Bellomorte

The moon lolled brightly over head, not yet tired enough to give way to the sun. Bellomorte stifled a yawn and wished, not for the first time, that he had the moon’s stamina, especially at this hour. Many of the bangers were night owls, and because of that there were many people assigned to early duty watching over the rest of the gang. The three o’clock hour was the best time, however, to strike against the gangs because there is a natural lull in the human body that seemed to be at its peak then. For that reason Bellomorte chose three A.M.. as a good time to strike at his enemies.

The warehouse wasn’t silent, however, as he’d expected it would be. There was a buzz of activity inside, a hive of drones moving items barely glimpsed through windows grimed with dirt and smoke. He stood crouched in the window of a burned out building across from the warehouse, observing the activity, trying to find a routine to the patrol but it all seemed aimless. This had its advantages. If there was no set check in time then they may not notice a missing patrol right away.

He carefully withdrew from his position and picked his way down through the rubble to the ground floor and stood in the shadows for a full minute observing that he’d not alerted anyone to his presence and to allow his breathing to settle into a shallow, almost inaudible rhythm. He crept forward, staying in the shadow of the ruined building, and listening intently for the bored patrol to stroll his way. Reaching the corner of the building he peered around to see the empty street between the buildings. These old warehouses and long dead manufacturing buildings often had narrow roads built between them, not much more than glorified alleyways. He dashed across the road and crouched down behind the carcass of a badly damaged van.

Once again he worked to regulate his breath, and strained to hear the footsteps of an approaching patrol. This warehouse may be a major point for the gangs to interact with whomever was supplying them with weapons; even more important it may be key to uncovering the underlying reasons for the gangs success. A few rogue cops did not a conspiracy make, but the idea was awfully tempting.

A foot dragged in the distance, sneakers pushing some pebbles along the road. The steps indicated the fatigue as well as the boredom of the guard, and Bellomorte felt his heart-rate increase as the moment of action grew closer. He slid the small knife from his sleeve and waited for the guard to draw near. The guard stopped, fiddled in his pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes. He slid one out of the pack and put one end in his mouth. After replacing the pack he began to pat his pockets again and finally reached into one and produced a lighter. Once his smoke was lit, he began to move again. After what seemed to be the limit of his patience had been exceeded several times over, the guard passed in front of him. He slid out and grabbed the guard, one hand over his mouth and the second holding the blade to his throat.

“Smoking is bad for your health,” Bellomorte whispered into his ear as he guided the man back towards the burned out husk of the van. The guard had dropped his cigarette and it lay smoldering in the narrow roadway.

“Now, you and I are going to have a chat, a nice conversation.” He breathed into the thug’s ear. The man stiffened as Bellomorte pressed the blade in on the soft throat tissue to emphasize the situation the thug was in. A small, low moan was trapped in the guards mouth.

“I’m going to move my hand, real slow. Now you stay quiet or Ill make you stay quiet. Understand?” Bellomorte asked. The man nodded imperceptibly. Bellomorte moved his hand and gestured towards the warehouse. “What’s in there.”

“They gonna hunt you down, you in the way of their plans.” The thug gained a little swagger as he said it, seeming to forget his position. The blade dug in a bit, a sharp reminder.

“Then you are no longer useful,” and so saying the blade bit deeply, cutting back through the cartilage all the way to the back of the neck before sliding out. Arterial spray flew out across the husk of the van, black in the dim light. The thug had evacuated his bowels and Bellomorte knew his time was limited and he hastened across the narrow road to the burned out building. Before he reached it a shot rang out, sparking off the asphalt. Yells went up in the night, his quarry knew he was here.

It was probably a rooftop sentry that had spotted him, Bellomorte knew, and cursed himself for being careless. There was too much he hadn’t learned tonight and his window of opportunity was lost. Another shot rang out ahead of him and he veered from the safety of the hulking wreck of the building and down the narrow street. His legs pumped, adrenaline surging through him and his mind worked quickly, planning an escape route. He kept close to the side of the building to make any potential shot difficult due to the angle and the lack of light.

