Renegade Page 2

  The Fasburgs, most of their friends and many of their employees were, in fact, members of an ancient species known in Latin as lupinotuum. Occasionally they referred to themselves as les loups garoux, or, in the Italian familiar, mannaro. The English word is werewolf. And so adept were they at blending into the society of humans—at mastering that society, really—that I imagine, if it hadn’t been for the tragedy that struck just after my fifth birthday, I might have gone my entire life without ever knowing what they were. Certainly, even after I learned it, the truth made little difference to me.

  At least not then.

  It was like living in a grand hotel, with constant comings and goings, banquets and masked balls and concerts and visiting dignitaries of one sort or another, for the Fasburgs were notorious for their hospitality and Venice is equally notorious for its festival atmosphere. Cordovan leather traveling cases in russet and burgundy and butternut appeared in the marble foyer on an almost daily basis, only to be whisked away to one of the opulent suites above. Sometimes I would hide behind the potted plants, as small boys are wont to do, and listen to the chatter of a dozen different languages, or watch the pretty women come down the majestic marble staircase in their shiny, form-fitting gowns and twinkling jewels. Their lips were always red, it seemed to me, and their fingernails sharp and brilliant, and even when they smiled at me I was too awed to smile back.

  The ceilings in the public rooms were frescoed with cherubs and clouds and gilded gold; there were sixteen chandeliers in the grand foyer, all of them dripping in hand-blown Belgium crystal. The arched doorways that led from room to room were fifteen feet tall and painted gold, and the fireplaces, all of them large enough for a small boy to hide in, had carved marble mantles that depicted scenes from long-ago times, and stories whose heroes had names like Orpheus and Persephone.

  There were indoor swimming pools tiled in blue glass, and sometimes the guests would swim nude, or sun themselves on the cushions that were scattered about beneath the high glass dome. This did not interest me as much as it would have had I been somewhat older. There were outdoor terraces and gardens where I would sometimes play with the children who visited the household, and where the adults would often lounge with drinks in their hands, watching us indulgently.

  The massive front door opened onto a riotous garden of lilacs and climbing roses and wisteria vines that spilled down toward the Grand Canal, but the breadth of the house backed up against a smaller canal which was the entrance for the household staff and for deliveries. There was a set of stone steps that led down into the water, and there I would sometimes sit and try to catch water bugs with a long stick. I did not know until I was much older that the steps had once led down to dry land.

  I had my own nanny and lived in a suite of rooms with marble floors and three television sets, for the Fasburgs were extremely generous with their employees and my mother, as manager of not only the Venetian villa but three other properties they owned, ranked high in their esteem. Until I was five years old I had no reason to suspect that the creatures with whom I shared this grand and glorious existence were anything other than as human as I was. Whether or not my mother knew I can’t say for certain, but I doubt it. She might have observed a few small eccentricities, but she was certainly paid enough to keep her opinions to herself. The Fasburgs, as I was to eventually learn, were not like others of their kind. This was both to their advantage and their great detriment.

  When I was five, my mother died of what I later would understand was ovarian cancer. She was sick for a summer, and sad, and I recall my nanny hugged me and wept a lot. Otherwise there is not a lot I remember from that time until the day we returned from the funeral, and the Princess herself came to my apartment.

  Nanny tried to keep me busy in the playroom, and to please her I solemnly sat on the floor in my scratchy wool suit and pretended to be absorbed in my building blocks, but I could hear what the others were saying in the room adjacent. They were women, mostly, who worked in the big house, whose faces I knew but whose names I did not. I was only a child whose world, until this point, had happily consisted of playdough and color crayons and storybooks with colorful pictures. I knew my mother for her goodnight kisses, but even the memory of those was beginning to fade. I was frightened, not by the loss which was, at that tender age, too big for me to comprehend, but by the sudden upheaval in my heretofore pleasant and predictable routine.

  “Poor dear. She was a widow, you know. What will become of the little one now?”

