In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (22 page)

“And we get our heads cut off when the power swings the other way,” Vicenzo says, shaking his head. “What is this foolishness you speak?”

“The world has changed,” Anselmo says, taking the slow walk toward the end of the table. “The world has changed and most people have not noticed. The governments of the world pay lip service to this idea of change, of metahumans, but that is all. They pretend that the low numbers will spare them, even as they plot to hoard their help for themselves. But the balance of power has shifted, my friends, and I think it is time to drive that point home for our own purposes.”

Vicenzo has the look of a man bewildered by an idiot. “Let us assume for a moment that you are right,” he says. “We have all read about these people, these wondrous people. But you are a fool if you think they can stand against the Carabinieri, or the army—”

Anselmo pulls a pistol out of his jacket and the table falls silent. He slides it down the table and it comes to rest perfectly in front of Vicenzo. “The Carabinieri bring guns and bullets. The army brings more of the same.”

“And these things will kill these metahumans you speak of,” Vicenzo says, nodding at the pistol in front of him. “They will kill them dead, even if you assembled an army of these powerful men—”

“Perhaps some,” Anselmo says, and he wears a muted smile of his own. “But not all.” He nods at the pistol. “Shoot me, Vicenzo.”

Vicenzo’s smile is plastic, cold, disbelieving. “You are a fool, Anselmo.”

“Perhaps that as well,” Anselmo says, grinning. “But shoot me anyway. In the face, in the head, in the chest if your gentle, womanly heart prefers—” There is a round of nervous laughter around the table.

Vicenzo needs little provocation. He pulls the pistol and jerks the trigger. His aim is true, and Anselmo feels a slap to the right breast. He shrugs it off, no more than a light shove. Vicenzo fires again, then again, then again.

Anselmo rips the buttons off his new shirt, pulls open the front and displays his bronzed chest. “Care to try again?” he asks, taunting Vicenzo.

Five shots are his answer, and not one of them does anything but hit him and fall onto the concrete.

Anselmo holds his hands open, catching the last of the bullets as it falls. He holds it up, flat-headed at the tip from impact. “Between all of us, we have paid more in bribes than this country is worth. We pay to grease the wheels. We pay to keep ourselves hidden, to keep ourselves from troubles, to allow the rackets and extortion to continue as unimpeded by the system as we can manage.” He walks the length of the table, then turns back to look at all of them. “I am sick of working around their system. I want to own the system, to make it work for me.” He holds up the bullet. “And the way to that goal is power. To seize it, to make it ours, to work the levers for our own profit.”

“How do you do that?” Vicenzo’s calm defiance is all gone now. His mouth hangs slightly open, and when Anselmo’s eyes fall upon him, the man is cowed enough to avert his eyes.

“Fear,” Anselmo says, and he knows he has them all now by the balls. “We make them fear us, and then run them in the direction of our choosing.” He squeezes his hand closed, as though he is placing it around a neck. “We seize the power, corrupt what we must, and take control of the rest.” He pushes his hands together so tightly that a fly could not survive between them. “We kill the old, we crush all who oppose us—make them fear us—and then we take it all for ourselves.”

“Look,” I say into the silence that has fallen after Diana and Isabella’s grim pronouncements, “I realize we’re no Avengers, but maybe we can do some good.”

“What does this have to do with Diana Rigg?” Diana asks, her face a mask of confusion.

“Who is Diana Rigg?” I ask. She gives me a furious look, like I’ve just insulted her.

“I am sympathetic to your concerns,” Father Emmanuel says, “but I just don’t see what the three of us can do against these men. Even discounting their powers, just thinking of how many followers with guns they have …” He shrugs. “It seems like to much for us to handle.”

“Maybe it is,” I say quickly. “Maybe it is. And maybe I’m the last person who ought to be putting this together. I mean, I’m no Captain America—”

“I don’t understand. You are from America, yes?” Diana asks, looking at me, brow furrowed.

“Okay, so, you didn’t see the
Avengers
movie,” I say, and let my gaze slide to Father Emmanuel. “Did you—?” I cut myself off midway through the question. “Of course not. Never mind.”

Father Emmanuel looks a little insulted. “I saw it in Mombasa. It was very enjoyable. I like tales of good versus evil.”

