Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2
Chapter Fifty-One

“This is quite comfortable,” Vivian noted with delight as we sat down on our bench.

Despite my request to Richards, the truth was I knew nothing about trains aside from what Maximo had mentioned about them in passing. I’d never ridden on one—I’d never had a reason to before this moment.

The handsome seating of the Washington Express was very comfortable--heavily padded and covered with a delicate floral pattern that lit the car’s spirit in the early morning light. The bench was wide enough to easily accommodated us both, and I delighted at the heavily varnished wood paneling throughout the car that framed its many windows. Watching the landscape go by would be a treat.

Though ours was not one of the modern models that Maximo had described, with private compartments that transformed into sleeping quarters, I soon learned that feature was unnecessary for this journey.

“We expect to arrive in Jersey City before the sun sets,” the porter assured me. “There should be at least two departures left to ferry you to Manhattan before they stop for the night.”

I mused that this vessel must move faster than even my wolf could run. Offering a gratuity, I thanked the man profusely and settled in. Shortly after we rolled out of the capital, I rejoiced to discover I could open our window to allow fresh air to cool us during the journey.

By noon, we’d ventured from our bench down the moving aisle to visit the dining car. There I marveled further at the simple offerings that made such a difference to travel’s normal discomforts.

And then I heard him.

I turned to look down the car from the service bar to the lounge where I found Duccio sitting alone at a small table and staring back at me. He had masked his mind completely, as he had the previous night at the theatre until he wanted me to notice him. It was a talent few possessed, and his control retook me by surprise. More than anything, I sensed he was true to his word: I had nothing to fear from him.

“I see someone over there that I know,” I told Vivian. “You may wait for me back at our bench.”

She looked back, locking eyes with Duccio, then nodded to me. After she’d left the car with our tea and shortbread cookies, I walked through to the lounge to approach his table.

Duccio stood, never taking his eye from mine, and nodded silently. I felt his immense power radiating within my mind, its presence assuaging any doubt I might have fancied during our century and a half apart.

How to describe the sensation of seeing his face again after so long? The most startling discovery was to learn I’d forgotten exactly what he looked like. Until that moment, he’d become a vague visage in my mind, reflective of the gamut of emotions I felt toward him.

He was exceedingly handsome with a strong, angular jaw and straight, hawklike nose that flared delicately near the tip. His sensuous lips and light olive skin might seem boyish were it not for his dark, heavy brow, which made his entire face appear exceptionally masculine.

Buried within all this accouterment were his eyes: two sharp sapphires that stared with startling presence. Filled at once with both danger and adoration, their effect unnerved me.

I wanted to slap him and rip the skin from his treacherous skull. I wanted to kiss him and remember all those days when he meant something profoundly wonderful to me.

Instead, I took a seat at his table and turned my head to stare silently out the window at the moving vista. Now that I’d come to it, I couldn’t decide what to say. There were things I wanted to scream, but far too many to choose from.

I settled for silence.

“How are you?” he asked.

It was the most useless, pedestrian question he could ask. I couldn’t repress a smile at how insufficient it was.

“Well,” I answered.

“And Maximo?”

“The same. I left him back in D.C. I decided I didn’t need his help to destroy you. I didn’t even bother to tell him you were here.”

My answer evoked another disparate look from his eyes, this time of both sadness and humor.

“Is that the price of your forgiveness, then?”

“No,” I sighed lightly. “I forgave you when I could not bear to suffer from Father’s loss for another day. And then I loved you once again when his letter reached my hands.”

Now it was Duccio’s turn to stare out the window.

“But don’t let that stop you from delivering the apology I’ve been waiting upon for a lifetime.”

“I apologize, unreservedly.”

In the moments that followed, nothing happened. There was no weight lifted from my shoulders; no euphoria of accomplishment to settle the old suffering. The words I’d waited so long for meant almost nothing to me now.

“Do you yet know what it’s like to regret a decision so despicable and ruinous that it haunts your every waking day?”

“No,” I answered after a ponderous measure. “But then, I’ve done nothing nearly so unforgivable.”

He looked back at me with sadness.

“You will,” he said. “When that day comes, you’ll try everything you can think of to undo it. But you’ll learn that there’s really no such thing as redemption. You can never undo what you’ve done, and there’s no way to repair the damage. Your only solace will be to choose something better to do with the time left to you.”

I saw his point, but I didn’t agree.

“And what did you do with your time once you fell upon that epiphany?” I asked with a repressed scowl. “What was so tedious and taxing that you needed all this time to stop hunting us, to show your face to me, or offer your apology?”

Duccio stared back without answering.

“No, by all means, I’d love to know. What was so engaging that you allowed your family to grieve for our father, who you slew with your own hands, while we ran for our lives?

