From Hell with Love (6 page)

“Don’t be sorry, father.  A merchant should learn patience, after all.  I’ll leave you two to your celebrations,” he said before backing away from his father and then turned to the crowd, which had somehow become rowdier.  He dived into the mass of people and tried to avoid some of the more unbalanced individuals, looking for his friend.

After a few moments of gracefully avoiding collisions with party guests, he found Marco with his arm around a plain girl with a large nose.  When Marco finally noticed his friend, he lifted his arm and jumped to the new arrival.

“Some nice words, young friend.  Nice words, indeed.  But see, now, what happens when you don’t take the homely girls,” Marco said before nodding behind him.

“You end up with the homely girls?” Niccolo asked with a hint of mischief, to which his friend nodded.

“I end up with the homely girls, Nico.  That is what happens.”

“Try harder, Marco, there are plenty of other women here, and the wine is certainly flowing,” Niccolo said as he waved his hand across the courtyard, displaying the hedonism rampant at the Vespucci Estate.

“You have a point, Niccolo, but I’m putting in some work on this little one just in case as a…backup plan.”

“You can’t be serious…” Niccolo muttered, but Marco grabbed his friend by the chin and nodded.

“A man is only wealthy if he sows many seeds.”

“You might want to be careful about the soil, Marco.  Anyway,” Niccolo said before brushing away his friend’s arm and then extended his left hand.  “that’s not the issue right now.  You have the ring?” he asked, which caused Marco to shake his head again.

“As your best man, I’m saying it’s a mistake,” Marco said as he brought out the ring from his right pocket and then dropped the pouch into Niccolo’s hand.

“If I wasn’t doing this, you wouldn’t
be
a best man.  Now wish me luck.  I’ve heard tell of a stunning merchant’s daughter around here,” he said before smiling at the perpetually drunk man.  Marco returned the smile and then motioned toward the second floor.

“You don’t need luck, Nico.  And she’s up on the second floor.  I don’t know about stunning, though…” he said before looking at his friend and sighing.  “She’s gorgeous, my friend.  You’ve had too much luck already.”

“Here’s to more of it, Marco,” Niccolo said as he moved past his friend and patted him on the shoulder.  Niccolo swam through the crowd of drunken guests and, once reaching the stairwell, leapt up the stairs two at a time, only catching his breath once he made it to the second floor.  He wandered around for a moment, considering his words, but eventually walked over to the balcony after stowing the ring into his pocket.  What he saw was enough to destroy the words in his mind.

Bathed in moonlight, Camilla Gherardini stood with her arms resting on the railing, a crimson dress draping over her figure.  The fabric had been tailored to the young woman, hugging to the curves of her hips and legs and flowing to the ground in cascades of red.  When the breath escaped from Niccolo’s mouth, Camilla turned and smiled at him, showing her teeth absent rot or imperfections.  Niccolo had to stop himself from staring at the girl’s cleavage, which the dress had somehow manipulated into even more of a distraction. 

“I’m offended that you did not come to greet me, Nico,” Camilla said as she turned and put her back to the railing, allowing Niccolo to drink in the sight.  The girl’s hair was done up in an elegant headdress, but Niccolo could not stop looking at her face long enough to notice.  He walked up to her and pretended like he still had his confidence.

“Like we agreed, it was supposed to be torture, my love,” he said before taking the girl in his arms.

“Then I guess we must keep waiting in order to make it better,” she said before putting her finger on his lips once more.

“I’m tired of waiting, Camilla,” Niccolo said, unable to stop the smile breaking through his calm exterior.

“Oh, I love it when you’re frustrated Nico, but there is only one way out of this.”

“And what is that, my love?” he asked before withdrawing out of her arms, knowing where the conversation was heading.

“You must tell me this secret of yours,” she said before placing her arms across her abdomen and clasping her hands together, complementing the act with a soft smile.

“Then I guess I must,” Niccolo said before smiling and withdrawing the pouch from his pocket.  Camilla watched him with scrutiny, but once he opened the pouch and brought out the simple golden band, her face filled with surprise.  “A simple trinket, but for me it means so much more.”

