Under the Bones

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Don’t blame yourself for this.”

  Her words stole the breath from Lou’s lungs.

  “I know it will be hard, but there is no one to blame for this.”

  Lou’s throat tightened in on itself. She hoped her face didn’t betray her.

  Lucy raised a shaking hand and touched Lou’s cheek.

  “You have so much strength, Lou-blue. You need to turn it out instead of turning it on yourself. Promise me you’ll try.”

  “I don’t know what you’re asking for.” She was fairly certain she’d turned all her abilities against the world. Every time she plucked a man from the streets, soaked her hands with his blood—wasn’t that what she was doing?

  Lucy’s hand seized her own. “Use your gift to protect, not punish. You could help so many. All I ask is that you try. Promise me you’ll try.”

  “I—” Lou began, but she didn’t finish.

  The door to Lucy’s hospital room began to slide open and Lou only caught sight of the barest hint of blue scrub pants. She tore herself from her aunt’s grip and bolted. She dove into the bathroom’s darkness and through to the other side.

  8

  Konstantine’s eyes fluttered open. Sunlight cut into his vision, whitewashing the world. When he turned his head to escape it, all the air left him. There she sat, on a sofa the color of a king’s cloak. Eight or nine guns were spread on the table before her, their shapes flashed prismatic onto the floor beneath. He watched her clean and inspect their chambers, the sunlight radiant on her skin.

  So it hadn’t been a fever dream. She had truly pulled him from Nico’s merciless grip.

  But the idea was as strange as seeing her here in full daylight, his creature of shadow.

  He rolled onto his side and groaned. Pain flashed red behind his eyelids. Sharp pricks all the way to his toes.

  “Bust another stitch and I’ll let you bleed to death,” she said, looking into the barrel of a .357. His gun, he realized. “I’m tired of stitching you up.”

  “Are you cleaning my gun for me?”

  “My gun, you mean?” It sounded like a joke, but she wasn’t smiling.

  He sat up, inspecting the gauze taped to his chest and neck. What he could see was pink, soaked through with blood. She’d left the blood crusted across his knuckles, the few good hits he’d gotten in.

  Nico.

  Konstantine had known there would be opposition to his rule. When Padre Leo had taken him into his study beneath the church and made his wishes clear, the old man had said as much himself.

  He hadn’t expected it to come from his own men, those who’d known and loved Padre as long as he had, who’d known his wishes. But they’d known Nico too. All of them boys, having the run of the church and the Florentine streets—Konstantine should have guessed what would happen if they were forced to choose sides.

  “Problems with the wife?” Lou asked. Her voice pulled him from his memories.

  Her face was placid and unreadable.

  “I don’t have a wife.” If he wanted anyone in the world to know he was available for such a union, it would be this creature. Though he couldn’t imagine marrying Louie Thorne any more than he could imagine transforming into a crow and flying into the sunset. This woman, with an arsenal laid before her, that cold and unwavering glare—his wife?

  He began laughing and instantly regretted it. His ribs throbbed as if a knife was wedged between each one.

  “A boyfriend then,” Lou said, inserting the magazine into the clean gun and picking up another.

  “Nico Agostino would sooner drown me in the Arno river than kiss me,” he said, daring to look at her again. Had he been permitted to simply gaze at her like this before?

  He supposed he hadn’t had the luxury since the night she appeared in his bed, a mantle of black hair flowing around her. But her hair wasn’t black, was it? It looked so in the moonlight, as rich as crow feathers. But in the sun, he realized it was actually a radiant brown, warm hues of red underneath. And her face wasn’t alabaster. A Michelangelo come to life. Pale, yes. But a hint of freckles across her cheeks.

  “I’m just trying to understand how one of the most powerful crime lords in the world was able to get jumped. In his own house.”

  “We grew up together, Nico and I,” he said. It was hard to speak with his chest as bruised as it was. The wounds made it tight. “As boys we had the same friends. We all entered Padre’s gang around the same time.” Francesco. Matteo. Vincenzo. Calzone. And how many more? “They helped him.”

  “No honor amongst thieves,” she said.

  Thinking of the betrayal hurt more than he expected. He tried to think of anything else.

  Anything.

  Fortunately, here was the most beautiful distraction.

  So different was his goddess by day, that if he’d seen her on the streets, would he have recognized her?

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Your boyfriend?” she asked. “I emptied my clip into his chest, but I’m pretty sure he had a vest on.”

  “You didn’t check?”

  Her cold stare met his. Ah, there was his death goddess. His Kali come to dance on his stone cold corpse. “If I’d wasted time checking on him, you’d be dead.”

  She had let a kill slide in order to scrape him off the church floor? Abandoned a thrill to save his life? A fortnight ago he would have sworn it impossible. I wonder if she herself understands the significance.

  She was still watching him, eyes narrowed. “Would you rather be dead? Because I can fix that.”

  She chambered a bullet.

  “No. I’m…surprised.”

  She put the gun on the table and twisted the cloth between her fists. “That makes two of us. Who knew the great Konstantine would call for help.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. I—” Her teeth clenched. She swallowed whatever she’d meant to say next.

