with an open book on his lap, a bronze duck looking up at him from the ground. Ahead, a paved promenade stretched around the perimeter of a pond. A silvery shimmer came from the ice on the water. In the light from the opposite bank, Rosa saw a single-story building with a pale green roof that reminded her of a circus tent. It had a tall spire like that of a church on top of it.
“Conservatory Water,” said Mattia breathlessly. “If we can make it over to the other side…”
He didn’t say what exactly would happen then, but she assumed that he meant they’d reach the high-rises on Fifth Avenue whose lighted windows stood out against the night sky, beyond the building with the green roof and a row of bare treetops.
“If we go around it, we’ll never get there,” she managed to say, with a groan. The cold was beginning to hurt, and as soon as she saw his bare skin, it got even worse. Why was he doing this?
Rosa wanted to run over the promenade and cross the ice, but Mattia held her back.
“No, don’t! The pond is thawed out in the day so that sailboats can go on it. The layer of ice is far too thin to support us.”
Sailboats? On this tiny pond? But she wasn’t stopping to argue. She tore herself away from him again and ran northward along the perimeter. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw dark shapes on the snow-covered space between the trees, at least a dozen of them, maybe more. Several were carrying something in their mouths, and that held them back, but the rest of the pack adjusted their speed to the others, as if they didn’t trust them enough to let them lag behind with the prey. Four human bodies, to be divided among too many big cats.
Rosa was running so hard now that she could hardly breathe. Frost was getting into her lungs, and her throat felt as if she had swallowed splinters of glass.
Another set of bronze statues at the far end of the lake: Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter, and the White Rabbit.
Mattia, too, was slowing down. The cold was beginning to numb him.
“Change shape!” Rosa called to him. Even her voice sounded like crushed ice.
“They can see us,” he replied, shaking his head. “They can’t know that I’m one of them.”
“You’re naked!” she snapped at him. “What do you expect them to think? That I picked up some kind of pervert on my way through the park?”
He swore—and turned into the panther. The change happened so fast that Rosa’s eyes could hardly follo
w it. His torso and limbs morphed at high speed; fur flowed over his skin like black oil. Then he was running ahead of her on all fours. For a moment she was almost overcome by envy. He was at most three years older than her, yet he had mastered the transformation perfectly. For him it was a gift. For Rosa, so far, it was a curse.
With the last of her strength she followed him to a terrace leading down to the pond, in front of the brick building with the green roof. She had expected them to run past the house and under the trees behind it. Fifth Avenue was so close; she could hear the nocturnal traffic as clearly as if she were standing on the sidewalk. A police siren howled as it went by, going south, and merged with the noises of the Upper East Side.
But the big cat was heading for the entrance of the building, and she realized that he intended to go in. She looked back once more. The Panthera were less than forty yards behind them. A gigantic leopard in the middle of the pack was carrying a human body in his jaws as if it weighed no more than a rabbit.
Jessie’s thin legs brushed the ground on one side of his muzzle, her hair on the other. Her arms swayed up and down at every step the big cat took. His head held high, the leopard was carrying her as the trophy of his victory. Full of pride, full of scorn.
“Michele,” whispered Rosa, her voice full of hatred.
When she turned to the single-story building again, Mattia was standing at the entrance in human form, beckoning to her with an exhausted gesture—and opening the gray metal door with his other hand. It swung inward. There was a key in the lock.
“I work here,” he managed to say, with a groan. “That’s why.”
The Panthera reached the terrace. Some of them, those who had killed no prey yet, couldn’t control their greed any longer and sped up. Rosa ran past Mattia, dragging him with her, and the two of them flung themselves against the heavy door from the inside. It latched. With trembling fingers, Mattia turned the key in the lock. Outside, several of the big cats uttered howls of fury as their claws scraped over the metal. The noise was deafening.
“The windows have grates over them,” Mattia whispered to her. “They won’t get in here even in human form.” His catlike eyes were glowing as brightly as the single emergency light above the entrance. While she saw him only as a vague outline, he must have as clear a view of her as if it were daylight. She put out one hand, her fingers so cold that she was afraid they might break off if they met the slightest resistance. Hesitantly, she touched his shoulder. It could have been made of ice.
Only now did she realized that it was improbably warm in this building. The heat was on full blast.
“You planned to bring me here,” she said.
He nodded, faintly. “The key was on the outside of the door, and I turned the heat up hours ago. I knew what state we’d be in when we got here.”
He moved away from the entrance and opened a small switch box on the wall. A red light showed. Mattia pressed it.
“The alarm system,” he said, loud enough for those outside the door to hear it. “It’s switched on now.”
The scraping of claws stopped. Something dropped on the snow—Jessie’s body?—and now they heard Michele speak. He was back in human form.
“How long are you going to hide in there? Until morning?” He uttered a sound that was possibly meant to be a laugh, but wasn’t. It was more of an animal screech. “There’s already someone on the way to fetch men with tools.”
Mattia lowered his voice. “If the alarm goes off, this place will soon be teeming with security guards. They won’t risk that until they’ve hauled some park official out of bed and bribed him. That’ll take at least an hour, and by then the effect of the serum will have worn off.”
