Raphael (The Immortal Youth Book 1) (4 page)

Angel’s finger gently pushed Raphael’s chin up. “I think I’m falling for you.”

Raphael’s heart slammed inside his chest. Shaking, he abruptly stood on his feet, putting distance between them. Mere centimeters that divided them like kilometers, and tore him apart. The pleasant buzz he had felt only a moment earlier was gone, a sour aftertaste in its stead. “I—” The hurt on Angel’s face was painful to look at. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head and cleaned the unwanted tears staining his cheeks with his sleeve. “Angel, I—” Yearning for the warmth of a soft caress, Raphael wished he could go back and hold him. Although they hadn’t known each other for long, he cared for the shifter already. “I can’t.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I understand.” Angel, so much bigger than him, now sat on the floor of his bedroom, his chin on his bent knees, curled up in a tight ball.

To Raphael, the sight was as painful as if Angel had lashed out at him. “I’m not free. I’m in love with someone already and she’s my mate.”

Angel raised one hand for Raphael to take, and he accepted the offer. They spent the rest of the night in silence, Raphael’s head resting on Angel’s shoulder.

Raphael caught Angel stealing a glance at him, and he gave the were-puma a smile and a wink. Angel’s lips curved up.

“You’re back.” Patrizia passed a finger over the plastic film on the unopened box. “And with gifts.” Using her long nail, she cut the transparent seal, then removed the lid with a satisfied smirk.

“Yeah, where did you disappear?” Paride grabbed the instruction manual from the opened box.

“Long story short, the Controller caught me, Quintilius hired me, and I now live outside of the catacombs.” Raphael omitted the part where he avoided the den for weeks, and how he preferred to sleep inside a hole in the wall meant for a coffin or under a bridge rather than confront Angel’s pain.

Paride angled his chair backward until its front legs detached from the floor. “That sounds fun.”

“Heaps of it.” Raphael unbuttoned his shirt and turned up his sleeves. Halfway through May, but outside in Rome the weather resembled July. Down in the den, temperatures were well into August digits.

Angel and Paride read Cities and Knights’ expansion rules, while he and Patrizia set the board. Raphael noticed how the two boys seemed to move and talk in synch. Two hours later, they had played through a shortened version of the game. The heat inside the chamber had become progressively more unpleasant, and they agreed to declare whoever reached eight points first the winner. Angel won. Meanwhile, the sun set and the soft glow of hundreds of candles illuminated the Recreation Hall. That too was courtesy of the neighboring warlocks and witches.

“What about a visit to the lagoon?” Paride asked.

“Isn’t it too late for you? Don’t you have a curfew or something?” Angel asked Raphael, his arms folded on his chest.

Raphael pushed his chair aside and grabbed Patrizia’s hand to help her up. He had a curfew, but didn’t want to be by himself. “Nah, it’s okay.”

“Let’s go.” Paride jumped up and let his chair fall to the ground with a loud thud.

They hiked through one of the tunnels sprouting from the den and connecting the shelter with different entrances to the Promenade and Magik Nation. More than half of the kids milling in the hall joined them, including the raucous couple.

Raphael had known of the lagoon before even knowing of the den’s existence, two gems he found thanks to his walkabouts. The natural pool was one of the many wonders of an underground world mortals knew nothing about. Illuminated by a big eye in the ceiling and protected from mundane attention by magik, the basin of crystalline blue waters was situated inside Magik Nation proper and bordered the den. Despite warlocks and witches kept to themselves and didn’t like intruders in their territory, they allowed the rejects to use the premises without restrictions, showing how they kept the kids in higher esteem than they did the rest of the paranormal society.

“Did you find your girl?” Angel asked as they walked inside the spacious chamber of the lagoon.

Filtering from above, the pale rays from a half moon created a circle of wavering light in the middle of the waters and illuminated the sandy floor of the pool, casting everything in a floating azure light.

“I haven’t.”