In front of him two men rounded the corner and he dashed from the relative cover of the building and sprinted to the opposite side where he entered the warehouse through a gaping hole in the wall. He had the advantage in here, based on previous experience. His main goal was to put distance between himself and his pursuers, but they would follow more cautiously since his reputation had him lying in wait in the labyrinth of the broken building.

Bellomorte stopped to catch his breath and analyze this information. It was said loud enough that he could hear, of course, which either meant they wanted him to hear or they didn’t care if he did; the difference was crucial. He worked hard to regulate his breathing, essential to not being caught in an environment where things would go quiet quickly. He cursed himself again, he’d been forced into this and they’d been ready for him.

If they had the manpower the group comment suggested, he was already flanked. If they didn’t, they were hoping he’d double back towards the two guards. Based on the number of people he’d glimpsed inside, they had the manpower. If there were thugs as part of that crew he could count on some disorganization and a lack of discipline. If they were smart, the thugs would have been the perimeter guards whose only job was to alert the others. Which meant the two that reached the doorway behind him, would be thugs; the rest moving to flank him would be better trained. He didn’t like thugs, but he liked his odds with them a whole lot better. They were a known quantity.

His breath now regulated he crept back and let a small throwing knife trickle down his sleeve and into his hand. Staying to the ruined buildings shadows he approached the doorway and spotted the outline of the guards. They weren’t right in front of the door, where they would be easy targets; apparently they weren’t complete morons. The light from the warehouse threw their shadows and gave away their positions, however. Judging from the way they were pressed to the building, the throwing knife wasn’t going to help him here. Just as well, he thought as he tucked it away, he’d never get it back if he threw at one of these two. And he liked that knife.

Instead he backtracked and found a partial staircase, and once on the second floor secured a few choice bricks and made his way to a window near his thuggish guards. They were on either side of the door, pressed close to the building so that nothing from inside cold hit them. Above, however, was a different ballgame. He had no hope of disabling both guards, and truth be told he’d be lucky to hit one. But his goal wasn’t to disable them; though if one head squashed like a melon, he’d count it in the plus column.

He tossed the two bricks down, hitting one in the shoulder. They cried out an alarm, but he was already moving to the other side of the building. Since they had been moving to flank him, they were now receiving an alarm that would convince them, he hoped, that he was trying to escape by going backward. If they bought it, he should be safely away on the other side of the building. He slid down a supporting pole to the first floor and picked his way across the ruined interior. Footsteps could be heard running all around. He wasn’t sure how successful his diversionary gambit had been. He moved towards the wall and as he crept forward gunshots rang out inside the warehouse. Either they were inside and pursuing him, or firing blindly to keep him pinned or flush him out.

Peeking out the shattered window frame he looked at the tangled mess of industrial waste. Fifty gallon drums, broken crates and shattered pallets lay strewn about, precious little in the way of cover. For the moment, there was no one else in sight. Before he could over think, he was through the window and moving to the scant cover of the industrial garbage.

A shot rang out behind him, not muffled by the building, the sound echoing off the wall behind him. He didn’t waste time trying to find the shooter, he scuttled to the nearest crate and flung himself behind it. Once there he knew he couldn’t stay, and he began to crawl as fast as he could, staying to the few shadows offered him and whatever cover was provided.

In the stillness of the night Bellomorte saw the small devices hurling into the wreckage in the moonlight. Grenades. Where the hell did they get grenades? He knew if he stood they would mow him down, and since the grenades were no where near his position he knew they didn’t know where he was. He kept his head down and moved faster. Shots rang out, more grenades landed and exploded; then the unthinkable.

One of the grenades was tossed too close a stack of fifty gallon drums, which must have carried chemicals at one time that didn’t respond well to the explosion. The barrels erupted, throwing shrapnel for hundreds of feet in every direction. Pain flared and then bit in deeply in Bellomorte’s left leg and he nearly screamed in anguish. Looking down quickly he saw a piece of jagged metal sticking out of his leg, right through the muscle and behind the blade on his leg by centimeters. If it had hit the blade, he’d have been spared.

