The Lonely Wolf

by Monica La Porta

  Then his sight cleared and he found himself staring into the magnetic violet eyes of the warlock, who leaned closer to him and whispered to his ear, “She loves you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  With his heart nudged in his throat and his eyes burning, Quintilius watched as the two immortals took his son away from him.

  “We’ll make sure he’s okay.” Ludwig brushed his arm.

  Quintilius passed a hand over his face, the growing beard on his jaw tickling his fingers. “Let’s go to the hospital. I haven’t checked on Camelia since this morning, and by now the lab should’ve analyzed the content of the glass bottle I sent.”

  He had lost count of the times they had flown back and forth over Rome during the last five days, and he couldn’t remember when he had slept last. His clothes looked as sorry as he felt, and he needed to change into something fresh, but it would have to wait. Showering, eating, sleeping, living, all had to wait. Too many loose strings to take care of. Like discovering why an empty, unlabeled bottle was amidst the rubbles of Iris’s cottage. A bottle that was the exact replica of the one he had seen in Camelia’s hands so long ago. A bottle that reeked with the same poisonous smell of curare.

  He didn’t need the lab technician to tell him what he had found, that was for the enforcers. His wolf’s nose was never wrong.

  After saying their goodbyes to their friends, he and Ludwig left the courthouse.

  Ludwig swept him in his arms and cradled him, then tenderly kissed him as he left the ground and rose higher in the sky. In his angel’s embrace he experienced peace, if only for a moment.

  A few minutes later, Quintilius entered the Tiberina Island Hospital with Ludwig in tow. Upon entering the traumatology ward, one of the nurses, a werewolf, stopped him.

  “Alpha, Doctor Lanzi is visiting Camelia. He is a renowned traumatologist and works with the paranormal special ops and the enforcers—”

  Quintilius nodded. “I know him.”

  Doctor Lanzi was an immortal who liked to give back to the community and had participated in several of Quintilius’s charities. He also volunteered at the Renegade Youth Shelter where he visited the kids every other Sunday.

  “Then you know she’s in the best hands.” The nurse gave him a smile. “Camelia’s awake, and the doctor asked for you—” At Quintilius’s raised brow, she gave him an apologetic shrug, and before he could say anything, she added, “We tried to call you.”

  “Thank you.” Quintilius tapped the desk, then reached for his cell phone that had been turned off throughout the whole day.

  As he walked toward Camelia’s room, he checked the messages on his voicemail, but only found two, the one from the hospital, and another from Iris’s cell phone. Wary, he stopped by a recess in the hall, clicked on the voice message, and said to Ludwig, “Listen to it.”

  “Quintilius, help me! I’ve been kidnapped. They are working togeth—” Her screams and a loud crash ended the recording abruptly.

  “What do you make of this?” he asked Ludwig.

  “She isn’t faking the screaming,” Ludwig answered.

  “What a nightmare.”

  “I’m afraid there’s more—” Ludwig paused a moment too long for Quintilius’s liking.

  “What?”

  “I was going to wait and tell you later, but it might be better if you have all the information now. I talked to my informant, and he says someone from your clan is involved.”

  “Who?”

  “He didn’t say the name, but he showed me a check with your signature.”

  “I sign checks every day. Usually, Iris compiles them and I just sign.”

  “This one was made to a dry-cleaning place called Shifter Washer.”

  “I can’t remember all the companies I make checks to—”

  “You paid them half a million euros.”

  “I would remember that.” Quintilius cursed out loud, and a few people walking by turned their heads his way. He raised a hand in apology. “Can I see the image?”

  “Yes, of course.” Ludwig reached for his phone in his jeans’ rear pocket, then turned it on and scrolled for the pictures tile. “Here it is.”

  The image spoke more than a thousand words. “That’s my check, and that’s my signature.” Anger sprouted in his chest, pressing against his heart, lungs, and stomach like an inflated balloon.

  Ludwig turned off his phone. “How many people have access to your bank account?”

