floor, and was alarmed to find how thick the smoke drifting along the passages was here. She held the crook of her elbow in front of her nose and mouth, stumbled through the smoke to the west wing, and with a powerful kick moved aside the iron bar that had been securing the door of Signora Falchi’s room.
“Don’t shoot!” she shouted, before flinging the door open.
There was no one there. The window was wide open, as before, when the tutor had been firing at the Hundinga on the terrace. The bedclothes lay in a tangled heap on the floor.
“Signora Falchi?” She went into the room and over to the bathroom door. “It’s me. Rosa Alcantara.”
The bathroom, too, was empty. She ran to the window and looked down. It was over twelve feet to the stone paving of the terrace. The mattress from the bed was lying at the base of the facade.
Signora Falchi was treading water in the middle of the swimming pool, fending off the drifting body of a naked man with distaste, as if defending herself against his improper advances.
“Signora!” Rosa leaned out of the window. “I’m up here!”
The tutor looked up. “Signorina Alcantara! Where’s Iole? Is she safe?”
“Yes,” Rosa said, lying. “Tell me about those dogs.”
“They were here just now. I thought maybe they were afraid of water. I had a dachshund once that—”
“Did they all run off to the inner courtyard?”
“How would I know?”
“Toward the main entrance?”
“Yes…yes, I think so.”
How many of them might still be alive? Eight? Ten? Maybe more? Alessandro couldn’t last much longer. She had to reach him. She still had the pistol. Maybe—
“Get out of there!” the tutor called up to her. “The whole palazzo is going up in flames!”
Without another word, Rosa turned away from Signora Falchi and ran along the corridor to a guest room overlooking the inner courtyard. She swept the curtain aside, opened the window, and looked out.
She could tell, even through the smoke, that there was fighting down there, but from this vantage point she could make out only two heaps of tangled bodies. She heard the snapping, howling, spitting, and hissing of the opposing sides. And she saw more Hundinga approaching from the gateway, in loose formation.
Without thinking, she raised the pistol and fired. Over the last four months she had practiced using a gun, but she was far from sure of hitting her target.
Her second shot hit a black Doberman—possibly the leader—and flung him to the ground. The next went wide, but the fourth bullet wounded a Hunding in the side. She must have hit his heart, because he was returning to human form even as he fell. The others who had come up from the gate growled at her, but they turned and retreated into the tunnel. They only had to wait. Sooner or later the flames would drive the Panthera and the last humans out of the palazzo and into their arms.
The Panthera also looked up at her. Alessandro’s adversary tried to exploit that moment, but Alessandro turned just in time to avoid a savage bite and struck the Hunding a powerful blow with his paw. The Hunding howled, and blood spurted from his throat. Alessandro’s fur gleamed, wet with blood. Rosa couldn’t tell how much of it came from his own wounds.
She fired again. The Hundinga moved back from the leopard and followed their companions into the tunnel.
A moment later the two Panthera were standing alone in the smoke that was now billowing ever more densely out of all parts of the building and into the inner courtyard. Firelight blazed behind windowpanes, bathing the scene in a flickering red glow.
“Alessandro!” Rosa saw that the leopard was about to pounce on him from behind. “No!” Her voice broke and became a hoarse croak. There was nothing she could do from up here. The risk of hitting Alessandro if she fired the pistol was too great.
The panther was thrown to the ground, dragging the leopard down with him. Both were lost from sight in a thick cloud of smoke. One of the windows near them broke in a cascade of shattered glass.
Briefly, Rosa toyed with the idea of jumping down into the courtyard. The tutor had done it and survived, so why not try it herself? But even a sprained ankle would be a death sentence for her down there. If the Hundinga came back, or Michele attacked her, she would be helpless.
Coughing, with streaming eyes, she ran back into the corridor, then to