Her father was at Giovanni’s side, bent over, dragging him across the gravel to the entrance, leaving a trail of blood. Roger leaned against the doorframe, the bolt deep in his left shoulder. Painful, but not life threatening, was Jess’s instant assessment. She ran past him to her father. Scanning to her left, through the olive grove, she looked for any sign of Nico. Nothing. The coward ran.
“How is he?” she blurted out, grabbing one of Giovanni’s arms. She slung the crossbow over her back.
“Not good,” Ben replied. He’d taken the gun from the big man, and offered it to Jess.
“You keep it,” Jess told her father, crouching over Giovanni, his eyes half-open. She kissed him. “Hang on, just hang on.”
Smiling weakly, he whispered, “We got your father.” He coughed up mottled red blood and mucus.
The clouds in the sky thickened, the gloom deepening.
Jess glanced at Giovanni, his eyes closed, his body twitching. He wasn’t going to make it. She grabbed an arm and helped her father pull Giovanni, glancing left into the olive groves again.
A hiss erupted between the trees. Whitewater churned through the valley below, a black sludge surging behind it. Looking up, lightning crackled through the angry black clouds, a peal of thunder rolling through the valley. The ground juddered, shaking rocks from the castle walls.
“We have to hurry,” Ben urged, grunting, pulling Giovanni through the entrance into the courtyard. “We’re almost at Nomad’s closest approach. Tidal forces will increase cubically. They’ll triple in the next hour. It’s going to rip the crust apart.”
“Down through the stables.” Jess pointed to their left. “We can get into the caves below.”
Roger stumbled in behind them.
Over the roaring wind and water, the crack of a gunshot, then another.
Screaming.
Her mother’s screaming.
Jess let go of Giovanni’s arm and turned, ran up the stairs to the house as her mother ran out.
“What is it?” Jess grabbed Celeste.
“Nico came in the side door, shot through the locks,” Celeste cried. “He took Hector.”
“Is he inside?”
“No, he dragged Hector out, into the olive groves on the north side.”
Jess hung her head, closing her eyes and listening to the rush of the water. The entire valley to the north was submerging. No way he’d get out there. This mountain was fast becoming an island. Where would he go? He knew they had the gun from his partner, so he wouldn’t risk coming in here. Would he just kill Hector?
No.
He’d want something more symbolic.
Jess looked at her mother, wiped swirling ash from her face. “I know where he’s going.”
38
CHIANTI, ITALY
“STA 'ZITTO!” NICO yelled at Hector, who squirmed in his arms.
Putting the boy down, he swung his left hand back and slapped Hector hard across the face, knocking the child into the dirt.
Fat droplets of black rain hammered onto the tin roof of the cable car control shack, spattering onto Nico. His eyes burned. It stank of rotten eggs, of sulfur. Pain flared in his right side. He’d snapped off the crossbow bolt, but the point was lodged deep in his right shoulder. It burned, and he’d bled badly. He was lightheaded, but it was almost done.
The ground trembled under his feet, black water churning in the valley below while lightning crackled in dark skies above. Nico smiled grimly, shaking in fear. This would be the end of it. This would be the end of everything.
After securing his prize, the final Ruspoli heir, little Hector, Nico would have disappeared down into the valley if it hadn’t been filled with churning water. Instead he was forced to escape up here, outside the north wall, up through the rocks to the highest point. The cable stretched over the valley floor, connected to Villa Tosetti on the other side.
Pulling the boy out of the dirt, he opened the control room door and peered down the slope. Surging black sludge flattened olive trees just hundreds of feet away, sucking along in it floating cars, the remains of shattered homes and a fishing boat. No, if he wanted to get across, this was the only way. Thick rolls of steam crawled over the sludge below. To his left, fingers of magma flowing from Monterufoli glowed dull red through the darkness. Tremors rattled the metal cage.
Hector crouched on the floor by his feet.
Nico growled. “Andiamo!”
God had extinguished the sun above. Leviathan had swallowed the sky, and darkness crawled over the valley. Only God could judge him now.
He reached down to grab the boy.
Hector shot sideways, turned and jumped at Nico, windmilling his arms. Nico tried to grab him, but an explosion of pain in his left side staggered him sideways. Hector scrabbled along the floor, a desperate animal trying to escape, but Nico overcame the flaring new pain and grabbed the boy by the neck.
The boy squealed.
Nico gritted his teeth and looked at his side. With the thickening clouds, light fell by the minute, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness. A jagged piece of metal stuck out of his ribs.
“Bastardo,” Nico roared, throwing the child against the metal wall.