“Nico…”

“Camilla, this was always supposed to happen, but our fathers were stubborn about the arrangement.  Just two days ago, I brought them together and pleaded to take your hand.  And, from this ring, I think you can tell what happened.”

“Camilla, will you be my wife?  Will you make me as happy as Allegra has made my father?  Will you finally let our story begin?” Niccolo asked as he smiled at the dark-haired beauty in the red dress.

“Nico… you know that woman has nothing on me,” she said as she took the man into her arms and kissed him passionately.  After a moment of embrace, he withdrew and then grabbed her left hand before setting the ring onto her finger.

“I know.  But her breasts…” He teased before she slapped him.

“Why must you be a pig?”

“Why must you be perfect?” he asked before drawing her into another kiss, the moon shining on their embrace.

Niccolo Vespucci had never been happier.

***

The merchant’s son woke up in his own bed and groaned as the headache set in.  Niccolo was used to drinking in excess, but his father’s wedding had been a special occasion.  Luckily, the young man did not drink enough to lose his memory.  That was the one thing he did not want to lose; he wanted to keep that vision of Camilla in that red dress for the rest of his life.

He rolled over in his bed and realized that the young woman was nowhere to be found.  It was expected, but he wished that her warm body was still entwined with his.  Niccolo’s thoughts returned to their embrace in the moonlight and the dancing in the courtyard.  From within his own mind he breathed in her scent and thought of all the things they would experience and the moments they would share.  His whole future was in front of him and he could not wait for it to start.

Niccolo felt an itch on his arm and scratched at his sleeve, but almost immediately pain set in.  His head was groggy, but there was no reason that he should feel such pain, so he sat up in his bed.  Niccolo wiped the sleep from his eyes before drawing back his sleeve, trying to find the source of the pain.  He was only able to roll back the sleeve halfway up his arm before it was too tight to continue, so in a hurry he rolled it down and then took off the entire shirt.  In the process the sleeve seemed to stick to his arm, and when he pulled on it, a stinging sensation followed.  When he was finally able to look at his arm, he sank into despair.

The rash that had been on his arm for the last few days had spread along his arm, but worst of all the skin seemed to be peeling away, exposing the lesions underneath.  There were five different patches near the elbow on his upper arm where the skin had been ripped away with the shirt, the skin around it puckering and gasping for life.  Niccolo’s face was filled with horror as he realized that some strain or sickness had claimed his arm.

He ran over to the dresser nearby, knocking over a bedside table and scattering glasses and bottles to the ground, and grabbed at a loose piece of clothing.  It turned out to be a linen tunic, and he wrapped the material around his arm before grabbing at some twine, trying to keep the cloth in place.  Niccolo was panicking as he realized that he had every potential to be cast out to the streets to live among the lepers.  It was no place for a merchant’s son, but with his new wife, Carlo might not need him anymore. 

Niccolo sat on his bed and despaired, feeling lost in his own home.

Chapter 3: Life after Death

“You saw Scratch die?” Niccolo asked, watching his friend struggle for a moment before leaning down and helping Cadmus to his feet.

“Among…other things, yes.  The palace was on fire, Dis was in chaos, then it…ah!” the reaper recounted before he bent over and held the sides of his head, his face the picture of anguish.  In his mind swirled a thousand possibilities of things to come, but the violence was the most distracting.  He saw it all over again, the destruction of the palace and the sprawled-out body of Lucifer.

“He…he was fighting something, it looked like a shadow, but then he was…someone stabbed him in the back.  The person was wearing,” Cadmus explained before horror took over his face, before he straightened up and looked his friend in the eye.  “They wore a dark cloak.”

“Cadmus…” Niccolo muttered, but as the idea bounced around in his head, he realized what Cadmus was thinking.  “Oh, stop it; it wasn’t you.”

“It could be…” the reaper said before breathing out, but Niccolo grabbed his friend by the shoulders and shook him.

“It’s not, Cadmus, you would never do that to Scratch!  Snap out of it!” he shouted.  “It was just a guy in a cloak, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, here’s some news for you, you’re not the only one who wears a cloak.”

“But…”

“And you said that it was all blurry and chaotic, right?  It could easily mean
nothing
,” Niccolo explained, his voice starting to tense up at the possibility that it meant everything.  Cadmus seemed to break out of his daze and leaned down to grab his scythe where he had dropped it.  When he stood back up, he looked at Niccolo with despair.

