The Sleepless Stars (27 page)

The woman met my gaze with an unreadable expression then strode past me, forcing me to turn once more to keep her in sight. She was the leader, the one in command, the one I had to focus on. Another boat arrived, this one a sleek, old-fashioned wooden motorboat. I’d seen ones like it in old movies set in Italy.

Tyrone emerged, hopping onto the jetty with a jaunty grace, ignoring me entirely as he strode over to the woman and kissed her on both cheeks. “Mother. What do you think of the present I brought you? Your long-lost daughter has returned to save us all.”

FRANCESCA WALKED AWAY
from the dock, schooling her expression until she was safely out of view of both Angela and Tyrone. Angela, her child who should have died in infancy, to see her not only alive but healthy, whole...it was beyond Francesca’s wildest hopes.

Poor Angelo, so innocent and guileless. Dear, sweet boy. When she’d realized that the child she created with her egg and his sperm carried a lethal defect above and beyond the Scourge, she’d thought it a kindness to let him take the child, to have someone to love her before she died.

Yet, here she was. Not dead but gifted far more than any Lazaretto in recorded history. The daughter she’d abandoned had returned to save them all.

If
Francesca could convince her to help. She nodded in passing to a group of health aides shuffling along with their patients then continued up to her office. At first she’d been furious at Tyrone for his treatment of Angela—crating her like a wild animal. But she understood his fury. Because of Angela, his brothers were dead.

Worse, because of Angela, the brothers had failed. An unforgivable sin for a Lazaretto.

As she paced her office, she came to a decision. They had only a few days to persuade Angela to join them. Otherwise, she would need to take what she needed by force—which would leave Angela dead or comatose, unable to use her gift.

Better that than to risk the girl turning on them, joining forces with Marco.

Perhaps Tyrone’s instincts had been correct. Angela had never had to endure the deprivations the rest of Francesca’s people had been subjected to. Perhaps by experiencing that, the girl would be more sympathetic, malleable.

Francesca nodded to herself. Her hand trembled as she reached for her phone, and her mind blazed with a kaleidoscope of stabbing, diamond-sharp colors. She slumped into her chair, barely reaching it before the fugue devoured her, imprisoning her body and mind.

<<<>>>

RYDER WOKE TO
bright lights stabbing his eyes. He tried to wave them off with a hand but couldn’t. An IV was taped to his arm. “What happened? Rossi?”

Alarms beeped, echoing the pounding in his head. His entire body felt bruised, but mostly his head. He couldn’t raise it. It hurt even to move his eyes.

A man wearing surgical scrubs appeared at Ryder’s side, hovering over him. “You’re at Good Samaritan Medical Center, Detective Ryder.” He reached across Ryder to turn off the damn alarms. “You’re quite a lucky man. Some thoracic contusions, but no permanent damage. Your vest took the brunt of the impact. Nurses counted five bullets.”

He leaned away, disappearing from Ryder’s vision but continued his litany of Ryder’s injuries. “Which left me free to address your head injury. Again, lucky man. If I were you, I’d go buy a lottery ticket. The bullet impacted your skull at an upward trajectory.”

Ryder blinked, his vision filling with the image of a muzzle flash below him, the darkened stairway, his back to a door.

“That created a minor depressed skull fracture with minimal parenchymal bleeding. We surgically elevated the fracture, extracted a small blood clot, and have been monitoring you. So far, no signs of excessive intracranial pressure or swelling. And, I’m glad to report, your post-op scan is clear of any further hemorrhage or cerebral contusion. Like I said, lucky man.” The surgeon bounced back into view, beaming as if he was the one responsible for Ryder’s luck instead of Ryder’s tactical position.

“What day?” Ryder choked out the words. His mouth was dry, tasted of sour lemon that made him even more thirsty.

“Day? December twenty-eighth. You’ve been here two days.”

Two days? Ryder struggled to sit up. Rossi could be anywhere in the world by now. How was he going to find her?

“Whoa there, cowboy.” The surgeon effortlessly restrained Ryder with a single palm against his shoulder. “You just got out of the ICU. You’re not going anywhere.”