The first time he visited the den after coming back to Rome, Raphael talked to Angel about Luisa, how they had met the first time, and how fate had reunited them for a spell. He talked for hours, hoping his words would explain why he had rejected the were-puma. Angel listened without interrupting, and at the end hugged Raphael, then whispered, “I hope you’ll see her again soon.”

Confiding in someone else had been a novel experience for Raphael. One he didn’t know how to define, unable to decide if it was good or bad for him, and yet he wished he could open up more.

Removing his heavy boots, he continued, “I’ve asked around at the Mattatoio, but nobody seems to know of her.”

“Maybe she hasn’t gone back there.” After discarding his shoes, Angel unbuttoned his jeans and kicked them off.

“Maybe.” Raphael looked at the others, already down to their underwear, and was reminded of how truly different he was.

Paride ran toward them, pushed Angel off the ledge, then cannonballed after him and made a big splash that reached Raphael, soaking his shirt.

“Come on! What are you waiting for?” Angel waved at him, water cascading in rivulets from his dark curls.

Raphael stood on the ledge and slowly shook his head.

“What do you need? A formal invitation?” Patrizia grabbed his sleeve, and tried to lower it down.

“Don’t.” He stopped her hand with his own and saw her flinching, but didn’t find the words to make it better. “I must go.”

Instead of returning to his studio, he biked the twenty kilometers to Testaccio, the neighborhood where the Mattatoio was located. The ride should have cleared his mind, but he was still too keyed up.

At the door, one of the mortal social workers, Lina, greeted him. “Glad you showed up.”

After a month of daily visits, Raphael had managed to be accepted by the adults running the youth homeless shelter. He hadn’t had any luck in befriending the kids, but not for lack of trying. “Heavy shift?”

Shoulders slumped, Lina massaged her arm. “Same old story. A new girl arrived tonight—” She shivered.

Despite he had been sweating only a moment ago, Raphael felt cold too. His heart, already beating fast from the breakneck ride, doubled its pace, until he could barely hear what the social worker was saying.

“She was covered in blood, the poor thing. So small. Barely sixteen…”

Without a word, Raphael sprinted past Lina, leaving the Mattatoio main gate behind and heading toward the infirmaries. After it had become clear that Luisa wasn’t there, Raphael had kept visiting the place hoping she would one day show up. Soon, he found himself volunteering alongside the doctors who performed miracles on a daily basis.

“Where is she?” He looked around the large room with the green walls. The light fixtures hanging from the high ceiling were rocked by a gust of wind, and he felt like he was being swayed, underwater. Most of the beds were empty, but a small crowd hung in the far corner. He didn’t dare move. “How’s she?” In the surreal silence, his voice was carried over by the chilly gust.

Roused by his question, the crowd parted. A young mortal doctor he had seen once or twice before—volunteers from the neighboring hospital changed every week—looked up from a bed. The man sat on a rickety chair and held a small hand in his, covering the rest of the patient with his hunched body. Raphael saw the blood coating both the doctor’s scrubs and his hand. A breath later, he saw the cuts on the small wrist and his heart stopped beating.

While hyperventilating, a random tidbit about the place came unbidden to him. The building that housed the social center had once been an ancient municipal butcher shop, and according to legend, its walls had been painted with dozens of layers of green to cover the red sprayed everywhere.

Cursing the image away, Raphael forced his legs to cover the distance to the corner, but every new step was heavier than the previous. By the time he approached the bed, his boots anchored him down as if made of concrete, for all the strength it took him to walk the last meter.

The horrifying sight of one hand, so little and still, its white skin marred by red, froze his heart altogether.

“Luisa—?”

His question dispersed the crowd. The three nurses and the two paramedics all gave Raphael a glance, then occupied themselves nearby.

“Do you know her?” the doctor asked, leaning back against the chair.

Centimeter by centimeter, the still form came into view, revealing how small the girl was, how her body was swallowed by the narrow hospital bed. How her hair was red and curly, and not Luisa’s.

His nose had known right away she was a werewolf, but not his mate. Yet, he had needed his eyes to confirm the girl wasn’t Luisa. A snarl escaped Raphael’s mouth and soon morphed into a choked cry. His knees sagged.

