Arcadia Burns

RETRIBUTION


THEY GAGGED ROSA, BOUND her hands and feet, and threw her into the back of a delivery van. When the metal door was bolted behind her, she lay there alone in the dark, doing her best to rouse the reptile within her.

It didn’t work.

She tried to do it by concentrating hard, but that was hopeless in her present situation. Then by dwelling on her fury with Michele. No chance.

The van began to move uphill. Rosa rolled over the floor, groaning, and collided with the rear door. The noise of the nighttime streets grew louder. They were climbing the ramp of an underground garage, and now they joined the traffic. She heard the muffled voices of two men in the front seat but couldn’t make out the words.

Now she was lying on her side, with her knees drawn up, her tights torn, her hands tied behind her back, and her feet painfully lashed together. The cables cut into her skin and wouldn’t work looser by even a fraction of an inch. There was a rubber ball in her mouth, held there by a strap buckled tightly behind her head. With the tip of her tongue, she could feel someone else’s tooth marks in it. She wasn’t the first to go through this ordeal.

The floor of the van was sandy. God knows what they usually carried around in it. When the tires bumped over manhole covers and potholes, she was tossed around, grazing her skin. Once, the back of her head hit the side wall of the van, and for a moment she saw swirling lights in the darkness.

The more desperately she tried to force herself to shift shape, the more impossible it seemed. She felt not a rising chill but waves of heat as her fear got the upper hand. Her clothes were drenched in sweat; her hair stuck to her forehead.

They hadn’t even given her an injection, like Cesare had that time when he’d wanted to make sure she didn’t get away from him in her snake form. Michele Carnevare didn’t need second sight to guess at her lack of experience. She had known for only four months what she was, and what she had inherited. An Arcadian first shifted shape on the verge of adulthood, seldom before the age of seventeen. Merely by counting on his fingers, Michele could tell that the hormonal turmoil of adolescence had only recently given way to something much worse.

All the same—it ought to be possible. Several times, she’d seen Alessandro change into a panther at will. Yet something or other kept her from doing it. No self-control, probably.

And then she knew what it was. She literally couldn’t change her spots, like the proverbial leopard. While Alessandro was able to put his own interests to the back of his mind when he had to do something he didn’t like, to achieve his one great aim, she couldn’t do the same. For her, changing shape at will was about as realistic an idea as jumping across the East River. She was always herself, and anyone could see what she was thinking from a mile away. The whole show she put on of being head of her clan was a farce. She didn’t want it; she wasn’t able to do it.

It was the same with changing into the snake. The harder she tried to force the transformation, the more useless it was. Her body wasn’t interested in the least—it just wanted to crouch there in a heap and wait for the danger to pass.

When Salvatore Pantaleone, the former capo dei capi, had attacked her at the top of the Sicilian ravine, she had turned into a snake within seconds. Maybe if Michele or one of the others went for her…But could she wait that long? And wouldn’t Michele foresee that very thing? He was no fool—he might even be counting on her transformation.

He had something planned for her, and it seemed to be only part of a larger scheme. That was why they were in such a hurry. Everything was almost ready, the security man had said. Ready for what? They hadn’t been expecting Rosa, but there was obviously room for her, too, in whatever net they had cast.

Bitter gall rose in her throat. In disgust, she swallowed it down. With the rubber ball in her mouth, she’d choke on her own vomit.

She had shifted shape twice when the lives of others were at stake. The first time out of love for Alessandro, in a cellar near the Gibellina monument while Cesare’s henchmen were coming to kill him. And the second time beside her dying sister, when her hatred for Pantaleone blotted out everything else.

But how about her own life? Would the snake show up to save itself?

She had to lie there and wait. The men in the front seat were laughing. The sound of the honking horn and the engine noise came in through the vents of the van, and once there was music, like a gigantic carnival. Maybe they were in Times Square.

Now and then, when they stopped, Rosa kicked both feet against the side wall of the van with all her might. Again and again, until her tights were hanging around her calves in scraps and the skin underneath wasn’t in much better shape. But nothing she did in here would attract any attention outside. This was Manhattan. No one was going to notice a clattering sound in a delivery van driving by.

In her helplessness, she bit on the rubber ball until her jaws ached. Her pulse was racing, but the Lamia in her was not impressed. It might have been putting Rosa to the test.

Her ability to change shape could have been a gift. Instead it just confirmed what Rosa already knew. She was different. Not like ordinary people, not like the other Arcadians. Her head was simply too messed up.

