The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (28 page)

I sat there in the evening light, my head against his chest.
We could sit like this for hours
, I thought.
You don’t just want to sit
, I said to myself.
But the waiting is fun, too
.

An old man crunched past us on the gravel, smiling at us as he went. “What are you thinking?” Bernardo murmured against my head.

“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to explain.

He chuckled, then fell silent again, and we listened together to the trees, the passersby, the traffic, the sighing air.

That’s when I felt the double pulse.

Bernardo’s heart has a certain sound. It’s firm, even when it’s pounding with hope, or desire, or whatever he felt that night. It’s steady even when it is too fast. Now there was another rhythm, darting in and out between his heartbeats, irregular, fearsome, hurried. It swam upstream through his heartbeat, the way I remembered from before.

My sweat turned icy.

Bernardo’s arms tightened around me, too tight.

I lifted my head just in time to see my boyfriend’s spirit vanish. He widened his eyes in surprise and terror. I had never seen him afraid. Then he began to recede—whatever made him Bernardo pulled back into the dark, beyond the irises of his eyes. And someone else came. I knew who it was.

“Not going anywhere, now,” he whispered. I could hear the straining of Bernardo’s vocal cords as they were forced to speak. “Not going anywhere. At last, at last.”

For a moment, I couldn’t move. He had struck home. There was no better way he could break me than by trapping me like this, in Bernardo’s arms. I felt rage surge up inside me, thawing my frozen muscles. I tried to pull away, even though I knew it would be useless. I had to do something before my breath was squeezed out of me. I got our chests apart long enough to hear the bell around my neck trembling and ringing. My demon grimaced.

“Such a little thing,” he hissed, “such a little thing to keep us apart for so long.”

He reached for the bell, and in that split second, I felt a brief, paralyzing stab of elation. It shocked me.
He’s coming back and I will have all the power again
, said a voice in my mind.
And I will save Bernardo
, said another.
What on earth are you thinking?
I cried out to them in my mind.

It didn’t matter. My demon reached for the bell again, but then drew back, baring Bernardo’s teeth like a vampire in some
film. He tried again and again to touch it, his other arm still holding me in a bruising grip. My bell kept ringing bravely. I would have been proud of it if I hadn’t been so terrified—and so angry.

Then he grinned at the bell and told it, “You don’t matter. Because I have her at last. I took the road into her heart, yes.”

He looked down at me, Bernardo’s face distorted, his jaw elongated, his brow rippling as my demon continued to make himself at home in his flesh.
Oh, Santa Maria. Oh, God
.

“Listen to me,
alcione
, listen to me,” he rasped, his voice gravelly and cold. I could hear him again as if he were inside my skull. “I have waited so long. I looked for you, and you were not there, your mouth was stopped with dust. But you’ve come back, so there’s hope for me now. You’ve come back. You must listen. You must!”

His harsh voice had a pleading note in it. I thought of the poem he’d recited to me. I thought, too, of Lisetta Maria Umberti’s exorcism. He sounded different: his voice was the same, but his words, his way of addressing me, were different.

The scent of cinnamon started to rise from Bernardo’s body.

What had my demon called me?
Alcione?
What did that mean? It sounded Italian, but I couldn’t remember hearing it, or reading it, before.

Only a few months ago, I would have gone to pieces, or died of fright. I still couldn’t think clearly; I had no idea what to do, but I knew I had some time. He needed me to listen to him.

My whole body shook with terror and anger. He could feel it.

“I can’t breathe,” I managed. “You’re holding me so tight. I can’t breathe.”

“That is because I cannot let you go,” he whispered. “I did before, and you did not come away with me. You went down into the dark, and the world ended.”

My vision was fading, and I knew I was about to faint.

“If I can’t breathe, I can’t listen,” I gasped.

It was a good point. If I hadn’t been so terrified and furious I would have laughed, to hear him pause, thinking. He made Bernardo’s arms slacken just slightly. I struggled again, and he tightened them once more, the smell of cinnamon growing stronger. He began to whisper in my ear again, the hideous double pulse beating beneath his words.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he hissed. I couldn’t see his face now, but I could see Bernardo’s shoulder, tight, muscles leaping with effort.

