The last two rooms were a long narrow bath — empty — and the kitchen. Standing in the kitchen, he swore he could hear a small heart beating.
“Franco?” he called out in a whisper that threatened to become weeping. His heart throbbed in time with his wound.
A tiny whisper came from a cabinet below the sink.
“Papá?”
“Franco! Dio mio, is it you?” He ignored the pain in his chest and sank to his knees, crawling toward the sink.
A boy’s face peeked from behind Maria’s frilly curtain, Franco’s face. But his eyes had aged since Giovanni had last looked into them. It was still the same day, but a lifetime had passed. Apparently for Franco, too.
“Are you all right, my son?” He didn’t let him answer, but instead gathered the boy in his arms and they rocked together, tears flowing for a long time.
“I’m all right,” Franco said. “And Mamma?” His voice trembled.
“She’s fine, she’s fine! We’re in a shelter.”
“I thought you were dead! Killed by those… things.” Franco sighed, laying his head on his father’s shoulder. “I’ve seen— Hey, there’s a lot of blood! Papá, are you—”
“I’m fine! It’s the blood of some brave men who helped me, God rest their souls.” He slowly shifted Franco’s face so he could see him better. “What about your friend Pietro?”
The boy suddenly started to weep. “We were great, we took them on, we saw them turn to wolves, we saw them kill, and then we ran and ran, but — oh, it was terrible! It caught us by surprise and it took Pietro, then it did terrible things to him. I ran away, Papá. When I could have helped him, I ran away, I ran all the way home and I hid like a baby.”
“No, Franco,” he soothed, “you couldn’t have helped him. If you saw the wolves, you know you couldn’t have fought them.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“I had help,” he said. “I had lots of help.” He touched the dagger in his pocket.
His son’s eyes were wide with fear from the memory.
“Let’s go,” said Giovanni, and they stood. “We can be with your mother in a short while, if we’re careful.”
He retrieved his submachine gun from the floor, checked to make sure it was cocked, and then took Franco’s hand.
As they walked out of the building and into the dangerous night, Giovanni wondered why his wound hadn’t bothered him in a while.
After a tense but eventless trek back to the shelter, the family reunion was joyful, though tempered by the loss of two good men who had given their lives to bring it about.
The partisan brigade leader, Corrado, had flown into a rage when informed the mission had cost two of his best, most experienced men, but a sober look at the condition of Giovanni’s blood-splattered clothes caused him to pause. Plus, the fact that he had not lost the Vatican dagger redeemed the situation in a small way.
“I have seen the dagger’s power,” he told Corrado, as he held hands with his son and wife. “And I’d like to be its guardian.”
He didn’t tell anyone he had been wounded in his life and death struggle with the wolf. He didn’t have to. The wound had disappeared by the time he’d changed into a borrowed shirt and jacket.
He was afraid of what that meant.
7
Giovanni awoke and sat bolt upright. It was dark in their sanctuary, though in some distant corner he could see the flickering glow of burning lamps or candles. And he could hear the disembodied voices of partisans talking quietly.
He felt strange. Dizzy and hot and itchy, like he was lost in a fever dream.
Maybe the past few days had been a dream, or more precisely an incubo, a nightmare. All of it. That certainly seemed more likely than the existence of savage German wolf-men. But he’d seen the truth of it with his own eyes, hadn’t he?
Giovanni wondered what day it was. How long had he slept? He remembered finding Franco hiding in their apartment and bringing him to their new home. They had returned just before dawn, and now — though it was nearly always dark where the partisans hid underground, a tiny bit of daylight trickled down through their many secret routes to the streets — it was clearly after nightfall. Had he slept all day, or even longer? Two days? Three?
Giovanni’s skin tingled where the wolf had wounded him. He reached up and touched it. The injury had somehow miraculously healed before he and his son had returned to the Sanctuary. He wondered if he had been mistaken, and what he had at first thought a wound was in fact Turco and Manfredo’s blood. Or if he had seen anything at all.
He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. More flowed from his pores.
Behind him, on a mattress tossed on the ground that had become their new bed, Maria and Franco lay sleeping peacefully.
Giovanni rose and swayed unsteadily. His head swam, from nausea or hunger, he couldn’t tell. More like starvation. And he was so damned hot. Without thinking of anything but relief from the sudden oppressive heat and itchiness of his clothes Giovanni stripped down, leaving every stitch in a pile beside the mattress. Then he moved quietly, shambling to the nearest exit — a set of uneven stone stairs that led to a hidden exit that opened onto the ruins of the city above. He needed some fresh air.
The stairs felt cool and damp under his bare feet, and the chilly night air felt good on his burning skin. In fact, it felt invigorating. It was the air and something else… the moonlight.
He could see it shining in through the cracks at the top of the stairwell, cool white light. It seemed to be calling to him much as it pulled the ocean tides. It drew him in, tugging at the small hairs on his naked arms and legs. It felt like it was causing his hairs to grow, pulling them as it summoned him to bask beneath its mesmerizing glow. As it did, he thought he saw a forest whipping past his vision as if he were running, running, ducking the shadows of trees in order to playfully catch the silvery moonbeams. These images playing across his mind’s eye suddenly seemed frightening, but he couldn’t deny them.
When he reached the top step he looked out over the decimated neighborhood’s crumbling walls. The piles of debris from the bombed out building looked oddly beautiful bathed in the full moon’s light. Nearby, a young partisan sat guarding the hidden stairway entrance. Giovanni recognized him. His name was Vincent. Rags that were once his Sunday clothes served as his uniform. He had a Beretta submachine gun resting on his knee and a hand-rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He looked out at the street’s ruined structures, unaware of Giovanni approaching him from behind.
Giovanni opened his mouth to whisper a greeting, but what emanated from his throat startled him and young Vincent both.
Instead of whispering or even speaking, Giovanni growled.
The young guard whirled, abject horror engulfing his features. The cigarette dropped from his mouth as he leveled his submachine gun at a confused Giovanni.
Suddenly having no control of his own actions, Giovanni leaped forward — an incredibly far, impossible distance — and pounced on the terrified guard. And to his panic and amazement what he thought were his hands had somehow become a massive set of lupine paws.
Horrified at what he was doing, he sank his teeth — but they were fangs, weren’t they? — into poor Vincent’s neck and tore away a huge chuck of warm flesh. He swallowed and went back for more.
Vincent fell backwards. All that was left of his throat was the vertebrae of his neck surrounded by a few thin strips of grisly meat. His life jetted from the ruined artery in a fountain-like gush.