“Is she your friend?” the doctor had dark circles under his eyes and his speech was slow. “We need to contact her family.”

“Sorry, I don’t know her.” Free to breathe again, Raphael walked all the way to the doctor’s side. “What happened to her?” At a closer distance, the faint blue marks on her pale skin stood out, telling part of the girl’s story.

“She tried to kill herself, but someone must have found her and dropped her by the gate.” The doctor passed a shaking hand through his matted hair. “I don’t even know how she’s still alive. The loss of blood, and her injuries—”

A commotion at the entrance diverted the doctor’s attention. Two teens dragged a third into the infirmary. With difficulty, the doctor pushed himself up, and, followed by the nurses, met the trio halfway.

Raphael sat on the vacated chair and kept vigil on the girl for the rest of the night. Around seven o’clock, she woke, and at Raphael’s sight, she screamed and scooted away from him, only to calm down when one of the female nurses took his place. That told him the rest of the girl’s story.

“Go home.” Lina accompanied him outside.

Awake for more than twenty-four hours, Raphael mounted his bicycle and rode all the way to the other side of the city to start his day at Quintilius’s office. The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed nine in the morning as he walked past the secretary station.

Iris raised her nose from the envelope she was opening with a paper knife and made a show to dilate her nostrils. “You are sixty minutes late and didn’t even bother with a shower.” Her cold, grey eyes studied him from head to toe. “Your clothes are filthy.” She pointed a bony finger at his shirt.

Raphael looked down and saw the girl’s blood on him. During the night, she had thrashed around in the bed and he held her in his arms worried she would fall. With a shrug, he shuffled to his office, and heavily sat at his desk. A pile of documents waited for him to be photocopied.

“Raphael!”

Quintilius’s voice startled him. Disoriented, he opened his eyes and saw the angry alpha staring down at him.

“What are you doing on the floor?” Quintilius grabbed Raphael and pulled him up.

Iris stepped inside, a malicious glee illuminating the harsh angles of her face. “Told you he was a good-for-nothing—”

“Iris, out.” Quintilius raised his arm to the side to indicate the door, and the woman had the grace to exit in silence. “You.” He squeezed Raphael’s arm, then let him go, looking at him long and hard. “This—”

Following the finger pointed at the messenger bag on the marble tiles, Raphael blinked, puzzled. The bag had an indentation, and he automatically brought a hand to his face. Under his probing touch, his cheek felt all wrinkled. When did he slip to the floor for a snooze?

“—I won’t tolerate,” Quintilius finished with a roar.

Raphael stumbled backward and hit the edge of his desk. From outside, Iris witnessed the scene with growing satisfaction. Unable to speak and say the words that would excuse himself, he stared at the wolf. Angry tears filled his eyes, but he refused to cry. Finally, he stepped beside the table and sat. Keeping down the bile, he lowered his head. “I apologize.”

Despite how tired he still was, he was now fully awake.

As soon as Quintilius stepped out of the building, Iris came to speak to Raphael. “People like you are the scum of the Earth. You are not the first one I’ve removed from his life, but you’re proving by far the easiest. And as you might have noticed my whispering lies in his ear is already working.”

Raphael didn’t give her the satisfaction to look hurt, and silently sat as she walked to the desk with a stack of documents.

With a cold smile, she placed the pile before Raphael. “These are the shipping contracts for the load of lumber that just arrived from the Alps. They must be copied, catalogued, and faxed to the Wolf Sea’s captain before five p.m., so the cargo can sail from the port of Civitavecchia to Istanbul’s tonight.”

Raphael waited for the woman to leave his office, then set to work and finished an hour earlier. He was about to leave, when Iris came back.

“Are you done with it?” She carried two manila folders.

Nodding, Raphael pointed with a pen to the copied papers he had neatly stacked on the desk beside the originals. If he opened his mouth to answer, her he would unleash his fury, which was what she wanted him to do, so he kept quiet.