  “You know I don’t trust anyone with that kind of information. Only Camelia and Iris.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Have you investigated this Shifter Washer place?”

  “My informant had already looked into it, and found out that the dry-cleaner building belongs to a vampire nest in Fiumicino, and that made me curious—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s the same nest we rescued Raphael from.” The balloon of anger inside Quintilius inflated, until it pressed so hard against his ribcage he could barely breathe.

  “The one and only. But I also had the dry-cleaning company’s title checked, and I made a few phone calls around to obtain the names of the silent partners. I’m still waiting on that, but it turns out that Shifter Washer is registered as an industrial facility that works for shipping companies, but since two thousand and thirteen—the year they were established—not a single load has ever been washed there. It’s safe to assume the only thing they clean is money,” Ludwig concluded. “I know it looks like a convoluted spider web, but we’ll find the truth. I promise you.”

  Unable to utter anything that wasn’t a crude swearword, Quintilius nodded. Then he resumed walking and reached Camelia’s room in a state of cold jitteriness. His emotions were mixed up, and he felt the call to violence building up alongside his anger. Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t wait to see Camelia and reassure himself she was finally out of danger. Finally, he dreaded the moment he had to tell her what he had discovered.

  Ludwig touched his shoulder in a brief caress.

  “Thank you.” Quintilius breathed in and out for a few counts, then peeked at the window on the door and saw the doctor was still visiting Camelia.

  Some fifteen minutes later, the traumatologist came out.

  “Lanzi,” Quintilius offered his hand to the tall immortal. “The nurse told me you were looking for me.”

  The man greeted him with a serious expression on his face. “Quintilius, I was about to call you again—” His eyes went to Ludwig, who made to move to give them privacy.

  Quintilius stopped him and said to Lanzi, “He’s family.”

  The doctor nodded. “The ICU sent me the results from the blood tests we ran on Camelia. The lab also sent me the results from the toxicology test on the specimen you asked to be analyzed. Traces of curare, and a few other substances, like belladonna, mandrake, and opiates, were found in both Camelia’s blood and in that bottle’s content—”

  “On both?” Quintilius asked, but he had known all along when he had found the bottle.

  “The exact same formula.” The doctor hugged himself, rocking himself slightly on his heels.

  “Like the Immortal Death?” Ludwig asked. He had investigated a string of suicides among young immortals a few years back. All the deaths had been caused by Immortal Death’s ingestion. The poison caused temporary mortality, and the kids had used it to take their lives.

  “Similar, but not quite the same cocktail. It’s a specific formula for werewolves. Whoever prepared the mix knew what to add and in what percentage to disable a wolf and hurt the host. Someone has been poisoning her for years.” Lanzi sighed. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of such horrific news, but on a happier note, Camelia’s is doing much better, and I expect her to steadily improve now that her wolf is recovering as well.” His eyes went to the glass window on the door. “In a way, being attacked saved her life. The tests we ran on her aren’t generally done during a physical, and here she was purged from the poison, which explains why her condition changed after
a few days, even though we didn’t do anything to explain her sudden recovery. She’ll be here for a while though. The damage done by the attack is extensive, but her past experience as an aura healer will help speed up the process.” Squeezing Quintilius’s shoulder, he made to leave, then added, “I wouldn’t recommend upsetting her, but she’s looking for answers, so use your judgment on what to reveal to her.”

  Quintilius waited for Doctor Lanzi to leave before turning to Ludwig. “I must tell her.”

  “I agree. It’s better to rip off the Band Aid now.” The angel looked him in the eyes and gave him a smile. “Go.” Then he lowered the handle and gently pushed him in.

  The door closed behind him, and Quintilius was greeted by the sight of a battered Camelia.

  Already lithe, she was now diaphanous, but her smart eyes locked with his, and her lips turned up in a smile. “Alpha.” Her voice was nothing more than a hideous croak, yet it had never sounded so pleasing to Quintilius’s ears.

