The threads of my little Italian tapestry (not the “Jesus is watching you” one, but the one I’m spinning from all the different things I’m dealing with here) are getting more and more complicated. I’ve got an info broker’s murder. One of the old goddesses. A guy with powers like mine. A priest who’s a meta and says that there’s a criminal meta hiding in the Vatican. And a villain who’s dropping the name of my old organization in a letter to a former colleague.
I’m gonna need some help tying these strands off, I decide, so I whip out my phone and make a call. When Dr. Perugini glances at me, I give her an apologetic look. I hate when people start fiddling with their phones or take phone calls in my presence without excusing themselves first. And from the look on her face, Perugini feels the same way.
“Helloooooo?” the voice at the other end of the phone says, pretty chipper. But then, it’s like ten in the morning there.
“J.J., my man,” I say, “it’s Reed.”
“Reed for speed!” J.J. says. “How’s the crazy race going?” I know what he’s trying to say with that. He and I have some geekhood in common. He might be stretching it a little with that metaphor, but J.J. is good people.
“Not bad, not bad,” I say breezily. “Hey, I’m in Rome chasing some stuff down. Running into some walls here.”
“And you want me to come in LIKE A WRECKING BALL?” He delivers the last bit with gusto, and I imagine the people in the cubicles around him turning their heads to stare as if they can see his weirdness through the grey plastic.
“Nailed it,” I say, a little singsongy. Perugini gives me a look, and I calm down eight notches to be all serious business on the phone. “Yeah, if you can help me get a lead on some things, I’d appreciate it.”
“What’s the what?” he says. No, he did not misspeak. “What’s the what?” is an actual sentence. It means, roughly translated from the geek, “What’s up?” or “What do you need help with in this instance?” He and I speak the same language.
“Did Sienna or Rocha fill you in about these email intercepts that sent me over here?” I pause, hear a snicker, and go on. “Right. Of course not.”
“You know I’m a mushroom over here, bro. In the dark, 24/7. I’m growing fungus—”
“Okay, so,” I interrupt, “Rocha and the NSA picked something up referencing Alpha, my old organization. Kind of an introduction letter from a former member to someone else. They go by code names, and I met one of them last night, but with a mask on.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” J.J. says. “Slow it down. Did NSA not give you a suspected identity on the email sender?”
“They did not,” I say. “I assumed it’s because they didn’t have it. All I got was the tag ‘Known Bad Guy.’ Highly technical term, I am assured.”
“Bad assumption, thinking they don’t have it,” he says. “It could be classified. We’ve run across that before. Or it could be coded as ‘need to know,’ and you have to ask.”
I frown. I assumed when Sienna handed off the info that she’d given me everything she had. She probably did; but we’re still pretty new to this whole thing where we’re actively networking with other agencies, so it’s possible she didn’t think to dig deeper than what Rocha sent. It’s also highly probable she didn’t think this thing would blow up in my face the way it did, so there’s that. “Can you dig?” I ask him.
“I’m already in the dark and in the dirt anyway,” he says, almost chirping. “I’ll get right on it, bro. Anything for you. So, hey … when are you coming back? Because the new Captain America movie is coming out next week in Italy, a full week earlier than we get it stateside—”
I see Perugini staring at me through those dark sunglasses, and I’m suddenly aware that she can hear every word he’s saying. “Gotta go,” I say and hang up before J.J. has a chance to embarrass me further. I shoot Perugini a muted smile, a tight one, and wave my phone. “J.J. He’s … helpful.”
She gives me barely more than an “Mmm,” before nodding slightly and turning to look back out the window.
When we get to the hotel, she follows me to the elevator and we head up. I realize for the first time I don’t even know where her room is, so I ask. “Down the hall from yours,” she answers. “Two doors.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding. We get out on the same floor and I follow her awkwardly, fumbling for my key—because I actually have a key, a giant oversized one. My five-star hotel has yet to upgrade to the card key system embraced by even the cheesiest off-ramp motels in America.
