Mozart’s Blood (10 page)

Tendrils of mist swirled between the two of them, obscuring his face. For a moment Hélène thought she saw the red eyes of an animal through the fog. “What—what are you?” she said. “
Mon dieu!
What are you?” Her hand went to her aching throat, and she remembered, with dismal foreboding, that she had a
sitzprobe,
an orchestra rehearsal, in the morning.

His look of youth and innocence returned as the mist cleared, and he smiled, touching his perfect teeth. “Why, mademoiselle,” he said. “It is not what I am, but what you are that is so very interesting.”

“You tried to kill me,” she said, her voice going flat.

“Were you not going to kill me?”

There was a step behind them, and two men, drunken, leaning on each other, staggered past. Hélène seized the moment to arrange her skirts, to wrap her cloak around her, to pull the hood well forward. When the men had passed, she stood very straight and looked into the black eyes of the strange young man. “I was not going to kill you,” she said. “But I could have.”

He raised one slender eyebrow. “Indeed?”

She turned on her heel and started across the plaza. The thirst raged dangerously in her, but now she would have to get away from this…this creature. He understood what she was, but perhaps it was not too late to escape exposure.

His footsteps pattered behind her. “Mademoiselle, wait,” he said. “Tell me what you meant.”

She stopped, staring at her feet, folding her arms. He was not going to let her go, it seemed. “Perhaps I should kill you after all,” she said in an undertone.

He put out his fingers and tipped up her chin. His eyes were as cold as the waters of San Francisco Bay. “I doubt you could,” he said.

She stared at him. “Stand aside,” she said. “I have to go.”

“To do what?”

“I think you know.”

“But I can't let you do that,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked. “If you let me go now, no one will have to die.”

He gave her a boyish grin and said softly, “If you killed someone, I would not care. It's this other thing you do…I can't allow it.”

A rage born of frustrated need surged in Hélène's bosom, and she shoved past him, forcing him to stumble back. A trio of people came out of the Ferry Building. She hurried toward them, past them, into the bright lights of the waiting area. A ferry had just docked, and a few people were disembarking. A yawning ferryman in a blue uniform stood at the open door, his wispy hair lifting in the breeze from the water.

Hélène glanced back over her shoulder, but she didn't see her tormentor. She dug into her pocket for boat fare, bought a ticket from the ferryman, and hurried onto the boat.

“Be a bit late,” he called after her. “Because of the fog.”

She didn't answer, but strode swiftly toward the prow of the ferry, where one or two other passengers lounged in the seats. She would find someone, anyone. And if she had to kill, it would be on his head. Whoever, and whatever, he was.

 

Octavia Voss sighed as the memory left her. She let her hot forehead touch the cold thick glass of Il Principe's window. It had seemed so awful, that San Francisco night in 1906. But it had been the best possible thing that could have happened.

 

The next day's rehearsals began at the top of the second act for most of the cast, while Octavia and Peter went off with the director's assistant to work on the Donna Anna–Don Ottavio duet from act one. As they left, Massimo Luca whispered to Octavia, “
Peccato!
I was hoping to see you this morning.”

She smiled, murmuring, “Work, work, work.”

“Perhaps we could lunch together,” he said.

Now she chuckled. “You're flattering me, Massimo.”

He gave her a boyish grin. “Not at all.”

She and Peter followed the director's assistant and a pianist down one floor to a small rehearsal room, where their marks had been taped on the floor, and chairs and a couple of music stands had been arranged to indicate the set.

The pianist opened his score. “Would you like to sing it through once first?” he asked.

Peter smiled at Octavia, his round cheeks creasing pleasantly. “I'd love that,” he said. “I haven't sung ‘Dalla sua pace' in weeks.” He patted his chest. “I warmed up this morning, just in case. God forbid I should crack the G in Milan, even in rehearsal!”

The pianist laughed, and Octavia chuckled. She touched Peter's arm, warmed by his easy collegiality. “I feel just the same,” she said, and nodded to the assistant director. “Let's sing it.”

Fortunately, she, too, had warmed up before coming this morning. The intervals of “Or sai chi l'onore” were devilish, shifting swiftly from high to low, every word of text laden with emotion. Octavia had experimented, over the years, with different techniques, different interpretations, each production a little more nuanced, each performance shading this way and that, from the most dramatic to the most heartbreakingly lyrical. Her interpretation had changed substantially since Teresa, half trained and inexperienced, first undertook the part.

