Just like my rats, he thinks. The more time he spends with the creatures, the more he can relate to them. They shun attention, too. And they understand their place in this world.

He glances over either shoulder before he taps in the password to his email server. There is only one new message in his in-box. Anxious as he is to read it, he pauses to take another discreet scan of the room. Satisfied no one is watching, he taps the mouse and the message appears.

“You must always abide His word,” the email instructs. “When He tells you to go forth, He means for you to carry His sacred creatures eastward. To Asia. I am convinced of it. You must release them in the Far East, the squalor of civilization, where they do not heed His word.” The sender then quotes a familiar verse from the Book of Psalms: “Let death steal over them. Let them go down to Sheol alive, for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart.”

He swallows hard, trying to steel his courage. He has never before left Italy, let alone the Continent. “New ships depart for the Far East every day,” the message goes on to say. “If I were the chosen one, I would go to the harbor and find a working ship. Perhaps a freighter? They are always in need of new crew. Is your passport in order?” The email ends, as they all do, with the same phrase, “You will be forever blessed.”

He replies with three words—“passport in order”—and then deletes the messages. As soon as the screen confirms that he has been logged out of the email server, he rises to his feet and heads for the door. He keeps his eyes straight ahead but makes no attempt to cover his face. After all, no one remembers seeing the invisible.

As he steps into the warm Neapolitan air, his resolve is stronger than ever. He does not doubt that Dr. Lonzo is a good man and an able psychiatrist. But in this case, he must be wrong. If only he could tell him: Do you not see, Dr. Lonzo? It is not only God who is instructing me.

Chapter

Fifty

The two men in white biohazard suits wheel the sealed black body bag out of the ICU room. The gurney almost grazes Alana’s gown as they pass her. The twenty-nine-year-old on it died only minutes earlier, following another failed resuscitation that ended in as much blood spatter as any Alana had witnessed. The woman had apparently been out celebrating her second anniversary with her husband only the day before. Now she represented Genoa’s thirty-ninth plague-related victim in the one week since Vittoria’s death. Fortieth, if you were to include her fetus, Alana thinks miserably.

She feels an elbow brush up against hers and glances over to see Byron at her side. “I want to show you something,” he says, grinning.

“What’s there possibly to smile about, Byron?”