  “Is that how it works?” he asked, unable to hide his curiosity. “You can feel people call to you and you simply go to them?”

  It was clear the question unnerved her.

  “I don’t come like a dog.”

  “I didn’t call you,” he said, sitting up on his elbows.

  This admission only seemed to trouble her more.

  “I didn’t call you the first night you fell into my bed either,” he added, his voice tight. Pain ricocheted through his body. Every movement hurt. It felt as if he’d been lifted and slammed against the church’s stone floor a hundred times.

  She stood from the sofa suddenly and stepped into the adjacent hall. A cabinet opened. A tin lid clattered to the floor. A tap ran, splashing water into a basin.

  She reappeared with a wet rag and a bundle of gauze.

  Instead of kneeling before him, tenderly wiping at his wounds as he desperately hoped she might, she threw the rag into his face. Its wet body hit home, blotting out the world. A heartbeat later, the plastic wrapped gauze hit his chest.

  “You’re bleeding again,” she said. “Better wipe it up or you’ll be sleeping in it.”

  She was right. The white gauze covering one of the bullet holes, one about six inches below his left nipple had blossomed red. A geranium in the afternoon sun. He carefully worked a nail under the curling tape and wiped the cloth across his bare skin.

  She scowled. “Don’t wipe it. Press.”

  He rolled his eyes up to meet hers. “I have done this before.”

  “And you’ve got ugly scars to prove it.”

  “They aren’t ugly.”

  She cocked another gun. “They’re hideous.”

  He caught a hint of a smile before she stood and walked away from him toward the kitchen. Then he seemed to see the apartment for the first time. The regal sofa the color of bruised fruit, yes. But also the large windows and mattress on the floor. Four pieces of art on the brick wall running the length of the apartment. The wood floors and an island with a gray marble top. A kitchen that looked as though it belonged in a museum
—untouched. Her apartment was only a little larger than his own.

  “Is this where you live?” he asked. He didn’t say you brought me back to your place? But he was certain the astonishment was clear enough.

  “I don’t usually perform minor surgeries in dark alleys. Even for ungrateful men who call for my help.”

  “I didn’t call you,” he insisted. Then his mind betrayed him with a pristine memory.

  If you still want to kill me, Louie, my love, you’d better come now.

  “Not exactly,” he amended.

  She stood there with a glass of water. Eyebrow raised.

  “I only thought, ‘if you want to kill me, you’ll miss your chance if you didn’t come.’”

  Her long ponytail rested over her shoulder, her face the same unreadable mask it always was. But he thought he saw something in the eyes.

  “How considerate,” she said finally, putting the glass on the table out of reach.

  “May I have a drink of water?” he asked.

  She pushed the glass toward him. He tried not to flinch at the sound of it scraping across the surface. He was fairly certain she did it to rouse him. To provoke him to anger.

  He only said, “Grazie.”

  When he opened his mouth to sip, his jaw clicked. Fresh pain welling up with another memory.

  “You hit me,” he marveled.

  “You wouldn’t stop crying.”

  “I was not crying.”

  “Maybe not with Nico. But with me, you wouldn’t shut up.” She picked up another gun from the coffee table, meeting his eyes over its barrel.

  Was this affectionate teasing? Dio mio, how he had dreamed of this. When he laid in his bedroom, surveying the starlight on his ceiling, he’d imagined what it would be like to hear her voice. To speak with her. To feel her smooth skin under his hands, her legs and body wrapped around him.

  Yet the moment was tainted by Nico’s snarling face. His promise to undo all that Padre had built. A legacy he had trusted to Konstantine with his last breath.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  “I will need your help to bring him down,” Konstantine said, setting the water glass on table.

  “Again—not a dog.”

  “And I would never treat you as such.”

  Her face pinched, her gaze sliding up and away at a memory. Was he asking for too much?

  “I’m only asking you to do what you would do anyway,” he said. “Take down a dangerous man who would hurt so many. Restore order.”

  “Is that what you do, Konstantine? Keep order in the criminal world? How is Nico any different than you?” She removed the magazine from a gun, pressing her thumb against the top bullet. His body softened at the sound of his name.

  He wanted her to say it again. And again. He wanted her to moan it.

  “Why should I care about your petty turf wars? If you kill each other, it’s less work for me.”

  “Do you really think we are all the same?” he asked her. He didn’t hide his offense. “Is there a line in the sand for you? With all the narcos and crime lords and bastard sons of thieves on one side and who then is on the other? You?”

  She leveled him with an unmoving glare.

  It occurred to him that she might be nervous. All the guns between them, the incessant unloading, cleaning, reloading—did he make her nervous? He was wounded, vulnerable. But so was she in full daylight. And he was here.

  Where was here? He sat up on his elbow and gazed out the large windows. There lay an unadulterated view of the shining river. A steamboat like something out of a Mark Twain novel, floated on the water. Tourists ambled up and down the cobbled river walk and to the right, a tall, sweeping arch, shining like a fish in the sunlight. He’d seen this structure in movies and on postcards. The Arch.

  St. Louis.

  But the part that stuck in his mind was the apartment facing a river—like his own. Were they really so similar? Or was he a romantic fool?

