In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (26 page)

“Do you expect me to talk, Poop-flinger?” I ask, finally coining my own little name for his cro-mag-style ape behavior.

He blinks at me, maybe astonished that I’m bothering to talk crap to him when he’s so sure I’m about to get smothered.

I just stare back and let him drag me closer, my hand firmly behind my back until the last possible second, my James Bond gadget ready in hand. I rip it out and squint my eyes as shut as they can get before I trip the trigger. The world goes blazing white even through my lids, and his screams are so loud they probably just woke every corpse in the Vatican Necropolis. Or maybe Emperor Hadrian, if he’d still been in his old tomb behind me.

The light fades, and I blink the stars out of my vision as I open my eyes. Anselmo has let loose of me because he’s figured out a more pressing need for his hands, and that’s to scratch at his own eyelids as if doing it long enough will somehow restore his sight. Good luck, pal.

A string of Italian swear words rips through the air around me, and I maintain a healthy distance between myself and the Italian Stallion’s ass (another nickname for him, these things are coming to me like crazy now) as he staggers about blindly. “What the—!” he screams in pain again. “What have you done to me?” he asks once he finds his power of cogent speech again.

“Overwhelmed your optic nerves, probably,” I say coolly then creep around behind him. I cut his legs out from underneath him and he hits the ground and begins rolling about wildly. I take a few steps back and let him, not really sure what to do now. “You know how they say you shouldn’t look directly into the sun? I sort of delivered a bottled version of that experience directly to your retinas. Time to bind you in darkness, I think.”

I stare down at the small light that fills the center of my palm. I’m not sure how James Bond it is, but it’s a pretty cool little device overall. Pretty well guaranteed to blind a human being, but a meta? Well, we’ll heal from it eventually.

I make a move to restrain him with the cuffs I have on the other side of my belt, but he’s flailing madly. He’s strong, too, strong enough that it’d cause me plenty of pain to tangle with him. I keep my distance and circle like he’s a dog on the end of a chain, looking for an opening.

He blinks at me, and I realize that he’s seeing me. He blinks again, those bleary eyes still focused on me, and the thought
Oh, shit
fills my mind yet again. How can he heal this damned fast?

Right. Top of the power scale. Seriously, though? Why couldn’t I have been facing off with something on the low end of the power scale, like a meta with the power to slightly alter the curvature of light? Something useless.

He strikes out at me, and the sound of gunshots fills the air. I see a few hit him in the face, doing little more than distracting him. He turns his head to look, and so do I. Diana is sitting in the branches of a nearby tree, one of her Uzis pointed down at him.

I stare up at her. “Lorenzo?” I ask.

“He’s experiencing some crippling pains in his arms and legs at the moment,” she says and fires off another burst that hits Anselmo unerringly in the face.

He actually growls at her like the dog he is. “You think the two of you can stop me, with your little flashlight,” he spits at me, “and your little cap gun? I am invincible. I am a god!”

Because of the way he’s got his back to the river Tiber, Diana and I see it and he doesn’t. He’s ranting again, stomping, and behind him, a steady funnel of water is rising out of the river, guided by hands I can’t even see. It’s a column of water, thousands of gallons, and it stretches skyward like a temple of old rising over the city. It makes it to a height of almost a hundred feet before it tips and comes for him, perfectly steered to land on his head and swirl around him like it’s constrained by some sort of aquarium.

I see him thrashing inside the makeshift prison as the water surrounds him. Anselmo claws at his throat, proving that even invincible, egomaniacal would-be gods have weaknesses.

I see Father Emmanuel striding forward, his hands raised high, fury and satisfaction etched on his features. “I baptize you with water,” he says, “but the one who follows me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Anselmo fights his way through the water, and it’s a sight to behold. He breaks through the wall and staggers to the ground, vomiting forth water and bile as he does so. I silently congratulate myself on making him vomit before the priest even got here. Diana shoots him again for good measure, but I’m not sure he notices.

I make a move to cuff him, but he dodges me and staggers back toward the Castel. “You think you going to take me?” he asks. He thumps his chest, but he’s walking backward, retreating the whole time. “You think you are man enough to stop me?”

