Mortal Sins (Conspiracy of Angels short story)

by Michelle Belanger

  Two squat, broad guys in shirtsleeves and suspenders stood on either side of an old white-haired matron. She had eyes black as a starless sky and a smile that shamed the Mona Lisa. The guy on the left was unmistakably Benny. The other guy looked like he could have been his brother. A plaque under the picture read, “The Boys with Momma Tuscanetti.”

  I had a name. Names were power. That would come in handy once I got the hell out of there.

  4

  The spirit was waiting for me on the other side.

  Anchor points of magic flared all around us, crafted along the foundation of the family restaurant. The place was old enough that the walls had a solid existence on this side of things, as well. The wards that were worked into them blazed against my vision, weaving lines of color and light alien to the Shadowside’s perpetual gray. I could feel the webwork closing in. Whoever had built them knew what they were doing. The wards were subtle—almost invisible—right up until they were activated.

  The ghost stood a few paces from me, shock registering on her features.

  “Didn’t know I could do that, did you?” I asked.

  She shook her head mutely, backing away. The transition to this side always tore off my cowl. My wings left blue-white streamers of power in the air behind me. Subtlety wasn’t my strong suit—especially not when I stood in my element, a step off from the world of the living.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said quietly. Seemed like I ended up saying that a lot. All the books these days depicted angels as beings both beautiful and benign. I knew better. If there was such a thing as God—and I really couldn’t say either way—we weren’t his children. We were his hit squad, and trust me, we looked the part.

  The ghost nodded slowly, then opened her mouth. Words were still lost to her. Her dusky-hued features creased with frustration as she struggled to speak.

  A tortured violin sound shrieked through the Shadowside—the lines of the wards as they tightened. Wires of power started cutting against me.

  “I don’t have much time here,” I told her. The bitter trauma of her final moments was stamped into the space around us, lending added weight to the strangling wards. Straining against the psychic imprint, the spirit’s appearance flickered between how she wanted to remember herself and the things she sought desperately to forget. Urgently, I said, “Don’t hide it. Let me see.”

  With a pained expression, she surrendered to the replay. Echoes of past events stuttered like a stop-motion film bled dry of color. There was no sound.

  I bore witness as the black woman—I still didn’t know her name—appeared near the entrance of the restaurant. She was smiling like she expected to meet a friend. Another person approached her—close to her height, broad and stumpy. I’d have put money on it being Benny, but it wasn’t a spirit exactly, simply an echo, so the features remained indistinct.

  The replay flickered forward. An argument.

  He ripped off her glove then jerked something from her finger. He threw the object—it had to be a ring—violently toward the back of the restaurant. She reached after it, started crying.

  The images jumped again and the stout man grappled with her. The ghost’s mouth opened in a silent scream. She struggled. He threw her against a wall, pinning her. His thick-fingered hands closed round her throat. Then a burst of something eclipsed the whole scene—those black stars of power connected with Benny’s magic.

  In their wake, the image stuttered forward. The woman was on the floor now, crumpled in the corner where I’d first felt the Crossing. Her eyes rolled wildly, her hat askew. She was gasping, pleading. Her attacker loomed over her, viciously kicking. Her body rocked with every blow. That dark power surged again, and everything went black.

  Shaking with futile rage, I hunched in the empty echo of the restaurant with the wards still singing around me.

  “I am so sorry,” I whispered.

  The spirit faded back into view, silently pleading. She mouthed a message over and over again. I couldn’t make it out. The wards crackled and my head buzzed unpleasantly. If I didn’t leave soon, I wasn’t going to get past them, and I didn’t like the idea of fighting Benny and the girl when I had no idea what I was up against.

  Then I spotted a chink in the magical webwork—it was just through the door to the kitchen. The door had no substance on this side—most didn’t—so I slipped right past it. The narrow opening on the other side looked like part of an old exit that must have gotten bricked over in the flesh-and-blood world. It lay at the very heart of the Crossing. Residual images of drywall and some heavy piece of kitchen equipment flickered in and out of existence in front of it—they hadn’t been in place long enough to leave lasting impressions.

