Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

the old crone had already been decrepit.
    Back then, Zitella had spent her day grinding human bones to sell for use in refining sugar. What the old woman did now, Luciana had no idea. What she was now…that was equally a mystery. Whether demon or ghost or something caught in between, Zitella was definitely not alive.
    Zitella stopped humming and looked up. “Luciana Rossetti? Is that you, child?”
    Luciana stepped forward.
    “Come closer, child. How long has it been? Centuries…”
    She laid the offering of flowers in Zitella’s lap.
    The old crone picked up the roses, sniffed them briefly before casting them into the darkness behind her. “Do not try to bribe me with such trifling gifts.”
    “There’s something else, Zitella,” Luciana said hurriedly. “I’ve brought another gift for you.”
    She placed the vial in the old woman’s hand.
    Zitella closed her bony old fingers over it. In the faint light, she held it up, uncapped the cork stopper from its top. Inhaling deeply, she said, “Yes, that’s more like it. The blood of an innocent, the essence of a recent death. Yes, I am pleased. What have you come to trade this for?”
    “Whatever you wish to give to me, ma’am,” Luciana said, knowing better than to ask for what she wanted.
    Carefully, Zitella recapped the vial and tucked it into a fold of her black garments. Then she fished into another unseen depth of her clothing and handed over a small bottle of blown glass, with a dull-looking powder inside. “This is what you seek. Ground bones from the most evil beings that walked the streets of Venice. Murderers’ bones and rapists’ bones, bones from sellers of children and purveyors of lost souls, ground to powder. Prepare a base of venom, hemlock and cyanide. And then add the blood of the innocent. Lastly, mix in this powder. Then, you will achieve what you need in such a formula—the ingredients to kill both the body and the soul.”
    Luciana accepted it, curtsied a little out of habit from the old days. “Thank you, Zitella.”
    “Use the techniques exactly as I taught you, those many years ago. Then you will be able to kill any demon on earth.”
    And if it can kill a demon, surely it will also kill an angel, Luciana thought.
    “I will be eternally grateful to you for all that you have passed on to me, both then and now,” said the demoness. She bowed her head in reverence, then turned to leave.
    The old crone stopped her, reaching forward to grab Luciana’s hand with surprising strength. The grasp felt strange, and the demoness almost recoiled from the feel of the old woman’s skin, hardened into bone itself.
    The old woman pulled her so close that they were looking into each other’s eyes. “Wait,” said Zitella. “I have one more question for you. Who is this man who has come to you? Your lover?”
    “I have no lover, Zitella. No one more than there ever was. You must be imagining things,” Luciana said, trying to pull away.
    “Don’t lie to me, Luciana Rossetti. Someone has entered your life.”
    “Perhaps,” she relented a little, “there is a man. But he is of no consequence. The relationship is doomed. There are vast differences between us.”
    “Don’t fool with the angels. Yes, I know. It is obvious. I can smell him on you. He has seen within you.” The old crone jabbed a bony finger into the left side of the demoness’s chest with such force that it hurt. “He knows your heart. Knows you have one.”
    And she laughed, a cackle so loud it disturbed some of the branches of her makeshift roof, causing a hole to break into the ceiling. Moonlight streamed in, shining on Zitella’s wizened old face.
    “Go now,” said the old woman. “What you intend to do with this substance is beyond my control. But have a care where you use it. And remember. Sometimes it is what we fear most that we need most.”
    Crazy old hag, Luciana thought to herself, stumbling back toward the boat in the darkness. She picked something out of her hair, expecting it to be more of the disgustingly sticky spiderweb from Zitella’s hut, or perhaps a twig that had fallen from the roof.
    It was a feather.
    * * *
     
    “Bring me one of the goblins,” Luciana instructed Massimo much later that night when the sun was about to rise.
    She finished the last essence she was distilling as Zitella had instructed, had finally gotten the mixture to a point where it seemed stable. Took some of the new poison. With shaking fingers, she drew some of