  “Camelia, my love,” he whispered, walking to the bed, where he sat on the edge and took her hands in his. After showering them with kisses, he finally said, “Never do this to me again.”

  She laughed then. “I promise, this is the last time I let a vampire maim me.” She brought his hand to her face, and as it was her custom, she leaned into it for a caress. “It wasn’t all that fun in any case.”

  “I went crazy—”

  “It’s already in the past. I’m on the mend now.” She released her hold on his hand and lowered herself to the pillow.

  “There’re things I must tell you.”

  “The doctor told me about the poison.”

  “Yes, that. But first… Iris has been missing and there were signs of struggle at her cottage—”

  Camelia’s eyes widened. “Where’s she now? Is she okay?”

  “Despite what I’m going to say next, I think she’s okay.” He paused to gather his thoughts and find a way to tell Camelia the truth without upsetting her. “When I went to check her cottage, it looked as if a hurricane had gone through the house. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture left whole. Then, among all that destruction, a scent I had all but forgotten caught my attention, and following my nose I found a bottle.”

  “What bottle?” With evident struggle, Camelia straightened against the headboard.

  “I recognized the smell right away, Camelia. It was the same acrid stench from the bottle you used—” No matter how much time had passed, talking about that night would always be painful, even more so now. “I should’ve seen Iris for what she was, but I was too blind, too arrogant, to even consider one of mine would betray me or you.”

  “Maybe there’s an explanation,” Camelia said, sagging again. “There must be one.” Her tired expression revealed resignation, not hope.

  “I’m sorry, my love.” Only now was he putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and the resulting image was scary.

  “I always feel sick and tired after eating.” She regarded him with sad, pleading eyes, as if she wanted him to deny the truth. “But Lara is such a good cook and she says I need more sustenance—” With a gasp, she shook her head, then whispered, “Iris hired her…”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  After a prolonged silence, she asked, “What else did you find?”

  “Did you know she has been employing bodyguards for a while?”

  Camelia shook her head. “What for?”

  “I don’t know yet, but she sent away Lupo a month ago, and after briefly talking with Raphael in the evening, I realized she had a big role in sending him away too.” The conversation with Raphael had been painful. Outside the courthouse, while they were waiting to be called in for Lupo’s hearing, he had asked the young werewolf if they could talk. What he learned from the chat was a confirmation of Iris’s duplicity, and how she had manipulated people around Quintilius without him being the wiser.

  “I don’t understand. Why did she get rid of those kids?” Camelia shifted position, her movements slow as she grimaced.

  Even though he was eager to help, Quintilius didn’t dare touch Camelia for fear of hurting her. “Again, I don’t know—”

  “I remember now that girl—Lupo’s mother. Once, Iris told me about this maid she had to fire because she was stealing. Later, someone from the staff commented to me that she didn’t think the girl had been stealing and that it was unfortunate she had lost her job, because she was pregnant. I didn’t connect that girl to the one you talked about until now.”

  “So, she ordered a batch of poison for you, and stored some in her house—enough to last one hundred and fifty years. She got rid of Lupo’s mother, and then of Lupo. She made Raphael’s life a living hell when he was working for me,” he said.

  “I’ve always known she was in love with you, and I excused her when she was being spiteful, because I thought she was alone, but what you’re saying is too much to believe.” Camelia blinked away a few tears. “My sister. We’ve never been close, but she’s blood of my blood. We shared a womb, we grew up together, we did everything together, even moving to Rome when the elders arranged our marriage.”

  “I know, and it doesn’t end here. I’ve just discovered that she forged my signature on a substantial check made to a dry-cleaner company that’s anything but a dry-cleaner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ludwig showed me the picture of a check, from one of my accounts, signed by me, for half a million euros. And since I know it wasn’t you, there’s only one explanation left.”

  Camelia brought her small hands to her face and hid her eyes behind them. “I’m so sorry, Quintilius. I can’t believe she would do something like that.”