  Still, I was going to have to time things just right. When I could see the obstacles, they were real enough to do damage.

  The spirit trailed behind me, still weeping.

  “I’ll come back for you,” I promised.

  The wards stuttered across the narrow sliver of an opening. As I stepped toward it, something on the ground caught my eye. It pulsed like a tiny fallen star, gold and gleaming. Caught between the new drywall and the stainless-steel monolith shoved up against it. I had to wait for their Shadowside echoes to flicker out of existence. I bent and retrieved it.

  It was the ring.

  I shouldn’t have been able to pick it up. On the Shadowside, most objects were merely after-images—faded memories trapped beyond their time. But the ring pulsed against my palm, its light still gleaming. This was a relic. It had meant so much to her in the moment that she died, some of her essence had burned into it. It held existence on both sides. I could carry it across with me.

  Gripping the precious object, I ducked swiftly through the breach in the wards. The covered door led not to an exit but a closet. The added bricks and drywall had sealed it into a tomb. A different set of workings were etched around the space—subtle lines of power wrought to hide and obscure. Someone had wanted to forget about this cramped little cupboard. A second later, I realized why.

  Bones. It held her bones, curled like an infant in the claustrophobic space. I held a hand up to the echo of the immured skeleton. With the clash of magic between the warding spells and hiding spells, there was still a way through. It was tight, but I could make it if I hurried.

  I had to walk right through the dead woman’s remains. That shuddersome contact finally gave her a voice. Her words resonated to the core of me.

  Tell him I didn’t leave.

  I wanted to ask more, but there was no time. I slipped under the searing cords of power weaving around the perimeter of the building, the bite of the magic scathing my wings. With a sharp electric crackle, the little brick restaurant sealed behind me. The spirit didn’t manifest again.

  Moving a few paces off, I stepped from the Shadowside and pocketed the ring.

  * * *

  Lil lounged on one of the fancy leather chairs near the fountain back at the Renaissance. I stabbed a finger in her direction as I strode through the dwindling crowd.

  “You walked out on me,” I said.

  “You were being an idiot,” she responded coolly. I flung myself into the seat next to her, the leather of my jacket creaking.

  “Doesn’t it bother you—what they did to her?”

  “Zack, please,” she sighed. “At least pretend that you know me.” Her beautiful features were cold and without pity.

  “So you’re not going to help,” I said, scowling and pushing my fingers through my wind-tousled hair.

  A look harsh as lightning flashed through Lil’s eyes.

  “Are you kidding? That bastard called me sweet cheeks,” she growled. “I’ve made men eat their testicles for less.”

  I covered myself reflexively. There was no chance she was joking.

  “Right then. So I can count on you at least for violence,” I observed. Steering the conversation away from such cringeworthy topics as vengeful castration, I continued. “They shut the place up tight with ward
s, and Benny the bartender was throwing more than punches. You got any clue what we’re dealing with?”

  “Magic? Old Italian family?” she mused, her thundercloud eyes tracing the lines of gilding across the ceiling as she considered it. “It’s a bloodline of witches. Strega, possibly Streghoneri.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  “Italian magic doesn’t fuck around, but Streghoneri spellwork gets pretty dark. Curses, the Evil Eye – things like that,” she replied.

  “You think it’s dark?” I marveled. “That says a lot, coming from you. What else?” She stretched against the chair, watching the water bubble in the fountain. Conversations rose and fell around us, their dull, cycling hum punctuated by staccato barks of laughter.

  Lil was looking everywhere but at me.

  “Spill it,” I demanded.

  Coyly, she met my eyes from beneath a nest of heavy lashes. “You say that like I’m hiding something.”

  “The sky’s still blue, so yeah—you’re hiding something.” Studying her expression further, I ventured, “Or avoiding it. And avoidance—that’s not really like you.”

