Blood of the Lamb (18 page)

Giulio Aventino, his partner and senior, was probably back at the station by now, and livid that the
maresciallo
had given Raffaele permission to do this surveillance. If Giulio had been there when the request had come in he’d have fought it, though the
maresciallo
would’ve overruled him and Raffaele would be here anyway. That was politics, not piety, Raffaele knew: an uncomplicated favor like this for the Vatican was the sort the Carabinieri were only too happy to grant, so that when someday the police needed to, for example, follow a suspect into San Pietro, the Curia would respond in kind. Everyone scratched one another’s backs, that was the Italian way, and Giulio Aventino was no different except when it came to the Church.

The senior detective wasn’t just some kind of blasé unbeliever to whom the Church meant nothing. In Raffaele’s view Giulio’s soul seemed infused with the bitter cynicism of a heartbroken lover. Giulio Aventino had been devout once, Raffaele was sure of it. Now, his religion was his work. As his sergeant, Raffaele applied himself to learning from a senior officer of long experience, obvious skill, and high reputation. As a man, younger but much stronger in devotion to the Holy Mother Church, he was grateful for his own faith in the face of his partner’s gloom.

Here now, what was this? Raffaele, as he’d been trained to do, stayed slouched in his chair, didn’t move, as though nothing was on his mind but his mid-afternoon
macchiato
. He reached for his phone, looking for all the world like a
figlio di papà
calling his girlfriend for a romantic chat. What he was, though, was a cop calling his uncle, the Cardinal, for whom the Carabinieri were doing this favor. Raffaele didn’t know why he’d been asked to watch this house, and no one had come out; but he thought Lorenzo Cardinal Cossa might be interested to know that a priest had just arrived, knocked, and was standing on the threshold talking to the black-haired woman whose photo, marking her as Raffaele’s surveillance target, the Cardinal had sent.

23

Standing on the cobblestones as the echo of his knock died away, it was all Thomas Kelly could do not to turn and run. He swallowed, bile burning his throat. The idea that he’d soon once again be in the presence of those . . . those
creatures,
made his stomach curdle and his skin crawl.

He still wasn’t sure he believed any of it: what he’d seen, what Lorenzo had told him. He’d given up hope that this was a simple nightmare but he was clinging to a new idea, that it was some sort of drug-induced hallucination. There’d been an accident. One of these terrible Rome drivers—some young kid on a
motorino
had almost run him down just moments ago, it was something like that, he was in a hospital all drugged up and his own subconscious had created this insane fantasy out of the depths of who-knows-where. The theory comforted him, but the problem with it was that while he waited for consciousness to return and the world to become right again, he had to take some sort of action. Although in this delusion Lorenzo Cossa had been deceiving and betraying Thomas for fifteen years, the fate threatening the Cardinal now was so horrifying that, though if any of this were true Lorenzo certainly wouldn’t deserve his help, Thomas found himself unable to just abandon him.
After all,
Thomas thought,
if you don’t act heroically in your own hallucination, what can you hope from yourself in real life?
Somewhere, somehow, Thomas was sure this all had to do with faith. The need to save someone whose treachery cut so deeply must be a test of faith. Thomas didn’t know why his subconscious demanded this of him, but he wasn’t about to let himself down.

And in a dark, far corner of his mind was a tiny stabbing pain he was trying desperately to ignore. But like a sliver of glass in his shoe, though minute it was agonizing and unremitting: the unspeakable possibility that he was wide awake and it was all true. In which case Lorenzo deserved his help even less, and needed it much more.

The door opened. Thomas stepped back involuntarily at the sight of Livia Pietro. “Don’t touch me!”

“No, Father,” she said quietly. “Of course not.” After a moment she moved back into the foyer, holding the door wide. “Will you come in?”

Thomas found he couldn’t cross the threshold, could not enter that house. They stood in silence, regarding each other. Pietro’s green eyes seemed kind, even concerned, but Thomas was not going to be taken in again. “You’re a monster,” he rasped.

She shook her head. “I’m a person. Like you, but different from you.”

A person? This creature was claiming to exist in the image of the Lord? He felt the calm that his new theory had brought him begin to slip away. “No!” he barked. “A creature with no soul.” Pietro just gazed at him sadly; for some reason that pitying look enraged him more. “You sold your soul for a promise of eternal life. But what you’ve bought isn’t that. It’s never-ending corruption. Everlasting decay!” He could feel the heat in his skin, could hear his voice rising, he knew he sounded wild but he couldn’t stop himself. “Your bargain is worthless. Worthless! Your false prophet will abandon you. The End of Days will come, even for you, and—”

Pietro held up her hand. Thomas’s cheeks burned; he trembled with rage. But looking at her pale face, her long dark hair—staring into her ocean-green eyes—he felt his flood of accusatory words abate. What was the point? The choice Livia Pietro and the others like her had made couldn’t be undone. The sin they’d committed couldn’t be confessed, expiated, forgiven. His knotted shoulders fell. Helplessness and sorrow flooded through him where, moments before, righteous anger had blazed.

“Father,” Pietro said. “You left here, and I understand. What you’re saying is wrong, but many think as you do. But you’ve come back. Why?”

No, he couldn’t do this. Without the heat of his fury he felt cold and clammy, and his breathing caught just standing here in front of her. He couldn’t go into that house.
Blood in the vase.

“Father Kelly? Are you all right?”

“No! How could I be all right? Your . . . your ‘people’ . . .”

“Father.” Now she spoke decisively, commandingly. “Come inside. Or leave.”