“Were you perhaps too busy at your tailor to aid us while we were captured and tortured? When the Paris pack ripped away our new lycan siblings in Burgundy, were you too predisposed with your treachery to lend them a hand? Or are you saying this pathetic realization only occurred to you recently?”

I felt my blood pressure rising, and I shifted in my seat. Duccio moved to answer, but I stopped him.

“No, forget those questions. After all this time, I only have the stomach to hear the answers I truly care about. What has become of the other lycan of Castello Palatino? Are they still there? What of Dionisio? When were his last days, or did he welcome his protector before death sought him out?”

Duccio only shook his head. From his mind, I sensed he could not answer my questions or speak about any of them. And at the thought of Dionisio, I felt a bottomless well of pain from Duccio before he shut his mind on the memories.

“All of it’s gone; your siblings; the castle. All that remains of them are our memories and the crate I sent you.”

His answer stunned me. It disarmed me, and I felt my anger turn to frustrated despair.

“How? Who?”

“It matters not how nor who. Everything that has transpired since your last day there was the inevitable result of my decision to slay our father.”

Silence fell between us. In time, Duccio rose from his seat without comment and walked to the bar to fetch us both coffee. Once he returned, the train slowed to pull into the Philadelphia station. Passengers moved on and off the train. I lifted my cup to sip the drink to keep from weeping.

From the platform, my heavy eyes were pulled toward a man leaning against the brick wall of the station manager’s office. Unquestionably lycan, he stared at Duccio through the glass, then at me.

“You need not be concerned. He is but another penance I endure.”

Are we in danger? I asked silently, placing my cup back on the saucer.

He reached to take my gloved hand.

“I’m quite certain you’re in danger from no one.”

I looked back at the platform to replace the man was gone, and I sensed that he’d retreated from us. A scout, off to report Duccio’s whereabouts, I expected.

“Sforza?” I asked.

“I only wish,” he answered darkly.

Duccio escorted me to the Astor Hotel on Broadway when we finally arrived in Manhattan. He even came into the lobby to make sure I was received without my husband present, assuring the front desk I was the Baroness Roussade, wife of the French ambassador to the United States, and not a prostitute there to peddle my wares. This peculiarity of American culture perplexed me: how a society still so young and fresh could also be so socially archaic about the sexes.

Duccio offered to host us in his house, but I declined, not bothering to cite all the obvious reasons. Nor did I inform him of my other reason for coming to New York. Duccio settled for the opportunity to invite me for dinner around seven the following night.

“There’s so much more I want to tell you.”

In the morning light, St. Paul’s Chapel filled the view from my hotel room windows. The handsome structure bore many Greco-Roman influences, its front reminding me of the entrance to Castello Palatino. I once more remembered those lycan who were my family for only a year, but who made such an impact on my life. I could still hear the timbre of their voices, even after a century and a half.

I thought now of the master, as I so often did when I was alone, hearing his voice comment upon nearly everything I studied.

The front columns support the entablature, just as the mighty trees support the heavens, he remarked with approval. It thrilled him to see his ancestors’ elegant style still in use even in this distant land.

Rising from the rear of the chapel was a magnificent tower, touching perhaps two hundred feet. Surrounding the building was a cemetery filled with beautifully carved headstones. I wanted to read each one before the week was finished.

Some might think it strange to learn that an immortal cares about cemeteries, but I replace them as crucial to my memory’s health as any journal, painting, or sculpture. I would give anything to replace the plot of earth where my human siblings are buried. Their location was lost to all the very moment Cecco killed my human father.

After speaking on the train with Duccio, I privately resolved that nothing should stop me from returning to Como, Morbegno, and Dazio. I desperately wanted to walk among those places of my childhood, even if they were changed by time, as all things become. The opportunity to sharpen those memories was worth any disappointment or anguish.

At twenty-five minutes past eight o’clock, I felt a pang of hunger and realized that Vivian had not arrived with my breakfast. No sooner had I considered what I might need to do to contact her on the sixth floor, where the Astor’s servant rooms lay, when Vivian’s knock came to my door.

“Forgive me, ma’am. They made me wait a terribly long time for your tray.”

“I didn’t expect there’d be such a rush in the kitchens this late.”

“Nor did I,” she said, placing the spartan offering of toast, fruit, and coffee on the small room table. “But there was a line of thirteen souls ahead of me when I arrived at seven forty-five, and they moved like stones.”

“It’s probably easier to send you to a cafe around the block,” I smiled.

“Aye,” she shook her head. “You also have a note there.”

From under the china saucer, I pulled out a small notecard and unsealed it.

Doña Gabriella d’Dazio.

St. Paul’s Chapel at nine o’clock.