Mise-Èn-Scene: arrangement of the scenery, props, lighting, etc. on the stage of a theatrical production
It was easier than ever.
Like one knew a distant friend from the slope of their handwriting and the faint wisps of a perfume lingering on their letters, he knew the Reaper from the brushstrokes of blood following a quick blade and the wicked artistry hidden and twisted in mortal sculptures.
Like a maze once walked, the path becomes familiar. Serial killers were dangerous, with Alessandro following their dark descent over and over again, their paths might become too familiar...
It was harder than ever. His eyes kept straying, expecting a flash of black. Like someone who put weight on a loose stone and fell, ground suddenly pulled from beneath them, he waited for a snarky comment, an observation hidden in a crude joke, and stumbled into the silence when none came.
His hands curled into fists. Alessandro had always worked alone. A partner was useless. He just wasted time explaining to them what he saw. He worked better alone.
But Giacinto saw things he didn't, showed him another side. He didn't slow Alessandro down – on the contrary, their competitiveness spurred him on. And the few times Alessandro had to stop and explain, he found he didn't mind.
Right now, Giacinto looked every bit the traitor. Giacinto—enough!
Alessandro almost swayed by the force of his anger hitting him. He battled it down, froze it over, played pretend one more time.
He divided the scene by three – de Vito, the boy, the stranger hanging from the cross. Puzzle. Inward from the edges. He strode to the boy.
He had been dumped face down in a pool of sunlight near the altar like an old doll. He couldn't be older than ten, his cheeks still a little chubby even though he was a bit too thin overall, nose turned up slightly like that of a mouse. A small street rat. Someone who wouldn't be missed.
He didn't appear harmed, no bruises or cuts marring his skin, except... Alessandro forced his eyes over the naked legs, pale, soft thighs smeared with drying blood.
The image of Giacinto grinning at the band of dirty, too thin street kids back in Venice let his anger flicker to life again. They had looked at the Greek with big, starry eyes. He would never do this.
Except if this had been an excellent set up, Giacinto playing Alessandro like a trump card, turned over at the perfect moment. Alessandro grit his teeth -- he couldn't read Giacinto. He could've been playing him the entire time.
The angry flames licked at memories of the Greek grinning at Alessandro over their chessboard.
Their? The anger sparked in joy.
Giacinto and Alessandro laughing breathlessly in the hallway, hair sticking in all directions after their wrestle.
This time, when Alessandro forced the ice over him, it physically hurt. If his anger reached those memories, it would burst ablaze and rip Alessandro apart in the explosion.
He narrowed his eyes – he couldn't spot the boy's trousers nearby. His shirt was dirty and wrinkled, but not torn in struggle...
This was too planned, too specific – someone had drugged the boy and stripped him elsewhere, yet brought and raped him on the altar. Why?
He brushed a finger through the blood on the inside of his thigh, as gently as he could with the anger boiling white hot inside of him. Alessandro yanked his hand back as if burnt. The skin was still revoltingly warm under his fingertips. The thin, broad smears of blood were starting to dry... 15 minutes ago.
Doubt scratched under Alessandro's skin. Something was wrong.
Yeah, there's a dead child, Captain Obvious.
Alessandro startled. He could practically hear the eyeroll in Giacinto's voice, a shiver ghosting down his neck as if the Greek had whispered into his ear. He clenched his fists.
Think.
The Reaper loved his grand, beautiful horror. He was known for his unwavering loyalty during missions, his iron hard set of rules. A twisted moral code, but one nonetheless...
The Reaper was cruel and brutal and he was clean. Rape was blunt, an animalistic, hot headed exhibition of dominance.
The Reaper would never lay a hand on anyone like this. He saw himself as cruel nobility. He wouldn't dirty himself like a peasant.
And then, a terrible, terrible thought formed.
"Laelia!" Alessandro was only faintly aware he was yelling, digging his fingers painfully hard into the boys's neck.
Please. He pressed deeper. Please.
He had checked his pulse before – but not long enough. The Reaper's drug must have slowed his heart so far it beat just faintly against the waiting hands of death.
A soft thud knocked against his fingertips. Alessandro's breath knocked out of him with relief. Laelia fell to her knees next to him in a flurry of silks, but Alessandro didn't turn, frantically ripping off his jacket instead, wrapping it around the boy. "He's alive," he rasped, "He's alive."
He pulled at his wrist, forced a still hand to turn – indeed, the palm was cut for the blood on his thighs.
