Skin of the Wolf (20 page)

R
osa Cartelli sat on the Via Veneto in the sidewalk café of Harry’s Bar. Even in the wan light and cool air of a February afternoon she enjoyed this place, had come here frequently to take a late-day hot chocolate—or in the heat of summer, a Campari—since the first confectioner’s, the Golden Gate, had opened on this corner in 1918.

Rosa Cartelli was among the Eldest of her people. Vividly, she remembered the first time she’d seen Rome. She’d arrived in what present usage referred to as the third century, in the year Diocletian became emperor. Much travel was behind her and much ahead at that point, and like most of her kind she kept, by and large, to sparsely settled areas. She avoided her fellow humans until a hunger she could neither understand nor control drove her to feed; afterwards she’d retreat again to regret, self-loathing, and solitude. It was a life of heartache, wary loneliness, and physical discomfort, a life she did not understand to be endless until she could no longer count the years since she herself had been attacked by a man none of the members of her household, or any of the citizens of Uruk, had ever seen before. She was not young then, and her children and grandchildren feared for her life, but her recovery was rapid and complete.
More than complete. She grew stronger, more able, more adept at every task; but as she became powerless to avoid her dark desire for the blood of others, as she watched her family age around her, she was forced to admit the gods had treated her with a different hand. Eventually her grandchildren began to have children of their own and they in turn neared the age of marriage, while she did not, any longer, change at all. As people in the town began to whisper and to turn from her, she understood she could not remain in the Mesopotamian valley that had until then been her entire world.

One night, without goodbyes, she left her loved ones and walked into the hills. The world, she found in the centuries that followed, was much, much larger than she had ever imagined. She saw great swaths of it, from the early dynastic towns of what would become the towering Chinese empire to the cold, rough fishing villages along the North Sea. Then one day she came by ship to the center of the Roman Empire, for no reason other than that she had not been there before. The hot and dusty hills, with their umbrella pines and vineyards, captured her heart. She stayed; eventually, as she had to, she left; but throughout the centuries she continued to return. It was here, outside the walls of the city proper in the dock quarter now called Trastevere, among peoples of all the Old World’s races coming and going, that she first became aware of others of her kind.

Eleven centuries after her first sight of these hills, ten after her first meeting with others like herself, the Council of Constance and the signing of the Concordat made it possible for her people—known to themselves, by then, as the Noantri—to settle permanently and together, if they chose. She did, taking the name Rosa Cartelli, leaving Rome after that only for the periodic Cloaking Noantri life required. As her formerly scattered, furtive people began to create the Laws and structures that would define their lives henceforth,
Rosa Cartelli engaged wholeheartedly in the debates and deliberations that helped build these systems and their uses. Her eloquence, passion, and clear thinking had brought forth from their acknowledged leader, the Pontifex, an invitation to take a seat on the newly formed Conclave. Though many Counsellors chose to serve for a time and then return to private life after some decades or centuries, Rosa Cartelli had remained in service to her people. She sat now on the right hand of the Pontifex, acknowledged as second only to him in wisdom and fineness of perception.

She was, however, with all that, still a fairly private person who would rather not be interrupted over her chocolate and biscotti. Thus when her cell phone rang on this afternoon in Harry’s Bar and the screen informed her the call was from the Conclave offices, she considered not answering. Duty won out, however; the Noantri administration rarely contacted a Counsellor except in a situation of importance.

“Salve. Sum
Rosa Cartelli,”
she said, speaking in Latin as was the custom when discussing affairs of the Community.

“Salve, Consiliaria,”
replied the familiar voice of Filippo Croce, the Pontifex’s private secretary. Continuing in Latin, he told her, “Livia Pietro has called from New York. She wishes to speak to you.”

“Livia Pietro? What on earth could she want?” Five months ago the task Pietro had been set was the most urgent business in the Noantri world. Any communication from her then was given the utmost priority. But that situation had been resolved satisfactorily, and Pietro had gone back to her uneventful life in the study of art history.