Lord,
Thomas prayed.
Father, help me.
He stood on the threshold another moment, a few more seconds in the cobblestoned, scooter-buzzed, sunny morning, and then he went in.

24

Livia led Thomas Kelly in silence up to Spencer’s study. In the doorway, the priest stopped and peered apprehensively into the room.

“Where is he?”

“I asked Spencer to give us some time alone.”

Livia sensed his relief, but he straightened and said, “I have no reason to be alone with you.”

“Would you rather Spencer were here? Come in and sit down. Please.”

She sat first, to appear as unthreatening as she could manage. Thomas Kelly chose a chair in the farthest corner and barely perched on it. He continued to look around uneasily.

“Spencer removed the vase, too,” she said. “Why have you come back?”

He snapped his eyes to her like a nervous cat. After a moment: “Cardinal Cossa. The Vatican Librarian.”

“And Archivist. I know who he is. What about him?”

“I got a call. Some of your . . . ‘people’ have abducted him.”

“What?” She sat forward. As she did, he drew back.

“They’ll make him one of you.” The priest swallowed, then set his jaw and went on. “Unless I bring them the Concordat.”

“I don’t understand,” Livia said. “This is— Who are they?”

“I have no idea. They said to come back here and help you. They’ll contact me. Once I have the Concordat I have to give it to them.”

Once
you
have it?
Livia thought, but only said, “When did this happen?”

“I just got the call. Not fifteen minutes ago, that’s how long it took me to get here.” Kelly took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweating face. “The abduction must have happened within the hour. I was with him until then. The Cardinal. He told me— He told me—”

“He told you about the Concordat. And about us. The Noantri.”

Kelly nodded, looking sick.

“Father,” she said gently, “what you’ve been told—”

“Your people promised to raise Martin the Fifth to the papacy,” he blurted. “If he agreed to stop exterminating you as the Church had always done. If he allowed you to exist and proliferate and defile the world!”

“No, that—”

“And worse: Martin agreed not only to permit you to continue, but to provide you with blood from Catholic hospitals for your filthy rites. Innocent blood!”

“Father,” she said firmly. “As far as they go, your facts are correct, but the motivations you ascribe are wrong. As is your characterization of my people. And you’re leaving out a great deal. I suppose you haven’t been told the whole truth.”

“What I was told—”

“What you were told is what most of the Unchanged believe.”

“‘Unchanged’?”

“People like you. Please. Wait here a moment. There’s something I have to do, urgently. But I want very much to discuss this with you. To tell you—”

“What? Your side? Life from the demon’s point of view?”

She stood and saw him recoil. “The news you’ve brought is troubling. I must discuss it with . . . the people whose instructions I’m to carry out. I won’t be long.”

“And what am I supposed to do? Just sit here?”

“I’m asking you to wait for me. But you’re not a prisoner here. You can stay or go.”

She walked past him out the study door, leaving him pale and staring.

Livia found Spencer where he’d said he’d be, in the drawing room on the next floor. “Well?” Spencer looked up, slipping a bookmark into the volume in his hands. “How is he, your young priest? Has he returned to drive stakes into our hearts? Has he brought his pistol and his silver bullets?”

“He’s frightened half to death. You really didn’t need to break out the Grand Guignol, Spencer.”

“Of course I did. He wasn’t believing a word you were calmly saying. He thought you and I were both mad. Two batty people sharing a
folie à deux
.”

“I could have convinced him.”

“Let me remind you that although you and I have all the time in the world, your priest grows older every minute. By the time your gentle rationality persuaded him, he’d have been too doddering to be of any use. Furthermore, unless I’m wrong, ageless though we may be, we still have a deadline to meet.”

Livia dropped into a chair. “You’re right. And things just got worse.” She told Spencer the news Father Kelly had brought.

Spencer lifted his eyebrows. “An interesting development.”

“You’re certainly calm about it.”

“The abduction of a cardinal is not an event that disquiets me.”

“Under these circumstances? This cardinal? It’s intensely disquieting, I think.” She took out her cell phone. “I have to tell the Conclave. They may not know.” She pressed the number and lifted her phone to her ear.

After a moment:
“Salve.”
Her call, as she expected, was answered by Filippo Croce, the Pontifex’s personal secretary. This man, sober, trustworthy, and devoted, had been the channel for communications to the Conclave since the media for contacting that august body had been quill pen and parchment.

“Salve. Sum Livia Pietro. Quid agis?”
Automatically, as her people had for centuries, Livia inquired into the state of the Community before introducing her own affairs.

“Hic nobis omnibus bene est. Quomodo auxilium vobis dare possumus?”
All is well here,
came the response.
How may we be of service?

The brief ritual completed, Livia switched to Italian and asked to speak to the Pontifex, or, failing that, to Rosa Cartelli. She wasn’t asked her mission; clearly she’d been given a priority with the Conclave that, flattering as it was, she’d have preferred not to need. She was assured the Pontifex would speak with her in short order. A brief silence, then the music of Carlo Gesualdo. As with the art hung at the Conclave offices—the paintings of artists such as Ivan Nikitin and Romualdo Locatelli—the music played, even over the phone, was the work of Noantri. Livia had always been uncomfortable with this kind of self-conscious Noantri pride; to her it bordered on separatism. As an art historian, she argued that good art was good and bad art bad, regardless of who produced it. If the paintings of Noantri artists could hang in museums and galleries around the world, as, unbeknownst to Unchanged curators and collectors, they indeed did, then Noantri could have on their walls the work of the best of their own people, and equally, the best of the Unchanged. And better music than Gesualdo’s could pour from the Conclave’s office phone. She rolled her eyes at Spencer. “I’m on hold.”