Arcadia Awakens (29 page)

Lilia raced to the bottom row of seats, where she braked sharply and started toward the tiers on foot. But one of the motorcycles accelerated, and the rider slammed on his own brakes, cutting her off as dust and pebbles sprayed up under his tires. Lilia swore.

Rosa gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, ignored Tano—and stepping on the gas, she rode straight for the bike barring Lilia’s way. She braked at the last moment, but the Vespa hit the motorcycle hard enough to knock it aside. The rider yelled inside his helmet as he fell under his heavy bike. Rosa was flung out of her own saddle, grazing her elbows as she fell, but got to her feet again at once.

Lilia took her chance and ran past the fallen motorbike, and then up the steps between the tiers. Rosa was going to follow, but Tano and one of the others had already caught up with her. The other boy barred her way, while Tano put down the kickstand of his bike and got off. He grabbed Rosa by the arm. He was still wearing his helmet, and so were the others.

“Leave her alone!” shouted Lilia, halfway up the auditorium, a small, dark figure among the rows of seats. The fourth rider had dismounted from his bike now, and began to follow Lilia, but Tano gestured to him to stay where he was.

“She’s not important.” He pushed up his visor, swung Rosa around by her arm, and sniffed the blood on her grazed elbow. “We have the Alcantara slut, that’s enough.”

Rosa kicked him as hard as she could between the legs. But he was too close, and her foot made contact mainly with his thigh. He staggered back a step anyway, swearing at the top of his voice and letting go of her. Rosa spun around and ran—only to collide with the second biker. He hit her in the chest and she stumbled back with a cry and was caught by the fourth man. His arms went around her torso, squeezing the air out of her. She tried to fight back, hitting the back of her head against his helmet, struggling and kicking as he held her in front of his knees, but she realized that she had lost. He was a head taller than she was, and a lot stronger, and his eyes and face were protected under his helmet. Panic tightened her throat, but she got herself under control enough to stay still and save her strength for a better opportunity.

Up among the tiers of seats in the empty amphitheater, Lilia was shouting threats, but the men ignored her.

When Tano reentered Rosa’s field of vision, he had taken off his helmet and leather jacket. The T-shirt he wore under it was drenched in sweat, and was the next item to land in the dust of the arena. His hands went to his fly next. In a matter of seconds he was undressed and standing before her in nothing but his shorts.

He was taller than Alessandro, and even fitter, with bulging muscles that shimmered in the light of the rising moon. When she’d first met him at the baron’s funeral, he had been wearing glasses. He had none on now; his cat’s eyes saw better than the eyes of any ordinary human being. They glowed as yellow as amber. His hair had changed color, too, and was lighter and coarser. Stripes of yellow, brown, and white downy fur were rising from his hips up his naked torso.

Rosa avoided his pitiless gaze and stared past him, over the arena, out into the dark landscape. Mountain ridges merged with the darkness in the east. Even more stars had appeared in the sky. Rosa began counting them.

There was an earsplitting explosion, followed by a rolling echo.

“Take your hands off her!” shouted Lilia. “I have a gun.”

Tano’s transformation was already too far along. The adrenaline pulsing through him drained the last vestiges of humanity from his body, as his bones and muscles were changing shape. His torso fell forward, and he landed on all fours. When his paws met the ground his joints shifted, his limbs grew shorter, and fur covered the last bare patches of skin. His face was now a muzzle, and he had fangs and fiery eyes.

Lilia fired into the air for a second time, shouting a warning. Her voice sounded closer. She must have come part of the way down the steps.

Rosa’s perception was clouded, as if someone were holding her head under water. Her body temperature had dropped, her sweat was cold as ice. Once again she felt that pulling and tugging sensation, and it wasn’t because the two bikers were now holding her arms.

But something still prevented the snake from emerging. She couldn’t do it deliberately. She felt numb. She was gripped with panic, fear that the same thing was happening all over again. Part of her recognized the situation as familiar, even though she had been unconscious that night in New York. She was alone and defenseless again, and there were men around her, ready to do whatever they liked to her.

The tiger prowled closer.

Suddenly her arms were free. The other two bikers had let go of her and retreated. Certainly not out of fear; they must have seen Tano’s transformation many times before.

A third shot cracked through the amphitheater like a whiplash.

Someone behind Rosa screamed. One of the men collapsed, hit by a bullet. His companion howled with rage and ran. Another dragged himself away, limping. He must be the one Rosa had ridden into on the Vespa. They were going to surround Lilia and capture her.

The tiger was licking his lips. A cruel growl rose from his throat as one of his paws ground the torn remnants of Tano’s shorts into the dust.

Rosa shivered with cold and tried to begin her own change through willpower. But her panic still paralyzed her, and obviously also the part of her that she didn’t know, that was entirely new to her, although it had always been there.

Another shot. Another scream. Someone was running down the stone steps of the tiers, shouting.

The tiger roared furiously in the dark. Rosa smelled his breath, not at all like the panther’s, but hot as a jet of fire. Then she noticed something else.

The trail leading to the amphitheater was suddenly bathed in glaring white light. The shadow of the distorted olive tree wandered over the ground, turned this way and that, and grew denser. Then car headlights came around the corner.

The tiger’s head swung around.

He crouched to pounce.

This time the gunfire sounded so close to Rosa’s ear that it deafened her for a second. In a flash of flame she saw Lilia, her eyes wide with fright, with a figure flinging itself on her from behind—and the tiger, half his skull torn away in an explosion of fur and blood.

Lilia screamed. So did the man throwing her to the ground.

