himself a full cup.
It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult; he’d been trained for years by the Keepers to keep these dangerous feelings in check.
To keep the Larva locked away.
Malatesta had been sixteen when first approached by the Keepers. At that time he was imprisoned in a boy’s reformatory for crimes of sexual deviancy against the women of his village. Constantin had been told by the village priest that he had a devil living inside of him, for he had been born out of wedlock, and on the Sabbath. Malatesta would struggle with that evil spirit infestation for as long as he was alive, the priest had said. In moments of lucidity, he would pray that he would be kept locked away for his own good, and for the good of the world. Nobody, especially those of the female persuasion, would be safe if he was allowed to roam free.
But his condition did not cause the Keepers concern; in fact, they had sought him out because of it.
Malatesta stiffened, spilling the contents of his goblet as the woman came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his chest.
“I didn’t figure you for shy,” Natalia said into his back, her eager hands caressing his chest and stomach.
He began to find himself aroused, and with that, so was the Larva—the evil spirit locked away inside him.
The Keepers believed he was perfect for their cause, a lost soul already infected by the blight of the supernatural—these were the types that they were looking for: those already inclined to the ways of the weird. And they had been right. Once they secured his release from the reformatory, they brought him to a secret monastery where his training began in earnest.
But first they showed him how to keep the monster inside him in check, and for many years, other than the occasional backslide when he was younger, foolish, and overconfident, he had done just that, and had continued to do so while serving his Vatican masters.
Until now.
The Larva was fully awake, clawing at his insides, demanding to be paid attention to. Malatesta fought to remember all that he had been taught, every last bit of the minutiae he had been shown to control the filthy spirit that resided within him.
Natalia’s hands were all over him, traveling down to the forbidden place that grew hard as she teased him. It was like ringing a dinner bell for the damnable fiend inside him.
Using all the strength he could muster, Malatesta held on to the beast, but in doing so felt the glamour spell begin to slip.
And he could not allow that.
Malatesta abandoned his drink, spinning himself around to face the woman who gazed at him longingly. The spirit was there, taking full advantage of this weakness. It grabbed Natalia by the shoulders in a grip surely meant to hurt.
The woman gasped as he squeezed, the monster inside him wanting to turn the flesh and bone in his grasp to a red pulp that would ooze from between his fingers.
Constantin was expecting her to cry out; the look in her eyes was one of shock and awe. The Larva liked that. It would feed off of her fear, but slowly. It had been a very long time since it had fed, and it wanted to take full advantage of the meal that was being presented.
Her mouth opened, and he prepared himself for the inevitable screams, but surprisingly, they did not come.
“That’s it,” Natalia said, her face flushed from the pain he was inflicting. “Show me what you can do. . . . Show me what you like.”
Malatesta was shocked by the words, but the spirit—the spirit had just been given the main course. He was nauseated by its excitement, its unbridled enthusiasm, as it tore free of any restraint that he had managed to maintain.
Though he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. His eyes—now the demon’s eyes—were locked upon their prey. Malatesta wanted to say that he was sorry, and that he would pray for her soul when the atrocity was complete, but the Larva refused to let him as it picked the woman up from the floor and savagely threw her across the room, where she struck a high part of the wall, leaving behind a bloody impression before dropping to the bed, and rolling onto the floor.
Malatesta wanted to cry out his sorrow, but the Larva had taken that away as well, replacing it with a hysterical laugh.
Temporarily sated, he was able to restrain the beast, to use the mental constraints taught to him by the Keepers to wrestle the beast into submission.
Malatesta leaned upon the bar, breathing heavily from the exertion of keeping the monster from emerging again while also maintaining the glamour. He thought about leaving the room and finding Remy Chandler before his act was discovered, and they were all put in jeopardy.
He walked toward the door, but was compelled to stop—to stare at the body of Natalia. The bloody smear on the wall above the bed told him that she was injured, quite possibly even dead, but he needed to know.
The Larva chattered excitedly inside his head, eager to deface the woman’s body in some foul way; but Malatesta remained strong, holding the leash tight.
Natalia lay crumpled upon the floor, her limbs bent in ways that suggested to him bones broken in more than one place. And the way her head hung limply to one side . . .
He believed that she might be dead.
The Vatican sorcerer had begun to utter a special prayer for the dead when he saw the body twitch. For a brief moment he was overjoyed by the idea that he hadn’t killed her, but was still nauseated by what he—the Larva—had been allowed to do.
Compelled to move closer, Malatesta found himself kneeling before the woman, reaching out to lay a comforting hand upon a leg bent disturbingly in the wrong direction.
Natalia’s eyes came open, staring.
He could not contain the gasp that escaped his lips as she began to thrash, hauling herself upright against the bed.
Wanting to tell her to stop before she could injure herself further, Malatesta remained strangely silent, watching entranced as she adjusted herself accordingly, setting limbs and bones straight, the way they should have been.
Natalia saw that he was watching, and laughed.
“I knew the bad angel that Morgan told me about was in there somewhere.” She adjusted her arm, bone grinding against broken bone. “Just give me a minute to heal, baby,” she told him, her lips stained with blood.
“Then we can really have ourselves a party.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was as if the building on Newbury Street and Francis were connected on some level. He had lived in the brownstone since its construction back in 1882, and they’d been through quite a bit together, seen a lot of things.
This angelic incursion was just the latest.
Standing silently in the lobby, Francis closed his eyes and reached out, feeling as the building felt, hearing the sounds, smelling the smells both old and new.
The angels had come in from the roof. The magickal wards that Francis had set up so many years ago were signaling the invasion. He doubted that the invaders had even noticed them, and if they had, they hadn’t given them a second thought.
These were angels of Heaven’s war legion, and Francis seriously doubted they gave one lick that they were trespassing.
Which was why he was going to teach them a little lesson on respecting others’ space.