She stops two doors down, cool, still hiding behind her sunglasses, and favors me with a look. “Dinner in an hour, say?” she asks, and it hits me like two by four to the back of the head—she wants me to go to dinner with her.
Then it strikes me like a bucket of cold water poured down the back of my shirt: we’re here on business, and we’ll be eating dinner together as colleagues. “Sure,” I mumble, still managing a smile. Then I fumble open my door and shut it, clicking the lock and putting my back against it like I’m a teenager in an overly dramatic high-school movie.
I’m about to take a moment to wallow in self-pity when I realize that the air currents in the room are all wrong. There’s a smell, a hint of something, and the shades are open, giving me a view of the rooftop across the way. The window is shut, though, so at least there’s that. The maid service at work, I guess, getting my heart back down off the ledge.
I take a few steps in and glance in the bathroom as I pass. Everything seems to be in order, there—
Then I clear the corner and get whacked from behind, and it’s not like a two by four or a bucket of cold water. It’s like a train running me over and then shoving itself into my ear. I hit the floor and feel my world start to spin, darkness rising out of the floor to drown me in its choking embrace.
17.
I am hauled off the ground, still pretty out of it, but awake enough to know this is happening. I can see the room around me, dimly, and it takes a few seconds to get my bearings, to realize that this is my room with the single beds, with the downturned, pregnancy-inducing comforters. I feel sick. And not because of the comforters.
Someone has seriously whacked the shit out of me. I’ve had my lights turned out a few times, and it’s not the gentle stuff of movies. I can feel blood trailing down the back of my skull, can barely keep my eyes open. I suspect a concussion. At least, that’s the thought that rises above the others, shouting like it’s delivering some astounding news. Hark! What is there, upon the horizon? A concussion, and my already scrambled brain, prone to speaking stupidity in front of the beautiful doctor, rendered still more mushy!
There’s a face in front of me, and I recognize it, and I kick myself for not making the connection earlier. “Lorenzo Benedetti,” I say.
“Reed,” the villain says in return. I know he’s the villain even without the mask he was wearing at Giuseppe’s shop, because now that I’m not busy running around in circles or trying to not look like an ass in front of Perugini, I remember him from Alpha. Of course, I hadn’t known he was an Aeolus then, or I might have made the connection sooner. “Do you remember Fintan O’Niall?”
I turn my head back to see a guy, and I know without a doubt that he’s “Wrench.” He’s got the look, and—yeah, okay, I remember Fintan now. What a jackass he was. “Hard to forget a face like his.” This is true. He’s got a flat nose that looks like it’s been broken so many times that he just gave up on ever setting it right again. He’s got a grin, and it’s not pretty at all. His smile is missing teeth.
I’m hanging off the ground, completely at his mercy, and it occurs to me what he is, because I faced off with him in Alpha training one time: he’s a Firbolg. Gets a battle fury on that lets him fight like a drunken, ragey Irishman. Which he also is. “It’s like a reunion,” I say. “If only Hera or the others were with us now.” I’m woozy, but I wish that much was true. Because I know they’re planning to kill me and dammit, I could use some help. “So …” I barely get out
, “… social call?”
“What did you tell Giuseppe?” Lorenzo asks me. He’s hanging out next to the bed, a little too nervous to sit down. Which is annoying, because if he’s going to kill me, I want him to at least have his pants be unwittingly soiled by some other dude’s genetic material.
“Oh, well,” I say, my brain not giving me much to work with in my bid to forestall my fast-approaching death, “the real question is what he told me, and who I told.” I don’t smile, because I’m trying to raise doubts, not piss him off until he tortures me. Though it occurs to me a second later that the two might not be mutually exclusive.
“We’ll get to that,” Lorenzo says, just a hair too calmly for my taste. He doesn’t smile, but that’s Lorenzo. Dude always had a bug up his ass about stuff. Micro-manager. He had my job, but for Italy, which kept him busy since Omega had this whole area shot through with organized crime that they got a piece of. Out the wazoo, actually, if Italy had a wazoo. I might place it around Sicily, personally.
