We file down a hallway into a miniature recreation of the Pantheon that sits in the heart of Rome, and I wonder at how the Vatican, symbol of Christianity, accumulated such a crazy amount of pagan art. Perugini’s interest begins to show as the tour guide turns us loose to wander around the circle of the Pantheon, the Greek gods standing on pedestals before us.
“Hmm,” she says as we pause before a pretty amazing statue of Ceres. I can’t really see behind the sunglasses, but Perugini angles her head to read the display.
“It’s Demeter,” I say, wondering if she’ll recognize the more commonly known Greek name.
She looks up at me. Sunlight streams in from an eye-like portal directly overhead in the dome. “Oh?” she asks and nods to the next statue in line. “And that one?”
“Apollo,” I say. He carries a mighty staff—not that kind; get your mind out of the gutter—and his robes are flowing and exquisitely carved.
“You seem like an expert on this,” she says, still cool. We meander to the next statue, and I admire her grace instead of looking at the carved marble. She nods at it and I glance up. I feel a little sick. “Which is this one?”
I angle my head down, looking intently at the floor, which is composed of white tiles interspersed with the occasional black one in some pattern my brain doesn’t want to put together right now. “It’s Hera,” I say, but I can’t look at the statue. It actually looks like her, too, which is why I don’t want to look it in the eye. Look her in the eye.
I was there when Hera died. But more than that, I was there when Hera lived. She was the head of Alpha; she was my boss. She was more than that, though; she was a guide, a mentor, a voice of authority in a world where the craziness of what we were up against was enough to make me question the cause sometimes. She was my north star—my Sienna before there was Sienna. I followed her, believed in her. I kept doing what she would have wanted me to long after she was dead.
I still am. She believed in Sienna.
I believe in Sienna.
I keep walking, pausing in front of the next statue. If Perugini senses my despondency—which let’s face it, she probably doesn’t, because why would she be studying me intently?—she doesn’t say anything. “Who is this?” she asks, testing me again, and I look up.
I don’t recognize this one, at least not at first. Then I do, and probably do a double take right there in the middle of the fricking room, like I’ve seen something I can’t believe. Which I totally have. I cannot believe what I’m seeing.
My eyes fall to the placard at the base of the statue, seeking out the knowledge I need. There’s the name, that’s the goddess. She even has a frigging bow in her hand, just like she did when I saw her last night.
“Diana,” I whisper, and the name is full of significance to me in a way that is probably lost on Dr. Perugini. It all makes a crazy amount of sense now, and yet not a damned bit. Why would she have been there last night? Why would Giuseppe try to introduce me to her, of all people? What does she have to do with all this? And then my eyes fall on her title, and I wonder if it’s a clue all by itself.
“Goddess of the Hunt.”
14.
I’m blown away by this revelation for at least the next thirty minutes. Maybe even an hour. I stumble along like one of the old tourists, just thinking it through. I shouldn’t be surprised that the Goddess of the frigging Hunt would survive an extermination of our species, should I? She knows hunters, so she knows how to avoid being prey, right?
She dropped off that rooftop like some character out of a superhero movie. Like a female Hawkeye. Or like that Japanese Hawkeye in the last Wolverine movie. Arrows a flyin’, my ass being saved—yeah, it was hero-type stuff. And she was clearly a total badass, too.
So Giuseppe wanted to introduce me to one of “my kind,” as he put it, here in Rome. So he plans an intro to a—she’s gotta be like a hired killer or something with that skillset. She can’t just be carrying a bow around Rome for shits and giggles, can she?
She’s the Goddess of the Hunt. I suppose she can do just about whatever she damned well pleases.
But the intro goes wrong, and Giuseppe’s inquiries get him killed by … someone. Someone scary enough that the huntress doesn’t want to get involved. She whacks like seven-eight of their guys, but she doesn’t want to get into this.
Stupidly, Alpha Male charges ahead where the Goddess of the Hunt fears to tread. Because my rallying cry is “MORONS FORWARD!” or something of that sort. Mercy.
