In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (7 page)

This takes a while, too, because once we pass security everyone needs to use the bathroom. By “everyone,” I mean everyone but me and Dr. Perugini. She doesn’t take off the sunglasses, and I wonder if it’s because she’s using them as cover to look at everyone without them knowing it or if it’s because she wants to look cool.

“So,” I say, dipping into my great font of conversational skills. She looks at me, waiting for me to say something else, and I falter. I run through possible responses, come up with nil that doesn’t make me look like an idiot, and shrug my shoulders.

She looks at me for a second and then turns back to watching the lobby. As soon as she’s not looking, I grimace at my stupidity. Way to go, Alpha Moron.

Once I’ve had enough time to transition through the five stages and come to acceptance of the fact that I’m a maroon, we start moving again. We go up an escalator that runs past a spiraling ramp into a sunlit room that’s covered by a geodesic dome type structure. Except it’s more of a glass ceiling.

“Hm,” she says, the first words she’s come out with in a while. “Pretty.”

“You know the geodesic dome was invented by Buckminster Fuller,” I say, and suddenly wonder why the Vatican doesn’t have like ten thousand Bibles within easy reach, just in case visitors decide to convert. Because right now I would take one and jam it down my piehole to keep myself from speaking. Praise Jesus, hallelujah. The word of God jutting out of my gullet could not be any more damaging to my cred with Perugini than my last few efforts in any case.

If she has an opinion on my idiocy, I miss it while trying to dig a hole in the earth to bury myself in. It’s actually less that and more a hot flush that crawls up my cheeks and blots out my memory of the following crucial seconds. Probably a defense mechanism for Alpha Male’s pride. Because he needs one.

The tour guide goes on a bit, leading us out into an expansive and sprawling courtyard. There’s something globe-like in the middle that brings to mind an
Assassin’s Creed
game. The day is brisk but not cold. There’s a wind, but it’s not frigid. Minnesota and Wisconsin have acclimated me to freezing my ass off at a much lower temperature than the balance of humanity would find acceptable. I don’t even have a jacket to offer Dr. Perugini, not that she’d take it at this point. Probably worried that my idiocy is contagious.

No, of course she wouldn’t think that; she’s a doctor. She just knows it’s genetic and that she wouldn’t want to have children with me.

See how my mind leaps, all wild and fancy free? This is how I end up on verbal cliffs.

We step into the building that encloses the courtyard, and I listen to the guide doing his thing. I’m on hyper alert now, eyes off Dr. Perugini, because I just know I’ll look like an even bigger moron if I get caught looking at the way her posterior causes the fabric of her dress to shimmer as she walks. I think I’ve made enough of a fool of myself for today, so I focus. If only I could have achieved this state of Zen some twenty minutes and innumerable embarrassments ago.

Part of this increased focus is because the tour guide is talking about some interesting stuff. We pass through a sculpture gallery, and he talks about how all those white marble statues from Ancient Greece and Rome probably had colored paint on them at some point. I try to imagine them with purple, yellow and red hues on them and it breaks my fricking brain. (Arguments could be made in light of my missteps with Dr. Perugini that my brain is already broken, and I see the reason in them.)

This place is art and architecture, everywhere. I’m not even that much of a fan of this stuff, and my senses are overwhelmed. There’s more statuary than in a sculptor’s shop, more frescoed or painted and gilded ceilings and crown-molding-ish trim on hallways than I imagine you’d find in the most ornate palaces of Europe. I start to make a sarcastic remark about it all to Perugini, but I remember to shut up just in time, because it’s the sort of thing that would probably be offensive to the majority of the population.

I wish, not for the first time, that Sienna was here. Now, though, it’s just so I’d have someone I could snark freely with.

We work our way quietly through countless displays. I see a statue by Michaelangelo that’s some of the finest work I can imagine. I keep my mouth shut, taking it all in. I pass security guards, every single one of whom is playing on a cell phone. I consider taking a sculpture off a stand just to see if they’ll notice, but ultimately decide not to commit a criminal act with my crush standing only feet away from me.

Perugini is expressionless throughout the whole thing. She’s about the coolest customer I can imagine, outside of the bow and arrow lady last night. I try to decide whether this has something to do with her medical training or if she’s just an impassive person. I do not come up with an answer.

