They say Paris is always a good idea, but Rome is as well. The thing about Rome is there’s so much about the city, and so few things come to mind. People think about Rome, and what pops up is the Vatican, or old dead men wearing sheets and laurels to work.
There is so much more to this city than what’s taught in High School History. It’s trite to say all roads lead to Rome, but when you step out on the balcony of your new suite, and look out across the warm night lights of the cityscape — it doesn’t matter which direction or what catches your eye — you feel like you were always on your way here anyway. And it was perfect for me to find Quinn, sitting on the railing of his balcony, right across the street from me — a wine glass in his hand, and his hair tossed lightly by wind.
Eye to eye, he gave me a smile that could make the virgin weep. For a brief moment I felt able to stroll out into the exoticness of Rome and into his arms. I didn’t of course. We were fifteen floors up in the air, but for a delightful moment, that didn’t matter a bit.
The night covered everything in velvet shadows and penumbras. The stars, however, were incredibly clear. One didn’t seem possible with the other, but that’s Rome for you. Or was it the dragon lord swinging his booted leg absently over the side of his marble railing?
“You look mauled, my dear,” Quinn said to me, as my bellboy left a glass of wine in my hand, and took his tip.
“I am,” I agreed, feeling the weight of many days, and heavy emotions. I brushed the hair from my face, and attempted to brush the weariness from my eyes. “I think you’ve been badly used yourself. You come in the middle, — no not really huh? This is closer to the end, here. I’ve been tossed, and turned, and rode, and emotionally gutted several times. And now you’re here hoping to make an impression. I must say though, this scene, and this balcony meeting has far more potency than I would have believed it could.” His grin took ten pounds off my shoulders and I found myself swinging gently with the Mediterranean breeze.
“Oh, this?” he asked, moving heavily curled black locks back from his eyes to look around, and down to the street below. “This is just a little, something, I whipped together. It’s not much. Not like, maybe, a perfect dress in the back of your closet when you thought you had nothing to wear.”
I squinted at him, “… and, is there, a perfect dress in the back of my closet?”
He shrugged, and stood up, seeming uninterested, “The back of a woman’s closet is her affair, so if there is, I’m sure I know nothing about it, or dinner plans with the Cardinal — tonight, at nine.”
“Which, Cardinal?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Which one is worth having dinner with, in a perfect dress?” he asked.
Lifting myself to a firmer stance, I challenged, “A perfect, dress?”
Quinn pouted his lips slightly, seeming to reassess his choice of words, but then held fast to his claim, “Sì, sì, un vestito perfetto.”
“Then, of course there is but one Cardinal in all of Italy — but I’m sure he has better things to do than to have dinner with a heathen — even one in a perfect dress,” I told him.
“His Holiness is not so burdened with graces that he could not offer a moment to the practical world,” he answered.
“The Practical world?” I asked, never hearing it described with that term in the context of visiting the Pope. That was always the distancing mark for me and the religious people I’ve come across in my travels. The practical world. It was fine to talk of high beliefs, and prophecy but babies still spit-up on shoulders, and diapers continually had to be changed — did the child Jesus never have to take a time-out? Could he claim to be one of us if he didn’t?
“Yes, practical,” Quinn agreed, “and don’t let it go to your head too far; others will be present as well. We have much to discuss.”
Quinn was powerful, angular and complex. His mahogany voice captured my attention, and my imagination. I could still feel how his oak, and leather scent caught me up that first night, as he lingered over me, leisurely taking in my nudeness at his pleasure.
Straightening my shoulders, I brushed the glitter, and romance from my eyes, and cleared my head from the numbness of the trans-Atlantic flight. “I haven’t been able to place you,” I told him.
“Place me?” he asked.
“I’ve caught on to the realms or whatever you five call your areas. Kane worked with influence and power in the business areas, while Slate did much the same thing, but works the political arena. Raw’s focus is war, and all that goes with that.”
Quinn stood, and drank down the last of the wine in his glass, “And you have trouble placing me into the matrix of the world,” he offered.
Hell, I had trouble placing him in this century. If he wasn’t so fucking masculine, the open shirt, extremely tight pants, knee high boots and long curls would have him more feminine than I liked. Fuck if it did though. It would take more than tight pants, and curls to make him effeminate. For a brief moment I imagined him in a tux, and my heart nearly stopped.
“Yes,” I barked out, in a cough, taking a step and coming close to breaking the heel off my shoe. “How do you see the world? Where do you focus your energy?”
He alighted up on the railing of his balcony, and pivoted on a toe. “Oh, I thought that would have been obvious.” Then he stepped out, and slid across the space from his balcony to mine, on what looked like the transparent silver blade of a sword.