Grimacing, but knowing his life was at stake, he crawled off into the night, the sounds of gunfire fading and the grenades no longer falling as his pursuers fanned out and tried to search the wreckage for his body. He took advantage of that slow search to make his escape. He had to get to the library, without leaving a trail.

“How does your leg feel tonight, eh?” Isabella inquired. Ely was standing in the fiction stacks, cane leaning against the shelf. He’d been thumbing through the mysteries, looking for something to catch his interest.

“Sure,” Ely snagged his cane and walked to the end of the row, falling into step beside her. They walked in silence towards the back of the Library and began to descend the steps to the basement slowly.

“I think so, as much as I can. My folks have to be worried. I went through my bag but when that guy stabbed my bag he sliced right through the power cord for my phone, so it’s dead and I can’t recharge it.”

“He’s is ashamed, and he is trying to prove himself but there are very few ways to atone for once having been the enemy. This is the cloud under which he lives, but the important part is that he lives.” She shook her head with a smile, “For most of us that isn’t enough. To be human, we always reach for more; it is our greatest attribute, and our worst.”

“I will need help,” she turned and placed a hand on Ely’s shoulder, “Get Daniella. Tell no one, simply tell her that I need her help downstairs. When no one else can hear, tell her we have a red light. Go.” She pushed him and headed down the hall.

He wasted no time, the urgency in her voice was enough to convince him. He moved down the hallway as fast as he could, his cane tapping out an irregular beat. He hopped up the stairs for speed sake and emerged on the first floor gasping for breath. He slowed his pace to try and gain control over his heaving chest. He walked across the carpeted floor, eyes searching out Daniella. Eventually he spotted her talking with Mike. Mike was smiling at her and she was shaking her head. He approached them, and Mike frowned as he drew close.

“Oh, all right. Why don’t’ we change your dressing since I’m heading down?” She looped her arm into his and called out over her shoulder, “I’ll see you later Mike.”

“Yes,” he responded. She turned and charged down the steps ahead of him. He sighed and continued down at his own pace. He’d gotten her, there was no sense in his breaking his neck to get downstairs now. When his feet touched the basement floor he heard a metal door closing and at the far end of the hall emerged Isabella and Daniella, and cradled in between them was Bellomorte. Together they struggled and brought him into the room Ely had spent several days recovering in and nominally thought of as his room.

“Daniella, acqua, bene,” Isabella muttered and Daniella brushed by Ely, standing frozen in the doorway. It wasn’t the blood, it was the figure the blood poured from that shook him to his core. In his mind Bellomorte had taken on the strength of myth, the kind of power legends are made from. To see him brought low knocked the wind from his lungs.

“Ely, the drawer, bandages and scissors. Hurry.” Isabella prodded him with her no nonsense words. He hobbled to the cabinet and extracted a handful of paper wrapped gauze bandages and then the scissors. He precariously tried to balance the entire group in one hand and dropped the scissors. He set the bandages down on the desktop next to the injured man’s leg – just a man – and reached for the scissors on the floor. As he straightened one of the bandages slipped off the desk, away from its mates and he bent over again to retrieve it.

Isabella took the scissors and cut away part of the pantleg, exposing pale skin underneath and a nasty piece of dirty shrapnel jutting from his leg. Daniella returned with the warm water and a clean cloth, both of which she gave to Isabella wordlessly. Isabella began to gingerly clean around the wound, trying to remove as much debris as possible. Bellomorte hissed once or twice, but otherwise remained silent. At last the area was clean, save for the shrapnel.

“Bello, bello. This can’t stay in here,” she pointed at the ragged metal. “But if I pull it out, you may bleed to death; I don’t’ know if an artery is cut.” She sighed heavily.

Daniella handed her mother a pair of pliers from a tool chest under the desk, partially hidden by Ely’s sea bag. She lay across his lower legs while Ely stepped up to the head of the table, and looked down into Bellomorte’s sharp blue eyes. The gaze held him, and Ely drew strength – the eyes still radiated that legendary feeling – and he took hold of Bellomorte’s hand. Isabella took the small bit of leather she had snipped away from the wound and folded it, then placed it in his mouth to bite down on. She patted his cheek in sympathy.

