The Bellini Card

96

He dreamed Palewski’s dream that night: of a never-ending search beneath the stones of Venice, and each stone had to be turned, one by one, by hand. But there was nothing underneath: only earth and water. And there was a woman, wringing her hands beside him.

He could still hear her groans and cries when he woke up, in the dark, and lay there listening against his will.

Muttering a prayer for her soul. A prayer against the darkness of the night.

He rolled swiftly aside and leaped to his feet.

That scream-was it really the sound of a woman mourning?

Or the sound of danger?

After the scream, silence.

The corridor was pitch-dark. Yashim felt his way along the wall. He reached a door and passed it. The next door he opened: slatted moonlight filtered through the louvered shutters onto the four-poster bed, hung with dark drapery; the room felt huge and empty.

He was about to shut the door when a low growl made the hair stand up on the nape of his neck.

He took a step into the room, wishing he had a candle.

And a white shape launched itself through the air and slammed him back against the wall.

He felt soft hair whip across his face and hard nails dragging across his chest.

She bit him like a wild animal, on the neck, on the cheek, clawing at his chest and shoulders.

He got a hand beneath her chin and flung her back. He could taste blood on his lip.

Carla staggered back and then flung herself forward again, sobbing and biting.

Yashim grabbed her arms and tried to force them down. She whirled around from side to side, trying to break his grip, dragging him back toward the bed.

Then he was on top of her, pinning back her hands above her head. Her hips writhed under him.

She spat into his face.

Yashim shook his head. Furious, he dragged a cord from the post and doubled it around her wrists. She twisted under his grip, almost threw him off, so he shifted his weight farther up her body. Her legs thrashed the bed.

With a heave he shifted her shoulders across the bed, bringing her wrists to the bedpost. As he leaned over her to tie them back, she jerked her head, snapping at him.

She made a furious lunge at the cord with her arms, trying to move it.

With a spring Yashim was off the bed, standing close, panting.

The cord held.

Carla gasped, reaching for breath. Between gasps, she began to laugh.

Yashim closed his eyes; his chest heaved.

She thought she had won.

He felt a rush of anger: if she had won, then he had lost.

Let it be, he told himself. Let it be.

His breathing eased.

And something cold, and very fine, slid up beneath Yashim’s ear as a voice whispered in it softly, “Thank you.”