Blood of the Lamb

by Sam Cabot

  Pietro smiled. “That’s not so clear to us. And to your point about eternal life, you may be right. We don’t know. What we have may only be longevity. Extreme, but not eternal. Some of our scientists think we may be deteriorating, as you are, just at a rate so slow as to be undetectable.”

  Thomas found himself asking, in spite of his repugnance, “Can you . . . die?”

  “We can. Not of natural causes, because of the rapidity of repair of our cells. And certainly not of silver bullets or stakes to the heart at a crossroads at midnight. Or an overdose of garlic.”

  “Or,” it occurred to Thomas, “sunlight. I was with you, in the sun.”

  “The Change heightens all the senses and makes us extremely responsive to our environment. We hear and see exceptionally well, for example, so most of us dislike loud noises. By that same token, bright light is painful, and for those of us who’re naturally pale, our skin sunburns easily. It’s not dangerous but it hurts, and pain is also something we feel more acutely than you do. So we wear sunglasses. And long sleeves, and hats. It was a Noantri chemist who developed sunscreen.”

  “But stakes to the heart—” A scene from earlier in the day flashed before Thomas. “Surely, if I’d stabbed Spencer George in the heart . . .”

  “No. It’s complex and still poorly understood, but there seems to be a sort of critical mass of blood and soft tissue that, as long as it’s maintained, will eventually repair or, if needed, replicate, the rest of the body. It can take a long, long time, depending on the damage, but it will happen. In this case, Spencer’s heart would have stopped, and the whole thing would’ve been messy, but after a day or a week of deep coma he’d have been back with us.”

  “Rising from the coffin. That’s why they say you rise from the coffin.”

  Pietro nodded. “That’s exactly right. We don’t sleep in coffins, of course not. But once buried, we can ‘rise again.’ It’s not really that, because it’s not really death. But we understand why it seems like it, to the Unchanged.”

  And the dead shall be raised

  Incorruptible

  Thomas shuddered. The gift promised to all humanity at the Last Trumpet, usurped and perverted. “But you say you can die.”

  “Yes. In two ways, one more widely understood than the other. First, by fire. Some chemical process involved in the Change makes our flesh more vulnerable to fire than yours. I’m not a scientist so I can’t explain it but if you want—yes, all right, never mind. The result is that fire can rapidly destroy us. If our bodies are completely consumed, there’s nothing left to initiate the process of regrowth.”

  “There’s always something. A tooth, a bit of bone.”

  “Bone and tooth don’t live in the same way. Or hair, or nails. Soft tissue is what’s needed. Living tissue, containing blood, which is what can be destroyed by fire.”

  “And the other way?”

  “Obviously, complete dismemberment would, at some point, eliminate that critical mass. How small you’d have to chop us”—to Thomas’s horror, she smiled—“that’s something we don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because what Noantri would volunteer for that experiment?”

  “Volunteer?” A wild laugh escaped him. Fiends with medical ethics? “Why not just, I don’t know what you call it, infect a bunch of people? Then you could chop them into pieces and see if they spring back to life!”

  She stared. “You can’t really believe we’d do that?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “No,” she said, calmly and firmly. “We consider our Changed lives a great gift. A Blessing. What you’ve suggested would make any Noantri ill even to contemplate.”

  Thomas felt ill himself. “But you can burn. So when you reach the fires of hell . . . But how will that happen, if you don’t die . . . ?”

  “Well, Father, perhaps you can take comfort in the knowledge that millions of years from now, the earth will fall into the sun. Then the Noantri will all be destroyed. We’ll die, and, if there’s a Last Judgment, we’ll be judged.”

  “You can’t be judged. You have no souls.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Thomas looked around him, for help, for guidance. He was a Jesuit; he wasn’t a scientist, but he was a scholar, trained not to shy away from the conflicts between fact and faith. Nor had he, ever. Ultimately, he saw those contradictions themselves as a gift from God: they were why faith was required. If God’s goodness, if even his existence, could be proved, then what was man bringing to the table? What were we offering God? Faith was what God asked of man. It was our single gift to him. The only thing man has, and the only thing God wants.