Truths shifted, Alessandro's mind racing to fit new pieces into a puzzle that was never meant for them.
Only De Vito had to die, but the Reaper had dragged three bodies into a deserted church to stage his sick, still play.
The boy only had to appear raped. But why was he not dead?
The Reaper was far from mercy. Why go to the lengths of luring a boy in, drugging him, staging him here after he had already killed De Vito?
This had nothing to do with De Vito or his orders, Alessandro realized with a start. This was a different game.
... the Reaper had his own ambitions.
Only one of them had played that game. Dread scratched up his throat. Only one had turned to ash at the sight and fled. Alessandro closed his eyes.
The coin Giacinto had given him burnt hot in his pocket. Alessandro had thought the Reaper was trying to frame Giacinto for Piero's murder. Then Giacinto had explained the meanings behind coins, monsters and labyrinths: the Reaper wanted Giacinto to blame himself for Piero's death.
Something else scratched at the back of his mind – Asterion. The tale of monsters, saints and stars... He said I could be either... Or both... Giacinto's voice rang emptily in Alessandro's mind.
The Reaper did all of this, for Giacinto.
They knew each other far, far better than anyone could have imagined. I killed them. Giacinto's hoarse cries echoed around him. The attack... Giacinto had an injured arm, he couldn't climb and flee once Laelia had escaped. Hopelessly outnumbered, Giacinto had had only one option. Kill them all.
Saint or Monster... The Reaper was playing Giacinto.
But this had nothing to do with Giacinto being a killer, this was a boy with blood on his thighs. Alessandro's eyes fell back onto old De Vito. He had clearly been arranged to this exact position on the steps.
His cruel mind summoned the ghosts with ease.
From the boy's feet, a purple echo stumbled back, half knocked aside, staggered, fell, stilled in blood, right where De Vito had been placed on the stairs.
He killed a bishop, he heard the servant's voice again.
Not once had he thought that perhaps, the bishop had not been the victim.
Restless worry gnawed at him.
But why give the boy the chance to wake up?
Laelia yanked him out of the dark, ripping her pouches off with flying hands, clawing them open one by one, powders and herbs and vials dropping at her side like bombs. "He's dying."
Alessandro's eyes widened. "What – but –" This didn't make sense. It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense.
"Water!" Laelia yelled. Alessandro jumped, but Lorenzo was already sprinting to one of the stoups, caught a flask tossed by Amand, holy water spilling over his fingers when he thrust the flask at them.
"Can you save him?" Alessandro's voice was hollow.
"I don't know!" Laelia cried out, panic smeared over her features. "I don't know what this is, I just, I checked his pulse again and it kept slowing, I don't know, I don't know, I don't –"
Alessandro grasped her face, making her look up at him with wide, fearful eyes. "You can. You beat the Reaper once –"
"But that was – I just threw something at him, I didn't have to save someone!"
"You're brilliant." He hardened his voice. "It's about time he realizes that. You can save this boy."
Laelia gulped, then nodded. "I can do this." Then her hands were flying, checking the boys skin, drawing his lid back, sniffing his breath. "I can do this. Lorenzo!"
The blond jumped, dropping to his knees next to Laelia. His hands were shaking like leaves. Not even that stirred any emotion in Alessandro.
The ice he had wrapped himself in had shattered and plunged him into the black, yawning jaw of the arctic sea beneath, and he sunk, sunk ever deeper, floating in icy, endless black, where time and space and thought slowly dissolved and faded away...
"It's Monkshood," Laelia said, face grim. "Usually he'd have a few hours, but he gave him some sedative, I don't know which, there's no trace, I don't know how they react or –"
"Lia." Zo battled his old smile back onto his lips. "You're better than him." He turned to Alessandro. "Go, solve this. I'll help her."
Alessandro could only nod, body completely numb as he stepped behind the altar to the cross. This had just been another game.
If Laelia failed, a boy would die in her arms. If Alessandro had pieced things together just a bit slower, the boy would have died.
The Reaper was playing his sick games with all of them.
Alessandro flung himself into his deductions with the desperation of a man running from his own madness.
The man on the cross had his throat slit, gaping open into a gleaming red smile as he dangled upside down. The impossible, sour-sweet smell of wet copper filled Alessandro's nose. The marble mosaic beneath him ran red with seas of blood. Gravity had drank every last drop of his blood.
All blood ran down his face in giant red rivers, dripping down the tips of his hair to a sea of red beneath him. Throat slit while already on the cross.
