Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel (22 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

WELCOME TO VIANNA

Doors line the hallway, all labelled, all locked: Cleaning supplies, electrical, heating, linen storage, water access… Sounds like a hotel to me. But what kind of hotel has a dungeon? The hallway turns and continues towards a door. This door isn’t labelled. I open it a crack and peek out. The coast is clear, quiet.

Dimmed sconces and shimmering chandeliers cast an orange ambience down a long hall. The carpeted floor is classically patterned, black and beige; the walls are lined with rich mahogany wainscoting and gold and cream floral wallpaper. I’ve stepped out from a dull cement dungeon into what looks like a castle. The door to the service hall locks behind me as I escape the cement labyrinth. No choice now but to keep moving forward.

I keep my body close to the wall, but I’m still a sitting duck with nowhere to run or hide if someone were to appear. I only pass one door—an impressive double door with golden embellishments. The door is labelled ‘stable access.’ It’s locked. I might be able to pick it, but there might be a better option ahead. The total silence ends as I approach an opening in the wall; the final opening before the hall reaches a dead-end a few feet later.

From the opening, slow, meticulous footsteps resonate and echo, as if whoever is around the corner is walking in a cavernous space—though, they never become louder or quieter, as if they’re walking in place. I reach the gap and peek around the corner—

A massive foyer, complete with thick marble pillars that rise all the way up to the room’s five-story-high fresco ceiling. Where the hell am I? Tall, stained-glass windows separate enormous, impressive oil paintings. The windows are dark; it’s night. The man pacing in the center of the giant room is Carmine Pesconi. He’s alone. Crossing the room unnoticed is impossible. I’ll have to go back and pick the stable lock. I turn around.

“Where are you going?” Carmine says. I freeze and my gut turns. I don’t want to look back. I don’t want to see his eyes—his venomous, soul-piercing eyes. I was so close. I’d made it so far.

“I’m going to see what’s taking so long,” a feminine voice says.

The rigid anxiety takes a moment to leave my body. I look back. Carmine wasn’t alone in the vast room; his wife had been sitting in the armchair she is now stepping away from.

“Just give them a moment,” Carmine says, continuing to pace the room. He grabs a water bottle from a table and downs half of it in a single swig. The temperature of my blood rises ten degrees as my mind revisits every time he scorned me, snatching water bottles from under my desk at the Ilium Inn.

“We’ve given them plenty of moments.” His wife continues her way across the room, towards one of its many doors.

“Just wait,” Carmine says. He slams the water bottle back down on the table and grabs his wife by the arm. She spins around and slaps Carmine on the face. After a few seconds of shock, Carmine’s chin sinks down to his chest, his manhood slapped right out of him. “Don’t hit me, Porsha.” He keeps his chin down, speaking in a low, sheepish tone. I did not see that coming. Carmine didn’t strike me as the ‘pussy-whipped’ type.

“Don’t grab me.” Porsha says. “And don’t you treat me like I got you into this mess.”

“I’m sorry. Please just wait up here.” Sorry? Did I just hear Carmine Pesconi say the word
sorry
?

“Why are you protecting her? It hurts me to see you protecting the little slut.” I have a strong suspicion that I’m the topic of their argument. I’m the little slut.

“I’m not protecting her.”

She steps in closer to her husband. “Bullshit, you aren’t.” Her words seem to break him down, make him smaller.

He looks away, unable to look Porsha in the eyes. His face is red. He wants to scream but somehow he keeps his composure—and takes everything she throws at him. “I’m not protecting her. I was about to kill her, then you called me back up.”

She laughs in his face. “Yeah, right. You were going to go through with it.”

“Yes, I was,” says Carmine, his voice loud now. His words echo throughout the resounding room.

“I mean,
you
. Not your little cronies, but
you
.”

“I was, as a matter of fact, about to do it myself. Not that it makes a difference one way or another.” He continues pacing around the center of the room. “Besides,” he continues, “all of my
‘cronies’
were up here with you.” Carmine stops. His wife is silent. “Wait a minute,” he says, turning towards me. I duck behind the wall. Did he see me? I moved too quickly—there’s no way. I peek around the corner. He’s facing away again—false alarm.

“What?” Porsha says coolly, reclaiming her seat in the armchair. She doesn’t look up at her husband, keeping her eyes down on her hands as if she’s inspecting her fingernails.

“That’s why you called me up.” He points his long, accusatory finger. His voice is higher than usual, beaming with illumination.