  She looked away, chewing her cheeks. The gesture drew her full red lips into something resembling a lush rosebud. The sight inspired a memory—wholly inappropriate to the situation—of her kissing me. She’d done it as a control tactic months ago, and I kind of hated her for it, but that didn’t stop the languorous tingle that shivered from my mouth to points further south.

  Guess we’d recovered from the threat of castration.

  “Maybe you should go talk to Sal,” she said after a while.

  “Oh, fuck that,” I snapped, glad to have something to get angry about. Anger helped push the unwanted feelings away.

  “I don’t like the idea either,” she admitted, “but if Benny-boy remembers you in connection with the Porrellos, Sal probably knows the rest of the story.”

  “No. Just no,” I insisted. “Every ounce of information I get from Sal costs me at least a pound of flesh.”

  “There’s always Remy,” Lil suggested.

  “I can’t believe you’re telling me to go to the Nephilim—any of them.”

  “Your mess, your people,” she spat back. “You got a better idea?”

  I started to snarl that they weren’t my people. I was Anakim—not Nephilim—and my tribe had been devastated, the majority imprisoned over the past two hundred years. But that was old news, and arguing history was pointless. I shoved my fists in my pockets and jammed my knuckle into the ring. Lil had me so beside myself, I’d almost forgotten about it.

  Pulling out the relic, I turned it round and round in the light cast by the chandeliers. A single diamond glittered in a setting of white gold. There was writing inside the band.

  Wrapped around your finger — Dom

  “Yeah. I’ve got a better idea,” I said, starting to smile.

  “What do you have there?” Lil asked. She held her hand out for it—then made a face when I wouldn’t hand it over.

  “My problem, remember?” I taunted, dangling the ring just out of her reach.

  “Fine,” she sniffed. “If you don’t want my input.” She leaned back in her chair, making a show of languidly draping herself over the rich upholstery.

  “Don’t know about input, but I could use your smartphone,” I allowed.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What for?”

  “Browser,” I answered. “I have a name. In fact, I have a bunch of names tangled up with all this—Dom, Benny, Porrello, Tuscanetti. I know the city. I have a range of dates. I might not remember shit about that deal Aradia’s people cut with Sal, but give me access to the Internet and I don’t have to rely on memory. I’ll find what I’m looking for.”

  For a minute, I thought she was going to tell me to piss off. Then she dug in her purse and handed me her phone.

  The sensible thing would have been to retire to the relative quiet of Lil’s hotel room. She even offered. Again I declined. The lobby was still busy, but not as bad as earlier. Not that it mattered. When I had research to focus on, everything else became background noise.

  I started with something easy—the Statler, Tuscanetti, and Joey Porrello. I had a feeling things would fan out from there, maybe even lead me to the name of the ghost. Online there were records for everything, if you knew where to look. Lil’s smartphone was ridiculously tiny in my big hands and I turned it sideways so the keys weren’t so close together. She craned her neck to peer over my shoulder as I tapped rapidly on the screen.

  “And you don’t have a cell phone—why?” she inquired, shoving a strand of russet hair back from her face.

  “I have one. It’s in my office,” I answered as I scrolled through an article on the Mayfield Road Gang, the Porrello brothers, and the 1928 mafia summit at the old Statler hotel. There was a Salvatore connected with all that, but when I followed the link, he looked nothing like the person who was now my sister.

  “Your office,” Lil scoffed. “That kind of defeats the purpose of the phone being mobile, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged, leaning my shoulder away from her. “They don’t travel so well through the Shadowside. I got tired of ending up with overpriced paperweights.”

  Lil made a monosyllabic non-comment. After following another useless link, I muttered some monosyllables of my own, all of them four letters in length.

  “Thought you were some sort of research wizard,” Lil teased. I looked up from the screen long enough to glare at her.

  “You don’t happen to know the last name Sal was using back when she was Salvatore, do you?” I asked.

  After a pause, she answered, “Try DiAngelis.”

  “Seriously?”

  Lil gave me a look.

  “That’s subtle as a toothache,” I said.