As if that guaranteed her survival. “Let’s set off the alarm ourselves,” she said.
“I have to talk to you before all hell breaks loose,” he said. “What’s more, then they’d find us both here, me naked and you…well, with not much more on.”
She followed his glance to her legs, which were blue with cold. There was hardly anything left of her tights.
“Better to appear in court on immorality charges than dead,” she said, going to the window and peering out. The Panthera had retreated to the edge of the terrace. Only Jessie’s body lay in the snow, distorted, looking like a dirty garment and easily visible from the window. A promise.
Rosa abruptly turned away. She stepped aside, leaning against the brick wall. “They’re waiting.”
“Good. That gives us time.”
Long tables dominated a gloomy room that occupied the entire single story. Several dozen model boats stood there, none of them more than a foot long, with pointed sails, countless little pennants, and colored symbols. By one of the side walls stood a workbench with carpentry tools, stacks of paint and varnish cans, plastic canisters, and rolls of sailcloth. There were more tools hanging above it.
“Kids and tourists rent the boats and sail them on Conservatory Water,” said Mattia, as if it were something she would need to know. “I repair them when they break down, which is quite often.”
She looked at his glowing eyes. “What’s the plan?”
“We have to talk. About Valerie.”
“They’re going to kill us, Mattia, whether or not the serum’s still working.” She fell back against the brick wall, which was so cold that she hardly noticed her backbone rubbing against the joins in the brickwork as she slowly slid down it. She sat on the floor with her knees drawn up. “Why Valerie? What does she have to do with any of this?”
“She and I,” said Mattia hesitantly, as if it were something to be ashamed of, after he had been running around beside her stark naked all this time, “we were a couple. And she still loves me, I know she does.”
She stared at him, unable to take this in. She didn’t feel like laughing, but she laughed all the same. It sounded slightly crazy, but it felt good.
“Love?” she repeated. “So that’s what this is all about?”
He shook his head as he crouched in front of her until their faces were level. Her eyes traveled down. “You thought of everything, but not a pair of pants?”
“Sorry.” He stood up, glanced at the window, and went over to the workbench. A moment later he came back with a piece of cloth, spattered with varnish, knotted around his waist. “Better?”
She nodded.
“Valerie and I,” he started again, “were inseparable for almost a year. Then I made the mistake of introducing her to my family. I took her to parties with me, to the Dream Room and a few of the other Carnevare clubs. That’s how she met Michele.”
Rosa tried to forget about the murdered girl out in the snow for a moment. To forget about her own fear. She began to guess where this story was going. “Michele took her away from you,” she said, and only then did it finally sink in that they were talking about her Valerie. The Valerie who always steered clear of men. Who had never mentioned so much as a one-night stand, let alone a steady boyfriend.
“She fell for him.” Mattia sounded as if it still hurt to talk about it. “She’d have done anything and everything for him…. She did do anything and everything for him,” he corrected himself. He paused briefly, as if to choose his next words carefully. “She found out somehow or other. What he is, what we all are. I never told her; she must have watched him, or else she found something out by chance.”
“Mattia,” Rosa said imploringly, “why here and now? You could have asked me out for coffee to tell me this. Those people out there are going to kill us.”
“Valerie disappeared,” he said. “Sixteen months ago.”
Rosa jumped to her feet as if electrified. Her chilly skin was tingling all over from the warmth in the room. The question slipped out. “When, exactly?”
He bowed his head slightly as he looked intently at her. “Just after Halloween.”
She pressed her lips together and breathed out sharply through her nose.
Mattia went to the window again and watched the Panthera. As she waite
d impatiently for him to go on, she looked past him outside. All was still calm out there. Michele and the others were waiting for reinforcements to arrive with crowbars. Presumably a parks department official had already received a phone call to warn him, and to make sure that no security guards responded to an alarm from the boathouse.
“Well?” she asked.
“The last I heard, she was traveling in Europe.” He was still looking at the scene outside, and without doing so herself Rosa knew that he was staring at the girl’s corpse. “I don’t know if that’s the truth. It’s possible that Michele—”
“Killed her?” She went over to him. “Why?”
“To keep her quiet. The concordat was still in force at the time, and there was something that no one could know.” He turned his head and looked her in the eye. “I know what happened to you at that party. So does Michele.”
Her face was numb. She bit her lower lip, but didn’t feel it until she tasted blood.
“Michele?” she asked tonelessly.
Mattia nodded. “He was there,” he said. “Michele was one of them.”
THE TRANSFORMATION
ROSA WAS PERFECTLY CALM. Exhaustion that had nothing to do with her run came over her. Like the feeling when hysteria changes to dull indifference. She had passed the point of screaming and raging, and had reached a state when she felt nothing anymore.
“Who else?”
Mattia sighed. “The building where the party was held, Eighty-Five Charles Street…it’s in the West Village. Does that address mean anything to you?”
Her fists were clenched so hard that her fingernails dug deep into the palms of her hands. “Tell me names. One or two of them, any names you know.”
Something was happening outside. Mattia’s glance moved nervously from Rosa to the terrace. He cursed under his breath. “There’s a car coming, on the other side of the pond. Those are Michele’s men.”