Raphael (The Immortal Youth Book 1)

by Monica La Porta

  Still groggy, Raphael blinked and looked up at the werewolf. “Where?”

  “There.” Rock rolled his eyes and pointed at the rest of the room behind Raphael.

  Feeling observed, Raphael turned, realized that a curtain had previously hidden an alcove, and saw they weren’t alone. “Sh—”

  Inside the alcove, an elegant werewolf in his early thirties sat on a burgundy wingback chair, drinking an espresso from a delicate china set. Without saying a word, the man’s dark-blue eyes assessed Raphael. The thorough appraisal made him feel like he was something the man was about to buy. In Tancredi’s presence—the man wore a tailored dark-gray suit over a cerulean shirt and gray tie—anyone would have come short in comparison. Yet, with his wrinkled and dirty clothes and scuffed boots he had been wearing for twenty-four hours, Raphael straightened his back, and didn’t lower his eyes as he was expected to do before an alpha.

  Not a smart move, but Raphael had no control over his visceral gut reactions. Years of beatings at the hands of his father had not taught him how to submit. Instead, any time he should have shown proper respect for the authority, he reacted defiantly. Raphael sensed Rock’s nervousness, and hoped he hadn’t ruined his only chance to get into the gang and see Luisa again. The silence protracted longer than necessary and became hard to bear.

  Then, without any warning he was about to do so, Tancredi slammed the espresso cup on the saucer and laughed. A moment later, Rock guffawed too, while Raphael stood still. Maybe he shouldn’t have drunk that beer before going to sleep, but he felt nauseous, and the scene before him didn’t make any sense.

  “I like the cub. He’s got spunk.” Tancredi pushed himself up and closed the distance between them, gave cup and saucer to Rock, then headed toward the same stainless steel door Rock had used the night before.

  “Congratulations. You passed the interview.” Rock slapped Raphael’s head.

  This time, when Tancredi knocked on the door, Raphael didn’t avert his yes. The metal surface slid into the wall as expected, and revealed a corridor. Two werewolves as big as Rock stood guard by it.

  “What’s on the other side?” Squinting, Raphael asked Rock.

  “You’ll know when you pass your trial period and become a true prospect.” Rock grabbed Raphael by his elbow and made him march toward the restrooms. “Scrub yourself clean. I’ll fix some breakfast for you.”

  The night before, when Raphael had used the loo, he had wondered why the restrooms were fully equipped with showers, Jacuzzi, sauna, and even a steam room. “I won’t leave this floor until I’m a prospect?”

  “You’re nothing but clever, aren’t you?” Rock was behind the bar that also doubled as a kitchen with a full stove at the end attached to the wall. While cutting slices of apples, he looked at Raphael from under his lashes. “A word of advice, being a smartass gets old very fast around here.”

  “No smartassery allowed on the premises. Noted.” Raphael mimed the act of writing. “Where do I sleep?”

  “Bedrooms.” The Red pointed the tip of the knife at the remaining third door. “No more questions or you’re out of here.”

  ****

  For the next two and a half months, Raphael risked his life more than once to prove he deserved to wear the prospect leather jacket with the red “P” patched on the front. Once, while in a drunken stupor, Rock spoke of the girls living on the fourth floor harem, and told Raphael he would see them the night of his initiation. Although, deep in his heart, Raphael knew Luisa was close, he redoubled his efforts to get accepted into the Reds.

  Meanwhile, other werewolves shared the billiard room with Raphael. Some of them prospects in training like him, others Reds who had drawn the short stick and were assigned to check on the recruits. Rock, who was the household and security manager, swung by several times a day to supervise all of them.

  After that first encounter with the alpha, Raphael didn’t have further interactions with Tancredi. It was as if the man had forgotten Raphael even existed. For which, he was grateful. The Reds’ alpha was mercurial. One day the sky was blue and Tancredi was satisfied with the recruits’ performance on the streets. The next, he would invoke hell and brim fire on all of them.

  Soon, Raphael realized how lucky he had been to meet Tancredi on the alpha’s good day. Compared to what happened in the following months, the morning he first saw the werewolf the man had been positively euphoric. Three recruits didn’t pass the alpha’s interview, and were thrown out into the street with several broken bones.

