#grettore

Drew and Ettore were racing through the starch white hospital hallways, stumbling over their own feet in their haste. Ett had taken the lead as he had also taken it upon himself to push people aside and call out that the two of them were coming through at breakneck speed. He shoved one of the nurses to the side. She swore at him and stumbled against the whitewashed wall as his metal arm collided with her chest. He winced, feeling a little guilt swell in his gut, but kept going as Drew showed absolutely no signs of stopping and depended on him to keep the paparazzi away and to clear the path.

  “Shit, sorry!” was all he managed to get out toward the nurse as they rounded a corner and he flung open the door to the emergency staircase.

  They took the stairs, not bothering with waiting for an elevator to chug along. Ett managed to take two at a time with his long strides. Drew fell somewhat behind, panting as he was out of shape compared to the younger man.

  “Fucking hell,” Ett swore as they finally reached the door to their floor and he shoved it open hard, nearly knocking it into a doctor who stumbled back and stared in shock at them. Ett held the door for Drew and the older man hurried ahead with Ett on his heels now. The hospital was filled with the sounds of whirring machines, beeping things and squeaking sneakers… and Ett yelling at anybody who happened to move in front of them.

  In general, Ettore had grown to hold a passionate dislike for hospitals. After spending so much time in the field, he had also spent his fair share of time in hospitals and, generally speaking, only bad things seemed to happen to him in these buildings that smelled distinctly of chemicals and death.

  He pulled to a stop outside of birthing room and caught his breath quickly as he hesitated with his hand on the knob. Drew made no such hesitation and grabbed it from him, pushing open the door as Keera’s screams broke into the hallway and Ett stayed back, looking tense. The door shut in his face as Drew entered and rushed to his wife’s side.

  His palm was suddenly damp from a cold sweat and he rubbed it against his dark wash jeans. He and Drew had flown straight here from Spain when they had receive the message that Keera had gone into labor. He had been serving as a bodyguard for Drew over there while the man was negotiating some type of business relations. Upon getting the call in the middle of the night, they had thrown on the street clothes nearest to them and taken off in Drew’s private jet without so much as a farewell or conclusions to Drew’s consultations.

  The clothes he wore now had been lying in a neglected pile next to his bed. He was actually pretty sure the shirt was Drew’s by the way it fit although he had no idea how it would have ended up in his pile of shit. Ett wore a simple pair of dark wash, almost black jeans, a white button up that was half unbuttoned and a little big on his frame. On his feet were a pair of black Converse shoes. He typically wouldn’t wear something like that, but Gracie had bought them for him for Christmas so, for her, he wore them. Secretly, he was certain this was just her way of nerding him up. His hair had grown out a little longer than normal and hung around his face as there had been no time to do anything with it. There were dark rims around his eyes from lack of sleep. Not only had they traveled through the night with no sleep but, recently, he had been battling with a lot of unexplainable nightmares.

  Ett’s head throbbed in sudden pain and he winced. He had grown almost used to it and, for the most part, he could manage these migraines now but this one was different. This one grew, throbbed, and almost sent him to his knees. He placed his cool metal hand against his forehead in an attempt to abate the cold sweat trickling down his brow.

  He hesitated for a long minute outside of the door as the cries carried out into the hallway and several nurses passed by and gave him inquisitive looks before squeaking on their way. This wing of the hospital seemed suddenly, hauntingly quiet. It was as if everything and everyone had paused and held their breath as Keera cried out and groaned.

  Finally, he pushed open the door and entered. The air pressure in the room seemed to change drastically from that in the hallway. It felt as if he had stepped into artic temperatures and then it burned the hell out of him as if he had died and gone straight into the inferno. His fingers dug around in his pockets til they grazed over the Rosary he always kept tucked away there. It burned to the touch and he instinctively jerked his hand back and picked his way through the room to where he saw Gracie sitting in the window seat and watching, waiting. She seemed on edge though not for the same reasons as he was.

  Something was wrong. Something was wrong with him.

  Through his delirium, he vaguely saw Drew standing beside Keera and holding onto her hand tightly and whispering something to her. There was a doctor and a nurse there too but he couldn’t make out any faces.

  Ett sat down beside Gracie heavily and rested his cheek against her shoulder as was typical for him. This time, though, it wasn’t out of affection but because he was unable to keep his head up any longer. He felt as though he was suffocating and his breathing was labored as he fought against the crushing in his chest. The color had washed from his face and he looked practically spirit-like himself as the life felt as though it was draining from his entire person. His eyes closed slowly and he swallowed thickly. He was about to say something, certain that he had taken ill in some way.