“I think I already did,” I say, and I keep coming. He’s backing up furiously, his eyes floating from me to Diana to Father Emmanuel as we all advance on him. I feel like I could go about one round with a declawed elderly cat at the moment, but I won’t let him know that. “Put your hands on your head and get on the ground like a good boy.”

He screams fury at me and runs, but not in the direction I expect. He turns tail and sprints along the empty stones in front of the Castel Sant’Angelo.

“Shit,” I say, and run after him, but I’m lagging right out of the gate. He hauls ass past the enormous jutting turret of the Castel and along the wall. Diana and Emmanuel are right with me, which makes me turn my head to look at Diana. She should be way out in front. She’s hesitating, and I can’t say I blame her. She’s playing like she’s part of a team, for once. “He’s gonna get away,” I say, Captain Obvious to the end.

He turns south in front of the Castel, then stops, doing a comical dance as he considers which way to go. I realize he’s probably agonizing over the decision to cross the bridge if he goes south over the Tiber, because it will pretty much put him at Father Emmanuel’s mercy. He goes east instead, sprinting along the siege wall that protects the Castel.

We lose time steering around the other turret, and by the time we clear it, he’s almost a dot in the distance. He stops a car and throws somebody out, and he’s gone in a squeal of tires. I curse and pull out my phone. J.J. is already there.

“Dude, you kicked his ass!” J.J. says. “Good job, way to go!”

“Not good enough,” I say, and my breathing is ragged. “He’s on the run. He’s gonna get away.”

“Relax, bro,” J.J. says. “Like you said, you got him on the run.”

“I have to finish this,” I say, staring as I realize I am completely out of ways to beat this bastard. My entire body hurts, and I’ve just watched my culprit disappear. This is why Sienna kills her bad guys, I swear. I sag, falling to my knees, unable to stand any longer.

“It’s gonna be okay,” J.J. says, and there's sound on the earphone behind him that I can't make out, low voices. “It’s all gonna be okay now.” I can hear sirens blaring in the distance now, coming closer, but somehow, I just don’t know how what he’s saying can logically be right.

“Reed!” Dr. Perugini comes sprinting across the stones to my side. She drops to a knee and runs her fingers over my face, and I realize for the first time I’m bleeding. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I say, “but the bad guy got away.”

“Only one of them,” Father Emmanuel says, looking down at me. “Fintan is restrained.”

“So is Lorenzo,” Diana says, though she doesn’t look that happy about it. I know she wishes he were dead.

“And that leaves Anselmo,” I say, staring at the corner he disappeared around. I feel Isabella’s hands searching me for wounds, looking for injuries, but the only thing that matters is that the bad guy—my bad guy—got away.

My back is sweating as the train rattles along, rolling through the Italian countryside. It’s a few hours after the battle of Rome (it’s my dramatic name for what happened; leave it be) and Isabella is at my side in the first-class car. The Italians appear to like it just a little hot, and the leather is sticking to me. The cabin attendant is moving around, bustling to the next compartment, and when he leaves, I lean over to her to say something.

“What?” she asks before I can.

“I was just thinking about what you said earlier,” I say. “About how you’d tell me you loved me if—”

“You were going into battle,” she says.

“Well, yes,” I say. “But I had said that I know you think you’re using me—”

She frowns. “Yes, yes. All this was said.” I get the sense she’s not comfortable with emotional discussions all of a sudden. Which is kinda funny.

“So I finally figured out how to describe what we’ve got going on here,” I say, with a little hint of pride. I found the adjective. That’s gotta be worth something, right? She looks at me with that one eyebrow cocked up in the air, like she can’t decide if she’s going to have to call me an idiot or not. “It’s not love. It’s convenience.” I deliver it like it’s a solemn proclamation of brilliance.

She stares at me for a moment, inscrutable, then shrugs. “That sounds about right.”

I blink a little. “Uh. Good.” That wasn’t quite the answer I was hoping for. I was kind of hoping she’d refute it, say that, no, it’s something new with rich possibilities for—

“You are making that face,” she says, not looking at me, eyes on the magazine I just realize is in her lap as she waves a hand vaguely at me. In my defense, she is across the aisle, and I’ve been trying to compose this clever verbal trap to get her to admit to—well, something. Anything.