This morning Octavia poured her anxiety and loneliness into the music. She sang full voice for the first time since she had come to Milan, and the release of the soaring melodic leaps was a relief after controlling herself so carefully. She held back only on the sustained As, knowing there was a long way to go in this opera. If she gave too much too early, her second-act music would suffer. She had learned that lesson from unhappy experience.

And as always, when she sang Donna Anna, she remembered her own father's death. He had died long, long ago, but his loss was as fresh in her recall as if it had happened last week. The memory brought the throb of real feeling into her voice, the weight of true grief that never dimmed. It was a sorrow, she knew all too well, that few could bear. She turned to Peter, her Don Ottavio, Donna Anna's betrothed, and she sang Mozart's sublime music from her heart.

When the final A major chord sounded, Peter put a hand to his plump cheek, cupping it as if to comfort himself. His eyes were red, and his lips quivered. The pianist struck the D major chord for his recitative, but Peter choked, “Wait—wait a moment.”

Octavia touched his arm. “Peter, what is it? What's wrong?”

He dashed at his eyes, and then he laughed. “Damn you, Octavia!” he said. “How am I supposed to sing after that?” He took her other hand and pulled her close to him to buss her on the cheek. “Divine,” he murmured. “Absolutely divine.
Brava!
”

The sincerity of the compliment made Octavia's own eyes sting, and she blinked furiously. This would never do. Only with Ugo could she let her guard down in such a way.

She drew away from Peter, smiling. “You are too kind, my friend. Thank you so much. I'm encouraged! Now come, carry me away with your ‘Dalla sua pace.'”

He returned her smile a little ruefully. He rubbed his pink hands together, cleared his throat, and nodded to the pianist. The D major chord sounded again.

Octavia closed her eyes to listen to Peter's clear, sweet tenor as he began the recitative.

 

There had been no “Dalla sua pace” in that first production. Antonio Baglioni, the first Ottavio, had had to make do with “Il mio tesoro,” in the second act. Teresa had listened from her dressing room, that first performance after the bite.

Teresa stared at herself in the dim glass as she listened to the aria. A small oil lamp flickered among the jars of powders and creams. The petals of drying flowers dropped here and there on her makeup table. Antonio's slightly nasal tenor drifted from the stage as she brushed a little fresh powder on her nose and trailed her fingers over the skin of her throat.

It was the oddest thing, the swiftly fading marks there. She had been intoxicated with wine, with triumph, and especially with the closeness of Mozart that night. She knew the Countess had closed her mouth on her neck, but she could not remember feeling pain. It had not been frightening, but sensuous; not disturbing, but deliciously wanton. She had felt, that night, that she could do anything she wanted to do, have anything she craved, and no one would criticize.

She was weary of criticism. She knew Signor Bondini was pleased with her appearance—everyone teased her about her figure, and even Mozart called her
il piatto saporito,
a tasty dish—but Bondini was never satisfied with her singing.

The marks of the Countess's bite were half a thumb's length apart, more deep than wide. They were scars of the tooth, and they shook her composure and troubled her dreams. When she touched them, a wave of heat swept up from her belly to her cheeks. Her upper lip pulsed, as if bruised.

What was this? she wondered. Lust, yes. Her yearning for Mozart had not abated. Rather, it was as if their brief night together had stoked the flames of her desire, so that its heat flared through her body. Even now she could hardly wait to be back onstage, looking down at his compact figure, his fine hands on the harpsichord, his merry dark gaze turned up to the singers.

But it was more than that. Something primal had happened to her, something that burned in her blood as well as her mind.

The tenor's aria was coming to an end, and she rose to take her place for her final entrance. At the last moment, she seized the ewer waiting on a side table and poured herself a cup of water. She drank it greedily, nearly choking in her haste.

Thirst, she thought. That was what had changed. It was as if Zdenka Milosch's bite had parched her, stolen every bit of moisture from her body. She had drunk water, wine, even beer in an effort to soothe her burning throat, but it seemed to Teresa Saporiti that there was not enough liquid in the entire world to satiate her thirst.

The Fiat raced through the center of Milan, turning again and again down the short streets, moving too quickly for Ugo to read the street names mounted on the sides of the buildings. He caught sight of a restaurant he recognized, Iris, which he knew was in the center of the city. He turned his head just in time to see the ancient wall fragment that marked the center of Piazza Missori. Floodlights shone on its blind arches and illuminated the silhouettes of a few late-night passersby. In the distance the Duomo rose, its thicket of spires glittering with fairy lights. The car rounded a corner and shot past the circular wall of San Satiro on its way north. It slowed as it nosed its way into one of the dark neighborhoods, where apartments and shuttered shops clustered together as if to protect themselves from the intrusions of progress.