  When he looked up again, his eyes had gone from normal light blue, to an icy, transparent and liquid blue. He blinked and it was gone, but they settled on a figure that appeared crouched in one corner of the room and his head slowly rose from Gracie’s shoulder as he focused. The figure came in and out of focus for a second and then he realized it was staring right back at him and glaring right through to his soul. He felt drained and yet drawn to it. He shifted away from Gracie. It was pulling him in.

  “Oh God…” he murmured under his breath. The thing was faceless and yet… he could make out features. Eyes that were a horrible icy color without pupils and definition but they were eyes, nevertheless. There weren’t any lids, or none he could see. It was a straight stare right at his soul. Its hair was stringy, moving without any airflow. It’s body was indescribably lanky and unhuman-like. It’s limbs were contorted and terrifying. His stomach did a flip as it almost looked like there was blood dripping down what could be called its legs and soaking into the floor, through the floor, dripping God only knew where. There was no mouth that he could see and yet he distinctly heard whispering coming from its corner. It was a never-ending string of hissing in his direction as it beckoned him closer.

  Without thinking, he rose and moved from Gracie and wandered across to the corner. His limbs moved jerkily, under no control of his own. He could vaguely hear Gracie calling his name… or calling for an Ettore. Was that still his name? Ett felt hot, like he was burning from fever. He heard Keera’s screams as he reached out toward the figure.

  Why was he doing this? Why? He didn’t want to touch it. He wanted to run. Why was it here and what was it?

  His metal arm hung limply as the connection was made between his right, real hand and the creature. The creature remained stationary, its eyes bore into his and Ett’s eyes reflected its ice blue. They remained suspended in time for a moment like that. He could hear Gracie moving behind him and he heard doctors. More beeping equipment and squalls of what he assumed to be a baby. The creature’s eyes flicked pure black, blending with its body and Ett’s normal, bright eyes changed with it as he looked over his shoulder. Both his eyes turned black and demonic like as they settled first on Gracie and then on the baby the doctor held up to show Keera. His eyes closed again, shutting out their pitch blackness and he collapsed in the corner of the room. His heart slowed to a near stop, he was vaguely aware that he must be seizing again. He felt himself jerking painfully out of his body. There was a sharp cry. He had no clue if it came from himself, Keera or Gracie. The room turned into a blur and it spun painfully as he looked up. He didn’t see Gracie’s face nor even a stranger’s. He saw the thing staring blankly down at him and then jerking him upward and disappearing through him or into him. He wasn’t sure. His body felt disconnected and distant and that was when he realized it was.

  Panic came over him as he realized he was no longer in the hospital room. He was lost in a dense forest of trees that were foreboding and bathed in a dim purpleish light. The sun was bright up above but all around him was freezing cold and dark as night. In front of him, there was a massive mansion that looked as though it had just been built the day before. Its windows were shuttered and the landscape around it was filled with contorted topiaries of various animals that he could not name. He moved toward it. His motions were slow at first and then he started running. The spirit was gone entirely and yet his head was still screaming in pain and he felt terrified without fully knowing why. He pushed into the house and looked around.

  The walls and furniture were warped and the wind was whistling through it’s empty rooms. The curtains were pulled closed tightly and he heard a child laughing behind him but when he turned, there was nothing there.

  “Where are you!?” he cried out, speaking a language he didn’t know yet somehow understood and could speak. He snapped his lips together tightly as the creature presented itself in front of him and his stomach did a flip-flop as it communicated without words. “I can see you!” he swallowed back his fear, backing toward the door and away from it as it came ever closer. “Why can I see you? What do you want?” it was whispering dark thoughts into his head, whispering his uselessness and whispering to him about the pills and the booze and whispering to him about Addington’s child. The child that needed to die.

  Even in this dream state, Ett felt his blood pressure dropping and his eyes rolling into the back of his head as the creature reached out and he felt the burn of its touch across his skin. It left a visible mark as it traveled down his right arm and to his hand. Yet he didn’t have the energy nor the will power to resist it. It was inches from his ear now, much larger than it had been in the hospital room and pulling him into its force.

  He realized within seconds that it was going to possess him, slowly. He had never had a spirit do this with him before, he had never dealt with anybody except people who simply wanted to be heard, seen and talked to.