“You must hold him still, as still as you can,” Isabella muttered. That was all the warning they got as she gripped the metal and pulled sharply. He bucked, his hand tightening to a grip no vise could ever match. The scream trapped in his mouth as his jaw bit down on the chunk of leather would have been like a klaxon, if it had been allowed to escape.

The grip on Ely’s hand went slack and he feared that Bellomorte’s life blood was being pumped out like a fire hose from his leg and he looked down fearfully. Isabella was cleaning the wound with alcohol and gauze, murmuring to herself as she did so.

“Not too bad, I have to clean and dress it as fast as I can while he’s passed out. This leather set needs mending and I’m sure there are other cuts that need cleaning on his poor body, so lets get him out of this set of leather,” She instructed. “Be careful, there are knives hidden everywhere, you could get cut or cut him by accident, take your time but be efficient.”

Ely and Daniela set to work removing the work clothes of this wounded hero. Ely pulled off the gloves, revealing the pale hands underneath and the nails trimmed short. He heard Daniela pulling down on the pants, as Isabella helped her guide them past the wound in his leg. Ely located a clasp at the neck, and then a line of them going down the front which opened into a flap that hid a zipper.

He tugged the zipper down and opened up the front of the chest piece. It was the only thing he could think to call it, since it wasn’t really a coat and it sure as hell wasn’t a shirt. He could feel metal in the leather at various places, some had obvious handles protruding and others did not. He guided the leather off his arms one at a time, leaving just a black tee shirt on underneath. Finally he undid the clasps and hidden zippers to expose the face beneath the mask. The pale face was young, perhaps mid twenties. Light freckles ran across his nose and sprinkled his cheeks. Red hair cut military short capped his head, matted with sweat.

“Good work, the wound is clean. I will bind it. Daniela take the leather to my room so I may mend it. Ely, I need you to stay here, when he wakes he may be disoriented and in pain. He will wake soon, I think, and I will give him some medicine, then he will sleep.” She looked lovingly into his face.

Ely jumped as a hand clamped down suddenly on his arm. He looked down into Bellomorte’s pain filled brilliant blue eyes and time held for just a moment. The eyes changed the whole face, the brilliant, bright blue contrasting with the pale skin and the red hair was exotic and caused a knot to form in Ely’s stomach. His words chilled him however.

The single candle guttered in the room, the emergency lights having gone out more than an hour before. Ely sat in a hard wooden chair, a paperback lay face down on his thigh. His eyes had been drooping, the words blurring on the page and he'd set it down to rub his eyes and stretch, hoping to push some oxygen through his system and wake up a bit. He inhaled deeply, which bridged into a yawn that he tried to stifle.

“Your body has been telling you ti's tired for at least ten minutes, you should listen to it,” Bellomorte said quietly from the desk. Ely started and, now fully awake, looked at the prone form. A thin blanket was draped over him, though his brow was shiny with sweat.

“I didn't know you were awake.” Ely set his paperback aside and pushed himself to his feet and pivoted to take a cloth from the shelf and dip it in water to wipe his brow clean. “You should have said something, are you in pain?”

“My heart.” The blue eyes closed momentarily and his body jerked involuntarily with a spasm of pain. Ely recovered and put the cloth back on the lip of the bowl. He pulled he blanket back from the wounded leg and examined the bandage, which was stained with blood.

“I'll ask her, once this is done.” Ely replied. He avoided looking into his eyes, they were like gravity wells, ones that Ely felt it was harder and harder to pull his gaze from. He began to slowly peel the tape back, then picked up the cloth again to ease the bandage away from the wound. Once the bandage was up Ely got his first clear look at the damage.

An angry red slash ran across the pale skin, but the blood was no longer flowing. It didn't look that bad, but he'd seen the piece of oily shrapnel that had created the puncture, so he knew it was deep. He threw the bandage into the wastebasket and cleaned the wound with water, then sterilized it. Bellomorte twitched when the fluid hit the wound, and Ely saw the hands close on the edges of the desk as he rode out the wave of pain.