Domenico saw Ugo peering out at the streets, and laughed. “It will do you no good to look,” he said complacently. “Where we're going no one will find you.”

Ugo leaned back against the seat.
“Che peccato,”
he said lightly. “I would have liked to share your charming company with one or two friends.”

Domenico grinned. He was not a bad-looking man, Ugo thought, though a bit sallow. He had crooked teeth, and he wore his brown hair a bit long, making him look foppish. But it was nice that his voice was good. Ugo was sensitive to voices.

“I suspect,” Domenico said, “that being a friend to Ugo is a dangerous thing.”

“You will learn that for yourself very soon, signore,” Ugo said. He favored Domenico with his most winning smile.

“Oh, I think I'll be all right.” Domenico held up Ugo's package, which he had ripped from his hand as his two thugs—Società hopefuls, Ugo had no doubt—forced him into the backseat of the Fiat. “I'll just take care of this for you, shall I?”

Ugo raised his eyebrows. He purred, “Do you think that's wise, my friend? You're playing about in something you don't understand.”

Domenico thrust the package inside his coat and narrowed his eyes. “I understand more than you think, Ugo,” he said, putting an unpleasant inflection on the name. “Stories of your little—What shall we call them?—Mutations, perhaps—have reached me.” He buttoned his coat and patted the slight bulge made by the
strega
's carefully wrapped bundle. “We'll have no trouble with that, though, will we?”

An utter fool. But it was not the first time someone had miscalculated the
lupo mannaro.

The man in the front passenger seat turned sideways to look over his shoulder at Ugo. He was pitifully young, Ugo thought. His burnt-ginger hair was clipped to his scalp. He had the burly shoulders and thick neck of a bodybuilder, a type of narcissism Ugo particularly detested. There was no intelligence in his pale-lashed eyes, only that old, familiar hunger. Seeing it filled Ugo with ennui.

He put his head back against the cracked vinyl of the seat and sighed theatrically. “Tell me, my new and unexpected friends,” he said in a silky tone. “What is it you want of me? It can't be my little purchase there. There must be some service you think I can perform for you.”

He rolled his head to face Domenico and let his eyelashes drop suggestively. He let his Italian accent thicken. “Perhaps you have a taste for
la bestia.
”

Domenico shook his head. “I prefer not to speak Italian.”

“Truly? And yet your name…”

Domenico laughed, and his strong voice echoed in the cramped confines of the little car. “I'm not stupid, Ugo. My real name is a private matter.”

Ugo chuckled. “I will not argue the question of your intelligence, signore.
La bestia
—the beast—I thought perhaps your appetites inclined in that direction.”

Domenico ignored this. The driver of the Fiat was nearly as youthful as the ginger-haired man, but bald as an egg. He wore a tasteless array of earrings that made him look, Ugo thought, like an advertisement for an American cleaning product. Ugo remembered, now, where he had first seen this man, and the memory filled him with fury.

The driver swung the little car into a shadowed entryway and braked abruptly just in time to avoid crashing into a scrolled-iron gate. Beyond the gate was a small courtyard, one of the surprising hidden spaces one found sometimes in Milan, with shrubs and a lovely old cedar growing in the center.

Domenico glanced ahead, through the windshield, and said, “We're here. Marks, you get out and lock the gate behind us. Benson, park over there, behind the tree.”

“Benson,” Ugo murmured. “We've met before, haven't we? New York, I believe. Battery Park, wasn't it? How nice to see you again.”

Benson grinned. “The pleasure's all mine,” he said.

“I was a little disappointed, though,” Ugo said as Domenico opened the door and waited for him to climb out. “Your product turned out to be inferior. I intended to let you know. I had no doubt you would make good on my loss.”

“Gonna make real good,” Benson said. Ugo shuddered at the grammar but kept a smile on his face.

Domenico put his hand under Ugo's arm and directed him toward a basement entrance. “We're going to have a little fun, Ugo.”

“Veramente,”
Ugo murmured. “I am sure we will.”