“Huh,” I say. “That’ll teach me to assume.” I search for my angle of reasoning again and get back on track. “I know this looks impossible. And I know that the idea of the three of us—” Isabella coughs, and I can see her ire out of the corner of my eye without even turning, “four of us,” I amend without missing a beat, “are—on paper, anyway—out of our league. Outmatched.” I look from Father Emmanuel to Diana. “I’ve been fighting those kinds of fights for a little while now, though, and Anselmo is a piker compared to the last guy I went up against who was threatening conquest.”

“That your sister went up against, you mean,” Diana says. She leans in and lowers her voice. “I don’t mean to offend you, but your little winds are nothing compared to the power of an unleashed succubus. If she were here, I could see this being a fight. But with you, me and a priest?” She shakes her head and turns to Emmanuel. “Can you even fight?”

He thinks about this for a second. “I can fight. I will not kill, though. That is where I draw the line. There is a difference between protecting God’s flock and committing murder.”

“Yes,” she says acidly, “and it’s exactly that difference that will get you killed in a fight with these men.” She slides back from the table, ready to leave.

“Wait,” I say, and she does. “Like I said, I know we’re up against … a lot.”

“And we don’t even know their plan,” she adds.

“And we don’t know their plan,” I agree. “But I think we all know that their plan, carried out, means the worst kind of change.” I look her in the eye, and I don’t spare the gravitas, trying desperately to convey the seriousness of the situation. “No one else is going to stop Anselmo if we don’t. Do you believe that?”

She looks at me and sighs. “I believe that. But I do not believe we can stop them.”

“I believe we have the obligation to at least try,” I say, not looking away from her. “But if you want to just walk away and let the consequences fall wherever they may … I understand that. And I guess I can respect your desire to live more than to make a stand.” I nod at her. “I wish you the best of luck, but for me—I can’t stand the sting of thinking myself a coward, which is exactly what I’d think every day if I walked away from this without at least trying to stop Anselmo.”

The lines across her brow soften. “You would hold your manhood cheap if you didn’t fight.”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “Uh … not quite how I’d put it, but … yeah. I guess.”

“It’s from Shakespeare,” Father Emmanuel says. “The St. Crispin’s Day speech.” He nods once, sharply. “I don’t know if we can stop them, but I am with you to at least try. I don’t think I could consider myself a good man if I didn’t at least try.”

“I am with you,” Isabella says, and I can see by the look in her eyes that she is.

“We are all of us fools,” Diana says quietly, staring down at the table with that thousand yard stare. “I should have died at the end of the last age of our kind; I have seen too much change.” She looks back up at me, straight in the eye. “If Anselmo wants to harken us back to the old world with him at our head, like that bastard Zeus, then I will do my utmost to help you stop him.” She sighed. “Even if it means joining my fate to all of yours.” She looks up. “Where do we start?”

“So how does this go down?” I ask as the four of us walk along the Via della Conciliazione, the road that stretches between the Vatican and the Castel Sant’Angelo. I can see St. Peter’s down the way. I’m spitballing, trying to figure this thing out before it hits us all like a runaway bad metaphor. There’s quiet in the night air, a sense of foreboding that hangs over this little corner of the city.

“If they truly mean to assassinate the premier,” Diana says, pensive, “they could hit him anywhere along the path, from here to his residence.”

I chew on that for a second. “Let’s assume he’s going high profile. That means somewhere in here, right?”

“There will be a full ceremony as he meets the Pope,” Father Emmanuel says helpfully. “This is a formal meeting of heads of state, since this is a new Prime Minister.”

“Any chance the Pope’s guards will take this threat seriously if you bring it to them?” I ask. I’m grasping at straws here.

“I suppose it is possible,” Emmanuel says with a shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know how they’ll respond, but I can try.”

“And you’re willing to do that now?” I ask. “Even if it means speaking up?”

He almost bows his head. “I cannot live with myself if I do not. I will try.”

“Well, that’s something,” I say as we keep going. A few cafés are open here and there, but not many. I glance behind us, and realize that somewhere back there is the Castel Sant’Angelo, that mighty drum of a fortress, though it’s hidden behind the buildings from here. “So we’ve got a long avenue here …”

“Which will be shut down by the Carabinieri for a special occasion such as this,” Dr. Perugini chimes in. She’s moving along at a brisk clip with the rest of us. The air is a little chill now that the sun is down. “It will be closed to vehicle traffic for a papal event.”