  “It breaks my heart. So young.”

  “No other relatives? What a pity.”

  “He’ll have to go to an orphanage, there’s no help for it.”

  “And I’ll be out of a job.” This was from Nanny, with a big sigh. And then she added quickly, “Not that that’s important.”

  And suddenly the voices were stilled, as though with a single held breath. There was the clack-clacking sound of stilettos on marble. Someone murmured, “Signora,” with a kind of reverence in her voice that made me pause in the building of my block fortress. Someone else said, “Princessa,” in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

  The authoritative click-click- clacking of sharp heels grew louder, and then was silenced completely as she crossed the carpet of my room. She stood before me, looking down. What I saw, from my position amidst the red and blue and yellow building blocks scattered on the floor, were red shoes with open toes and high, high heels, as high as the Eiffel Tower, it seems to me in recollection, and legs clad in shiny stockings, and the hem of a narrow black skirt. And then suddenly she dropped to her knees before me, and I saw her smile, and her tender green eyes, and her dark hair, swept up into a knot atop her head with tendrils curling down around her face. She was, perhaps, the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She said, softly, “Well, look at you, little man. Aren’t you the precious one?”

  She opened her arms to me, and because I was young and she was irresistible, I went to her. I can remember to this day the sensation of that embrace, and to this day I cannot describe it. The sweet warm envelope of her perfume was like hot chocolate, like cotton candy, like summer skies with striped balloons floating high. Her arms, slender yet soft, the crinkle of silky fabric, a sound that I would forever more associate with the simple peace of being safe; the sigh of her breath, warm and faintly redolent of exotic spices, across my cheek. And yet those were externalities. The whole of her embrace, the thing I cannot describe, was like being infused with scent, like tasting warmth, like hearing star song. I know now what it was, this purely human reaction to a close encounter with one of their kind; the sensory overload, the electric gasp, the flood of wonder. But I was a child, and all I felt was the dizzying rush of adoration.

  She lifted me to her hip and took me out of that room, past the gawking women who were gathered outside, the clip-clip-clip of her staccato heels growing faster, their rhythm almost ebullient as she carried me up the stairs. I fastened my arms tight about her neck, my eyes big and excited to see the places I hadn’t seen before, the fountains that cascaded from the open mouths of golden wolves, the trees that grew indoors, the gold leaf that sparkled on the arched beams overhead.

  We entered at last a large room with furniture done in blue silk and big curved windows looking out over the sparkle of the Grand Canal. There was a woman there, long and lean and dressed in purple, with impossibly white skin and a coil of orange hair cascading over one shoulder. She lounged on one of the sofas with one slim leg tucked beneath her, smoking a cigarette and dangling a martini glass from two fingers. But it was the man, even I could sense, the princess had come here to see.

  He leaned one hip upon the corner of a massive carved desk, his own glass held between long slender fingers, laughing at something the woman had said. He was tall and thin, his dark hair swept back from a high forehead, his nose sharp, his dark eyes heavy lidded. He wore a double breasted suit with a thin stripe, and a shirt with stiff cuffs that were fastened by heavy gold cufflinks in th
e shape of wolves’ heads. I remember those cufflinks fascinated me.

  “Geof,” exclaimed the princess as she burst into the room. She had a soft husky voice that sounded as though it were perpetually discovering a secret she was bursting to tell. “Look what I have found!”

  He turned from the laughter he shared with the other woman, and I remember the tenderness that came over his face, the quiet leap of joy that softened his eyes when he saw his wife. Yes, even at five, I noticed that.

  The eyes became lit with amusement as they traveled to me. “Why, my darling, I can’t imagine. What is it you have found?”

  And the woman on the sofa said in a bored, exasperated tone, “Oh, really Ilsa, not another one of your strays!”

  The princess shot her an annoyed look, and her tone was cool as she replied, “I really can’t think what you mean.”