  What did that mean, then? Was it possible these—these creatures, were just another form of human life? Ultimately, as Pietro said, to die, and be judged, like all others?

  Thomas looked at Livia Pietro again. For a moment, he saw her eyes as kind and her face as animated by a lively intelligence. Then: Begotten of Satan and birthed in hell! Inside his head, as clear as if the man himself were sitting here, Thomas heard Lorenzo’s roar. The degradation of men’s bodies, the destruction of men’s souls. A foul and futile pledge.

  They drink human blood.

  It’s the essence of evil to be subtle.

  Kind eyes, an intelligent face. Better men than he had been deceived by less.

  Pietro had been silent, watching him. Now she spoke. “Father, I thought I might be getting through to you but I can see that I haven’t. I wish you’d keep an open mind but I know this is hard for you and I can’t help what you believe. I think that’s enough discussion. We’re wasting time. Each of us has a compelling reason to find the stolen copy of the Concordat, and a better chance of succeeding if we act together. Can you put aside your distrust and work with me?”

  If only it were merely distrust, Thomas thought helplessly. Revulsion, anger, sadness, and a soul-deep despair opened a chasm within him. This was what Lorenzo had meant when he said, I’m afraid of what it will do to you, to your faith.

  And Thomas had laughed, because he’d thought that his crisis of faith had come and gone. He saw now that he’d been a man unconcerned about spots on his skin because he’d once survived hives, only to learn, too late, that he has the plague.

  “The notebook,” Pietro said. “Damiani’s notebook. Spencer and I have been studying it. He agrees with me that the pattern of the missing pages may be important.”

  Thomas stared. Was he really going to do this? As though discussing Damiani’s poems, or anything, with her, was reasonable? But, without a sense that he’d decided, he heard his own voice: “How can— How can you tell? You’ve identified the places the missing pages refer to?”

  “No. There are too many possibilities. What we did was to decipher the poems that remain. When we mapped those places out, we found a broad area from here—this house—through Trastevere to the Tiber, with no poems relating to it. It’s possible Damiani was heading from here to the river, and hid the Concordat on his way. In some place, some building or statue or fountain, he’d already written about.”

  Thomas hesitated, then slowly said, “If I do agree to help, what use can I be?”

  “You know the significance to the Church of many of these buildings much better than either Spencer or I do,” Pietro came back promptly. “And if we do manage to find the right building, we’ll still have to locate Damiani’s hiding place within it. He was a brilliant and ironic man with a great sense of humor, I’m discovering. Especially if the building he chose was a religious property, as I suspect it was, your knowledge of Church history could be very valuable.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “The Conclave is. And your cardinal.”

  Yes, the Cardinal. Lorenzo had great faith in Thomas. Not enough to tell him the truth, but enough to ask him to take on this task.

  “And if
we find the Concordat?” Thomas asked. “What happens then?”

  “Our goals are the same: to keep it hidden.”

  That’s your goal, Thomas thought. And the Cardinal’s. Mine, right now, is to save him. If what it takes to do that is giving the Concordat to someone who’d reveal its contents, how bad would that really be? Would it really cause the destruction of the Church? No: the setting of the Church back on the correct path, a path Thomas could now see had been abandoned six hundred years ago. Would Thomas be able to convince Lorenzo of the rightness of this? Lorenzo had screamed, Don’t help them; Lorenzo had been willing to sacrifice himself to protect his Church. But Lorenzo, Thomas suddenly realized, could only be anxious to maintain the status quo because all this was theoretical to him. He must never—until they’d seized him—have met one of these Noantri, never been in this insidious, seductive presence. If he had, he’d understand. He’d feel the way Thomas felt now.

  Thomas swallowed and asked, “How do we begin?”

  “Spencer has the notebook.” Pietro’s relief was palpable as she stood. “I’ll get him. He—”

  She stopped as the door opened. Thomas’s stomach clenched at the sight of Spencer George, who stood in the doorway holding Damiani’s notebook. Thomas had to stop himself from going for his crucifix again. Looking at the historian, Thomas had to admit the man looked none the worse for the great gushing of blood from his wrists a few hours earlier.

  None the worse; but he did look odd.