“I don’t know, Counsellor. She said her concerns were private, to be shared only with you. I have her on the line and can send the call through, or I can tell her you’re unavailable if you prefer.”

“No, it’s all right, I’d better speak with her. I can’t imagine what it’s about—you say she’s in New York?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Filippo. Please put her through.”

A pause, an electronic hum, and then, “Professor Pietro, here is Counsellor Cartelli. I’ll absent myself now, and the line is secure.
Salve.
”

In the early days of this technology, until not long ago, one would at this point have heard a click. Now nothing but a subtle silence announced Filippo’s departure.

“Signora Cartelli?” came Livia Pietro’s voice, speaking Italian. “Thank you for taking my call.”

Rosa switched to Italian, also. “I must admit to a certain concern, Professor Pietro. If you wish to discuss an issue of importance to the Community, a protocol exists that you, of all people, know very well. Thus I wonder why you insisted upon contacting me individually. If you have something else in mind, my perplexity is all the more. Tell me, how can I be of service?”

“I’m afraid your concern is justified, Signora. The issue I’m calling to discuss is of enormous importance to the Noantri, but I don’t feel I can talk about it at this point with anyone except yourself.”

“I don’t recall us being the closest of confidantes.” Rosa signaled the waiter for another chocolate. “Please explain yourself.”

“Yes. I assume Signor Croce told you I’m in New York. Spencer George and Father Thomas Kelly are here, also.”

“An embarrassment of riches for New York.”

Pietro didn’t respond to the mild barb. “We’ve met two men here. Not Noantri, but also not Unchanged.”

“Don’t speak in riddles, Professor. It’s tiresome.”

“I apologize. But when I tell you—” Pietro took an audible
breath and began again. “Signora Cartelli, these men are what the legends call shapeshifters.”

During the long pause that followed, a
motorino
buzzed up the street and a truck rumbled the other way. Rosa stared at the ancient bricks of the Porta Pinciana, recalling the hot summer when it had been built. “Livia Pietro, be very careful what you say. These are not concepts to be trifled with. Down the ages many people have claimed many abilities. Some have known themselves to be liars, while others have believed their own words. All, though, have turned out to be charlatans. America is no different from the Old World in this, except that the impostors may be both more persuasive, and unfamiliar to you. Whatever these men are claiming—”

“No.” Pietro interrupted her. “They’ve claimed nothing, in fact they’ve tried to hide it. Spencer saw it happen.”

“Spencer George? He saw? What did he see?”

The waiter placed Rosa’s chocolate in front of her and backed discreetly away. The cup sat untouched as Rosa listened to Pietro’s narrative of a cold night in a park in the heart of the giant metropolis, where, according to Spencer George, a man had turned into a wolf.

When Pietro was finished Rosa said nothing, but lifted her cup to her lips and sipped. The sweet warmth of the drink broke the spell. It was a seductive tale; but it was nonsense. “Spencer George was injured. He was hallucinating.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“You may not. There it is nonetheless.”

“The young woman who was killed—”

“Was killed by a madman of one kind or another. A tragic story, but an old one.”

“I disagree.”

“Professor Pietro, have you seen this Shift, as you call it?”

“No.”

“Until you do, please don’t spread unsubstantiated rumors. Especially from an academic, it’s bad form. Furthermore, if this is a phenomenon you’re requesting that the Conclave investigate, as is your right, I still don’t understand why you felt compelled to contact me directly.”

“I’m most emphatically not asking the Conclave to investigate. That’s part of the point. I’m calling you because when I was Summoned before the Conclave you were the Counsellor most forcefully opposed to Unveiling. You insisted vehemently and categorically that revealing ourselves would result in disaster for our people.”

“That encounter was not so long ago that I’ve either forgotten it, or changed my opinion. What of it?”

“Assuming for the sake of argument that what Spencer saw was real and these men do have this Power, it’s both contrary to their Law and a genuine danger to them to reveal their existence. As it would be for us. In fact I’m directly contravening their Law by calling you, although I do it with the approval of one of them.”

“I do not accept your assumption, but since you apparently do, let me ask, then, why you’re calling at all?”

