Page 36 of Unbound

For fuck’s sake, how does this woman know everything? I narrow my eyes at her, impose my will. Give her a stare touched with a shimmer of charm, one that would normally have anybody cowering away from me. Not her. She stands tall, meets my eyes. Looks like I was right—she is hard to charm. I wonder if she realizes her defiance makes her far more likely to be killed?

“I can help,” she says simply. “I majored in journalism, and I was an investigative reporter. But I also took some courses in history. I can research sources, find things out. From what Minnie was saying, there are a few mysteries that could do with solving.”

Did Minnie actually tell her that, or did she eavesdrop with her bat ears?

“Mysteries that need solving? What the fuck are you, Scooby-Doo?”

“No. I’m a mix of Velma’s brain and Daphne’s sex appeal.”

I can’t help it; I have to crack a smile. “Yeah? Well, I have no use for meddling kids right now. When I do, you’ll be first in line. Now, I’ve got stuff to do. I’m going to give you some free rein here, Yvonne. I’m going to try this new thing called trusting you. If you’re serious about wanting to be transformed, you prove to me that you deserve it.”

“How?” she asks earnestly.

“I don’t fucking know. You’re not top of my to-do list. I’m sure you’ll come up with something. But if you leave court without permission, the probation period is over. And frankly so are you, because I will find you, and I will kill you. No more chances.”

She doesn’t even bat an eyelid. “Okay. Can I use your coffee machine?”

Jesus. I threaten to kill her, and her first thought is coffee? She’s going to end up running this place. I nod and leave her to it.

I talk to the boss of the Albini crew as he supervises their work, and once the canopy is up, I walk out into the middle of the garden with him. Shafts of sunlight pierce gaps in the makeshift structure, but it’s good enough for now. “I’ve been told there’s something under here. Cells, dungeons, a fucking spa for all I know. Nobody can find it, and wherever the entrance is must be so well hidden we might never come across it. I want the whole thing cleared and the ground dug up.”

“You sure, pal?” He strolls around, stomping on parts of the floor. “Some of this is dirt. Some is concrete or stone. There’s a chance if we dig it up, you’ll just end up with a giant pit in the middle of your compound.”

“Understood. Now do what you’re told.”

He quakes a little, takes a step back. He’s used to dealing with his own Mafia bosses, and a construction crew is always handy to have on your books. Money laundering, body disposal, and, you know, actually building shit. Running a crew in those circles needs a firm hand and a tough character. But his instincts tell him, correctly, that I am in a different league of Not To Be Fucked With. He nods. “Sure thing.”

I look on from the sidelines as they get to work. The workmen know better than to ask questions or pay too much attention to what’s around them. They bring in massive sledgehammers and big pneumatic drills and set up one side of the courtyard as a dumping zone for everything they’re clearing. Before long, it starts to pile up, and I do have a brief twinge of regret. The flowers, the fruit trees, the lavender bushes? They are pretty, as Yvonne said. They’re also reminders of Italy, the hills around Florence, the gentle rolling swell of the Tuscan landscape. The ancient cities and the smell of myrtle and pine, the olive groves and vineyards. Was that why Vincenzo planted this garden? As a sensory reminder of a place he left behind, maybe even a time in his life when things were simpler and sweeter?

Fuck no, I tell myself. The man had always been evil. His only rival for that was his sister, Giulia, who transformed me. I killed her, and I helped kill Vincenzo, and I don’t regret a single second of it. Coscas are built on loyalty, but he never hesitated to threaten me, to hurt me, and he didn’t hesitate when he tried to kill me either. Screw him and screw his fucking plants.

Aidan joins me, tries to talk to me about this upcoming meeting with the other families. Maybe it’s thinking about Vincenzo and the way he stole so many years of my life, maybe it’s seeing the cleansing destruction going on all around me, but I’m not in the mood. “No,” I tell him. “No to Corsica. No to whatever else they fucking suggest. No to us being treated like the weakest link. We are not prey, and we will not act like it. They want a meeting? They come here.”

Aidan stares at me, then rubs the bridge of his nose. “That’s not going to happen, boss. None of them will leave their strongholds to come here. That’d be like … like bending the knee.”