  “Honestly, Ilsa!” The orange haired woman drew hard on the cigarette. “Is there a homeless, abandoned or disadvantaged human in all of Europe that you haven’t employed? You have one girl whose only job is to change the light bulbs and light the candles for parties!”

  That interested me. I thought I would very much like to be the person whose only job was to light the candles at parties.

  But the princess ignored her. “He can’t be much older than Lara,” said the princess, setting me on my feet, “and look how sweet. Not a bit shy.”

  The woman with the orange hair took another leisurely draw on her cigarette. The smoke came out of her mouth in puffs as she remarked, “He can’t even speak.”

  Of course she would think that. It had been well drilled into me by Nanny that I should never speak to any member of the household outside our apartment unless first spoken to.

  The prince looked at me curiously, and even the princess seemed a little uncertain. “Of course he can speak,” she said. “I’m sure he’s very bright.”

  “Well, young man?” prompted the prince, regarding me still with an indulgent half smile to please his wife. “Do you speak?”

  I replied in a clear, brave voice, “I speak English and Italian, and I can do all of my letters but I can only write words in Italian. Nanny is teaching me French but she says I am not very good.”

  The prince chuckled and the princess beamed at me, and placed her hands on my shoulders and gave them a little squeeze. The orange-haired woman made an exasperated sound. “There now, you see,” declared the princess, pleased. “He will be a perfect playmate for Lara. They can take their lessons together and when we go to the islands this summer she will have someone to splash in the water with.”

  “Get her a puppy,” advised the orange haired woman, rising as she stubbed out her cigarette and glanced at her watch. “I must fly. Aldolpho said if I was late for another appointment he would never dress me again, as if he dared.” And then her smile grew kind as she approached the princess, embraced her lightly and kissed her cheek. “Darling,” she said gently, “you simply cannot save them all.”

  And when she was gone the princess reached down and took my hand and held it softly captured in both of hers and she said to her husband, smiling, “And so, Geof? Shall we save just this one?”

  He took a sip of his drink and regarded her in a way that suggested he was pretending to think about it. “You do know,” he told her, “that there are institutions for this sort of thing.”

  She made an impatient, dismissing sound in her throat.

  The prince looked me over as he sipped again from his glass. “It’s really quite unorthodox.” And then a kind of merriment came into his eyes as he added, “What do you imagine our esteemed pack leader would think of such a thing?”

  The princess replied soberly, “Oh, I’m sure he would quite disapprove.” But when I sneaked a quick upward glance at her, her eyes were dancing. “And what a pity, too, since I know how desperately you yearn to please him.”

  The prince worked his mouth in a way I was to learn indicated that he was struggling to hide a smile, but not struggling very hard. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, his tone musing. “I think Alexander might be amused. In fact, he might even applaud our efforts. And what a great feather in my cap that would be.”

  “Oh, Geof, stop teasing. Your humor is going to bring us all to ruin one day. And you’re upsetting the child.”

  Actually, I wasn’t in the least upset, but because I was by now devoted to the princess, I tried to look a little distraught.

  The prince saw my effort and smiled. “Well, now we certainly can’t have that.” He set aside his glass and came over to me. He clasped his hands behind his back and bent down so as to address me directly. “Decide then, young ...”

  He glanced at his wife questioningly, and she supplied, “Emory.”

  “Young Emory,” he repeated solemnly, as though committing my name to memory. “So, little man, will you come and live among us, and be one of us?”

  I could tell this was a serious matter, and so I thought about it. I said, “Could I swim in the big pool?”

  The prince replied, “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  “Then,” I decided gravely, “I think I would like it very much.”

  The prince’s dark eyes were dancing with laughter but he made his face seem suitably somber as he nodded. “I believe you have made a wise decision, young Emory. Welcome to our family.”

  He extended his hand to me and I shook it just like I had seen the grown men do, with a firm grip. And then the princess, laughing, threw herself into her husband’s arms and kissed him on the mouth, and turned to me and scooped me up and kissed me too. “Oh, we are going to be so very happy together!” she declared. “So very happy!”

