Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

than reality to most of us locals.”
    “How is it that she has been allowed to run wild for all this time?”
    The concierge gave a short laugh. “She is the least of our concerns. She is not the only demon in this area. There are dozens of Gatekeepers here, just like in any city. We lack the time and the resources to take care of the likes of Luciana Rossetti. Demons are embedded in this city, as deeply as San Marco. Venice is a city of the divine and the profane, a city of beauty and vice. Both are drawn here, each by the other. I suppose we Veneziani have simply learned to accept that.”
    “I promise you, I will rid this city of her before I leave here,” Brandon said gruffly.
    “If you have taken it upon yourself to try to excavate her from Venice, I wish you luck. But no one will blame you if you don’t succeed,” said the concierge. “Now, if you care to gather your things, we will find you another place to stay tonight.”
    * * *
     
    Clearing his things out of the room, Brandon surveyed the space.
    The image of her perched on the windowsill was burned into his mind’s eye.
    How did she manage to escape? he wondered. Was she real? Was she even here at all?
    The bed was empty but for a rumple of sheets, showing no clue as to who had lain there.
    But on the nightstand stood the tumbler full of glass shards, mixed with her blood.

Chapter Five
     
    T he clock tower at the Piazza San Marco tolled three in the morning. Luciana stumbled out of the pensione, staggering into the now-deserted square. In the moonlight, all was silent, Venice sleeping after the celebrations.
    Far in the distance, on the Lido, the young Venetians would party into the night. On the beaches, DJs would spin techno music until the early hours of the morning. Every single year past, Luciana had joined them, dancing in another year of freedom on the beach until the sun rose, glorious and brilliant over the Adriatic.
    Celebrating another year of demonhood, another year of renewed vitality.
    Another year of power.
    Not tonight.
    Tonight was a total and utter failure, she thought, starting homeward.
    After almost two and a half centuries of successful hunting during the Redentore Festival, Luciana Rossetti had failed utterly to fulfill her annual requirements.
    She had been bested, once again, by the goddamned Company of Angels.
    But at the very least, I survived, she thought. And I escaped.
    Her hand throbbed.
    The thumb was bent at a distorted angle. But at least the break was clean, and she was free. W hat had gone on in that godforsaken little hotel room was now behind her.
    Around San Marco’s square, a few stragglers wandered, stumbled, singing in deep states of inebriation. Any of them would have been easy targets.
    Right now, Luciana didn’t have the strength left to kill a fly.
    She limped home on bare feet, barely noticing the roughness of the cobblestones beneath her soles. By the time she reached her palazzo, she staggered through the door with the last ounce of energy that remained in her body. Bloody and aching, she collapsed into a chair in the portego, cradling her broken hand.
    “Thank you, lord of darkness, for my continued survival,” she whispered. “For the survival of my household.”
    The house was silent, but then a door opened somewhere in the back of the palazzo. Massimo rushed out, his eyes going wide in the dim light at the blood. He blinked, swallowing at the sight of her crushed left hand and the handcuff still dangling from her right.
    “You have returned, baronessa! But what happened?” he said. “We thought the worst. We thought you had been captured by the angels.”
    “I’m fine,” she managed to squeeze out. “I was captured. But I escaped. I saw the boat when I came out of the Redentore, and you were not in it.”
    She ran the fingers of her good hand along the fine carved wood, consoling herself with the familiarity of the furniture. With its solidity, its real presence in the material world. She wanted to hug Massimo, flooded by protective emotion. The thought of losing him was almost like losing a child of her own, or a sibling.
    Yet, for the centuries they had spent together, the formality of a noblewoman and her servant still stood between them. The invisible barrier of a class division that had all but been forgotten in the modern world still separated them, barely present but still palpable.
    “I was attacked while waiting for you outside the church,” the Gatekeeper said. “The