A fine vase on the altar burst with fresh flower, yet petals had fallen onto the marble counter – on one side only.
The Reaper had hung the man upside down on the cross while he was still alive, slit his throat and sat back on the altar to watch him bleed to death.
The robes were Marius'.
Marius had been supposed to be with De Vito. He wasn't an actual member of the order, but he had been De Vito's student, he knew something and that made him dangerous. De Vito must have known. He knew he would die and saved Marius.
Sitting back and watching a man choke on his own blood, strung up like a pig for slaughter... the Reaper was furious. De Vito had crossed him, even in death. The robes were a clear message. Marius was next.
De Vito himself laid on the stairs leading up to the altar in a puddle of his own blood, as if fallen. He had been stabbed in the side, blood seeping beneath him, down the stairs in now almost black, slow waterfalls.
The spatter from the entry wound were elongated drops – long tails extending from the spot they had hit the ground fast at a flat angle. He had been laying here when he had been stabbed.
There was a blind spot around the height of his waist – the Reaper had knelt above him.
A fine red mist around his mouth – internal bleeding mixed with air, the pressure of the lungs turning the blood into a fine spray. Indeed, small bubbles of air were trapped in some of the bigger drops. He had died from that wound, not from poison.
A few perfectly round did not fit the pattern. The had to have hit the ground at a square angle from above. Alessandro connected them to a line – the Reaper had knocked the old priest out and carried him here.
Alessandro clenched his fists. The purple bishop's robes were too large for the old man, heavy with golden embroidery – Amand's.
They had nothing to do with De Vito, the old man just had to die quickly, to be removed from the board like a mere pawn. The robes were for Giacinto, recreating with sick preciseness whatever horror the Greek had survived.
Alessandro's heart sank. Everything here was the Reaper's doing. He had given De Vito no chance to turn his death into another hint for them.
This was it. De Vito was dead and they had nothing. Alessandro dragged a hand through his hair, desperation clawing at his throat. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
We'll go home! The memory of Laelia's laughter made Alessandro want to lash out and break something.
He had to get a grip. He would find something. Anything.
De Vito must have left a clue. He had known he would die and saved his foster child, he must have left something for Marius to solve this. Alessandro clung to that thought like a drowning man.
He squared his shoulders and raised his chin, summoning every last ounce of calm confidence when he stepped down to Amand and Marius.
Marius still sat slumped on the ground, curled into himself, shoulders shaking with silent sobs, but Amand had joined him, an unsure armlength away, only daring to sneak glances at the other.
The Amand Alessandro knew would rather force someone to their knees and sit on them rather than lower himself to the ground.
Appearance was power and no one played card that better than Amand. But here, the devil of the Louvre sat on the ground like a common man, suddenly small when all his grandeur faded into blood and tears.
"Your robes," Alessandro said.
"Your inability to form actual sentences," Amand replied.
"I am this close to setting your moustache on fire."
Amand's lips twitched into a smile. "Pretty hot, non?"
"No, you look like a goat that wants to be a pirate."
Amand gasped. "Mon dieu, you are ruthless." He shook his head. "Now, what about my robes?"
Alessandro curtly recounted all he knew. He was surprised by how even his voice was, cold and detached, as if this were just another report. He wasn't surprised by how easy it was to lie about the boy and Giacinto. He had enough practice lying.
Amand's expression darkened, all heat from his earlier anger dissipating like a sun sinking behind the horizon, giving way to cold, black night. The Reaper had made a dangerous enemy.
"So, this assassin is coming for him next." Amand avoided Marius' name like a plague beacon." Now more than ever, he has to leave town." He turned to Marius. "That is an order."
Marius slowly shook his head. He looked like a lost ghost, with the dark circles under almost colourless eyes, black soot smeared over snow. "I am no longer your archdeacon. You cannot order me anywhere."
He slowly got up, raising his head high, white hair gleaming in the sun like a halo. Alessandro almost expected the rustle of wings unfolding. "Inspector Steno said there's a clue De Vito must have left for me. I'm staying."
"You are going. This is not your battle!" Amand found his fire again. "Look what your stupid Jesus complex got you into with the Medici. You could have died!"
"No," Marius smiled sadly. "I can't do that. I'll help them." His eyes fell onto the body behind Alessandro. "Can I go to him now?" He whispered. There were fresh tears swimming in his eyes. "Please."
Alessandro nodded, the pain in Marius' expression making his head spin. If that were his own father...
"I can't let you – this is –" Amand called after him.