  “Seems to run in your family,” she quipped.

  I refused to dignify that with a response, no matter how right she was. Fixing my attention on the glimmering screen, I entered “Salvatore DiAngelis” into the string of names I had growing in the search engine, along with “Statler Hotel,” “Cleveland Cosa Nostra,” “Aradia’s,” and “Tuscanetti.” That led me somewhere interesting.

  It wasn’t an .edu site, like most of the articles that had been popping up. The top search result was a personal blog. From the graphics, it verged closer to conspiracy theory than hard scholarship.

  “Under the Underworld,” I read. “The Occult Mafia in Cleveland.” Little gifs showed lurid scenes edited together from The Sopranos and True Blood. The blog’s title sounded like a bad made-for-TV movie, but most of its information was right on the money. The author had gone down the rabbit hole of crazy and come out the other side. One flashing headline asked, “Are Immortals Running the Crime in Cleveland?”

  I nearly choked.

  “What?” Lil demanded.

  I grunted a response that wasn’t, and continued digging through the site.

  There was an entry for Salvatore DiAngelis with a grainy picture clipped from an old copy of the defunct Cleveland Press. Sal in a suit with short, slicked hair, parted to one side. My only memories of Sal featured her current identity as a woman, so the image was a little jarring. A thin caterpillar of a mustache crawled her upper lip. She was blonde as ever, and how she had passed herself off as Italian should have been a bigger mystery than her immortality. The black-and-white photo was placed side by side with another newspaper clipping—this time from the seventies.

  Neither picture was exactly high quality, but Sal’s features were unmistakable and, of course, they hadn’t aged. Below Sal was another familiar face repeated across the decades—Benito Tuscanetti.

  “Gotcha, Benny,” I murmured.

  Benito appeared a couple of times with another Tuscanetti—Dominick. I recognized him from the family photo tacked to the wall in Aradia’s. That had to be the Dom who had put his name on the ring. The dead woman’s story was starting to fall into place, all the pieces blazing in my brain. As sick as it
made me, her color was the key.

  “I think I got it,” I told Lil.

  “What is all this?” she demanded. She tore the phone from my hands, brows knitting as she scrolled through the blogger’s collection of impossible photos. But I didn’t need the articles anymore. My thoughts ticked rapidly through all the connections, leaping from chain to chain.

  “So we’ve got a family of Strega—witches—but way beyond Wicca 101, right?” I asked, not waiting for a reply. “They’re specifically Italian, so, a bloodline, like you said. Family is important. There are two brothers, Benito and Dominick—otherwise known as Benny and Dom. Dom inscribed the ring, by the way,” I added, waggling it at her. Lil didn’t so much as glance up from the blog.

  “This can’t be possible,” she breathed.

  “No, but it is,” I insisted, rising to my feet. “Don’t you see? It makes perfect sense. One of the brothers falls in love—probably in the late forties from the clothes the ghost is wearing. Only it’s not something approved by the family,” I continued. “The girl’s the wrong color—a huge no-no in those days and worse in a bloodline that’s hung up on lineage. Ol’ Benny finds out and tries to put a stop to it. Contacts the girl, asks her to meet with him.”

  Pacing excitedly, I felt the rightness of the story as it unfolded.

  “She’s probably thrilled,” I said. “She dresses up, thinks she’s finally won their approval, but the meeting doesn’t go as planned. Maybe Benny asks her to move far away and forget about Dominick. Maybe he just asks her to dump him. Either way, she won’t do it. So Benny kills her and uses magic to hide it. And Dominick—he never knows she didn’t walk out on him. No wonder she’s so upset,” I finished. “Even dead, she’s still in love. Half her soul’s tied to this ring.”

  I lofted it in triumph.

  “Mother’s Tears, Zack, take a breath already.” Lil pulled away from me. “And I’m not talking about your little murder mystery, I’m talking about this website.” She jammed a finger at the phone as if threats of violence might convince it to cough up its secrets. “Where the hell did he get these things?”