“Because a greater danger is imminent and I need your help.”

“What danger?”

Again, Rosa listened as Pietro described a scenario that, if it were to come to pass, would admittedly be horrible. Men and women with no experience of powers simultaneously vast and subtle suddenly invested with them, with the changes in perception they brought and the alterations in consciousness that went along
with them. Rosa was taken back to her own beginnings, when her new Blessings and dark needs appeared simultaneously, with no warning, no guidance, no way to understand.

“Many will not survive, I’m told,” Pietro said. “Some will, but be unable to choose rationally how and when to apply their Powers—a terrible form of insanity. Many lives will be forever changed, irrevocably destroyed. But that’s not the worst.”

“And what is the worst?”

“It will be the same as it would be with us. Once it’s known this can happen, once people become aware that it’s the natives of this country who carry the gene that makes it possible, and especially in view of the chaos this ill-considered Awakening will unleash, there will be disaster on a grand scale. You spoke about the fires coming for us once again. They’ll come here, too. The killing mobs, people who’ve been wronged screaming for blood, and people full of fear, and soon after, people whom the destruction hasn’t touched but who are all too willing to seize a chance to brutalize and kill. Unlike with us, the Power to Shift doesn’t convey immortality or anything near it. The stories say Shifters are difficult to kill, but the truth of that depends on their skills and abilities in their animal forms. Most of these people will have none. In our case, only the fires can harm us, and to escape them is to survive. But a Shifter can be captured, hurt, and destroyed in any of the ways an Unchanged can. And of course, as it was when the Noantri were the target of violent persecutions, many people who aren’t Shifters will be hunted and killed, caught up in the panic and the frenzy.

“And something more. Like ours, the Shifters’ difference is based in their physical natures, in their genes. To fear government-decreed mass arrests and imprisonment, and human experimentation—
especially considering the history of this country regarding its First Peoples—is not to go too far.”

Rosa sighed and sipped her chocolate. “You’re an eloquent speaker, Livia Pietro. All those years of trying to motivate undergraduates, I would suppose. The picture you paint is quite dark but you haven’t yet explained my place in it.”

“The men who plan to perform this Ceremony have hidden themselves. I’m not sure we can find them to stop them. But they need a specific artifact, an ancient mask. Or at least, they believe they need it, which amounts to the same thing. The murder of the young woman came about when they tried to obtain the mask, but the one at the auction house is a fake. They’re looking for the real one. Signora Cartelli, they
must
be stopped.”

“I assume you’ve come to the point where I learn why I’m involved.”

“Yes. Spencer and Father Kelly have followed the trail of the real mask to Il Gesù, in Rome.”

“The mask is here?”

“It may be. Certainly, information on the last man known to have possessed it is there. He was a Jesuit priest who lived in the early eighteenth century in what was then called New France. A certain Père Ravenelle, on a mission to the Iroquois. The information that could lead to the authentic mask is in the secret archives at Il Gesù. Even Father Kelly can’t get at it.”

“A circumstance which has fueled your suspicions, no doubt.”

“Yes.”

“But your nemeses, they can?”

“I don’t know. They may be able to, or they may find the mask another way. For us, this is the only path we see.”

Rosa finished her chocolate, watching dusk settle over her beloved Rome. Four millennia, and the problems of people living in this world never got any easier. People Changed or Unchanged—or, barely possibly, Other. She wrapped her cashmere scarf more tightly as a breeze came up.

“What you want me to do, then, is send someone to burrow into Il Gesù to unearth this material.”

“That’s it exactly. But without informing the Conclave. I realize this puts you in a difficult position. But as I said—”

“Yes, yes. Whatever I choose to do will be my own responsibility.” Rosa took another long pause. “Very well. Although I seriously doubt the veracity of this claim to shapeshifting powers, the consequences you describe are too dire to be ignored. On the possibility that there is truth in this story, I will help you. After the danger has passed we will discuss the necessity of Conclave involvement. In the unlikely event that what you say is true, this is not a secret you have the right to keep.”