Angelina awoke abruptly. Sleep had hit her with an overpowering swiftness once she’d relaxed her body – if not her mind – into the plush covers and inviting mattress. It had come like possession: a force that overtook her, rather than gradually sidled up and made friends. Her sleep had been filled with dreams of prophets and rivers, bullets and the frailties of faith, until it left her as abruptly as it had come.
As she lifted her head from the pillows compressed beneath it, her hair was still wet.
‘How long was I out?’ she asked with a groggy voice, sensing movement from across the room. Ben was already up.
‘You slept for almost four hours,’ he answered, ‘which isn’t bad, considering.’
Angelina blinked open her eyes and let them adjust to the light. Ben stood a few metres from the foot of the bed, dressed in clothes that were crisp, clean rejuvenations of those he’d worn yesterday.
As she breathed in, Angelina’s nostrils filled with a swirl of welcome scents. Coffee, eggs, toast.
‘I thought we could both do with something to eat,’ Ben said, taking note of her expression. ‘Sit yourself up, it’ll be easier.’
Surprised, but drawn in by the scents and the sudden awareness of a ravenous hunger, Angelina pulled herself forward, readjusted the pillows and sat upright on the bed. A moment later, Ben had laid a silver tray across her lap. An omelette dripping with melted cheese was on a plate at its centre, surrounded by a fan of sliced melon and berries, a rack of brown toast beside a tiny pot of jam, a bowl of purplish yoghurt, and a cup already filled with steaming black coffee.
‘I hope they’re things you eat,’ Ben said, stepping away. ‘I didn’t know your diet, so I just guessed.’
‘It’s perfect,’ she answered, going straight for the coffee. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d actually had a meal – had it been breakfast the day before? – and at that moment would have eaten anything within arm’s reach.
An enormous forkful of omelette was in her mouth a second later, the flavours milling on her tongue.
‘Did you get some sleep, too?’ she asked around the food.
‘A couple of hours,’ Ben answered. ‘Adrenaline, you know. Didn’t allow for much more.’
Angelina understood perfectly well. She dunked a corner of a slice of toast into the jam and added a bite to the other flavours merging in her mouth.
‘Our laundry was hanging outside the door when room service brought up the food half an hour ago,’ Ben added. ‘I hung your things in the wardrobe. I hope you don’t mind, I already ate without you.’
He motioned towards the desk. A second tray was there, its contents already devoured. Angelina looked up and smiled at him.
‘Nice to know I’m not the only one with an appetite.’ The odd – no, inexplicable – tone of their conversation before sleep had not left her, but with the morning came a new energy, a new calm, and Ben’s kindness was sufficient to let her overlook it for the moment.
He smiled back at her, then sat in silence at the desk, watching her eat. He let her get about halfway through the plate of food before he added, ‘You should get dressed, quickly, once you’ve finished that.’
A tinge of energy. The emotions of yesterday started to flood back. Angelina peered at him over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘Why the rush?’
Ben’s eyes fell to his shoes. ‘You don’t want me to tell you.’
The tingle in her spine became a fire. ‘Ben, what is it?’
He slowly faced her again. The same distant look she’d beheld multiple times the day before was back.
‘The third plague,’ Ben said flatly. ‘It’s already upon us.’
Somewhere between their interrogation beneath the Apostolic Palace and his revelation of belonging to what Angelina considered roughly the equivalent of a charismatic cult, she had thought she’d lost the ability to be shocked by anything that came out of Ben Verdyx’s mouth. This proved that theory wrong.
She shoved aside the tray of breakfast and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘What am I supposed to make of a comment like that, Ben?’ She tightened the belt of her robe as she stood. ‘“Good morning, have some breakfast, then get dressed quick since a plague is upon us”? Christ, man!’
He didn’t answer. Instead, he was already tearing the plastic wrappings from Angelina’s laundered clothes and passing them to her, urgency in his eyes.
Infuriated, yet puzzled by his behaviour, Angelina grabbed the clothes and marched crossly into the bathroom to put them on.
It was there that she heard the first explosion.
It was not the explosion of a firing gun she’d unwillingly become only too familiar with yesterday. This was an utterly different sound, and a feeling that went along with it. A rumbling that shook her feet, her core, and the whole room around her, even as a thumping bang followed by a rumble sounded in her ears.
She spread her feet immediately for balance, reaching forward and bracing her hands on the granite countertop. The boom still echoed in her ears, but gradually the rumbling stopped and the world regained its stability.
‘What the hell was that?’ She shot out of the bathroom, buttoning her blouse as she went.
‘The third plague,’ Ben said solemnly. His words were measured, if not entirely calm.
‘No more about plagues!’ Angelina’s toleration had reached its limit.
He appeared to sense that no answer he could vocalise was going to convince her, so instead he walked over to one of the tall windows and drew back the layered curtains. He’d not opened them before, but he knew precisely what he would see.
He motioned Angelina closer.
She huffed as she approached, more disgruntled than ever at Ben’s behaviour. Halting a step away from him, she glanced outside, then lowered her gaze to the street.
Another boom sounded, and this time Angelina watched as a manhole cover midway across the Via Veneto lifted up off the tarmac with explosive force and flew at least two metres in the air before clanking to the ground with a terrific, metallic thunk. Out of the black hole it had covered shot a geyser of steam, erupting into the early morning air.
But no, it wasn’t steam. The gooseflesh on Angelina’s back started to rise as she realised it was too thick, too solid a grey.
It billowed as the geyser reached nearly to the height of their fourth-storey window.
‘You don’t have to believe anything you don’t want to,’ Ben said forebodingly. ‘You can call them chance coincidences, lies or anything else you like. But the prophecy on the tablet predicts plagues, and you know as well as I that the third is—’
‘Fog.’ Angelina finished his sentence. She gazed at it a moment longer, temporarily mesmerised by the curling tendrils spreading out across the street.
Then she turned to Ben.
‘It’s time you took me to your church.’