  As it had happened to Raphael time and again in the past, he slipped into survival mode and kept by himself, exchanging as few words as he could with the rest of the dwindling crew, and doing what was asked of him to the best of his abilities. Every morning, he would get a list of locations and a load of boxes. The locations changed from day to day, then were repeated weekly in the same order. Instead, the boxes remained the same in both size and shape, resembling those containers used by hospitals to transport organs.

  The job came with its hazards.

  Once, a biker tried to pull Raphael over and steal the box he had secured on the rear of his Nimbus. Raphael escaped with his life and the box both intact, only because he knew every alley and backstreet in Rome. As the biker revved his Yamaha to pass Raphael and cut him, Raphael threw himself into the passageway between two buildings. The space was too narrow, and the huge bike didn’t fit. From there, Raphael sought the closest entrance to the Promenade.

  Another time, a rival gang caught Raphael unaware in their territory. Again, his familiarity with the Eternal City saved him from being lynched.

  One fall morning, his docket looked different. Instead of the usual number of deliveries, there was only one address—Olgiata zip code—no box, and a set of instructions. By now, Raphael was used to the Red policy of don’t ask don’t tell, and, without a comment, he checked the location on his phone to calculate the best route. As he entered the posh neighborhood, he realized why the address had sounded vaguely familiar. Primotti’s villa loomed ahead.

  A sense of foreboding made him shiver, but he kept pedaling. He was close to being admitted into the House, the apartments on the second, third, and fourth floor where Red life happened. Too close to Luisa to stop now.

  Before the villa’s gate, Raphael hesitated, read the instruction one more time, then pressed the button on the column.

  The electric buzz grated on his frail nerves. “Who’s it?”

  “Reds.”

  A clang announced the wrought iron gate was about to open, then one side swung on its hinges and moved forward. Pushing the Nimbus ahead, Raphael ambled through the pathway and left the bicycle by the staircase. He knocked on the imposing dark wooden door, and waited for several minutes. When he was about to step down, the door opened, and Raphael swore at the sight of a familiar shifter.

  “You—” The were-puma staring back at Raphael was the same he had relieved from the vial of V last time he was there. “I’ll kill you,” he said while barreling toward Raphael.

  Raphael sidestepped and avoided to be hit by the angry freight train. If possible, the shifter had gained more weight and height. Counting on the fact that he was lighter and hopefully faster, Raphael danced on his feet, feinting and ducking, trying to reach ground level and his bicycle.

  “You cost me a fortune, and my father thrashed me that night for the brawl at his party.”

  With his notorious bad luck, Raphael should have known he had stolen from Primotti’s son. “I’m sorry—”

  The upper jab caught Raphael unprepared and hit him squarely on his right jaw, sending him careening down the marble stairs. Closer to his Nimbus, but still far away from escaping. Kicks and punches rained down on him. The shifter didn’t give him respite, but pummeled Raphael with increasing strength.

  Sweat from the were-puma mixed with Raphael’s blood, as the shifter cursed and blathered things like, “I’m enjoying so much beating the crap out of you,” and, “Too bad none of my frien
ds are here to film me. It would be so much fun watching you die again.”

  On the verge of passing out, Raphael realized the shifter was high on V, and for the first time in years he feared for his life. In a desperate attempt to make the guy reason, Raphael raised his hand before him. “I am with the Reds—”

  Eyes unfocused, the were-puma lowered his reinforced boot over Raphael’s arm and pushed it down. Instead of landing flat on the marble, the arm remained suspended over the hard edges of two steps. Pain exploded behind Raphael’s eyes when the boot crashed against his arm and pushed it all the way against the back of the step, breaking bones.

  Next thing Raphael knew, the shifter was throwing the Nimbus at him.

  “What’s happening here?”

  The voice reached Raphael in a haze of red and screams, his.

  “What are you doing, Paolo?” An older man wearing a majordomo livery entered Raphael’s line of sight.

  “Mind your business.” The shifter, Paolo, swatted at the majordomo.

