“Oh, I beg your finest pardon. Would you like to accept my apology by choosing the next location?”
“Gladly. How about the table?”
“Thekitchentable?”
32
DAEMON’S DEVOTION
Early morning light flooded Pierre Castel, the tiny stone chapel above Vizzavona, where we had buried our dead. Lucas’ and Finlay’s graves lay side by side, marked by cairns. There were also cairns for those who fell in Corte, whose bodies we weren’t able to bring back with us. The little graveyard was surrounded by serenely calm birch trees, motionless in the already hot summer air.
Einar explained his plan to Lena whilst I stood by in silence. I mostly came along for moral support, knowing that he had tossed and turned the whole night, barely allowing either of us to get any sleep.
Lena was breathless, not so much from the sharp climb uphill as from apparent nervous agitation. And yet when he finished, she told him without hesitation, “I’ll do it.”
“Lena, you do know what they’ll do to you once you get there, right?” Einar asked her carefully. “These men ... I doubt they’ll be very gentlemanly about it ...”
She had dark, swollen circles under her eyes, and her expression was pinched.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she snapped. “Of course I know. Won’t be the first time. There were rapists even before theOutbreak.” Einar flinched at the word. “I know what I’m getting myself into. But how could that even matter to me when I know Emma’s there alone?”
I absent-mindedly rearranged a row of red plastic cemetery candles on a granite ledge by the chapel’s barred archway entrance.
“You’re immune, which makes me hopeful that Emma might be too. But still ... I like you and so I want to make sure you understand,” Einar continued calmly, undeterred by Lena’s show of nerves. “There’s no guarantee that?—”
“That it will work and that Emma or I will make it out alive.” Lena nodded curtly, her nostrils flaring with impatience. “I get it, man! Why do you keep droning on and on about it for crying out loud?”
“I guess we’re just ... unsure you do actually understand, given how quickly you’ve agreed to it,” I interjected tactfully, abandoning my search for rubbish to clear underneath the layers of fallen leaves.
“Well, the alternative is going there on my own with no plan whatsoever.” She tapped her head with a finger, a gesture indicating plainly that she thought we were both idiots. “Anyplan is better than that, isn’t it? Will you quit babying me and tell me more already? For instance, how are you going to obtain the samples? Do we need to find a fresh fury somewhere?” She turned to Einar.
“I thought so at first.” Einar smirked in a way he did when he was particularly pleased with his own genius. “But catching one alive could be tricky and time-consuming. And so I said to myself, why bother when we have a small and manageable one tied up for us already in Bocca di Verdi?”
“Oh no,” I groaned, closing my eyes. “You mean Bastien? His mother will never agree to it.”
“She may not, but Raphael will if I make my offer tempting enough for him. He may not have been willing to kill the child without the mother’s consent, but surely, he won’t mind a few finger pricks in exchange for a partnership?”
“You’ll allow them a partnership while the boy still lives?” I asked incredulously, and he only shrugged noncommittally in response, which was in no way reassuring. “In either case, it’s not just a few finger pricks. I spoke to Kevin, and he recommended obtaining the samples at the last possible minute to ensure the viral load survives.”
“Even better.” Einar shrugged again. “We’ll just take the wee bugger on a field trip with us then.”
What followed was an extremely long day. We gathered and sterilised whatever little flasks and tubes we could find in the settlement: little perfume testers and one actual medical tube. Einar also brought out an expensive bottle of whiskey I knew he had kept for the most special or desperate of occasions, intending to spike it and have Lena deliver it as a token of her submission to the bikers. The alcohol would likely kill the virus, but as he said himself, it was worth a try.
Subsequently, we packed whatever tents and camping supplies we could find for thirty archers and set off towards Bocca di Verdi.
Einar had been right. Lured with the promise of partnership and weapons, Raphael did agree to lend us the cannibal boy despite his mother’s vigorous protests. Elodie was a drawn, nervous woman of around forty with prematurely greying curly hair. Two men from Bocca di Verdi held her struggling, and her shrieks accompanied Einar, Russ, Albert, and me as we led Bastien back to the road where we had parked.
Einar dragged Bastien in his chains a couple of yards in front of us, cursing as the child strained to break free. As soon as we reached the vehicles and were out of sight, Einar wrapped a rope around Bastien from neck to foot to prevent him from moving altogether. Bastien didn’t take kindly to being mummified and kept trying to bite his captor, who in turn retaliated by gagging him, using a rag that had been left on the floor of our Mazda for who knew what purpose. Einar then lifted the pacified boy and unceremoniously threw him into the boot of the car, shutting it with a resolute thud.
“I don’t think Raphael would’ve agreed if he knew you were going to treat the child this way.”
“Raphael doesn’t care. He just doesn’t have it in him to do the right thing,” Einar forced out through his clenched teeth, his face flushed with annoyance. “Who knows, perhaps he’d thank me to rid him of this nuisance.”
It took us about four hours to get to Bonifacio. We put up our tents at an erstwhile campsite about a twenty-minute walk away from the fortress town, which was itself concealed from our view by an encroaching forested hilltop. And yet, knowing that our enemies were so very close and could drive by at any minute, set us all on edge as we unpacked in silence. We were thirty experienced archers, which was more than excessive for the number of furies we anticipated, and at the same time, nowhere near sufficient if we were to be ambushed by the bikers before they turned.
The campsite consisted of eight wooden bungalows and a few tents abandoned on an overgrown grassy pitch, encircled by a garden wall made of rounded grey stones like prehistoric eggs. There was also an empty restaurant and a building that hosted showers and toilets.
The campsite was completely deserted, devoid of people infected or uninfected, alive or deceased, with the one notable exception: a skeleton sitting in a plastic chair by the campsite entrance, as if ready to check guests’ reservations and direct them to their parking spots. His yellowing bones were completely bare, and nothing remained of the flesh that once enveloped them, nothing but black stains on the white plastic. He wore frayed, grey shorts and there were masculine slippers by his feet, which gave us a clue as to his sex.