She stretched out full length on her back, swallowed sour saliva, breathed more slowly, and waited to see what would happen.

At last the van stopped, and this time she heard the doors of the driver’s cab being opened. More voices joined those of the first two men. They were expected.

It was bitterly cold in the back of the van.

Footsteps crunched in the snow outside. The street noises had died down a good deal. They weren’t in the middle of city traffic anymore. Maybe this was someone’s yard.

When the rear door was opened, she saw the men’s outlines, with gnarled branches behind them. Leafless trees, made visible in the darkness by the red back lights of the van. A park. Maybe the park.

One of the men climbed into the back while another leveled a shotgun at her. They knew about it. They were making doubly sure.

“Same as before,” said the man in the van. “Only a girl.”

Her stapler was in her jacket back in the club, and they had taken her cell phone away from her.

She heard Michele’s voice outside. “Then give her the injection now.”

She screamed in spite of the rubber ball when the man rolled her roughly over on her stomach, raised her skirt, and dug a needle into one buttock. Then they were holding her. The hands of strange men on her skin. She had no memory of the events of sixteen months ago, but her body recognized the situation at once. She began kicking and struggling, hit the man on the chin with her elbow, defended herself as best she could.

It made no difference. He hauled her out into the open air and set her on her feet in the snow. Someone undid the strap at the back of her head and took the ball out of her mouth.

“A*sholes!” she spat.

There were four men, including Michele Carnevare and the bouncer, obviously now promoted to bodyguard. Behind them in the snow stood a black jeep with mirrored windows. Both vehicles had stopped beside a wide pathway through the park, near empty benches and overflowing trash cans. There was light behind a nearby avenue of trees, as if searchlights had been set up there. Indistinct voices came from that direction; figures were moving around. Was there any point in screaming to draw attention to herself? But Michele would never have made her get out in this spot if the people over there hadn’t been in his pay.

“What do you want with me?” she asked him, ignoring the other three.

“And what do you want with Valerie?” he replied. “I wasn’t lying when I said she’d disappeared. I’d very much like to know where she is myself.”

“So?”

“Did she have anything to do with the murders?”

“What murders?”

He gave her face a resounding slap. Her head flew to one side, her cheek burning. When she looked at him again, all she saw was his dimples. Alessandro’s dimples.

“What murders?” she asked again.

This time it was the bouncer who moved to hit her. Michele held his arm back. “That’ll do.”

She laughed at the bald-headed man. “Go f*ck yourself.” She could taste blood in her mouth, but she held his angry gaze until Michele sent him back to the jeep. Only then did he turn to her again.

“The serum will keep you from shifting shape for the next quarter of an hour. You know how it works, I assume. It’s very effective. Tano got the stuff—you knew him as well, right? One hears this and that. For instance, that you’re to blame for his death.”

Did he expect a reply to that? She said nothing.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” he went on. “Or any other Alcantara. This was to be just a party, a bit of fun in the snow for members of the family.”

The lights beyond the trees. The shadowy movements. She began to guess what was going on here. She felt sick to her stomach, and everything about her hurt—her face, her bruised legs; even her butt felt as if the needle were still in her flesh.

“You’re going to hunt human beings? Here in Central Park?” By now she had recognized the nocturnal skyline above the trees; in the distance to the left, she thought she saw the roof of the Dakota building. West Drive couldn’t be far away. They were probably somewhere near Seventy-Fifth or Seventy-Sixth Street, maybe a little farther south.

“The murders,” he repeated. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about them. Are you trying to say that you just happen to be here in New York by chance? Now, of all times? Does Alessandro know you’re here?”

“Who’s been murdered?” she asked. “Some of the Carnevares?”

Once again he took a menacing step toward her, and this time she saw that he could barely restrain himself. He had enviable powers of self-control, but below the surface he was seething.

“My brother Carmine is dead. Two of my cousins, Tony and Lucio, were gunned down in the street when they were taking their kids to school. A third cousin has a bullet in the back of his neck, and no one can say how much longer he’ll live. His name is Gino.” His eyes were focused intently on hers now, as if he were trying to read the truth there.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said.

He took a deep breath, and only when he retreated again did she realize that he had picked up the scent of her sweating terror. He didn’t believe a word of what she said, but obviously he was in no mood to interrogate her. She could sense the excitement that had hold of him now. Sheer bloodlust.

“Take her over to the others,” he ordered. “And give her another injection before we begin.”