  “Livia?” Spencer George spoke in a voice distant and strange. He didn’t seem to notice Thomas. “Livia, I have one of these poems.”

  26

  Livia’s heart leapt. Spencer had one of Damiani’s missing poems; Father Kelly was joining in the search. She was doing as the Conclave had instructed and now had a hope of succeeding. Maybe things would turn out all right.

  Maybe Jonah wouldn’t have to die.

  Spencer crossed the room to a rolltop desk in the corner. Livia watched as he unlocked it and slid the cover open. Laying Damiani’s notebook down, he pulled out a drawer and retrieved a small leather case, from which he took a single sheet of paper. He held the sheet, fingering its edges, his eyes moving over it as though searching for something that wasn’t to be found—something he’d searched for many times before, something he had never found. Then he laid his paper gently down and opened Mario Damiani’s notebook beside it.

  The priest started forward but Livia put out a hand to stop him. They waited; finally, Spencer, still in a soft monotone, said, “Come and look.” After a moment, “You, too, Father Kelly, you may look.”

  They did, and over Spencer’s shoulder she could see: the paper, the handwriting, the ink were all the same. Spencer turned pages, comparing torn edges until he located the place the sheet from his desk had originally resided.

  “Mario gave it to me,” Spencer said. “When he was just starting this book. He was satisfied with this poem— No,” Spencer interrupted himself with a sad smile. “It was Mario. He was delighted. He said whether or not the rest of the book ended up any good, this poem did just what he wanted it to and it would always be mine. I thought that’s all the note meant.”

  Livia glanced up at him. “The note?”

  From the leather case Spencer drew a second sheet. Though the paper clearly came from another source, and the ink was different, the handwriting was the same. Its single line was Italian, not Romanesco, and scribbled in haste, but no one could mistake that it had been written by Damiani. Look to your poem, it said.

  “I thought it was a farewell.” Now Spencer turned and met her eyes. “When I finally returned to Rome, this was on my desk. I thought he’d left it in case—in case something happened to him. To remind me I had the poem. Had something of him. You see?”

  “Yes.”

  “But maybe that’s not what he meant at all. Maybe he wanted me to find the Concordat. Maybe he was telling me where it is.”

  Heart pounding, Livia peered at the poem; over Spencer’s other shoulder, Thomas Kelly did the same.

  Quer sbirilluccico che jje strazzia

  er gruggno, er ginocchione flesso, è ’n passettino

  incontro ar Padre nostro: Lui sà ch’è la monnezza

  tra dde noi che bbatte er cammino,

  piede destro, poi er sinistro, che porta l’anima a la grazzia.

  The Romanesco words lay oddly on the page, their letter groupings not those found in Italian, certainly not in English. But Livia had had a lot of practice at this, as she knew Spencer also had. Nor did Thomas Kelly seem fazed. In Livia’s head the poem quickly transformed.

  The glow of ecstasy upon the face,

  the bended knee, the humblest of steps

  toward our Father: He well knows the base

  and lowly are the ones who make the trek,

  right foot then left, that leads the soul to grace.

  “If we can understand it,” she said, “if we can work it out, you’re right, Spencer. Maybe that’s what he meant, and this is what we need.”

  “Work it out?” Spencer seemed bemused.

  “What it refers to!” Thomas Kelly snapped. “Where he was sending you!”

  Now Spencer smiled. “I’m surprised at you, Father. A Church scholar of your supposed erudition. ‘The humblest of steps.’”

  Thomas Kelly flushed angrily.

  “I’m sorry, Spencer,” Livia said. “I don’t see it either.”

  “On the contrary. You do.” Spencer pointed out the window, at the shadowed façade of the church of Santa Maria della Scala.

  27

  Jorge Ocampo lit another cigarette and ordered another coffee. The smoke was his fifth and the coffee his third since he’d sat down in this café in Piazza della Scala. He coughed. Maybe he should cut down. Though Anna said there was no reason. His indestructible Noantri body would repair any damage he was doing. But Jorge found the coughing itself unpleasant.

  Anna never coughed.