Oh, Bernardo
, caro,
I never meant to do this to you! This wasn’t your danger; it was
mine
!

When my demon tightened his grip yet again, I knew I would hear that sound of grinding muscle and bone in my dreams. Or one day, I would hear it in my own bones, my own muscles, and then I would know I was going to die.

One of Bernardo’s hands found the lump in my jacket pocket. Even on a date, I never went without it; Bernardo never asked, or even seemed to notice.

“What is this?” my demon whispered. “Ah …”

With quick, shuddering fingers, he pulled out my case. I could just see the gilded letters on the side, shining faintly between his fingers.

“How I hate these,” he reflected, so softly I could hardly hear him.

Smoke began to curl from under his fingers. I smelled the old leather, beginning to burn.

“How dare you!” I whispered back. “Haven’t you taken enough?”

“These humble things cannot abate my anger,” he told me simply.

I struggled to get my hands free and reach my case.

He held it away from me, keeping me in his crushing grip and laughing—Bernardo’s laugh turned upside down. I don’t know if I’d ever hated my demon more.
You are
mine, I fumed.
I will settle you, I will take care of this matter on my own
. I felt a shadow rising behind me, the shadow of the bear. I made one more flailing grab at my case.

Incredibly, I caught it in my hand. It burned me where he had set it smoldering. We tussled for it while he went on laughing.

My demon seized my arm in his ferocious grip, forcing Bernardo’s beautiful, gentle fingers into my flesh.

“So easily lured,” he hissed. “You’re even easier to trick than I imagined!”

“Go on,” I heard myself whisper fiercely. “Break it. Take
control of me. Trash my case. What good will it do you? What does it give you, to ruin someone’s life? To take a father from his son, or a daughter from her father? What difference does it make to you?”

“A huge difference, you widow slut!” His voice rumbled, so low that I heard the words through my rib cage. “What do you know about it? Have you ever
really
lost anything?”

Even in the midst of my own fury I heard his words, remembering that he had called me this once before, on Christmas Eve, when he possessed Lisetta Maria.
So
, I thought, while my body reeled in pain from his wrenching grip and the hot case in my hand,
you keep talking to me like I’m someone else. Who?
When he wrapped Bernardo’s other arm around me again, even tighter, I wasn’t sure I would stay conscious long enough to find out.

“I have to know,” he whispered at last.

I pulled my face as far away from him as I could. I gazed at him, lost in the darkness of his eye sockets, so different from getting lost in Bernardo’s pale eyes.

Oh, God, Bernardo! My demon kills his hosts, nearly all of them! Don’t go!

But something besides anger looked back at me out of the empty eyes.

“I have to know,” he repeated. “Please tell me. Did they tell you what they meant to do? Did you know when they set out? Did you see them leave?”

I blinked at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me! I have to know,
alcione
!” He hissed wildly, crushing me.

I heard someone screaming, and it took the longest time to realize it was me. I could feel the bell still trembling and ringing in the hollow between my collarbones. I could feel the bear, now, rising up through my spine, and still I screamed. Yet somehow the sound seemed faint, like it was being swallowed by the dark emptiness in the eyes of my demon.

“Did you know?” my demon asked. “Did you?”

“I don’t know what you mean!” I gasped.

“You really don’t,” he rasped.

“No,” I said. “No.”

“You did love me, I think,” he whispered. “You did! They never told you.”

“Who are you talking about?” I cried. “Who am I to you? Why do you call me
alcione
? I don’t even know what that word means! Who are you?” I screamed.

“You don’t know?” he asked, his voice soft now.

“I don’t,” I whispered.

“No, it is not possible,” he groaned. “You have to know. You have to …”

Staring into his eyes now, I could see that they were tunnels.
If the eyes are the windows of the soul
, I thought,
my demon’s eyes open a view on past centuries
.