“When?”

“When can you leave?” The surgeon considered. “If we can get you eating and on your feet today, I’ll repeat the scan tomorrow. If not, the next day. If the scan looks good, you can go.”

Two more days? No. Not going to happen. Ryder knew better than to plead his case with the surgeon—he’d learned that the hard way during his last hospital stay after he’d been shot.

The surgeon began to leave, then turned back as if sensing his patient might not be among the most compliant. “No matter what, you’ll need to take it easy for several weeks, maybe even months. No strenuous activity, no work. Even TV is out. I’m serious. You were incredibly lucky. Don’t push that luck. Not if you don’t want to risk complications like a re-bleed or post-concussive syndrome.”

With those grim words, condemning Ryder to basically sitting on his thumbs while Rossi was out there facing Lord only knew what and while some crazy Italian family unleashed an epidemic of lethal prions on the world, the surgeon left.

As soon as he vanished, Ryder scanned the room and planned his escape.

<<<>>>

MY FIRST DAY
on the island passed in a blur. At first, no one spoke to me, no one looked me in the eye. They were all so frightened of me. As if I were a feral beast, untamed and dangerous.

Francesca’s people—I was not sure how to label them. More than servants, they were all part of the Lazaretto family, yet there was a definite hierarchy, some kind of caste system. Anyway, that first morning on the dock, Francesca stalked off, leaving Tyrone to shuffle me through the massive gates.

We stood in a large courtyard, a distinctive modern building to my right, all metal and steel. It was a sharp contrast to the ancient stone monastery that stood across from it, its length hugging the shoreline. Tyrone led me into the monastery, his two men holding my arms as I stumbled, still not steady on my legs.

Daniel’s memory overlaid my vision as I passed through the arched corridor with its stone walls. Parts of the monastery dated back to the years when the Black Death threatened Venice, but I could see that it had been updated with all the modern conveniences, such as security cameras in every room and hallway.

The room they ushered me to would have been called opulent and given five stars by any hotel reviewer: a crystal chandelier suspended above a large bed, thick wool carpets in rich colors under my feet, wide windows framed by expensive silk drapes that swung open to a view of Venice with its towers and domed buildings filling the horizon in that direction. Of course, any review would need to overlook the restraints attached to the bed frame, the dressing table filled with medications and lab equipment, and the monitors tastefully hidden behind a screen.

Two women waited for me. Neither was older than I was, but they both had the hardened expressions of prison guards. Tyrone and his men left me with them. Wordless, they undressed me, scrubbed me clean in the adjoining bathroom—a bathroom as large as my apartment with its toilet, bidet, sunken tub with jets and gold fixtures, walk-in shower area large enough to accommodate a patient on a stretcher, and its own isolation tank.

That’s when I realized the truth of this place: It was where the Lazarettos came to die.

Daniel’s and Leo’s memories filled in the gaps. The Lazarettos had many facilities scattered around the world, but this island was special. During the plague years, the family’s founding father, himself a physician, realized that members of his family were strangely immune to the pestilence, and yet half of them were still dying young, devastated by their own strange plague, what he termed the Scourge.

When the Black Death struck, the Venetians were the first to use quarantine measures to slow its progression. Their doctors established island sanctuaries where the sick could be cared for away from the main population. This island was one of those, its monastery converted to a hospital.

By the time the Black Death passed and Venetian society returned to normal, the Lazarettos had conceived a plan to use the special gifts their family Scourge provided them and began their climb to power.

Now the island housed family members with the Scourge. They acted as servants, trained as researchers, cared for other family members too sick to care for themselves, and, like me, played the role of laboratory rats to Francesca’s Dr. Frankenstein.

Second in power to her younger brother, Marco, who, since he did not carry the fatal insomnia genes and therefore was not at risk to develop the psychosis, dementia, and early death that went along with prion disease, ran the family business elsewhere in the world.

But not here. This island and everyone on it were ruled by Francesca.