  “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio.” He stopped as he gasped for breath and his knees buckled under him. Somewhere in the house he heard laughter again. It was twisted, like a girl screaming and laughing at the same time. His blood ran cold, “Contra nequitiam snarls diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus,” he felt a little stronger and looked up to see the being inches from him, their eyes were a mere hair’s length away and they locked, “supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis, Dei virtute, in infernum detrude Satanam aliosque” his heart was racing faster than he knew it should. It was hammering like a drum against his chest and felt like it might burst. Sweat poured down him, “spiritus malignos, præbent mundo ad perditionem animarum pervagantur. Amen.” The creature momentarily jerked away from him. There was blood splattering the floor and he wondered if it was his own.

  Ett rose from his knees and wobbled toward the door but was stopped. His legs refused to move and he was thrown back around. His back collided painfully with the wall. The being was right in front of him again, his back pressed against the wall as he stared down at it, trapped. “What do you want?!” As he repeated his words he again heard the same mantra repeated over and over. Kill the child. Kill it. Kill it. Kill it.

  Ett cried out as it felt as though the words were being engraved into his skull. He felt blood trickling down his neck and he realized that there was red liquid dribbling from his ears and down to his shirt collar, staining the white permanently red. Tears were running down his cheeks in red – he realized that he was crying blood.

  By that point, he was certain that he was going to die. He wasn’t going to see the normal world again…. He wasn’t going to see Gracie again. “Let me go!” he lashed out and the being vanished. Ett dashed to the door, light headed and blacking out as he flew through the forest and prayed that someone would revive him and help him escape this world. “Madre!” he cried out, it was the only person who came to mind who might be able to help him. “Appello!” he gasped out, leaning against a tree as he felt the weight and horror of it settle across his chest. He sniffed and realized that his nose was bleeding too. He rubbed the back of his hand against it and it came back smeared and dark red.

  He fell to his knees. “Appello!” he reached for his Rosary but found that it had vanished. He searched both pockets desperately but it was not to be found. He looked up toward the dim sun as the mixed tears fell freely down his cheeks and dripped into his shirt.

  He remembered no more after that.

  He came to in a hospital room of his own, gasping as machines beeped to life around him. They rung, loud and annoying, in his sensitive ears. He looked around to see only Gracie there with a gray-haired doctor. Her cheeks were stained with tears and the doctor looked absolutely horrified as Ett blinked and stared around blankly, his eyes still a clear, ice blue for a second before adjusting to their normal color. He was pale as a sheet of paper and the usually subtle dark rims around his eyes were defined and as dark as if he had been wearing eyeliner.

  “Nurse!” the doctor immediately called a nurse in there and rushed to the side of the bed to check his blood pressure and vitals.

  “What happened…” Ett’s words came out in Italian as nothing else was coming to him besides the demon’s horrible language that he somehow understood.

  “You died ten minutes ago,” the doctor murmured in shock himself as he gathered what Ettore was asking without needing to understand the language, “we tried to revive you but you were gone.”

Florence was deserted, her streets vacant, crumbling under the humidity and acidity in the air. The entire place dripped with poison and sat forlorn, a shadow of its former beauty.

  Ett took this in as he sat on the top of the cathedral  - his cathedral - and gazed off toward the horizon line. The line wasn’t bright blue, nor was it a dazzling sunset. It was gray, gray and cheerless. He had never remembered it to look like this. The sunsets from the top of his cathedral had always been the most breathtaking events he had ever witnessed. Now, they were no more.

  His fingers brushing over the worn edges of two small portraits. One was of Gracie, its corners dog-eared and worn down by time and gentle love. She stuck her tongue out at him, fighting back a smile as the corners of her eyes crinkled. It was so perfectly her. The other was a black and white of his parents together, happy and young. It always surprised Ett just how much he resembled his father when the older man had been his age.

  He kicked his heels against the side of the building as his legs dangled over the edge. He was at least a good eight stories up, perched on the Tuscan barrel tiled roof and breathing at the aid of a high tech facemask created by Drew.

  He had been on his own for seven months now, moving from group to group like a nomad. His heart was searching, yearning for something. He wasn’t even sure what, he knew he just needed to find it. Deep down, when he would begin to lose his resolve, something within him would remind him exactly what he was really looking for… or who.

  Ett pulled out a yellowed letter and lay back against the roof and read it over again. It was a letter his father had addressed to him shortly before his father had passed on. Honestly, he didn’t even need to read it as he had the words memorized down to the last period and sentence. He was close to even having every swirl of his father’s signature committed to memory.

  He remained motionless like that for some time before closing his eyes and drifting off into a dreamless sleep.

  Over the last eighteen months, the world had fallen apart. Nuclear warfare had begun in New York but it had quickly spread across the globe and affected most of the major metropolitan areas. Florence had made it out relatively intact, only affected now by the radiation and neglect.