Rosa, able to move again, staggered back.

The tiger—Tano—collapsed. The bullet had blown his forehead apart, destroying much of his face.

More headlights, their beams lighting up the ancient tiers of seats. Car doors were flung open. Men shouted in wild confusion.

But the loudest voice of all was Cesare Carnevare’s, as he rushed forward out of the bright light and fell on his knees beside the tiger’s body.

Lilia’s little revolver was torn from her hands. It landed at Rosa’s feet. She bent like a sleepwalker to pick it up.

Cesare howled, inwardly already more beast than man, and leaped over his dead son, his suit tearing apart as he sprang and fell on Lilia in the form of a gigantic lion.

T
HE LION THREW
L
ILIA
to the ground and stood over her for an endless moment—then lowered his open jaws to her, bit, tugged, tore, raged.

Within seconds her body moved only when the lion dug his fangs into it and shook her lifeless limbs.

Rosa couldn’t breathe as she watched what Cesare was doing to Lilia. Still holding the gun in her shaking hand, she stepped back, aimed it at the huge lion, and pulled the trigger. The bullet missed by more than a handbreadth and fell in the dust beside him. Stumbling backward, Rosa stumbled over the body of the biker whom Lilia had shot, recovered her balance just in time, and pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked. Once, twice. The six bullets had already all been fired.

The next moment she was seized and swung around. A hard blow struck her arm, sending the revolver flying through the air. Someone came down heavily on her, while the agitated voices around her grew louder. Suddenly the arena was full of men in dark suits, shadowy figures hurrying around in the beam of headlights. Several vehicles were standing in a semicircle on the edge, their lights aimed toward the seats.

The lion was still raging. Rosa couldn’t see Lilia anymore. Her head was being pressed down to the ground, and the body of the dead biker mercifully spared her from the sight of what was happening. But she heard the sounds as Cesare savaged the body, and vomit shot up through her throat and out of her mouth. The man holding her head let go in disgust. She just barely managed to turn her face away.

Vaguely, she saw two men bending over the dead tiger. One of them was shaking his head. The animal was gradually returning to human form.

The man on top of her suddenly let out a scream. He was abruptly knocked aside as a fist struck his skull, and then his assailant kicked him hard in the ribs. There were yet more voices, more shouting; the whole arena was full of turmoil. All of a sudden she was free, as someone gripped her upper arm and helped her to her feet.

“Alessandro?” she managed to gasp.

He put an arm around her waist and pulled her firmly to his side. “Leave this to me.”

Several men approached them menacingly. The guns they were holding were not aimed at Alessandro yet, but the expressions on the faces of Cesare’s followers left no doubt that they were ready for anything, and just waiting for a chance. Other men, however, were now moving toward them with drawn pistols.

The lion paused in his fury, threw his head back, and uttered a terrifying roar. Blood gleamed on his muzzle and stuck his fur together, covering his face from the eyes all the way up to his mane.

“She broke the concordat,” cried the man who was still kneeling over Tano’s body, one hand going to the pistol in the shoulder holster he wore under his jacket.

“So she did,” said someone else. To Rosa’s horror, he was one of the men who had been protecting her and Alessandro from the others. He stared at her, then pointed to the revolver on the ground. “She fired a shot. An Alcantara has shed Carnevare blood.”

That’s not what happened!
she wanted to cry. But what difference did it make in the end? Lilia had killed Tano to save her. Rosa might just as well have pulled the trigger herself.

The lion left the mutilated pile of Lilia’s remains lying on the ground and turned to Rosa and Alessandro. Cesare’s men made way as the huge cat stalked through the middle of the crowd, stopping not three yards away from the two of them.

Alessandro fixed his cold gaze on the lion. “Don’t even think about it, Cesare. She didn’t do it, you saw that as well as I did.”

Rosa didn’t know why he was here, or why they had all arrived so suddenly. She hurt all over; her bruises and abrasions from Isola Luna were aching again, and now she had new ones to join them.

The lion retreated, but Alessandro did not. He kept one arm around Rosa and gestured toward his followers with the other.

“Rosa Alcantara did
not
shoot him,” he called to them.

“Protecting one of
them
, are you?” one of Cesare’s men spat. “Your father would have killed you for that.”

Alessandro glared angrily at him. “My father was your
capo
because he had strong nerves. He didn’t let grief and anger lead him to do anything foolish. In a few weeks’ time I’ll be succeeding him. And I won’t drag his reputation through the dirt by standing by to watch Cesare kill an innocent woman.”

“He’s right,” said one of the men who had come with him. “I saw it myself. It was the other girl who fired the gun.”

“I knew her.” The man beside Tano’s body spoke up. “She hung out with Zoe Alcantara all the time. She’s one of them, so it makes no difference which of them pulled the trigger. The Alcantaras murdered Tano, that’s what counts.”

A terrible roar came from the lion’s jaws, but now a cry of human rage was mingled with it. The beast’s features were shifting, the proportions of his body changing, and slowly, with a crunching sound, he stood upright. His body was still densely covered with fur, and his mane was slow to change back.

Somewhere in the darkness, a suitcase snapped open, and a man hurried up to him with a snow-white bathrobe. Perhaps that was the most bizarre sight of all—the moment when Cesare Carnevare, stained red all over, had the white bathrobe thrown around him as if he had just climbed out of a bath full of blood.

Then Cesare pushed the man aside and came to within an arm’s length of Rosa and Alessandro. His facial muscles were twitching. The blood covered his features like a samurai’s war mask.