“So the premier comes driving up for his formal occasion,” I say, musing my way through it as we approach St. Peter’s Square. The basilica is lit up ahead of us. “Fintan’s involved for a reason, so maybe they snuff him right as he’s arriving?”

“Makes sense,” Diana says, and she’s got a tight expression, green eyes looking surprisingly lively. “There will be plenty of cameras present for that, and Anselmo is cracked enough to want it seen.”

“So how do we stop them?” I ask, thinking it through as I speak. “Maybe a zone defense, or man-to-man—”

“This is English you are speaking?” Diana looks at me with a sharp frown.

“Sorry,” I say. “We take them one-on-one.”

“Bad odds against Anselmo,” Diana says.

“I think I can handle him,” I say. She cocks an eyebrow at me questioningly. “I got a toy from home that should take care of him in a pinch. Which leaves us with Lorenzo and Fintan.”

“What is Fintan?” Father Emmanuel asks.

“Firbolg,” I say. “They get into this kind of battle fury, kind of an adrenaline-fueled rage that makes them really hard to stop. They can do a lot of damage like that—smash cars to pieces, shred people—it’s pretty messy.”

“Are they invulnerable?” Emmanuel asks.

“No,” I say, “but they can take a lot more punishment when they’re in the fury. It’s like they don’t know that they’re taking damage.”

“I can handle him,” Father Emmanuel says, nodding with a certainty I find oddly comforting. “And he is my task in any case.”

I think about questioning this, but let it drop. “Okay. The priest has got the rage-roidal monster, and I’ve got Anselmo.” I swivel my head took at Diana, who seems focused on the basilica. “You think you can handle Lorenzo and his mighty hurricanes?”

She doesn’t say anything at first, staring straight ahead. “I remember when this was the Circus of Nero.” She waves a hand toward the basilica and the massive obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s Square. “That used to sit in the middle of the Circus, and was moved—I don’t even remember when.” She looks disgusted. “Change. Everything changes, always, and I watch as it does.” She looks at me, and I see something stirring behind those eyes, some sense of rage that’s looking for an outlet. “I will handle your Aeolus problem for you.”

I stare back at her. “He’s been pretty good at dodging your arrows so far. You sure you’re up for it?”

I see the first hints of a cold satisfaction take root in those emerald irises of hers. “Yes. Though I think perhaps it’s come to the point where I will change with the times as well.” She stalks away from us without another word, down the street toward the Castel, and does not even look back.

“Uh, okay?” I say to her retreating back. “We’ll see you here, morning after tomorrow, bright and early and—” She gives me a wave to signal her concord, and that’s about it. She dodges down a side street and is gone a moment later.

“What do you think she meant by that?” Father Emmanuel asks.

“Hell if I know,” I say without thinking, and I catch a disappointed look from the priest. “Uh, sorry. What are you going to do?”

“Use the power that God has given me,” he says. He bows his head to me, then heads off toward the Vatican without another word.

“Everybody’s gotta be all vague and mysterious,” I say to Dr. Perugini, who is the only one left with me. She’s standing at my side, and I feel her fingers interlace with mine. It feels … good. “Not sure how well this team-up is going to go,” I confess, and as I look at her I can see the reservations that she immediately puts aside.

“It will go fine,” she says, soothing.

I speak without thinking, just looking for reassurance. “Really?” I breathe out an aura of hope.

She half-shrugs, and the uncertainty breaks through. “It kind of has to,” she says, and leads me back down the Via della Conciliazione to catch a cab back to our hotel. As we walk in silence, I come to the conclusion that she’s pretty much right.

Lorenzo comes hobbling out of the house around midnight. Anselmo is still staring out across the view below. He never tires of it, not really. It is a perpetual reminder of the power he wields, and that is nothing if not exciting to him.

“
Capo
,” Lorenzo says. The boy is favoring his arm. He wears a pained expression, one suitable for a whipped dog, perhaps.

Anselmo acknowledges him with a lifted drink and little else, and the boy comes to stand beside him. The table is now empty, the others long since gone back to their hotels or their homes. There will come an hour for revelry, and it is soon.