The infinity dungeon 270

Chapter 270

Cardinal De Ponti eyed Don Casellaro’s reflection in the mirror warily. The plush, velvet seats of the room reminded him of his residence in the Vatican, although he knew that unlike at the Vatican, here the golden details scattered in the room were most probably fake.

“Why are you here?” he asked the man. 

The Don had waltzed into the cardinal’s room unannounced, as if he owned the place. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he had bought the whole hotel where the gala was about to be held.

He laughed. “Can’t I say hi to a fellow Italian before the dinner?”

De Ponti’s eyebrow twitched. The two spoke their language when alone, but the Don’s southern accent always bothered him. Being from the north, he found the other man’s way of speaking undignified, brutish and barely intelligible–a thing the Don knew very well.

“Besides,” the Don continued. “You have been sent here to keep an eye on me, have you not?”

“I am here on behalf of his holiness,” De Ponti said. “It is you who has invited yourself to the gala. I have never hidden the fact that I was going to participate.

The Don shrugged. “Well, let’s just say that I am here to remind you and his holiness, that such things are not necessary. We work together, do we not?”

“Again, I am telling you that is not the case,” the cardinal said.

“And again, I am telling you not to play games with me.”

“Games?” De Ponti scoffed, turning away from the mirror so that he wouldn’t have to see the man’s pig-like face. “Now that your… assets are both gone, I don’t see why we should keep working with a man such as you.”

The Don poured himself a glass of wine, swirling it before taking a sip and making a disgusted face. “Because,” he said as he put down the glass and took something from his pocket. “I am the only one in the world who can use this and not die a painful death.”

The broken mirror shard glinted under the incandescent lights of the chandelier up above. Made to mimic candles, all the lights achieved was a bothersome electrical droning. De Ponti almost called for the power of his Faith just to silence both them, and the stupid man in front of him. He did not.

He did not move at all. Should the Don choose to use the shard, not even his Faith would save him. Perhaps he could kill the man before he acted, but these days the shards seemed to have a will of their own. They, along with their wielder, have been growing erratic and strange.

De Ponti could feel it, a stink to the air.

The Don noticed the microexpressions on his face. He put the shard away, moving between the cardinal and the mirror and facing the man directly. He smiled. A wide, disgusting smile that showed his two gold teeth, surrounded by yellowing teeth stained by smoke. His forehead was perennially sweaty, and his body odor had claimed the room. An acrid mix of cigar smoke and sweat, expensive perfume applied in way too generous amounts, and clothes treated with God knew what sort of plethora of products.

The cardinal knew that the stink he was smelling was not due to any of that. It was not even a proper smell, but the sensation of something very wrong with the world. His Faith seemed to want to rebel against it, but he forced it to still. He knew, after all, that the only reason his Faith could even dare to act upon the world was that wretched shard.

“You cannot touch me,” the Don said. “You cannot hurt me. You cannot get rid of me.”

He went to fish a cigar from a little wooden box he kept in his jacket. With slow, agonizingly controlled movements, he lit up a match and started smoking, blowing the smoke toward the cardinal.

“Why am I here, you asked? I will be making some deals for my Family tonight,” he said. “For a few friends of the Family as well. You must have noticed that the americano and his little gathering of friends are trying to take over the world, have you not? Or do you live, perhaps, under a rock and spend all day praying?”

De Ponti struggled to keep his face under control. His wrinkles betrayed him, he felt, accentuating every little twitch and reaction. The Don gloated, laughing heartily before coughing in that disgusting way long time smokers coughed.

“You know what I do here,” he said. “I do not live under a rock, nor do I pray all day, although some days I wish I did.”

The Don laughed again, and De Ponti could not help but feel like the man was toying with him however he wished, while he could do nothing to stop him.

“Perhaps your will is faltering, then,” the Don said mockingly. “You better keep it under control, lest you lose your… Faith.”

He leaned in and pretended to examine some of the jewellery on the cardinal’s body. Somehow, he seemed to know exactly which of the many trinkets allowed him to channel the power of his holiness. Of course he did, he was the one who had either found them, or created them.