I say none of this to Dr. Perugini, because a) she’s not going to believe me, and b) none of this makes me look cool, especially the part where I’m not the Big Damn Hero doing the saving. Also, there are a lot of tourists around us and most of them speak English. Call me self-conscious, but I don’t want anyone thinking I’m crazy. There is still a widely accepted cult of skepticism about the existence of metahumans, even after the Minneapolis incident.
We go through a corridor of tapestries, and one of them has a Jesus that the tour guide swears is watching. I picture someone behind the wall like in the old movies, eyeballs staring out, then dismiss that thought as utter nonsense. Then I move, and I swear the tapestry’s eyes move with me. No, I am not a fan of the “Jesus is watching” tapestry. It’s like he can sense my impure thoughts about Dr. Perugini and he is not pleased. Come on, man, your dad supposedly intelligently designed her. Like this wasn’t predictable.
I manage to center my thinking back on the search for this priest, Father Emmanuel, just about the time we get to the Sistine Chapel. They get pretty serious about keeping out people in shorts and short skirts, and I glance at Dr. Perugini. She raises her eyebrows almost imperceptibly at me, and I suddenly realize why she changed her clothes before she came here; they wouldn’t have let her in wearing what she’d had on before. I watch a couple of American northerners get culled from the pack for non-regulation clothing, and we pass on through into the Chapel.
It’s about this time I realize I need to talk to Perugini about what to do regarding this priest. The problem is, you’re not really supposed to talk in the Sistine Chapel. This doesn’t seem to stop most people, though, and I’m kind of embarrassed for them. There’s a security guard whose primary function seems to be to loudly shush people every thirty seconds or so, as the crowd within the Chapel goes from a buzz to a roar in between his invocations. I’m not a huge rule-nazi, but this is just pathetic, and it makes me despair for the species.
The guide gives us ten minutes, and Perugini sits on a bench on the far end of the main room. She leaves space for me to join her, so I do, sitting down as I stare up at the frescoes. There’s a lot going on up there, some pretty impressive stuff. I note the rule that you’re not supposed to take pictures, but people are disregarding that left and right as well. Jeez, people. Is nothing sacred anymore? Uhh … literally, I guess, given the location.
Perugini speaks as we’re leaving the Chapel, and now I see a conversion station for those who have been moved by the frescoes to join Christianity. No Bibles on the table, though, which is totally a deal breaker since I suspect I’m not done saying stupid stuff in her presence. “What about this priest?” she asks, probably reminded of our situation by the fact that there’s a black priest sitting at the conversion table. And because this is the Vatican, he is also playing on a cell phone. Seriously.
“Well, I have a number for him,” I say, “but I don’t know if his phone’s turned off or what, because I can’t get through to him.”
I see her eyebrow arch, barely, under the expansive sunglasses. She holds out a hand, palm up, and it takes a second for my slow-ass brain to interpret this as her asking for the number. I hand her the slip of paper and she continues to look at me, palm still outstretched, until I hand over my phone as well. With both in hand, she looks down and dials, her sunglasses still hiding any emotion her eyes might reveal.
A sharp, surprisingly loud rendition of Pharrell’s “Happy” echo through the corridor and almost makes me sna
tch my phone out of Dr. Perugini’s hand in embarrassment. Then I realize it’s not my phone that’s making the sound.
It’s the African priest’s.
It takes a few seconds for it all to register with me—he apologizes to everyone around, profusely, embarrassed, in a low, sonorous voice with an accent that tells me he probably is from somewhere in Africa. He then puts his head down again, and I look back to Perugini.
“Went to voicemail,” she says, and we both look at the priest. He’s fooling with the phone, but he’s plainly refused the call.
“Dial it again,” I say, and pass by her to make my way—slowly—toward the table. I see her comply, and this time the air is filled with a low buzz before he rejects the call again and I feel a smile creep onto my face at the blind, beautiful luck that has finally—somehow—swept in on the winds.
15.
“Father Emmanuel?” I ask, and he blinks twice in surprise and looks up.