Alessandro cleared his throat. "If I may – Father Fromm would be safer here. With you."
Amand gritted his teeth. "He's a tool to you. You need that clue."
"I do," Alessandro said flatly. "But he is no tool. And you didn't send him away out of disgust –"
Amand's eyes burned hotter than hell. "Don't you finish that sentence."
"You could have had him hanged before noon. You were trying to keep him safe. Somewhere no one would find out his secret --"
"Don't you dare say you care! I knew how you were, before. You were the brightest star, but you burnt out," Amand spat. "Now you reign in the dark over ice and blood, so don't you dare pretend you care about anything other than solving this."
Alessandro felt something in him wither at his words. "You survived the French court. You can keep him safer than any one of us." Amand had been born from death, intrigue and powerplay. He could navigate this chaos.
"He'll never be safe, look at him!" Amand snapped. But Alessandro caught the desperation in his voice.
Marius hadn't gone to De Vito right away, instead struggled to take down the man on the cross by himself, gently resting him below the altar and wiping his face clean from the blood. He now sat by the old bishop's side, in a pool of blood, holding his hand like a lost child, head hung low, tears dropping through the sunlight like diamonds. Still, he was stifling his cries, as if he didn't want to disturb the others.
Laelia and Lorenzo still battled for the boy's life in the shadows.
"He went with the Medici just so no one would get harmed in a struggle." Amand exhaled shakily. "One man hit him so hard his skin split. If that man were drowning, he would still risk his life to save him!"
The boy. Alessandro only half listened, mind suddenly racing. In the shadows. There had been sun when Alessandro had crouched over him.
"He's a good man, Alessandro," Amand hissed. "Good men die."
The shadow moved. "That they do."
The church held its breath as the dark ghost stepped forward onto the ledge beneath the cupola. The Reaper calmly raised a crossbow and aimed it down at Marius.
Amand surged forward, Alessandro yanked him back. They were too far away. They wouldn't reach him in time. Amand growled like a wounded animal, but stilled immediately.
The angel's robes hadn't looked real – they had been real. The Reaper had stood before the statue. When Alessandro had been busy bent over De Vito, the Reaper had slipped to above Laelia and Lorenzo, getting a clear shot down to where he knew Marius would rush sooner or later.
Alessandro should have paid more attention, he should have –
"If you hurt Marius, I will kill you!" Laelia jumped up, fists curled at her side, chin jutted out. Lorenzo failed to drag her back down, then desperately tried to shield her with his own body. She kept twisting free, glowering at the assassin.
"Good afternoon, little poisoner," the Reaper laughed. "I would like to see what that would do with you. You are all so fascinating. Did you like my little game?"
"You are sick," Alessandro gritted. "This boy's life is not yours to play with."
"Oh, I just put him on the board. It was you who played." The pleasant smile in his voice was unsettling.
"And I won. He's alive," Alessandro spat.
"Roar all you want, little lion. I can still kill him," the Reaper said, his voice like the caress of a knife. "I can smell your fear. You need control. This is what you fear the most, if I shoot, they die, and there's nothing you can do."
"You won't," Alessandro said surely. "You played, I won. You follow rules."
"So scared," the Reaper mused. "You really are good, Inspector." He smiled down at them like a black hawk about to leap off the edge and catch one of them in his claws. "I can see why he hates you."
He? Antonio Morosini? He barely knew Alessandro. Daniele? Alessandro had suspected he was involved, his father was the head of the police force -- he had the power to have Alessandro and Giacinto arrested on that supposed crime scene of the Shadow, framed for conspiracy and murder.
"I've heard a lot about you and your abilities. You put me in a bit of a tight spot, I really can't have you find what this old sheep hid for sweet Marius before I do, you see?"
It was a hard shot. Alessandro knew the Reaper could make it – he had done it before. Shooting that artist in Laelia's family's palace had been almost impossible. Maybe if they distracted him...
Amand's eyes were wide with fear and hopeless rage.
They had no chance of reaching Marius in time.
"Which is why –" The Reaper slowly spun the crossbow towards Alessandro with a smile, pulled the trigger and sent the bolt right to Alessandro's heart.
How much of this chapter's reveals and twists had you guessed? You're all scarily good at reading between the lines!
Did you expect the real reason for Amand to send Marius away?
The Reaper and his games... does he care about Gio? Or does he just want to turn him into something like himself?
Thank you for reading, don't hate me too much for this, stay lovely!
Avis.