“Yeah. I know. They can take it or fucking leave it. I’m dealing with this Tomasso Capelli thing on their behalf. I’m forging new relationships with the Vecchissime that could benefit all of us. I’m changing the way things are done. I’m going to be doing that with or without them. I’m all out of fucks to give about etiquette or tradition. You know what tradition is? It’s the thing that lets monsters like Vincenzo carry on living when they should be dead. I’m not playing their games anymore. They want to come for me? Let them fucking come!”

Aidan takes a step back. My fangs are out, and I know my eyes are red. I’ve got a lot of shit going on, and I’m pissed about Rosa leaving, and I’m totally over being a pawn in other people’s games. He doesn’t get the chance to formulate a reply, because there’s a cry from one of the workmen. “We’ve found something,” he yells, over the roar and thud of the drills.

I run over, join the small huddle of men. They’re staring into a hole in the ground. It’s maybe a foot wide. Dust rises from it along with a musty scent that makes my nostrils twitch. Death, bodily fluids, and weirdly, alcohol. There’s definitely some kind of chamber beneath us.

This was one of the most densely planted parts of the courtyard. There was a whole section here that was used to grow sunflowers, the flower that seemed the most out of place in a vampire compound. Now the soil and the plants are gone, piled into a multicolored compost heap, and beneath is a smooth concrete surface, scattered with soil. One of the drills has gone right through it, and the rest is crumbling, falling in on itself.

I push the workers aside, tear at it with my bare hands, expanding the hole. I heft up a huge slab, throw it to the side. Beat down on the next section with my balled fists until it starts to crack into a spiderweb, loose enough for me to get my fingertips beneath. It’s hard work, painful even, but I lose myself in the action, the violence, pulling up chunks of rock and slinging them away, enlarging the gap. The foreman shouts a warning to me. “Be careful! That whole section could go at any second.”

I hear him, but I ignore him. The next second I pay the price—there’s a crunch and a grind as the damaged concrete gives way under my weight. I plummet down, hands flailing, trying to grab hold of something to break my fall. I land with a dull thud, feeling something crunch beneath me. I lie flat and still for a shocked moment, doing a quick triage on my own body. I’m okay. The crunching wasn’t anything that belonged to me. Even if it was, I’d heal, but I know from bitter experience that regrowing vertebrae can be an absolute bastard.

I suck in air and immediately regret it. The stench down here is foul, overwhelming. A single ray of sunlight has managed to get through one of the canopied sections and is shining down in a narrow laser beam. It hits the skin of my hand and I snatch it away. Give myself a few more seconds to recover. Dust motes dance in the single yellow stripe, and it’s almost beautiful. Except nothing in this hellhole could ever be a thing of beauty. Just like Vincenzo’s gardens. Pretty on the surface, corrupt beneath.

I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and immediately know I’m not alone. There is slight scent nearby, the faintest hint of life. A soft rattle of chains, the smell of rotting flesh. I push myself up, see that I’ve landed on a pile of corpses. Human, but old enough to be brittle, for the hair to be desiccated strands clinging to yellowing skulls. I’m not Rosa. I’m not someone who’s going to lose time worrying about who they were, what they were, the life they left behind, but I also regret it. The pointless loss. These would have been playthings for Vincenzo and Carlos, just like Yvonne was. Their days would have been nothing but pain, and their deaths were probably a release.

I get to my feet, dust myself down. I can barely stand, the top of my head grazing the ceiling. More dust and dirt is crumbling down around me. “You okay down there?” Aidan yells. “You need a hand?”

“Yeah. Get your ass down here. Bring a flashlight.”

He joins me, jumping down into a far more elegant crouch than I managed. He looks in disgust at the heap of disintegrating bones and straightens his tie. Freezes, glances up at me. I nod. He can feel it too—the lurking presence of something barely alive.

I flick on the flashlight he passes me, begin to look around properly. Fuck me, even by Vincenzo’s standards this is batshit. There are three separate little chambers carved out down here, and the one I crash-landed into can only be described as an operating theater. The kind that comes with no anesthetic and aims to harm not heal. There’s a gurney, coated in old rust-colored blood, and various tools and devices around it. A hoist, the kind you see for people with their limbs in traction. Those stirrups that women use at the gynecologist. A whole tray of blades and scalpels, along with a hacksaw. The smell is old, layered. Decades’ worth of torture and killing. A table on wheels is piled high with anatomy books, some of them ancient. Reference manuals for the sick and twisted, his own handwritten notes in the margins.