The cabbie is swearing.Alessandro is bleeding from his nose and his eyebrow.His hand rises unsteadily to his face, his gaze unfocused.Beyond him, I see that the car’s side door airbags have been deployed on Alessandro’s side, mushrooming into the cabin.
This is my one and only shot.
I don’t even try to shove Alessandro off of me.It will waste my energy and my precious time.I have to get back to Curse.I twist my arm behind my back, feeling for the handle, then latch onto it like it’s some kind of lifeline.Pulling hard, it unlatches, and I half-fall out of the vehicle.Stumbling to my feet, I run, nearly getting hit by a vehicle in the oncoming traffic lane.The driver shouts something to me – maybe scolding me, maybe trying to stop me to make sure I’m OK – but I don’t answer them.My boots slide as I loop around the back of the taxi, which I now see has been T-boned by a large black SUV in the middle of an intersection.
How far have we gotten from the station?I have no idea.I don’t even know what the hell Union Station looks like from the outside.My battered brain barely registered the details on the way out.I run back in the opposite direction that the taxi had been going.A part of me feels terrible for leaving the cabbie behind with his smashed vehicle and Alessandro, vengeful and bleeding, in the back.But I can’t stay there.Alessandro will come for me, and Curse might still be alone on that train car.I need to tell Elio and the others where he is and what Alessandro’s poisoned him with.
Opioids.
He could die.Actually fucking die before I get there.Before I can claw my way back to him.
Don’t do it, I beg inside my pounding head.Don’t go.Don’t leave me.
It’s stupid even to think it.Curse and I have both acknowledged that he isn’t the person I used to know.He’s not little Accursio anymore.He may be my fiancé, but we both know he isn’t my friend.
And yet…
It’s still there.Still fucking there;alwaysthere.This connection to him, whoever he is.Whatever he’s done.However he’s changed.Like my heart doesn’t know how to beat without the dark rhythm of his breathing in the background.Like I can’t go on existing without knowing that, somewhere out there, he is existing, too.If souls are real, then mine has been held fast in Curse Titone’s hands for more than twenty years.He’s owned it ever since he pulled me from that water.
He’ll take it with him wherever he goes.
Even if it’s out of this world and into the next.
Ahead, there stands a huge block of a building made up of pale material, like limestone, alight and golden.There are pillars with doors behind them, and I see a dark iron post with a large cube at the top, a clock displayed on each square face.It’s like a little clock tower combined with a lamppost.Beyond it, close to the building, looms a large statue or sculpture made of metal.It shows a naked man, straining to pull the metal sides of a split sphere together, like he’s connecting the framework of an unformed globe in his hands.Metal birds surge around him, wings spread but ultimately flightless, supported by curving rods.
A concrete barrier has large metal letters on it, similar in colour and material to the sculpture.While the sculpture’s shapes and lines are knife-sharp and so clear to me that I can make out the carved lines of every metallic feather, the letters swim and smear before I can drag them into focus.
Union Station.
But then the letters are gone again, a man shoving himself between them and me.Alessandro lurches my way, blood streaming down his face, like some grotesque villain from a nightmare.Other men are running towards us, but I don’t see Elio among them.I don’t know if these men are his, or Alessandro’s.
I want to barrel right through him but know that I can’t.My body reacts before my mind can come up with a plan, some bone-deep instinct to save myself propelling me backwards a few shaking steps before I spin and run again.
A sleek black sedan slips crisply into a space in traffic and nips up to the curb.The back passenger door opens as I pass it.
Ortryto pass it.I don’t succeed.A hand appears with such speed and grace it seems like something disembodied.The ghost of a limb that can move with eerie quickness no human should be capable of.But when it clamps on my wrist, I feel the living heat of it.Skin and blood.
“Let me assist you.”
Apparently, assisting me means yanking me into the vehicle.The car peels away from the curb with me in it.
Chapter2
Aurora
The man attached to the striking, seizing hand leans across me to shut the door.
“I’d advise you to put on your seatbelt,” he says in a voice like smooth smoke, “based on what happened to the other vehicle you were in a moment ago.And don’t even think about jumping out and running,” he adds.There’s no urgency in his command.He never breaks his calm, almost elegant rhythm of speech.“Luca and I are both faster than you are, and I promise you that you won’t get far.”He tips his head towards the driver of the vehicle, a shadowy silhouette who appears to be a young man.
But the driver doesn’t hold my attention for long.My gaze crawls to the man in the backseat with me.
This isn’t Elio.It isn’t Alessandro.And I don’t think he is a man belonging to either of them.There is nothing in this person that would indicate he works for anyone else but himself.He reminds me of my father, and of Marco.Not because he looks or sounds like either of them, but because everything in him, from the cut of his suit to the richly confident cadence of his voice, to the relaxed tilt of his head, screams that this man is a leader.A boss.Chest heaving, my cheeks burning hot, then cold, then hot again, I stare at him.
It’s dark in the car, but even so I can see that he’s handsome.A hard, meticulously-shaved jaw and sharp cheekbones create the foundation for a pair of probing, deep-set eyes beneath strong brows.His nose is prominent but straight-bridged, his dark hair slicked back and showing a few strands of silver at the temples.When an errant streetlight, or maybe headlights from another vehicle, shine through the window and send bright stripes sliding down his face, I’m pierced with the whiskey-gold colour of his irises.But despite the warmth of the shade I find there, the gaze is detached, cold, calculating.
“Who are you?”My own voice shocks me.It’s ragged and small, like a little girl who’s screamed herself hoarse.
“So rude of me not to introduce myself,” he says.He extends his hand – the same one that shot out of the car as if from a grave to grab me.When I don’t take it, he merely extends his hand further, grasping my seatbelt and buckling it for me.Somehow he manages to do it without touching me, which I know isn’t meant to be any sort of kindness, but I feel relief at it anyway.