All this passed through my mind quickly—thanks to my enforced confinement on the plane for all those hours, I was becoming more adept at accessing the knowledge I wanted without falling into a full-blown fugue. Knowing that I could exert some control over my body—for the first time in a month—helped me to remain calm.

Even when they toweled me dry, wrapped me in a plush robe, and sat me in a chair where they cut off my hair and shaved my head.

I sat in silence, knowing my words were useless, and simply let them do it. My priorities were to get the cure for the children, to stop Francesca from releasing the prions. But still, it took everything I had not to cry when the first long lock of hair fell to my lap.

Save the children
,
I thought as the razor buzzed and more hair flew.
Stop Francesca.
It became my mantra. Along with one more, less charitable thought:
Make them pay.

AFTER SHAVING MY
head, the two women secured a wireless EEG cap—just like the one Louise had had me wear earlier—to my scalp and stood back as if admiring their work. One leaned forward to reach for Ryder’s pendant, the last memory from my old life. Whiplash fast, I grabbed her wrist and twisted it hard, bringing her to her knees.

“No.” It was the first word I’d spoken since I arrived.

They exchanged glances, and she nodded without meeting my gaze. I was expecting a struggle, some reprisal for my rebellion, but when I released her, she scurried away, fear filling her face.

My triumph was short-lived. They dressed me in silk pajamas, a robe, and slippers before leading me, without actually touching me, from the room and along stone corridors that twisted in a maze. Thankfully, Daniel and Francesca had explored the island together, searching for hidden corners away from her family’s prying eyes where they could find some privacy.

As we walked, I overlaid a rough map from Daniel’s memories, pleased to see how accurate his observations had been. It made sense. After all, Daniel had been an architectural engineer before he devoted himself to finance.

Leo had also been here with Tommaso, but he’d had little regard for his surroundings, had been more obsessed with the lab and the research opportunities. Also helpful. During my time on the plane, I’d developed a theory about Tommaso’s research. Now, as I sorted through Leo’s and Daniel’s memories, a plan began to form and, with it, a glimmer of hope.

All I had to do was learn everything I could about Francesca’s cure, elude the guards and the security cameras, escape the fifteen-foot-high walls, and cross miles of open water until I reached Venice.

As a plan, it was definitely lacking substance, but it distracted me from why I was really here: for Francesca to experiment on.

Her office was on the top floor of a tower twice as tall and twice as wide as the bell tower I’d left behind at St. Tim’s. The walls were just as thick and even more ancient—it served as a watchtower to defend the island. The views through the new, modern windows were amazing. In addition to stunning views of Venice to the south, I could also make out the outlines of several islands nearby, each with its own distinctive towers jutting up from sea level. Murano and San Michele, Daniel’s memory informed me.

The height gave me some perspective on the Lazarettos’ island itself. It was small, maybe ten city blocks in total area, with this monastery as its largest building running the width of the island. I glanced down at the roof of the modern building across the courtyard from the dock. Serious HVAC and ventilation systems—obviously their lab. The rest of the island was taken up with gardens and cottages, giving it the lush appeal of a retreat.

Appearances, deceptions—if the Lazarettos had a family motto, it should include those two words, I thought as I turned back to face the woman who’d brought me here.

She stood across the room, looking elegant in a wool dress and silk scarf. Thick wool rugs covered the stone floor and in the center of the room stood an octagonal, centuries-old slanted desk that had once been used by monks to illuminate manuscripts. Everything appeared serene, welcoming even.

Except for the very modern examination chair with thick restraints—a chair that eerily resembled the dental chair Tommaso had been strapped to when he took his own life. Tyrone stood beside it, grinning. Guess it was only fitting, a bit of a karma boomerang.

I decided to shake things up a bit—and hopefully convince them I was here to cooperate and wouldn’t need the restraints. First small step in my plan: lull the enemy into complacence.

Before my guards could escort me to the exam chair, I strode over to it and settled myself in, wrapping my robe around my legs so it wouldn’t trail on the floor. Best part: It put Tyrone out of sight behind me, making it easier to avoid his narrow-eyed glower. At least until he moved to stand beside Francesca at the desk in the center of the room.