  And so there you have it. I owe the man I am today to a preternatural creature with a sense of humor and the mate who knew he would deny her nothing. This was not the first time their kind had intervened in the lives of humans, nor would it be the last. I think it’s fair to say, however, that every time they have done so, history has been changed, and not always for the better.

  This time was to be no exception.

  _________________________

  Chapter Three

  The Present

  Rolfe watched him with amused brown eyes. Emory sipped his Armagnac, still holding the glass with both hands. The sensation was returning to his fingers, but his wrists were weak, and when he tried to straighten his fingers, the entire hand shook convulsively. The blood blisters had darkened, but had not spread.

  Rolfe said, “You are as captivating a raconteur as I imagined you would be. I’ve read your books, you know.”

  Emory said, “I’m flattered. Tell me, which did you like better—A Social History of Communal Man or The Origin and Development of Language Centers in Primates?”

  Rolfe smiled. “I found them both quite fascinating, actually. But I was referring to the book, Dawn to Dusk: A Tale of Two Species. Gripping stuff, really. Of course, parts of it are a bit over-written, but one can almost overlook that for the sake of content.”

  Only members of the pack had access to the digital copy of that book, and there were, to Emory’s knowledge, only three bound copies in existence. One was displayed in the museum library of Castle Devoncroix, one was under lock and key in Venice, and the last, so he was given to believe, was secured in the vaults of the Vatican.

  He watched as Rolfe rose and circled the table to the bookshelf on the opposite wall. He removed one of the green leather volumes and Emory saw the familiar crescent moon logo stamped in gold. “This part, in particular, is one of my favorites.”

  He opened the book and read aloud Emory’s own words.

  “In a time now long forgotten, when the earth was new and the stars so bright they cast shadows upon the plains, in a time of crisp white snow and glistening glaciers, of wet, fetid springs and lightning-cracked summers, the earth was their playground. They raced the moonlit prairies, they hunted the fertile valleys, they ate until their bellies were heavy and they slept the deep and dreamless sleep
of those who have absolutely nothing to fear. They were the perfect predator, evolved not only to survive, but to thrive in the world of brutality, chaos and upheaval from which they had sprung. Their senses were sharp, their brains were large, their muscles strong, their synapses fast. They were the penultimate example of an adaptive species.

  “Their most distinctive adaptive quality, of course, was the ability to change their form at will to meet the challenges of their surroundings. They were quadrupeds, with thick harsh coats of fur to protect them from the arctic winds and tropic sun, with teeth designed to tear and claws designed to rip; muscles that could propel them effortlessly over chasms and hearts that would pump steadily and strongly as legs ran for days without stopping. And they were bipeds, with hands and feet that could climb tall trees or scale sharp cliffs; with long, supple fingers and opposable thumbs that could hold a tool or build a fire, with vocal cords that could produce spoken language. Their prey was any species that could not outrun or out think them. They were at the top of the food chain.

  “Eons passed, climates shifted, the earth heaved and shuddered and settled itself again. During this time, so the legend goes, our magnificent dual-formed heroes ruled the earth. And who was to stop them? The jungle cats who fled from them, the canids who crept in at night to scavenge their leavings, the filthy, cave-dwelling humans with their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex and a lifespan of less than twenty years? Prey.

  “As is inevitable when the necessities of survival are abundant and leisure is plentiful, creatures of imagination begin to yearn for that which will endure beyond them, and a civilization is born. In the vast underground caves of the frozen north, in the equatorial jungles, upon volcanic islands now long since submerged, they began to build, exploiting the possibilities of their bipedal form to the fullest. And so with their nimble fingers they drew patterns in the earth and fashioned tools, with their two legs they walked upright and reached for things they could not see. They fired pottery and carved stones; they harnessed the power of roaring water and blazing sun. They discovered pleasure in harmonic sounds and complementary colors and symmetrical shapes. They built shelters and gathering places, they wove textiles and cultivated gardens.