“Yes?” he asks, and I smile at this stroke of luck.
“My name is Reed Treston,” I say, and pause. What the hell am I supposed to say next? I go for the crazy. “I got your name from a man named Giuseppe—”
I don’t get any more out before a shadow falls down his features. “Not here,” he says quietly. “Not now.”
“Uh, okay,” I say, and look around the hallway. There are tourists everywhere. “Where, then? And when?”
He looks a few degrees down from panic, even as he remains seated with the cell phone clenched in his hands. “Two hours. There’s a café just down the Via della Conciliazione. A block from the Castel Sant’Angel.” He mentions the name of the café and then clams up. His expression is furtive, and I wonder what a priest in the middle of the Vatican has to be nervous about.
Also, I dig his ringtone choice. I’ve been rocking the Pharrell ringtone for a while myself.
“Two hours,” I say, nodding at him, and then head back down the hall. Dr. Perugini falls in beside me, and I can tell by her expression she overheard everything. “What do you think his deal is?” I ask, more rhetorically than anything.
“He looked like he needed a change of undergarments after you spoke to him,” she observes. Her wry humor is the first hint of emotion I’ve caught from her.
We finish the tour, meander around St. Peter’s square, but don’t go into the basilica. It’s a little crowded, but not too bad. I try to imagine the place on a day when the pope is doing something here, and I envision a crowd so intense that Sienna would lose her shit just from the sheer volume of people.
Perugini leads the way and we walk from the square down the big damned street, the Via della Conciliazione. We make it almost to the end before I realize that the Castel Sant’Angelo is hiding behind some trees, directly ahead. It’s a fortress, a massive circular structure that towers over Rome. I saw it when we crossed the Tiber to get here, but I hadn’t realized how close it was to the Vatican.
We stop in the nearest café and wait. I watch the clock for the first five minutes. Perugini says nothing, just orders a Coke Light and sits there, sipping. I squelch my fantasy about being that Coke within seconds.
“Why did you come here?” I suddenly blurt out.
She cocks her head at me, and finally she takes off her sunglasses. I’ve seen her eyes many a time. They’re a lovely, lovely shade of brown. “Because you asked,” she says. And that kind of warms me for a moment, until she goes on. “And because it’s a free trip to Italy, of course.” She sips the Coke. “This is a paid vacation, you know this, yes? All funded by the agency. How can I refuse a chance to go home for free?”
My brief moment of hope at “Because you asked,” dies in a fire. “Okay, then,” I manage to get out, hopefully without squeaking. “You deserve a vacation.” She probably does, too. The last year or two haven’t exactly been kind to any of us, and if I recall correctly, she ended up locked in a car trunk because of Kat at some point.
She nods in agreement—basically with herself, since I was already agreeing with her—and sips some more Coke. We sit in a companionable silence, and the minutes drag by.
I’m groping for another (probably idiotic) icebreaker when I see Father Emmanuel appear in the entry to the café.
I have never been so happy to see a holy man in my life. I would even confess right now—in private, of course—if that would save me from saying something else stupid to Dr. Perugini. His Lord may move in mysterious ways, but my mouth moves in pretty knuckleheaded ones.
“Thank you for coming,” Father Emmanuel says as he takes a seat next to me, as though I’m doing him some sort of favor. I blink at this, but for once I shut I mouth and let him go on. “When I reached out to Giuseppe after receiving his name, I was concerned that no one would be able to help me.”
I raise an eyebrow at Perugini. She raises one back at me. We both keep listening.
“I hate to …” Emmanuel lowers his head, and it’s clear that what’s on his mind is something with weight. “… I hate to … squeal? Is that the word you use? To complain outside the organization?” He looks up and I can see he’s a little tortured. English is plainly not his first language, but he does a pretty good job considering that he probably also speaks Latin and whatever his native tongue is.
“That’s right,” I say. Now I’m just mystified. He wants to talk about internal Vatican matters? What does this have to do with me? With Giuseppe? I’m just smart enough to know that revealing my ignorance while he’s pouring his soul out on the table is one sure path to shutting him up, so I stop talking. Again. If only I had similar control around Perugini, alas.