  He shook his head, then leaned over her to move her hands aside and brushed her nose with a small kiss. “Me neither, but compared to what she has done to you, it’s just money.”

  “My strength is coming back already.” Camelia raised her eyes to him. “Who knew a few days of hospital food would do that to me.” She tentatively smiled.

  Her comment made him cringe, and he made a mental note to check how many of the people working in the kitchen at Casolare del Lupo were in Iris’s pocket, besides their cook. “If nothing else, I’ll be forever grateful to whomever ransacked Iris’s cottage, because it made me discover that bottle.”

  “Our notion of silver linings is screwed up.” She laughed one of her small laughs that were so full of mirth, and Quintilius couldn’t help but chuckle back.

  ****

  Anticipating that Quintilius’s chat with Camelia would be a lengthy one, Ludwig walked out to the hospital’s courtyard, found a quiet spot with an empty marble bench by a pine tree, and set to answer a few of the hundreds of unread emails that had filled his mailbox.

  When he had turned on his phone earlier to show Quintilius the check’s picture, he had noticed a missed call from a number he didn’t recognize. He was about to call it back, when a call arrived yet again from the same number.

  “Ludwig Barnes.”

  “My dear archangel, you sound tired,” Claudius answered.

  “What do you want?”

  “Just a friendly remainder you have two days left to surrender the cub to me.”

  Ludwig was surprised by the request. Claudius didn’t know Lupo was being transferred to Regina Coeli as they spoke, and that was good news all around. “It’s not going to happen, and you know it,” he answered.

  “Then prepare for your demise.”

  Ludwig hung up before the vampire could spit some more venom. As he looked down at the screen on his phone, he saw that one email had just arrived, and it was from the fraud-department—one of the branches established within the Immortal Council to keep an eye on the many paranormal businesses operating in the mortal world.

  As he opened the mail, one word immediately stood out, Claudius’s name.

  Underneath all the layers of dummy owners, ghost companies, and silent partners, Claudius was the sole proprietor o
f Shifter Washer.

  Now Ludwig had two days to find Iris and ask her what her business with the vampire was.

  ****

  Quintilius and Camelia listened to Ludwig’s news, and while he shook his head in disbelief, cursing under his breath, she remained silent and motionless.

  Ludwig had knocked on the door and asked for Quintilius to come out, but Camelia had invited him in with a, “Nothing else can shock me anymore.” She had been wrong.

  “We must find her,” Quintilius said, caressing Camelia’s arm, now shaking.

  “That’s my plan, but where can she be?” Ludwig paced back and forth, his jerky movements and heavy steps contributing to the overall nervousness filling up the small room. “Was she truly kidnapped? Because that could be a ruse.”

  “She sent the vampire to attack me,” Camelia whispered, following her own train of thought.

  Quintilius didn’t have the heart to remind Camelia that Iris had been poisoning her for years, and that sending a vampire to kill her wasn’t such a stretch.

  “If she wasn’t kidnapped, do you know of any place where she could’ve gone to hide?” Ludwig asked.

  Camelia massaged her temple in small circular motions, then pressed her fingertips deep enough to make an indentation on her pale skin. “No, since she moved from the main house to her cottage, our relationship has been civil, but our interaction has lessened. We’ve been growing apart for a while. No drama or anything like that, but we’ve become polite acquaintances. We talk about house-related issues when we meet in the house—hiring new people, changing appliances in the kitchen, that kind of talk—and that’s the extent of it.” Her skin was red with half-moons made by her fingernails. “I should’ve talked to her more. I should’ve made an effort to reach out, to understand her—”

  Quintilius raised one hand. “Stop with the what-ifs. She is not a good person. I’ve always known she had a dark soul, but I underestimated how cruel and twisted she was. Iris doesn’t deserve your love or compassion, she took the path of evil, and she will pay for her actions.” He wiped Camelia’s tears away, then angled his body toward Ludwig. “We can analyze the recorded message on my phone. Maybe there’s something in the audio we can use to find her.”