“When did you cross the field?” I ask him, and hope I’m speaking clearly enough that he gets my meaning. “Go to the dark side?”
He scoffs with a little laugh. “I don’t see much of the light side left standing.”
“Maybe not here,” I say, “but across the pond they’re still kicking.” I see him blanch just a little, a hint of something. It occurs to me that Lorenzo is not much of a leader. He’s a flunky at heart, a remora looking to attach himself to someone stronger. Then it occurs to me that I’ve just taken a rather significant blow to the head, but not quickly enough to keep me from saying something stupid first: “You’re worried about my sister showing up.”
I sting his pride and hit him right in his insecurities all in one, and it’s blatantly obvious to me even in my completely staggered state. His calm facade disintegrates, and now I know for a fact I’m about to be tortured. Unfortunately I’m still aware enough that this is a serious concern, because I have enough time to imagine them mangling my man-parts and making me even more useless to Dr. Perugini—like I wasn’t useless enough already—before Lorenzo takes his first step forward in menace. He’s furious, and I feel Fintan’s arms tighten around me. He’s strong enough that this would be a problem even if I wasn’t trying to regain control of my muscles. He’s got me in a full nelson and my arms are locked upward where they couldn’t do a bit of damage—
I see motion outside the window just before the first arrow breaks the glass. Fintan panics and his grasp loosens; I hit him with an elbow and twist down so I can get a hand to point against the wall. I trigger a gust with everything I have—mostly shitting-myself levels of panic—and we both crash through the bathroom wall and land in the tub in a storm of plaster and wood splinters. I can feel the impact of his broad shoulders against studs and crossbeams, and I bet they hurt. When his neck crashes against that shitty bathtub, I feel his grip loosen enough to allow me to throw my hands down and use my powers to blast up while thumping his body against the thick tub. I see his eyes flash in anger, and I know I need to get out of his range as quickly as possible.
I throw both hands at him and trigger my powers again. The force of air slams him down again and vaults me back through the destroyed wall. I hear Lorenzo fending off arrows, glass continually tinkling as he clears the remaining shards out of the window while trying to keep Diana—I presume—from using him for target practice. He’s damned strong; I wouldn’t be able to do half of what he’s doing, and that’s really frustrating to Alpha Male. I see him look back at me with furious eyes, and then he lashes out with a full gusting burst from his hands, clearing the air in front of him, and then he lifts off the ground by directing a gust through his feet.
His feet!
I didn’t even know you could do that.
It’s a takeoff, and he shoots right through the window then drops to the alley below. I see Diana now. She’s on the opposite rooftop, taking cool and precise aim, but she leans over the ledge to shoot at him and gets blown back. She recovers nicely, but it spoils her shot. She looks over again a moment later, and I conclude he’s gone because she’s right back to paying attention to me a moment later.
There’s a shattering noise behind me and Fintan bursts right through the wall of my bathroom and into the hotel hallway. Not exactly five-star construction either, apparently, because the dude is gone. I hear his footsteps fading down the hall, followed by a crash as he goes out a window. I turn back to my own destroyed window to find Diana standing there, leering at me, inside my actual room now. I didn’t even hear her jump.
“Fool,” she says, like that’s not completely obvious to all of us by now.
“Yeah,” I say, “you’re not exactly catching me at my best, here.”
“Do you know who they are?” she asks.
“Former Alpha,” I say, going right to the truth. I could have been a little cagey about it, but she’s saved my life twice in two days. I figure I owe her this much.
Also, head still hurts. Owch.
“Do you know why they’re here?” she asks me, still seething, like she’s resentful that she had to lurk on a rooftop and save my life. Jeez, just stay home next time. This is like the lifesaving equivalent of a woman telling you, “Fine.”