“You were a hell of a lot more than convenient to me,” I say, exasperation leaking out. “You were …” And I realize that I’ve played this wrong, and I go coy. Coy and smiling. “… Awesome. You were awesome. And hot.” She looks up at me, and I see the irritation. Now she’s hot in more ways than one. “Very hot?” I ask, playing like I’m trying to appease her. “Very hot and awesome?” I pretend to think for a second more. “Which also describes how it felt—”

“Oh, enough,” she says, making an exasperated noise of her own as she tosses down her magazine. “Sometimes you are too expressive.”

“Like how Muppet Yoda was actually more expressive than CGI Yoda,” I say, nodding.

“This is not the most attractive side of you,” she says, shaking her head. “No, not like a yodeler.” I don’t correct her, because this is not the moment to instruct the gorgeous Italian on SF/F geek blasphemy. “You are a little like a girl in this.”

“Hey,” I say, frowning. “If I’m a little more expressive, is that such a bad thing? I mean, I could be all buttoned up and one-hundred-percent testosterone-fueled battering ram like Anselmo, if you’d prefer—”

“Uck,” she says. “Fine, convenience. Have it your way.” She gestures in a way that stirs her lustrous black hair, and she picks up her magazine again. Another hilltop Italian village drifts by the window, and I have to wonder how many of those this country has. The answer? At least one more.

We make it through three more tunnels before she turns to me again. “Can you not just be happy with … whatever this is for now?” Like we didn’t just leave the conversation in the middle.

“I want more,” I say, and I see her flinch a little, her lips pursing, dark eyes studying the magazine even though I know she’s not reading it any more. “Because I kinda know you now. I know enough to know … I want more of you, Isabella.”

She gives me a slightly harried look and puts the magazine aside. “I will … think about it,” she says. And for now, that’s enough for me.

Anselmo stares out over the countryside, stroking his face and taking slugs of brandy. It runs hot, like his blood, and his mind swirls with anger and thoughts of his revenge.

The bottle is empty, and he tosses it over the ledge with a fury. He ignores the body of Niccolo, splattered upon the concrete where he left it. Others are scattered around the house where he found them. One of them betrayed him, surely. Niccolo brought him the messages from the others, filled with insults. Even Don George had sent one. So polite, yet the most insulting of all of them. Anselmo takes up another bottle and swigs directly from it. This one is wine, and he will finish it soon. He will drink the day away, lick his wounds as a man does, and then, tomorrow—

Treston will pay. Oh, yes. Anselmo will see him bleed, the little shit. Him, his little bitch, his little friends—Diana and the priest. Anselmo will see them all dead, them and the other
capos
, starting with Don George.

In the silence of the house, Anselmo hears a footstep. But this is impossible; the house is empty. He swivels, and drops the bottle.

He needs no time to lick his wounds.

The revenge can begin now.

“Hi, there, Anselmo,” Treston says, smirking, standing at the edge of his pool. “You and I … we’ve got unfinished business.”

I stare at him, his back to that marvelous vista of Florence at night. The sun is going down, and the sky is lit all orange, fiery hues turning it magnificent colors. Anselmo looks pissed, and I’m hardly surprised. He’s an easy guy to read, after all, pretty much a one-track/one-emotion mind.

“Unfinished … business?” Anselmo manages to slur out. There are enough shattered bottles around him to tell me he’s more than three sheets to the wind. “You have ruined … everything … in my business.” He gestures to one of the nearest corpses. “There is only one response to this insult.”

“Insecure dick wagging?” I ask helpfully. He stares in disbelief. “Just a guess, based on your responses up to this point. I mean, guy,” I wave a hand up and down to encompass the whole of him, “you really put the Italia in genitalia, if you know what I mean—”

He bellows and charges at me, and a shock of water from the pool hits him a moment later, knocking him back and drenching him. A half dozen staccato shots pop him in the face as well and he staggers toward the edge of the patio, toward the edge. He blinks away the surprise and looks back. “You think this will kill me, this fall?”

“I doubt it,” I say, not budging.

He waves a finger at Father Emmanuel. “You think this … Poseidon? You think he can stop me?”