“What are you on about, now?”

“Don’t give me that shit. You know what I’m on about.”

“No. I don’t. Enlighten me.” She keeps her gaze fixed on her fingernails.

He marches over to his wife and looks down on her. “That’s what this is about? You’re insecure? You think I’m sleeping with that cunt?”

“I never said anything like that. Though, I do find it suspicious.” Carmine is right—that is what she thinks. And she isn’t completely wrong. Had she not called him back up, he probably would have succeeded.

“Find
what
suspicious?” His face is dark red now. He keeps his breaths slow and controlled.

“You put an awful lot of time and energy into tracking the
cunt
down.” Porsha turns her hand, checking every single meticulously manicured fingernail for imperfections, of which she is well aware there are none.

Carmine waits for the temptation to explode to pass before responding. “Because she stole from us, Porsha. She stole from you.” The volume of his voice rises with every word. “And it wouldn’t bode too well for our reputation if I let some little bitch steal our things and sell them to a couple of prostitutes for a handful of human money.” He takes a few seconds to catch his breath, to let some of the crimson drain from his steaming face. He shrugs his shoulders and adjusts his suit jacket. “Speaking of my reputation, I would appreciate it if you would stop commanding me around like a dog in front of my men. It’s humiliating.”

“I’ll stop commanding you around like a dog when you stop acting like one.”

He turns away and resumes pacing, brushing the insult off. “Where are they?” he says, his voice a low growl once again.

Porsha rolls her eyes and slumps her head into her hand. “I never want to step foot in that human city again,” she says.

“Finally something we can agree on,” says Carmine, his face finally returning to a healthy shade of red.

Porsha stands up from her seat. “I’m sick of travelling. I want to stay in Vianna. I want to go to the opera, and the ballet, like we used to. Remember the ballet?” She takes a few steps and then breaks into a pirouette. “I miss those days.”

“Soon enough,” Carmine says, still pacing with his brooding eyes on the floor.

“When?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

“Why can’t we just drop this whole thing and stay here in Vianna?”

“You know why.” Carmine’s voice is low now, an almost incomprehensible muttering. His hands are restless, sometimes in his pockets, sometimes fiddling with small objects, sometimes fiddling with nothing at all.

Porsha collapses her shoulders and swings her head in a long, dramatic motion. “I’m not sure I do, anymore, Carmine.”

“If we drop this, then the gypsies will think they can walk all over us, just like the Ilium girl. We didn’t get where we are now by letting everyone walk all over us.”

“And where are we now? Chasing a bunch of dirty philistines across the country.” She slumps back down into her armchair. “Because they stole a few territs—”

“—They stole more than a few territs.” Apparently, Freddie and I have a lot more in common than I thought.

“Right… Territs we stole from other therians. From them,” Porsha says.

Carmine stops and turns to his wife again. “Watch your mouth, woman. My family came to this country with nothing. Nothing. My father scrubbed fucking bathroom floors to earn those territs. We were never given a handout.” Once again, his voice becomes louder with each word. “Therians laughed in my father’s face, and made him walk in the gutters on his way home from work. He did what he had to do to survive, to provide for his family, so we wouldn’t have to go through the same thing.” He stops to catch his breath. “Do you have any idea what I went through, when the other kids at school found out my father was a toilet cleaner?”

“I’m not saying you never struggled, sweetheart,” Porsha says with a smile.

“We did what we had to do. And you could be a little more grateful for what you have.” As Carmine turns away from his wife, the door opens, and two of his henchmen come running in.

“The girl’s gone,” says one of the men. His companion bends over to catch his breath. Both men are red, panting as if they’ve been running up and down those six stories since I crawled into that purifier. I cower further behind the wall.

Eyes wide, Porsha springs to her feet. Carmine is slow to respond. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Her cell’s empty. Eddie is cuffed to the bars; Jimmy is working on getting him out.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Carmine says. I can feel his words rumbling in the wall I now lean against.

“She’s gone. The girl’s gone. We checked all of the floors. We don’t know where she went.”

“It doesn’t make sense, sir,” says the second henchman, finally upright. “I was stationed at the only entrance to the cellar the whole time. There’s no way she snuck past me. It’s impossible.”

“For the love of God,” Porsha says as she turns away from the tired men.

“There’s only one door into the cellar, and you were at it the whole time.” Carmine says, looking down at his feet.