  “Very well, I’ll call Mr. Primotti. But you know he doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s on set.” The older man made to leave.

  “No need to call my father.” Paolo released the Nimbus to the ground.

  “Who’s your friend?” The majordomo gave Raphael a brief look, before turning to face the shifter.

  “I’m with the Reds,” Raphael whispered, gurgling out blood from his mouth.

  “What did he say?” The majordomo leaned over Raphael.

  “Nothing—” Paolo drew back and placed a hand on the man’s elbow, as if to convince him to step away from the scene.

  “You invited someone from the Reds to your father’s house. Are you insane?”

  “I owe them money—”

  “And you thought beating one of them would help you how?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “You rarely do.”

  “This guy, he deserved it. He’s the reason why father’s so angry with me.”

  “This time you went too far. There’ll be consequences.” Pushing away Paolo’s hand, the majordomo retrieved a cell phone from his jacket front pocket.

  “No! I’ll take care of this. Don’t call my father. I beg you.” The were-puma fell to his knees. “He’ll kill me for sure this time.”

  Raphael didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. He passed out from the pain, and remained in a state of semi-consciousness, as the majordomo and Paolo carted him around Rome. For a moment, he thought he was in an infirmary. When he finally opened his eyes and the world didn’t rotate on its axis, he saw that his broken arm was covered with a cast and he was back in his bedroom at the Reds’.

  Rock was staring down at him with a big smile. “You made it.”

  “Barely.” Thirst parched his lips, and he raised his hand to shield his eyes from the overhead light.

  “Tonight, Tancredi will throw a party for you. You got in.” To Raphael’s silence, Rock added, “You’ll get your letter. Probably the first recruit to become prospect so fast. Aren’t you happy?”

  Heart galloping in his chest and images of Luisa playing in his mind, Raphael nodded.

  “Primotti’s son paid five times what he owed us. Tancredi called his father—”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “Because even though you aren’t a Red, yet, you were there on Red business. And no one hurts one of us. There are consequences.” Rock patted Raphael’s cast. “Thanks to you, now the Reds have a prime seat in Cinecittà. Uncharted territory.”

  Throbbing pain flared up all over his body, and Raphael tried to sit up, banging the cast against the wall beside his bed. “Glad I could be of service.”

  “Oh, you’ll be glad, cub.” Rock smirked. “You’ll see tonight.”

  Chapter Eight

  The rest of the afternoon went by in a haze for Raphael. His mind was on Luisa. The idea they would reunite at last numbed him to a barely functional stupor. Reds came by to his room to congratulate him, even people Raphael had never seen before, but eventually the crowd dispersed and he was left alone with Rock.

  “You’ll take the ceremonial jacket from your older brother and you’ll present it to Father—”

  Rock had been talking for the last half an hour, only pausing to ask Raphael if he understood one aspect or another of the Red protocol. Each time, Raphael nodded without knowing to what he was consenting. This time, something clicked in his addled brain when he put together bits and pieces of what little he had heard with Rock’s last statement. “I’ll take the jacket from my older brother…”

  “Yes, the one you’ll have just elected.” To that, Rock’s eyes lit. “And you’ll present the jacket to Tancredi, who will give you the patch. Then one of the girls of the harem—you’ll get to pick one—will sew it for you.” With a sweeping motion of his hand, the werewolf encompassed the small bedroom. “Tonight, you’ll sleep upstairs.” He winked. “And not alone.” Pushing himself up from the chair he had been rocking the whole time he talked, Rock added, “Now, let’s make you presentable for Father.”

  After a torturous shower with his cast arm enclosed in several layers of plastic bags, Raphael emerged from the stall battered but clean, and immediately covered himself with a cotton bathrobe. One glance at the fogged mirror confirmed he looked like he felt, bruised inside and out. Among many, one purple bruise stood out, covering the right side of his face from forehead to jaw.

  From the doorway, Rock made a sound that could have been anything from pity to disgruntlement. “You look like crap.”

  “I’ve been in worse shape.” With a shrug that caused him more discomfort, Raphael tightened the robe belt around his waist and walked out of the bathroom. “This nothing.”