We file down a hallway into a miniature recreation of the Pantheon that sits in the heart of Rome, and I wonder at how the Vatican, symbol of Christianity, accumulated such a crazy amount of pagan art. Perugini’s interest begins to show as the tour guide turns us loose to wander around the circle of the Pantheon, the Greek gods standing on pedestals before us.

“Hmm,” she says as we pause before a pretty amazing statue of Ceres. I can’t really see behind the sunglasses, but Perugini angles her head to read the display.

“It’s Demeter,” I say, wondering if she’ll recognize the more commonly known Greek name.

She looks up at me. Sunlight streams in from an eye-like portal directly overhead in the dome. “Oh?” she asks and nods to the next statue in line. “And that one?”

“Apollo,” I say. He carries a mighty staff—not that kind; get your mind out of the gutter—and his robes are flowing and exquisitely carved.

“You seem like an expert on this,” she says, still cool. We meander to the next statue, and I admire her grace instead of looking at the carved marble. She nods at it and I glance up. I feel a little sick. “Which is this one?”

I angle my head down, looking intently at the floor, which is composed of white tiles interspersed with the occasional black one in some pattern my brain doesn’t want to put together right now. “It’s Hera,” I say, but I can’t look at the statue. It actually looks like her, too, which is why I don’t want to look it in the eye. Look
her
in the eye.

I was there when Hera died. But more than that, I was there when Hera lived. She was the head of Alpha; she was my boss. She was more than that, though; she was a guide, a mentor, a voice of authority in a world where the craziness of what we were up against was enough to make me question the cause sometimes. She was my north star—my Sienna before there was Sienna. I followed her, believed in her. I kept doing what she would have wanted me to long after she was dead.

I still am. She believed in Sienna.

I believe in Sienna.

I keep walking, pausing in front of the next statue. If Perugini senses my despondency—which let’s face it, she probably doesn’t, because why would she be studying me intently?—she doesn’t say anything. “Who is this?” she asks, testing me again, and I look up.

I don’t recognize this one, at least not at first. Then I do, and probably do a double take right there in the middle of the fricking room, like I’ve seen something I can’t believe. Which I totally have. I cannot believe what I’m seeing.

My eyes fall to the placard at the base of the statue, seeking out the knowledge I need. There’s the name, that’s the goddess. She even has a frigging bow in her hand, just like she did when I saw her last night.

“Diana,” I whisper, and the name is full of significance to me in a way that is probably lost on Dr. Perugini. It all makes a crazy amount of sense now, and yet not a damned bit. Why would she have been there last night? Why would Giuseppe try to introduce me to her, of all people? What does she have to do with all this? And then my eyes fall on her title, and I wonder if it’s a clue all by itself.

“Goddess of the Hunt.”

I’m blown away by this revelation for at least the next thirty minutes. Maybe even an hour. I stumble along like one of the old tourists, just thinking it through. I shouldn’t be surprised that the Goddess of the frigging Hunt would survive an extermination of our species, should I? She knows hunters, so she knows how to avoid being prey, right?

She dropped off that rooftop like some character out of a superhero movie. Like a female Hawkeye. Or like that Japanese Hawkeye in the last Wolverine movie. Arrows a flyin’, my ass being saved—yeah, it was hero-type stuff. And she was clearly a total badass, too.

So Giuseppe wanted to introduce me to one of “my kind,” as he put it, here in Rome. So he plans an intro to a—she’s gotta be like a hired killer or something with that skillset. She can’t just be carrying a bow around Rome for shits and giggles, can she?

She’s the Goddess of the Hunt. I suppose she can do just about whatever she damned well pleases.

But the intro goes wrong, and Giuseppe’s inquiries get him killed by … someone. Someone scary enough that the huntress doesn’t want to get involved. She whacks like seven-eight of their guys, but she doesn’t want to get into this.

Stupidly, Alpha Male charges ahead where the Goddess of the Hunt fears to tread. Because my rallying cry is “MORONS FORWARD!” or something of that sort. Mercy.