“Something something criminal something,” I say, blinking my eyes to ward off the impending coma. That happens after a concussion, right? “I dunno. Conquering the world? That’s big with the evil types, right?” She doesn’t react visibly, the contempt radiating off her at least twenty degrees cooler than the outside air now flooding my room. “Weather domination? Tickets for a live taping of The X Factor? Throw me a bone here.”
She raises a fist and I think she’s about to hit me, but she stops herself at the last moment. “You are an idiot.”
I’m just tired by this point, and I’ve just had the crap kicked out of me. “Yeah, okay.” Why fight it? Oh, right, it’s what Alpha Male would do. I just don’t have the energy. “Why’d you come save my life, then?”
This seems to enrage her further. Her nose flares, she bares her teeth, and a bonfire starts in her eyes (not literally—feel like I should say that, though, since some metas could maybe really do that). She doesn’t strike me, but I can see her knuckles whitening as she clenches her fist. She stands that way for a second, then seems to think the better of it and casually turns and jumps out to the next roof. She’s gone even as I hear the sirens of the Carabinieri coming down the street.
I look at my stuff, my little lonely suitcase of crap, and I shove all my things inside in thirty seconds flat. I’m turning to leave when I see Perugini through the massive hole in my bathroom wall. She’s got her little roller suitcase out as well, sunglasses on, and she’s ready to move. “Check out time?” she quips, but she’s not smiling.
“Something like that,” I say, but my words are kind of sprawling, like I’d like to do at the moment. I want to fall down on a non-dirty bed and sleep for a while. I blink, thinking I should probably have the doctor examine me first. Heh. Examine me, Doctor.
I sigh and thread my way down the little hallway and unlock the door. I pull the bolt and then shut the door carefully behind me, then toss the overlarge room key back through the hole in the bathroom wall. “What do you bet they charge the company card for that?” I ask her as we make for the staircase.
“You are as bad as your sister,” she says, and it sounds like she’s scolding me. Whatever. I wasn’t going to get examined in the good way anyhow. I take the lead as we get the hell out of there, and we’re already halfway down the street when the first police car pulls up in front of the hotel.
18.
I’m not quite shaking as I stroll the streets of Rome with Dr. Perugini at my side, but only because I’m holding it in for her. Nobody wants to look weak and vulnerable, right? I can usually play pretty cool when I need to. I mean, I’ve faced death more times than I can count. But I just got overpowered in a hotel room and made it out by the very skin of my teeth. It was o
nly good luck or stupidity that kept O’Niall and Benedetti from figuring out Perugini was with me and dragging her into this situation. After all, if they could track me down, they could probably figure out I had someone else along for the ride.
I have no idea where I’m going, but I pull my roller suitcase behind with a determined rattle as if I know what I’m doing. Perugini is calmer, cooler, her eyes still hidden behind the dark, oversized glasses that keep her emotions out of view. She says nothing, apparently content to let me lead us in a pointless path along the Via Nazionale. I want to scream, cry, and lose my shit in the nearest alleyway.
It’s like the night my father said goodbye all over again, and just like last time, I manage to stave off emotion and keep it together.
I should have seen it coming. Benedetti knew me when we met at Giuseppe’s shop. He called me out by name. How hard would it be to track me down after that? Stupid, Reed, stupid. Alpha male; Omega brain.
“How did he do it?” I murmur to myself. There was certainly no shortage of ways. Call every hotel in town, ask for Mr. Treston. Hack the systems, maybe? J.J. would know better than I if that was possible. Good old-fashioned bribery and investigation were also a possibility. “However they did it, they could do it again,” I say under my breath.
“So no more hotels,” Dr. Perugini says, and I snap around to look at her, slightly surprised. I have almost forgotten she was there.
“Well,” I say, “I’m not sure I love the idea of sleeping on the streets.”
“There are other places,” she says.
“Such as?”
“Friends,” she says simply.
I feel the burn of that one. “I think the closest thing to friends I had left in Rome just tried to kill me.” Not that that’s saying much. The realization hits that I don’t really have any friends anywhere. Not anymore.
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