Her cold eyes stared him down. “Good.” She sounded disappointed. Then she lowered the manila folders on the desk. “Here are the contracts for the marble slate shipment that must leave tomorrow morning from Livorno. You know the drill.”

As Raphael finished the new task she gave him, she came back once again with yet another folder.

“I forgot about the terracotta tile cargo that was stopped at customs in Los Angeles, earlier this morning. They need a copy of the original contract you filed two days ago,” she said.

Reaching for the folder Iris had deposited on the desk as far away from him as she could, Raphael collected all his strength and smiled at her.

Past dinner time, Raphael was finally able to leave the premises.

The secretary had stayed as well. “Look how late it is,” Iris said, as she punched the security code to lock the office and broke one of her manicured nails.

The venom in her eyes and the twitch on her lower lip gave Raphael enough fuel to hastily retreat to the ground floor, from where he was still able to hear her tirade. Too exhausted to care, he took the stairs to the garage, but decided to leave the bicycle there instead. After buying a slice of pizza and a soda from the pizzeria at the corner of Quintilius’s offices, he hopped on the first bus to Testaccio and the Mattatoio. There, he met Lina, whose shift was ending, and inquired after the werewolf girl.

“She’s awake. Another girl would’ve died with that amount of blood loss.” Lina walked him to one of the stalls separated from the rest of the infirmary by fabric screens. “Don’t feel bad if she doesn’t want to talk to you. She screamed at the doctor who saved her life too,” she whispered before disappearing behind the screen.

Only wanting to check that the girl was okay, Raphael waited for Lina to announce him. A few hissed words later, Lina reemerged, and he was allowed behind the beige curtain where the girl lay huddled under the thin duvet, depressingly matching the color on the walls. Green hope covering red blood.

“Only a few minutes, okay?” Lina patted him on his arm and left.

Raphael shuffled closer to the footboard, one hand holding his messenger bag in place over his shoulder. “Hi.” Tilting his head to move his long bangs out of the way, he gave the girl a smile. “How do you feel today?”

Emotionless, the girl stared at him, resembling a statue in her stillness.

When he realized she had no intention to answer him, he stepped back and turned with a parting, “Okay.”

“Wait.” Her voice reached him on the other side of the curtain.

He pivoted on his heels and walked back to her bedside. “Let’s try this again.” With a wave of his free hand, he said, “Hi. How are you?”

The girl shook her head. “Alive.” Tears shimmered in her blue eyes.

“And you aren’t happy about it?”

“No. I can’t say I am.”

“That’s a shame.”

Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything. Shaking, she raised the duvet to her nose. The scars on her wrists were healing. Next full moon, they would be gone.

“It gets better.”

“Says who?”

His right eye twitched, the harbinger of a migraine that would soon wreak havoc on his fatigued system. “Someone who thought more than once that dying was preferable to living.” He looked for a chair, but there was none.

Frowning, she hid both hands under the blanket. “Why?”

“Because the pain was too much.” He massaged his temples.

She looked down and brought her knees up. “Then why didn’t you?”

“Kill myself?” The green and the beige mixed as he swayed.

She nodded.

Too tired to stay on his feet anymore, Raphael patted the bed in a silent question. The girl shrugged, he took that as a
yes
and let himself down by the footboard. “Because I really hate to lose.” His back throbbed, as it often happened when he revisited his past. The RYS psychologist had explained to him the pain wasn’t due to any physical reason but triggered by his memories. The man had used a few acronyms, but the only one Raphael remembered was PTSD because he liked the
post
prefix; it gave him hope to think his problems were in the past. Too bad they wouldn’t let go of him.

“Are you okay?” the girl tilted her head to the side, slightly relaxing her curled up position as she rocked her body.

“Yes—” He swatted away a mosquito buzzing too close. “I’m fine.” Trying to soften the scowl he knew was on his face, he smiled and waved his hand in greeting again. “I’m Raphael.”

“Carla.” She lowered her chin to her knees. “Why were you here this morning?”