  Ettore had changed some over the last few months himself. His hair had grown out and was just beginning to brush his shoulders. There was no point, nor time to spend cutting it regularly. He had also gotten into a tangle with a bad group of people and had received several scars as payment. One stretched under his left eye, long and jagged, ending at his temple. One change that had created the least physical alteration, but had transformed him greatly nonetheless,  was his name.

  Ett had come to the decision to change his last name. It seemed frivolous during such trying times but something about being a proper Gimondi, his surname by birth, seemed right. If he was to die, he wanted to join his parents properly. And, if on the off chance he survived, he wanted to carry on his father’s name.

  “Gimondi,” someone was kicking him roughly and he pulled himself up, blinking and rubbing his eyes. He was no longer in Florence and had to remind himself that that moment had taken place weeks ago. He had been dreaming. The realization slammed hard into him and he blinked again out of surprise more than tiredness. He never had dreams, let alone simple, good ones like that.

  “We’re moving,” the same gruff voice announced. “We are going to reach the shelter before nightfall.”

  Ett’s heart skipped a beat. They were in Russia now. Despite the fact that he still harbored a dislike for the country, he also felt as though he was getting closer to Gracie and the others. It had been so long, though. The only hope he clung to was that he hadn’t found her on the other side. That was a good sign, but there had always been a lingering unease, too… after all, the other side was a new hell of its own now, it was crumbling into chaos. He had a hard enough time finding even Guilia anymore.

  Ett pulled himself to his feet. The shack the small group of survivors had found shelter in was wretched, roughly hewn from large, weathered logs and it smelled of dirt and unwashed bodies. It took only minutes for him to prepare himself. His possessions fit into a small satchel. Actually, the only things he owned besides his weapons were the pictures and his dad’s letter.

  Late in the day, as the sun that was no longer there would have been setting, he heard a few heavily accented men up ahead announce that they had come to the shelter. It didn’t look like much, but Ettore assumed that the majority of it was hidden beneath the earth. He kept his fingers crossed that they might have some real food or water in there, anything. His lips were cracked and aching as were his feet. He knew he had lost quite a lot of weight over the last eight months. His clothes hung loosely over his bones and his belt was notched tighter than ever before.

  He sniffed and rubbed his hand over his dirt-smudged face, pushing his hair back behind his ears as he followed the group down.

  As the group was first checked, then welcomed and moved inside, Ett’s eyes caught a curious sight. There were a few wind chimes blowing carelessly in the still breeze. Wait, there was no breeze. Yet they move, tinkling a melody, and his head tilted to the side as he watched them. His mouth went dry and he felt his temples throb in pain. He saw his mother, he knew her instantly. He would swear on it. She was standing there, watching him, crying for him. He could feel the pain of her bleeding heart.

  He blinked and she was gone. He had no choice but to move on. As they entered the underground compound, he moved past everybody as quickly as he could, pushing his fellow exhausted travelers out of his way. His mother’s appearance had been a sign and, between their gaze, she had managed to communicate with him.

  He first saw Drew and his heart skipped a beat and his throat constricted tightly. His breathing quickened. He flew by the scientist, not even sure if the man recognized him and he honestly didn’t even care.

  Ettore’s feet pounded against the cool cement flooring as he flew down the long corridor, picking up speed with every step. His footsteps echoed through the place, vibrating back to his ears. As he entered a large common room, he stopped quickly. There were at least two dozen people milling about, talking, sitting, eating, living almost normal lives under eerie florescent lights. Almost. He stood there and stared at the back of a girl. She was facing another woman, talking earnestly to her. The girl’s hair was a light brown and wavy down her back. Her height was just perfect, not too tall, and not too short. She looked like any other girl from the back, except he knew she wasn’t.

  He flew across the room that divided them, his footsteps light and his movement rapid as he pushed by lingering residents. He was behind her now, before she could spin around to see who was there, his strong arms wrapped tightly around her, pulling her back into his chest. He spun her around in circle after circle until they were probably both dizzy and even then he was reluctant to set her down. “Gracie!” He gasped her name out, tears welling at the corners of his eyes as they raked over her, taking in every single detail in her face, her clothing, everything. “Fucking hell! What the fuck!?” He waved his arms around, his own tired features transforming as his face lit in boyish delight and the nights of insomnia faded away. His voice caught in his throat. “Gracie!” the sound of her name delighted him. He lifted her into his arms again and hugged her close to his chest.

  His heart was hammering hard against her cheek. He had known, deep down, that she was still alive, but he had always wondered if he would really survive to see her again.