“I'm sorry,” he apologized. The blue eyes remained clenched closed for a few more moments, letting the burn subside. Ely unwrapped a new bandage, shifted on his own leg to adjust the pressure, and laid the bandage over the punctured skin. He finished with tape to secure it, and cleaned up the mess he'd made.

“Yes, seeing someone die...especially the first time, isn't easy. I comfort myself with two facts while I'm on the street. The first is that I and the thugs are trying to kill each other, it's definitely an 'us or them' situation. The other is that I'm not killing people. I'm exterminating pests, pulling the rotten tooth that government dentistry can't or won't.”

Ely stared at the blue eyes, framed in the pale face. The red hair seemed to not belong, it was so different. He was stunned at the hate, the depth of disgust for the gangs. Even though Ely felt they were a problem, a deadly one, he had Mike to balance some of that and realize that some could be saved.

“Mike is spineless, a jellyfish that floats with the tide. Make no mistake, he hesitated but he'd have killed because the option was that they'd kill him. He'd never stand up to anyone. If you ever doubt that, you're making a mistake.”

“Angelina?” Ely asked quietly. The blue eyes widened for a moment, and then returned their focus to the ceiling. “You said my eyes were the same color as her, like...”

“The city was just beginning its slide then. Maybe it was farther along than I realized,” He shook his head, “At the time I didn't think so. Angelina had just started to work in the area, she and I were in school together. She was smart, brilliant in some ways. She had a way with children that was so strange,” he smiled as he fell silent.

“She didn't care for children very much. She said that whomever she married would have to enjoy having nieces or nephews or have a strong imagination because she didn't want children,” He chuckled and winced, grasping his leg briefly. His eyes drifted to Ely, held him for a moment; then he made an extended blink and turned his gaze back to the ceiling.

“She was amazing with children though. They loved her. She had three families that she babysat for and another that she nannied for on weekends. She got her schoolwork done at their homes at nights, she had that kind of voodoo over the kids. She was very gentle.”

“Girlfriend? No,” Bellomorte laughed, “Her tastes ran to more...feminine persuasions. No we just studied a lot together. The night she died, we were together. I had met her at the Castlewaite's, she had been there all that Sunday. We were walking to the bus stop, which was several blocks away. She'd had a hard time getting the youngest to take her bath that night,” he let a small, strangled chuckle leak past his lips, “Her magic with kids having failed turned out to be an omen.”

Ely broke his gaze, his eyes had been locked on Bellomorte's face and with his dramatic story he suddenly felt as though he were intruding on him. He struggled to his feet and hobbled to the cabinet where he pulled out an aspirin bottle and poured water from a pitcher. He shook four tablets into his hand, recapped the bottle and then turned with the items.

Bellomorte's blue eyes were locked on his green ones. He paused, so fierce was the intensity of his gaze. He recovered quickly and hobbled back over to his side, placing the tablets in the pale hand and then the glass. He placed his hand behind his head, lifting him forward towards the glass. Once he'd taken the medicine, Ely replaced the water glass and resumed his seat.

They sat in silence for a moment, each knowing the conversation would become irreversibly personal should it continue. Ely felt that he couldn't ask for anything from the injured man, though he badly wanted to know. The blue eyes turned slowly towards him and instead of returning to the ceiling, instead of bland toneless narration, they locked on to him and he resumed.

“We passed an apartment building, it had a deep overhang that had most of its lights out. I don't know if they were intentional or simply hadn't been replaced.” he licked his lips. “A group broke away from the shadows of the building and began to trail behind us, but within half a block they had caught up and surrounded us. I felt nervous, but assumed they were trying to rob us. I offered up my wallet and she tossed her pocketbook on the ground. Turns out money wasn't what they were after.”

“They killed her, I barely survived. I can still hear her screaming, they didn't kill her right away. All I could do was bleed on the sidewalk, unable to lift even a hand to help her. “Now they pay for it, they all pay for it.”