  The cameriere brought his coffee. Jorge liked it well enough, this Italian roast, but he’d never been served a coffee here yet that had the depth and strength of an Argentinian brew. He stirred in sugar (they didn’t drink it sweet enough here, either), all the while keeping an eye on the door through which the priest had disappeared. Anna would be proud of him. He’d spotted that priest and this time, he wouldn’t let him get away.

  He admitted it was mostly luck, but a large part of a revolutionary fighter’s skill was recognizing the luck that came his way and knowing how to use it. Speeding on his motorino to the home of the dark-haired Noantri woman who lived on Piazza dei Renzi, he’d almost collided with the priest who’d been with her in the Vatican Library. He spun his bike around and followed, instinct telling him this man, in such a rush, might lead him where he needed to be.

  Besides, this priest had knocked him down, and he owed the man for that, he thought as he sat in the café rubbing his shoulder. Though in truth it didn’t hurt anymore. An unfortunate fact about the Noantri body, Jorge had found, was that vastly heightened senses meant pain, like any other physical phenomenon, was amplified far beyond what was experienced by Mortals. But it was also true that quick healing made the pain pass rapidly. Anna had promised, since disability and death were now impossible for him, that eventually the instinctive panic and fear that serious pain occasioned would fade, also.

  Jorge hoped so; meanwhile, he was happy to trade occasional bouts of panic and moments of searing pain for the irreplaceable gift his augmented senses had also brought him: the acute, almost unbearable pleasure that surged over him, enveloped him, at Anna’s touch. Her velvet lips brushing his lips, his throat; her silken fingertips stroking his face, his chest—and the beautiful blazing agony when she dug her nails into his shoulders, scraped furrows down his back: all this was his, and was worth whatever it cost.

  Once or twice, Jorge had
caught himself wistfully wondering what it might have been like to make love to Anna if they’d both been Mortal. If all they had were the senses they’d been born with and the desperate, thrilling urgency Jorge remembered as such a vivid part of Mortal embraces. Urgency, of course, underlay all Mortal endeavors, though in daily life it hung almost unnoticed in the background. It came from the simple knowledge that time was finite and one’s supply of hours would one day be exhausted. That understanding furnished a piquancy to a Mortal’s every moment that, in his unguarded thoughts, Jorge sometimes found that he missed.

  But in exchange, look what he had! He had eternal life. And he had Anna.

  And right now, he had a chance to make his Anna so very happy. The door he’d been assiduously watching had opened, and from it issued the priest, the black-haired professoressa, and a third person: a well-dressed man Jorge didn’t know but one Jorge could tell by his scent was Noantri. They were walking with purpose across the little piazza, toward the church.

  The professoressa, in her hand, gripped the stolen notebook.

  Jorge stood.

  28

  Sergente Raffaele Orsini remained seated at his table at the café in Piazza della Scala. The call he’d made half an hour ago to his uncle, Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa, about the priest’s arrival at the house Raffaele had been sent to watch had gone to voice mail. He made another call now, and when the Cardinal once again didn’t answer, Raffaele called the maresciallo.

  “The subject has just come out of the house. She’s with two people I don’t know. One’s a priest. I can’t reach the Cardinal.”

  The cell phone in his ear was briefly silent. Raffaele could picture his boss’s exasperated frown as he weighed the options. On the one hand, the maresciallo was losing the use of one of his men and would eventually have to account to his own superiors for Raffaele’s unproductive time. Then again, this was a favor for a cardinal. Sooner or later the maresciallo would be able to call it in, thereby impressing his superiors with his Vatican entrée. Good personal connections with the Curia, outside the professionally cordial relationship the Carabinieri were at pains to maintain with the Church, were no small advantage for an ambitious cop on the climb. Raffaele had seen how his own stock had risen in the maresciallo’s calculating eyes when his uncle was elevated to cardinal and brought to Rome. He found his boss’s transparency amusing, but Raffaele was an ambitious cop, too. That he was a cardinal’s nephew was nothing but luck, but he wasn’t ashamed to take advantage of what it could bring him. His partner and senior, Giulio Aventino, always said police work was five percent doggedness, five percent luck, and ninety percent the skill to recognize and doggedly use the luck that came your way.