SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Fifty-Five
I pushed aside the servants who advanced as if to assist me and barreled past Guccia’s bodyguards at a full run down the tight hallway behind the tier of boxes. Lost momentarily, I found my way downstairs to the entrance and into the night.
A steady rain fell from the pitch-black sky, but I couldn’t feel it. The drops of water were nothing as I moved along the walkway, rounding the corner down a narrow street to Corte de l’Albero. I pulled at my jacket and waistcoat in the darkened courtyard, struggling to escape them. But it didn’t matter—my wolf had arrived, and his hulking size separated the seams of my clothes savagely until I stepped out of little more than tatters.
Only a handful of pedestrians moved through the dim torchlight in the courtyard because of the rain. I remember their eyes jutting up with concern as I screamed during my transformation. Some ran away. Others tried to intercede, no doubt thinking I was under attack until they realized something else was wrong with me. But I didn’t hear them when they stumbled away to flee in fear. That terrible drumbeat was all I could think about.
Wanting to be free of any remaining eyes, I leaped up the side of a building, using my talons to grab hold of ledges and railings until I landed on a roof. From atop the structure, I could see much more of the city. Its tiny flickering torchlights were among the only reflections on the black shimmering waters of the canals.
I closed my eyes and again saw the crimson tinge. It filled my sight, even in the blackness behind my eyelids. Was it a voice I heard?
No, please stop!
Yes, a cry for mercy. But the voice came as mere fragments—echos muffled in the gentle strikes of raindrops on the roof tiles. What came in thundering ovation was the sound of my heart, its anxious drum pounding through my very limbs.
But then I realized it was not my heart that made the sound. Though I could hear its panicked rumble in my mind, the violent drumbeat came from the east.
I leaped forward across the roof onto the next, running and jumping up and down at a frantic pace to find the source. I soared from one roof to the next as if gravity had no say in my movement, flying over streets and canals alike. My feet only touched the wet terracotta tiles that roofed the entire city.
I didn’t know where I was, certain only that I was close. A wave of panic and nausea overtook me but then halted as quickly as it started. I was certain the heartbeat came from beneath me. Peering down into the darkness, a wave of crimson filled my sight once more, and I almost lost my footing as the panicked nausea overtook my every sense again. Something in the courtyard at the base of this structure. I needed to get there to stop this foul sensation and its control of me.
With a thud, I landed on the stone courtyard floor. Three young men stood in the darkness of a covered corner, each with their backs to me. None turned around, unable to have sensed me in the dull roar of the rainfall slapping on every surface around them. I thought one of them kicked the wall, but then I saw the form of a man lying at their feet. A clap of thunder overhead illuminated the scene for only a moment, but it was enough for me to see the man they’d beaten in submission at their feet.
Blood covered the man’s face, and he lay in a pool of sick on the wet stone floor. Two of his attackers urinated on him, both trying to aim for his mouth.
I remembered the night a group of young men had drawn me away from my camp outside Salieu to beat me unconscious and do the same. I remembered the warm fluid on my tongue and my revulsion when the rancid smell registered. For the briefest moment, I felt that same fear again and found myself unable to move.
But then I understood something that changed everything. It wasn’t my own fear I felt, but the agony inside the beaten man’s mind. I felt his terror in my every limb. It was his heartbeat I heard pounding in my mind. He was human, not lycan, but I heard his weeping soul as if I lay on the wet ground instead, suffering every sensation of his biting agony.
A seething rage filled my lungs, and I roared at the three men despite my intention. They each gave a clumsy start as if my voice had struck a physical blow, and they staggered to face me in confusion. Without thinking about what I would do, I leaped forward at all three of them in one terrible bound, my talons slashing at the flesh of their faces with impatient fury.
Their screams didn’t deter me in the slightest—I must have their blood, I must put an end to each of them. When one man attempted to offer resistance, my rage answered with unforgiving violence, grateful for that small moment of distinct purpose. Slashing and ripping in a frenzy, their trembling bodies soon lay on the ground before me. I wanted to kill them again and again, and I stalked back and forth, hoping someone else might come to challenge me.
Their victim remained lifeless on the ground. As the rage fell away, and a sense of relief gave way to my limbs, I reached down to cradle his head, finding he was unconscious but still breathing. I realized I could no longer sense the pain in his mind. Had that been the reason for the brief end of my nausea on the roof? Had his attackers rendered him unconscious, breaking the link between us? And if I left him here, wouldn’t his suffering call to me again?
Voices came from down the street. People approached as if alerted by my roar and the dead men’s cries for mercy.
I took the frail man into my arms and moved away from the bloody scene as gently as possible. When I was half a block away, I took to the roof of a building, cradling the man like a child so that I didn’t further injure his ragdoll body.
I took us west, back toward the Grand Canal. I didn’t know quite where I was, but I knew that when I returned to the city’s primary artery, I would easily find Palazzo Lupofiero near the Rialto Bridge. Getting there proved more treacherous in the pouring rain as I struggled on the wet roofs. Without the blinding rage that had drawn me to him, keeping the man safe in my arms was a significant challenge, and I lost my footing more than once.
When I located the roof of the Palazzo Lupofiero, I finagled my window open from the central courtyard and swung us inside. The fire was lit, and I found my bed turned down. I placed him down easily on the soft sheets, cradling his bleeding head onto the pillow.
From the antechamber, I sensed Duccio staring at me and turned to find his expressionless eyes.
He’s hurt, I said quietly, but Duccio said nothing in return. Instead, he approached me slowly.
Even with my mind on fire, my wolf’s body reverted in the quiet warmth of our room, and in moments I stood as nothing more than a dripping wet lycan.
Duccio didn’t seek linen to dry my naked flesh but approached to enter my mind. It seemed he must understand what had brought the anomalous sight of this unconscious human and me to his eyes. And from my mind, he took his answers. He saw it all: the blood that filled my eyes, the blinding rage that occluded my hearing, drawing me to that dark courtyard in the pouring rain, and the unconscious man’s attackers.
At once, Duccio moved to tend to the man. He removed the man’s wet and soiled clothes, wrapping him in my robe. He poured water into a basin and washed the man’s face and head, drying him quickly and wrapping his head with a rag to prevent more blood from seeping from his wounds. Two lacerations on his scalp had not stopped bleeding. Looking at my arms and shoulder, I realized he had bled all over me.
I became conscious of my exposure and chilled skin and went to the dressing room to dry and clothe myself. From behind me, I heard the unconscious man stir. A debilitating nausea overtook me, and I staggered to the floor. When I opened my eyes, I saw Duccio staring back at me from the bedside in astonishment.
The injured man’s eyes were closed, but the tense guise of his agony filled his face.
“It’s okay, Brother, you’re safe now,” Duccio whispered to the man. “You’re hurt but no longer in danger, and we’ll take of you.”
The man mumbled something less than a whisper in return. I felt the agony of his cracked ribs as he tried to breathe.
And then I saw memories from this human’s mind, vivid images of the attack. Again and again, he’d cried for help—he’d begged for the strength to stop the painful assault as those angry men had beaten him. “Frocio,” they’d hissed at him. He’d cried for the Archangel Michael to come and intercede.
In the short moments before he’d blacked out again, the desperate man saw the mighty archangel standing at the courtyard gate in a flash of lightning, and his heart leaped with gratitude. A second before his mind closed, seeking unconsciousness to escape the terrible pain, he’d seen the archangel through blood-tinged eyes fall from Heaven to protect him and slay the evildoers.
He’d seen me.
“Michael,” he whispered over and over.