  Rock let him pass, then followed him back to his bedroom. “Shitty family?”

  The werewolf’s question was simple and direct. Yet, it caused in Raphael an odd mixture of sadness and warmth. Very few people had ever shown an interest in knowing what had happened to him. When a kid, his body had been a billboard of the abuses he suffered, but no one had ever questioned his father. Those times when Raphael needed bones to be fixed, the nurses and doctors always believed the falling-down-the-stairs lie. Every single time. “Shitty father.”

  “Got one of those too.” Rock opened his mouth as if he wanted to add something, then shook his head and smiled. “Doesn’t matter anymore. We’re family. Starting tonight, you’ll have a new father and an army of brothers.”

  Helped by the werewolf, but making sure Rock would only see his front, Raphael donned a white cotton tunic that reached his knees. The garment was part of the ceremony, because in addition to the patched jacket he would also receive his first Red tattoo, a wolf on his chest.

  When Rock offered Raphael a pink pill for the pain, saying, “It will make the needle more bearable since you’ve been beaten up enough for one day,” Raphael shook his head.

  “I want to remember everything about tonight.” He didn’t do drugs, and even if he had he would have said no. Having waited so long to see Luisa again, he couldn’t bear the idea of not being lucid in her presence. Pain he would deal with. He had grown up learning how to dissociate his mind from it after all.

  “You’ll be a proper Red in no time. I feel it.” Rock beamed at him. “Ready?”

  “I am.” Robed and wearing nothing else but a pair of boxers and his combat boots, Raphael felt ridiculous but followed Rock to that metal door he had kept looking at for the last two months.

  The ascent through the compound was anticlimactic. After so much anticipation, Raphael had expected to feel something profound when he left the billiard room and entered the House. Two guards were posted at the entry and congratulated him. The second and third floor were deserted. When Rock pushed him through the entryway to the fourth floor landing, Raphael’s senses went in overdrive with an orgy of smells, colors, and sounds.

  A long hallway, brightly illuminated by chandeliers that looked like modern sculptures, was fi
lled with werewolves standing by the walls, creating a long column of cheering Reds. Suspended from the high ceiling by thin chains, shining copper braziers rocked back and forth. The scent of burning jasmine was heavy in the air.

  “Prospect, prospect, prospect—” the crowd repeated over and over again, until the last letter of one word attached to the beginning of the next and lost its meaning.

  Rock took his place by the wall and sent Raphael ahead. At the other end of the hallway was an oversized, black and silver futuristic chair on a dais. On that modern representation of a throne sat Tancredi. To Raphael’s surprise, the man only wore a pair of jeans, showing the intricate arrays of tattoos covering every single centimeter of his muscular torso and arms. The designs composed of vividly sketched wolves, flowers, Latin letters and numerals, stopped just under his throat and before his wrists. As Raphael walked closer to the alpha, he also noticed the piercings to his nipples, nose, upper lip, and eyebrows.

  Shivering, Raphael prompted his boots forward. He had thought the alpha scary when looking respectable and all his tattoos and piercings hidden from sight, but now he was terrified by Tancredi. Especially because the alpha looked like calm personified, and Raphael had grown to be afraid of Tancredi’s quieter states. In his short experience as a recruit, those were the harbingers of one of the alpha’s bouts of violence. Plus, Tancredi all decked out for the evening looked like one of those ancient representations of the devil.

  “Sons—” The alpha’s voice boomed as if projected by a microphone, but there was none to be seen. “Raphael will join our brotherhood tonight.”

  The loudest cheers yet were accompanied by stomping feet. Despite Raphael only wore the thin tunic, rivulets of sweat matted the fabric with darker patches.

  “Sons, say your names for Raphael to elect his older brother.” Silence was restored, then Tancredi made sign for Raphael to approach the dais. “And you, Raphael, choose wisely. Brotherhood among the Reds is stronger than blood.”

  As asked by the alpha, Raphael stood by his right and studied the crowd. Tancredi raised one heavily jeweled hand, and from the beginning of the hallway a werewolf stepped out, stated his name, bowed, then stepped back and left the stage for the next Red to repeat the same sequence of actions.