“Almost everything was blurry, but Lucifer was not.  Someone killed him.”

“Well, shit, like right now?  Do you know what time it is?  Can we stop it?” Niccolo asked, his mind racing at the thought that his father figure was about to be murdered.  Cadmus looked to the palace rising out of the center of Dis and shook his head.

“That,” he said as he pointed, “was definitely on fire during the…vision.”  Biting his lip, Cadmus looked back at his friend and slouched slightly.  “We have some time to figure this out.”

“Well, we go and tell Scratch what’s going on, then!” Niccolo said as he shouted out instructions to the dormant entity in his mind, causing a green mist to appear in front of him.

“Don’t be so hasty!  I’ve never dealt with a reaping like this.  It could be something entirely different,” he urged as a horse coalesced from the mist and stood next to Niccolo.  The beast was a fearsome creature, its sleek black coat interrupted by diseased patches of green tissue, and it almost seemed to gaze into their souls with its emerald eyes.  A green fog seemed to issue from both the eyes and the horse’s mouth, but neither Niccolo nor Cadmus was alarmed by its appearance.  Niccolo merely used the stirrups attached to the grey saddle to leap onto its back.

“We need to warn him, Cadmus.”

“Need to warn him about what?  I was asleep,” a baritone voice echoed from the ether, but the Horsemen knew who was speaking.  Niccolo just lowered his human hand to the horse’s mane and ran his fingers through the black hair.

“Cadmus just got a vision of Scratch dying, getting stabbed in the back,” Niccolo said as he grabbed the reins with his maimed hand.

“Since when do you get visions, Horseman?” the voice asked as the beast turned its attention to Cadmus.

“A side effect of reaping one of the Fallen, Plague.  I don’t know if we can trust it entirely, though.”

“Why the hell not?  You said you get their memories,” Niccolo said as he shifted in the saddle, but Cadmus frowned as he rubbed his forehead with his left hand.

“Nico, I’ve
never
had to deal with this kind of power.  It’s a whole new game.  I want to talk to Buné, first.”

“Just
who
did you reap?  I’ve never heard of this before,” Plague asked, his eyes narrowing at the question.

“Räum,” Cadmus said as he worried the handle of his scythe with both hands, looking down at the corpse just fifteen feet away.

“What?  That’s…” Plague said as he turned to look at the broken demon, the gruesome exit wound from Crocell’s assault still weeping dark blood on the cobblestones.  “What happened?”

“He went feral,” Niccolo said tersely, frustrated that his horse was taking so long to understand the situation.  In his mind he expressed his annoyance, but the horse disregarded Niccolo’s efforts and focused on working through his own thoughts.

“That’s…you think you've seen everything,” Plague muttered before turning to Cadmus.  “Summon Mercy, we’re going now.”

“We can’t bother Lucifer with this right now, he’s preparing for the Council.  I really want to talk to Buné first,” Cadmus started, but Plague neighed and then stamped his front leg.

“That’s
exactly
what we’re going to do.  Buné will know whether or not we can trust this memory from Räum.  I’m assuming we have some time,” Plague said with a note of annoyance, but Cadmus merely breathed out in relief as he tapped the end of his scythe against the cobblestones, dust gathering around them in response.

“Thank God, you’re reasonable.  I didn’t want to fight the both of you,” he said as the dust built on itself and formed into another horse, which looked expectantly to its rider with eyes missing irises.

“We were not made to listen blindly to humans, Cadmus,” a rasp came from the pure white horse that had been born out of dust.  Cadmus grabbed at the black saddle and hoisted himself up, his leap far more graceful than anything Niccolo could hope for.

“I know, old friend, I know.  I’m guessing you were listening,” the reaper asked as he grabbed at the reins of his mount.

“Of course.  I have eternity to waste and so very little to fill the time,” Mercy rattled while he walked to the far alleyway, stepping around the corpse of Räum.  Plague and Niccolo followed, the Horseman grunting when he heard the statement.

“Why can’t you listen like that?” he asked as they reached the alleyway and headed to the main road.