We were so still that I could hear the faintest rustle of the leaves. We held as still as lovers on a spring night, staring into each other’s eyes.

Now I could feel the bear’s heat spreading from my feet all the way to the top of my head. I felt its strength in me. I didn’t understand it, and I wanted to, in case there was a price for me to pay. But I felt sure I could trust it. For now.

As the bear’s power filled me, I tried to lower my feet to the gravel beneath the bench.
If I can just touch the earth
, I thought, wondering what instinct was speaking. I remembered what Signora Negroponte had told me months earlier about the magic of the road. We were sitting beside a path. Did that count? What had she said?
Mercury is the god of roads, the lord of thieves and messengers. Messengers …
I remembered the suicides who helped us from time to time.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from his.
I will get lost in their darkness, and never come back
, I thought. Then,
No! I’ve got to find an answer
.

The law of the road had worked in my demon’s favor, in the past, because I had needed the protection of my family to go outside. The wards they set on their home would not work in the street. I couldn’t see a way to turn it to my advantage. I felt the strength in me, the strength of the bear, buying me time, but I could not tell how much.

Somebody was standing near us. I recognized his stained stockings, his drab waistcoat.

Help me
, I thought.

Respicio opened his hand. It held a cup of hot chocolate from Zucca. Then he vanished.

Damn all messengers!
I thought. Here I was, stuck on this
lonely path, trapped in the arms of my demon, unable even to reach my cell phone in my pocket … and all I get is …

You didn’t think of your cell phone at first
, I told myself.
You know this fight’s your own
.

Someone else, however, was emerging from the trees into the evening light, his face nearly as white as that of Respicio. He was smiling, the way he’d smiled on our disastrous first date in the Galleria.

“You will help us, after all,” he said.

I found my voice.

“No, Lucifero,” I said.

A movement out of the corner of my eye made me turn my head; I saw Lucifero’s friend and two other people I did not recognize, a man and a woman.

I suppose I should have been even more terrified. I was exasperated instead. First the useless messenger; now a pack of idiot Satanists who never knew when to give up.

My demon was eyeing them with what looked like professional interest.

“I know you,” he grated out, looking at Lucifero.

“You do, my lord.”

“My lord?”
I said. “Are you
totally
insane?”

“Don’t speak to him that way,” snarled Lucifero’s friend in a high voice.

“Go to hell,” I said. “Oh, wait, that’s kind of your plan,” I added, feeling slightly hysterical.

My demon stood up, still gripping me with Bernardo’s
arms. He made Bernardo’s head turn slowly, taking in all four of the people closing in on us.

My feet touched the gravel of the path. I heard my next thought as clearly as if I had spoken aloud.

God of roads, lend me your wings
.

I don’t understand what happened then. I don’t know if anyone else heard the thunder or felt the earth heave. I only knew I was out of my demon’s arms and turning to face him. I stretched out one hand, fingers curled like claws, and something burst away from me like a sound wave. Then I was running as fast as I could down the path. Behind me, I heard my demon scream; I heard Lucifero shout. My fingers fumbled in my jacket for my cell phone. I came to a crossroads and turned.

I slowed down, then stabbed the toe of my shoe into the gravel as I came to a halt. I listened to my breathing, ignoring a staring couple. Half of me wanted to keep pelting away until I got to the candle shop, but the other half wanted to turn and fight. I had felt such power.
I want to finish this
. And I knew I couldn’t leave Bernardo to my demon and to the fools who worshipped him.

Think
, I told myself.
This isn’t just about you and your fight now: don’t do anything—anything more—that would put him, or his body, at risk. What would be the best thing to do? What would you tell yourself to do, if you were Nonno?

Stand and use everything I have—wits—the strength of the bear—my own strength—to fight for myself and for Bernardo
, I
answered myself.
But also call for backup
.

I pulled my cell phone free of my jacket, trying to see the buttons well enough to speed dial Emilio. As I hit
CALL
, my cell phone slipped from my fingers. I bent down to grab it.

“Mia?”

“Parco Sempione, kind of near the amphitheater,” I gasped.