  For all he knew she brought men here all the time. Any man she wanted.

  Fire surged up his neck into his face. He would sever the fingers of any man who’d touched her. He’d draw his knife right across those knuckle bones, feel the blade scrape the joints, then crack.

  He released his anger with a laugh, falling back onto the pillow and covered his face with his hands.

  Forget Nico. This creature would drive him mad long before that fight came.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He groaned. “Me.”

  The bed smelled of her. God help him. He was swimming in her scent. He put the pillow over his face and breathed.

  Something poked through the pillowcase, catching the corner of his eye. His finger traced its outline. A tag? No. This was thicker, and larger. He slid his hand into the cotton casing and plucked the object free.

  A photograph came away in his hand. The edges were curling in on themselves. Perhaps for being so poorly preserved inside a pillowcase instead of in a frame where it should be.

  In the picture, a large man smiled up at him. His eyes were haloed by dark hair, the same color as Lou’s, wet and falling into his eyes. But the eyes themselves were different. She must have her mother’s eyes.

  When Konstantine registered the massive arm around Louie, a girl then even younger than when they first met, he realized who he was looking at.

  It was her father, Jack Thorne. He saw the resemblance now. But his gaze kept sliding to the girl tucked into the crook of her father’s big arm, one ear pressed to his chest, a front tooth missing.

  A child. To imagine such a creature was once a child.

  And as if by premonition, Konstantine imagined another girl this age in ten or fifteen years, looking like Louie, but with Konstantine’s green eyes.

  The photo disappeared from his hand as if by magic. And Konstantine turned in time to see Lou slip the plucked photograph into the back pocket of her cargo pants.

  “Touch my things again and I’ll dump you on Nico’s step, hog-tied with a ribbon pinned to your ass.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Because for all his jokes and banter, her father was no laughing matter. He knew this was one untouchable part of her. A bone that had been broken long ago and reset poorly. If he prodded this carelessly, she would end him. This he understood. It was like the wound he carried for his mother.

  Go watch your movie, amore di mamma. A cool hand brushing through his hair.

  This was a day for memories it seemed. A day for ghosts.

  Silence stretched between them. The light from the large windows turned orange with afternoon.

  “At least we understand each other,” she said, finally, settling onto the sofa across from him again.

  “We do?” Konstantine turned toward her. Every inch of him ached, but for now, it was enough just to look at her, watch her body move as her scent cocooned him.

  “If anyone is going to kill you, Konstantine,” she said with a delicious grin. “It’s going to be me.”

  9

  Nico crossed the plaza enshrining the Duomo and headed south, toward Konstantine’s apartment. The crisp September air slid along his shaved scalp, prickling his skin. The scent of food wafting through restaurant windows and petrol burning from engines surrounded him.

  Florence.

  He’d been born and raised in this ancient city, before his traitorous father exiled him. But it had changed in the ten years since he’d left.

  He loved Florence. With its cobblestoned town center and statues as old as civilization itself. Loved the stone walls, bridges, and ancient churches. Loved the river cutting through it as pigeons the color of sheet rock perched on buildings. Loved how one could turn a corner and suddenly be staring at a fountain built centuries before.

  It was an old city built on the corpses of men. Bones fertilized the earth beneath his feet. Kingdoms rose, flourished, and fell here. Some of those kings had even been banished, like himself, only to return and dance on the corpses of their enemies.

>   And Nico would dance.

  He thought of his father. Of his last night in this city before he’d been shackled and thrown into the back of a truck.

  He’d been seized from his own bed. Gagged, shackled, and dragged through the street. He rode in the back of a squat car, bouncing on the cobblestones in the early morning mist. When the brakes squealed at the water’s edge, for a terrifying moment, he thought they were hefting him into the river. Surely the shackles would have pulled him down, pinning him to the bottom of the Arno’s dark floor.

  He was certain it was a rival gang. Enemies that had found his home in the night and had moved against him.

  But when the tailgate dropped, and he saw his own father—he knew the truth.

  He was to be the sacrificial lamb.

  And why? Because his father’s friend Giovanni lost a daughter. Bella had been caught in the crossfire of a petty bust, taking a bullet from Nico’s own gun, and now he would be thrown to the dogs for it. As if it was meant as a personal offense.

  What story did his father tell himself? An exiled child in exchange for a dead one? That he was saving Nico’s life from Giovanni’s retribution? He probably painted the betrayal as mercy.

  Lies.

  The truth was Nico had always been ambitious. He wanted the Ravengers for himself. He thought he’d hidden this desire to usurp his father well enough. But looking into those pale eyes in the morning mist, that unforgiving face in the light—he knew he’d done a poor job of it.

  His father, the great Padre, or Father Leo to every street rat in the city, had the power to placate Giovanni.

  A thousand men in the city would’ve answered his every beck and call. If only he’d raised his hand or voice to rally them. Instead, he’d used the first transgression brought against Nico as an excuse to be rid of him. If it had been Konstantine who’d slain the girl, there would’ve been no hesitation. Padre would’ve moved Heaven and Earth for his bright boy.