“They are simply not set up to deal with this level of treachery,” Emmanuel says, shaking his head. “This level of … deceit and indecency.” I stifle a completely unproductive joke about the history of the church. Even in the few moments that I’ve known him, Emmanuel seems like a good guy.
“Go on,” I say. Helpful. Super helpful. “Maybe just getting it out there will help you work through the solutions.” And vague. Alpha Male is nothing if not vague.
“I do not even know where to start,” Emmanuel says, and his desperation is thick in the air.
“The beginning,” Perugini says, and I realize that I don’t have the market cornered on vague. She’s inscrutable again, even with the sunglasses off.
“I came here from Mombasa over a year ago,” Emmanuel says, and his head is still down. He won’t meet my eyes, and I wonder if he’s ashamed. “I needed sanctuary, and the church knew this.”
“Sanctuary from what?” I ask, and then the answer comes to me before he can answer. “From the extinction. From Century wiping out metakind.”
He nods, but still won’t raise his head to look at us. “There are other priests and nuns, of course, that are like myself. The church knows us.” He finally looks up. “There is no shame; we are all children of God, all loved. But when Sovereign began to move—” I shouldn’t be surprised that a priest can knowledgeably discuss events I was intimately involved in, but somehow I am, “—they reacted differently than almost any other country. They gathered us together and protected us here in Vatican City. They isolated us from exposure to the outside world, limited access, used the intelligence they accumulated about Century’s methods to keep us hidden and safe.” He opens his hands and I can see the sweat glistening on his palms. “They managed to do what no other country could.”
“They protected their meta population,” I say in a low voice.
He nods. “But not only theirs, I found out.”
This elicits a frown from me. “Did they take in others?”
He looks away and nods again. “Some. Where they could, and where they were certain that these people were not Century spies.” He purses his lips. “This is where the problem lies.” He folds his hands. “Where my problem lies.”
I lean in, very serious. “So what is your problem?” I ask, now unconcerned about dispelling the image that I’m totally informed. He’s in the boat; there’s no re
ason to be coy now. (Because we’re not in a koi pond, har har.)
“One of the outsiders that they gave sanctuary to,” Emmanuel says, still looking down. “He is the problem. He is using us—the church. He’s hiding now. He got in because his brother is a priest, and now we continue to shield him while he—while he—” Emmanuel makes a noise of utter frustration, something a holy man trying to avoid the sin of wrath might make, and I suspect his next confession will be interesting if he doesn’t keep this to himself. “He’s still using us to hide.”
I narrow my eyes as I realize that this is moral outrage. It’s as serious as can be for him; whatever this situation is, it offends him on a deeply personal level. “What’s this guy doing?” I ask.
Emmanuel looks up, and his dark eyes flash. “It’s not just what he’s doing, but who he is. He is a criminal,” Emmanuel says, “and I think he’s still committing crimes—while using our sanctuary to keep himself hidden.”
16.
Father Emmanuel doesn’t give us much more than that. He’s jumpy, and he leaves a few minutes later, promising that if he can find more—proof of his claims, for instance—he’ll be in touch. I get the sense he’s carrying a bit of a load, but I also get the sense he’s not telling me everything.
Like how he figured out this guy is still active as a criminal. Did Emmanuel witness something? Or is he a telepath?
Dr. Perugini and I head back to the hotel. I spring for a cab, because her gait is showing the first signs that she might be developing a blister and I’m sensitive like that.
On the ride back to the hotel, we’re pretty quiet. The windows are cracked, letting cool air drift in on the stretches where the cabbie revs the engine up to redline. Then he slams on the brakes as we come to a traffic light and audibly protests in muted Italian. I decide he must be related to the last swearing cab driver I had.
Dr. Perugini says nothing, hiding behind her sunglasses, eyes fixed straight ahead. She’s lost in thought, I can tell even through the lenses, and I don’t want to be the one to disturb her.
In the Wind (Out of the Box Book 2) Page 6