Stepping down onto the deck of my balcony, he took up the wine bottle my porter had opened, and refilled his glass. “I focus on the spiritual, the religions, the beliefs and hopes of the people.”
I snapped my mouth shut, and replayed what just happened in my mind twice. “Did you just slide down a moonbeam onto my balcony?”
“Yes?” he answered waving a dismissive hand. “It’s all that faith stuff.”
“I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t do that,” I said.
He searched his memory, and shrugged when he came up empty, “I’m sure someone very holy, and famous did at some point. I can’t have been the first.”
“Zeus, maybe,” I suggested.
After admiring a mouthful of wine, he agreed. “Sure, that sounds like him. Always turning into gold dust and clouds to seduce his women.”
“That what you’re hoping for?” I asked, feeling a thrill of challenge. “This is Rome buddy. The place where wolves raised men to be kings. Serious ground. Olympus is in Greece.”
“I know where it is, I have a villa there,” he said.
That stopped me. “You live on Mount Olympus!” I said, in wonder.
“Oh, well, no. Just south of there. Olympus is a protected preserve now.”
The way he said this, made it sound as if the gods were an endangered species — which sounded crazy, but all too real as well.
I glanced at the wine glass in my hand, and chose my next question carefully. “Are you messing with my head?”
“It is religion dear. Not for the faint of heart,” he offered, and neither was the intoxicating patchouli scent in the air.
I was severely lacking in the area of mind altering experiences. A couple of nights a year I drank down more than I should, and howled at the moon, sure — but always around safe, trusted people. People who would bail me out or at least be sitting beside me in the jail cell, saying ‘damn that was fun!’. And, truth be told, I never truly enjoyed being in an altered state of mind. Glancing back at my wine glass, I tossed it over the side to the street below without further thought, and went into my room.
When I didn’t hear the expected sparkling shatter of my wine goblet, I looked back to him, and found he had my glass in his hand.
“You might hurt someone like that,” he said.
“Keep messing with my head, and it’s a guarantee,” I replied, and continued inside.
“Apologies,” he offered as he followed me into my room. “But it’s not fully under my control. This is not to say that it’s not me, but rather you’re bonding with me.”
I stopped, and turned back to him. “I’ve been through that three times now and the other three didn’t feel like this.”
“True, but my power is more internal. Our spiritual worlds, make up our beliefs, defining the boundaries, and fabric of our reality.”
“Are you saying the effect is deeper?” I asked.
“Not deeper, per se,” he said, his expression showing his active search for the right words. “More diffused perhaps. Even those of the same faith don’t believe in the same ways. Belief is a very personal experience. Personal and hard to define even for those who have invested long years of focused time searching for clarity.” It didn’t take long for me to agree with his assessment. My own beliefs were muddled in ways no other topic came close to being – clear as stirred up mud.
“Alright,” I said. “What do you suggest?”
His vagueness sharpened to an intense expression that was difficult not to describe as violent. “All the ground work is complete. Our energy tonight is only in closing the trap.”
“Something tells me that you’re being literal — that C-source is close. Is it exposed enough to tell what it is?”
He stepped closer to me, pulling something from his shirt pocket. “The people we are meeting with tonight have different names for the thing, but westerners like yourself would most likely call it a Grigori.”
The name meant nothing to me, and I’m sure my expression told him this as I let him slip a gold ring on my finger. In the same motion his hand slid up my arm and cupped my breast bringing his lips to mine.
“Aren’t you moving a little fast for being the holy one?” I asked, just before his lips sucked my lower lip between them in the most beautiful way.
His smile looked more fox than dragon. “I don’t believe any of the people we are meeting tonight would call me holy. Besides, it would really depend on what part of the world you were looking at — for example, for the Kama Sutra, we’re not even close to the introduction.”
The mention of thee Kama Sutra had the effect of reminding me there was more to religion than Rome — and that some of them even liked sex.
“So, what is a Grigori?” I asked, after he released my lip.
“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?” he said, and then took from my bra the iron nail Raw had given me. “One could ask what this is,” he added, but he didn’t sound jealous. “The easy answer would be that it is a token from Raw, except I know my brother well, and Raw doesn’t give tokens. Raw understands heartache, loss, mortality, and pain better than the Buddha. If he ever had a sentimental side to him, it was burned away long ago. So, again, what is this?”
I looked at the nail again, remembering the ring it use to be and felt an ache. “He said to keep it for protection.”
“Did he now? That is interesting. I think then, you should do as he suggested, and we should try that dress on, in case I didn’t get the measurements perfect.”