“My faith is unshakable,” the cardinal muttered angrily, feeling like a child hurling empty protests against much bigger and meaner parents.

“Let God be the judge of that. Sometimes little lambs get lost along the way, and they need to repent before returning to the herd.”

He leaned in.

“You will make sure everything goes smoothly tonight,” he said, speaking in the cardinal’s face. 

Then he left. 

De Ponti felt the heat of righteous anger rise within him. He got up, stared at the mirror and then out the window, where the faint light of day had turned this strange American city blue. The streets were strange. The skyline was alien. The food tasted strange. People were strange.

He took a deep breath, and felt himself deflate. His whole body withered like a balloon drained of air, save for his right fist whose fingers were still curled on each other, pressed so tight the skin had become white. When his jaw unclenched, he felt the ache in his teeth from too much pressure.

***

The Don entered his room and immediately extinguished the cigar in the toilet before flushing. The thing got stuck in there, and he snarled against the useless piece of plumbing before leaving the room and slamming the door shut behind him. Someone else was going to take care of this, he did not care.

He looked at the reflection in the mirror, disgust on his face. He rolled up a sleeve seeing faint dark lines on his skin that seemed to trace the shape of his veins. He unbuttoned his pants, and let them fall to the floor, revealing a patch of darkened skin right where the shard was always touching his leg. The skin was flaking, oozing pus and strange fluids. It seemed to be changing into something, something resembling scales…

“The things I do for power…” he muttered. 

He cleaned the strange wound and tightened three rounds of gauze around it, then got dressed again. In the other room, he was sure that De Ponti was seething with rage. Good, let the man stew in his own anger for a while. 

That was what the Don did best. He had a knack for putting people in a tight spot. For breaking their delicate balance. When people were off-balance, they made mistakes. They were not as aware of machinations and subterfuge as they would normally be. They were most prone to reacting rather than being proactive, and their reactions were more impulse than reason.

He rolled up his sleeve again. The strange black lines had receded somewhat.

He grinned. Perhaps he was the last inheritor of such a strange power. The power to resist the corruption that came with the use of the shard. This made him so valuable that not even the pope could dare to touch him, despite the man’s immense power.

At least, that was how things should be. However, seeing the cardinal’s behavior, it was clear that the pope was trying to manoeuvre around him.

I did not make pope Francis resign just to let your stupid religious zeal and thirst for power ruin my plans, the Don thought. 

Except, pope Damasus the Second’s fiery zeal had been instrumental for Don Casellaro’s plans. Without it, he would have never gotten to where he was. Because in the end, the easiest people to manipulate are the people whose desires you know intimately, and there was no deadlier combo than religion and thirst for power.

His fingers found the sharp edges of the shard of the broken mirror in his pocket. For a moment, he thought about how much he hated the fabric of the fucking clothes he was wearing, the stench of perfume and chemicals applied to them just to hide the stench of his corrupted flesh.

He could feel it, in his mind, the faint whisper of voices from the other side of the shard. They promised pleasure, power, immortality, and the death of his enemies. He ignored them, knowing that they were the lures of devils. He had gotten used to them as of late, enough so that he was sure he had gotten pretty good at counteracting their influence on his mind. 

Unfortunately, the more he used the artifact, the stronger they became. After tonight, he would need to stay away from the shard for at least a week, he knew. But those were problems for tomorrow.

The people from Unity were going to be at the gala tonight. The new Secretary of Defence was obviously their plant, and he had somehow managed to slip them through. With their abilities, they were sure to get to the President, and then they would be able to sense what De Ponti had done to the man.

That was why he had been forced to change his plans. Why he needed De Ponti to be off-balance and careless. Emotional. He had not told the man about the disturbance that was going to happen. Already he could picture the man’s face when he saw the Lexington boy and the others stroll in like they owned the place. Like they always did. That Travis man and the other lackeys doing the boy’s bidding.

After tonight, pope Damasus will be forced to recognize just how much he needs me.

He looked into the mirror, smiling his practiced smile. The shard was cold between his fingers, sharp. An echo of desire made it vibrate with anticipation, almost as if the thing knew that Don wanted to use it. He looked at the time. The show was starting soon.