I say none of this to Dr. Perugini, because a) she’s not going to believe me, and b) none of this makes me look cool, especially the part where I’m not the Big Damn Hero doing the saving. Also, there are a lot of tourists around us and most of them speak English. Call me self-conscious, but I don’t want anyone thinking I’m crazy. There is still a widely accepted cult of skepticism about the existence of metahumans, even after the Minneapolis incident.

We go through a corridor of tapestries, and one of them has a Jesus that the tour guide swears is watching. I picture someone behind the wall like in the old movies, eyeballs staring out, then dismiss that thought as utter nonsense. Then I move, and I swear the tapestry’s eyes move with me. No, I am not a fan of the “Jesus is watching” tapestry. It’s like he can sense my impure thoughts about Dr. Perugini and he is not pleased. Come on, man, your dad supposedly intelligently designed her. Like this wasn’t predictable.

I manage to center my thinking back on the search for this priest, Father Emmanuel, just about the time we get to the Sistine Chapel. They get pretty serious about keeping out people in shorts and short skirts, and I glance at Dr. Perugini. She raises her eyebrows almost imperceptibly at me, and I suddenly realize why she changed her clothes before she came here; they wouldn’t have let her in wearing what she’d had on before. I watch a couple of American northerners get culled from the pack for non-regulation clothing, and we pass on through into the Chapel.

It’s about this time I realize I need to talk to Perugini about what to do regarding this priest. The problem is, you’re not really supposed to talk in the Sistine Chapel. This doesn’t seem to stop most people, though, and I’m kind of embarrassed for them. There’s a security guard whose primary function seems to be to loudly shush people every thirty seconds or so, as the crowd within the Chapel goes from a buzz to a roar in between his invocations. I’m not a huge rule-nazi, but this is just pathetic, and it makes me despair for the species.

The guide gives us ten minutes, and Perugini sits on a bench on the far end of the main room. She leaves space for me to join her, so I do, sitting down as I stare up at the frescoes. There’s a lot going on up there, some pretty impressive stuff. I note the rule that you’re not supposed to take pictures, but people are disregarding that left and right as well. Jeez, people. Is nothing sacred anymore? Uhh … literally, I guess, given the location.

Perugini speaks as we’re leaving the Chapel, and now I see a conversion station for those who have been moved by the frescoes to join Christianity. No Bibles on the table, though, which is totally a deal breaker since I suspect I’m not done saying stupid stuff in her presence. “What about this priest?” she asks, probably reminded of our situation by the fact that there’s a black priest sitting at the conversion table. And because this is the Vatican, he is also playing on a cell phone. Seriously.

“Well, I have a number for him,” I say, “but I don’t know if his phone’s turned off or what, because I can’t get through to him.”

I see her eyebrow arch, barely, under the expansive sunglasses. She holds out a hand, palm up, and it takes a second for my slow-ass brain to interpret this as her asking for the number. I hand her the slip of paper and she continues to look at me, palm still outstretched, until I hand over my phone as well. With both in hand, she looks down and dials, her sunglasses still hiding any emotion her eyes might reveal.

A sharp, surprisingly loud rendition of Pharrell’s “Happy” echo through the corridor and almost makes me snatch my phone out of Dr. Perugini’s hand in embarrassment. Then I realize it’s not my phone that’s making the sound.

It’s the African priest’s.

It takes a few seconds for it all to register with me—he apologizes to everyone around, profusely, embarrassed, in a low, sonorous voice with an accent that tells me he probably is from somewhere in Africa. He then puts his head down again, and I look back to Perugini.

“Went to voicemail,” she says, and we both look at the priest. He’s fooling with the phone, but he’s plainly refused the call.

“Dial it again,” I say, and pass by her to make my way—slowly—toward the table. I see her comply, and this time the air is filled with a low buzz before he rejects the call again and I feel a smile creep onto my face at the blind, beautiful luck that has finally—somehow—swept in on the winds.

“Father Emmanuel?” I ask, and he blinks twice in surprise and looks up.

“Yes?” he asks, and I smile at this stroke of luck.

“My name is Reed Treston,” I say, and pause. What the hell am I supposed to say next? I go for the crazy. “I got your name from a man named Giuseppe—”

I don’t get any more out before a shadow falls down his features. “Not here,” he says quietly. “Not now.”