Lowering his shoulder, he let his bag fall to the floor, then leaned against the footboard. “It didn’t feel right to leave you alone last night.” His eyes went to the faded bruises on her jaw. “Plus, everyone around here is mortal, and you might have needed help to skedaddle before having to explain your miraculous healing.”

As Carla listened to him, her facial expression changed from surprise to shock. “Wait. You stayed the whole night?”

Looking for a more comfortable position, he hugged the bed frame with one arm and raised his black boot to the mattress. “Yes.”

She gave the boot a raised brow and he straightened his leg. “I don’t understand. We never met before,” she said.

With a shrug, he changed position yet again, then sat on the edge of the bed, feet planted on the floor, elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his united hands. “I thought you could use the help. That’s it.”

“Thanks.”

“No biggie.”

“I’m sorry I screamed at you.”

“You must have had your reasons.” The overhead light was harsh, and he squinted at Carla.

A long silence followed, then she sniffled once, tears followed and she was soon crying. “I was given to two boys—” Her chest shook with uncontrollable sobs and she brought both hands to her eyes. “They… they—” Words ran together until her speech became unintelligible. Clutching her stomach, she finally said, “I’m only alive because one of the two came back to check on me, and when he saw all the blood, he panicked. I remember him staunching the cuts I made on my wrists with his shirt. Then he scooped me up and drove me here.” Despite the tears, by the end her voice had become calm and much colder. “I hate them for what they did to me.” She raised her eyes to his. “And I hate him for not letting me die.” Then as if she had spent the last sparkle of energy left in her, she collapsed to the bed and cradled herself into a fetal position, her eyes closed.

Raphael scooted closer to her and lowered his hand toward her head, but let it hover, worried the gesture would upset her. She surprised him though, sitting up and seeking the comfort of his arms. He had no words for her. Nothing he would say could lessen her suffering, but he embraced her closer and gave her a shoulder to cry on. Later, when her sobs lessened and her breathing evened, he released her to the bed and rearranged her pillow, then tucked her in.

“Try to get some sleep. I’ll come back tomorrow.” He scooped his bag from the floor and pushed himself up.

Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Thank you.”

“Bye, kid,” one of the male nurses greeted Raphael on his way out of the infirmary.

The clock on the wall wasn’t working, but one glance at the cell phone, Quintilius’s gift, confirmed he had missed his ride. It was past midnight, and the next bus to Vescovio Place—where the alpha owned the building complex Raphael lived in—wouldn’t be by for another hour. The idea of waiting out in the street didn’t sound appealing to him, so he dragged his feet back into the infirmary where he huddled on a stretcher.

Loud cries woke Raphael in the middle of a nightmare starring his father. A bleeding boy was being carried in by a nun who yelled as loud as her charge.

The male nurse and the same doctor from the night before rushed to help the nun. The nurse took the kid from the woman’s arms as the doctor fired question after question. Raphael watched the scene unfold from his corner, but sprung up as the doctor called for him.

“We’ve a full house tonight. Can you check on the kid on the gurney over there?” The doctor pointed at the opposite side of the room. “See if he needs anything.”

“Sure.” Mind still numb from sleep, Raphael reached the kid. “You okay?” He passed one hand through his hair, then yawned.

A scrawny, little thing, the street urchin—a gypsy from his colorful clothes—looked up, pain etched on his face, and shook his head. “I’m fine.” Maybe ten years old, the boy’s eyes were red from crying and now dry.

Remembering he had, at some point in the night, pocketed the rubber band he used to tie his hair, he fished for it, but only found a quarter and a candy wrapper. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

The boy sat and hugged himself, as if cold. “Can you stay with me?”

Nodding, Raphael anchored his boot on the wooden stool by the bed and moved it closer. “Do you like stories?”

A small smile graced the boy’s lips. “What kind of stories?”

“What stories do you like?” Raphael sat on the stool, his elbows on the bed.

The boy perked up. “Dragons.”

“I love dragons.” Raphael swung the satchel to the front and retrieved his sketchbook and a pencil. In minutes, his tale was accompanied by winged creations flying all over the pages.