By Blood We Live
Page 57

“I’m not leaving here without my daughter,” I said. “Where’s her cell from here?”
“Not now,” he said. “We can’t do it now—”
“Where is her fucking cell?”
Lorenzo looked to his left. His nostrils were like two graceful little apostrophes. His day’s odour pounded out of him. Clean sweat, Pears soap, a strawberry yogurt he’d forced himself to eat for lunch. He was breathing heavily. “When you get to the end of here turn right. Then third left. Double doors, but they’re locked and guarded. You’ll never—”
“How many guards?”
“Two. But listen—”
“Through the double doors and?”
“Second cell on the left. One guard. But not yet. Please. You have to wait.”
“Now. Right now.”
“It’s not possible now. Please believe me. Tomorrow—”
“What do you want from me. Why would you do this?”
He came right up to the bars. Gripped them with both slender hands. Rested his forehead against them. There was an inner discordant symphony: desperation—but not, as far as I could tell, madness.
“I want you to bite me,” he said.
Footsteps.
“Step back,” I hissed. “Quick.”
He did—just as the previous guard reappeared in the corridor. Not angry, apparently. Smile-frowning.
“Lui non’ c’era,” the guard called. My Italian covered it—just: “He wasn’t there.” It didn’t cover the second bit: “Sei sicuro che ha chiesto per me?”
“Tomorrow,” Lorenzo whispered, then turned and hurried away toward his colleague.
52
BRYCE CAME TO see me. He looked exhausted. His face was damp and porous, and the pupils in the roundel eyes were dilated. The cream linen suit had been replaced with black jeans and a green cable knit sweater that almost perfectly matched his eyes. The greens and the beard and the longish hair made me think of him in Sherwood Forest.
“I know it’s been tough,” he said. “But we’re almost there.”
It was late—or at least I’d decided it was late. The guard Bryce relieved—a slabbily built guy in his forties with a Saddam Hussein moustache—had been yawning, hugely, for the last hour, though for all I knew it was three in the afternoon. No windows down here, no clocks.
“They’re moving you both in forty-eight hours,” Bryce said. “Four vehicles, a dozen men. It’s a two-hour drive from here to the landing field. There’ll be a roadblock. Jesus, you’ve no idea what this is costing me. I get an hour head-start with the kid, then you’ll be released. You’ll be given a phone and some cash. You keep the phone and wait for my call. I’ll contact you within twenty-four hours. We’ll arrange a rendezvous then.”
Tomorrow.
I can get you out of here.
I want you to bite me.
Tough to keep everything that had just happened out of my face. Remshi’s face from the dream swam up. I’m coming for you.
It took everything I had to stay in character. “You fuck with me,” I said to Bryce, “I’ll find you. If I have to come back from the dead to do it.”
I was spared the dream that night because I was spared sleep. Aside from my inner strategist going silently insane the effects of not having fed properly were making torturous fiesta in my blood. Wulf never goes quietly even with a full stomach. Denied its monthly due it digs in for prolonged and violent outrage. The way it feels is that if someone were watching you they’d see the big shape writhing and straining under your too small skin, threatening at any moment to tear out. But of course that’s not what they actually see. What they actually see is a woman glistening with sweat, unsteady on her feet, occasionally doubling up or jerking as if at the mercy of extreme cramp and furious muscular spasms.
Zoë would be feeling it too, although her little belly was easier to fill, and she’d eaten a good few pounds before the assault had interrupted us. I was desperate to see her. I’d have to tell her to be ready. Yesterday I’d felt in her the beginning of resignation: We’re staying here. Mommy can’t do what she said. I have to live with these ladies in the black dresses. I don’t like it. I don’t like it.
That I’d held her close only confirmed it for her. She could feel my fear. My hopelessness. Today I’d have to do better. Today I’d have to promise and believe it. All night I’d been picturing it. SWEETHEART, WE’RE GETTING OUT OF HERE TODAY.
YOU PROMISE?
And I’d lie. Because what else was there to do with a three-year-old you might be carrying to her death?
YES, I PROMISE.
The door at the end of the corridor opened and Salvatore appeared, flanked by two guards, the nervy skinhead and the bruiser with the Saddam moustache, both armed.
“Talulla,” the Cardinal said, smiling, as if my name was the satisfying solution to a riddle. He stood facing me, hands clasped behind his back. He looked larger than usual, big and plump and human. His moony face was roseate, as if with joy. Light played on the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses. Wulf, determined to make its presence felt, breathed deep in me, inhaled his odour of cologne, recently consumed tomatoes, sardines, strong black coffee. His gleaming boots reeked of polish. All this mixed with the guards’ smell of sweat and canvas and the guns’ stink of metal and rubber and grease.
I got up off my bunk and went to the bars.
“You’ll be expecting your daily visit to see your daughter,” Salvatore said. “With regret, that won’t be possible today.”
It was hard to imagine him alone in a room. His faith was a glaze that only ever reflected non-believers. If I thought of him on his own I pictured him shutting down, like an automaton. God only came into play as a Divine extension of himself when others were present. Alone, he’d have no room for God.
“I must say,” he said, putting his head on one side like a pleasantly perplexed dog, “your naivety surprises me.”
You might not want this for yourself, but you’ll want it for your children. The distance between me and Zoë was like a spear being dug into my navel.
“Naivety?” I asked.
“Bryce,” he said.
Adrenaline loosened my knees.
“Big Brother with werewolves,” the Cardinal continued. “Bryce has sunk a great deal of money into a new company developing silver-delivery systems.” He leaned forward. “Gadgets to kill your neighbourhood werewolf, if you understand me. Worthless, obviously, until people believe werewolves are in their neighbourhood. He’s not a man of faith, therefore he doesn’t believe in the faith-based exposé. Hence the secular—the allegedly ‘scientific’—version. He’s blind. He doesn’t have the faintest idea how many people already believe—thanks to whom? Thanks to us! He could have stuck with our arrangement and still made a fortune.”