He shook off Domenico's restraining hand as they went through a narrow door. He thrust his hands in his pockets and affected a casual air as they waited for the elevator, a grim affair of steel and linoleum. Domenico punched a button, and the elevator descended, depositing them in a subterranean corridor that was even grimmer, with a cement floor and walls that might once have been white but were now a sort of hopeless dun shade. At the end of the corridor was a locked door, which Domenico opened with a skeleton key. He locked it again when they were inside, evidently shutting the redoubtable Marks and Benson out.

“Such charming accommodations,” Ugo said.

The room was little more than a shoebox, with a steel-spring cot in one corner that held the thinnest of ticking mattresses, a toilet and sink that looked as if they might fall off their fixtures at any moment, and a fly-specked light fixture depending from the cracked ceiling. The room smelled of moldy cement, with a whiff of something that might have been urine, or might have been the wine that had apparently been spilled in one corner and left to desiccate.

Domenico laughed. “You don't need to stay long, Ugo. Simply tell me what I want to know, and you can be off to whatever odd little activity you had planned tonight.”

Ugo stepped into the middle of the narrow room and turned to face his captor. He shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. “Since you brought me to this cozy
camerino
to ask your questions, rather than simply inviting me out for a
cappuccino,
I assume that what you want to know will be something I won't want to tell you.”

Domenico nodded. “It's true, I'm afraid.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small coil of gray nylon cord. “I prefer not to hurt you, if I can avoid it.” He held up the cord, and though his face was solemn, his eyes glittered with something like anticipation.

Ugo allowed himself a visible shiver. “I simply loathe pain,
mio amico.
Like you, I would prefer you not to hurt me.”

Domenico began to pay out the cord, nodding toward the cot. “Just move over there, if you would, please,” he said.

“Oh,” Ugo said lightly. “I don't think so, thanks.”

“Have it your way. I'll get Marks and Benson in here to help, if I need to.”

“Well, yes,” Ugo said. “I think you do need to, actually. I hate being tied down nearly as much as I hate pain.”

Domenico took a step toward the door, but before he could reach it, Ugo had leaped to block his path. “Truly, my friend,” he said, “I hate being tied down.” He put out his hand and gripped Domenico's wrist. His accent flattened, and the focus of his voice fell back in his throat, the voice of an American born and bred. “And I hate being toyed with. What do you want, man? Tell me what it is, and maybe neither one of us will have to get hurt.”

Domenico pulled back. Ugo held on, his fingers biting into the other man's skin. He knew it must hurt, but Domenico gave no sign.

Ugo smiled up at him. “Very good. You tolerate pain. How much, I wonder?”

Domenico's eyes narrowed. “Tell me how to find them,” he said in a low tone.

Ugo widened his eyes in his most innocent manner. “Find who?”

His adversary was having none of it. “You know who. The elders. La Società.”

Ugo released Domenico's wrist with a flare of his fingers. He pressed his hand to his chest. “
Gran Dio,
Domenico! You can't be serious. They would destroy you in a heartbeat! I can't have that happen to my new friend.”

Domenico leaned toward him, his lip curling. “I'm completely serious, of course. You must know that by now.” His breath was sour, and Ugo knew he was hiding nerves. “I've risked everything to get this information,” Domenico said. “And I mean to have it.”

Ugo closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “My friend, my friend,” he said. “You have no idea what you're asking. I wouldn't want you to—”

Domenico kept his eyes fixed on Ugo's face as he shouted, “Benson! Now!” His voice was deafening in the tiny room with its cement walls and uncarpeted floor.

Ugo heard the rattle of the lock, and the door swung open. Marks stood outside, a witless grin on his face. Benson, bald head shining with sweat, sidled in, a small, flat case under his arm. Ugo gritted his teeth. He could guess the wicked instruments it would hold: pliers, possibly syringes, if this Domenico was truly inventive. Certainly it would hold knives.

He was haunted by things that cut, he thought. He had been bedeviled from the start by fools who thought they could bend his will to theirs by applying a sharpened blade.

He would much have preferred not to spend another moment in this room, with these particular tormentors. But until the
strega
's herb wore off—or until the pain was intense enough to defeat it—he was stuck with them.

He sighed, shrugged, and sauntered across the room to the cot.

Benson, evidently disappointed at the ease of his submission, followed, and struck him between his shoulder blades with a hamlike fist. Ugo sprawled in ignominious fashion to the floor, catching his cheekbone on the edge of the metal frame. Benson laughed, and Domenico snapped at him, “Just get the answers, Benson. And be quick about it.”