Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

sacred. You don’t know the real Venice,” she said, her voice deepening into a snarl. “Can’t you feel it? This city is steeped in suffering and death. Not two hundred yards from here, prisoners were tortured. There is an entire museum full of weaponry and torture instruments. I can take you down into the prison cells attached to the Doge’s palace. We can take our own little trip to hell without ever leaving Venice.”
    “No, thanks,” he said, staring her down.
    “If you look closely, you’ll see the underworld drawn on this city. Etched in the architecture. Gargoyles and gremlins crouching in corners, perched on cornices and tucked into the shadows beneath the eaves. A satanic lion’s head is carved on a palazzo on the Calle Diedo. On the facade of the Ospedale Civile, the ‘City Hospital,’ there’s a sixteenth-century graffiti etching of a murderer holding a human heart after ripping it out of his own mother.”
    “If you’re looking for hatred, it’s easy enough to find,” he said grimly.
    “Never underestimate the presence of evil. Evil exists here. It is real. If you don’t believe me, I can show you. Venetians used to believe there was a dragon living in the lagoon who could be pacified only by the oars of the gondoliers. Do you think that myth was founded on a superstitious fear, or do you think there was some truth to it?”
    Around them, the water rippled as the gondolier’s oar stroke pushed through it. Then the canal began to churn, and Brandon caught sight of an object surfacing in the dark water.
    The long, lizard-scaled back of what looked like a very large snake.
    Brandon blinked, his mind not trusting what his eyes were telling him.
    He reached toward his shoulder holster for his gun, but neither were there.
    Neither had been there for the past decade.
    Whatever it is, this is not a dream, he thought.
    Massive and furious, the dragon rose. Water poured from its body as it emerged from the canal to tower over the boat. The sheer bulk of it, as huge as a rhinoceros and as fast as an anaconda, hung over them. Its eyes, bright green and verdant like Luciana’s, fixed on Brandon.
    Who simply returned its stare.
    Despite the pounding of his heart and his gut screaming at him to swim, to run, to flee however he could to escape this beast from the underworld.
    But he looked back at the demoness and said in a calm voice, “Put it back. Whatever realm of hell you dragged that thing out of, send it back where it came from.”
    “Why should I?” the demoness grated out.
    He didn’t remove his gaze from her. “It doesn’t belong in this world.”
    Twelve feet in the air, the animal opened its mouth and roared out a stream of fire that singed the air beside Brandon’s head. The gondolier cringed in terror, hunching down nearly into a fetal tuck. Yet Brandon did not relent. He could not relent. His calm gray eyes remained fixed on her. For long moments, he stared.
    “You can choose to destroy me right here and now,” he said calmly, “but you know you’ll start a war you can’t finish.”
    He saw her mouth tighten, flattening into a frustrated line.
    At last, the dragon gave a final heated sigh and slid back down into the canal.
    Cowering, the gondolier remained kneeling in a ball at the back of the boat.
    “Please continue,” Brandon told him, urging the man up. “It was simply an illusion. Just a trick of the shadows.”
    For a moment, the gondolier’s human mind wavered with the idea, not accepting it.
    “Who would really believe that you saw a real dragon?” Brandon asked him. “It was merely a trick that my friend here conjured.”
    Luciana, too, began to cajole the man in Italian.
    He smiled shakily, but once again stood and began to row.
    “Are you happy?” Luciana said, sitting back against the cushions. “I should have ordered that creature to burn you into oblivion, where you belong. Really, why do you insist on spoiling everything?”
    “That’s my job,” he said flatly. “It’s my role to believe that everything and everyone in this world would choose goodness, given the choice. Even you. You can pull out every trick you’ve got up those lovely sleeves of yours, but nothing you’ve got can scare me.”
    “I may not be able to scare you. But a darkness resides inside you. It is your greatest vulnerability. If it doesn’t frighten you, it should.”
    His heart began to race, more terrified of that truth than he had been of a mythical creature rising